Skyrim: Soul Fade Promises Your Biggest Challenge Yet

It feels fairly safe to say, at this point, that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of the greatest RPGs of all time, and Bethesda’s sprawling epic has given players hundreds of millions of hours worth of enjoyment over the years.

That said, it released all the way back in 2011, and given that we still somehow haven’t had the sequel despite it being announced by Todd Howard at E3 in 2018, you could be forgiven for having run out of things to do in the base game for a while now. Fortunately, the game’s immense modding community is on hand to fill in the gaps, and they’re still releasing brilliant efforts to this day.

Skyrim: Soul Fade Isn’t For The Faint Of Heart

Bethesda Entertainment/Nexus Mods: NEW DAWN Redux

Over on Nexus Mods, you should be able to find the mod page for Soul Fade, a lightweight download that adds real consequences to the game every time you die. If you’ve played for any length of time, you’ll know that aside from having to load an earlier save, there aren’t really any problems if one of the world’s many dangerous creatures bumps you off.

That changes with this mod, as described in the flavor text for the download:

“The Dragonborn’s soul is immortal, but it can be weakened. Death may not bring about your true end, it does weigh heavily upon you, and as you fall time and time again in battle, your very essence weakens. Thankfully, you are a slayer of dragons. Consume their souls and use them to restore your own.”

The way this plays out mechanically is that for every tenth death you suffer through, the chance that your physical and magical attacks will cause no damage increases significantly. Specifically, the change with each tenth death is as follows:

• 0-9: Unaffected
• 10-19: 15% Chance of No Damage
• 20-29: 30% Chance of No Damage
• 30-39: 45% Chance of No Damage
• 40-49: 60% Chance of No Damage
• 50+: 75% Chance of No Damage

That means you’ll have to be a lot more careful with your life when stalking those dark corners of Skyrim, or you’ll quickly find yourself far too weak to live anything other than a quiet life.

Skyrim Modders Are Doing Akatosh’s Work

If it hasn’t been said enough already, Skyrim’s modding community really is one of the best out there, and they’ve given the game life far beyond what it would have otherwise have had. Given that we still haven’t seen any more of The Elder Scrolls VI, it’s a genuine blessing to have more ways to play the existing games moving forward.

Systems

Released

November 11, 2011

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol

Developer(s)

Bethesda Game Studios

Publisher(s)

Bethesda Softworks

Engine

Creation Engine