The wilderness is dotted with small barbarian camps like this, and each of the Barbarian nations will have greater capitals too. There will be significant differences between the smaller tribes as well. The southern Nord tribes, for an example, are lightly armoured and fight using ranged combat, while the northern Nords are heavily armoured, using axes, blunt weapons and other heavy weaponry. This is a southern camp.
A video-tour of Anvil Nova, with focus on the harbour area.
I’ve not been updating for a while, but I’m working hard on the mod. Here are some screenshots of the latest work. Most of my work has been concentrated on the cold north, and I’ve been mostly pasting trees and rocks and doing other necessary, but not-so-exciting work.
This is the inside of the Anvil Nova Cathedral. I have many undone interiors in the city of Anvil Nova still. I will do them quite late in the process, so I get to implement all the new resources in those interiors.
The road to Windum. Windum is the player-owned shire in Frontier. Here, you will buy land and build your castle and town. Windumshire will be green and pleasant, although it lies pretty far north and close to the barbarian border. Windumshire is all undone yet; I’m saving the best for last.
This is what much of the barbarian north will look like. There will be no sunshine and no green, rolling hills with pleasant farm landscapes. Imagine forest areas like these full of predators and barbarian raiding parties. This is a small forest lake near the border to Windum.
This is the view Frontier supplies when you approach Anvil Nova from the north. If the weather permits, it really looks quite impressive. The city of Anvil Nova is seen there to the left. Farms and mills dot the landscape around the city; to the right, you can see Cilicia Prison. At the top of the scene, you can see Godfrey island and the town of Vestra, which is situated on what looks like a peninsula from this distance.
The horizon looks better in vanilla lighting. I’m using a mod. Nonetheless, I do need to work on the horizon. Either resizing the worldspace to extend further south will help, or I’ll use some other trickery.
I have kindly obtained permission from Backstept to use his excellent Regent Armoury swords in Frontier. In this land, they will be the main choice of weaponry for the nobility and officers. The Crusaders at Lone Wolf will also be armed with these Medieval weapons. You can download his mod here to check this high-quality work out.
Backstept has based his work on Ewart Oakeshott’s standardization of Medieval sword types, meaning that the swords you see the knights carry into battle in the Frontier will be as historically correct as you can get. This is really important to me, since I’m trying to recreate a bit of a true Medieval atmosphere in this fantasy game.
I’ve already implemented the armours to support a Medieval atmosphere, now I can also put the swords in place and soon let this heavy Medieval knight’s arsenal loose on fantasy barbarians, trolls and dragons!
There’s a special material on The Frontier which is found nowhere else. It is called Dircinium, named after the town where it was first discovered – Dirch. Since I’ve invented the material, it also has to be of some use. I need to have a process where you can go down into the mine, mine the ore and ultimately create something from it too. It took me a while to figure out, but now I have the process in place.
This is the Dirch Mine. It’s going to be filled with the valuable Dircinium, but for testing purposes I placed only one vein down there at the bottom. My gentleman testperson looks a bit sad and needs to have something sexy to dress in to impress the ladies.
Mining Dircinium works well. Two Ores are added to his inventory as he hacks away at the vein.
Off to the smelter to produce ingots from the extracted ore then. Dirch is a small mining town and has all the facilities; smelters, smiths, workbenches and so on. The gentleman quickly produces his ingots.
I’ve added the Dircinium Armour pieces under Steel. Only the basic Steel smithing perk is required. I figure that since Dircinium is such a rare resource and only found on the Frontier, low smithing requirements are suitable. Just add a few leather strips to the mix and the man produces this chickmagnet of a helmet!
“Ladies! Look at me! I produced my own helmet! Who wants to go out!? Ladies!?” Oh. I forgot. There are no ladies yet to impress in Frontier.
Hearthfire, the next DLC for Skyrim, was released on PC yesterday. This one’s not a large quest-DLC like the previous DLC, but a smaller – what I would call – house mod. You’re obviously going to be able to build your own home in this one and move in your spouse and then adopt one of those irritating children. Oh well, let’s see now if it’s any fun.
I’ve finished the exterior as well as interior of Castle Lone Wolf. The Castle sits on a mountain cliff and is the home of a band of Crusaders. Their mission is to protect the northern border and spread civilization north. The Crusader Army is very much male-dominated, just like the monastery of Dibella will be very much female. Here, we’re standing at the top of the tower, looking down at the court yard.
This is part of the interior. These guys love Talos, which is also why many men from the rest of Tamriel have come to join the Crusader ranks recently since the White Gold Concordate. On the Frontier, Talos worship is still permitted since the colony was never annexed by the Empire formally. The Lone Wolf Castle Crusaders have therefore implemented strong religious ideas into their Order as well; they see themselves as the final, true guardians of Talos.
This is the torture chamber. It’s the home of one of the most eccentric characters ever, the Inquisitor. The new Crusader Lord doesn’t believe in torture as a righteous means of obtaining facts, so the Inquisitor has been pretty much left without work recently. He is desperate for new “clients” and is trying to market his services in entirely new ways to stay in business; like a spa, by offering both flogging, burning and some cleansing stretching on the torture rack to potential clients.
Frontier 