TwinCrows

I've been spending hundreds of hours working on dungeon adventure mods lately, including the 'Akaviri Ruins of Savirien-Chorak' which was recently featured by Bethesda for PC, Xbox, and PS4. I figured I would compile some tips and ruminations on how to go about creating dungeons. This includes some ideas that I personally want to memorize, as well as knowledge that I want to offer to other modders in this category. I've written this so that you can just pick and choose from topics — don't feel like you need to read it all. These are just some general, abstract-level ideas about making dungeon adventures. Step 0: Learning Practice If you haven't really modded before, then you will need to do some personal projects before you can really release anything to the public. Make your own player home, for instance. Make a new, custom NPC. Experiment with creating, and most importantly, do tutorials. This means both watching and performing the steps yourself. There's no getting around it. You will need to spend many hours learning how to mod before you can do it. Step 1: Planning Scope Don't think big. Start small, and release something that is functional at its core. It's better to have something small, and highly polished, than something big and buggy. It's easy to forget how much work goes into Navmeshing, lighting, and decorating until you get to those points in your project. The work required for any project increases exponentially with its scope. Every new room you add to a dungeon needs to be navmeshed, lit up, have its own enemies, loot, and possibly lore. From a small release, you can work your way up to a medium-sized dungeon. I wouldn't go any bigger than a medium dungeon — I think at that point it's better to just start a second dungeon using the ideas that you've come up with. The bigger your mod is, the higher the likelihood that it will be incompatible with other mods. If you want to release your mod and be able to just let it exist, without needing to address mod conflicts, then I'd highly recommend keeping it simple and keeping it small. You'll have a clearer conscience. Optimization Another concern relating to scope is optimization. Think about the people who might want to play your mod: Some of them will be playing on low-end PCs and Xbox. A beautiful area can become a poor experience if it ends up giving the player a choppy framerate (or worse, crashing). Just because it performs well on your PC, doesn't mean it will perform for other peoples' platforms. A good way to optimize dungeons is to split them into multiple loading zones. Try to take apart your dungeon and split it into multiple cells, each having a small portion of the total dungeon. This way, you can actually boost the framerate up to some pretty impressive heights. There's nothing better than a room that is absolutely beautiful, which also has an excellent framerate. Motivation If you really want to get your ideas to come to reality, you need to be enthusiastic about doing it. Enjoy every part of the project. There's a lot to like about how the toolkit is set up. I even make up little stories, and let my imagination run wild. If you're setting up a scene, imagine being there as the scene is actually built in-game. Imagine the people in your world placing the furniture, or storing their goods in the chests and bookshelves. I actually listen to a playlist that I made whenever I mod (and also when I'm at work) that sets me in the perfect trance to work for hours upon hours. Here it is: https://soundcloud.com/possessedlemon/sets/elderscrolls-creationmix Step 2: Building Location The best adventure locations are themed — try to pick a spot that is relatively sparse. I love picking locations where 'getting there is half the adventure'. Something far in the distance, or up on a mountain that players might not have visited. I usually also give my mods map markers that are enabled by default, so that players are always aware of where the location is for that mod they just installed (however I don't enable fast-traveling there until they have actually traveled to the location). Also, unless you plan on editing the LOD (which I would not recommend), you should try to pick a spot that is relatively obscured from a distance. Within a thick woods, or beyond a cliff where it might not be seen from afar. This is helpful for immersion. Theme Pick an aspect of the lore that you find interesting, and which the vanilla game has not adequately explored. Personally, I love the 'forgotten races'. Akaviri, Falmer, etc. These old bits of lore that are kicking around on UESP.net, but which aren't really present in the game. A lot of people report that my mods are 'lore-friendly', which is great, especially considering that I like to add extra tidbits of lore based off of the original canon. Try to fit everything that you add to your dungeons around the lore. Lighting, traps, plants, notes... it