Status check of Tuxborn playthrough

Since I’m super behind on getting my playthrough posts written up, here’s a quick status check on where I am with Tuxborn.

In January of this year, Tuxborn dropped a test build for a 1.0 release. Since my playthrough of Nona, using Tuxborn’s 0.5.2 build, was still in progress, I didn’t want to bail on it. So I set up a second Tuxborn installation on my Steam Deck.

Partway into testing with that build of Tuxborn, one of the mods in Tuxborn’s load order vanished off of Nexus. This was the voice pack for Alternate Start – Live Another Life, a mod that added some audio for certain lines that Alternate Start otherwise only had represented via subtitles. The disappearance of this mod broke the test build and any further installs of 0.5.2, which made things complicated for Tuxborn’s devs.

They eventually released a new test build, which is what’s available for download now. 0.5.2 has been pulled off of Nexus, so anybody interested in doing an install of Tuxborn will need to use the test build. Or, hold out until a formal 1.0 release finally happens.

I am not planning to document what I’m doing with Tuxborn’s test build, since it’s explicitly a test build. And what those of us playtesting it are doing in it is therefore to be considered disposable. Once a formal 1.0 build of Tuxborn is released, I will do a formal playthrough on this blog with it.

Meanwhile, since I still have a working build of 0.5.2 and Nona’s playthrough is still in progress, I’m proceeding with her run as best I can. Its major challenge is that Legacy of the Dragonborn in this load order has huge performance issues on the Steam Deck, so I’m having to structure my play sessions around using the museum as little as possible.

Additionally, since it’s not feasible for Tuxborn’s devs to try to support 0.5.2 anymore, I have taken the liberty of adding a few things to its load order. Not getting too crazy with it–I haven’t forgotten the lessons of Harrowhark’s playthrough. But I did want to play a bit with learning how to add things to a load order in Mod Organizer 2, how to use LOOT to sort plugins, and how to rearrange priority of mods in the list to resolve conflicts.

And basically, I was very much missing certain core mods I’d come to love via Elessir’s and Kendeshel’s playthroughs. So this is what I added to Nona’s:

• Convenient Horses (because Simplest Horses is a bit too simple for my preferences, when it comes to managing multiple horses)
• Campfire (because even though Tuxborn 0.5.2 does have LOTD and the stupendously useful Rains’ Shelter, I was still missing the ability to make campsites via Campfire)
• A Matter of Time (because I really wanted to have the in-game date and time visible on screen)
• Tidy Up (because Tuxborn’s load order has issues with items flying out of place in certain locations and this is the only mod I’ve found so far to help correct those problems when they happen)
• Immersive HUD (because this was my previous solution for toggling the UI on and off and I wanted it back)

And just to be clear: the only reason I went ahead with adding additional mods to Tuxborn 0.5.2’s load order is specifically because Tuxborn’s devs cannot in fact support it any further. So I was reasonably confident in being able to handle these changes myself, without causing any weird breakages. And I was willing to accept that solving any breakages would in fact be my own responsibility.

I will not make any similar changes to the active Tuxborn test build, and do not recommend other players do so, either. Even if you possess the technical chops to do so yourself. The Tuxborn policy is that if you do make any modifications to the list, you automatically void any right to get official dev support for any issues you see. And since Tuxborn’s explicitly on a test build right now and is undergoing playtesting, it’s important to not complicate matters by adding any extra mods in on top of that.

(Maybe when Tuxborn releases an official 1.0 final build, I might change my tune on that. But even in that scenario, I’d strongly recommend against it unless you know damn well what you’re doing and can fix any mod conflicts on your own.)

In terms of where I’m actually at with Nona: she’s at level 54 now. I’d been running a squad of five regular followers with her: modded Lydia, Eris, Remiel, Auri, and Gore. This wasn’t even my max number of acquired followers, either; I’d also picked up Lucien, Nessa, Aviendha, Ralya, and Runs-With-Sticks. But I came to see that that many followers was just too damned many followers for my tastes, even aside from potential performance issues impacting the LOTD museum.

So I’ve cut back on the follower count, and am just running the modded Lydia and Remiel. I’m really enjoying this version of Lydia, the one provided by the Improved Follower Dialogue – Lydia mod. And I am, in fact, romancing her, in a hard callback to my original Skyrim playthrough where I did the same. <3

And I’ve kept Remiel because she is hands down my favorite custom follower so far this run. I’ll have more to say on her later.

Nona has not yet run either Dawnguard or Dragonborn. In terms of major vanilla factions, the only ones I’ve run so far with her are the Bards College and the College of Winterhold. I have no plans to run the Thieves Guild or the Brotherhood with her, especially given that this version of Lydia is very much geared towards good-guy playthroughs, and at this point Nona’s story would not be fitting for that kind of playthrough.

But at the same time, I also haven’t run the Companions or the civil war with her either. I’m pretty sure I won’t, just because there’s so much else to do in Tuxborn’s load order that I have had plenty of other stuff to do.

Right now, I’m working on clearing out a bunch of side quests with her, to try to put a big dent in her journal to clear the way for running Dawnguard.

Last but not least: since I’ve been maintaining an active presence on the Tuxborn channels of the Aetherius Modding Discord, Tuxborn’s devs offered to promote me to “Community Helper” status on that server. Just out of gratitude for helping answer questions for players. I was very happy to accept. <3