Initial Commentary on Tuxborn

I hadn’t intended to start my playthrough of the Tuxborn modpack quite yet; I’d been thinking I’d finish Kendeshel’s playthrough first.

But well, hell, it’s been a bad week, and I wanted to do something to lift my spirits a bit. So I got started running my latest Skyrim playthrough, starring Nona the Imperial!

I’m going to put up two posts about this–one to cover the actual played action, and another to cover a bunch of thoughts about all the changes Tuxborn makes to the game. Doing this to cut down on length for each post!

This post will be the one with general commentary about the modpack, so consider this to be the first wave of commentary in what’s likely to be a lot of thoughts to come. Commentary here isn’t in any particular order; it’s just thoughts as they came to me, reviewing the session’s screenshots. But the post is arranged roughly in order of how I encountered things as I played my first session.

And just about all of this commentary is spoiler-free, unless you consider discussion of character appearances, game behavior, and game mechanics spoilers.

How leveling works in Tuxborn

I figured out in the half a dozen or so attempts to take out Tanita the Khajiit that as an Imperial, I had two perk points to start with to spend on skills. But those didn’t actually help me much, even after I tried dropping the points on “Heavy Armor Mastery” and “Two-Handed Mastery”.

And that initial spending of perk points didn’t take, either, just because I had a bumpy enough start that I had to spend those points a few times before I was finally able to make real progress.

As the session went on, though, I did get some opportunities to see how leveling works in Tuxborn. I knew going in that it wasn’t going to be the same system vanilla Skyrim uses, but I didn’t really know before I started what that was actually going to mean.

So far, from what I’ve seen, it means I still get a perk point to spend on each level up. That part is like vanilla Skyrim. But I also get a bunch of points to apply directly to various eligible skills, and that feels closer to Morrowind. I’m not sure if I like this system yet? But after only one session in this playthrough, way too early to tell.

Plant graphics

One of the things I noticed right away about the graphics used for the world in this version of Skyrim is, the flowers all look significantly different. They’re still mostly recognizable, but they have a very different style to them. And I’m not sure I like it yet. So far every single clump of wildflowers I’ve seen has seemed way too tidy, like they’re cultivated in a garden or a town, rather than growing out in the wild.

I do like that the various color classes of “Mountain Flower” (Blue, Red, Purple) have more than one visual variant, though. That makes things more visually interesting even if everything so far seems a little too tidy to me.

Some of the color choices in general seem odd to me, too. Most grass is very green, especially against the overall sand-colored terrain of Eastmarch. Certain other types of grasses are so pale as to look almost white, especially when it’s night.

Still though, if the end result of this is good maintainable performance on the Deck, I’m fine with this. It’s just a huge visual difference from the Skyrim I’m used to! And I’m not used to this look yet.

UI changes

Up till now I have not been a fan of SkyUI. I’ve had to install it anyway, because a bunch of mods I was interested in depended upon it. But I’ve usually installed “Hide SkyUI” to revert back to the vanilla menus instead.

Tuxborn does of course have SkyUI in it, and so I’m giving it more of a shot this time. And fair play to Tuxborn, I’ll say that so far, this experience has been better for me. I think it helps that I have a reliable way now to switch back and forth between views when I’m talking to a vendor, so that I can easily look at their stuff vs. my stuff.

I also like how other mods in Tuxborn’s load order are doing better organization of what SkyUI shows you. Especially when I’m at a forge trying to make something. The SkyUI in this playthrough so far seems much nicer for me to navigate through.

The compass in Tuxborn, by default, shows much smaller than I’m used to. The modpack is using Compass Navigation Overhaul, which I’d already identified as a mod I was really interested in, and I am so far very happy to see it here.

However, I did have to figure out how to make that compass bigger, because hi I’m old and have old person eyes. Fortunately, I was able to track down the appropriate setting to adjust in skyhud.txt.

The other thing I want to adjust is that Compass Navigation Overhaul shows its distances to quest objectives in meters. There’s a toggle in its INI that you’re supposed to be able to set to 0 to make it show imperial units instead of metric. I tried changing it, but that didn’t seem to take. I asked the Tuxborn Discord about this, and was pointed at a different copy of the same INI file to use instead, which fixed that problem. Yay!

Another thing I’ll call out is that Tuxborn’s using a different font than the standard one in Skyrim. I’m pretty sure it’s the Sovngarde font, which I’ve seen before? But I don’t know for sure, since that’s not a mod I actually see in the load order list. So if Sovngarde is somewhere in this load order, it’s getting pulled in as part of some other mod.

I kinda dig it, too. Changing the game’s entire default font is certainly a way to give everything a different look and feel. Tuxborn’s doing a lot more than that, of course. But a different global font is contributing a lot to this looking like an entirely different game to me right now.

And the last thing that’s so far stood out to me is that I’m really missing the in-game time display I was able to turn on for Elessir’s and Kendeshel’s playthroughs, thanks to the mod A Matter of Time. I really like having the in-game time and date readily available on screen, rather than having to open up the inventory menu just to see what time it is. But A Matter of Time is not included in Tuxborn’s load order, so asking the Tuxborn Discord about that, too, to see if there’s anything in the load order I missed that does the same thing.

Paper map

This gets its own section just because I think it’s cool. Tuxborn is using paper-style maps for the world, which is yet another major change that contributes to making Skyrim come across as an entirely different game.

And as with a bunch of the other changes, I’m not used to it yet–but I think I really like it. I like these paper maps better than the maps I’ve tried on previous modded playthroughs.

Music

This definitely gets its own section. There’s a lot of fan-produced music in this modpack, all of which is described as being heavily influenced by Jeremy Soule, and therefore doing its best to keep to the theme and atmosphere of the original game.

So far, everything I’ve heard sounds great. <3 And there’s enough of it that it was in fact a little surprising to hear one of the vanilla themes roll into play!

Redesigned characters

Tuxborn overhauls the look of pretty much every single NPC in the game. Several of the changes, I’m really digging. Characters not only look different, but also have a broader variety of clothing, which is really cool. And it was delightful to see Camilla in Riverwood wearing pants.

Ysolda in Whiterun really looks different. All this time, I’d been parsing her as a brunette… but in the Tuxborn modpack, she’s got much paler red hair. And I went back and looked her up on the wiki, and am now not even sure of what I’d thought of her appearance before. Because now that I take another look at her pics on the UESP and the Elder Scrolls wikis, yeah, I could see her having dark auburn hair.

I think I really like the look Tuxborn’s mods give her, though. She looks kind of cutely gawky, and that is a nice change from a lot of the other women in the game looking way too much like supermodels.

In Whiterun, I noted with pleasure that Elrindir had antlers. Because apparently has a mod to give Bosmer NPCs antlers sometimes. Neat. The mod in question specifically says on its description on Nexus that this is to help tie in the look of Skyrim Bosmer with ESO Bosmer. As an ESO player, I’m for that. <3

I also like Delphine’s new look. Her hair still looks too fancy to my eye, but in her case I can forgive it as part of her cover as an innkeeper. She does not, however, look excessively pretty aside from that. If anything, she looks weathered and old. And she is old, just not as old as Esbern. So I like that her redesign kept her looking good but also respected her age and experience.

But some of the changes I’m really dubious about. Not a fan of how Balgruuf, the Jarl of Whiterun, looks. He’s a lot hairier in Tuxborn, and looks a lot older. He even reminded me very heavily of how Théoden looks in the Lord of the Rings movies, just prior to when Gandalf breaks Saruman’s hold on him!

And even though I lost the progress of visiting the museum in Solitude (more on this in the action post), I don’t think I like how the modpack redesigns Auryen in LotD, either. I’ll have to swing back for round two of my first visit to the museum, and see if I can get a better look at him then.

As noted above, too many of the women I’ve seen so far look way too super-model-y. Especially the Frightened Woman, who had more visible cleavage in this incarnation than she does in her vanilla one. And hair that looked way too good for someone who’d just spent weeks imprisoned by bandits.

I’m also not a fan of Adrianne Avenicci’s new look. She too looks too pretty. But more importantly for me, she has less of a Claudia Christian vibe now. And I associate that very strongly with that character in particular–even though Claudia Christian of course voiced multiple characters in Skyrim besides her. So she just looks wrong to me. And also too young.

