Frequently Asked Questions: Carved Brink - Omni-guides/Tuxborn GitHub Wiki

This page covers various questions of interest pertaining to the mod Carved Brink.

Carved Brink is one of our quest mods that will not auto-launch for you, you have to go out of your way to find and start it. This requires you to find a camp of Khajiit, Baandari peddlers, who are camped by the river near Hillgrund's Tomb, just past the huge tree being used as a bridge across it.

Talk to these Khajiit. Expect it to go badly, and yes, you will need to fight them.

Once you confront them, this will lead you into a nearby cave called the Abandoned Grotto. That's where Carved Brink content really starts properly, since the Khajiit aren't relevant to anything else once you defeat them. Explore the house inside that cave to launch the main plot.

Carved Brink has no level requirement, but it may be a little challenging for lower-level players. The Khajiit you have to fight to get access to the Abandoned Grotto are heavily armed and armored, and their leader has ebony weapons. So it's likely they will kill you if you're a lower level character. And quite a few of the mobs in Faceted Stones can be challenging for low-level characters, too.

So if you want to go into this mod fairly quickly, try to get a follower squad first. two or three followers will help even the odds against the Khajiit and those later mobs.

If you're feeling ambitious, maybe target hitting the quest around the 8-10 level mark, but bring followers with you. If you start the main quest fairly early, you can try hitting this quest either on the way to High Hrothgar to meet the Greybeards, or on the way back from that. You might want to consider the latter option specifically so you'll have the first two words of Unrelenting Force.

If you're disinclined to bring followers, maybe target the 15-20 range instead. But gear up well, for the challenging fights.

Stock up on means to cure the Death's Grip nerf, if you've kept Shades of Mortality on in your playthrough. Cure Disease potions would be most immediately useful, not only for curing this nerf, but also for the Auriel's Boxes you'll find. (See below on more about those.)

Bringing a lot of lockpicks is recommended, as Carved Brink has a lot of loot chests you can get into. Lower-tier spells for lock opening would also be a good idea, as they'll help you avoid using too many of your lockpicks. The Open Novice Lock and Open Apprentice Lock spells should be easily buyable from any spell vendor. You will still need lockpicks even if you have those spells, though, since a lot of Carved Brink's chests will be Adept or Expert tier.

For preparation purposes, note that the small player home inside the Abandoned Grotto, the House of the Arcane Arts, does include almost all critical crafting stations. So it's a good place to stop and make a bunch of potions if you need them, or temper and/or enchant your gear. The house does not include a smelter, though, so you'll need to make sure you have enough raw materials to work on your gear without smelting anything.

One additional preparation step you might want to take is to temporarily disable QuickLoot while running Carved Brink. QuickLoot's MCM has options for setting hotkeys to do exactly that, though it has two options, one hotkey for disabling and one for re-enabling.

The reason you might want to consider setting those hotkeys is, something about QuickLoot's interaction with the chests in Carved Brink is known to periodically cause crashes. We don't have a solution for this at this time. But if you use QuickLoot's hotkeys to let you disable the mod when you want to, this workaround will let you avoid the problem.

And if you stock up on moonstone and leather strips beforehand, you'll find that useful at Auriel's Forge. (See below on why.)

While Carved Brink is primarily of interest as an exploration/quest mod, there are a few named weapons in it, as well as a few armor sets.

The weapons are not really competitive with any other artifacts you may acquire, even early in the game. They are also not displayable in the LOTD museum. So you might use them as early game weapons. But once you're far enough along, you'll be able to do better. Decide at that point if you want to sell the weapons in question, smelt them down into raw materials, or simply put them into your personal loot displays.

The first of the two armor sets in this mod is the Altmer Adventurer set. This consists of a chest piece, gloves, and boots; there is no helmet. It's light leather armor, with a very sleek style, so might be good as a starter set if you run Carved Brink early enough. It's also a potential set you might hand off to a follower if you don't want to wear it yourself. Be aware that since it's leather armor, you may not be able to improve it all the way up to Legendary at a forge, due to the Simonrim mods we're running that eliminate blacksmithing enchantments and potions. This is why for our load order, you won't want to consider this gear your final.

The second armor set is craftable, but you have to find Auriel's Forge to do it. This forge is in the Abamath Residential District in the mod's worldspace, and it will require you to have moonstone, leather strips, and a bunch of the Ancient Crystals you'll find lying around in the worldspace. The resulting gear is very fancy and formal, and is considered light armor, not clothing. So you might not want it for a pure mage build. But it could suit a spellsword, particularly if your Dragonborn is an Altmer, or otherwise prefers an elegant style. Also, this armor can be tempered, as long as you have enough additional mats. If this interests you, collect all the Ancient Crystals you can find to use later.

The last armor set is Curate's armor, which appears to be Carved Brink's renamed versions of the same gear you'd normally see worn by Vyrthur at the end of running the Forgotten Vale in Dawnguard. This set does include all four pieces, unlike the items worn by Vyrthur. Each one is also displayable in the LOTD museum! But if you luck out on loot, you may even find multiple copies of each. So if the look of Snow Elf armor is your jam, and you want to take advantage of the enchantments on the pieces, you may want to claim pieces of it for your own use.

One: the House of the Arcane Arts. This is a small, cozy house inside the Abandoned Grotto, the place you need to go to to launch Carved Brink. You do not need to do all of Carved Brink to take control of the house, but you do need to do the introduction that involves fighting some nefarious Khajiit. (See above in the section about how to start the mod.)

The house is nicely designed and has almost all craft stations, but lacks a smelter and any kind of a shrine. It's also not located anywhere particularly useful. So this works pretty well as a starter home, but is not really a contender for a home base.

Still, worth having if you're playing Survival Mode, as any place you can stop and sleep is helpful with that, especially if you're trying to avoid fast travel. And one nice aspect of the cave the house is in is that it's a source of several unusual plants, including scathecraw and others. So if you're inclined to alchemy, it's a good place to harvest ingredients.

There are a lot of books on the shelves in the house, several of which should be displayable in the museum if you haven't already found those titles. So be sure to check the bookcases.

Also, this house is the location to acquire the three pieces of the Altmer Adventurer armor set. There's a piece on the main floor, a piece on the top floor, and a piece down in the safe you have to access during the Carved Brink plot.

And if you do play through the rest of Carved Brink, you'll have continued access to the portal that leads into the Carved Brink worldspace if you want to return there for whatever reason after you're done.

The powders are basically the equivalent of potions, and will have standard and refined versions. Grab all the ones you can find, especially any that restore Health, Magicka, or Stamina. Because here's the thing about those powders: standard potions in Tuxborn are going to restore Health, Magicka, or Stamina over time. The powders act a lot more like vanilla potions, though, and will restore Health, Magicka, or Stamina immediately. This could be extremely helpful in a fight.

The paragons are the equivalent of soul gems. Stock up on those, too.

Those are not the equivalent of soul gems. You can use four of those to open the Auriel's Boxes you'll find in assorted places in Faceted Stones.

You'll see several short decorative pillars in various places around Faceted Stones, with a sun decoration on top. These are Auriel's Boxes. Opening them with four Falmer paragons will have random results. You can get randomly selected loot, but you can also catch a disease off of them. This is another reason to stock up on Cure Disease potions before you start the mod!

These will give you a single increase to a randomly selected skill, so they are useful to pick up. There are a number of these scattered around Carved Brink's playspace, so be on the lookout for them.

You should be able to sell them later once you've gotten the random skill bump off of each one.

Because of the Simonrim mods in our load order. The buffs granted by these powders have been patched to align with the removal of Smithing and Enchanting buffs from almost all sources. The patch just didn't happen to rename the powders in question.

The Magic Mirror was temporarily disabled for Tuxborn version 1.0 and the 1.0.1 hotfix. The reason for this is a RaceMenu issue we discovered, and which is covered in more depth on the Frequently Asked Questions: Character respec page. We will be restoring its functionality in a forthcoming Tuxborn release.

Anyone still playing on a 0.5.2 build should also be able to use the mirror.

Yes! They're for making the Ancient Falmer armor mentioned above in the section about armor and weapons in Carved Brink.

Auriel's Forge is semi-useful. It's only able to make the Ancient Falmer Robes, Gloves, and Boots; it doesn't function as a full forge, so you can't make anything else there.

However, if you do want that Ancient Falmer set, explore down to the bottom of the Abamath Residential District. You should find Auriel's Forge up a small flight of steps, facing the huge swirling "sun" mechanism that acts as the area's light source.

You need to use the True Path spell a lot more in the alcazar to make it to the throne room. If you find that hard to navigate, this YouTube video gives a visual walkthrough for how to get there.

Textual summary of what's shown in the video...

1. From starting point, turn east
2. Port up to the next platform from there
3. Face slightly east-north-east, then port to the stairway
4. Go up the stairs, then face east again on the walkway
5. Port to next point visible from there
6. Then turn west, and go another level up
7. Then another port up still facing west
8. Third port up while pointing west
9. There’s now a port point visible in the middle of a square, port to that
10. Still facing west, port to walkway along the wall to the right
11. Port upwards to point on opposite wall facing north
12. Then another port to the west
13. This should put you on another walkway that turns right and leads to more stairs
14. Head up those stairs and face east
15. New port point higher up between two things that look like pipes
16. Then face south and then east
17. One more port, then another port upwards and to the east
18. That should be the final port to the stairway that leads to the throne room

You have two options:

Getting out the long way...

The long way is to go back out the way you came, using the True Path spell to navigate the various levels of Faceted Stones. You'd need to go back through the Abamath Atrium to get out of the part where the Blue Horn goblins live, and back into the part where the Lasting Bones goblins live. Once you're back in Lasting Bones' part of Faceted Stones, you can continue to use True Path to finally get back to the original portal you opened to get into Faceted Stones in the first place.

Getting out through a maze...

When you finish Carved Brink's main quest, you'll be punted back out into the Borderland Pits area. There are more ways out of there than are immediately obvious, if you just came in following quest markers. One of the ways out leads to an area called Seeker's Path, and this contains a maze you can traverse to get a staff that can port you back to Skyrim.

Be warned: this maze is full of jangling black clouds that will kill you if they hit you, so you need to navigate this maze with care. Listen for the audio cue of one of these clouds heading your way, and avoid it at all costs.

If you don't like mazes, or if you feel like the added pressure of having to avoid the death clouds will make it too complicated for you to maneuver, then skip this part and take the long way back out of Faceted Stones.

If however you do want to tackle the maze, this YouTube video gives a walkthrough of how to get through it.

Textual summary of what's in the video...

1. Down the stairs
2. East
3. Immediately south
4. Turn around a slight bend to the west but keep aiming south
5. Aim back around to the east very slightly
6. Then veer south again
7. Head towards a lantern to the southwest
8. Then veer south again towards another lantern on the left
9. Once you get to that lantern, veer west
10. Keep heading west past three lanterns, third is just to the north
11. Veer to the south, you should see two lanterns
12. Looking up should show a gap in the roof
13. Go south until you can’t south anymore
14. Go west to a lantern, then south
15. Get to another lantern, then east
16. Go very briefly east, then turn south again, you should see two more lanterns in front of you
17. Turn east at the second lantern
18. Turn south again to another lantern
19. Pass that one, then turn west
20. Head south from that lantern, to a split in the wall
21. Take the lantern on the left, that sends you east again
22. Veer north briefly, then east
23. Go south towards another lantern
24. Keep going more or less south, you should soon get to the final area

Once you get the Staff of Transitions, then you can use that to return to Skyrim. You'll need to zap it three times, and the third zap will land you in a randomly selected location. Which may or may not be a part of the map you've been to yet!