FAQ

1. What is Beyond Skyrim?
Beyond Skyrim is an extremely ambitious community, working together to bring the other provinces of Tamriel - High Rock, Cyrodiil, Hammerfell, Roscrea, Elsweyr, Argonia, Atmora and Morrowind - into the game and timeline of Skyrim. You will be able to travel to entirely new locales, fight new enemies, experience new storylines and more, all in an entirely lore-friendly and immersive world. It is composed of separate teams working on separate provinces, but working together to create a single, unified package.

2. Will this be lore-friendly?
We will stick to established lore from all of the TES games (including TES Online), and attempt to make a coherent, fully fleshed out Tamriel from it, while also taking inspiration from out of game sources and our own in-house lore.

3. Is this the same thing as Skyblivion/Skywind? Why aren't you working with them?
No, Skyblivion and Skywind are recreations of older Bethesda games using the Skyrim engine. This is a new mod in which the player can visit a version of Tamriel contemporary to Skyrim. We do however work alongside them from time to time via asset trades, as well as some of our members being cross-team modders.

4. Will it require DLC, or any other mods?
Yes, all Beyond Skyrim provinces will require all the official DLC. We do not, and will not require other mods to run our provinces. However, provinces may have recommended mods that get utilized alongside them for an enhanced experience.

5. Will it require a new game?
Nope! You will be able to use your existing characters from Skyrim. Just hop over the border, and continue your adventures.

6. Will I be able to walk to other provinces? Will there be loading screens?
You will be able to walk from Skyrim to the other provinces via the border gates - this will require a loading screen. Hammerfell and High Rock share a worldspace as does Cyrodiil and Elsweyr which means they will not have load screens if you move between them. Once in the other provinces, you will be able to walk around freely. Unfortunately, due to a bug in the Havok physics engine, landmasses larger than 128x128 cells will throw up bugs and glitches, and we have had to cut up our heightmap to fit.

7. When can I play this/can you give a release date or percent complete estimate?
When it's ready! In all seriousness, a full release date is near impossible to give when the entire community is made up of volunteers working in their spare time, but progress is always being made. Several provinces are planning early 'teaser' releases - the first of which was Bruma, a city in northern Cyrodiil.
 * https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/84946/ for Legendary Edition or
 * https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/10917 for Special Edition.

8. Will you continue the main plot from Skyrim for (insert faction here)?
We are planning for most of the quests in Tamriel to run parallel to the events in Skyrim. There will be a follow-up for some events in Skyrim, but most of the content will be stand-alone.

9. Are any of the characters from older games returning?
Most of the characters from Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion are... rather dead, but it is always a possibility.

10. Are you going to change (insert city/landscape/dungeon)? I (hated/loved) it, so you really should/shouldn't.
Our portrayal of Tamriel will be largely consistent with all the games - including TES Online - but we will incorporate "missing" elements and our own in-house lore where we have the chance. Also, keep in mind it has been 200 years since the most recent game so cities, dungeons, etc might not be exactly the same. Where ESO conflicts with pre-existing canon, we will stick with what came first.

11. I have this really great idea for a quest. You should totally do it!
We are accepting new writers on all provinces, so feel free to apply to join a team, but you need to be open to collaboration and working with others' ideas. In addition, you need to be prepared to create dialogue scripts, flowcharts etc.

12. What kind of people are you looking for? How can I join?
We will take on anyone and everyone with a talent or skill to offer - or anyone looking to develop one! We are always on the lookout for talented concept artists, 3D modellers, landscape designers, and people skilled with the CK, although we have openings for other positions as well. Just check the pins in #recruitment on the discord server for more information.

13. I have a great idea for a new Beyond Skyrim province. Can I start working on it?
If you want to start a new province project under the Beyond Skyrim umbrella, you must make a formal request to the council, and have a suitable team already in place. Ideally you must also have some sort of experience in a leadership role, and a clearly defined design document or similar for the province.

14. Why aren’t Valenwood and Summerset being worked on?
The provinces of Alinor, Valenwood and a few others are all currently inactive. The issue is that each of these areas are notorious 'mod-killers' - where small, overly ambitious teams with poorly fleshed out plans make little progress, before giving up entirely.

15. Why don't you just port content from Oblivion/Morrowind/other games?
Because this is a violation of Bethesda's EULA, and would be grounds for them to close the project. We have no wish to cut a few corners and risk seeing the mod served with a cease and desist. Furthermore, we want to exceed the standards of those older games - we want to create places that feel fresh and new, and with the same graphical quality as Skyrim.

16. Why don't you all just work on one province to get it done faster?
Beyond Skyrim is set up so that there are multiple teams working in parallel towards a common goal - to see all of Tamriel in the Skyrim engine. The province projects all differ significantly as well - it's like developing several different games in parallel. Because of that, we can't force a volunteer to work on a project they have no interest in.

17. Will Beyond Skyrim be available for Skyrim Legendary Edition/Special Edition/Xbox One/Playstation 4?
Bruma is available for Skyrim Legendary Edition, Special Edition, and Xbox One. Future releases will be Skyrim SE, with the exception of prereleases and smaller provinces which may go on Xbox One, but only if they are small enough to fit under the mod limit. Mods like ours will never be available for Playstation 4 due to the restrictions Sony has placed on mods.

18. Can I donate to the project? Will Beyond Skyrim go on the Creation Club/paid mods under a new name?
No. Beyond Skyrim is and will always be free. Even if it were legally possible, it would be impossible to fairly divide the money over the hundreds of past and current contributors. The Creation Club also does not accept preexisting mods.

19. I want to talk to a Developer about Beyond Skyrim, where should I post?
You can post here on our reddit where some of our developers can probably give you an answer. If you want a more real-time question answering, pop into our Discord where you can talk to devs, writers, and team-approved community members for help.

20. Will Beyond Skyrim include any new gameplay mechanics?
Beyond Skyrim is committed to providing players with a comparable to vanilla experience, and this includes new systems, some larger, some smaller, all compatible with vanilla overhauls where we can help it. This also includes furthering the RPG experience in areas where we feel it to be necessary.

21. Will you be able to become Emperor?
For both story and gameplay reasons you will not be able to become Emperor.

22. What will a team do after their full project releases?
Depends on the individual members of the team. Many will probably stick around to work on bugfix patches and possibly even post-release content. After that, they'll probably either join other teams or move onto new and exciting projects outside of the Beyond Skyrim umbrella.

23. Will there be dragons?
The general plan is for dragons outside of Skyrim to be rarer and treated with a greater degree of care, though random attacks will occur in the areas immediately bordering Skyrim, getting rarer the further away you move. Some provinces, like Hammerfell, will feature specific dragon characters returning from the lore. Elsweyr will not contain any dragons.

24. Will being a faction leader in Skyrim be referenced?
When appropriate.

25. Will there be Daedric quests/Will they remember you from Skyrim?
Yes, there will be Daedric quests, but no spoilers.

26. What is the status of slavery in Morrowind?
Slavery has been abolished. You cannot buy slaves.

27. Is it compatible with survival mods (Chesko’s Frostfall, The Creation Club’s Survival Mode, etc.)?
Yes, in fact some projects, such as Atmora recommend using them to improve the experience. Beyond Skyrim will also be open to third-party modification after release to allow further integration, such as heat mode for the deserts of Hammerfell and Elsweyr.

28. What are pre-releases?
Pre-releases are parts of larger projects that will be released early to give a feel for how each project will work. Smaller projects such as Roscrea and Atmora will not have pre-releases but instead release complete when they are finished.

The planned pre-releases are as follows:
 * For Cyrodiil, Bruma: The northern County of Cyrodiil: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/84946/
 * For Iliac Bay, Three Kingdoms: The Breton Kingdoms of Farrun and Jehanna and the Redguard islands of Cespar, Herne, Stros M'kai and the Chain.
 * For Morrowind, The New North: The isles of Bleakrock and Sheogorad.
 * For Elsweyr, The Greater Rim: Focused around the Akaviri influenced city of Rimmen as well as the Khajiit ciites of Orcrest and Riverhold. At this time, Bruma is the only released pre-release.

29. Can you give a percent complete for any of the projects?
Due to the nature of Beyond Skyrim as an all-volunteer project, any estimates of progress or completion dates are inherently worthless, since real life hits us all and we have to prioritize other things.

30. Will I be able to transfer my Bruma save file to the full Cyrodiil release?
Tentative yes. We can't guarantee it though yet. Once we have finished Cyrodiil we can test this out and then we will release a definitive answer.

31. How do I keep up with the project? Any place I can go to get updates?
You can find us at all these links, including the subreddit here. Discord however, offers the most frequent updates as developers can freely post stuff to our showcase channel.
 * Website: https://beyondskyrim.org
 * Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/BeyondSkyrim/
 * Twitter: https://twitter.com/BeyondSkyrim
 * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialbeyondskyrim
 * SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/beyondskyrim
 * Discord: https://discord.gg/u9FG56s