SSE Tips on Creating a Skyrim Adventure Dungeon

[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.

Edited June 8, 2018 by TwinCrows

[Evangela]

Bookmarked. :o

 

I've tried several times making dungeons and the problem for me has been jumping straight to the editor and building it as I go.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Rasikko

[c0ax599]

Where has this post been hiding! ;) This post has alot of great ideas/thoughts on modding from someone who obviously knows, and has insight alot of regular tutorials don't.

 

That's exactly what I'm doing right now, building as I go. And learning as I go. Had some help and advice from a few around here. Posts like this are just what newer modders need sometimes to help expand our minds! :teehee:

[Evangela]

Building is rather easy. The lighting part though, I find that to be hardest of all.

[c0ax599]

Dude, you ain't s***ing about the lighting!! See my post above. Some of the player houses i try to make changes too it's almost like there's electricity and light switches. lol!

 

 

Actually I'm having a bear of a time building a simple large room. And trying to add a balcony around the perimeter, using the Akaviri architecture. i mean you got some stairs, then, for the balcony there's a floor, a ceiling, a 3 part railing and seperate posts! sheesh, I sure wish there was a way to select multiple objects and have them stay "glued together" while putting them in place. I know that's the general behavior of them but invariably I always click wrong and the 10 things get deselected! aarrrrgghh!

 

But I'm having fun!!

Edited March 12, 2019 by c0ax599

[Evangela]

CTRL Z when you wanna reselect objects. It doesn't always work. You can select multiple objects and move them all and constrain them to either X, Y, or Z axis by holding X, C, or Z: that might help reduce misclicking.

Edited March 13, 2019 by Rasikko