Skyrim Together: The Co-op Project
Skyrim is a beautiful, endlessly moddable open world. Skyrim Together Reborn lets friends play it together online. I'm using both to prototype my own co-op RPG: custom roles, big world events and my own stories, playable by my friends with zero setup on their end. And I'm building it with Claude, an AI that writes the tools, explains the hard parts, and now builds Skyrim mods from plain-English descriptions.
For My Friends: What You'll Have To Do spoiler: almost nothing
The whole point of this project is that you don't touch mods, settings or config files. Ever. All the hunting, installing, testing and fixing is my job. Here's the plan for you:
- Own Skyrim Special Edition or Anniversary Edition on Steam (you already do).
- Run one launcher I send you. The first time, it sets everything up by itself.
- Click Play. It updates my content, opens Skyrim and connects you to our server.
That's it. When I add a new event or fix a bug, your launcher picks it up automatically next time. If something crashes, there'll be a button that sends me a report, so you never have to troubleshoot.
What you'll get to play
Real roles
A Tank who can taunt enemies off the healer, a Healer who keeps the group alive, and DPS who mark a target so everyone focuses it.Dragon Swarms
Packs of smaller, faster dragons hit a random town in waves. Get there and save it, or it burns. Ends with a full-size Swarm Mother.Giant monsters
Oversized trolls and giants roaming roads and towns, tougher than anything in the base game.A story villain
A rival Dragonborn corrupted by Molag Bal, hunting the people your story depends on. Race to stop him.Status: everything is being built and tested solo by me first. You only get it once it's solid.
The Vision where all of this is headed
Asheron's Call's mystery. World of Warcraft's group combat. Skyrim's beauty.
🔍 Mystery worth the hunt
Remember the Silphe of Crimson Stars in Asheron's Call? People searched dungeons for clues to it for years. I want items that are truly hidden, found by following clues, and worth the hunt.⚔ Combat for a group
World of Warcraft's party mechanics: tanks, healers and damage, threat, taunts, crowd control, cooldowns and raid marks, built for a group to play together.🏔 Skyrim's beauty
Skyrim's world, models, animations and textures, reused and restyled, with new shapes built in Blender where needed, and Bethesda's Creation Kit to build it all.🌋 A world that reacts
Undead and zombie invasions, elemental attacks, and encroachment: a mining town digs too deep and wakes a great fire demon; farms spread into giant fire ants' land and the queen sends soldiers to cull the people. Evil summoners in league with Molag Bal and the other Daedric princes, gifted powers that put the whole world at risk, and only the parties can stop them.Later: whole new continents with their own bosses, stories and biomes. Skyrim is the frozen north; after it come a desert, a jungle, and alien insect lands.
The order we're building it in
- Group combat that works for a group, and looks good enough that people want to play it. Now
- Hidden items and clue trails worth hunting for. Next
- World events: invasions, encroachment, Daedric summoners. Planned
- New continents and biomes. Later
⚔ Miah's Merc Mod In developmenta Mercenaries Guild, 4-person parties, MMO-style combat
Skyrim, played like a dungeon-running MMORPG.
Miah's Merc Mod adds a Mercenaries Guild to Skyrim and lets you bring two more companions into your party, for a full four-person group. Every member fills a real Trinity role (Tank, Healer or Damage), and enemies decide who to attack using a threat table, just like the MMOs we grew up raiding in. It's all inside a normal Skyrim game.
The Mercenaries Guild
A new guild in Skyrim, and your home base for party play. It's where your group comes together: the hub for hiring the companions who fill out your party and getting them ready to fight alongside you.
Four-person parties
Vanilla Skyrim is built around one hero, maybe with one follower. Merc Mod adds two extra companion slots, so you can run a full four-person party. That's the classic MMO group size: enough bodies to need real roles, small enough that every role matters.
