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Alternate Start - Live Another Life

Misery and despair have haunted you all your life. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, you've been arrested and thrown in the dungeons. Your trial was supposed to be weeks ago, only nobody has come for you. It's been so long since seeing daylight you no longer know what month it is anymore. The dungeon is cold, damp, and worse still, you're running out of food. At least you have that leak in the wall for water. It seems as though you've been forgotten, soon to rot away and die. The eight have forsaken you! Or... have they?

Live Another Life provides an alternative means to start the game for those who do not wish to go through the lengthy intro sequence at Helgen. You will be given the opportunity to choose your race and then choose a new life for your character to lead. A wide variety of choices will be available. What you choose will have a lasting impact, so choose carefully or the gods may forsake you again!

Additional support has also been provided to allow you to extend Live Another Life with your own starts.

My Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/arthmoor

Installation Requirements

Official Skyrim patch 1.9.32.0.8 or greater. Using earlier game versions will result in CTDs and other problems. Just don't.
Official Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn DLCs are required.
Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch 3.0.16 or greater.

You will need to turn on subtitles to see the text for the startup quest.

Alternately, download and use Fuz Ro D-oh - Silent Voice (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/14884) to see subtitles only on those NPCs with no voiced audio. This requires SKSE.

Uninstalling Live Another Life

Due to the nature of Skyrim mods, especially those adding scripts, it is strongly discouraged to attempt uninstalling a mod from your active game. Any mod that is more than pure mesh or texture replacements has the possibility to leave behind permanent changes to your save that you may not want. This is not something modders can correct for. It is how the game was designed by Bethesda. No support will be provided for anyone who uninstalls this mod from an active game and continues on with that save.

That said, should you insist on going forward with doing so you must adhere to the following:

First things first. You need to be sure the main quest has been started before you can uninstall this mod. The quest "Live Another Life" must have been marked as completed, AND you must have "Before the Storm" listed in your journal. Uninstalling prior to this will break the main quest as well as the civil war.

It should also go without saying that if you're using the farmhouse start, clean your stuff out of it first because if you don't you'll lose it all.

Clean your stuff out of any other start location containers you may be using, including any that are part of the vanilla game because they will NO LONGER BE SAFE STORAGE!!!

Once that's done, use your preferred method to uninstall the mod. The .esp, .bsa, and .ini files must be removed entirely.

Steam Workshop users should be sure to unsubscribe before doing this or the launcher will simply replace those files again.

Load Order

Due to the sensitive nature of the mod, it should be loaded relatively late in the load order. A lot of other mods may seek to make modifications to Helgen and the charactergen quests. Moving this further down in your list will likely help, a lot. I highly recommend going with the order LOOT[loot.github.io] specifies.

Starting the Main Quest

Skyrim has a lot more flexibility in pursuit of the main quest, even when playing the default Helgen scenario. Alduin's appearance does not force one to pursue the main quest beyond Helgen. So this mod is mainly providing a mechanism to bypass Helgen and not encounter Alduin either. The game will patiently wait for you to follow along. So there's no special effort really needed to avoid it, just don't do it :)

For most of the starts, it will appear as though your "Live Another Life" quest has stalled. You will not have an active objective telling you where to go next. When you are ready to begin pursuing the main quest, talk to an innkeeper and ask them for rumors. You'll be given a generic rumor about Helgen and told to travel there. You can also simply go to Helgen on your own without anyone telling you to do so.

The main quest will also start if you join the Civil War, complete the first two missions for your chosen side, and then get sent to Whiterun. Once there, you'll find Whiterun closed. If you manage to bribe or persuade your way in, the next guard you pass by who delivers the line about Helgen being hit by a dragon will resolve the beginning portion. Otherwise asking them what they mean by dragons will get you pointed toward Helgen and you can proceed from there.

If you somehow avoid all the guards and get into Dragonsreach without ever hearing about Helgen, the MQ will be force-started upon entering the main hall. Sorry, but this failsafe is required because it is not possible to advance the Civil War until Bleak Falls Barrow and Dragon Rising have been completed. Bethesda did not supply dialogue to allow for a Stormcloak takeover of Whiterun before starting the Main Quest.

Choosing the campsite start will begin immediately with the encounter with Alduin.

Using this mod to follow the default Helgen sequence will play out the same as the vanilla game.