Skyrim nerds, go play Enderal

[DigDog]

Since i know some of you weirdos still play Skyrim .. and, i mean, *what* is it exactly you do?!? It doesn't take that long to finish the game in full .. but hey, to each his own.

Anyway, i was looking up at total conversion mods, and found one that should be interesting to you.

You can download this as a standalone product from Steam, and do not need to have Skyrim installed, as long as your Steam account owns a copy of Skyrim you can download it for free:

Enderal: Forgotten Stories (Special Edition) on Steam

Enderal: Forgotten Stories (Special Edition) is a total conversion mod for Skyrim SE. It offers an immersive open world, new skill systems and gameplay with a dark, psychological storyline and believable characters. SE features a new rendering engine, improved lighting, performance and stability.

store.steampowered.com

This is a complete new story built on the Skyrim engine. It features 40 - 130 hours of gameplay (you would need to really push it to complete it in 40h), new classes, new races. It's good.

Notable changes:
1. level up is now through XP and you do not level via using skills.
2. skill improvement is done via buying books - they are fairly cheap and easy to find.
3. combat and crafting are separate. Enchanting etc . are nowhere near as broken as they used to be.
4. slight changes in combat, not immediately evident. Still the same "bonk enemies on head with big stick" stuff.
5. new magic realms and new mechanics regarding magic. Most of it is similar to Skyrim.
6. completely new map with gorgeous textures. Lot of stuff reused from Skyrim, some stuff new. Looks far better than Skyrim.
7. frankly, a better story than Skyrim. All new, high quality voice acting. Better character models. Better dialogue.
8. far better environments. And faster load times ..
9. NO LEVELLED MONSTERS !!!
10. which means that you can accidentally wander into an area where they will rip your face off.

also of note:
1. harder, and slower progression, specially early on.
2. no fast travel outside of fixed map points (same as the carts in Skyrim)
3. no quick sleep / time passing outside of beds.


Basically you get a whole new game for free.

I've had 2x CTD after which the game recovered without issues. It's not super stable (was Skyrim super stable anyway?) but i have not seen any in-game bugs, e.g horses climbing vertical walls.
i'm enjoying it more than i ever did Skyrim. Due to the initial difficulty, i would advise you to listen to the story, follow the main quest, and get some XP so you can level up. And don't think of starting on Master, i'm playing on Adept and have died more times that i'm comfortable with.
The story does seem to favour magic, i'm obviously going the route of stealth archer, which is not easy, but can be done, and frankly i'm happy that i'm getting an actual challenge. Exploring with no levelled mobs is much more exciting.

So go get it.

 

[DigDog]

i see you nerds are already busy downloading it.

 

[Igo69]

Interesting got to check it out, thanks.

 

[DigDog]

i see you nerds are already busy playing it.

 

[Leeea]

Thank you for posting this.

 

[DigDog]

i've been playing this for quite a while and i have to say, it honestly is a little bit better than skyrim in every way.
It's more difficult, no question about it, and i enjoy fighting mobs that can actually kill me, instead of stupid meat sacks.
Unfortunnately pathing is [expletive deleted] so don't go jumping on rocks to save yourself, be a man and die.

 

[otho11]

I agree that is better than Skyrim.

I couldn't believe the quality of this free game, story was pretty interesting too. My biggest complaint was that my companions wouldn't follow me well or get stuck, not a big deal.

It really scratches that first person RPG itch for me. I got somewhere around 60 hours out of the game and I am far from a completionist.

 

[Elfear]

Since Enderal was initially released in what 2015 (?) I assume it's built off of the OG Skyrim engine rather than SE?

 

[DigDog]

i think what they have now is SE. Tbh i dont know, i just see SE being mentioned a lot.

Two small changes from the original post.

1. fast travel does exist - teleport scrolls. Still much more limited than Skyrim's "do you wish to fast travel" thing.

2. i have found one pretty bad bug; just dont save when you are riding a horse. if you load a save where you are on a horse, you are likely to be flung into the stratosphere.
If that happens, quickly spam E to dismount. Or, enjoy flying through the sky, idk im not a cop.

 

[zinfamous]

I may give this a try because I have been waiting for a proper excuse to play the SE.

Steam says that my original Skyrim play time is....uh, 600 hours? Never has mining ore and smithing daggers been more fun!

 

[Artorias]

Wow I put in 439hrs(the original, never touched SE) according to Steam. Have not played it since my university days, I think was one of my first games to get 100% achievements.

Can you still cheese by creating overpowered rings, necklace etc through alchemy? You would then create a loop to create even more crazy potions, that was so fun and hilarious.

 

[DigDog]

So, im going to give you a few spoiler-free pieces of advice.

1. the bank in Ar.. wait

1. The directional signs in Ark (the capital) can be clicked on to just between the different regions of town - merchants quarter, nobles quarter, sun temple, etc.
2. the bank in Ark will take cash deposits and pay you a ridiculous amount of interest; caps at 9000 deposited, which pays 250 DAILY. You will need money.

3. you level up, and then you press Y to "meditate" which allows you to buy perks.
4. when you level up you get 5 "learning" (combat) skill points, and 4 "crafting" (...ermm .. crafting) points. One Handed, Two Handed, all Magic, all Armor, Bows, etc are combat.
ALCHEMY, ENCHANTING, SMITHING, all all crafting, but so are speechcraft, sleight of hand, lockpick. If you wanna get the uber stuff, you gon' need high enchanting / alchemy / smithing which means you really won't have enough for anything else.

I'm at level 35 now and my stealth bow is finally starting to look like the 1-shot cannon that Skyrim has, but there are still plenty of situation where i gotta tail it or die. I'm playing on Adept difficulty. I reeeeally dont recommend you go above this and even this will be really hard. Remember, no levelled mobs. Tons of stuff that can 1-shot you.

On the "good" side, you can just go to some hidden places at level 1 and pick up some uberstronk stuff, which even in your incompetent level 1 hands can still rek stuff, but i won't spoil that for you.

Yes, horses exist. You can even get one for free if you can kill a troll.

 

[otho11]

Can you still cheese by creating overpowered rings, necklace etc through alchemy? You would then create a loop to create even more crazy potions, that was so fun and hilarious.

I was not able to create anything noteworthy through enchanting or crafting, even after maxing those stats. I was an overpowered mage at the end but could still be killed if I wasn't careful.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Can I still do the loop of creating a potion to enhance my enchanting, then enchanting equipment to enhance my alchemy, then create a stronger potion of enchantment, etc, etc until I can create potions and equipment that exceed the bit precision of the game engine?

I like the my bow that does over 1 million damage+1.2million lightning/shock damage.

 

[Igo69]

How did you do that and what bow u got? I have Bow of Ishyian that does 36 damge and 3 poison damage for 7secs and it still sucks lol. That is the highest damage bow i found the rest are just garbage. I mostly 2 handed and 1 handed weapon though.
Anyone found any super powerful swords, axes and hammers?

 

[Fallen Kell]

I believe my bow and armor is just dwarven bow/dwarven armor, but because of my smithing skills and equipment with fortify smithing, they become weapons of the gods.

You need to have some basic alchemy and smithing (at least initially), and you need to have the components for multiple Fortify Enchanting potions, and you need to have found an item that has the "Fortify Alchemy" effect, and "Fortify Smithing" effect so that you can learn those effects to apply in your item enchanting. You brew a potion of "Fortify Enchantment", and immediately enchant a set of equipment to with the "Fortify Alchemy" effect. Then you put on that full set of equipment that has the "Fortify Alchemy" as the effect stacks, and then you make another "Fortify Enchantement" potion (and this new one will have much higher stats than the original one from the buff from your alchemy enchanted equipment). You then remove/throw away the equipment set that you previously enchanted with "Fortify Alchemy", drink the new, more powerful "Fortify Enchantment" potion, and enchant a new set of equipment with "Fortify Alchemy", rinse, repeat... At some point you will have a set of equipment that your "Fortify Alchemy" is >10000% or more.

You can also create a set of equipment with the "Fortify Smithing" enchantment (you just need to create a potion for "Fortify Enchantment" with your buffed "Fortify Alchemy" equipment, drink it, and craft a set of equipment with "Fortify Smithing".

Then craft a superweapon/armor with your buffed "Fortify Smithing" equipment on, and then drink another "Fortify Enchanting" potion that you made (with your buffed "Fortify Alchemy" equipment on) and add attack or defense enchantments to your new superweapon/armor.

Again, be careful and take each iteration of the loop one at a time and test out the equipment as at some point, you will be exceeding what the game engine can deal with and you will bit-flip the value from a positive number to a negative (which can be bad when talking about a "Fortify Health" enhancement that automatically insta-kills you if you put it on). Please note that doing this makes you basically unkillable, and you might as well have put on godmod via console. However, it is all within the rules of the game and you have not enabled any cheats etc., to do this.

You can make some nice soul trapping weapons and things like drain health/mana, and enhance your own health, speed, stealth, etc. Your weapons/armor/potions that you craft/enchant will also be worth millions if you try and sell them, so you basically also have infinite gold.

Some mods can disable this loop (I think the unofficial fixes/patches mod removes the fortify alchemy from stacking).

 

[DigDog]

oof, 80+ hours of gameplay.
some spoilers below

Spoiler

The story gets to be kinda forced at the end, but it's to be expected.

character at lev 51 was substantially weaker than a Skyrim character; this is due to you ONLY levelling those skills that would be your primaries in Skyrim. So while i was a fairly competent stealth archer, i couldn't do anything else. I know that this sounds like a complaint, more so considering that i hate Skyrim's endgame characters who can do everything, but being weak is more noticeable in Enderal due to the higher difficulty.

Sneak gets to be nearly as broken as Skyrim once you go over 80.

Enchanting and Alchemy are barely in the game - you just dont get enough skill points to be able to do much with them. Note that the "fortify enchanting" and "fortify alchemy" enchantments do not exist as player-crafting enchantments, preventing you from exploiting that obscene buffing loop that Skyrim has.

map design is a bit railroad-ey; get yourself a horse and you will be able to climbs *some* geometry gaps, allowing for much easier travel.

had 1 major game bug where after a war, all of the main city's merchants were gone. I figured, "ok, they are in hiding, and will be back once the war is over". Nope, not a script, a bug. And now several hours of saves behind. I just carried on and used other merchants.

the occasional CTD, nothing tragic. Game launches in a few seconds anyway.

oh yeah, it's the same f* story as Mass Effect. Like, the same-same.

all in all a very enjoyable experience for the price of ZERO american dollah.