Trinity roles: Tank, Healer, Damage
🛡 Tank
Holds the enemies' attention and soaks the hits, so nobody else gets flattened.✚ Healer
Keeps the party alive through fights that are built to hurt.⚔ Damage
Brings the enemies down before the healer runs dry.Each role has a clear job. A party that doesn't play its roles won't survive, which is the point.
The threat table: MMO-style aggro
Normal Skyrim enemies just attack whoever is closest or hit them last. That makes a "tank" impossible: the healer always gets jumped. Merc Mod adds a threat table: enemies track who has done the most to earn their anger, and go after the top of the list. That's what lets a Tank actually hold aggro, and lets a Healer and Damage dealers play their roles without being chased down.
Built for Legendary difficulty
Merc Mod is meant to be played on Legendary. The game is re-tuned around a full party: enemies have a lot more health, and encounters throw more enemies at you. Solo-hero tactics won't cut it. Fights are tuned for a coordinated group with a tank up front, a healer behind and damage dealers focusing targets.
If it feels brutal on purpose, that's working as intended.
What's built so far
Working = confirmed in my own game. Testing = built and being tested now. Everything gets proven solo first.
Hiring mercenaries Working
Mercenaries wait at the inns. Talk to one, pick their role (Tank, Healer or Damage) and they join your party, free of charge. You can change their role or send them home any time.
New: hire up to four for a full five-person party, like a WoW dungeon (the Bannered Mare now has a fourth, Varulae the Ranger). They carry your gear like a companion does, and follow you out of the inn even if they were sitting at a table. Testing The inns never run out: a merc who dies, or gets lost for five minutes, is back at their inn, ready to hire again.
Threat that works like WoW Working
Every blow and every heal earns threat; the tank earns three times as much. An enemy switches targets only when someone passes the current target's threat by 10% in melee, or 30% at range, the same rule WoW uses. Hit too hard as damage and you'll see "Careful: you're about to pull it off the tank".
Raid marks over enemies' heads Working
Shout a mark onto an enemy, even before the fight starts: Skull (kill first), X (kill second), Moon (crowd-controlled, leave it alone) and the tank's Shield. Mercs follow the kill order and never touch the moon. Marks fade as they stop meaning much: the shield dims as the tank's hold slips, and the moon fades as its crowd control is about to run out.
Read a mark at a glance
A bright mark is holding. A dim one is running out. A mark flashing red means watch out: that tank hold or polymorph is about to break.
Who puts each mark up
| Mark | Means | You (player) apply it with | Mercenaries apply it with | Fades? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Skull | Kill this one first | A mark shout | — (they follow it: damage mercs go straight for it) | No, stays until it dies |
 X | Kill this one second | A mark shout | — (next in the kill order) | No, stays until it dies |
 Moon | Crowd-controlled: don't touch it | A mark shout, or your own crowd control | The healer's Polymorph, and crowd control like Sleep, Fear and Frost Nova | Yes, as the crowd control runs out |
 Shield | The tank has it | A mark shout, or Attack Me! / Challenging Shout as the tank | The merc tank's taunt, which it opens every fight with | Yes, as the tank's hold slips |
Polymorph: enemies into animals Working
The healer can turn an enemy into a harmless animal (yes, a goat), with the moon mark over it so the party leaves it alone. It's the WoW mage's polymorph, and the biggest crowd-pleaser so far.
So far it's turned bandits into a cow, a goat, a bunny and a chicken. See the polymorph hall of fame →
Tank tools Testing
- Attack Me! (taunt): the enemy turns on the tank, and the tank's threat jumps to the top.
- Challenging Shout: taunts every enemy nearby at once.
- Pummel: interrupts a spell, staggers the caster and drains its magicka.
- Shield Wall and Last Stand: big defensive cooldowns for when things go wrong.
A merc tank opens on every new enemy with a taunt, picks up anything chasing the healer, and pops its own cooldowns when it's low.
Crowd control Testing
Sleep (a sap before the pull), Fear and Frost Nova, with WoW's diminishing returns: each crowd control on the same enemy lasts half as long as the last, until it's briefly immune.
