Mod overview: Falskaar - Omni-guides/Tuxborn GitHub Wiki

Falskaar is one of the very first new lands mods ever created for Skyrim. Its plot will send you to the island of the same name in the Sea of Ghosts. You'll discover you are the prophesied Traveler, and you'll be called upon to put a stop to the threat of war simmering on the island.

The mod provides an NPC in Riften, Jalamar, who you can talk to as a hook to start the mod. He'll mention witnessing some suspicious activity in the nearby Echo Deep Mine, and ask you to go check it out in case there's something going on that the city guards need to know about.

Talking to Jalamar isn't critical, though, as you can also just go straight to Echo Deep Mine if you so wish. Jalamar's main function is to just give you an in-character excuse to go to the location, and to give you a quest marker to do so.

If you want to find Echo Deep Mine on your own, it's a short distance north of Riften, in the same general area that would lead you to Fallowstone Cave.

The mod will kick off in earnest once you make it to the bottom of the mine, activate a portal, and go through it to wind up on Falskaar.

The way Falskaar launches makes it impossible, by definition, to launch this mod on accident. Jalamar won't force-greet you in Riften, and you will otherwise have no reason to enter Echo Deep Mine (unless a radiant quest happens to send you in there). So Falskaar is easy to skip if you wish to avoid it.

Falskaar has no level requirement, and should in general scale with the player. However, its page on Nexus does warn that if you make it past (say) level 80, you'll probably find running it to be very trivial.

Falskaar's Nexus page also warns that mods that alter the level scaling on bandits or other enemies won't impact it, as Falskaar's bandits have their own system.

We therefore recommend that if you want to run Falskaar in Tuxborn, don't delay it until the very end of your run. Maybe take it on early or mid-game. If you start your playthrough in Riften, it might be a good initial quest for you to do.

No. Its narrative doesn't care if you're officially the Dragonborn yet, and unlike several other large quest mods in Tuxborn, you won't be blocked from running it if you haven't launched the main quest, or played up to the common checkpoint, The Way of the Voice.

None of the NPCs will address you as Dragonborn, so no concerns about narrative dissonance there.

Be aware though that there is a custom Shout in Falskaar (see more on this below). So if you're not officially the Dragonborn yet when you run it, and you find the words for that Shout, factor this into your personal RP considerations.

Player's choice. None of our custom followers are known to have commentary specific to Falskaar, so run whoever you like.

There are a couple of general goods merchants on Falskaar and one known blacksmith, so you'll have those as options if you're short on any general goods, armor, weapons, or crafting mats. The general goods merchants also stock critical potions, so if you're short on healing potions or Cure Disease ones, you may be able to buy them from those characters.

You'll also encounter multiple crafting stations, so if you have a backlog of mats, you should be able to make anything you need.

Make a call on whether you want to have a horse beforehand, as well as enough gold to buy and decorate Horndew Lodge. Both of these could make running Falskaar easier for you. More info on both of these below.

Yes, three of the weapons you'll find on Falskaar will be displayable at the museum. The display for them will activate when you finish the mod's main quest.

See previous section re: weapons. But see below down in the recommendations section for an important note about how to acquire Vanvir's Masterpiece, which is one of the displayable LOTD items!

There are also three known armor sets: Fitted Guard Armor, Reinforced Guard Armor, and Staalgarde Armor. All three of these can be looted from dead guards of various types, both friendly and hostile. They're all light armor sets, and all of them are essentially rebranded guard armor. Their stats are in the same ballpark as vanilla guard armor as well. So while you can get these armor sets, you may or may not want to actually use them, depending on whether you need to replace your current armor, and how far along you are in your game.

None of these armor sets are displayable. So if you want the sets regardless, you will need to display them either in the East or Wing wings of the museum Armory, or else put them in one of your houses.

Yes, Horndew Lodge. You may buy this home from Jalma, the wife of the Jarl in Amber Creek. It will cost you 8,000 gold, comparable to Honeyside in Riften, Hjerim in Windhelm, or Vlindrel Hall in Markarth.

If you'd like a walkthrough of what the house looks like, have a look at this YouTube video. The speaker does a little walkthrough of the house to give the viewer an idea of what it looks like. (Bonus: Snippy from Project AHO also appears in this video!)

