First of three-day mod features, and exciting Curse Skyrim $15k giveaway update!

Today marks the beginning of a series of mod feature highlights, as well as an important announcement regarding our Curse Skyrim $15,000 giveaway!

Over the course of the next three days, we'll be featuring fantastic mods that not only improve gameplay, but help to immerse you even further in the world of Skyrim. To top it off, we've even got interviews with the authors themselves!

Arrowsmith - Simple Fletching

Starting off this week's mod feature is Arrowsmith – Simple Fletching. Mod author Samutz used some serious trial and error to come up with an excellent mod that allows you to create your own arrows at a blacksmithing forge – crafting them in bundles of 50 with the right items – letting your character live off the land.

With this mod enabled it feels almost as though fletching shipped with the game, as Samutz took care to make realistic recipes; with some only able to be crafted with proper blacksmithing skill perks or at Whiterun's infamous Skyforge.

Read on for some insight on how the mod was created, as well as a tutorial for how to create your own crafting recipes!

How did you create something like this without the toolkit being released?

Samutz<span style="font-weight: normal;">: I used the FallOut Mod Manager's TESsnip tool. With a little bit of tweaking, it can be used with Skyrim's master and plugin files, although with some limitations. After I figured out how to make my own plugin files, a lot of trial and error was needed to figure out what the different things did and how to make them do what I wanted.</span>

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What considerations did you take to keep it balanced to fit the game world?

Samutz<span style="font-weight: normal;">: The first version actually wasn't balanced and mostly a proof of concept release. This was because I was still only a few hours in to the game and hadn't seen the higher level items yet.</span>

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<span style="font-weight: normal;">The second release rebalanced the smithing recipes based on feedback I received from the modding community and based on my experience playing a stealth archer character.</span>

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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Since the second release, weaker arrows require cheaper or easy to find materials, while more powerful arrows require more expensive or rare materials, all while making enough arrows to last you a while so that you're not running back to town to make new arrows often.</span>

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Can you tell us about any mods you have planned for the future?

Samutz<span style="font-weight: normal;">: I don't have any more mods planned. The original idea was for Arrowsmith to be a proof of concept for other modders to expand on. So I released a tutorial on how to make smithing recipes (which you can find here) which other modders have used to make their own mods.</span>

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Skyrim $15,000 Challenge Update

<span style="font-weight: normal;">Curse has an exciting second announcement to make about the ongoing Skyrim $15,000 challenge!</span>

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<span style="font-weight: normal;">The Items contest category has been the first category to hit the 35 submission limit! All this means is that we've given out our prize pool for the "Items" subsection of the contest. Any mods that are submitted that would fall under this category will no longer be eligible to earn the prize amounts listed on our Skyrim contest chart.</span>

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<span style="font-weight: normal;">That doesn't mean that you're entirely out of luck, however! </span>If the mod submitted would have been an eligible submission, it will be entered in our $3,000 grand prize giveaway<span style="font-weight: normal;"> so long as it's submitted before our deadline, January 31st.</span>

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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Keep those mods coming! We're excited to have already given out that much cash to authors. Thanks to all of you for sharing your hard work and creativity with us!</span>

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