State of the ‘Rim - October 2023

Hello everyone! I hope you’re doing well. I’m back from my modding break (Cyberpunk 2.0 rules, by the way), and I’m excited to get back to work. In this post, I want to talk about my plans for the rest of the year.

Whenever I return from a modding break, I always like to spend a little time taking stock of my work and making plans for what to do next. The last time I returned from a break, in late March or early April, I realized that it had been a long, long time since I had released a new mod (at the time, my most recent new mod was Hand to Hand, released in December of 2021), and I committed to uploading as many new mods as I could.

During the six month stretch between April and September, we released seven new mods. Some of those mods were relatively small projects (Journeyman, Candlehearth, and Starfrost), but the majority of them were major, large-scale releases (Stormcrown, Sorcerer, Gourmet, and Artificer). At some point during this stretch, we finally met, and then surpassed, Enairim in mechanical coverage (which is a pretty big milestone for me as a former Enairim player and a general admirer of Enai’s work). Every new Simonrim release makes the Simonrim suite as a whole that much better, and as 2023 comes to a close, Simonrim is one of the most robust gameplay overhauls in the history of Skyrim modding. That’s a good feeling.

So, what comes next?

Well, if you go back and look at my modding schedule (from the old “The Future of Simonrim, Part 1” post), the next thing on the list is Armorer. There’s definitely a part of me that wants to come back from this break and get right back to what I was doing–releasing new mods. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s the best move for Simonrim right now.

During the last few months, as I’ve been laser-focused on new releases, a couple of necessary maintenance updates have fallen by the wayside. In addition, I’ve also been developing ideas for some major updates to core Simonrim mods (Mysticism, Adamant, Hand to Hand, Apothecary, and Pilgrim all have major updates coming) and some more modest sized updates to other mods. In fact, almost every single one of my mods has some kind of update that it needs.

Given the backlog of updates that I currently have on my plate, I’ve decided that I’m going to stop working on new mods for the rest of the year, and work on old mods instead. If you were really hyped about Armorer, this might be disappointing news. However, if you’re a fan of Simonrim in general, this is actually quite exciting, because some of these updates have been building hype in the Discord for the past several months.

Based on my list right now, I probably have more updates than I can reasonably finish before the end of the year. Because of that, I’m going to prioritize a couple of big updates (Mysticism, Adamant, and Hand to Hand) and then try to squeeze in as many smaller updates as I can (Blade & Blunt, Thaumaturgy, Gourmet, and Sorcerer will be my priorities). I’d like to have Mysticism, Adamant, and Hand to Hand done in time for Adamant’s fourth birthday (December 13th). Once we get to the end of December, I’ll take stock again and decide what to work on next. Maybe it will feel like the right move to just say fuck it and finish the last major updates (Pilgrim and Apothecary?). Or maybe I’ll be itching for the mines again and want to plow ahead on Armorer.

From my perspective, Armorer and Mercantile (which in some ways is kind of a sequel to Armorer) are the last two major mods that Simonrim needs. Everything that comes after those releases will be plugging small holes (diseases, uncapper, etc), or building addons to existing mods (more CC support, expanded artifacts, improved vendor integration). This stretch of updates will give me time to get my house in order before another long period of going heads-down on a new release. If I can knock out most of these updates before finishing Armorer, then when Armorer releases, we will be so, so close to the finished product–a vision that I’ve been chasing for just over four years now.

I’ve already started working on updates. I released much needed updates to Scion and Manbeast yesterday, and I’ll probably release a similarly-sized update for Pilgrim by the end of the month (note: this is just a maintenance update, not the big Pilgrim update I was mentioning earlier). In the meantime, I’m splitting my attention between Mysticism and Adamant. I don’t have any firm dates for the Mysticism update right now, but I imagine it’ll be some time in November.

Alright, that’s all for this update. I will be in touch next month, hopefully with news on a big release. In the meantime, you can find me on Discord if you want to keep up with my progress, or even just hang out.

Until then, cheers!