Falskaar, a massive dlc quality land ready to be released

[D_ManXX2]

The plus so far i haven't had a single crash witch is very rare playing skyrim. Also not seen a dragon spawn was great too. Voice acting was really well done.

 

I only wished they made more battles. or atleast bigger battles.

 

I am currently playing this mod with OBIS in mind. the maker made a patch witch makes variant in all bandit types.

So fights where pretty tough.

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

This thing is starting to get some bigger attention... and I feel bad for the guy who spent so much time on this because I cannot find one truly amazing thing in the mod. All I can truly say is that it defines wasted effort and the idea of it being DLC quality shows that he's either trying for hype or it's a massive case of unwarranted self importance.

 

It might be a big fish with the time and supposed effort that went into it, but content wise it's nothing special. Where did the supposed year it took to make this go to? There's almost nothing that isn't vanilla when it comes to weapons, items, magic and textures, there isn't an amazing complex plot, the characters are still as one dimensional as in base Skyrim, the dungeons aren't any more complex or intricate as vanilla, the quests are practically the same stuff you can find in vanilla... voice acting and the music could not have taken that long, and if they spent so much time bug testing, then they failed because I had to use the console twice already to fix NPCs that broke for no good reason at all.

 

Most mods strive to make something more; this one looks at what's already there, says "good enough" and just makes something out of the prefabricated bits. I dare say retexturing mods of armor and weapons are a more worthwhile use of time than this. And that's a fucking shame, because if the time and effort that supposedly went into this actually went into character writing, dungeons and hand made stuff, then this would be an awesome mod just for that alone.

 

When this is all over, I'm tossing the mod out; it's not worth a load order slot. Not unless something comes along and blows me away.

 

This really is a case of all hype and no real substance.

[LLCNC]

This thread is massively disappointing. I just finished downloading it too...

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

I just got my first CTD with Falskaar.

 

What is it with this mod and buggy ass NPCs you're supposed to follow? Two quests now, one of which seems to be "main" quest, both had them to the point where I had to use the console and/or another mod to get them to work properly.

[Adam Jensen]

I won't argue there, but there's a small (though significant) difference between just re-using an asset, and re-using an asset creatively.

 

There is also a difference between this and Bethesda reusing their assets. This is a mod, this is free, Bethesda charges 20 bucks for something like Dawnguard.

[Adam Jensen]

I just got my first CTD with Falskaar.

 

What is it with this mod and buggy ass NPCs you're supposed to follow? Two quests now, one of which seems to be "main" quest, both had them to the point where I had to use the console and/or another mod to get them to work properly.

 

Odd, so far the navmesh are working fine for me. But if you love buggy Npcs that you need to follow, you must certainly need to check Wyrmstooh.

[GrimReaper]

I think the main problem is that Falskaar is one big cannibalisation of Skyrim. Even some quests and location are directly ripped from Skyrim, at least it feels that way. There is one quest that is almost a direct copy of a quest you can find in Skyrim that involves a lighthouse, falmer and a dead family. The only thing that is different is the location, obviously. There is a pirate cave in Falskaar that looks almost identical to the one you can find next to Solitude.

 

Another thing is that the author limited himself with only using vanilla stuff, you can find an ancient ruined fishing village that consists of buildings that are used in ancient nord burial sites. Needless to say, it looks very out of place, awkward and artificial. The landscape is mostly just flat forest, which also looks very... boring. Falskaar is huge, but empty. There are not many interesting spots to find and travelling is mostly just walking and not exploring.

 

On the plus side however, I think the main quest is well done. The story itself is not very entertaining, though, but the quest are mostly well made. And the voice acting is really good, there are some bad examples here and there but mostly you will not notice that you are playing a fan-made expansion. I especially liked a side quest that involves a lighthouse and a ghost, it's one of the few quests that don't involve fighting and focus on atmosphere rather than action.

 

It's worth a try, but don't expect anything new.

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

One thing NOT taken from vanilla that's jarring is not being able to take stuff from NPCs whom you have helped. It's nothing major, but it's weird to have helped somebody, only to see that every single item in their house/shop/stall is marked as steal.

 

Oh, and the fact that Amber Creek is literally the only town in the whole area that is open to you bugs the shit out of me.

[Guest wellbredbitch]

we arrived in Amber mill late last night. after giving the blacksmith the good news about his apprentice and saving the bad news for the jarl untill the morning, we went to the inn and relaxed.  i have found it to be a good experience so far. no problems that i have noticed.  i play on legendary setting as my character and her equipment are fully upgraded and enchanted and it seems to be working in Falskaar ok. i hesitated for a moment during the mine bandit encounter and one of them killed me with an arrow!

[Guest wellbredbitch]

has anyone else had a CTD when trying to unequip a piece of armor?

[Arizona_Steve]

First of all I have a lot of respect for Alex and his crew, and the amount of work that went into producing Falskaar.

 

But I have to agree with the critiques above. Most disappointing is that once the main quest is completed only Amber Creek remains intact - the other two settlements are in ruins (maybe the Helgen Rebuilt author can get to work on these). I was going to slap a couple of the Falmer Valley wayshrines into Falskaar but there's really nowhere to put them.

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

That ending was utter shit. And here I was thinking Alduin was the most underwhelming boss possible for Skyrim...

 

 

I was expecting this to go Morrowind with the Heart of the Gods; that the mustache twirling bad guy would get it, do a Dagoth Ur with respawning even when killed and you'd have to destroy it. But no, instead you get a piss poor easy "duel" with him, and when you win he goes up, tries to grab it, then a dragon just appears from nowhere and stops him, thus making the whole fucking chase and build up useless... because he never would have won in the first place.

 

 

SO MUCH FUCKING WASTED POTENTIAL. IT PISSES ME OFF.

 

Also, that unskippable credits thing was stupid and not needed at fucking all. Especially when it went on for nearly 10 goddamned minutes. I hope this guy doesn't get a job at Bethesda, because we DON'T need this sort of thing in future TES games.

[« Broken ‡ Mirror »]

That ending was utter shit. And here I was thinking Alduin was the most underwhelming boss possible for Skyrim...

 

 

I was expecting this to go Morrowind with the Heart of the Gods; that the mustache twirling bad guy would get it, do a Dagoth Ur with respawning even when killed and you'd have to destroy it. But no, instead you get a piss poor easy "duel" with him, and when you win he goes up, tries to grab it, then a dragon just appears from nowhere and stops him, thus making the whole fucking chase and build up useless... because he never would have won in the first place.

 

 

SO MUCH FUCKING WASTED POTENTIAL. IT PISSES ME OFF.

 

Also, that unskippable credits thing was stupid and not needed at fucking all. Especially when it went on for nearly 10 goddamned minutes. I hope this guy doesn't get a job at Bethesda, because we DON'T need this sort of thing in future TES games.

Ripping off your name, but some of us here don't give a flying fat fuck.

[GrimReaper]

 

bla bla bla if its not good enough for you, why don't make it yourself then ?

owww wait you can't do it, only thing you can do is piss on some 1 else work

 

if you don't like it why even bother to post your wordless comments, or post your crap comments on nexus, they now how to tread you the right way there

 

 

Have you ever criticized a movie? Have you ever done a movie yourself? No? This is the most stupid argument ever. You don't need to be better at what the creator does to say you don't like it. Valid criticism is NOT based on what you do or don't do, it's solely based on your arguments. Kyubey may be a bit harsh, but I can understand where he is coming from and I consider his point of view valid.

[Guest Xluxlu]

excelent mod =D i can´t wait for the traduction to spanish or italian jajajaja

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

Can people ever come up with anything other than "make something better or don't complain"? Look, whoever the Hell you are, if people couldn't commit the grievous sin of actually judging something without making something better, then there would be no reviews, no critics, nothing to tell you something about anything. Quality is subjective; what you consider great is another mans steaming pile of shit. If you think I'm being too harsh, then too fucking bad; I don't sugar coat anything.

