State of the Mod - September 2025 - Release and Status

Hi everyone! Mr. Cosmogone here with our last blog post before release!

Before we dive into the meat of this post, I’d like to take a moment to reflect upon Lordbound’s journey and share some tidbits about our history that would not be obvious to most people. Like all modding projects we’ve had highs and lows, but there was a time a couple of years ago when, as project lead, I truly did not believe that Lordbound would ever be completed.

This was in spite of all the content built during the time of my predecessor Neshkor, under whose leadership most of the valley and a handful of features were brought to a functional level. The best decision I ever made regarding the mod was when I posted internally about my plan to open-source what we had made up to that point.

My tenure as team lead had burnt out what energy I had left, and help was too scarce to get things done in a reasonable timeline. That plan initially garnered resigned approval… before a handful of undaunted team members pulled me aside to ask if I really wanted to go through with it, or if I would give them a shot at finishing it.

Fast-forward to today, and I could not be happier to have trusted Kiria, Raz, and the others with Lordbound. Believe me when I say that the road has been harder and bumpier than you think. When a volunteer project of this scale releases, it is nothing short of a small miracle. In the two years since that critical moment, they and the rest of the team have gone above and beyond as they have:

• Made the main quests fully playable, including the full implementation of the orcish MQ and tons of polish for the Imperial and Highreach MQs.

• Added brand new sidequests, and fixed a slew of others to a playable state.

• Completed redesigns for Highreach and Garshakur.

• Created a full new kit for Garshakur, interior and exterior.

• Created custom armors for several characters/rewards.

• Added a small army of custom creatures.

• Built dozens of new or revamped interiors, esp. around the cities.

• Gotten almost all VA roles cast, and a majority recorded.

• Added tons of character interactions: NPCs now react when you steal things, greet you and taunt you in combat!

• Fixed literally hundreds of bugs.

Earlier this year when we missed our March release date, I said Lordbound would ship September 30th no matter what. Well, the date is almost upon us when you all can set foot in the Druadach Valley at your leisure. The mod will come out as planned!

However, there is a caveat: some pieces of the mod are not quite in place yet. Voice acting specifically is still very much in progress as it was dependent upon full quest completion, a milestone that we only very recently hit. In addition to that our QAs, amazing as they are, are just a handful of mortal humans, and the mod is simply too big to be tested as rigorously as we’d be perfectly happy with. In short, things will still be somewhat rough, and not fully complete. Even though everything is fully playable, we still consider this to be a beta release. We hope that with this release, we can attract a few more helping hands to more quickly tie up our remaining loose ends.

That being said, everyone is hard at work to get as much as possible done in time. Spirits are high and seeing your hype and support means the world to us. We are committed to finishing this project that some of us have worked on for nearly a decade. There will be polish, there will be (human!) voice acting. In these days when AI voices are becoming more and more prevalent in professional circles, we believe that it is important for us to include authentic performances and give up-and-coming VAs opportunities where we can. That being said, we do have several voices in the mod that you may recognise!

We are about to cross a tremendously important milestone that will empower you with the choice to play Lordbound or to wait. No matter what you choose we’re excited to have you with us, whenever that may be. In order to help you have a clearer picture of our status, here’s some additional info:

So what is ready?

• 60+ Hours of Content

• 40+ Quests to complete

• 50+ Dungeons to Plunder

• A worldspace 1.5x the size of Solstheim

• 2 Sprawling Cities, and plenty of smaller settlements

• 14 Armor Sets

• 10+ Weapons

• 15+ Spells

• 14+ Potions

• 20+ new creatures and enemies to challenge, hunt or pet

Conservative projection of the playable Druadach Map relative to Skyrim

And what is not ready yet?

• Fully implemented VA. For now roughly half of the mod’s major characters are voiced but many NPCs, especially supporting ones, will have incomplete or no voiced dialogue. Most are already recorded in raw form but require editing and implementation. (Help us out!) We have a priority list we’re working our way through, with the most important NPCs of the main quest at the top.

• There will be bugs. Possibly a decent amount of them. We have done as much testing and fixing as possible with our small team but the size of this mod cannot be understated, and our resources for fixing them are being pushed to the absolute limit.

Finally: thank you again for accompanying us on this decade-long journey. As you can see, we are so very close to 100% completion. It’s a matter of when, not if, and we sincerely hope that you’ll continue to accompany us for the final stretch.

We are, as always, open for recruitment, and are looking for:

• Voice Actors with XLR setups who can voice Orc men or women (Send us a sample!)

• Audio and Dialogue Editors to process the voice lines

• QAs to help us log, track and verify bugs

• People with general CK experience to help us fix those bugs as fast as we can!

If you think you can help you can apply here or join us on Discord and send a DM to Kiria.

-- Mr. Cosmogone