Yeah Winterhold seems like it should be a great city a la Solitude but it's smaller than Morthal.
It was, the whole sinking into the sea of the City of Winterhold is the reason given.
That’s the in universe explanation but I bet you dollars to donuts the mage college and winterhold was a late addition and/or they had to pare a lot back due to time constraints. A quest line to build the place up could’ve been interesting.
There 100% is some winterhold stuff that didn't make it, most likely because of time constraints. Iirc quite a few of the college npcs and even a couple of notes in the midden and library reference some missing students, whom you can actually find (their death locations are unmarked places), and that feels like it was probably supposed to be a whole quest.
You'd think with how many times they re-released Skyrim that they could've afforded a small team to put out updates long term in the form of restored cut content etc. I don't want live service or anything but it's actually crazy that the game only really got 2.5 dlcs and then paid fan mods in terms of Bethesda content post release
Be careful, Todd is watching...
I have already been assimilated, child
Praise be to Todd. It just works!
Seriously, he'll rerelease skyim again if we say his name too many times
I am ready to buy it again
Ps3 Ps4 Ps5 Switch PC
I am not complete
Sideload it onto your Garmin with the map update
There was a quest with them. You take their rings, (locked in a chest somewhere on campus) place them on the daedric hand and a sailor pops up. You can either kill him for mediocre loot or let him free for a treasure map to a special chest.
Velehk Sain, the Dremora pirate. That was a neat little quest
Are those the same students? I thought they were different mishaps.
Those actually aren't the missing students. The missing ones never got a completed quest and were Yisra, Ilas-Tei, Rundi, and Borvir. The students whose rings you need to get for Forgotten Names are Katarina, Treoy, Balwen, and Pithiken.
Yep, their bodies are still findable it seems
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/The_Missing_Apprentices
Since Bethesda seems very all in on settlement building in there games, I’m sure ES6 will have some sort of destroyed city to build up.
Doubt it. The Elder Scrolls experience and the Fallout one are extremely divorced-- TES isn't about rebuilding society or anything like that, it's about heroic fantasy, ancient mysteries, weird cosmology, and occasionally blowing up a god here or there. Settlement building fits into Fallout in a way that it simply doesn't in TES-- much like the way that the balance between combat and non-combat tools is very different between TES and Fallout.
I don’t think it would be like in Fallout where there are a whole bunch of settlements to build of. I would think it would probably be one town, either an existing village or one that the player character founds and builds up from shanties to being one of the main cities. It is thematically fitting for your Elder Scrolls character to become lord of a city they founded.
Based on the continued improvements and expansion of settlement/base building in their last three games, including Starfield, it really seems like they are keen on this being a big, but mostly optional, feature in their games going forward.
Yeah short of a game set somewhere like that nord island from morrowind, settlement stuff doesn’t make much sense in ES games. If they could make it make sense I’m sure I’d love it.
Why the fuck are you never addressed as the Arch Mage after completing the college missions? I have people whispering "hail sithis" left and right and thieves leave me alone and give me shit, but all I get about the college is I should go there if I wanna learn magic.
Nobody calls you Archmage because nobody bothered to file the paperwork that says you are the Archmage.
Really, Mirabelle was the only one there who cared about anything other than her own work. With her gone and the new Archmage off doing gods know what anyway, it's only a matter of time before someone sends the whole College off to some forgotten plane of Oblivion.
For real, why I can’t ever buy a dlc. “Complete Thoughts”
Winterhold also existed in Arena. It’s always been a part of skyrim.
As a long time mage, Skyrim (one of the best games of our generation) really let me down lol spells suck and take way too much fine tuning with mechanics and enchantments to even make them viable when I can just be a Stealth archer or a blender (dual wielding swords)
As someone who works in games myself, you would honestly be miserable if you found out all the things in your favourite games that were planned but cut for time/budget. The economy is the worst part of being a game dev
My favourite example is that doom eternal was supposed to have a scene where you drive the giant mech and punch the titan demons but it doesn't. Fortunately for that one, the next doom game will have this, and a robot dragon ride. So this is a rare time to see justice
The Great Collapse happened over 50 years ago. You'd think in that time one of those asshole mages would conjure some fucking hammers and get to work
Imo the game should have reflected this better by having a lot of either collapsed or mostly intact but abandoned houses. Also, there should have been a massive wall around the whole thing. All of this was 100% possible even with PS3 and Xbox360 limitations
It's sad because the shopkeeper actually has a really cool quest if Im remembering correctly
If I'm thinking right, the shopkeeper gives you a dragon claw and talks about being ripped off when she bought it (through the quest you get the helm of yngol...ygnol? Ysgramor's boi , however you spell the name)
It's not the shopkeeper but the quest for the Star of Azura is in the inn.
