Open water travel: paddling Skyrim

[Bandy]

Hello, quick search did not reveal any meaningful posts for canoe, boat, or paddle.

 

Perhaps I'm not alone in thinking that Bethesda overlooked an important aspect of TESV by not letting the player travel the waterways/lakes/Sea of Ghosts by canoe/small boat with a paddle in real time.  In fact there are a few mods that open up this possibility, but there is no discussion of them on this forum.  Is this the correct subforum to do so, or should it be relocated under the main 'Mods' discussion forum ???

 

I've looked long and hard at 'Realistic Functional Boats' https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/56410/?

as well as 'Script Free Sailing Ship'  https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/67727/?

Both have pro's and con's judging by their descriptions, but I settled on giving 'Script Free Sailing Ship' a try on my first install of TESV last year, and now on my STEP-X install.

 

I enjoyed it very much despite some at times quirky behaviour resulting from the canoe using horse scripts to save on resources (which is pretty damn ingenious if you ask me!).  As the mod author, ElstarTomas, says:
 

 

Once it was a cow that looked like a boat but thought it was a horse, now-days it's not much left of the cow (leather). It don't moo while idling, it never could jump, it possible to stop it from fleeing and has a reworked skeleton. The horse characteristics kept are things like mounting, dismounting and locking a NPC to another NPC (saddle bone). Some of the NPC characteristics kept are health, inventory, vanilla movement system (including wheels for shorter land journeys), behavior-graph, possibility for animations, collisions with terrains and followers, affected by currents, water-wake, weapon usage, tilting, collision box, mass, carry capacity, skeleton, possibility for water-sounds as footsteps and extra features has already been implemented for horses, for instance "CH".

All in all a lot of things are given for free without the need to add a lot of scripts to handle something that's already in the game. You can always download and try it out.

 

If anyone is interested in further insight on this mod, some of my experiences using it with STEP and 'Convenient Horses' (and 'Horse Followers' on previous install) then do post, but expect some lengthy replies...  :)

[Greg]

Moved to Tamriel Traders/Skyrim for general discussions about Skyrim.

 

I think Bethesda left a lot to be desired regarding the waterways in Skyrim. If I remember correctly, there are two places in Skyrim where it's possible to use a boat: traveling between Windhelm and Solstheim, and traveling between the coast and Castle Valkihaar (although I probably mangled the spelling of the castle). Both are unfortunately nothing more than imagined boating with fast travel magic so the boats may as well not exist. I remember using another mod that allowed the player to visit new lands in the Sea of Ghosts, but it was just glorified fast traveling as well.

 

Now that an actual boat mod is a reality in Skyrim, how about some real working fishing rods?

[soupdragon]

 

Now that an actual boat mod is a reality in Skyrim, how about some real working fishing rods?

You mean like this?  Can't say I've tried it whilst in a boat though.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65613/?

Edited March 14, 2016 by soupdragon