Alternate Start via. Console

[RedRavyn]

Since I've frozen my Skyrim at version 1.14.something until Bethesda gets most of the major bugs sorted out, I'm rather restricted as to some of the mods I'd like to run. One of them offers a number of alternate starts, and I've been wanting to play without the pressure of being the Dragonborn for a long time. I finally figured out how to do this from the console and thought I'd share it with you, along with a few "interesting" developments in this, my thirteenth playthrough.

 

First of all, you need to find your "Skyrim.ini" file. Mine is in "My Documents\My Games\Skyrim. Do NOT alter the "Skyrim_default.ini" that is in your game installation folder. If you do and this breaks your game, don't say you weren't warned.

 

Make the following change in "Skyrim.ini" under the [General] section.

 

; The following line is for alternate start games. Comment out for normal starts.

SStartingCell=AbandonedPrison01

 

You can substitute any cell you want, of course. I used the "Abandoned Prison" for several reasons:

 

1. It's mostly abandoned, with just a few ghosts that have to be fought if you want at any of the loot, but you can leave immediately without engaging them if you want.

2. You can get some decent, but not overpowering, starting gear if you take on the ghosts, although the boss will likely prove rather difficult.

3. It's centrally located between Whiterun, Windhelm, and Riften -- which is the area I prefer to explore first with a new character.

 

Start a new game. What happens is that the entire opening sequence, including the assignment of the Main Quest is skipped and you'll find yourself as a default Nord male wherever your "SStartingCell" is. Now issue the following console commands. The first one is optional, but I did it for role-playing purposes:

 

player.removeallitems

showracemenu

 

The first command will strip you naked (or as naked as the game will allow). I figured this would be appropriate, since I'm role-playing a character who was captured by bandits and held prisoner in one of the cells. It made no sense to have armor and weapons, which you get upon starting a new character like this.

 

The second command puts you into the initial character creation process that you generally go through right after the opening scene and before you get sent to the chopping block. Once you've edited and named your character you're totally on your own to do as you please.

 

The Main Quest will never start in the game. Dragons won't spawn, so you'll never learn you're the Dovahkiin, and learning words of power is pretty pointless. You might want to be careful what you pick up, though. The "Dragonstone" found on the Draugr Overlord in Bleak Falls Barrow will be flagged as a quest item if you pick it up. I have no idea what effect this might have, since the Main Quest will never begin unless you start it with the console.

 

I did encounter a bit of strangeness during my first couple hours of playing. The first was that I was accosted by Athis and Torvar on my way to check out Helgen. These are Companions from Jorrvaskr. They were instantly hostile, even before I was aware of who they were (two red dots on the "radar" is what alerted me to their presence). I was forced to kill both of them. I tried to fix things using all the console tricks I know, but nothing would work, so I just left their bodies where they were. I'm not joining the Companions, anyway. No, I didn't have a bounty anywhere, although I did murder Anise to get her cabin (sneak attack and one-shotted her so I didn't have to fight her), but that shouldn't have had any effect, here.

 

The second little bit of weirdness was when I went to Helgen, since I was curious as to how the game would handle skipping the introduction. The gates were locked, so I used "unlock" to get in after making a save. I wasn't going to "keep" whatever happened inside Helgen, since I have no idea what my machinations inside the city might do to the game.

 

The city was intact, along with all its civilian residents, as I suspected it would be. Some of the buildings are just props, with non-functional doors. The residence, where you see the kid sitting on the doorsteps in the vanilla introduction, could actually be entered, although there wasn't anything in it. Helgen Keep, itself, could be entered through either door, and was exactly as you see it during the introduction, including hearing Alduin outside the building (even though he's not really there).

 

All this was pretty much as I expected. However ... Ralof was there, in full Stormcloak armor and armed to the teeth. There were also some other Stormcloak soldiers with him. I have the mod "Immersive Patrols" installed, so the other soldiers might have been the result of that mod, but that shouldn't have affected Ralof, who I figured wouldn't even be in the game at this point. The Imperial soldiers, of course, immediately went aggro on the entire bunch and made short work of them, except for Ralof, who is essential. I got bored after he killed all the Imperial Soldiers in Helgen, and restarted my game from the save outside the gate. I never did see any of the named or "special" soldiers, like General Tullius or the "headsman", or Elenwen, for that matter.

 

It will be interesting to see if, in several days' time, there are any changes to Helgen, since the game is supposed to move some bandits in. I don't know if that's triggered by the Main Quest or is just a matter of time passing in-game. All the local residents are still there. Like I said ... it could be interesting, especially since the bandits are supposed to be in the ruined version of Helgen and not the intact one.

[bpestilence]

That is interesting. I suppose the same things are true of the "mod" alternate starts as well. Perhaps someone has already come up with a fleshed-out Helgen with an alternate start mod?

[RedRavyn]

I haven't seen one, but that would be an interesting addition, especially if it didn't conflict with other alternate start mods. There could even be an associated quest of some sort to start the Main Quest at a time of the player's choosing based upon the PC witnessing the events. It would take a little fiddling with the Main Quest intro to jumper out the parts associated with the PC being an Imperial captive, but it should be possible.

 

By the way, I forgot to explicitly mention that with the ini setting to move the starting location, the game will always try to start brand-new every time you start it up. This is implicit in the comment I put above that line, but it probably isn't obvious. You have to comment out that new line once you have your alternate start and you'll have the option to load your last save, etc., just like with vanilla Skyrim.

 

I haven't been back to Helgen, yet, except for an early-game run-through with Barbas and I encountered some difficulty, there. Barbas is too stupid to realize that he can run around the city (probably a navmesh issue) rather than have to go through it. The gates are locked and cannot be unlocked without using the console, so he stalls out at the gate. The solution is to just go around the city, stand near the other gate and type:

prid 52535

moveto player

 

He'll then continue on his merry way as if nothing had been changed.

 

I hope other people will try this and let me know of any additional issues they may discover due to this technique. So far I haven't run into any problems except for the Barbas issue.