No I'm talking about the one where you go into a cave and these little glowing orbs follow you around
Birna, she gives you a claw that opens the door in Yngol Barrow
Yea that's it, I couldn't remember if it was a claw or not
Sells it to you for 50 gold if I recall correctly
Sucks there's no follow-up either, especially after she asks you to let her know what happens
It's a shame, isn't it
How do you get her to give it to you?
Talk to her, think the dialogue option is something like "You mentioned a bad deal"
Oooh thanks!
You get the quest in Birna's oddments I think
There is a mod that makes winterhold look more like a small city instead of a village
It's amazing how many of the "standard" quests I've never once gotten around to doing anything with. Like I've never joined the Bard's College.
there was no barding sadly
With all the fucking flutes, drums and other instruments it definitely should have been a thing. The only reason why I do the quests is because it's cool and you get free speech levels from some side quests there.
this is Skyrim. if it is not in a nord ruin then it ain't happening
And we like it in that way, thank you
With all the fucking flutes, drums and other instruments it definitely should have been a thing
probably fits into the 'planned but canceled' catagory
Honestly shocked that cut content wasn't brought in with all the various re-releases. Like, it's been 10+ years, Bethesda absolutely has had the time and resources to patch in that stuff.
Not really, they were busy with....fishing I guess? Or did someone make that for CC for them? Survival mode the same story? I forget.
i forgot there was a bard’s college, holy shit
We forgot it for a reason
Huh I join it most play throughs
You're missing out on a decent fetch quest with an actually kinda challenging boss fight and a few standard fetch quests + some free skill levels
That's about it
It’s a true college experience, attend zero classes, party, bullshit your way thru the last test and rest of life.
There's a Bard's college? Where?
In Solitude, on the left when you're heading toward the blue palace.
I literally did that quest for the first time a few weeks ago as I always ignored it as I heard it’s not very interesting. Can confirm it’s boring and pointless.
You get the jarl to approve a festival and then you go instrument hunting. Nothing special.
I only do that one so I can eventually drop the ruby claw.
Honestly understandable
Like all cities except for Solitude, there's also a potential replacement Jarl depending on what you do in the Civil War.
He was under the sea.
UNDER THE SEEAAAA 🎶
UNDER DA SEEAAAA!
There’s only so many places in that “town” he could be at lol
She, if I remember correctly, at first.... Or depending on who you side with for the civil war.
There are like 3 buildings in the place, you couldnt be bother to check them out?
Wait, theres more than the college and the inn?!
I'm shocked I tell you! SHOCKED
There's also a general store in it.
you couldnt be bother to check them out?
ya pretty much
WHY WOULD I, TO BREAK INTO SOME POOR FARMER'S HOUSE?
Seriously, highly advise every mod user to use mods to expand vanilla "cities"
What are some good mods you recommend?
Tons of them, I even use multiple mods for a same city(then using patches to fix conflicts)
For starters, I recommend The Cities of the North series, more stable IMO.
I do use them, and Winterhold is indeed my favorite of them, since it has both collapsed buldings arround the collage bridge and many abandom houses in the city. Which realy helps the lore about the city come to life.
I alao had a mod once to rebuild Winterhold, but it was kind of meh
Winterhold? You mean: Average American College Town? Windhelm North? The place where 1/5th of the towns population is the town drunk? The place where there's damn near a 1-1 ratio of civil servants to citizens?
Man fuck that guy, his hold is in ruins and instead of trying to rebuild he just whines all day about how it's all the college's fault
What I find hilarious about that is the fact that the college is the only economic opportunity that that place has. He should be embracing them so he can get the tourism coin to rebuild his city. But no, prejudice is more important than survival.
WHAT
Lol, I played Oblivion for 6 years before I finally focused on the main storyline and "beat" the game...
Sort of same it was like a year tho really because the main questline can get boring at times but it’s very cool and worth it later on
After Anniversary Edition came out, I went to the Riften docks for the fishing questline and ended up picking up a separate quest that led to a giant dwarven ruin ending in a unique boss fight.