As you can see if you look at the video, the house is comparable in size to the outposts you can build as part of running LOTD in our load order--although this doesn't count the hidden grotto beneath the place.

You'll need to furnish the place to make it more useful, and that will cost you additional gold. Jalma will be able to sell you furnishings as well as the house itself. She'll provide you a decorating guide similar to the ones you get from stewards when buying houses in the major Skyrim cities. You'll get safe storage, bookshelves, a garden, and an alchemy table.

Read the note by the fireplace about the hidden grotto, then return to Jalma. That should open up an option with her to decorate the cave. Note that the video linked to above doesn't actually include this information, but we've confirmed it from other sources. (TBD: whether this additional decorating option adds other crafting stations besides an alchemy table to the home, and whether the note that triggers ability to decorate the cave is present as soon as you buy the house, or whether it appears only after round 1 of decoration.)

Since Horndew Lodge is pretty small, and on Falskaar besides, you probably won't want to use it as a primary player home. But it should serve perfectly well as a home base for any action you do on Falskaar, either during or after its main quest.

You should decide in advance if you want to bring enough gold to buy and decorate this home before launching the mod. Its best use is going to be confirmed safe storage to drop off loot, as well as a guaranteed place to sleep. You may or may not make enough money to get the house during the course of running Falskaar, so this'll be a legit question to think about. Having access to the house will make things easier for you.

No.

The mod is known to contain two new spells and one new Shout. The spells are Relentless Spirit and Fury of Flames. The new Shout is Champion's Spirit.

Note that the TES Mods wiki page warns that the Shout is less immediately useful to Orc characters. However, that warning can be safely disregarded for our load order, since we're running Mannaz. That mod rearranges racial passives for all races, and for Orcs in particular, it removes the passive that the TES Mods wiki page is talking about.

There are several. TES Mods's page for Falskaar has a list of them.

Falskaar's map is large, comparable in size to Wyrmstooth, Midwood isle, and Solstheim. So you may find traveling around the island on foot a bit cumbersome, especially if you're a loot goblin. A horse would make this less problematic.

Gabrial in Amber Creek will sell you a horse for 1,000 gold. However, be mindful that it'll be a vanilla-style horse, only level 4 and not Essential. If you do choose to buy Gabrial's horse, then make sure to set the Simplest Horses MCM option that marks your horses as Protected. This will keep it from being killed by the next wolf or bear you happen to ride past. You might also want to use Simplest Horse's H hotkey to rename the horse as you like, since it'll be named Exmoor Pony by default.

If you already acquired a horse on the Skyrim mainland prior to launching Falskaar (for example, you tamed one one of the AE's Wild Horses), that horse will probably port to you as soon as you fast travel anywhere on Falskaar's map. The problem with this is, Falskaar's narrative in fact makes it highly implausible for your mainland horse to make it to the island with you! So you might want to decide whether that breaks immersion for you.

If you've acquired any of the four spells available in Tuxborn for conjuring a mount, this would solve the problem nicely. So consider as well if you want to have a conjurable mount available before you go to Falskaar.

There are two answers to this question:

The mod will provide you with dialogue options with NPCs on that very topic. Ask any NPC you see who gives you that dialogue option, and they'll point you to Wulf, who runs a boat back to Skyrim and will ferry you back and forth if you need him to. You'll get a miscellaneous quest objective to talk to him about it. You'll find Wulf at the southern docks on the island, where you'll need to go as part of running the main quest, so look for him there.

The miscellaneous quest objective will resolve once you talk to Wulf, and you'll get a little prompt describing what you have to do to return to Skyrim. Wulf's price to ferry you will be 500 gold. So depending on how much gold you have on you, you might not want to do this too often.

Wulf's dropoff point in Skyrim is Dawnstar. So if you haven't been to Dawnstar yet before you run Falskaar, this'll give you an excuse to show up there.

HOWEVER: taking Wulf's boat back to Skyrim is not actually necessary. You should see a fast travel marker back to Skyrim on Falskaar's map, and you can use this to return to the mainland if you don't have enough gold to pay Wulf (or enough patience!). (TBD: whether fast travel off of Falskaar is allowed before you finish the main plot.)

