Skyrim is a beautiful, endlessly moddable open world. Skyrim Together Reborn lets friends play it together online. I'm using both to prototype my own co-op RPG: custom roles, big world events and my own stories, playable by my friends with zero setup on their end. And I'm building it with Claude, an AI that writes the tools, explains the hard parts, and now builds Skyrim mods from plain-English descriptions.
The whole point of this project is that you don't touch mods, settings or config files. Ever. All the hunting, installing, testing and fixing is my job. Here's the plan for you:
That's it. When I add a new event or fix a bug, your launcher picks it up automatically next time. If something crashes, there'll be a button that sends me a report, so you never have to troubleshoot.
Status: everything is being built and tested solo by me first. You only get it once it's solid.
Asheron's Call's mystery. World of Warcraft's group combat. Skyrim's beauty.
Later: whole new continents with their own bosses, stories and biomes. Skyrim is the frozen north; after it come a desert, a jungle, and alien insect lands.
Skyrim, played like a dungeon-running MMORPG.
Miah's Merc Mod adds a Mercenaries Guild to Skyrim and lets you bring two more companions into your party, for a full four-person group. Every member fills a real Trinity role (Tank, Healer or Damage), and enemies decide who to attack using a threat table, just like the MMOs we grew up raiding in. It's all inside a normal Skyrim game.
A new guild in Skyrim, and your home base for party play. It's where your group comes together: the hub for hiring the companions who fill out your party and getting them ready to fight alongside you.
Vanilla Skyrim is built around one hero, maybe with one follower. Merc Mod adds two extra companion slots, so you can run a full four-person party. That's the classic MMO group size: enough bodies to need real roles, small enough that every role matters.
Each role has a clear job. A party that doesn't play its roles won't survive, which is the point.
Normal Skyrim enemies just attack whoever is closest or hit them last. That makes a "tank" impossible: the healer always gets jumped. Merc Mod adds a threat table: enemies track who has done the most to earn their anger, and go after the top of the list. That's what lets a Tank actually hold aggro, and lets a Healer and Damage dealers play their roles without being chased down.
Merc Mod is meant to be played on Legendary. The game is re-tuned around a full party: enemies have a lot more health, and encounters throw more enemies at you. Solo-hero tactics won't cut it. Fights are tuned for a coordinated group with a tank up front, a healer behind and damage dealers focusing targets.
If it feels brutal on purpose, that's working as intended.
Working = confirmed in my own game. Testing = built and being tested now. Everything gets proven solo first.
Mercenaries wait at the inns. Talk to one, pick their role (Tank, Healer or Damage) and they join your party, free of charge. You can change their role or send them home any time.
Every blow and every heal earns threat; the tank earns three times as much. An enemy switches targets only when someone passes the current target's threat by 10% in melee, or 30% at range, the same rule WoW uses. Hit too hard as damage and you'll see "Careful: you're about to pull it off the tank".
Shout a mark onto an enemy, even before the fight starts: Skull (kill first), X (kill second), Moon (crowd-controlled, leave it alone) and the tank's Shield. Mercs follow the kill order and never touch the moon. Marks fade as they stop meaning much: the shield dims as the tank's hold slips, and the moon fades as its crowd control is about to run out.
The healer can turn an enemy into a harmless animal (yes, a goat), with the moon mark over it so the party leaves it alone. It's the WoW mage's polymorph, and the biggest crowd-pleaser so far.
A merc tank opens on every new enemy with a taunt, picks up anything chasing the healer, and pops its own cooldowns when it's low.
Sleep (a sap before the pull), Fear and Frost Nova, with WoW's diminishing returns: each crowd control on the same enemy lasts half as long as the last, until it's briefly immune.
Frost Nova looks great: enemies get covered in big ice crystals. Still checking that they stay rooted in place.
Imbue the whole party's weapons for half an hour: flame that burns up the blade like a torch, frost with snowflakes falling, acid that smokes and drips, and storm crackling with lightning. Each adds elemental damage, and acid eats the enemy's armor. All built from effects already in the game.
Giants wrapped in fire, frost, lightning or acid that roam the wild and hunt people, guards included, instead of standing around a campfire. They're the first step toward world events.
First sighting: a Rime Golem, a giant covered in frost, found me on my first test. I hit it with Frost Nova and it got encased in big ice crystals. Then it killed my whole party, and a guard for good measure. That's exactly the kind of threat I want a party to have to plan for.
Next for them: golems that occasionally march on Whiterun and the other major cities.
Enemies below 20% health take 50% more damage from your party, so finishing a fight feels like a push.
Every step below has the same three parts: what we built, why we chose it, and how it works. Click any step to open it.
What: Chose Skyrim Special Edition + Skyrim Together Reborn as the base for my game prototype.
What: Skyrim SE 1.7.104, SKSE 2.3.1, Address Library v13 and
Skyrim Together Reborn 1.8.3, all running on Nobara Linux through Steam's Proton and Mod Organizer 2.
str_setup.py,
a 28-step setup program that checks each step against the real system before marking it done,
offers to fix the safe ones automatically (with backups), installs mods straight from my Downloads
folder, and remembers progress between runs. When something broke (like an SKSE version mismatch),
the fix went into the program, so it can never silently break the same way again.What: The official Skyrim Together server running in a container on my machine, with an on/off switch, password setup and a mod-list check.
What: Bethesda's official world-building tool, with the community stability fix pack (CKPE).
What: skyrim_report.py collects every version, path, setting and recent log into one report.
What: An open-source bridge (skyrim-modding-tools-mcp) that gives Claude 15 tools to look up,
create, change, build and install Skyrim mods, connected through Claude Code in my terminal.
mcp_setup.py to install it step by step: a private Node.js 24
(leaving the system version alone), the .NET SDK, a separate ModTest profile so testing never
touches the co-op setup, and a real end-to-end test. When the build failed with an obscure compiler warning,
Claude traced it to Fedora's .NET compiler being one version too old and taught the installer to fetch a newer one.
Final proof: asking it to find the Iron Sword returned 012EB7:Skyrim.esm.What: A new dragon, half size with reduced health, made entirely by describing it.
help "Swarm Dragon" 4, then player.placeatme, and a dragon called
Swarm Dragon was attacking me. It looks right, flies right and is very aggressive.What: A notes file (CLAUDE.md) the AI reads every time it starts.
ModTest; close Mod Organizer before installing; multiplayer-safe scripting; every new item named
CP_…; debug tools built in from day one), my machine's details, and every design so far.What: A small server, hosted online, that keeps the party's threat tables and marks, with player accounts and a check that every player runs the exact same files.
What: One Windows installer with everything a player needs, and a launcher where they log in and press Play.
What: Roles, threat, marks, taunts, crowd control, elemental weapons and golems, all described in plain English and built by Claude (see Miah's Merc Mod above).
The rule: as few mods as possible. Every extra mod is another thing that can break multiplayer sync or crash a session. Skyrim Together works best close to vanilla, so we only add what's essential, plus our own content.
| Piece | Version | What it does | Why we need it | Friend package |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skyrim Special / Anniversary Edition | 1.7.104 | The game itself | Everything runs on it. Must be the Steam version for Skyrim Together. | You own it |
| Skyrim Together Reborn | 1.8.3 | Online co-op: syncs players, NPCs, combat, quests | The whole point: playing together. | Auto-installed |
| SKSE64 (Script Extender) | 2.3.1 | Lets mods do more than the base game allows | Skyrim Together requires it, matched exactly to the game version. | Auto-installed |
| Address Library for SKSE | v13 | A lookup table that tells mods where things are in the game's memory | Required by Skyrim Together. Wrong version = instant crash. | Auto-installed |
| PapyrusUtil SE | AE/SE | Extra scripting functions: saving data, files, lists | How the game and the party sync pass notes to each other. | Auto-installed |
Miah's Merc Mod (CoopRoles.esp + scripts) | in testing | Mercenaries Guild, 4-person parties, roles, server-managed threat, raid marks, taunts, crowd control, elemental weapons, golems | Turns Skyrim combat into MMO-style group play. | Included |
| Our other content (Swarm Dragons, events, story) | growing | The world events and story to come | This is the game. | Included |
| Friend launcher | private test | One-click install, log in, connect, version check | So friends never touch a mod or a setting. | Included |
| Texture improvements | maybe | Sharper visuals | Looks only, safe for sync. Only if it doesn't hurt stability. | Undecided |
| Bundled Creation Club extras | — | Small paid add-ons that come with the Anniversary upgrade | Switched off: they're a common cause of mismatches between players. | Disabled |
"Auto-installed" is the plan: the launcher downloads each piece from its official source. Each mod's author decides whether others may redistribute it, so I'm checking every license before deciding what's bundled directly and what's downloaded. At worst, one piece might need a single click on Nexus Mods the first time.
