Co-Op 'Skyrim' Mod Beta Is Live

Ever wanted to explore Tamriel with friends but didn't want to do so with thousands of other players in The Elder Scrolls Online? Then this Skyrim Together mod is for you! After a long developmental process, the modders have finally revealed that this project is entering closed beta status, which means we're closer than ever before to a full release!

Closed beta access will be granted to the Patreons that have supported the project thus far, but that exclusivity is short-lived. Soon, mod access will be available to all for testing so that the team can make sure that they get rid of all of the bugs and glitches found before its full launch.

"As mentioned in the closed beta announcement, this test is for our Patrons only - everyone that have backed us in the past and new ones coming in," reads the mod creator's recent Reddit post. "We're doing this so that we can ensure a smooth open beta release which we will be working towards from here. This means that we will be gathering location data, fix the new bugs that we probably didn't anticipate and scale up towards a full release."

Here's what else you need to know:

Make sure that:

• You have an account on //oreo.skyrim-together.com/ (re-register if it says invalid email/password)
• Make sure Patreon is linked to it
• You downloaded and installed Harbor with the link above

From there:

• Launch Skyrim through Harbor (will also launch the latest version of SKSE if present)
• Load in a savegame (be sure to be further than character creation, else you cannot connect yet)
• Hit RCTRL to open our UI
• Invite the friends you want to play with
• Hit "Launch Session" to start playing!

As far as what Skyrim players can expect to see in the closed beta:

What you can expect from the closed beta:

• A fully working UI to invite friends and start private sessions
• Health bars and a party overlay on the UI (which can be hidden)
• Player and NPC synchronization
• Interacting with objects such as levers, buttons, puzzle elements
• Picking up placed items in the world, such as soul gems and sacks of gold
• Chat commands like "/tp {playername}", "/server time(scale) " and "/server duplication on/off" (use "/help" to view all of the options)
• Synchronization of locks, like doors and chests
• PVP and PVE (weapons, magic, shouts and (cross)bow and arrow(/bolt))
• (To most extend) the disabling of pausing whenever you enter a menu, to prevent the world from standing still for everyone
• A reworked death system for players to prevent loading the last savegame
• The ability to roam elsewhere while other players are in another area
• Mod support (compatible with all Creation Kit mods, and additionally client-sided SKSE mods like SkyUI (which requires the latest version of SKSE). Detailed info here)

What we still want to work on before releasing it to the public (due to stability etc):

• Support for Oldrim yet to come (we encountered some major issues that were left unnoticed while we continued developing for Skyrim Special Edition. We want to fix Oldrim as soon as we can.)
• Shared containers (chests, burial urns, NPC inventories, etc)
• Dropping items into the world (items will simply not appear)
• Factions and bounties (e.g.: if your friend is a Stormcloak, it will not aggro your hosted Imperials)
• Object synchronization (this mainly means dragging items (no cabbage ball unfortunately), interacting with objects such as levers and picking placed items up still syncs)
• Quest synchronization (you'll have to take the same steps in the quest, but some quests might get stuck because the quest script requires an actor to move to another place, which it cannot as another player is hosting that NPC)

The current hard cap is set to 8 players but if enough players say they are interested in that cap being raised, the team said they would be open to looking into it. As far as Skyrim Together goes, there will be a launcher ready to be downloaded when the closed beta goes live. The team mentioned that players would be looking at roughly a 200mb update, which isn't that bad considering the content context.

Excited to learn more? You can check out this mod's official subreddit here to check out even more about this project before you test it out for yourself!

Thoughts on the 8-player co-op mod for Skyrim? Join in on the conversation in the comment section below, or hit me up over on Twitter @DirtyEffinHippy!