I’ve spent most of my gaming time for the past year gradually applying more and more mods to Skyrim, and finally got around to trying Chanterelle last week.
It doesn’t have much in the way of quests or npc dialogue, but everything it does have is top quality. Lots of wilderness to explore, a couple of dungeons to crawl. Somehow the landscapes feel more realistic than most of Skyrim. Recommended for those who enjoy walking around in the woods. There are many wonders to discover. Next new game I’m going to try starting there.
I began my attempt at a “start in Chanterelle” game this morning, having added a few more mods and gotten there via the “travel agency” near helgen before doing anything else. Now the grass is taller and there are dinosaurs, but I have some new “hunterborn” skills. Also I have zero equipment or food. I’m slightly worried that all the other mods I have to make things somewhat challenging to survive in Skyrim will make it nigh impossible here. My first attempt, I was instantly killed by a sabre cat. Second attempt is going better so far though, I’ve managed to kill and field dress a wolf.
Update: Day 3 of living in Chanterelle. Well, it turns out I needed another mod to make the foods prepared in “primitive cooking” actually provide nutrition so my character doesn’t so quickly starve to death. On the 5th attempt I got lucky enough to survive long enough to find a good place to camp, and now I’m making progress. I’ve got a little armor now, but still can’t survive one hit from a sabre cat. They’re common enough that I try to stay close to rivers and rocks so as to be able to run away instantly. A kentrosaurus helpfully killed an angry bristleback for me, and I used its tusks to make a bow. I found some iron and made a crude katana as well. The mods that make it slower to level up in normal Skyrim make it take approximately forever here where so much time is spent hunting and running away from things. But that’s okay. It’s just a totally different game now, a pretty good one. It’s going to be really weird some day for my character to emerge from the wilderness and go back to Skyrim.
It’s Saturday morning Skyrim time, but I’ve switched from being a Skyrim player to being a Chanterelle player for now.
On my current game, things are going well. I didn’t choose the most difficult possible start this time, and instead gave myself some leather armor and a conjuration spell to start with. The spell is quite often useful for being a distraction while I run away. Having some idea where to start looking for things and which areas to avoid helps as well. 40 hours or so over the past six weeks and I figure I’ve explored maybe 30% of it all.
Here is the current list of mods I’ve found to be necessary. I have a lot of others that mostly make things more challenging in general, but these are the ones that seem like they’re in one way or another specifically good for Chanterelle.
Essential mods:
- Random Alt. Start for Chanterelle - by far the best way to start new games there
- Hunterborn - hunt for food and stuff. Wouldn’t be the same at all without it
- Hunterborn Survival patch - required if you want to eat and not starve
- Animallica - lots of animals, it’s quite nice
Survival:
- SurvivalModeImproved.esp - You’ll want some kind of survival mode
- SurvivalControlPanel.esp - Adds UI for survival mode stuff
- You may also want some kind of camping mod. The one I have probably isn’t the best choice and I should probably just learn to craft a “scrimshaw” bedroll instead, I’m sure I saw it in the menus somewhere.
Other things:
- Convenient Horses patch - maybe too convenient, but I like it
- Armor Rating Rescaled - makes early-game and primitive armor actually useful
- Toggle Compass - just a simple ‘turn compass off’ ability is all I want for that
- timescale10.esp - more time to get things done in a day seems important
- Scrimshaw Expanded - I don’t remember what this adds, but scrimshaw seems okay with it
- Origins Of Forest grass - taller grass makes a big difference here
- Ark of Chanterelle.esp - adds giant beasts which are more unpredictable than most
- Chanterelle Companion Zeus - I didn’t try it yet due to installation mistake
Eh well, I finally found Bragon’s old boat. Somehow missed it the first time through, so I searched the whole river for it. Also I have three seemingly unique items and have no idea what they’re for. The other thing that’s different about Chanterelle compared to Skyrim is that so far as I know there’s no wiki to instantly tell you how everything works. That too is a welcome change.
Any chance of an update?
Well, I can confirm that I did find Faucheuse. I think it was actually the first of the various “treasure hunt” type things I discovered, but as it turned out I’m glad I forgot about it for so long before finally getting around to following the clues, because it was the most difficult of them. It was quite a journey. Goes a long way into territory that’s much more dangerous than where it starts. Feels like actual map reading skills could be useful. Very satisfying, if you enjoy that kind of thing. The path does go near some obviously unfinished areas, of which there are a few scattered across the land.
As the fights got more difficult, I relied on alchemy quite a lot. Also paused to spend some time levelling up smithing a little, by practising leather working mostly. Lucky for me I’d set the crafting skills to level at something closer to a normal rate compared to everything else, so they wouldn’t be too grindy. Very good weapons can be found, but you’ll probably want some decent armor too if you want to feel comfortable in such places as are found in for example the Hall of the Mountain King.
Even with a whole lot of time spent improving skills and equipment while wandering around, I found myself running away from things at least some of the time all the way through to very near what seemed like a sensible place to call an end to this Chanterelle playthrough. For now I’ll be off to spend some time in Skyrim for a while. The next playthrough will start in Chanterelle again.
