Best Skyrim Alternate Start
I'm in the midst of a modding binge, and the latest class of mods I'm looking at are alternate starts. A lot of mods work best with a fresh character, and doing the Helgen sequence over and over just to test new mods gets tiring.Here are all the alternate start mods I know of with some stats, descriptions, and impressions.www.nexusmods.com 700,000 unique downloadsPosted 13 July 2012, updated 13 November 2013Choose from a set of starting scenarios through dialog (you talk to a statue). Example starts include being a patron at an inn, being a fresh recruit at one of the guilds, going through the default main quest prison cart ride to Helgen, and being a vampire in a vampire lair.The main quest is started by visited the ruins of Helgen, where you'd encounter Alduin at a nearby camp site.
There's also a start option that just puts you in the camp site where you first meet Alduin. (From the description.)This is the 'standard' alternate start mod, created by a well-known mod author and listed in just about every Skyrim modding guide.
The 'prisoner whose life is reset by a magic statue' premise is a bit weird to me though.( www.intarwebz.net) 30,000 subscriptionsPosted 14 August 2013, updated 31 January 2014 (it was on the Nexus earlier, but its creator got banned from there)Setup is done through the MCM menu in the options screen, as in you have to open the options screen before starting the game proper. Pick equipment, magic, and a location through the mod's MCM config menu. Dragons, dragon soul absorption, and word wall learning can be toggled, making it possible to disable the main quest entirely.The main quest is started by killing a dragon and absorbing its soul, and starts with The Way of the Voice. The Helgen sequence and the quests Before the Storm, Bleak Falls Barrow, and Dragon Rising are skipped entirely (you can still do The Golden Claw).This is the alternate start mod I've actually tried. It's straightforward, and the options that basically allow you to set whether you're the Dragonborn or not are a nice touch. Having to open the options screen to set this all up instead of going through any in-game setup is a bit annoying though.www.nexusmods.com 50,000 unique downloadsPosted 12 October 2012, updated 22 October 2012Pick a loadout, then get placed at a completely random location such as a city, a shack in the wilderness, or at the bottom of a dungeon.The main quest is started by investigating Helgen. (From the description.)I figure this would be useful for a challenge playthrough, but that's about it.tesalliance.org 10 downloadsPosted 4 January 1014, updated 15 January 2014Choose from a small set of locations and start with minimal equipment.The main quest is started by talking to Jarl Balgruuf in Whiterun.
Mar 14, 2019 - Live Another Life provides an alternative means to start the game for those. If you're going to use that mod, it is best to wait until you're off the. If so, Alternate Start is here for you, allowing you to begin the in many different ways. Once you install the mod and start a new game, you'll be taken to a mysterious room with a statue of Meridia. The statue will enable you to begin your quest in one of roughly a dozen available situations. An Alternate Start - Live Another Life This mod gives you an alternate opening, where you're left to fester in a jail, forgotten, instead of the Helgen opening we know so well by now.
(From the description.)This mod is new, but also promises to be straightforward and to the point like Skyrim Unbound.www.nexusmods.com 3,000 unique downloadsPosted 7 April 2013, never updated (apparently used to be on Steam Workshop, Nexus uploader not the original author)Instead of bypassing the Helgen sequence, this mod streamlines it. You black out as soon as Alduin appears when you're at the chopping block; when you wake up you choose a class, get some starting equipment, then choose a starting location by activating a horse (you get to keep the horse). The entire tutorial portion of Helgen is skipped.I imagine simply streamlining Helgen instead of cutting it out entirely would lead to the least amount of conflicts with the main quest, and it seems to do a good job of that judging by its. This mod is apparently abandoned and buggy though.I'm curious about what alternate star mods you've all tried and would recommend.
I like the roleplaying elements of the various starts on LAL (my favourite was starting off in the Thalmor Embassy, although sadly my game got irretrievably bugged before the bit where that would have paid off, roleplay wise, so I ended up going and doing a different questline) but I think SU seems to just kind of. Work better, for me. Plus, tbh, I like skipping Bleak Falls and all that (although I ended up going through there after all in this playthrough as I decided I wanted to marry Camilla Valerius) and going straight to the Greybeards, and I find SU seems to have done a better job of removing references to having been at Helgen, which was a bit immersion-breaking unless I was playing a liar who was claiming to have been there. I have the opposite problem, SU bugs out on me while LAL is the most stable, so LAL is the one I have. But I liked the options in SU, so I think it's another really good one, just not for me. I have not tried the others mentioned in the original post.
What I like about LAL is that you can actually opt for the original Helgen sequence if you choose to. The role-playing options are very good. When I started as a Redguard, I got Hammerfell garb right away.
'Left for dead' is my personal favorite. I got spawned in the sulfur flats, not an easy place to get out of with nothing but flames at your disposal and the very limited magicka of a Nord. You can also start at a property and many of the property mods worth with this too, so you can start in style. Goatk's Hearthfire remodels of the 5 major houses work with LAL.
You get Vindrel Hall without doing anything, Proudspire too.:D hehehehe.