Frost Nova looks great: enemies get covered in big ice crystals. Still checking that they stay rooted in place.
Elemental weapons Testing
Imbue the whole party's weapons for half an hour: flame that burns up the blade like a torch, frost with snowflakes falling, acid that smokes and drips, and storm crackling with lightning. Each adds elemental damage, and acid eats the enemy's armor. All built from effects already in the game.
Rebuilt: the damage worked from the start, but the game's own enchantment glow was far too faint. So the AI built brand-new effects that sit right on the weapon: rising flames and embers that trail behind each swing, icy mist with snowflakes falling off, green flames with acid dripping and smoke rising, and arcs of electricity throwing sparks. A mace should look like a torch.
Round two: testing showed the effects only in the inventory, and still too gentle. So they're now worn right on the weapon in your hand, and turned up several times over: a brazier of flames that would set your leg on fire, and acid that pours off the blade like Alien blood.
Round three: now they're too much. Acid is just right: green smoke and dripping that look great without hiding anything. Flame, frost and storm swallow the whole character, so they're being toned down to match the acid.
Smoke and drips, and you can still see the fight.
A bonfire instead of a torch.
So bright it hides the enemy.
Lightning over everyone, not just the blade.
Click any screenshot to see it full size.
🛡 Role icons over the party Working
Every merc wears their role over their head, like a WoW party: a blue shield for the tank, a gold holy sun for the healer, red crossed swords for damage. One glance tells you who's who in the middle of a fight.
That matters more than it sounds: mercenaries come in every race, size and look, so you can't tell your healer from your tank by their armor. The same icons ride along under the compass, pointing to where each party member is, even when they're behind you or around a corner.
🎯 Target lock Testing
One key (G, or the controller's d-pad) locks onto an enemy and puts an orange chevron over it. Press again for the next enemy, hold to let go. Your swings, arrows and spells turn you to face it, the lock jumps to the next enemy when it dies, and your damage mercs attack it. The party server shares every player's target, so you see your friends' targets in blue. It already made my first bandit camp with it a lot less chaotic.
🧭 Finding your party Testing
Your mercs' role icons slide along under the compass, pointing the way to each of them, with no confusing quest arrows. The Party power opens a list of everyone: role, health, and "25 m to your left". The journal lists the party by role too.
🐔 Polymorph with sound Testing
Each animal now announces itself: an indignant chicken ba-KAWK!, a moo, a goat's bleat, a rabbit's squeak, a spider's hiss. And the game keeps count: the Party list shows "Polymorphed so far: 2 chickens, 1 rabbit". (Skyrim has no ducks, sadly.)
❄ Elemental golems Working
Giants wrapped in fire, frost, lightning or acid that roam the wild and hunt people, guards included, instead of standing around a campfire. They're the first step toward world events.
Elemental rage: each golem is consumed by its element. Fire, frost, lightning or acid roars off its club, head, chest, arms and legs, and its whole skin throws the element off.
First sighting: a Rime Golem, a giant covered in frost, found me on my first test. I hit it with Frost Nova and it got encased in big ice crystals. Then it killed my whole party, and a guard for good measure. That's exactly the kind of threat I want a party to have to plan for.
Next for them: golems that occasionally march on Whiterun and the other major cities.
⚔ Encounters in the open In testing
Skyrim is wide open, but the fights are far apart. Now, out in the wild, something turns up every few minutes for the party to fight: a bandit camp pitched nearby, with tents, a campfire, a loot chest, a chief and his band (you smell the smoke first), or a pack coming down from the hills: wolves, sabre cats, bears, trolls, spiders, spriggans or a Forsworn war party charging the party. Sometimes it's a giant roaming with its mammoths. At night the vampires and werewolves come out.
Asheron's Call's Drudges are the first AC monsters in Skyrim: grey-brown goblin-folk in four ranks (Skulker, Slinker, Prowler and the Ravener chief). Half the camps are theirs, and Drudge packs roam with the rest. Spin them round in 3D. The Shadows come out at night; see them in 3D. Virindi and Lugians are next.
