With my latest character I decided to make my own Alternate Start, using the guidelines At the bottom of the UESP Wiki's Console page. I was surprised at how easy it was. To be honest, most of the things the wiki shows in their batch file are unnecessary. All you really need to do it edit the Skyrim.ini file and add one line to the [General] section with the place you want to start (the wiki is very handy in providing the ids of every location in the game). For example:


Note that as long as you have that line in your .ini file every time you start the game it will always start a new character at Riverwood (or wherever you set for the starting cell). It skips the main menu, and goes right to the new game there. So you might want to comment the line out with a ; mark except when you actually want to start a new character.

It starts you out as a male Nord (a Mord!), preset #1, with all of this stuff. Basically a full set of iron armor, some iron weapons, some potions, lockpicks etc... The Puppeteer Figurine is from my Puppeteer mod.

From that point all you have to do is open the console and type in the following:

player.removeallitems
showracemenu

You can even skip the removeallitems command if you want, if you want to keep all that iron stuff.

At that point you are basically naked wherever you started. I just used the Help command to equip my character with what I felt was appropriate. This is one of the most useful improvements in the ES series. All you have to do it open the console, and type in the following:

Help "item or spell name as it appears in the game" 4

So if you wanted to start with a steel sword, you would just type in:

Help "steel sword" 4

It will then give you the ID of not only the base steel sword, but every enchanted version with "Steel Sword" in its name (Like Steel Sword of Burning, Steel Sword of Rabbit Slaying, etc...)

From there you can simply use the player.additem command to add them to your character. This even works with modded items, and in fact, is the easiest way to get the ID of something from a mod, as the first two characters of every mod item's ID changes depending on where it is in the mod order at the moment. But the Help command always gives you the correct ID at the moment.

I discovered some interesting side effects of starting the game this way. The main one is that the main quest does not start. Not at all. When I got to Whiterun I did not get the usual guard walking up and saying: "Holt, The city is closed due to Jarl Baalin being too busy dancing on the table." The guards ignored me, and the gate had the "locked, needs a key to open" message. But it was easily opened by opening the console, selecting it, and typing in the unlock command. From then on everything was as usual.

I found Helgen was even stranger. The gates are likewise locked and requiring a key to open. But the unlock command gets you in. That is where the weirdness starts. The place is not destroyed, and there are Imperials standing guard on the walls. Some of the Stormcloaks are lined up near the west gate, along with Lokir. The civilians are all just standing around looking. There is no sign of Tullius, Elenwen, or Ulfric. The real fun is Hadvar and Ralof, who immediately start attacking everyone on the other side. But the others all ignore the two! You can actually go inside the inn, though there is just a generic little room there. You can go inside Helgen Keep as well. Gunjar's dead body is there like normal, but without the Imperial Captain to loot, you cannot get the key to open the first gate to the basements. The unlock command works of course. The cave-in happens like normal, but most of the soldiers you encounter down there are missing. I only saw the torturer, who ignores you. I followed it almost to the end, but found that after the sleeping bear there is a closed wooden portcullis blocking the cave exit. I have no idea where that came from!

Finally, I found that you can still start the main quest if you want to. Just open the console and type in:

setstage mq101 0

It then starts the regular opening sequence on the cart. Neat thing, if you are in third person when you type the command in, you remain that way through the entire tutorial!

The cart ride in third person

I am still trying to figure out who these two are (they have nothing to do with the alternate start, they always show up as the wagon rides into the fort, walking alongside the road. Once the cart is inside Helgen and draws abreast of the inn, they just vanish.

It looks really weird when the game forces your character to move during the scripted sequences, your arms disappear.

Once you get into the keep and Haddie/The 'Lofster cuts your binds, the game goes back to normal. I found my level, skill points, and all my perks had been unchanged. However, all my gear was gone. So if you want to do this, put your stuff in a safe container beforehand.

I am not sure if there is a way to not do the main quest, and change Helgen to its ruined, bandit infested state. That would be nice. There is probably a quest somewhere in the game that runs in the background that does it though.

I think I will probably do this for all my future games, and eschew alternate start mods. Since I don't do the main quest, it is actually nice not having it clutter up my journal. I just would like to find a way to make Helgen a bit more 'normal'.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Oct 20 2013, 05:24 AM