 

A little tip for you guys; I wanted to like this. I really did. Given how much of a joke Hearthfire was, how much I hated Dawnguard and was enraged to the point of near rage quitting the final boss of Dragonborn because Besthesda can't do script heavy bosses that can actually function properly half the time, I wanted a modder to appear and show them up. I really wanted this to be something to show them that somebody can do something better for free and without any of the resources that a big named company has.

 

But it didn't. It seems to be a hyped up vanity project for this guy who hopes it will land him a job at Bethesda. it's as vanilla as Skyrim, and sections of it are worse. He spent a year on this, he had voice actors, he had music made, he put in so much time and effort and it was all wasted potential. And he even managed to make a more underwhelming end boss than Alduin, which is a task in and of itself.

 

If you can't handle my opinion, then go back to the Nexus where everything is happiness and sunshine through banning anybody who doesn't kiss ass.

[Adam Jensen]

 

 

bla bla bla if its not good enough for you, why don't make it yourself then ?

owww wait you can't do it, only thing you can do is piss on some 1 else work

 

if you don't like it why even bother to post your wordless comments, or post your crap comments on nexus, they now how to tread you the right way there

 

 

Have you ever criticized a movie? Have you ever done a movie yourself? No? This is the most stupid argument ever. You don't need to be better at what the creator does to say you don't like it. Valid criticism is NOT based on what you do or don't do, it's solely based on your arguments. Kyubey may be a bit harsh, but I can understand where he is coming from and I consider his point of view valid.

 

 

I'll be honest, if this was a dlc for which I had to pay 10-20 bucks, I would probably support Kyubey's statement. But here is the thing, I honestly don't care whether Kyubey wants to bash it or not, because frankly his opinion doesn't affect my enjoyment or my opinion of the mod. That said, I would like to remind everyone that thing is FREE CONTENT, and honestly you guys might say it's vanilla or whatever, but it was a superb work, it has pretty good voice acting, some nice quest even if they are somewhat generic, etc.

 

Yes the kid could had done a better job, but for fuck's sake if anyone here has taken a stab at CK, you know how much of a bitch designing just one dungeon can be. Give the kid some slack, give him some positive feedback instead of just bashing his mod. Frankly I am immensely grateful for his work, because I wanted a mod that took me to a new land for a long time.

 

And sure the thing has its flaws, but so did Vanilla Skyrim and I still love it.

[brendan62]

Actually the only issue ive had with this is that the worldspace is a  little bland after doing a little house and land modding here and there id have spent more time on making the worldspace more diverse and perhaps more like eye candy, but  those who are running down in such an insulting fashion should jump into the ck and try to make something even a 50th of the size and see how much is involved before you go insulting the modder

[hafertaler]

I've downloaded and "installed" it, but since I'm playing a new pc and just bought Dawnguard and Dragonborn, I think it'll take a while until I get to play it.

 

I appreciate the effort regardless of the outcome, but depending on the outcome I will criticize it too. 

And while others might be able to ignore it, I'm also one of those guys who HATES unskippable sequences in any shape or form, so thanks for the warning Kyubey ; ) 

I think there are some videos included in the pack so let's see if deleting the outro video does the trick.

 

Anyway: I didn't read anything close to an insult here, so far I think the "Nay-sayers" at least had something to back their opinion, while the "Yay-sayers" just stated that the dude put effort into it and that it's free... 

I could make a tasteless comparison to a dog turd on the street, that - under certain circumstances - fulfills the same criteria, but that wouldn't be fair.

 

He put the mod out there and by doing that, he technically agreed that the mod can be criticized and judged. As long as people just say what they thought, liked and disliked about the mod, I don't see a problem with it.. nobody insulted the modder.

[Adam Jensen]

I've downloaded and "installed" it, but since I'm playing a new pc and just bought Dawnguard and Dragonborn, I think it'll take a while until I get to play it.

 

I appreciate the effort regardless of the outcome, but depending on the outcome I will criticize it too. 

And while others might be able to ignore it, I'm also one of those guys who HATES unskippable sequences in any shape or form, so thanks for the warning Kyubey ; ) 

I think there are some videos included in the pack so let's see if deleting the outro video does the trick.

 

Anyway: I didn't read anything close to an insult here, so far I think the "Nay-sayers" at least had something to back their opinion, while the "Yay-sayers" just stated that the dude put effort into it and that it's free... 

I could make a tasteless comparison to a dog turd on the street, that - under certain circumstances - fulfills the same criteria, but that wouldn't be fair.

 

He put the mod out there and by doing that, he technically agreed that the mod can be criticized and judged. As long as people just say what they thought, liked and disliked about the mod, I don't see a problem with it.. nobody insulted the modder.

 

I'm sorry but that comparison makes little to no sense. 

 

If you have a dog that wants you to play with his crap, you have one hell of a weird dog. And that's coming from someone who has this for a dog....

 

[foreveraloneguy]

 

 

 

bla bla bla if its not good enough for you, why don't make it yourself then ?

owww wait you can't do it, only thing you can do is piss on some 1 else work

 

if you don't like it why even bother to post your wordless comments, or post your crap comments on nexus, they now how to tread you the right way there

 

 

Have you ever criticized a movie? Have you ever done a movie yourself? No? This is the most stupid argument ever. You don't need to be better at what the creator does to say you don't like it. Valid criticism is NOT based on what you do or don't do, it's solely based on your arguments. Kyubey may be a bit harsh, but I can understand where he is coming from and I consider his point of view valid.

 

 

I'll be honest, if this was a dlc for which I had to pay 10-20 bucks, I would probably support Kyubey's statement. But here is the thing, I honestly don't care whether Kyubey wants to bash it or not, because frankly his opinion doesn't affect my enjoyment or my opinion of the mod. That said, I would like to remind everyone that thing is FREE CONTENT, and honestly you guys might say it's vanilla or whatever, but it was a superb work, it has pretty good voice acting, some nice quest even if they are somewhat generic, etc.

 

Yes the kid could had done a better job, but for fuck's sake if anyone here has taken a stab at CK, you know how much of a bitch designing just one dungeon can be. Give the kid some slack, give him some positive feedback instead of just bashing his mod. Frankly I am immensely grateful for his work, because I wanted a mod that took me to a new land for a long time.

 

And sure the thing has its flaws, but so did Vanilla Skyrim and I still love it.

 

 

Being free does not make it better, it simply removes the "I can't believe I actually paid for this thing" argument. It's great that you like this. But then, some guys pay other people to kick them in the nuts. That's not really my thing, dig? And 20-30 hours of content, that, at that end, makes you say to yourself "man, I'll never get that time back" is not a ringing endorsement for this mod. Yet, that's exactly how I felt.

 

The other thing to think about is that he worked on this *full time* for a year. He had no job, wasn't going to school, nothing. Just spending his days and/or nights modding. For a year. And this is what he got for it. But, you know, he seems to be happy with it, so good on him.

 

So, just off the top of my head, here are some rather obvious things that, if they had been included, would have made this mod actually worthwhile to play:

 

The ability to pick sides in the war. I mean seriously, the ability to betray the Jarl and side with the bad guy, then, maybe even the ability to betray him, take the heart for yourself and rule Falskaar as an Immortal would have been really nice. Instead, you're forced into the role of good guy all the way through. Or you expose the Jarl for his own plot, and rule Falksaar or leave someone else in charge. Because really, that Jarl guy is so good that it makes me want to puke. He's the ultimate one dimensional good guy, which makes him the ultimate boring character. I kept hoping he'd die, but he never did. And that was disappointing. The author got my hopes of for a second there leading up to the boss battle, but nope, I fight him. And as soon as he wanted to fight me, I knew he was doomed, because after all, I'm the PC, and the PC can't really lose. You just respawn, and maybe sit through some dialog again.

