Blink over to GamersGate and you'll find a selection of Bethesda published and developed games, their prices magicked in half for this weekend by Baargan'an, Daedric lord of cheap stuff. From there you can... er... damn. I was going to crudely shoehorn in a Rage reference, but I can remember almost nothing about that game. Oh, it had John Goodman in it. Maybe there's something there?

Highlights include Dishonored and Skyrim at £7.49 each, and Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition (the one with the added DLC bits) for £7.48.

Strangely, even the earlier non-Steamworks parts of their discounted catalogue, like Morrowind and Oblivion, require a Steam account to activate. It's unlikely to be a big deal for most, but it's worth bearing in mind if you don't want Rogue Warrior to Sulley your account.

"Sulley," get it? Because that was John Goodman's character in Monsters, Inc? Honestly, I don't know why I bother.

Head here for the full sale list.

Thanks, Joystiq.

It's been a good week for Skyrim mods. Chris Livingston already told the tale of Enhanced Mighty Dragons, which does the unthinkable and turns Skyrim's leathery nuisances into the fearsome sky-beasts they were always meant to be. Now there is a mod that does the same thing for mudcrabs. And fish. And, er, giants. To borrow a phrase (and then slightly ruin it by adding a word), Here There Be Monsters. Giant, mildly terrifying, Shadow of the Colossus-esque monsters. You're gonna need a bigger axe.

In creator Aaranim's own words, the mod "adds nine massive boss monsters that prowl the Ghost sea. They are based off of various world myths regarding sea monsters. There are also three ship captains that can be hired, three survivors in the docks, and an expert monster hunter for hire. Talking to the survivors will lead you on a quest that will pit you up against each of these monsters." So it's basically Norse Jaws, which is basically all I've ever wanted from anything.

Said monsters include Karkinos, the Great Crab of Learna; Ymir, Father of Frost Giants; and Tiamiat, everybody's favourite Babylonian Chaos Monster. Any resemblance to existing Skyrim creatures is purely coincidental. Also: not. Here's another image, for scale.



Here There Be Monsters can be downloaded here. Do it, for heaven's sake.

Cheers, RPS.

Remember your first fight with a dragon in Skyrim, and how exciting it was? The powerful leathery wings, the blasts of magical breath, the earth-shaking rumble as it landed... thrilling! Now, remember your most recent fight with a dragon? How you sighed and rolled your eyes as you climbed off your horse, how you killed it with one or two blows, how you were already a half-mile away when you absorbed its soul, and how you didn't even bother to take its bones because you already have a dresser full of them in one of your mansions?

Enhanced Mighty Dragons is a mod that restores dragons to their rightful perch as the most feared and deadly creatures in Skyrim by adding sixteen new dragons, each with its own powers, abilities, and fighting styles. Finally, dragons feel truly legendary.

Rather than wait around for a random dragon to show up after installing the mod, I decided to hunt one down. Esbern, in Sky Haven Temple, offers radiant dragon hunting missions, and after talking with him I found myself on a mountaintop with my wife and two of The Blades in tow. I lead the charge toward the resting dragon, my enchanted axe at the ready. Let's do this!

The dragon is also quite prepared to "do this"

The dragon sees me coming and immediately leaps into the air. I quickly glug a couple potions to protect myself from the standard fire and frost attacks, but something else comes out of the dragon's mouth, a fast-moving ball of ghostly white energy. I think to myself "Huh, that doesn't look like fire or frost," though I only really have time to think "Huh, th--" before I'm suddenly and violently catapulted backwards, doing two full flips before landing right on my face.

I hope there are no bards watching. I don't want this ending up in a song.

I see from the Skyrim wiki that there are some "vanilla" dragons that have Unrelenting Force, but I honestly can't recall a dragon ever using it, let alone leading with it. This particular new dragon uses it almost exclusively and to great effect. By the time I've managed to stand back up, it's circled overhead, scattered my companions with another Force shout, then skimmed back to knock me on my ass just as I've managed to recover.

My dragon's breath smells like... me.

After being thrown down the hill in a jumble of limbs and armor for the third time, I finally manage to get off a shout of my own: Dragonrend, which forces the beast to land. I sprint over for a power attack with my axe as it turns to face me. I land a nice blow, and see the dragon's hit points decline by a tiny sliver. Okay, so it's got some extra hit points. I may have to hit it a few more times. I try to land another blow, but can't help noticing that my hands are suddenly completely empty. My battleaxe is gone.

