Spend Christmas playing Skyrim with this festive quest mod, you know you want to
It’s ok, your relatives already know you’re a saddo that’s been playing the same game since 2011.
If you’ve been looking for a reason to get sucked back into Skyrim this Christmas, a new mod can provide exactly that, offering a fully-voiced adventure that’ll teach you about the spirit of Saturalia.
Yes, Saturalia. Look, without getting into a big discussion about Tamrielic culture, it’s basically the Elder Scrolls equivalent of Christmas, held on the 25th of Evening Star. Seriously, they even decorate trees and everything.
As a gift designed to celebrate this and our own holiday season, modder JaySerpa has created ‘The Gift of Saturalia’, which adds a new quest to the game that’ll see you work with a rather suspicious “bearded old trader”.
“He wants you to help the people in Skyrim that are going through a rough time and by doing this, also spread the spirit of Saturalia across the province," JaySerpa writes. “[The] Quest is short and sweet, similar in scope to the vanilla quest ‘The Book of Love", but longer.” They add that, in their view, the coolest aspects of the mod is that it “has lasting effects, scenes and dialogue after its completion”, allowing you to see the impact your do-gooding has had on people’s lives.
As you can see in this cheeky little trailer, which definitely isn’t inspired by any other video games - cough, GTA, cough - the mod’s one or two hour long quest revolves around the characters of Diane the Bard and Niklas the Trader, voiced by streamers LIZZ and Urgie. It also aims to give “several vanilla NPCs that don't usually get much love” a bit more to do via some spliced vanilla dialogue, taking its total up to 500 festive lines.
It looks like your persuasion skills will be put to the test, but there are some “Interesting rewards that encourage staying in the cold areas of Skyrim” on the line for your trouble. That’s in addition to the chance to mess up the living situations, relationships, or general attitudes of some NPCs depending on your actions, because what would Christmas be without some emotional strife?
Also, if you’re saving up to buy your partner a terrible last minute petrol station gift, you’ll be glad to learn that the Creation Club’s Saturalia Holiday Pack add-on isn’t a hard requirement for JaySerpa’s work, though the mod will make use of it if you do.
If you love a good Bethesda RPG, be sure to check out our coverage of the latest must-have mods for Starfield and Fallout 4, as well as our recent interview with some modders about Skyrim’s new Creations initiative.