Skywind is a non-commercial, fan made modification for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim that seeks to merge the amazing world of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind with the enhanced graphics and capabilities of Skyrim’s engine.
While ownership of both games is required to play, the player only actually plays Skywind using the Skyrim game, and not the older Morrowind game. This means that the user interface, combat, and graphics of the Skywind mod are based on those of Skyrim, and not Morrowind.
We’re keeping our release targets private for now, and it’s not possible to give a useful completion percentage. With a community project such as this, progress often comes at an irregular rate and is hard to predict. Providing even an approximate estimated date won’t help us deliver Skywind faster and will result in disappointment if we’re delayed. It’ll be done when it’s done.
Currently we have been experiencing a steady level of activity in several key sectors that has benefited the project immensely. When we have a release date in mind we will notify our fans via our various social media pages and Discord.
If you would like to help accelerate the development of Skywind we would love to have any qualified volunteers come on board! Please see our volunteer page if you believe you have the passion and aptitude to learn and help: https://tesrskywind.com/volunteer/
Skywind takes advantage of the graphical capabilities of the Creation Engine whilst having its own unique weathers, user interface, and other alterations that will make it somewhat demanding. The recommended system spec for the mod is slightly higher than that of Skyrim: Special Edition. More information about system requirements will be available as we get closer to completion.
You will also need the following installed on your system:
- TES III: Morrowind, including the Bloodmoon and Tribunal expansions
- TES V: Skyrim: Special Edition
You need legitimate copies of both games – even if you defeat the copy protection somehow, pirated copies of the games do not work right with Skywind and you will have problems.
Skywind aims to have full functionality upon release equivalent to recent Elder Scrolls titles, as well as to expand by reintroducing critical elements from Morrowind that did not make it into Skyrim. We cannot make any promises at this time about what will and will not make it into the final release but rest assured some are already implemented and others are being worked on.
Every asset in the game is being created from scratch, to as high a level of quality as possible. The level of quality upon release should rival or surpass the average Skyrim mesh or texture.
A separate TES Renewal team is working on an Oblivion conversion called Skyblivion. Skywind and Skyblivion will be separate mods. Visit skyblivion.com for more information on Skyblivion.
Yes you will! This is in the process of being implemented.
In the future you will be able to craft many of the objects from Morrowind using local materials. That means real mining and Morrowind style crafting stations too. These recipes will be balanced so as not to interfere with a Morrowind style of gameplay. Smithing will also be overhauled as to not overshadow the value and rarity of particular found items and to balance the game so that players do not feel like they need to smith or lose out on the best armor. The skill will still be incredibly useful and will work differently than it did in Skyrim.
New crafting fields unique to Skywind will be introduced, bringing further functionality to previously static objects such as the loom and kiln. These professions are based on those the Temple saints are patrons of, valued by Dunmeri culture. Minor tier crafting professions will tie into major ones, but are not exclusive to a skill. These include cooking, dye-making, and pottery.
You will be able to use fast-travel and quest markers because they come with the Skyrim engine. However it will still be quite possible to play through the entire game without them, and the dialog and quests are designed with this in mind. We’re planning to make this configurable in the Mod Configuration Manager in our version of SkyUI.
Like Morrowind, Skywind will not have horses. As well as staying true to the original game in this regard, we think it’s important that Vvardenfell maintains the impression of a vast island to explore (which, incidentally, it is – 60% as big as Skyrim by landmass, but with more explorable terrain by far!).
Horses introduce a smaller world in terms of travel time, and inevitable glitches (as demonstrated by one of our devs, Thermocrius: https://youtu.be/YZQ1HsMwtDw). This also means we’re not obliged to do horse armor DLC… although maybe the guars could do with armor?
Over the course of development our modelers have explored this possibility and found it to be prone to major clipping issues. At this point, we will be using the system found in Skyrim as it gives us greater room to create interesting armor designs without having to worry about major modeling issues between pairing different armor types.
Similarly, clothing and armor will not be able to be worn at the same time. This is due to clipping issues as well as some of the hard-coded elements of the game.
Yes! Although we’ll probably not implement every weapon from Morrowind (don’t hold your breath for throwing stars, for example), we’ve included crossbows and have made great progress with spears and staves, with custom animations in both first- and third-person. We plan to including some impromptu weapons like pitchforks and paddles, too.
