Skipping Legacy of the Dragonborn - Omni-guides/Tuxborn GitHub Wiki

LOTD is a core feature of our modpack, but it is not required to play Tuxborn. If LOTD isn't your thing, it's reasonably painless to avoid launching it. This page goes over how to do that, and what the consequences of this choice would be.

"How can I avoid launching LOTD if I don't want to run it?"

Follow these four basic steps:

  1. Don't use the Relic Hunter start in chargen. You can still choose the "I came here on a ship" start, and even tell it you want to land in Solitude if you wish. But if you do this, remember to say "No" to the prompt that asks you if you're coming to Solitude as the museum's relic hunter.
  2. Don't read any of Auryen's treasure hunter notes placed on counters in various inns.
  3. If you sell any displayable item to a merchant, Auryen will send you a courier letter inviting you to come talk to him. Avoid reading this letter. If you want to be thorough about it, you might also take extra steps to dispose of the letter so you won't read it by mistake. Try any of these steps:
    • Sell it to a merchant (it won't be worth anything, but you can at least get rid of it that way)
    • Leave it in any container so you can safely disregard it (if it's a respawning container, the game will even then get rid of it for you, bonus!)
    • Drop it on the ground or the floor, then use the disable console command to destroy it
  4. And, of course, just don't set foot in the museum. Auryen remains in there at all times, except when LOTD has him leave for plot purposes, so it won't be possible to encounter him in the world.

"Is there any benefit to skipping Legacy of the Dragonborn?"

Mostly, this is a matter of personal preference. If you don't like LOTD, or even if you're just not interested in running it in a particular Tuxborn playthrough, then don't run it. Player's choice here.

An exception to this is that it might be helpful to skip it if you're playing on a Steam Deck or on a very low end PC. In past Tuxborn builds, primarily on Steam Deck, we had severe performance issues in the LOTD museum. This is the reason why in current Tuxborn builds, the Deck profiles have fewer mods than Desktop and Handheld. The Deck profiles were scaled back some to try to remove or at least mitigate the performance issues.

So if you're a Steam Deck (or lower end PC) player, and you want to try running the Handheld or Desktop profiles, then skipping LOTD might give you enough headroom to do so. We have not tested this. So if you try this out and get good results, do report in and let us know!

"What content will I miss out on if I don't run it?"

LOTD is almost entirely self-contained, plot-wise. So it won't impact any other mod content in the load order, or vanilla Skyrim content, if you don't play it.

What you'd miss out on therefore would be LOTD-specific content, including but not limited to the following:

  • Access to the Safehouse and the Dev Aveza
  • Access to Deepholme
  • Access to the LOTD Achievements system, which is one of the few means in Tuxborn by which you can get additional perk and/or attribute points
  • Several unique items available only as LOTD Achievement or quest rewards
  • Additional conversation options with the modded Lydia, and Remiel

"Will LOTD artifacts still exist in the world if I don't run it?"

Yes and no.

Weapons

Certain unique weapons added by LOTD are only available from Auryen when you reach various display count milestones. You should expect those weapons to not be available to you unless you're willing to invoke the console to create them.

Other artifacts that are not specifically display count rewards or LOTD quest rewards may still exist in the world. For example, the BiPolar Blade. It depends on where the item is, and whether LOTD expects you to do anything special to get to it.

Keep in mind as well that there is a difference between artifacts explicitly added by LOTD itself, and artifacts added by other mods that have displays in the museum (and which are therefore still marked as displayable). So depending on what content you're running, any artifact you find may be a Skyrim base game artifact, a LOTD artifact, or an artifact from some other mod. And all of these types could potentially be displayable.

Armor

No known armor sets from LOTD will remain available in the world if you skip running it.

The only significant LOTD armor you'll miss out on if you don't run it is the Visage of the Dragonborn set, since you only get that if you run LOTD's Shattered Legacy quest.

Jewelry

Several unique jewelry pieces added by LOTD are still available in various places around the game, so those items you should still be able to find.

A few jewelry pieces though are known to only be LOTD quest rewards, such as Windcaller's Ring and Windcaller's Talisman. So as with weapons, this is another yes and no situation.

Other

You can still find and use the items available via the Tools of the Trade side quest. These items spawn in the world on startup, so if you know where to find them in advance, you can still go get them.

A couple of caveats to keep in mind about that:

  1. Rains' Shelter hooks into Safehouse storage. So while Rains' Shelter is our recommended means of camping in our load order, if you're not actually going to play LOTD, hooking into the Safehouse storage is only partially useful to you. If you stash any armor, weapons, clothing, or jewelry via Rains' Shelter, those items go straight to the Safehouse and will no longer be available to you if you never enter the Safehouse. Consumable items and gems, though, you'll be able to retrieve. So in this scenario, use Rains' Shelter's storage only for consumable items and gems.
  2. Picky's Beacon and Picky's Resonator are intended to be used on the Dev Aveza to let you summon it to you from afar. If you're not running LOTD, you won't be using the Dev Aveza, so Picky's items won't be useful to you.

If you think you might want some of these items even if you don't plan to run LOTD, go have a look at LOTD's page for Tools of the Trade and see which of them look potentially useful to you.

"If I'm not going to play LOTD, what are my options for player homes besides the Safehouse and the Dev Aveza?"

Your options are many and varied. Check Vanilla player homes available in Tuxborn and Mod player homes available in Tuxborn to find what options appeal to you.