| Tool | What it does | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Claude + Claude Code | AI that writes the tools, explains problems, and builds mods from plain English | Turns weeks of learning into working results, and teaches me along the way. |
| skyrim-modding-tools-mcp | Bridge giving the AI 15 Skyrim tools (find, create, edit, build, deploy…) | The Creation Kit can't be automated; this can. |
| Mutagen | The engine that reads and writes Skyrim plugin files | Mature and trusted by the modding community, so no corrupt files. |
| Mod Organizer 2 | Keeps every mod in its own folder; profiles for "co-op" vs "testing" | My game folder stays clean, and tests never touch the co-op setup. |
| Creation Kit + CKPE | Bethesda's world editor + community stability fixes | Hand-building places, terrain and NPC paths. |
| str_setup.py, skyrim_report.py, mcp_setup.py | Setup checker & control panel, diagnostics, AI-bridge installer | Written by Claude so every step is checked, repeatable and explained. |
| Nobara Linux, Proton, podman | My OS, Steam's Windows layer, server container | No Windows anywhere in my workshop. |
I'm not a professional programmer. I'm learning Unity and Unreal in my spare time and, honestly, it wasn't sticking. What changed everything was working with an AI instead of fighting tutorials. Here's what that actually looked like.
Bethesda's Creation Kit has no automation at all. Normally, a new creature means opening the editor, finding the original, duplicating it, and clicking through tabs of stats. Now I describe it, and it's in my game.
Result: launched Skyrim, typed two console commands, and a Swarm Dragon was attacking me. First try.
Everything on this page (the setup programs, the diagnostics, the AI-to-Skyrim bridge setup, the first mod, and this web page itself) was built working with Claude. If you've got an idea you've never had the skills to pull off, it's the best place to start.
Try Claude →| Step | What | Why this order | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Party combat: roles, threat, marks, taunts, crowd control | Everything else is built on fighting as a group | Built Tuning |
| 2 | Combat that looks amazing: glowing elemental weapons, clear marks, visible shouts | People have to want to play it. Polymorph proved how much a great effect matters | Now |
| 3 | Boss mechanics: phases, attacks to dodge, adds for the tank to pick up | The first real test of a party working together | Next |
| 4 | Class kits: a rogue with stealth and sap, an archer with a pet and Misdirection, a warlock with a summoned pet that fights or off-tanks | More ways to handle threat, more roles to play | Next |
| 5 | Party frames and meters (each other's health; damage, healing and threat) | Quality of life, once the fighting is fun | Later |
| 6 | Hidden items and clue trails worth hunting for | The Asheron's Call part of the vision | Planned |
| 7 | World events: elemental golems attacking Whiterun and the major cities, Dragon Swarms, invasions, encroachment, Daedric summoners | A world that reacts, built on proven combat | Planned |
| 8 | "Living world" layer: events that move on while nobody's online | Makes the world feel persistent | Planned |
| 9 | New continents: desert, jungle, alien insect lands | Once everything above works | Later |
Skyrim Together keeps players in sync while connected, but each player's progress lives in their own save. So instead of making everything persistent (that would mean rewriting the multiplayer mod), we persist our content: which towns were attacked, which bosses are dead, where the villain is headed.
No extra mods for anyone. It's an untested idea, so it gets proven solo first, like everything else.
skyrim-modding-tools-mcp) is open source and the modding community's tools are public.
My setup scripts are tailored to my machine, but ask me, and if there's interest I'll clean them up to share.
Built on the work of: Bethesda Game Studios (Skyrim & the Creation Kit) • the Tilted Phoques team (Skyrim Together Reborn) •
the SKSE team • meh321 (Address Library) • perchik71 (CKPE) • the Mutagen project • Ciltress
(skyrim-modding-tools-mcp) • built with Claude by Anthropic.
A personal fan project. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Bethesda, ZeniMax or Anthropic.