Everything is the game's own leveled bandits and creatures, so they match the party's strength, and it's cleared away once you move on.
Execute Testing
Enemies below 20% health take 50% more damage from your party, so finishing a fight feels like a push.
Progress: What We Built & Why the reasoning behind each step
Every step below has the same three parts: what we built, why we chose it, and how it works. Click any step to open it.
1. Picking the platform Done
What: Chose Skyrim Special Edition + Skyrim Together Reborn as the base for my game prototype.
2. Skyrim Together running on Linux Done
What: Skyrim SE 1.7.104, SKSE 2.3.1, Address Library v13 and
Skyrim Together Reborn 1.8.3, all running on Nobara Linux through Steam's Proton and Mod Organizer 2.
str_setup.py,
a 28-step setup program that checks each step against the real system before marking it done,
offers to fix the safe ones automatically (with backups), installs mods straight from my Downloads
folder, and remembers progress between runs. When something broke (like an SKSE version mismatch),
the fix went into the program, so it can never silently break the same way again.3. Our own dedicated server Done
What: The official Skyrim Together server running in a container on my machine, with an on/off switch, password setup and a mod-list check.
4. The Creation Kit on Linux Done
What: Bethesda's official world-building tool, with the community stability fix pack (CKPE).
5. One-click diagnostics Done
What: skyrim_report.py collects every version, path, setting and recent log into one report.
6. Connecting AI directly to Skyrim's data Done
What: An open-source bridge (skyrim-modding-tools-mcp) that gives Claude 15 tools to look up,
create, change, build and install Skyrim mods, connected through Claude Code in my terminal.
mcp_setup.py to install it step by step: a private Node.js 24
(leaving the system version alone), the .NET SDK, a separate ModTest profile so testing never
touches the co-op setup, and a real end-to-end test. When the build failed with an obscure compiler warning,
Claude traced it to Fedora's .NET compiler being one version too old and taught the installer to fetch a newer one.
Final proof: asking it to find the Iron Sword returned 012EB7:Skyrim.esm.7. First mod built from plain English: the Swarm Dragon Done
What: A new dragon, half size with reduced health, made entirely by describing it.
help "Swarm Dragon" 4, then player.placeatme, and a dragon called
Swarm Dragon was attacking me. It looks right, flies right and is very aggressive.8. Project memory for the AI Done
What: A notes file (CLAUDE.md) the AI reads every time it starts.
ModTest; close Mod Organizer before installing; multiplayer-safe scripting; every new item named
CP_…; debug tools built in from day one), my machine's details, and every design so far.9. The party sync server Done
What: A small server, hosted online, that keeps the party's threat tables and marks, with player accounts and a check that every player runs the exact same files.
10. The friend launcher and installer Private test
What: One Windows installer with everything a player needs, and a launcher where they log in and press Play.
11. Miah's Merc Mod, playable In testing
What: Roles, threat, marks, taunts, crowd control, elemental weapons and golems, all described in plain English and built by Claude (see Miah's Merc Mod above).
Plugins & Mods Kept minimal on purposewhat we use, why, and what ships to friends
The rule: as few mods as possible. Every extra mod is another thing that can break multiplayer sync or crash a session. Skyrim Together works best close to vanilla, so we only add what's essential, plus our own content.
In the game (what players run)
| Piece | Version | What it does | Why we need it | Friend package |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skyrim Special / Anniversary Edition | 1.7.104 | The game itself | Everything runs on it. Must be the Steam version for Skyrim Together. | You own it |
| Skyrim Together Reborn | 1.8.3 | Online co-op: syncs players, NPCs, combat, quests | The whole point: playing together. | Auto-installed |
| SKSE64 (Script Extender) | 2.3.1 | Lets mods do more than the base game allows | Skyrim Together requires it, matched exactly to the game version. | Auto-installed |
| Address Library for SKSE | v13 | A lookup table that tells mods where things are in the game's memory | Required by Skyrim Together. Wrong version = instant crash. | Auto-installed |
| PapyrusUtil SE | AE/SE | Extra scripting functions: saving data, files, lists | How the game and the party sync pass notes to each other. | Auto-installed |
Miah's Merc Mod (CoopRoles.esp + scripts) | in testing | Mercenaries Guild, 4-person parties, roles and role icons, server-managed threat, target lock, raid marks, taunts, crowd control, elemental weapons, golems, bandit camps and roaming packs in the open | Turns Skyrim combat into MMO-style group play. | Included |
| Our other content (Swarm Dragons, events, story) | growing | The world events and story to come | This is the game. | Included |
| Friend launcher | private test | One-click install, log in, connect, version check | So friends never touch a mod or a setting. | Included |
| Texture improvements | maybe | Sharper visuals | Looks only, safe for sync. Only if it doesn't hurt stability. | Undecided |
| Bundled Creation Club extras | — | Small paid add-ons that come with the Anniversary upgrade | Switched off: they're a common cause of mismatches between players. | Disabled |
"Auto-installed" is the plan: the launcher downloads each piece from its official source. Each mod's author decides whether others may redistribute it, so I'm checking every license before deciding what's bundled directly and what's downloaded. At worst, one piece might need a single click on Nexus Mods the first time.
Behind the scenes (my workshop only, never shipped)
| Tool | What it does | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Claude + Claude Code | AI that writes the tools, explains problems, and builds mods from plain English | Turns weeks of learning into working results, and teaches me along the way. |
| skyrim-modding-tools-mcp | Bridge giving the AI 15 Skyrim tools (find, create, edit, build, deploy…) | The Creation Kit can't be automated; this can. |
| Mutagen | The engine that reads and writes Skyrim plugin files | Mature and trusted by the modding community, so no corrupt files. |
| Mod Organizer 2 | Keeps every mod in its own folder; profiles for "co-op" vs "testing" | My game folder stays clean, and tests never touch the co-op setup. |
| Creation Kit + CKPE | Bethesda's world editor + community stability fixes | Hand-building places, terrain and NPC paths. |
| str_setup.py, skyrim_report.py, mcp_setup.py | Setup checker & control panel, diagnostics, AI-bridge installer | Written by Claude so every step is checked, repeatable and explained. |
| CoopRoles build tools | Small programs Claude wrote that make the mod's pieces: the weapon effects from the game's own fire, frost, lightning and poison; the role, mark and target icons; the party list, compass and targeting records | Every effect and icon can be tuned and rebuilt in seconds instead of by hand in an editor. |
| The CoopRoles log | The mod's own diary of every fight: who's in the party, who each one is fighting, every imbue, mark, target, polymorph and lost merc | Most bugs on this page were found by reading it after a play session. |
| Nobara Linux, Proton, podman | My OS, Steam's Windows layer, server container | No Windows anywhere in my workshop. |
★ Big Successes: AI + Prompting how Claude automated the Creation Kit
I'm not a professional programmer. I'm learning Unity and Unreal in my spare time and, honestly, it wasn't sticking. What changed everything was working with an AI instead of fighting tutorials. Here's what that actually looked like.
Latest wins from in-game testing
❄ The Rime Golem
Described as "giants with elemental effects that roam and attack guards and people". On my first test, a frost-covered giant found me, wiped my whole party and a guard. Built entirely from the game's own giant, frost cloak and effects.🧊 Frost Nova
One cast and the enemy is covered in big ice crystals. It's the WoW mage's root, made from Skyrim's own ice effects.🐐 Polymorph
Turning an enemy into a goat, with a moon mark over its head so the party leaves it alone. Exactly as fun as it was in WoW.💀 Raid marks and threat
Skull, X and moon marks over enemies' heads, and enemies that pick their target by threat, just like a WoW dungeon.🐐 Polymorph hall of fame
Bandits who walked into a fight with my party, and walked out on four legs. Every one of these was a real enemy a moment earlier.
