A couple of days ago, I teased the logo of Living Skyrim 5. It's time to give some details to go along with that logo. In case you missed it, here's the logo:

Pretty neat, huh? I'll let you figure out the symbolism of it all.

I want to detail what to expect from Living Skyrim 5, and yes, this is as much for you as it is for me.

In the past, I've done the three pillars of what Living Skyrim should be: Life, Content, Roleplay. And I'm happy to report that those aren't changing. They'll still be what makes Living Skyrim unique among Wabbajack modlists.

Also, I've previously said that Living Skyrim 4 is my ideal version of the list. So, you maybe wondering why I've decided to make Living Skyrim 5. There's a few reasons, but I'll address the most important ones here.

Firstly, Living Skyrim 4 hasn't received an update in a while, since November 9th of 2023. And now that I've typed that, I realize that it's an unacceptably long time between updates. Don't get me wrong, Living Skyrim 4 is in a great place and doesn't have anything that would prevent people from enjoying the list to the fullest. But as you can imagine, the technical debt of going that long between updates piles up fast. The Skyrim modding scene moves at lightning pace and waiting that long between updates is, quite frankly, unacceptable. At this point, updating the list to bring it up to date with everything that's happened in 2024 is effectively the same as rebuilding the list, so I'm going to rebuild the list.

Secondly, there are several sections of the list that need major revision and rebalancing.

The first is the graphics package. Living Skyrim 4 is a great looking list, but it has fallen behind other lists in terms of graphical fidelity and I fully intend to bring Living Skyrim into 2025 with the graphics. The other part of the graphics that need revision is the overall performance of the list. My goal with Living Skyrim 5 is to build a graphics package that doesn't require a performance profile while still looking absolutely gorgeous.

The second is the combat and enemy mods. There haven't been any major breakthroughs in terms of these lately, but the overall combat flow and feel of Living Skyrim isn't where I want it to be. The animations, enemy mods, and overall combat package need revisions to bring it in line with how I think Living Skyrim should be. It should be equally playable with and without followers, which isn't currently the case in LS4. It's currently skewed heavily towards needing followers, and I intend to tone it down so that you don't have to have a follower or several.

That being said, I do still want people to be able to play the list with their favorite followers. Especially some of the new, exciting followers that have come out in the last few months. I have a very special surprise planned on this front, but I'm not quite ready to reveal it yet. In the meantime, just know that you'll be able to play the list solo or with an adventuring party.

The fourth part of the list that needs revision is magic, which is nothing new for the list. There's always a constant struggle to balance and revise magic, and I intend to do yet another pass with Living Skyrim 5. There are also a ton of new magic mods that look amazing and absolutely need to be included in the list to bring it up to date.

Last but certainly not least is the immersion and roleplay parts of the list. Building Zenithar's Forge has given me a lot of ideas of how to expand the roleplay options in the list without making it too tedious or overbearing, so I want to make sure that I overhaul that section of the list. You should be able to play everything from a daring adventurer to a humble wandering merchant, and with Living Skyrim 5 I want to make that a reality. I also want to make sure that you have a wide variety of character build options, so I'll be looking into the class systems available to see what I can do to make sure that your character plays the way you want.

Thirdly, and this is entirely my own fault, I've fallen a bit out of touch with what's been going on in the modding scene so I'm not entirely familiar with what's possible with Skyrim modding anymore. Living Skyrim 5 gives me a great opportunity to re-familiarize myself with what's hot in modding and get used to everything that's new. Everything from Pandora, the newest versions of DynDOLOD, Synthesis, Community Shaders, SPID, Skyrim Patcher, and more - it's all on the list of things I need to get acquainted and re-acquainted with.

So! With all of that in mind, I hope you're as excited for Living Skyrim 5 as I am.

Cheers.

FG

P.S. Oh, and before I forget, here's a few teasers to get you hyped. Please note that these are from an extremely incomplete version of Living Skyrim 5 and may or may not be final. Subject to change at any point and all that.

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