Chanterelle - a Savage World to Explore (www.nexusmods.com)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by kbal@fedia.io to c/skyrimmods@lemmy.world

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I've spent most of my gaming time for the past year gradually applying more and more mods to Skyrim, and finally got around to trying Chanterelle last week.

It doesn't have much in the way of quests or npc dialogue, but everything it does have is top quality. Lots of wilderness to explore, a couple of dungeons to crawl. Somehow the landscapes feel more realistic than most of Skyrim. Recommended for those who enjoy walking around in the woods. There are many wonders to discover. Next new game I'm going to try starting there.

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[-] kbal@fedia.io 3 points 2 years ago

It's Saturday morning Skyrim time, but I've switched from being a Skyrim player to being a Chanterelle player for now.

On my current game, things are going well. I didn't choose the most difficult possible start this time, and instead gave myself some leather armor and a conjuration spell to start with. The spell is quite often useful for being a distraction while I run away. Having some idea where to start looking for things and which areas to avoid helps as well. 40 hours or so over the past six weeks and I figure I've explored maybe 30% of it all.

Here is the current list of mods I've found to be necessary. I have a lot of others that mostly make things more challenging in general, but these are the ones that seem like they're in one way or another specifically good for Chanterelle.

Essential mods:

Random Alt. Start for Chanterelle - by far the best way to start new games there
Hunterborn - hunt for food and stuff. Wouldn't be the same at all without it
Hunterborn Survival patch - required if you want to eat and not starve
Animallica - lots of animals, it's quite nice

Survival:

SurvivalModeImproved.esp - You'll want some kind of survival mode
SurvivalControlPanel.esp - Adds UI for survival mode stuff
You may also want some kind of camping mod. The one I have probably isn't the best choice and I should probably just learn to craft a "scrimshaw" bedroll instead, I'm sure I saw it in the menus somewhere.

Other things:

Convenient Horses patch - maybe too convenient, but I like it
Armor Rating Rescaled - makes early-game and primitive armor actually useful
Toggle Compass - just a simple 'turn compass off' ability is all I want for that
timescale10.esp - more time to get things done in a day seems important
Scrimshaw Expanded - I don't remember what this adds, but scrimshaw seems okay with it
Origins Of Forest grass - taller grass makes a big difference here
Ark of Chanterelle.esp - adds giant beasts which are more unpredictable than most
Chanterelle Companion Zeus - I didn't try it yet due to installation mistake

Eh well, I finally found Bragon's old boat. Somehow missed it the first time through, so I searched the whole river for it. Also I have three seemingly unique items and have no idea what they're for. The other thing that's different about Chanterelle compared to Skyrim is that so far as I know there's no wiki to instantly tell you how everything works. That too is a welcome change.

[-] postgeographix@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Any chance of an update?

[-] kbal@fedia.io 2 points 2 years ago

Well, I can confirm that I did find Faucheuse. I think it was actually the first of the various "treasure hunt" type things I discovered, but as it turned out I'm glad I forgot about it for so long before finally getting around to following the clues, because it was the most difficult of them. It was quite a journey. Goes a long way into territory that's much more dangerous than where it starts. Feels like actual map reading skills could be useful. Very satisfying, if you enjoy that kind of thing. The path does go near some obviously unfinished areas, of which there are a few scattered across the land.

As the fights got more difficult, I relied on alchemy quite a lot. Also paused to spend some time levelling up smithing a little, by practising leather working mostly. Lucky for me I'd set the crafting skills to level at something closer to a normal rate compared to everything else, so they wouldn't be too grindy. Very good weapons can be found, but you'll probably want some decent armor too if you want to feel comfortable in such places as are found in for example the Hall of the Mountain King.

Even with a whole lot of time spent improving skills and equipment while wandering around, I found myself running away from things at least some of the time all the way through to very near what seemed like a sensible place to call an end to this Chanterelle playthrough. For now I'll be off to spend some time in Skyrim for a while. The next playthrough will start in Chanterelle again.