Used to be, the butt was a good place to hit a dragon. Now, they have tail attacks.

I've been disarmed. This scaly sonofagun has a Disarm Shout? That is so not fair and yet so awesome, I say to myself as I sail through the air once again, the victim of another dose of Unrelenting Force. The dragon shrugs off my Rend spell and takes flight again.

It's pretty hard to look for an axe in a blizzard while a dragon knocks you around like a pinball, so I draw my bow and call in my own dragon, who starts dive-bombing with flame breath. After five or six minutes of three Blades, myself, and my wife peppering the dragon with arrows, and my own dragon pitching in, we finally manage to bring it down. I died about four times, once from being bitten and thrown, once from a tail-whip, the rest from being Force blasted all over the mountain.

Some of them do still breathe ice and fire. They just do it better.

I check the mod page and discover I just faced Al'Mul'Grah, the youngest and least-powerful of the new dragons. In addition to its love of Force and Disarm shouts, it can also summon animals to help it in combat, which, luckily, it didn't do this time. It had my hands full without some stupid dragon-loving bear ripping into me while I lay stunned and face-down in the snow.

Over the next few days, I look for more of the new dragons. One appears randomly, circling overhead, and I manage to avoid its Force shouts and Rend it to the ground. Sprinting, I raise my axe to bash its head in, and it belches poison on me, then casts a paralysis spell, so I get to watch my helpless, rigid body be slowly consumed by dragon venom. Fun!

You'd be able to clearly see this dragon spitting poison in my face if this dragon wasn't spitting poison in my face

On top of a mountain, another dragon spots me coming, summons a Daedra Lord, and takes flight. From the air it blasts me with Shock Breath, and then decides it might as well double-down on the whole electrocution theme and whips up a full blown lightning storm so it doesn't even have to be looking at me to hurt me. Awesome! Also, incredibly painful.

You'd be able to clearly see this dragon summoning a lightning storm in my face if, well, you get it.

Later, I encounter one in an open field, but manage to draw him into fighting three nearby giants. I figure this fight will be over in no time, but the dragon scatters the giants like bowling pins with Unrelenting Force. It takes a while, and some of my help, but the dragon is eventually destroyed, which you would think would make the giants and me best friends, but they just club me to death.

On the left, a dragon shouting. On the right, two giants listening.

Those are just the three or four dragons I've seen so far, but I'm keen to find the rest and get slapped around by them. The mod includes a skeletal dragon who can't fly, but fights with deadly physical attacks. A couple of the new dragons can summon storms to hide in, and even turn invisible. One has mayhem shouts, can muffle spell casters, and uses mass paralysis. Another is a phantom with few attacks but incredible defenses. There's even a dragon that can raise the dead to fight for him. I want to see all these dragons, and get killed by them.

That's my wife in the middle. A moment later, she entered orbit.

The mod is also amazingly customizable. There are four different difficultly levels, from Slightly Mighty to Nightmare, and with each you can choose if you want all random dragon encounters to be Enhanced or just the boss dragons. You can also decide if you want to stick with the classic dragon textures, new ones, or a mix of both. And, if you think fighting extra-tough dragons means you deserve extra-looty-loot, you can choose that as well. You can also increase the spawn time between random dragon encounters if they're proving a little too much to fight on a regular basis. Finally, Dragon Priests can be beefed up to Nightmare levels as well, just in case you want some extra pain.

Installation: While it doesn't appear to be on Steamworks, Enhanced Mighty Dragons comes with its own installer and configuration utility, so my work here is done. It also uses no scripts, so it's easy to uninstall as well.

When I saw Elder Scrolls Online a few months ago, it was revealed that the player will be sent on a central quest in the vein of those presented by the franchise's single player offerings. In ESO's case, it will revolve around the daedric prince Molag Bal, who takes the liberty of stealing your soul very shortly after character creation. This new trailer details the premise briefly, and shows off some in-game footage of Molag Bal's plane of Oblivion, Coldharbour.

In keeping with Coldharbour's nautical park theme, the realm itself is trying to quite literally drop anchor and merge with Tamriel. Dark Anchors will serve as part of the game's dynamic content, spawning enemies similar to the Oblivion gates we learned to love and hate in Elder Scrolls IV. Along with the tie-in to the main quest, we've also been told these will hook up with the Fighters' and Mages' Guild progressions.

The purpose of Coldharbour is, purportedly, to store the mortal souls Molag Bal has enslaved. By the looks of it, he just likes chaining them together and having them sway in mute misery. I guess it adds to the ambience, but I feel like he could be doing more with so many captive, androgynous, bald figures in drab robes. You know, get some frozen lemonade stands going. Those anchors are going to be bringing in a lot of foot traffic, after all.

If you haven't already, you can sign up for the ESO beta on the official site.

The inevitable bumper edition of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been scheduled for a June 7 release. The Legendary Edition bundles the core game with the Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn DLC. It will also benefit from the perks update 1.9 ushered in, including a new Legendary difficulty level, tweaks to allow ongoing leveling of skills, and all manner of bug fixes as detailed here. So if you passed on the game the first time around for some reason, then now's probably a better time than any to dive in.

The news follows Bethesda's announcement that the core Skyrim team is moving onto other projects, marking the end of an era. Minor updates and fixes will continue, but, as we reported last week, the team's focus has shifted to the next major release, which Bethesda describes as their "biggest and best work yet."

 

 

In Skyrim, while you were shouting down dragons, dicing up Daedra and fast-travelling up a bloody big mountain, did you ever stop to wonder what it would be like to pack up adventuring and go live as a Jarl? Probably not - their life appears to be a repetitious bore of sitting on a throne, wandering to bed, going back to the throne and occasionally making a pompous speech. But, if untethered from Bethesda's engine, they could get up to all sorts of political and military mischief. That's the aim of Elder Kings - an Elder Scrolls themed mod for Crusader Kings 2.

It's set before Skyrim. In fact, it's set before all the Elder Scrolls games, taking place in the Interregnum period of the Second Era. Supposedly, it was a time of petty bickering and tribal warring - which makes for a perfect Crusader Kings setting.

The mod promises 25 races and cultures, with unique bonuses for each, as well as new traits, events and diseases - adding vampirism to CK2's already eclectic range of ailments.

It's still early in development, although the recent 0.1.1 patch has fixed a fair number of bugs from launch. You can download Elder Kings from ModDB.

The core group at Bethesda Game Studios announced on the studio's blog today that they will be leaving the jagged, snowy climes of northern Tamriel behind for an unknown location. While minor updates and fixes to Skyrim will continue, the bulk of the development focus is being shifted to the next major release, which they hope will be their "biggest and best work yet."

Skyrim was in pre-production from 2006, well before the release of Fallout 3, so the team at Bethesda has spent almost seven years in its shivering sandbox. "We’ve invested so much of ourselves into Skyrim and will never truly say goodbye to it," the blog reads. "We loved hearing your stories, your in-game triumphs, and your suggestions."

All told, Skyrim received a similar amount of content as past Elder Scrolls games. Bethesda seems pretty set on the "two big expansions, and a handful of smaller stuff" model when it comes to TES. As for what this new project is, the most obvious answer would be Fallout 4. Then again, it could be something completely new—which we haven't seen out of Bethesda proper since the studio as it stands today was founded to work on Morrowind in 2001.

If you still pine for the Nine Holds, the modding community will likely maintain a steady flow of new Skyrim content until the heat death of the universe (or, possibly, TES 6).

I've never been much of a reader in the Elder Scrolls games. When I come across a stack of books, I'll just drift my cursor along the spines, looking for any that are high value, either to collect and sell or to briefly crack open on the off-chance they provide me with a skill point. Today, however, I'm in the library of the College of Winterhold, opening and examining every single book I can find. This change in reading habits doesn't represent a sudden interest in lore or knowledge. I'm chasing an achievement.

This is due to a mod called Achieve That! which adds over 100 unique achievements to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. More importantly, it adds tangible rewards for achieving them in the form of small bonuses to relevant attributes.

Achievements in games are kind of a mixed bag. Often they seem to result in pointless busywork that can distract players for hours as they chase milestones for the simple reason that the milestones exist. Sometimes the busywork can interesting enough: in Bioshock Infinite, peering into all of the game's telescopes and kinetoscopes for the "Sightseer" achievement will give you a broader view of the city and insight into its history. Other times, chasing achievements can even turn you into a better player: Team Fortress 2's "Hot Potato" achievement, earned for deflecting projectiles with the flamethrower's airblast, will help make you a better Pyro.

