/moonshadow

An extremely lightweight and performance friendly Requiem-based modlist focused on roleplaying and creating a harsh fantasy world de-centralized from the player that incentivizes preparation and strategy.

MIT LicenseMIT

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Read-Me

Introduction

Moonshadow is an extremely lightweight and performance friendly Requiem-based modlist focused on roleplaying and creating a harsh fantasy world de-centralized from the player that incentivizes preparation and strategy. Moonshadow's design philosophy can be broken down into four core pillars:

Performance/stability: In my opinion, smooth and satisfying gameplay starts with a consistently high framerate and no crashes. Moonshadow is built to be one of the best performaning modlists you can install while still looking very good. Moonshadow is designed for 60 FPS on low-end PCs and 144 FPS on mid to high-end PCs.

Consistency: Moonshadow attempts to overhaul the game while still creating a cohesive and consistent experience across the board. Both gameplay and visual mods have been carefully picked and tweaked to mesh with eachother as much as possible. Moonshadow prioritizes simple and intuitive mechanics. The goal is for the player to not need to break their immersion and pace of play by having to check a wiki to figure out how to complete simple tasks.

Overhauled Progression: Vanilla and even "vanilla+" progression can be very boring and predictable. The beginning of the game is a bit tough until you get a few levels and some quality gear, the mid-game is very easy due to the player's perks and gear plus the lack of enemy variety, then the late game tends to become rather grindy as the enemies become very tanky in an attempt to counter-act the player's god-like arsenal. Moonshadow aims to smooth out this progression and create a much more difficult but rewarding character building experience. In addition to Requiem, the mod Static Skill Leveling is used to provide a skill system similar to a game like Fallout New Vegas. Skills no longer increase simply from doing a related activity. Instead, the player is prompted with a menu to increase the skills of their choice upon level up. This removes the common issue of Skyrim progression (especially with Requiem) of grinding tedious tasks to level up your skills as quickly as possible. Since you no longer get XP for leveling up skills, the mod Experience is used to simulate a similar XP system to most RPGs where you gain XP for killing enemies, completing quests, and more.

Roleplay: The biggest part of what has kept Skyrim fresh for me and many others after all these years is the character building and roleplay elements. In Moonshadow, you can live life as you see fit. Are you the one and only Dragonborn destined to save the world? Or perhaps you're a simple blacksmith just trying to make an honest living in Skyrim? Explore the harsh and unforgiving land of Skyrim however you see fit. Moonshadow tries to eliminate any elements of meta-gaming that are especially common in hardcore mods like Requiem. Effort has gone in to making any type of build viable - and most importantly - fun. For example, "good-guy" options have been added to many quests that lacked them like various Daedric quests and the Dark Brotherhood questline.

List Contents

You can browse the full list contents here if you want to know exactly what you're getting.

You can find a summary of all changes on the Gameplay Changes page.

Requirements:

  • An fresh installation of the English version of the game with the full paid Anniversary Upgrade DLC from Steam or GOG

    • The paid Anniversary Upgrade is required, full stop.
    • Only the English version is supported. I understand that this may be frustrating for non-English speaking users, but due to the core file differences between the different versions, only one version can be supported.
    • The game MUST be installed outside of any default Windows folders, such as Program Files, your Desktop, or Documents. If you have your Steam library in any of these locations, please follow these instructions to move it.

  • Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package

  • The latest release of Wabbajack installed outside of any default Windows folders.

Installation:

Clean Install

Lost Liberty requires a completely clean installation of Skyrim Special Edition. This means completely deleting both the game folder and also the folder located in Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition then reinstalling the game through Steam/GOG. The game MUST be installed outside of any default Windows folders, such as Program Files, your Desktop, or Documents. If you have your Steam library in any of these locations, please follow these instructions to move it.

Starting Skyrim

  1. Run the launcher from Steam/GOG
  2. There should be two pop-ups about detecting your hardware and applying settings. You do not need to change settings here, as settings will be set automatically by the installer

If you do not see any pop-ups, you did not properly do a clean installation! Delete Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition and try again

  1. Run the game and proceed to the main menu where you will be prompted to download all the Creation Club content from the Anniversary Upgrade

If you do not get a prompt about downloading Creation Club content, you likely do not have the paid Anniversary Upgrade which is required for this list!

  1. Once all of the downloads are finished, exit the game and proceed with the installation

Downloading and Installing

The download and installation process can take a little while (an hour or more) depending on your system specs. For optimal speed, it is advised to install Wabbajack and the modlist to an SSD.

  1. Create a folder for the modist outside of any default Windows folders called Moonshadow (I recommend C:\Games\Moonshadow)
  2. Launch the Wabbajack app and select Browse Modlists
  3. Make sure Show Unofficial Lists is checked and search for Moonshadow
  4. Select the Download icon in the bottom right, then select he Play icon once the download is finished
  5. In the Modlist Installation Location box, select the Moonshadow folder you created in the first step
  • The Resource Download Location box should automatically fill in Moonshadow\Downloads, but you can move this folder to a different drive if are low on space
  1. Click the Go/Begin button and wait for Wabbajack to finish

Startup

Open the installation folder and double click on the program called ModOrganizer.exe.

IMPORTANT: If you use the GOG version of the game, activate all the mods under the GOG Support separator

Make sure the dropdown box on the right is set to SKSE and press the Run button.

You're all set! Everything is already configured by default so you can hope right into a new game!

Credits

Thanks to Guitarninja2 for the read-me format taken from their wonderful Dragonborn modlist.