should all tell a story of the place, and fit the general aesthetic. Tokens and Symbols A concept that really helped me understand how to create fresh content is the idea of 'symbols', and symbolism. When you see a bandit, they're not just another bandit. They're also symbolic for the strife, chaos, lawlessness, greed, desperation, and other themes that exist within the game world. The same goes for types of ruins, for statues, etc. For most people, if you drop down a statue of Mara, they might not immediately associate that statue with absolutely being Mara, but rather a more typical statue that evokes the same themes as Mara. Think of the game objects as your palette. With all the various objects, you can paint a picture of the experience you want to give your players. When you think of items, enemies, and structures as being more abstract symbols for what they represent, you'll open up endless new possibilities. Step 3: Customization Enemies Base your enemies off of vanilla enemies, while also giving them a unique spin that fits your theme. This might include changing the spells that they use, or giving them unique equipment. You can also scale enemies up and down, for instance creating a giant Frost Atronach. When placing enemies, ensure that they're far enough apart so not to all aggro on the player at once. This can mean that you might need to lengthen some of your corridors, or else set the enemies to ambush only after a trigger is activated. Kit-bashing It's possible to mix multiple static objects together in ways that haven't been previously seen before, to create fresh content. Combine kits, like the underwater kit (barnacles) with a ruin kit (nordic) to create an underwater nordic ruin! Or combine the nordic vines with the snow elf dungeon to make a overgrown snow elf dungeon! Think of each different kit as a tag, so you're combining [overgrown] with [snow elf]. You could also combine [overgrown] with [daedric] or [imperial] or [noble] or whatever you want! When you are kitbashing, I would really recommend to keep it simple, and stick to two or three tags. More than that, and it feels like a 'kitchen sink' dungeon without consistency to tie it all together and ground it to an identifiable purpose. Souvenirs When players explore your dungeon, or go on your adventure, it's important to give them relics, and items that really make it memorable. My favorite is to give them a unique weapon or armor, something themed according to the mod, that they can choose to use or to sell. Another cool way to do souvenirs is to create unique misc. items. You can re-use the models for scrolls to make your own unique ones, or create new lore books that they can take home and store in their library. Step 4: Refining the Experience Balancing An important aspect is to make the mod fun for all levels of players. You can do this by using customized enemies that are set to level according to the player. It's best to give them a minimum level of something around 20, and the max. at 999. Also important is to consider the amount of loot that you're giving players. Don't make it excessive, or it will feel like a cheat mod. I personally love to use the default chests that are included in the game. It's fair to give one chest per 5 or 6 enemies, as well as one boss chest per boss. Also consider the amount of items that you are placing in the game world — try to make these just common items, rather than placing gems and scrolls around. However, it's fair to substitute a boss chest for placing items in the room where that boss is. Keep in mind that players are playing your mod for the experience, not for the items! If you really want to make a room 'feel' like a treasure trove without giving too much loot, fill it with "fools gold"! Make custom items, and reduce their values.

Yeah, I don't understand why you are so hesitant to use an interior cell. Interior cells are not limited to a certain amount of space, so far as I know. I'd say give it a shot, and if it doesn't work how you wanted it to, you can always move everything to a different cell (interior or exterior).

Somebody could do possibly do this in NifSkope and Gimp. I'm not too competent in NifSkope, so I'll leave this to another modder. Here are the components: Elven Armor (base) recolored whiteFur Armor (added on) with recolored (and potentially sized-up) peltSnowy Sabre Cat (Mounted Head) with removed wood attached to shoulderThat should be plenty enough to achieve the original design. But you could achieve a simpler result by just... Retexture 'Stormcloak Officer Armor' with the Snowy Sabre Cat's hide texture.

This is an interesting idea! Vanilla skooma is pretty tame. A time slowdown effect might be the ticket, with a time speed-up effect on withdrawal?

This looks amazing! Very well done. That lion looks so soft I could sleep on it. Or take its pelt and frame it. :thumbsup: