News - Lordbound mod for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Hi everyone! Mr. Cosmogone here to tell you more about Lordbound.
Today, we’ll be taking a closer look at Highreach Hold, seat of power of the local Breton lords.

Take a look at the map to see where we are:

Highreach is an independent fortified city of respectable size that rules over most of the surrounding lands. While it once ruled over the entire valley, political changes have seen Gardale become independent, and the Orcs of Garshakur settling the west.

Lord Haelan, Highreach’s current ruler, is a just and welcoming leader. The valley is bountiful enough to sustain multiple cities, and he has long disavowed the imperialist conquests of his ancestors. He relies chiefly on diplomacy to solve conflicts, but anyone who would judge him weak for it would be sorely mistaken.

Should words fail, magic is sure to succeed, as Highreach is home to the famed Lordbound. These mage-knights are loyal to Lord Haelan, and grateful for the autonomy he grants them in regards to magical research and tutoring.

To the north lies a small Orcish outpost connected to Mor Khazgur, watching over one of the tunnels leading across the Druadach Mountains to connect the valley to Skyrim. A long time ago, this tunnel played a vital part in the valley’s economy as it allowed caravans laden with goods to flow through the valley and onward to High Rock, an alternative many preferred over risky boat trips through the Sea of Ghosts. Recently, the outpost’s Orcs have managed to reopen the tunnel and make a junction with their kin from the other side. High volume trade has yet to resume, but if Orcish labor can restore the way, Haelan is willing to lease them a commission on the passage once built by his ancestors.

To the east lies the derelict mining town of Orefell. After the discovery of a rich mineral seam, many sought to make a new life for themselves in Orefell, and what was previously a ramshackle camp then grew into a flourishing settlement, extracting precious ore from the earth and carving out the stones that served to build many of the valley’s imposing keeps. However, once the seam ran dry, the town was abandoned and smugglers moved in. After the collapse of the tunnel to Skyrim, the valley needed to find new sources of foreign goods. While some turned to magic, others turned to the smugglers. They were happy to oblige… at a premium.

The southern part of Highreach Hold is both more remote and more hostile than the rest of the region, and travelers would do well to watch their back. Malicious Reachmen prowl the woods, taking shelter in ruins of old…

Let’s look at some of the major dungeons located in the area:

The lone tower of Horvutdaan is said to stand atop of an ancient crypt housing the remains of Nordic warlords.

The Orehold Garrison was once Orefell’s premier line of defense against the frequent Reachman raids, but was abandoned alongside the town after the mines were closed. Today, adventurers will find the ruins fraught with danger and would be ill-advised to take shelter there for the night.

Ysgramor’s Folly is an ancient Nordic tomb where Nord raiders tried to take shelter after their defeat in the swamps to the west.

There, they met a fate worse than death.

Angavaar is nested at the border with Gardale’s territory and was once a major stronghold of the ancient Nords in the valley.

Shrouded in mystery, it is whispered within scholarly circles that it houses powerful artifacts once used to drive the Dragon Cult out of the valley. Its sprawling underground complex is well guarded by Draugr, skeletons and devious traps.

In the wilds, the Spriggans of the valley have found a safe haven in the Glowing Ceiling, a network of caves where nature thrives.

There, Spriggan spirits can quite literally return to their roots and be born anew.

That’s all we have for today folks!

I hope you liked this look at Highreach Hold.
Next time, we’ll venture in the heart of the Valley and explore Gardale and its surroundings. Dwemer enthusiasts won’t want to miss it!

We are always open for recruitment, and would love to hear from you.

We are specifically looking for people with relevant experience for the following roles:

• Video Editor
• Visual Artist
• World Designer
• Quest Designer
• Living World Designer (City interactions)

For more information check the Lordbound Discord and contact Mr. Cosmogone#8050 or Neshkor#6497

-Mr. Cosmogone

As the first update of 2021, we figure we do things differently. Today the team lead takes some time to explain what's going on within the team to give you a better picture of where we are in development, and how things are going. Take it away Neshkor!

Hulloes and happy new year!

I'm Neshkor, the team lead since development started over six years ago. I've been on the team for the full run and have since also managed to join the games industry, which adds a little more work to my day-to-day. I do my best to get the mod done as fast as we can, while also occasionally being irresponsible and allowing the crew to go ahead and add that one feature there that'll only take a day or two but you players will love it!

What about progress?

The main quests, world, creatures, spells, weapons, sounds and dungeons exist, this was the first 90% of the work. As it goes in Gamedev, completing the project is the other 90% of the work. Making a game functional does not make it fun, and as we are a volunteer team, crunch is off the table. In its current state, Lordbound can be played from start to finish(es), but it would be a buggy experience with obviously missing content here and there…

Why is it taking so long?

Our active development team is typically around 20 people in size, with people rotating in and out continuously. During recruitment we mostly recruit experienced modders & developers, as we learned in the past that taking on new modders and training them up would often result in lower productivity as the mentors had to focus on training over creation. To add to that, we occasionally lose some great people as they find a job, or simply decide they have done their part.

We've always put a lot of time and care into reviewing our content. I do my best to verify as much game data as I can before it goes into the project; this ensures another level of quality control. If content does not meet our standards, we recall developers to improve their work. Nothing creeps into the build undetected. As the recent controversies surrounding Fallout: The Frontier have demonstrated, modding projects of this scale absolutely require a high level of supervision to ensure quality. Accountability is important, and we want to make sure nothing gets in the way of a great experience.

On top of that, Lordbound is not a 30 hour mod. It's easily twice the length and probably a lot more if you want to find every last bit of content. And we're making sure that it'll look and feel great even in an unmodded version of Skyrim.

"WAIT TWO TIMES 30… LORDBOUND 60 HOURS CONFIRMED?"

Easily 😊 Provided you take the time to explore everything we have to offer!

What remains to be done?

World Team is currently revisiting our oldest work from the first year of development. Part of this includes redesigning our cities. They are too intensive to run without a load-door, and we also want the places you will visit most often to look the best. We are also completing the five territories that make up the map, and now focus on one at a time so that we can begin finalisation. Each territory has its setpieces completed, but plenty of roads, meadows and forests between them are now given some love.

Once we complete the geometry work and base encounters, we move to finalisation. This process includes an estimated 600+ hours of navmeshing, placing random world encounters, static world encounters, improving existing spawns, and making sure the world is blanketed with ore to mine, flowers to pick, and butterflies to catch.

Quest Team is polishing what quests it can, but is dependent on the city redesigns to fully complete their work, as most quests unsurprisingly spend much time in them. Orcish main quest polish is currently on hold, pending the redesign of the Great City of Garshakur. As this is going on, Quest Team is able to work on more side quests, while also investigating what it takes to create a Living World.

Living World will be a combination of people from Quest and World teams. They'll bring the world to life and spice it up by implementing additional dialogue, misc. quests, vendors, and roaming adventurers who're looking to pick a fight. When the World is in its finalising stages we can get these underway properly. These finishing touches are relatively quick and easy, but range into the hundreds. It's these interactions which make the world feel truly complete and immersive, with people responding to you, your actions, and the ongoing conflict.

Audio, Art, Dungeon, Music and System teams are also working on some hefty features, but we'll cast a spotlight on them in a future update.

How can we check on progress?

The Lordbound Discord server houses the team so that you can occasionally tap the glass. But for an active feed, there's our #Progress_Updates channel. Anytime an update is made internally I make a post so that you can be in the know. The messages added to each update are a little cryptic as we want to avoid spoiling the adventure, but it gives you some idea at least ;)

But can we get a video at least?

As we don't have a video editor, we're unable to make any at the moment 😦 Anyone interested would become a fully-fledged member of the team, with access to our internal build! Exciting!

That's all I have for now,
- Neshkor

Speaking of cities, we previously covered Garshakur, the Orcish capital, in one of our updates as well as our upgrades to Skyrim's weather system. Much like in one of our previous articles, our next article will go over how the other departments are doing, our plans for the future, how many bugs have been squished and include a teaser of one of the many locations that you'll get to visit in Lordbound.

For more information, please contact Neshkor#6497and check the Lordbound Discord for further (live) updates!

In the meantime, enjoy a toast to all of the good fortunes for the coming year. May your splinters be few and painless!

Until next time,

- Ravnie

You should have acted.

They're already here.

The Elder Scrolls told of their return.

The dev diaries are back!

Hello, Mr. Cosmogone here for a long-awaited dev diary about your favorite mod, Lordbound! But first, a bit about myself. You can scroll down to the pretty pictures instead if you cannot wait to see them.

I joined the project several years back, working as what we called internally a "Core Designer". It was my responsibility to design and implement new spells, weapons, armors, potions, enemies, and whatnot. Quest rewards, unique items, and more mundane things fell under my dominion. After a few years, I started helping on level design - initially a little, then more and more, until it became all I did. In the meantime, my IRL professional focus was narrative design. Like a good Skyrim player, you can see that I leveled up a bit of everything!

The latest big Lordbound thing happened some time ago when our beloved Neshkor felt like he had a right to a personal life (he does) and that he should step down from his lead position (he did.) The stage was set for a coup, and soon after, I was wearing the Lordbound crown. Yay!

Actually… not that yay. It came with significant challenges. Coming out of COVID everyone in the team was worn out, myself included. At that point, we'd been working on this mod for a long time, and several members, for various reasons decided they didn't want to continue. Many of us joined to get the chance of working on a significant portfolio piece that would get us a job in the games industry, and for many of us, it did! But with jobs come responsibilities, and those are fine motivation killers.

The gist of it is that both real-life and different projects have snatched back quite a few of our team members, and we've been operating on meager resources for the past few years. Progress still happens, but the pace is slow. I know this isn't the best news to read, but in the spirit of transparency: this is where things are.

Don't worry too much though! We already have a lot, and what we have is pretty damn cool. Trust me on that!

That was the not so good news, now let's move on to the good stuff!

The title mentioned a road and a map, but I will not give you a roadmap (things are progressing way too erratically for that, as is the way of modding. Sorry!) Instead, feast your eyes on the map of the Druadach Valley in all its glory!

To the east lies Highreach Hold. Home to respected wizards, the eponymous capital was established on a rocky spur in 2E 767 and has stood for generations, proud of both its magical tradition, and its independence.

The northern mountains of the valley around Highcrown Peak, previously home to the Dwemer, are today the territory of fierce Reachmen who wage relentless guerilla warfare upon the other inhabitants of the valley. They have never been amenable folks, but scattered reports of dark magic have recently surfaced. Some suspect that in the shadows, a terrible pact has been struck.

Gardale was a peaceful town before the return of the Empire in the valley. Trade with Highreach and Garshakur ensured the prosperity of the settlement despite Reachman raids. The arrival of Imperial forces in the valley will upset the delicate balance of power, and no matter what transpires, Gardale's central position will see the town caught in the middle.

In the middle of inhospitable marshes, Motte Malgorath is one of the Orcish strongholds in the region, and protects the south border from any would-be invaders. Centuries ago, a Nord warband unceremoniously met their doom in the fetid bog. Only fools would dare venture here unprepared.

To the south is Tangled Moot, a largely unpopulated section of the valley. The Moot is home to a diverse mix of prowling Reachmen and peaceful Giants, all of them living amongst centuries-old Dwemer ruins and long abandoned settlements.

To the west stands Garshakur. Here the Orcs led by Chief Gorek, the champion of Malacath, have forged a new home for themselves. Any who attempts to take it from them shall pay the price in blood, for Malacath's faithful will accept nothing less in the name of the mighty Garshakur.

That's all we have for today, folks!

Next time, likely in two or three months (we promise!) we'll take a deep dive into Highreach Hold with pictures, stories and more.

We are always open for recruitment! We'd love to hear from you. We are specifically looking for people with relevant experience for the following roles:

• Video Editor
• Visual Artist
• World Designer
• Quest Designer
• Living World Designer (City interactions)

For more information, check the Lordbound Discord and contact Mr. Cosmogone#8050 or Neshkor#6497

-Mr. Cosmogone

Hail, adventurers!

Sorry for the radio silence! We’ve been without some parts of the team as they worked on recent videogame releases, while others were out to recover from sickness. The work on Lordbound never stopped however, and we’re excited to share new updates with you!

More on our weather system and debugging below, but we’ll start with the obvious: how the team has been dealing with the pandemic.

On the whole the pandemic has allowed the team to grow closer together, with less time spent outdoors and more closer to our computers. Unfortunately, as some may had hoped, isolation did not increase our overall productivity. While the first month was promising, soon after we returned to a normal rate. Some crew, in need of something new, changed specialties which led to the Open World at large getting more attention. The team is doing well, all things considered, and development continues.

Meshes and textures make up the world, but to make an environment shine upgrades to the weather system are necessary. This finishing touch is delivered by Elena, a single designer who’s been working on this feature since December last year. She has the task of making the world look decidedly like Skyrim, but without its washed out colour palette, across seven subregions; each with a distinct look and feel. Some are as cold and snowy as Skyrim, a few feel like a warm summer’s day, and others blend the two, with the sun shining down while snow dwindles down from the nearby mountain peak.

Elena achieves all of this by duplicating existing Skyrim weathers and figuring out how to make them work in favour of the existing ones. Clouds are the biggest pain to get right, followed by making nighttime a good blend of colour saturation and darkness. Once one type of weather matches the feel, she makes variants to fit: No one area is perpetually sunny, rainy, or foggy (save for maybe that one place in our valley).

Every few months, a handpicked part of the crew is called to sit down together and walk through the valley for hours to critique the new updates to the weather. So long as Druadach’s wizards haven’t done anything funny, the valley will always feel appropriate to your leg of the journey...

More good news awaits, as we’d like to bring your attention to a debugging phase.

Our QA team has been working hard to find all the problems in our finished content, with over 598 total bugs logged. To bring the bug count down and prevent a tiring slog at the end of development, we’ve started an early debugging period where half the crew is reassigned to focus only on debugging. We intend to reveal the number of bugs fixed and verified on our next update.

We are also open for recruitment!

We are specifically looking for:

• QA Testers
• Audio Engineers
• Video Editors
• Visual Artists
• World Designers
• Living World Designers (City interactions)

For more information check the Lordbound Discord and contact Neshkor#6497

Until next time,

-Ravnie

Good tidings!

In our previous update, we mentioned that Garshakur, the Orcish capital, is undergoing redesign. It was the very first location that was done when Lordbound kicked off. While unique and beloved, the years have not been kind to it. To meet higher standards both in quality and lore friendliness, Garshakur is getting a proper retrofit. Its partially-underground style will be maintained, its Imperial architecture swapped out to look more Orcish, and the layout redone from the ground up. Not everything has been easy as there are old quest constraints to adhere to and designers needing to split their attention.

Originally, Garshakur was designed to replace Mor Khazgur (an Orc Stronghold located in Haafingar) back when Lordbound was just a city-overhaul mod. The decision was made to make the mod into a DLC-sized addon, the city was to be its capital and renamed to Garshakur. The original ecotype was based on the environment found in the Reach, and Garshakur’s plains maintain those elements to this day. Garshakur at the time was designed to fit in the shape of the mountains at Mor Khazgur, but those will now undergo reshaping in the redesign process. Similarly to Riften, Garshakur will become an instanced interior accessible by a load door. This means we can do more inside the city and its direct vicinity, but it also means we will have to cut access to the city walls.

After our shift to the Druadach Valley, the story of Garshakur began to take shape;

Found in the northwestern part of the valley, the ruins of an old fortress were overtaken by Orcs. Westedge provided them with shelter and basic amenities to build their future from. In present time, Garshakur is thirty years old and overflowing with migrant Orcs. Despite some having begun to act more like City-Orcs, old traditions are still adhered to and only by following the tribal ways is one able to earn respect.

The orcs have cleared many of the city's unwanted areas and repurposed the space for new expansion. The signs of the previous garrisons have been wiped out, making way for what the Orcs' makings. Much like any major city, the player can expect to find all the essentials within the walls - though some may need to be earned.

The city of Garshakur is divided into different tiers. Once the player has obtained respect, they will have access to the higher tiers of the city. In the old city, each tier was distinct from another and made navigation and bartering easier. We're looking to keep that in the new version, and possibly more.

The team has maintained one ground rule, however. While outwardly brutish, the Orcs need homes. Past their brutal defensive works, you find places where they live happily in relative peace and comfort. Garshakur and its denizens recognise Orcish players as kin, and are more welcoming to them than they would be to other races. Albeit once the player has aligned themselves with other factions and been declared as Garshakur’s enemy, the gates may never open to them again.

Overall, Garshakur is an outlandish city not made to adhere to human or elven styles. It is a rough and tumble place, but still filled with dignity, homeliness and respect. Only the worthy may enter.

Will you prove yourself?

Until next time,

- Ravnie

P.S.

Here's a work-in-progress render of an exciting new armor set we've been working on, reserved for Garshakur's elite!