Falskaar is one of the oldest Skyrim mods in existence, and it was created by a single modder rather than by a full modding team. We encourage giving it a little grace when you run it.

Some oddities about Falskaar you may notice that reflect its age include:

1. You may notice strange brown striping through grassy areas. This is a known issue with how Falskaar populates grass and trees through its worldspace.
2. Quest design may be clunkier than players accustomed to current Skyrim modding standards may prefer.

If you need some help making it through any of Falskaar's quests, the TES Mods wiki page for it has a list of the quests and some basic walkthrough steps for them. Use that as a reference source if you need it.

Torchbugs and Luna Moths both appear to be more common in Falskaar than in the main Skyrim worldspace. So be on the lookout for them if you'd like to stock up.

Standard Skyrim plants such as Deathbell, Dragon's Tongue, Lavender, Nightshade, etc. will also be available to harvest as you wander the island. Likewise standard Skyrim mushrooms.

Be advised that the best possible quest reward for the side quest "A Craftman's Finest", Vanvir's Masterpiece, will not be given to you unless your Two-handed skill is at 60 or above.

This item is displayable in the LOTD museum, and it does have a replica recipe that will be available once you turn in the quest, if you aren't given it as a reward.

But if you want the original for whatever reason, you should hold off on running this quest until your Two-handed skill is high enough. If you acquire the quest during running Falskaar early in your game, come back and finish it up later.

Wulf should be able to ferry you back to Falskaar if you need him to do so, though you will need to go to Dawnstar for that.

As with traveling from Falskaar to Skyrim, though, you can also fast travel in the opposite direction. The marker that will take you to Falskaar is just above Dawnstar on the map, in the Sea of Ghosts. Taking this fast travel marker should land you at the southern docks, and from there, you can go wherever you need to go on the island.

And since there is a viable fast travel marker, you should also be able to use the Dev Aveza to get there if you wish, once you acquire it.

Why does an island in the Sea of Ghosts have climate that makes it look like the Rift...?

You'll probably notice that most of the island of Falskaar looks pretty much exactly like the Rift in mainland Skyrim. If you get far enough into Falskaar's plot, you'll discover there's actually an in-character explanation for this.

Turns out that when the island was settled several hundred years prior to current game time, the incoming settlers got magical assistance that made the place warm and habitable for them. So in other words, it was terraformed!

If you have trouble finding the Key of Strength in Bearclaw Cave...

The quest marker to find the Key of Strength is a little misleading. It's parked in the center of the cave you find the marker in, but it's not pointing directly at the key. The key is, however, still in the room. If you're standing at the quest marker, look at the table to the west. The key should be right behind the mead barrel on the table.

Location of the handle to get past the first gate in the Halls of the Dead during the Lost Knowledge quest...

It's a large handle inside of one of the coffins of the draugr you'll have just had to fight at this point in the quest. You want the upright coffin to the left of the gate, the one with an inactive draugr in it. The handle is above and to the right of the draugr's head.

How to get past the three locked gates in the Halls of the Dead during the Lost Knowledge quest...

Further along in that quest, you'll get to a very large chamber full of draugr coffins and a whole lot of fire traps on the floor. Once you take out the many draugr as well as the boss draugr (Overlord Garjeheim), you'll find three locked cage-type gates you can't get into, and your quest marker will want you to enter one of these. There will be an Open activator on it, which does not work, even though it's not telling you it's locked.

You will need to find a nearby lever, which will unlock all three gates at once. The lever's attached to a nearby pedestal a short distance from the gates. For quest purposes you only need to care about the one that leads to a descending staircase, but one of the others does have a couple of chests you might want to loot.

Is there any way to get past the gate in the Northern Pass...?

No. That gate was originally intended to lead to the Northern Hold, a section of the Falskaar map. Plans to fill in that content, however, were abandoned by the creator of the mod. So at this point the gate simply serves as an artifact of expansion plans that never happened.

Thanks to the following players on #txbn-general for information contributing to this page:

• Pobadboy3, for pointing out the issue with the quest "A Craftsman's Finest"