 

And because of the above, your choices don't matter, because you're only given one choice; to be the Jarl's loyal and helpful good guy. I'm in the Thieves Guild, the Dark Brotherhood, and my character would generally rather just kill you and loot the body than spend 2 minutes talking to you. And I like it that way. Think of a medieval version of Deadpool here. I just wanna set shit on fire, then hack it to pieces. Or maybe put a few arrows in your face. That's fun too. For me that is, less so for you, if you meet me.

 

Can't improve the very few items you get out of this. And to add insult to injury, those items aren't much of anything special. At least I was able to disenchant the "special" war hammer in Dragonborn and apply it to something else.  You know, like my 2H sword that does a couple hundred base damage.

 

Beds in the inn that are way overpriced, and don't even give a well rested perk. 50 gold for a night? And it doesn't even come with a wench to warm my bed? Sure, I did a quest, and that got it to the bargain price of 20 gold, but I still didn't get a well rested perk out of it, making it nearly pointless to bother sleeping in the inn, as opposed to any of the other dozens of beds freely available for no apparent reason.

 

A fairly empty and rather boring land that's impossible to distinguish from Skyrim. At least Dawnguard gave us the Soul Cairn, and Dragonborn gave us a plane in Oblvion to explore. This "DLC-quality" mod? Bupkis. Big, fat, bupkis. Because really, just changing "Skyrim" to "Falksaar" on the map doesn't actually qualify as a "new land" in my book.

 

500 gold, before a certain quest, to get back to skyrim. And a quest to go back to skyrim gets put in your quest list. Seriously? Eff you. I'll kill the captain and take his effing boat before I pay 500 gold. Or at least give the player and option to haggle the price if the PC's speech skill is high enough. Again, a fairly obvious oversight on the author's part, or so I think.

 

A truly, truly, sad final boss battle. I mean, it's just sad. Took me about 5 whacks with my magic sword and a shout to beat him, then he just runs off to die. And I did all those pointless quests... for this? For some stupid comic book style montage ending? At that point, I realized I'd been trolled.

 

And, as said, that ending sequence feels like a giant "Look at me! Look at me! I am great! And you WILL sit there and watch all the credits, whether you care or not! Because look at me, I am so great!". Seriously, it's not that great, and I don't care. But this did confirm the previous suspicion of the mod actually being just a big troll.

 

Where, again, I do give him credit is we've got some new content for other modders to play with. Maybe someone will come along and do something with it, maybe not, and maybe the author will expand on it, or maybe not. And the voice acting is better than the usual fare. But since I don't care about any of the characters, it's not enough to redeem the mod. Although, almost none of the voice actors seem to know what either a pop filter or compressor limiter is, so that probably had a lot to do with me occasionally laughing where I probably wasn't supposed to laugh, and cringing over all the too-loud "puh" sounds coming through the speakers (seriously, that shit makes my ears hurt). That, and most of the voice actors seemed to come from the "William Shatner" school of "you can never, ever, emote too much". Again, laughter where there probably wasn't supposed to be laughter. But by way of disclosure, I should say that my own VA work makes me alternately cringe and laugh, so... yeah. But at the same time, he did get a couple of decent jokes in, like that one time I heard "You'll wish you'd just taken an arrow to the knee!", or something to that effect. At least, I think I was supposed to laugh there, and I did. Another thing I'll give him credit on is that he did successfully manage a rather large project, and was able to execute on his vision for the expansion he wanted to do. That was probably his single greatest accomplishment in this, and something I don't think anyone will argue is easy to do.

 

So... I'm not criticizing the mod just to be a dick. Criticism, at least constructive criticism, is how creators learn. It's vital feedback, or at least it is for me. But if everyone treats this guy like a small child and just tells him how great his mod is, he'll never learn to be better. And really, do you people have so little respect for him that you think he needs to be treated a delicate little flower that will wilt and die at the first hint that maybe he's still got something to learn? But as mentioned, on Nexus everything must be sunshine and kittens and happy rainbows, with nary an ill, or helpful, word spoken to those delicate little flowers that are the Nexus modders, and that's even more sad. It's also the reason some modders release crap mod after crap mod.