We’re going to do as much as we can manage to make spells similar to Morrowind, but there are restrictions to how spells have to be done. Many spells, especially the ones from Morrowind, are not a simple “fill in magnitude and it magically does what you want it to” – they are scripted, and often rely on many other things, such as perks, other magic effects, other spells, and global values.
If we want a spell with that stuff, we can’t just simply change a magnitude or duration in one of them. We have to create new spell(s), new perks, new global variables, new magic effects and so on for each one with different magnitude/duration/area.
With that said, we are making great progress with support of custom spells. Check out Greavesy’s proof-of-concept here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2mNUeoJMiU
The team is putting their heart into making Skywind the best product it can be, and we want to make sure that our fans get to experience our vision as it is meant to be. Due to the alpha stage of the project we have decided to keep our work internal and update you via our various social media channels. We will open Skywind to a beta testing in the future when we have reached a point where feedback will be constructive to polishing up Skywind. Currently, many aspects of the game are still a work in progress and it would be hard for anyone not directly involved in the project to know what is or what is not a bug or simply unfinished at this stage.
We greatly appreciate the interest our fans have in the project and understand how much you want to play it and we’re working hard to make it what it is destined to be. If you are interested in volunteering your skills to help speed up the project please check out our volunteer page here: https://tesrskywind.com/volunteer/
Morrowind tells the story of the ascent of the Nerevarine: a hero reborn in the mantle of an outlander, shipped to a hostile and alien island, and left to fend for themselves, and to discover their destiny. The Skywind team feel that having crossover with the story of the Champion of Cyrodiil or the Last Dragonborn detracts from this story, and are content with Skywind telling the story that The Elder Scrolls III set out to tell.
In addition, because of the major changes Skywind brings in its implementation as a Skyrim mod, this unfortunately isn’t easily feasible. Skywind will act as a stand-alone game with its own launcher.
We are exploring the possibility of a skill tree overhaul specific for Skywind. The goal of the overhaul would be to create a skill tree system that brings back elements from Morrowind as well as restructuring the perk system altogether. It is too early to say if we will be able to achieve everything that we are planning but we want you to know that we are making a serious attempt at redefining this system.
Modders with experience in this area have offered to lend their help in this endeavor but anyone interested in this aspect and has experience in this area is welcome to contact the game mechanics department lead if they would like to volunteer!
By and large, probably not. Certain mods should be compatible, and we will be getting our own separate page on Nexus Mods where people will be able to post their mods for Skywind. However, we are changing mechanics of the game, and not every mod will be usable. You’ll have to try the individual mods for yourself.
We don’t plan to include the expansion packs at this point, but it’s possible we’ll consider it as extra content once the main game is complete and released to the world.
Our QA team hates bugs! They’ll be looking to remove all of the original bugs from the game, and make sure that no new bugs are introduced in the conversion.
This isn’t something the core team have plans on doing. However, we have opened up for the possibility of the community doing translations. It is a huge task, requiring co-ordination and automation, without the support of the team, who have higher priorities. For now, we’d need modders with existing i18n experience and xEdit experience. If you’re undeterred, contact no_egrets on Reddit or Discord to discuss getting started.
We’re open to suggestions, but note that we get a lot of them, and it’s really important that we limit scope creep. Feel free to make the suggestion, but please understand that it might not be feasible or practical!
Even if you think it’ll be easy, or if you found a mod that already does it, that doesn’t always help much. We find that independent modders are rarely all that willing for their work to be absorbed into a bigger mod, and that many mods don’t meet Skywind’s high standards. If you think you might have an exception to this trend, though, we may well be interested :)
We occasionally run donation drives to help us with costs we can’t afford – most notably website hosting and service subscriptions. When we do so, we’ll reach out on social media and be totally clear about what it’s for and where it’s used. This is never for profit.
We will never charge for Skywind, and we will never accept donations to provide exclusive access or for any other preferential treatment. Don’t accept any imitations.
In Skyrim you can’t kill some characters because they’re flagged as ‘essential’. What about Skywind?
We love that Morrowind didn’t railroad your decisions about important characters, and we’re replicating that approach, wherein you may kill whom you want – you simply get a message that what you’ve done has broken the storyline. To avoid annoyances, we might stop important characters from being targeted by other hostile characters and creatures.