Frequently Asked Questions: Main quest - Omni-guides/Tuxborn GitHub Wiki

Technically, yes. But be aware that several of our mods actively expect you to be the Dragonborn. And at minimum, to play through the main quest up through finishing The Way of The Voice. So if you don't launch the main quest, you'll be blocked out of a considerable amount of content, and other content may make much less narrative sense even if you can launch it.

Content known to expect you to be the Dragonborn, and to have played at least up through The Way of the Voice, includes:

• The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal
• Legacy of the Dragonborn. You do not need to launch the main quest in order to launch LOTD in general, but you do need to play through The Way of the Voice as a requirement for getting the airship Dev Aveza, as well as for running the quest Shattered Legacy
• Midwood Isle
• Tools of Kagrenac
• Warden of the Coast
• Wyrmstooth

Content known to rely upon you being the Dragonborn for narrative purposes includes:

• Project AHO
• If you're running Lucien as a follower, the latter stages of his personal quest

Thus, playing without ever launching the main quest is not recommended.

It is a common player preference to hold off on running Skyrim's main quest line, and that is possible in Tuxborn. This may be even desirable, given that Tuxborn's default difficulty level is higher than vanilla.

So take this into consideration when planning how your playthrough should go.

If you don't specifically want to delay running the main quest, we do recommend you launch it as early as possible, if nothing else to unlock the ability to get Shouts, as well as Lydia as an early follower. We're running the Improved Follower Dialogue - Lydia mod, which is a Lydia overhaul, and adds a lot more characterization to her! So that's worth doing at least once, if you're not already familiar with that mod, just to experience its changes to everybody's first housecarl. (See the Lydia section of the Followers available in Tuxborn page for a more in-depth look at her changes.)

Since Tuxborn includes Alternate Start and none of the options in our list includes the vanilla start, you will need to take steps to go to Helgen on your own. No matter which option you choose in Alternate Start, you'll have an objective in your journal that won't go away until you do finally go to Helgen, so there's another reason to get that done early.

You have a few ways to do this:

1. The camping start option will put you just a short walk away from Helgen. As soon as you get close enough to Helgen, you'll see Alduin immediately, and can investigate what happened as he flies off.
2. If you take the Relic Hunter option for Legacy of the Dragonborn, once you meet Auryen, he'll include Helgen in a list of places he asks you to go to get some initial relics. (Note: of course Helgen will be destroyed when you get there; you are not expected to actually FIND the relic Auryen asks for. This is just LOTD's way of giving you an excuse to go there.)
3. Ask the nearest innkeeper about rumors, and you should learn about Imperial activity near Helgen, and get an objective to go check it out.

Note: Alternate Start adds in a few new lines that are not voiced. You will need to have subtitles activated in order to see the lines in question! These include the rumor line from innkeepers, as well as dialogue with Hadvar and Ralof once you investigate Helgen, if you choose to go looking for them in the cave.

It is not critical for you to go talk to innkeepers, though, or to look for Hadvar or Ralof. If you don't want subtitles on and want to skip those bits so you don't have to worry about unvoiced lines, you can take the camping approach or the Relic Hunter approach. And once you finish investigating, you can also go straight to Riverwood to warn them about the dragon.

Some strategy suggestions for when you investigate Helgen...

1. If at all possible, prior to going to Helgen, get a horse. This will be helpful if you want to loot the place for useful items while you're there. See the Frequently Asked Questions: Horses and other mounts page for more info on the fastest way to get a horse.
2. There is a displayable item in Helgen, for the Legacy of the Dragonborn museum: a bottle of Mead With Juniper Berry. There are actually five of them, but you only need one! These can be found on the upper floor of the destroyed inn. You will not be able to get to them unless you get into the tower next to the inn, and jump through the hole in the wall in that tower, same as you would normally do during a vanilla start.
3. Take the time to go through Helgen Keep, the same keep you'd go through if you were doing the vanilla start and following either Hadvar or Ralof to safety. You won't be able to get all the way through, but you can get a fair ways in. Loot everything useful you can find, including gear off the dead Stormcloaks and Imperials. This will probably overload you, but that's what the horse is for. You can sell anything you can carry out of the place, and use the coin to help you gear up for that first dragon fight!

Once you get the quest to go to Bleak Falls Barrow, if you're still early in your game, you might want to take a bit of time to gear up first. In a vanilla game, you could charge all the way through killing Mirmulnir in your very first session. With Tuxborn, though, you should take at least a bit more time than that.

First and foremost: Tuxborn's load order and configuration makes things more difficult by default than in vanilla Skyrim. Both of the available combat overhauls make combat more difficult, no matter which profile you want to play. Roughly speaking, you should expect each level of difficulty in vanilla Skyrim to map to the next highest tier in Tuxborn. So for our load order, the default "Adept" Difficulty will actually be "Apprentice" in our load order.

If you want to see the actual numbers for these difficulty levels, you can do so in the MCM for Custom Difficulty UI, under System -> Mod Configuration -> Custom Difficulty UI. In that same location, you can also adjust those numbers if you want to.

You should also go into System Menu -> Settings -> Gameplay, and make sure the vanilla Difficulty setting is where you want it to be. In a default clean install of Tuxborn, it should still say "Adept" since that's the default for vanilla Skyrim. Change it at this point if you want it to be something else.

Second: once you're comfortable with your difficulty settings, then assuming you're on Novice or Apprentice, I personally recommend you target somewhere in the 5-8 range for level before you try to take on Bleak Falls Barrow. Adjust that higher if you want to play on higher Difficulty levels. Or maybe a little lower if you bring in multiple followers.

Third: As with going to Helgen (see strategy tips above for Helgen), it will be helpful to have a horse while you're running Bleak Falls Barrow. Because if you loot everything in there, including all of the gear wielded by any draugr you kill, you can sell that stuff. Or smelt it down to get an easy source of iron ingots, if you need them for crafting. And anything you can sell will help you gear up for fighting Mirmulnir.

Fighting Mirmulnir will be a bigger deal than Bleak Falls Barrow. Since we have a higher overall difficulty in this modpack, that does extend to fighting dragons.

If you play carefully, you can take out Mirmulnir around level 8, in one go, at Apprentice level difficulty. Adjust that range higher if you want to play at higher difficulty levels, to give yourself more time to get appropriate gear and training of your skills.

Alternately, consider recruiting one or more followers. Having good backup will help your chances of taking out Mirmulnir faster, especially if your squad has bows and/or Destruction magic. This could help you keep the level range for the fight a bit lower, even if you're on higher difficulty levels.

So balance out a) how much difficulty you want, b) how many followers you feel like running, and c) how much time you want to spend on leveling up and getting gear before you take on the dragon.

There are several followers easily recruitable within range of Whiterun, to help you make that call. Look on the Followers available in Tuxborn page for more details.

If you intend to run Legacy of the Dragonborn, try to get its initial three fetch quests done first, before you fight Mirmulnir. Regardless of whether you're running the Relic Hunter start, Silent Moons Camp will be one of the locations you'll need to hit. And inside Silent Moons Camp, you can find Denstagmer's Ring. That ring will grant you 30% Fire Resistance, and that will be incredibly useful for fighting the dragon.

Running those fetch quests will give you something to do to work up to a good level range, too.

If you don't want to run Legacy of the Dragonborn, try to get a reason to go hit Silent Moons Camp anyway so you can look for that ring. It should still be there, regardless. There are a few other ways you can get a reason to go to that location:

1. Talking to Proventus for a bounty quest in Whiterun, which may send you there
2. Talking to Belethor and asking him if he needs any help with anything could also send you off on a bandit bounty quest to that location
3. If you're running Katana as a follower, and you kick off her personal quest, one of the first things she'll have you to is to talk to Megara in the Drunken Huntsman. And Megara will send you to Silent Moons Camp to kill a specific bandit there.

And even if you get Denstagmer's Ring, stock up on any and all Resist Fire potions you can find. Also Cure Disease potions, as the primary means of curing the Death's Grip nerf from Shades of Mortality. If Mirmulnir kills you during the fight, your damage will be nerfed, and you need to fix that ASAP as soon as you come back out of the ethereal state. So having a means to do so is critical.

Thanks to the following players on #txbn-general:

• TSP, for the tip to get Denstagmer's Ring for the fire resistance, to prep for fighting Mirmulnir
• Kok0, for pointing out that you need to run The Way of the Voice in order to be able to launch The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal