Mod Authors: Consider using the Falskaar worldspace

[melvinius]

Hi all!

 

I just wanted to throw this out there for any mod authors who may be in need of a new landmass for their mod. I should mention here that I am not associated with the mod Falskaar in any way except as an end-user.

 

The main Skyrim worldspace tends to get pretty cluttered with all the great mods out there. Not a bad thing necessarily but this can lead to certain places (Bannered Mare, ahem) that become overused as places to put NPCs or as quest points of interest. In the long term this can cause these areas to be performance heavy messes, especially on heavily modded setups.

 

It really would benefit the community a lot to have modders build upon the existing work of others. Falskaar is a good example of what I mean here, so I chose it as an example.

 

Falskaar is a bit of an older mod, but it was very well put together. Sadly, the landmass of Falskaar is pretty sparsely featured and unpopulated. There are a lot of interesting areas that the mod author just never filled in or finished. On top of that, Falskaar SE is an extremely STABLE landmass. I've been running around it for hours with several followers and have been enjoying a much better framerate than I generally do over in the main Skyrim worldspace. Falskaar also contains several large cities which were never fully completed.

 

So if you are a mod author, consider modding for Falskaar. Need a whole city for your mod? Finish one of Falskaar's very cool city locations, or build a completely new one in an empty section of the Falskaar's world map. Building a house mod? Build it in Falskaar, especially if it's going to be a very resource intensive/detailed house mod; the lower baseline performance requirements of Falskaar landmass vs. regular Skyrim worldspace will mean a smoother experience for your users. Making a new follower mod? Put your follower's home or starting location... in Falskaar! Did you just mesh a cool new monster? Put some spawn points in Falskaar!

 

Of course, some baseline rules need to be set in order for all this to work nicely, the same as the base Skyrim game:

 

- It's a good idea to leave (Falskaar's) existing quests alone unless absolutely necessary.

- It's a good idea to use only the base Falskaar mod (not the addons) for a basis of your own mod, to increase the potential user base and ease of install.

 

#resurrectFalskaar

Edited March 21, 2020 by melvinius

[Anselmp]

Good idea. I'd been thinking I'd never bother with Falskaar again. The only proper town was destroyed and none of the remaining buildings are of any interest visually. The 'port' is on the wrong side - it would be quicker to walk back through the tunnels. I would recommend that the mages move their college there to continue their research in peace and quiet and no longer annoy their neighbours. Also the monastery could house a religious wing with plenty of stained glass and a warrior monk wing with a more spartan look with different musical backgrounds.

Anyway, how did they find such armies when there was nowhere for most of them to live?

[melvinius]

Good idea. I'd been thinking I'd never bother with Falskaar again. The only proper town was destroyed and none of the remaining buildings are of any interest visually. The 'port' is on the wrong side - it would be quicker to walk back through the tunnels. I would recommend that the mages move their college there to continue their research in peace and quiet and no longer annoy their neighbours. Also the monastery could house a religious wing with plenty of stained glass and a warrior monk wing with a more spartan look with different musical backgrounds.

Anyway, how did they find such armies when there was nowhere for most of them to live?

Yeah, there were a lot of... idiosyncrasies to the mod, to put it mildly. The modding team was hugely talented, but Falskaar lacked a bit in the writing department and in detailing the world. There was just too much space to fill for the size of the team building the mod, I guess.

 

I felt like the "Heart of the Gods" concepts was a bit hackneyed too, but it opens some interesting possibilities. The land of Falskaar looks... engineered, for lack of a better word, and the idea that a Divine intervened to bring life and warmth to part of the land makes me think that an extended questline to "terraform" the rest of Falskaar using the same artifact would be really interesting.

 

There's just so much potential here for not only mods that build upon Falskaar lore, but also for new mods that need somewhere to put them. I'm trying to convince some mod authors to expand their work into Falskaar. Things like illuminated road signs, lamp posts, and overhauled interiors for inns/homes/shops would breathe some new life into Falskaar.

 

And Falskaar already has some of the best voiced bandits in the game. :)