Skyrim Player Adds Climbing Mechanic That Lets You Scale Buildings
Climbing in Skyrim is a headache. You can awkwardly jump up the sides of mountains, but odds are, you’ll hit a slope and tumble down. With buildings, it’s even harder. You need to find the right stack of objects and hope you reach the ledge. Or you can jump out of bounds in Whiterun to see absolutely nothing. You aren’t meant to be climbing around like Ezio. But one modder has implemented a way to at least scale ledges.
„SkyClimb brings a true climbing mechanic to Skyrim,“ Sokco writes in their mod’s description. „Utilising EVG Traversal’s animations, SkyClimb uses techniques seen in modern games to allow you to realistically climb onto anything.“
Unlike other mods and EVGAT add-ons, SkyClimb is entirely procedural. That means you can climb any ledge in the game in real time, rather than it being a pre-rendered animation. Sokco shared two GIFs to highlight this–one shows their character climbing up a small wall rather than taking the stairs, and the other shows them scaling a Whiterun rooftop.
With the mod downloaded, it’s easy enough to use. „Simply walk up to any wall with a ledge above you within reasonable vertical distance,“ the description reads. „A blue indicator will appear on a ledge that is accessible. Use the jump button to climb onto it.“
To download it, you only need two other mods–EVG Animated Traversal and powerofthree’s Papyrus Extender. However, you’ll also need SKSE, meaning that SkyClimb only works on PC–you won’t find this on Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo Switch.
SkyClimb is in its beta phase which means that there may still be bugs and problems, which Sokco encourages users to flag on the Nexus mods page. Already, they’ve ironed out problems such as accidentally climbing when enchanting and the blue indicator appearing on „weird objects“. It now only appears on buildings, rocks, terrain, and other similar places.
Sokco’s mod shot up in popularity instantaneously, becoming the number one trending Nexus add-on at the time of writing with over 10,000 unique downloads and over 70,000 views. Even more impressive is that it’s only their fifth mod, with the last being uploaded in September 2022. This was a simple hide helmet add-on that does exactly what it says on the tin–hides your helmet. Before that, they created a mod that let you start your own guild, added wands, and overhauled the save menu to remove scum saving.
SkyClimb is an ambitious project, but it should help you reach those high spots to… chill? There’s really not much on the rooftops, but maybe it’ll make for a good spot to pull back your bow and stealthily archer some baddies.
