Skyrim Creation Kit Quest Tutorial

[Kathy Douds]

Moddingcan be a complex and daunting prospect with any tool, and the Creation Kit is no exception. This tutorials section is designed to help you get started regardless of your level of experience and area of interest.

If you're brand new to modding, or just brand new to modding for Bethesda Game Studios' titles, start here, where you'll get basic instructions for installing and navigating the Creation Kit. You may also wish to browse the general editor reference pages to get an idea for some of the terminology and concepts used throughout this wiki. Once you're comfortable with the tool and ready to get to work, try jumping into one of the tutorial projects on the right.

If you're experienced in modding for Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas, the Creation Kit will feel very familiar to you, as the data format and tools are shared between those games and the Creation Engine. You may wish to start by browsing some of the new features the Creation Kit offers. While some of the tutorials may be covering ground you already understand, keep an eye out for this symbol, which indicates when a tutorial is using new functionality.

As a veteran modder, your expertise is especially valuable in contributing to the modding community and this wiki! Please consider writing your own tutorials, editing pages, and contributing solutions to common modding tasks and problems.

Do you want to create exciting new areas for players to explore? Building new gameplay space is a great way to expand the game for players, as well as a great way to learn the Creation Kit. Check out the level design tutorial series, written by the BGS level design team, to learn how to create your own dungeon from scratch. While this tutorial series is designed as a complete project, example files are provided at each step - so you can jump around if only specific topics interest you.

Perhaps you want to create stories that unfold for the player? Quests are core to the RPG experience, and a valuable storytelling tool. The BGS quest designers have prepared a quest design tutorial series to get you started writing dialogue and using the quest tools offered by the Creation Kit. As with the level design series, these tutorials take you through a complete quest project, but example files are provided at each step. If you are totally new to designing quests, see the Fallout 4 Simple Fetch Quest, which provides a detailed step-by-step guide to the most common kind of quest.

Want to create content above and beyond what can be achieved with conventional tools? The Creation Kit comes packaged with an all-new scripting language known as "Papyrus". Papyrus is similar to popular scripting languages like Ruby and Python, and offers an unprecedented level of power to modders of Bethesda games.

Because Papyrus is an entirely new tool, and a complex one, this wiki features an entire scripting reference, as well as tutorials to help you get started. Familiarity with other scripting languages will offer a considerable advantage, but is not required.

Much of the work you'll do in the Creation Kit is visual in nature. Sometimes something just doesn't click until you see it being done. Thankfully, there are a number of Video Tutorials produced by Bethesda and the Creation Kit modding community to help you out.

Throughout these tutorials, the following symbols will be used to call out different kinds of special notes. Take note of the symbols associated with each type of callout box: you may wish to take special note of certain type in particular, depending on your expertise level.

No offence but you really need to break this down into smaller topics and use more pictures, and the last 1/4 of this page suffers from Wall of Text syndrome, I doubt anyone will even attempt to try and plough through it.

I wish people would show how to do other kind of quests, not just 'talk to npc' kind of quests. I'm trying to do a very basic and simple 'pick up note, get quest to go somewhere with marker added" that is it... Can I find any such? Nope, every single tutorial is all about npc's and going super big. I like to know about books, or item pick ups, or getting a quest from a trigger you cross.. not just darn npc's!

This is because the method for an NPC quest applies to every type of quest -the commands for these things are the same. It's just the application of different functions and such.

For a pick up note thing, you have 3 normal options:

Add a script to the note with the event _-_ObjectReference. OnRead, you then SetObjectiveDisplayed (or set a stage on the quest, which also will display the objective) to display the objective. This will set the stage of the quest when you read the note.

Add a script to the note with the event _-_ObjectReference, conditioning it so it will only set stage/display objective when it enters the player's inventory. This will set stage/display objective when you pick up the note, instead of when you read it.

Or add _-_ObjectReference in a script on an ALIAS on the PLAYER. Does the same thing as above but you have the script on the player instead of the book.