Irileth, Balgruuf’s housecarl in Whiterun, likewise looks too pretty to me–and I think she may also no longer have her warpaint, which I’m not too pleased with. I do kind of like that she’s wearing chitin armor in this run, which seems to fit her being a Dunmer. But on the other hand, she’s also the housecarl of the Jarl of Whiterun, not just any Dunmer. So I kinda feel like if you’re going to change up her armor, she ought to be wearing Whiterun armor.

So so far, the character redesigns are a mixed bag for me. We’ll see how this holds up as I continue.

Interacting with characters

Launching conversations with characters in Tuxborn’s version of Skyrim does the thing I’ve seen in Oblivion, where you get a sudden zoom in on a character when you launch a conversation with them. I think this functionality is handled by Improved Alternate Conversation Camera?

But I’m going to need to experiment with its settings. I’m not a fan of the sudden zoom in on a character, especially on a screen as small as the Deck’s. I find it visually disorienting. So I will probably need to dial down on that zoom some, either in scope, or in speed.

Several of the vendors, I’ve found, now have extended versions of their banter lines that you can trigger if you take certain conversational options with them. Mostly, I like this; I like the overall improved conversation with them, even if the lines themselves are already familiar to me. In the specific case of Arcadia, I found it a trifle awkward though. Because she already had her thing where she goes “ohnoez you must have Ataxia”, even if you’re perfectly healthy. But the extended version also utilizes the “I think you might be sick, how do you feel?” line that you get from NPCs when you are in fact sick.

So that was confusing. I wasn’t sure for a few moments if I was sick or not!

Delphine’s extended conversation was likewise a little bumpy, since I took that conversation after renting a room from her–and the extended chat eventually just led to my being prompted to rent a room. Which triggered the innkeeper line of “are you joking? You just rented a room from me!” Snerk. So not as smooth there as I would like.

Behavior of subtitles of NPC commentary

I noticed more than once, in places where multiple conversations were going on, that something in the load order is improving the display of subtitles. I’ve seen them stack visually.

This helps a lot when it comes to trying to catch what everybody is saying! Because in crowded places, sometimes people talk right over one another. And I’m hoping this’ll also help when I have followers try to throw off random lines when I’m trying to have a quest conversation, too.

Remains of dead animals

I haven’t had time to see much of this yet, but I knew going in that Tuxborn includes mods that show the impact of passing time on the remains of dead animals. I saw this actually playing out on the way in and out of Kynesgrove–because on the way in, I saw a dead goat and some dead chickens. I think they might have been killed by a passing wild animal?

And on the way out of the inn in the morning, after getting thrown back there by a prior death, I happened to see that the remains of the goat I’d spotted before were now almost gone. Just a trace of bone remained on the ground!

So that was pretty neat to see in action.

Environmental lighting

I am so far having trouble with how Tuxborn handles its environmental lighting. Daytime exteriors look great. But every time I stepped into a building, it was super dark in there. And I had issues really making out the faces of any of the NPCs I spoke to.

Outside at night, it was also super dark. I’m okay with that, just because that’s rather to be expected. And I do not have a reliable light source yet. Tuxborn has mods in its list that let you make lanterns, and I will be doing that. But I shouldn’t need a lantern or a torch just to talk to people in inns!

So I’ll need to dig into the mod configs and see if there’s anything I can adjust to make things a bit less dark. I’ve tried adjusting the Deck’s native brightness slider as well as the one in Skyrim’s display settings. But that only serves to improve the interior brightness while making exteriors too damned bright. And I don’t want to have to spend the whole game adjusting things every time I go in and out of locations.

So adjusting configurations is called for. I just need to find what configurations will want adjusting. Which may be a while.

New armor types available, and armor types not available?

The armor I got off Tanita the Khajiit seemed to be Moon Monk robes, with matching gauntlets and boots. And I mostly think they look really cool. But later on in the session, when I finally got to Whiterun, I noticed some issues with the shoulders not rendering quite right when I was at the workbenches at Warmaiden’s. I kept seeing what looked like tears along seams, which showed my skin color underneath.

I’ll probably be trading off to something else soon, but not sure what yet. I see several interesting looking armor types available for crafting at forges, and I want to try at least one or two of those!