The achievements that shipped with Skyrim are neither interesting nor helpful, mainly focusing on the completion of quests or the act of leveling up. They're not even interestingly named. The achievement for getting married, for example, is called "Married." Wow. Achieve That! provides achievements that are relevant to different styles of play, names them well, and rewards the player with relevant bonuses for completing them.

For instance, an achievement called Treasure Hunter challenges you to loot 150 chests, something the average player will probably accomplish in the course of the game anyway, and provides you with a +10 to your carrying weight. The reward feels perfectly relevant to the task: walking around with trousers heavy with loot would probably cause you to eventually grow stronger. Another achievement is called Local, which kicks in after spending a full month in the frosty climate of Skyrim, and gives you a +5 toward your frost resistance. (Spend six months or a year in Skyrim, and gain +5 more for each.) Makes sense: if you spend enough time in the snow, being frozen will eventually lose some if its sting.

At least 1,745 of them were asking for it.

There are general Skyrim-style achievements as well, but they also have appropriate bonuses. Completing 50 quests for A Helping Hand or 100 quests for Famous Hero gives you a small bonuses towards finding better prices in stores, as you become more well known in Skyrim. Discovering 150 world locations nudges up your movement speed by 5%, unlocking 300 locations gives you an additional 5%.

As for you dastardly types, you have not been overlooked. Steal 10 horses and receive a small bonus to your sneak skill. Kill 30 innocent citizens, and get a bonus to your damage. Backstab 500 times and your one-handed damage will increase. Escaping prison 15 times will boost your sneak, lockpicking, and pickpocketing skills as you grow from a lowly jailbird into a career criminal.

Now there's even more of a reason to stuff everything you find in your mouth.

There's also a category for professions, with achievements and bonuses for crafting, enchanting, and  mixing potions and poisons, as well as some random achievements for plucking butterfly wings, hunting rabbits, and even the simple act of eating food. Here's a full list of the achievements and rewards. And hey, should you feel that the attribute bonuses are cheating or making the game too easy, but still want to track your progress and chase milestones, you can always disable the rewards themselves.

Achieve That! seems to be intended for new or lower-level characters, but I'm trying it out with my level 43 Orc, Braul (previous exploits here and here). After installing and enabling the mod, and watching all the achievements I've already gotten scroll by on my screen, I decide to chase one of the book-reading achievements. As I said earlier, I'm not much of a reader, and Braul has only read a handful of books during his 206 days in Skyrim. I head to the library at Winterhold, run by an Orc named Urag gro-Shub, and start nosing around.

After reading some loose books piled around the library, I move on to the bookcases, though I'm dismayed to find that they're all locked, along with the display cases. I hunch over sneakily, hoping to pickpocket the librarian, only to discover that he doesn't have the key. Well, at least I have money, so I buy everything Urag gro-Shub has for sale, read them immediately, and sell them back to him.

Behold: Stealth.

I still haven't reached my milestone, so I start lifting and reading the books on the tables. Naturally, in my haphazard race to absorb as many books as I can, as fast as I can, I accidentally wind up stealing one instead of simply closing it. This doesn't go over well with gro-Shub. Though the act of stealing a book only comes with a 1 septim bounty, it apparently carries a death sentence from the librarian, who immediately begins throwing magic in my face.

Jeez, man. It's not like I took a book into the bathroom with me.

You can probably guess how the rest of my quiet library excursion goes. My follower, a powerful wizard I picked up in Solstheim, isn't fond of nerds shooting ice magic into my nostrils and goes full-on meltdown, summoning a flame atronach and blasting the librarian with fireballs.

Boy. That escalated quickly.

Of course, the librarian is one of those unkillable characters, and while he's quickly beaten into submission, he just catches his breath for a few moments, and then he and my follower start up with the magical bombardment again. Meanwhile, I'm just innocently trying to read whatever books are lying around as their song of ice and fire turns the room into a cloud of debris.

Eventually, gro-Shub flees up some stairs and my follower chases him, allowing me to quietly finish my achievement in peace. The library, meanwhile, has seen better days.

The lesson: NEVER READ.

Installation: It's a snap. Just download and drop the two Achieve That! files into Skyrim's Data folder. HOWEVER! You will need both the latest version of SkyUI and the Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) to make it work. (If you're into Skyrim mods, you've probably got both already working.) For characters over level 20, you'll need to enable the mod from the Mod Configuration Manager (MCM) tab on the main menu. Below level 20, the mod will automatically be enabled when you start, but you can still adjust the settings from the MCM tab.