State of the ‘Rim - August 2023

Howdy everyone! Hope you’re doing well!

Things have been pretty good for me since my last update. The Gourmet release went very well, and on top of that I was able to release two smaller projects, Starfrost and Candlehearth. I’ve wanted a Survival Mode overhaul with robust integration for injuries for a long time, and it’s pretty cool to see that idea start falling into place. Candlehearth is also an exciting project that adds a surprising amount to the game, especially if you’re playing Survival. With Gourmet, Candlehearth, and Starfrost installed, inns become a major center for player activity, with beds, crafting tables, safe storage, and well-stocked food vendors (and even travel pack distribution).

One small pain point with Gourmet was the recipe system, which (in my opinion) worked pretty well if you only had the food added by Gourmet, USSEP, Survival Mode, and Fishing, but kind of fell apart if you added a bunch more food to your game, which a lot of food mod enjoyers like to do. Fortunately, I was able to go back to the drawing board and emerge with a new recipe system. Unfortunately, after completing the beta version of the update, I realized that my deadline (Starfield release!) was quickly approaching, and that I didn’t have the time to work on a Gourmet update if I wanted to finish the rest of my to do list. I will return to it soon, hopefully next month. There will be some slick new assets, as well as a new system for crafting alcoholic drinks, along with some mechanical integration with Starfrost based on using Frost Salts to make Chilled Wine.

Since moving on from Gourmet, I’ve been hard at work on Artificer, which has been my white whale for the last year or so. Progress has been going extremely well and we are in very good shape. That said, I should warn you that I can’t guarantee that I’ll release “on time.” Artificer is a pretty big mod, and due to the nature of the project you can occasionally find yourself sinking three or four hours into a single weapon. I’m trying to strike a balance between giving every weapon the attention it deserves, and getting bogged down with perfecting individual shaders one at a time. The good news is that, in my opinion, Artificer is looking great. I’m pretty much done with all the top-level artifacts, and I can say for sure that no matter your chosen build or weapon, you will be able to find at least one or two pretty awesome artifacts to support it. We’ll also be adding a small number of artifacts, mainly to help builds with next to no artifact support (rip Heavy Armor / War Axe builds). In the future, we’d like to add even more new artifacts (and maybe use this as a vehicle for redistributing CC content), but I don’t want to go overboard with new artifacts in Artificer itself.

Once September 1st rolls around, I’d like to take a solid two weeks off and no-life Starfield. As you probably know, I’m a huge science fiction nerd and I’m really excited about this game. A lot of people have asked me whether I would be interested in modding Starfield. The answer is definitely yes; that said, my mods generally come from a place of deep appreciation for (and deep familiarity with) the games I’m modding. In order to make great Starfield mods, I need to play Starfield and fall in love with the game. In addition to that, I have absolutely no desire to abandon Simonrim when we’re so close to the finish line. For all these reasons (and a few more), my plan is to continue to focus on Skyrim for the next year or more. That’s not to say I won’t do anything for Starfield; I would like to volunteer some of my time to the Starfield Community Patch, and if I come across a place where there’s a low-effort, high-impact “obvious” way to improve the game (something like Arena, which took me about 2 hours to make), then I could definitely see myself spending a Saturday morning working on that. But I highly doubt that there will be a “Simonfield” any time soon.

Once I come back from my Starfield break, my plan (assuming that I did release Artificer on time) is to cool it on new releases for a while and spend some time working on updates. The major updates I’d like to work on are Mysticism 3.0, Adamant 6.0, and Hand to Hand 2.0. I’ve spoken about these updates in the past, but the TL;DR for them goes something like this.

Mysticism 3

• Polish and general improvements to spell cost, casting times, XP gain, and other “minor” features
• Vendor improvements, especially for scrolls and staves, and improved spell distribution for some niche spells
• A modest number of new spells or spell edits, mainly adding new spells to fill specific niches, or changing niche spells to make them more useful
• An optional plugin that slows spell progression by requiring you to actually reach skill level 25/50/75 before Apprentice/Adept/Expert spells show up in vendors (Master spells will still be 90)
• A once-and-for-all fix for the Poison crash
• New visuals for a number of spells

Adamant 6

• A final polish pass for Adamant 5.X, including an update to Xbox, saving the documentation in a readable place, and keeping the old plugin around for console and VR users.
• The addition of SKSE, Scrambled Bugs, SPID, KID, and po3tweaks as requirements, which will allow me to significantly improve the mod
• New Heavy Armor, Light Armor, and Block perks which will use these new dependencies to make perks that are otherwise impossible (there’s a sneak peak of some of these new features in Hand to Hand already)
• Improvements to weapon and magic trees, with a focus on overall balance and perk requirements, as well as supporting niche builds (improved perk support for One-and-None, necromancy, sun magic, Destruction cloak spells, etc)
• Major overhauls for the last trees that really need it (Sneak and Speech), including some features I’ve always wanted to include (I’m definitely going to give animal taming a good honest shot)
• Unarmed perks and Shout perks removed (Hand to Hand and Stormcrown exist)
• Bard perks made a feature of the main mod

Hand to Hand 2

• Removing all edits to trees besides Hand to Hand and Security, as these will have been migrated to the main Adamant plugin
• The number of perks required for both Hand to Hand and Security will go down from 14 to 12
• Hand to Hand will lose its Stamina damage, but this mechanic wasn’t working super well anyways
• Buffs to make Hand to Hand feel more playable in the early game, especially for players who struggled with the difficulty
• No loss of features for Security, just collapsing a few perk ranks and making general improvements
• A new take on making locks harder to pick, and thus making Security/Alteration more valuable (I’d like to continue working on this feature in Mercantile)

Once these three updates are done, I will decide whether to continue working on updates (I’d also like to update Apothecary and Pilgrim), or whether to shift my focus to Armorer. Armorer is one of the last truly major projects in the Simonrim Suite, and I go back and forth between “wanting to drop everything and focus on it now” and “wanting to clear everything on my plate so I can devote all of my attention to Armorer for as long as it takes.” Right now, looking at my schedule for the rest of the year, I think Option #2 is the best one.

Simonrim is a huge project. I’ve spent the last four years working piece by piece through every single mechanic in Skyrim. Six months ago, the (happy) end of Simonrim seemed almost unreachable; there were so many mods left to make, it felt impossible to imagine finishing them all. Since I returned to modding in April, I’ve published Stormcrown, Journeyman, Sorcerer, Gourmet, Starfrost, and Candlehearth (not to mention Blade and Blunt 3.0!). Artificer will bring this to an incredible seven new releases in under five months, and will be the crowning moment at the end of a long and difficult sprint. I am looking forward to getting the mod into your hands; I’m looking forward to a well-deserved break afterwards; and I’m looking forward to coming back after my break to begin work on the next steps. We’re in the home stretch now; I can feel it every time I look at my notes, and every time I have a discussion about long-term planning with the team.

And the best part about all of this? There is still so much cool shit coming that I haven’t had room to tell you about here.

I will report back at the end of the month–hopefully, to tell you that Artificer is done and that I’m fucking off to play Skyrim in space for a while. As always, you can find me in my Discord. Feel free to swing back if you’d like to ask questions, check in on my progress, or just hang out.