Skyrim’s intro is bad and this mod fixes it – thank goodness!The Elder Scrolls Skyrim was released more than 5 years ago, and I have only recently gotten my hands on it for PC a few months ago. I’ve only had a console experience with this game, which until only recently with Skyrim: Special Edition has not had mod support.
I have modded the crap out of my Skyrim game, but it has not changed my own personal dogma about modding: that mods may enhance a game’s experience, but ultimately cannot fix issues that are inherent in a game’s systems and engine. So while I must say that Skyrim with expansion packs and mods is a much more enjoyable experience, it does not fix certain problems and critiques I have of the final product. However, one mod has quickly become my favorite and solves a few problems I have always had with Skyrim, and that is the problems relating to main quest urgency and the “Special Snowflake Syndrome” that permeates the game’s main story.Before I get ahead of myself, I want to talk about the mod itself, which is called Alternate Start. Alternate Start essentially lets you to choose how you start a new game in Skyrim, allowing you to bypass the horrid opening scene of Skyrim’s default intro.
There are multiple ways to start a new game, ranging from choosing a faction to join, choosing a side in the civil war, being a property owner, or my favorite: a lore appropriate starting location based on your chosen race. There are many more options, as well as the option to do the default Skyrim intro. What start you choose will also change your starting inventory and how difficult the game could be in the first few levels. Overall, this is a good mod for those who want to re-roll a new character but don’t want to play through the starting tutorial, or want more immersion for role-playing. Plus skipping that poorly paced intro is something I’ve always wanted.It’s no secret that many don’t people enjoy Skyrim’s intro, and my main problem with the game’s opening is its awful exposition.
I and in that video I bring up the term exposition. I use the term exposition as defined in a GDC talk by Greg Kasavin – in it he describes the working definition of exposition as:The deliberate arrangement of its content, including its structure, its systems, and its narrative, in support of the game’s experiential goals.Now this topic has been done to the death on the internet, but the point I want to hammer in is that Skyrim’s intro does not adequately represent or compliment the game design and tone the game exemplifies.
This being the explorative and immersive RPG nature of what the Elder Scrolls franchise is known for. Alternate Start completely fixes this problem by simply allowing you to bypass the shitty default intro, but it also does more.The most important aspect of RPGs is the role playing; the ability to look through the eyes of a character and commit to actions as that character. The Elder Scrolls series does this very well for the most part, but there is a problem Skyrim suffers from that breaks my roleplaying immersion. The intro and the opening story beats of Skyrim forces the character to pick sides and rushes them through its open and explorative world in a ludicrously fast pace.
It enforces this sense of urgency in its main story that doesn’t seem to go away. Rather than being a person who happens to find themselves involved in events due to circumstance, you almost immediately (after the first couple of main story quests) become the single most important person in the universe. This special snowflake syndrome isn’t exclusive to Skyrim but it lacks a lot of the pragmatism that even games of its own Elder Scrolls lineage have done better. This main story urgency and constant threat makes roleplaying a less viable option, because you are encouraged to be in the mindset of the most important person in the universe by the main story.
It’s very hard to justify all your side activities as lore appropriate when the literal apocalypse is happening, and it sure as hell doesn’t help that everyone in the main quest must remind you. This is where the mod comes in.Alternate Start solves this by simply by making the main story an option rather than the first thing you do, allowing you to avoid the annoying urgency of the main quest for as long you please.
Skyrim Alternate Start No Dlc
Now the main story was always optional in Skyrim, but the way the game presents the urgency of that quest doesn’t correlate with the game’s design, which encourages you to do whatever you want in this open world. In my playthrough I created an Argonian, and I chose to start my scaly dude off in Windhelm.
Skyrim Se Alternate Start
Argonians and Dark Elves are disenfranchised in this city and sent to live in the poor ghettos by the xenophobic Nord majority. Within my first couple of minutes in the game my character gets into a bar fight with a Nord, making a good chunk gold after thoroughly roughing him up with my lizardy fists of justice. With this new found currency I decide to take a carriage and join the Imperial army in Solitude, with the hopes of removing the oppressive Jarl of Windhelm and possibly making the city better for Argonians.
I had a much more enjoyable experience roleplaying as a disenfranchised lizard-man who wanted to free his people, over the demigod figure the story builds you up to be. Without the pressures of the main story and the option to choose the origins of your character, this brings up the game’s roleplaying immersion that I feel should have been the main focus of the game.Now this mod doesn’t change the problems of the main story, but it does allow you to bypass the main quest for as long as you like, as well providing better exposition than the default intro. The fact is that the side quests and objectives have always been the better part of the Elder Scrolls series’ storytelling. By allowing you to roleplay more convincingly, and get to that content faster, the Alternate Start Mod this game much more enjoyable. I’m still not convinced that mods can fix what is inherently baked in a game’s systems, but there is a reason that mods are still being developed for this game even five years later. While they can’t fix the core problems, they can make the game more fun. In the end, isn’t that all that matters?