 

And a final note, for contrast, look at the Gates of Oblivion mods for examples of some of the more imaginative stuff you can do by recycling content, or Maids II for an example of how to do a mod where your choices affect what happens next, and who lives and who dies. But, in fairness to Alex, both those mods are also done by more experienced modders. They're also sort of benchmarks for me that someone is going to have to pass to get to call their mod "DLC quality".

[Deathmaw]

I installed this played it for about 2 hours then unistalled and loaded up a previous save.

 

The good and the bad were

 

 

The Good:

 

*Awesome voice acting, fair game it was very high quality.

 

*A lot of work went into it.

 

*The music is pretty good, however it feels misplaced in skyrim while it is of extremely high quality it would feel more at home in a Zelda game.

 

 

The Bad:

 

*Considering it is meant to have no issues I had several instances of where my companions would just get stuck or get lost and take the long way around for no reason. I can only assume something is fucked with the Nav mesh in several area's. This is a deal breaker for me since I enjoy travelling around with 3 companions. Then for the quest where you have to find the missing caravan when I got there I could not interact with the wounded guard I had to disable and renable him to continue the quest.

 

*I played for a while went back to skyrim once then went back to falskar saved and quit, when I reloaded and tried to leave via the boat I would get an endless load screen. Tried this 6 times before saying fuck it and unistalling the mod. I assume this had something to do with the gimmicky cutscene thing.

 

*While this is just a personal thing the guys name constantly being slapped in your face in all the trailers the mod page and even when you first arrive in skyrim really grates my gears. The only time you put someones name at the start of a game or a film are for well known people like Sid Mier or Steven Spielberg. 

 

*As others have said it is just more vanilla skyrim landscape, which is kind of meh.

 

 

 

All in all it seems decent just not finished I would say. Certainly not the holy grail of skyrim modding that several people have made it out to be. I also doubt that the whole constantly going on about himself doing it for a job at Bethesda is going to do him any good.

[hafertaler]

I gave it a try and have to say it's really boring.

 

A proper name for the region would have been Blandistan and I actually developed a hate for birch trees... I hate a kind of tree, I never thought that would be possible.

 

The voice acting is really mixed, there are some good examples and some are really bad, Rangarr or whatever his name is (the blacksmith in Bland City), is atrocious, same goes for Svea and the Yarl. And the girl with the voice of a 54 year old woman... brilliant.

 

The music isn't bad for the most part, except for "the dragonborn comes - I hate to sing it and want to bore you to death" edition. 

The usage of the music is bad though, it doesn't fit at all for the most part and the one time I thought "Well here a bit of atmospheric creepy music and I would actually enjoy it", there was just silence (the light house quest).

 

The houses are just too empty as far as I have seen it and the usage of "clutter" objects just uninspired and unnatural.

 

The quests I've seen so far aren't good either, I like the fact that there is a message when you can advance in a quest, after you have to wait for something to happen, but that's basically the only good thing I can say. The worst example is the  quest for these dream crystals, first off those priests never found the trapdoor directly in front of their house... totally believe it, the other thing is you have to track down those 4 necromancers with their shards, they don't get a quest marker and they keep traveling through the hold of blandistan (I skipped through most parts of the dialog but I think it works like that)... no thanks, that's just unacceptable.

 

Another thing that bugged me out is the HEAVY usage of bandits, I think I killed more bandits in the first 4 or 5 hours I played the mod, than I did in a whole playthrough of the game.

All in all I've seen 4 different enemies: bandits, draugrs and wolf spider combos... boring.

 

Finally the thing that made me laugh out loud: You can ask the guy with the ship something like "How can a place so beautiful be so dangerous"... right, just wow. I'd call that delusional. If the landscape had the same quality as Vanilla Skyrim I wouldn't complain, but it's FAR worse, "It's like watching an old flintstones cartoon, where the background repeats over and over again" ...

[zeustyrantz]

one quick question , is there anyone u got problems getting pass trought the gate

because when im trying pass trought the gate i got ctd

[bitterne]

Huge empty land that modders can play with and make interesting. Bethesda will love him for sure, it's what their devs have been making so far too.