It wasn't AE content, I just had never talked to random NPCs on the Riften docks before.
I read that in his accent lol
I went to him so many times my first play through, like where’s my house, my follower, and my dang quests! So I just let the demon spirits from the college overrun his town and never spoke to him again. Still got pissed every time I walked by his house though, he doesn’t deserve to rule.
Yo r/TrueSTL,you got your post of the day
was looking for this comment
The funniest part for me is i have 100% met them before, but still completely forgot about them so had a "wait there is?" moment reading this
I just asked my wife where he goes and she said this. “He’s often in the tavern and you’ll see him walking to the tavern in the morning and walking home in the evening. Twice I’ve seen his wife on the throne in the Jarl’s hall.” My wife has replayed skyrim around 20x and she seems to never forget a character.
Getting drunk, bitching about the college, teaching his son to be racist.
I’ve been playing since it originally came out and I just now learned lol
That man is bitter AF. But he does nothing to improve the place. Just sits & whines about the college.
Wait till you discover the second blacksmith in markarth.
Yeah and it’s the only city that becoming thane does nothing, there’s no house, but also no housecarl.
You mean the jarl of 3 houses? Yeah, I remember on my first playthrough how I wanted to be thane of all holds and was searching for the Winterhold jarl in the college for a long time before I thought to check the inn outside.
That one Winterhold overhaul that actually makes it look like an impressive city where a lot of it fell off a cliff should be mandatory
Eh, the guy's worthless. He's no Balgruuf.
Wait till you find out about Winterhold’s jail (actually the best jail in the game)
Well I don't know if there's a PlayStation mod for it but someone must have or should have done a mod to see what it looks like and yes I reacted this way when I found out also
Where is the jarl tho
Honestly that jarl should just give up and hand winterhold over to the college lol
The fact the college of winterhold quest doesn’t involve figuring out what happened to winterhold is a massive disappointment. Would have been easy to bring in the Jarl as well
*in theory
I have more people living on my farm than he does in his Hold.
I kinda wish that after you beat the college that the town became less of a shit hole.
Haven't either. Have met his housecarl a few times
Where is the jarl tho.
I only learned he was a thing because I was recording a video where I tried to commit a crime in every city and I decided to rob a home in winterhold, which ended up being his house 😂😂
Missed opportunity with Hearthfire dlc to not add in Winterhold expansion quests.
I would have loved it if there was a huge chain of quests that involved getting all the materials to build houses and stores there. Then go and recruit people to live there. With the promise of a house, food, and a job immediately. A lot of people would probably accept that if they didn’t have much.
Then after you have completed stuff, it earns you money for all the money you put into it. You go talk to a certain NPC, and they have daily money to give to you.
For rebuilding the city, you get new spells, armor, weapons, etc as some loot during, and everyone in town loves you.
If you are already adding in building a house into the game through a dlc, why not use those same mechanics to rebuild a terrible city?
The game is pretty self-aware about it too since his quest is to get the crown of Winterhold or something so the other Jarls take him seriously
Lol thankfully it didn't take ne that long to find the Jarl but I was hella surprised when I did.
in theory.
Wow there really are so many "standard" quests I haven't done yet.
I mod that rebuilt winterholds former glory would be amazing
Da always said “go to the college”
I'm doing his quest for him and will become his thane. I gunna make a new character dedicated to destroying the mage college., though I'm sure many of the characters there are unkillable sadly
What you never noticed the coup where Jarl Korir and whiterun's citizens marched on the other holds after stealing the eye of magnus from the college? Oh? Was that only in my playthrough?
Yeah the jarl is there. His job is to sit on his ass and complain about the mages, probably because they have a cooler castle than him…
I saw him yesterday cos i was almost done with the College questline and he was on his way to the Inn and i was like "wait who tf are you, are you the jarl? WHOA You look younger than sidgeir my dude"
I don’t believe you
The Cutting Room floor mod restores some of his cut quests and even allows you to become Thane
I’m gonna be honest I didn’t even know riften had a jarl until like a week ago when I accidentally discovered it
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Yeah Winterhold seems like it should be a great city a la Solitude but it's smaller than Morthal. Andone just goes to Winterhold for the College (as the innkeepers are aware of) so it's not really like you get to know the jarl a lot.