So apparently I downloaded this mod in April of 2024 and forgot all about it. Didn't notice the big ass ship docked near Windhelm until today. Holy cow what a pleasant surprise. This mod is fantastic, the isles are extremely detailed, Quests are fun, voice acting is superb, 10/10. Thank you for your hard work!
I really enjoyed this mod overall, and I thank you for the incredible amount of work that went into it. I'm honored to have been able to contribute my voice to the project as well.
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I haven't played too many new lands mods, but based on the ones I *have* played, I have to say I really appreciated the design of your overworld. Coupled with Folkvangr and Simply Bigger Trees, it felt just the right amount wild and overgrown. The ups and downs of the terrain, the fallen logs, the gnarled tree roots, the different biomes, and the different routes around the isles were really awesome. It felt so much better when compared to other New Lands mods like Falskaar, where the entire world is basically a gigantic flat forest or Vigilant, where the map is just a big square. I loved traversing the isles -- it really felt like I was exploring a frontier, which was great, and it was pretty in-line with the base game in terms of quality. Likewise, the level design and art direction of the dungeons was remarkable. They all felt truly unique and immersive, and the little gimmicks and central concepts of each of them worked really well. All the little half-hidden secret paths were a lot of fun to suss out, and exploration was rewarded pretty consistently. A couple times I legit got jump scared by the dungeons, either from falling into well-disguised traps or by *ahem* noises.
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A few drawbacks to the mod that kinda bummed me out though: First, combat was waaaaay unbalanced. Throwing 4 Draugr Deathlords and a 2 Scourge at me at a time, or 7-8 of the orcs at a time in the final few missions, was insane overkill and not fun. Even on Novice, they were tanky and doing absurd damage. Maybe the intent was to use the Blood Magic to kill them, but man, didn't enjoy it. Cutting all the enemy counts in half or reducing their level would go a long way to fixing things. Second, the mod is in desperate need of a navmeshing pass. Especially in dungeons, I couldn't go 5 feet without losing my followers -- assuming they could even get in the front door, since the doors weren't properly marked on the navmesh. Combat encounters were a little more manageable with my followers present, but I spent most of the mod missing at least one of them due to navmesh problems. Lastly, it's obvious the mod is unfinished -- several locations have nothing there or load doors that don't actually go anywhere, and the player never even goes to the island in the northeast (which is a shame, because that whole area is really unique and awesome looking). Not necessarily a problem for me, because I like exploring just to see what's there, and finding places that just exist and aren't there to be my playthings feels somehow more immersive to me.
I'm sorry you ran out of steam on this and just had to push it out the door to get it done, and I sympathize. I reached that point with a patch on my mod that I worked on for more than two years and across multiple burn-outs. I get it. So I just want to say again that I really enjoyed Tempest Isle and I commend you for your work on it. Even if you've abandoned Skyrim and never come back to this project, you've done something special here.
Thanks for your hard work! Definitely had some creepy Oblivion vibes going on and I jumped a couple times. The ruins / dungeons were very unique and not just all copies of what is seen in Skyrim. I didn't have to use console codes to advance a quest line once, and everything was fairly easy to follow or figure out.
Looking forward to seeing what you do with this in the future ;).
All in all this was a pretty fun mod to play. The islands and the dungeons were pretty well done, and the voice acting was good. Acquiring the tomes to defeat the orcs was an interesting idea, but it felt like it didn't go anywhere. The mod's main story felt very incomplete. I took the town and was like "That's it?". I thought there would be more content on the larger island to the north. The orcs feel very underdeveloped as well, I would've liked to had the opportunity to speak with their leaders or even ally with them.
This modpage looks abandoned, and I really hope this isn't the case. This was a good mod and I think it has a lot of potential.
impressive work, the quality of the environnement is really great probably the best i've seen in a mod i wish author was in charge of vanilla skyrim.on the other side narration is not that good or even bad, i suppose it's a classic miscalculation of time and most was spend on the map but if you take in consideration that it will be an exploration mod and lower your expection story-wise it's top-tier.
also not a single bug which is great except maybe with quest markers but that's a very minor thing.