The biggest of the bunch, and completely harmless.
The original, and still the classic.
From axe-swinging bandit to this.
Perched beside its former friend, the late Bandit Outlaw (click for the full scene).
Click any screenshot to see it full size.
👾 Asheron's Call comes to Skyrim: the Drudges
Dereth's goblin-folk, alive and well in Skyrim's wilds. Each Drudge is built on one of Skyrim's own creature bodies, given its own skin and size per rank, with dirtied fur and bone gear. They pitch camps and hunt in packs out in the open, so the party runs into them the way you did crossing Dereth. They spin on their own; drag one to turn it yourself, pinch or scroll to zoom.
Fat, tan and mean. The bottom of the pecking order, and the most of them.
The runt: small, pale and quick. Hangs back and throws spears. Kill it before it calls the rest.
Tall, grimy grey-brown, and turns up once the party has some levels.
The chief: near black, in his feathers, and towering over his band. Every Drudge camp has one.
Virindi and Lugians are next. The models take a moment to load the first time (about 4–6 MB each).
⚔ A real Drudge camp fight
Where combat stands: the group fights feel great: the tank holds the Drudges, the healer keeps everyone up, and the Ravener's camp is a proper battle. It still needs tuning and bug checks, though, mostly visual glitches from the target lock and polymorph. The first fight below ran about ten minutes; after one round of tuning the same camp took about three, and it still kept me on my toes.
✅ The same camp, after tuning
What changed between the two fights:
⏱ Fights that move
Enemy health halved: a camp now takes about three minutes instead of ten. Still hard, just no longer a slog.❄ The Ranger's Freezing Trap
With three or more enemies on the party, the Ranger freezes one solid in ice and everyone leaves it alone until it's hit. It's crowd control in the world itself, like a WoW hunter's trap.🩹 Mercs help each other
Damage mercs give a quick First Aid to anyone but the tank who drops below half health, so the healer can stay on the tank. The tank's role now gives more health and armor (Bulwark).🛡 Taunts that land
The merc tank's taunt used to be a bolt that flew over short Drudges. It now hits every time, so the enemy turns on the tank.🐐 Polymorph, cleaned up
Mercs no longer swing at the empty spot where a sheep's enemy stood. The healer polymorphs less often, and never giants.🎯 Lock-on, not camera-yank
The target lock no longer turns the camera. In a fight, the locked enemy's health bar takes the compass's place, and spells fly straight at it.🤝 No friendly fire
With four of us on one enemy I kept hitting my own party. Now your blows and spells never hurt party members.🔥 Warlock-style afflictions
Four Destruction damage-over-time curses, one per element: Ember Skin, Acid Burn, Frost Burn and Static Hex. They stack on one enemy and never touch the party.🌑 Out of the dark: the Shadows
Bael'Zharon's Shadows walk Skyrim's nights now. They're built on Dremora (black skin, glowing eyes, blades) and in the game each one is wrapped in a shroud of black smoke, with dark wisps streaming up its body. The smoke is a game effect that can't come along to a web page, so these models are the Shadow underneath it. By the party's level: swarms of Shadow Children, the Shade, the Shadow Stalker, the Shadow Caster, the Shadow Lord, and the Panumbris Shadow drifting over it all.
Small, unarmoured and fast, with a dagger. They come in threes and fours, and they swarm.
The fighters: spiked black armour and a blade. They come at night, in twos and threes.
Hangs back in black robes and throws fire. Kill it first.
No legs: a cloud of smoke carries it. A head taller than a man, hurling ice, with its Shadow Children around it.
⚔ The Shadows in the game
The first time my party met the Shadows: the black smoke shroud on them in the wild, and how the mercs handle a pack of them.
Bugs found in testing, and fixed
Every play session ends with a report back, and the AI reads the mod's own log to find out what actually happened. Here's what this round turned up.
⚔ The companion who turned on us Solved
When my mercs attacked a guard, Skyrim quietly took my companion out of the party, and he started fighting the mercs, then me. The log showed exactly when the game flipped him. I'd rather have a party I can trust, so it's four mercs now, and the mercs are bound to each other so they can never fight one another.🍺 Mercs stuck at the tavern table Solved
Walk out of the inn and the mercs kept sitting. Then, after being brought along, they wandered off to sit somewhere else. The fix: a merc left behind appears behind you, and one who forgets to follow is told to follow again.👻 Mercs gone for good Testing
Three mercs vanished and never came back, and with them, nobody left to hire. Now a merc who dies is back at the inn once you leave the body, and one who's lost for five minutes walks home. Every death and disappearance goes in the log.✚ A healer who wouldn't heal herself Testing
The log showed my healer sitting at 46% health for a whole session: she only healed herself in emergencies. Now, between fights, she tops everyone up, herself included, like a WoW healer between pulls.🔥 Invisible weapon imbues Testing
The imbues did their damage, but you could barely see them. After testing the game's own glows one by one, the AI built new effects that stay on the weapon itself (see Elemental weapons above).📝 A log that tells the story Done
"Create in-depth logging" turned into the mod's own log file: who's in the party, who each one is fighting, every imbue, mark and taunt. Most of the fixes above were found by reading it.🔄 The sync that never stopped Solved
The party-sync helper kept running after Skyrim closed. Now it shuts itself down about 20 seconds after the game does.🎥 A camera tweak gone wrong Reverted
An attempt to let the third-person camera zoom further out locked me into first person instead. It was undone completely, and camera settings are off the table for now.Round two: what the bandit camp turned up
"The combat was SUPER FUN!" — and the log showed exactly why a few things went wrong.
🎻 Mercs stolen by the bard Testing
The mystery of mercs walking off in the Bannered Mare: the game kept drafting them into the bard's audience, whose orders outrank "follow me". They're now on the game's own "not an audience" list.🕳 The boss they ignored Testing
My damage mercs never touched the cave boss, because they were still outside the cave. The catch-up that brings mercs to me paused during fights. Now a merc left on the other side of a door is brought along, fight or not.✚ A healer on an old brain Testing
The healer only started healing after I gave her the role again: her "brain" was left over from an older version of the mod. Every merc's brain now refreshes itself after an update.❓ "[...] is in your party" Solved
The party list showed blanks instead of names: the game couldn't attach the mercs to the quest at load. They're attached while you play now.🧭 One arrow too many Testing
The party's compass markers looked just like quest arrows. They're replaced by the party's own role icons on the compass.🔥 Glow only in the inventory Testing
The imbues' effects showed on the weapon in the inventory, but not in your hand. They're now attached to the weapon you're holding.The loop that changes everything
Bethesda's Creation Kit has no automation at all. Normally, a new creature means opening the editor, finding the original, duplicating it, and clicking through tabs of stats. Now I describe it, and it's in my game.
The prompt that made a dragon
Result: launched Skyrim, typed two console commands, and a Swarm Dragon was attacking me. First try.
Problems solved along the way
"Experimental" made it work
The AI bridge's author listed Mod Organizer under Linux/Proton as untested. Claude read the tool's source code to see how it worked, installed it accordingly, and it connected on the first real run, reading my game files through Proton.A compiler mystery, solved
A build failed with 3 errors. Claude pointed at the warning above them instead: Fedora's C# compiler was one version too old. Then it taught the installer to fix that automatically for next time.Tools that check themselves
Instead of "do these 28 steps," I got a program that verifies each step on my real system, fixes what's safe, and backs up before changing anything.Honest about mistakes
When its own health check wrongly said "passed," Claude caught it from my output, owned it, and fixed it. It now runs a real test (find the Iron Sword) instead of trusting a status word.Design partner, not just a coder
It flagged the hard parts up front: Skyrim has no aggro system (so "Tank" needs a custom Taunt), 40 dragons at once would crash multiplayer (so: waves), and killing story-critical NPCs would break saves (so: wounded or kidnapped instead).Plain English, always
When I asked "wait, WHAT is Mod Organizer?", I got a straight answer about what it is, where it lives, and when to open or close it. No jargon, no judgment.Prompting tips that actually worked
- Say the goal, not just the task. "My friends quit if they have to configure anything" shaped every decision after it.
- Give it your real output. Pasting the actual error or report beats describing it. The fix is usually in a line you'd skip.
- Ask for tools, not instructions. "Make a program that does this and checks it's done" beats a 30-step guide.
- Test the smallest thing first. One dragon proved the whole pipeline before building a 40-dragon event.
- Write the rules down. A project notes file means every new session knows the goal and the guardrails.
- Report like a tester: what I did, what I expected, what happened. Then it fixes the right thing.
Want to build something like this?
Everything on this page (the setup programs, the diagnostics, the AI-to-Skyrim bridge setup, the first mod, and this web page itself) was built working with Claude. If you've got an idea you've never had the skills to pull off, it's the best place to start.
Try Claude →Roadmap what's next, in order
| Step | What | Why this order | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Party combat: roles, threat, marks, taunts, crowd control | Everything else is built on fighting as a group | Built Tuning |
| 2 | Combat that looks amazing: glowing elemental weapons, clear marks, visible shouts | People have to want to play it. Polymorph proved how much a great effect matters | Now |
| 3 | Boss mechanics: phases, attacks to dodge, adds for the tank to pick up | The first real test of a party working together | Next |
| 4 | Class kits: a rogue with stealth and sap, an archer with a pet and Misdirection, a warlock with a summoned pet that fights or off-tanks | More ways to handle threat, more roles to play | Next |
| 5 | Party frames and meters (each other's health, with arrows pointing to any member who's lost; damage, healing and threat) | Quality of life, once the fighting is fun | Later |
| 6 | Hidden items and clue trails worth hunting for | The Asheron's Call part of the vision | Planned |
| 7 | World events: elemental golems attacking Whiterun and the major cities, Dragon Swarms, invasions, encroachment, Daedric summoners | A world that reacts, built on proven combat | Planned |
| 8 | "Living world" layer: events that move on while nobody's online | Makes the world feel persistent | Planned |
| 9 | New continents: desert, jungle, alien insect lands | Once everything above works | Later |
How the "living world" will work
Skyrim Together keeps players in sync while connected, but each player's progress lives in their own save. So instead of making everything persistent (that would mean rewriting the multiplayer mod), we persist our content: which towns were attacked, which bosses are dead, where the villain is headed.
- The game writes small "world fact" lines to its log. A helper sends new facts to the always-on server.
- Before launch, the helper packs the latest world state into a tiny generated plugin the game reads on load.
- A world clock on the server moves events forward, so if nobody stops the villain by Wednesday, the world changes.
No extra mods for anyone. It's an untested idea, so it gets proven solo first, like everything else.
FAQ for friends and the curious
Will this mess up my normal Skyrim?
Do I need Linux like you?
Does it cost anything?
What if it crashes?
Is the AI doing everything?
Why Legendary difficulty in Miah's Merc Mod? Isn't that brutal?
Can I use these tools for my own Skyrim project?
skyrim-modding-tools-mcp) is open source and the modding community's tools are public.
My setup scripts are tailored to my machine, but ask me, and if there's interest I'll clean them up to share.
Built on the work of: Bethesda Game Studios (Skyrim & the Creation Kit) • the Tilted Phoques team (Skyrim Together Reborn) •
the SKSE team • meh321 (Address Library) • perchik71 (CKPE) • the Mutagen project • Ciltress
(skyrim-modding-tools-mcp) • built with Claude by Anthropic.
A personal fan project. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Bethesda, ZeniMax or Anthropic.