For item pick ups, you can use method one or two on the item/player alias. The method of the quest does not change - you're still setting stages or setting objectives as displayed. The only thing that changes is the event to start - for example, when you read the book, or when you pick up an item. You get this code by using events, like OnItemAdded or OnContainerChange, or OnRead. There are a ton of them and you can find more of them on the CK WIki: _Page

So THAT'S why there are no tutorials like that. They're simply not necessary, and NPC quests are the most common type - and they allow the writer to show how to do dialogue as well. Dialogue itself is not necessary to a quest, just an 'inbetween' thing like a script on a book that advances the quest when you read it.

Welcome to the Modding Workshop: My First Quest. In this tutorial we will be discussing how to create a lore-friendly quest using existing NPC's and recorded dialogue and how to package it properly for upload. We will briefly discuss item creation, triggers, and scripting, but this workshop will not cover every aspect of these topics, only what is needed for this task. Coming into this tutorial, you should already be familiar with the basics of navigating the Creation Kit and some knowledge of Papyrus syntax.

Part I: Tools

You're going to need several tools for this job in addition to the Creation Kit.

BAE - Allows you to view the contents and extract from Skyrim BSA and ESM files.

Voice File Reference Tool - Allows you to view and search the voice files from Skyrim without needing to extract them and shows file name, dialogue, and voice type.

Unfuzer CPP Edition - Allows you to decompress FUZ files from Skyrim to WAV and LIP and compress WAV and LIP files to FUZ.

Wrye Bash - Takes care of most of the hoop jumping needed to get your mod packaged for release to Steam. Not necessary for other mod sites who allow uploads of loose files.

TES5Edit - Shows you what files are included in your mod and how they are interacting with their respective masterfiles and/or other mods. Useful for finding mistakes and conflicts. Experimental.

Clean Saves - make your own or use my resource. Probably both. You'll want saves made at key points around the area and time frame in game that you'll be modding. For example - if your quest doesn't start until after a certain event, make a clean save before and after that event. This way you will be able to test if your quest triggers properly even if a downloader installs it on a game that has already passed that checkpoint.

Notepad ++ - Text documents on steroids. Infinitely helpful for scripting. It numbers lines, helps you line up indented code properly. Such nice, much syntax.

7 zip - File compressor and extractor. Skyrim scripts now come packaged in a .zip file and need to be decompressed to be edited

To do this go to File>Preferences>Scripts>Fragment File Prefix in the CK window and fill it in with something that makes it yours. Hit Apply.

Smarty Says: Use the same prefix for any files you create inside your mod! This will help you locate them in the Object Window and elsewhere.

You also need an outline for your quest. Each bullet in your outline will become a Quest Stage.

The beginning of a quest is always invisible to the player. Without the quest having already begun quest objectives cannot be assigned. Quest dependent dialogue, items, events, and anything else included in your quest will not be enabled and quest stages cannot be advanced. Part of quest creation will be determining how your quest will start. Will it start when the game starts (Unbound)? Will the player find a long forgotten tome that leads them to your quest (Rebel's Cairn)? Will they walk into a room ( The Golden Claw)? Will it be a combination of these things (Boethiah's Calling)?

Quests that start when the game starts can be a strain on someone's save game and even corrupt it over time. Reading a book requires the creation and placement of said book and making sure the player knows how to find it in your mod description. Picking up an item has similar problems. Walking into a room, however... Can be done easily. I recommend using an interior cell to minimize conflicts with other mods and finding an interior cell your player will have to pass through during normal game play in order to complete your quest.

Then you need to know how many objectives there will be - ours only has one objective. You can always add more and once you know how to manage one, adding more is simple.

And lastly you need to end your quest which is more complex than it sounds. More on this later.

Part III: Turning on the Creation Kit

You thought I'd never let you. Well, now's your chance! We're finally ready.

Turn on the Creation Kit and load the Skyrim.esm only. The default settings on the Creation Kit do not allow multiple master files to run simultaneously. It is possible, but not covered here.

Starting the Quest: This tutorial quest involves only locations and NPC's from the Mage's College. There's no reason for this quest to begin running silently in the background until the player is there so we will put our quest's jump start in the Hall of Elements - the first interior cell in the Mage's College the player will enter.

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