Thanks to this review, I have reconsidered abandoning this project altogether. This was a mod that took me 5 years to build to the current state after a ton of changes and reworks and I definitely don't feel like it's done yet in many ways from difficulty scaling to storyline, and I would honestly like to make people happier with this work. I can't promise anything but I hope to put out future updates to make this mod much better for you guys.
5 Years! That's a lot of time and effort. Thank you for the mod.
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If I may say, since you make good stories and quests, how about going for small-medium quests instead of DLC sized? You know, quests that won't take weeks and months of your time.. quests that you can just work on and off only when you feel like. Or instead, even just adding a one off quest to a neglected vanilla NPC. That might easier on effort and time I think. All of them will be popular regardless I feel. Sorry for the unsolicited advice.
honestly you don't have a lot to do to make it better, add a few dialogue encounter to flesh out the orcs, nords survivor from the village, an orc in a bleed out state who explain the motivation. maybe use the spell to replicate the cow questline mechanic where you have to take down a barrier to give them a meaning, a bit of urgency with the orcs having maybe some hostage or deadrics menace. And a closure with the nords or leaving or rebuilding at the end.
I think when people want to reply with constructive criticism that means you have something of value. Engagement and investment is a natural result of a valuable creation, and for a lot of people, the natural human instinct is to want to correct and polish it rather than just encourage or congratulate. In that sense it can be exhausting, especially when it's done as a hobby and for no profit.
I guess what I'm trying to say is do not stop making things. I wanna say that to literally anybody, do not let anyone stop you from making things. I can think of very few passion projects that need to be stopped, I think even odd creations have an audience and make a certain kind of person happy. I never wanna see anybody become discouraged out of creative endeavours when they could have kept going
Hi, SSE Engine Fixes reports a duplicate addon node with this mod and Madmen - A Forsworn Overhaul:
[warning] duplicate addon node index found, formID 90025BF0 in plugin Madmen.esp and formID D649CD64 in plugin TempestIsleVacMerge.esp share node index 91
I haven't found a way to fix it, I just disabled this mod. I played for a lot of hours with the mod and nothing broke (in those hours only), and for me, the only side effect of having this and Madmen is that arrows will have an weird flashing/sparkling effect.
310 comments
Can anyone tell me anything about this?
Maybe I missed it, but looking at the mod description, it doesn't say anything about a separate startup condition.
Asimilar question was asked below, why didn't anyone answer it?
Is this just a glitch in my personal mod environment and there's no workaround?
and I can't get to Tempest Island without talking to her.
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I'm sorry you ran out of steam on this and just had to push it out the door to get it done, and I sympathize. I reached that point with a patch on my mod that I worked on for more than two years and across multiple burn-outs. I get it. So I just want to say again that I really enjoyed Tempest Isle and I commend you for your work on it. Even if you've abandoned Skyrim and never come back to this project, you've done something special here.
Looking forward to seeing what you do with this in the future ;).
This modpage looks abandoned, and I really hope this isn't the case. This was a good mod and I think it has a lot of potential.
also not a single bug which is great except maybe with quest markers but that's a very minor thing.
If I may say, since you make good stories and quests, how about going for small-medium quests instead of DLC sized?
You know, quests that won't take weeks and months of your time..
quests that you can just work on and off only when you feel like.
Or instead, even just adding a one off quest to a neglected vanilla NPC.
That might easier on effort and time I think.
All of them will be popular regardless I feel.
Sorry for the unsolicited advice.
maybe use the spell to replicate the cow questline mechanic where you have to take down a barrier to give them a meaning, a bit of urgency with the orcs having maybe some hostage or deadrics menace.
And a closure with the nords or leaving or rebuilding at the end.
I guess what I'm trying to say is do not stop making things. I wanna say that to literally anybody, do not let anyone stop you from making things. I can think of very few passion projects that need to be stopped, I think even odd creations have an audience and make a certain kind of person happy.
I never wanna see anybody become discouraged out of creative endeavours when they could have kept going
[warning] duplicate addon node index found, formID 90025BF0 in plugin Madmen.esp and formID D649CD64 in plugin TempestIsleVacMerge.esp share node index 91