I also noticed, however, that my early go-to AE armor, the Leather Scout armor, is not available to me yet. The Creation for this does appear to still be in Tuxborn’s load order–which suggests to me that I will actually need to run the quest for the Leather Scout armor to be able to make it!

Which will actually be fun, given that I have yet to actually play that quest, as I recall.

New guard armor 😀

And speaking of armor–I have got to call out all on its own that all the guards I’ve seen so far in Tuxborn’s version of Skyrim have completely different armor, including redesigned helmets!

That don’t actually look bad! They aren’t those weird bud-shaped things with pointy tops anymore! And I can actually get some hint of guard faces underneath those helmets!

Ri’saad’s Khajiit caravan has a location marker!

When I made it to Whiterun, as is typical whenever I start a new Skyrim game, I found Ri’saad’s Khajiit caravan camped outside the city.

This time through, though, that actually triggered a location discovery.

Holy crap, that means something in Tuxborn’s load order is giving location markers to the Khajiit caravans. I love that. <3

Also, Ri’saad himself was heavily redesigned, which is also going to take some getting used to. 😀

Architectural changes

As of this writing, so far I’ve visited Kynesgrove, Windhelm, Whiterun, Solitude, Riverwood, and what was left of Helgen. And so far, the overall look of all these various places is doing that “familiar, but not familiar” thing.

Windhelm looked tidier, which surprised me. A bunch of its walls in the market area appeared to be built with a lighter colored stone than what appears in the vanilla game.

I came into Solitude fairly late in the day, so didn’t really get a good visual impression of the place–because it was very dark, and I have no source of light yet. But I did see Whiterun, Kynesgrove, and Riverwood in broad daylight. And the overall flavor of what I’m seeing in the architecture looked similar to what I see in the Noble Skyrim mod: i.e., a lot more emphasis on wood in the design of buildings. Which is an aesthetic choice I do like; it seems appropriate for Nords.

And in Whiterun in particular, I really enjoyed walking into the Drunken Hunstman. I really liked the far more rustic look of the place! It had furs all over the walls, which seemed quite appropriate for a tavern run by a couple of hunters!

Crash at the Winking Skeever, and default Tuxborn save settings

I saw this get reported by other players on the Tuxborn Discord before I started playing myself: there’s apparently an issue with a hard FPS drop as soon as you enter the Winking Skeever in Solitude.

I reproed this, when I went to Solitude to try to sign on as the relic hunter at the museum. And it in fact threw me all the way back to Whiterun, which lost me my progress in Solitude completely.

So that was frustrating. By default, I noticed that Tuxborn did not have any of the usual saving checkpoints on–changing zones, closing out of a menu, etc. I think I’m going to have to adjust these settings, because this cost me progress more than once throughout the session.

And I know from past experience that I am not good at remembering to manually save. So I’m going to fix this before I run Nona’s next real session.

Reported FPS drops in Legacy of the Dragonborn

In hanging out on the Tuxborn Discord, I’ve seen other Steam Deck players reporting that they’ve seen behavior in v6 of Legacy of the Dragonborn, similar to what I’ve seen in v5 in Kendeshel’s playthrough: i.e., FPS hits in the museum. So it sounds like to me that v6 of Legacy may still have Deck-based issues.

From what I’ve seen on the Discord, the Tuxborn team is investigating the problem. But I’m not sure how much they’ll be able to do if the issue lies on Legacy’s side?

We’ll see. For now, it seems to me that strategies I’d already been thinking about during Kendeshel’s run will need to apply here. This will involve less time spent in the museum, when possible. And I’ll need to think about not relying completely on the Safehouse as a home base.

Nether’s Follower Framework

Tuxborn includes Nether’s Follower Framework, which I have never used before. It appears to have fairly comprehensive control over what you can do with followers, and a bunch of settings to tweak. I’ll need to familiarize myself with what all it can do.

I did immediately notice that when I picked up Gorr as a follower, he lagged behind me a lot and took a while to catch up with me, even when I stopped to wait for him. I’ll need to see what I can do to fix this.

All in all so far

My overall initial take? Really liking what I’m seeing here. What quibbles I’ve got are hopefully ones I’ll be able to adjust by tweaking settings.

And even with character designs I don’t happen to like, none of that is going to stop me from actually enjoying the playthrough!

So let’s do this thing! Onward!