Modders have put an awful lot of effort into making sure Skyrim has continually evolved and expanded in the years since it was first released into the world.
Many have focused on changing the game by adding unique weapons, new crafting stations, and revised combat mechanics to it, with a few even going as far as giving your Dragonborn the chance to head to an interesting new location or earn Dibella’s blessing without rudely breaking into a temple.
If you plan to pass the time while you wait for Starfield or Skyblivion to arrive by hanging out in Tamriel and don’t want your chill playing sessions to be interrupted by random attacks, a new mod might be worth adding to your load order.
Sick of being randomly attacked by guards in Skyrim when you haven’t accrued any bounty?
The mod in question is called ‘Zero Bounty Hostility Fix’, and is the latest work of prolific modder wSkeever. Some of their previous projects have given you the chance to help Belethor’s sister take over his shop in Whiterun or barbecue some skeevers.
This time, they’ve decided to have a go at rectifying a pesky bug that causes some NPCs to remain hostile towards the Dragonborn after a crime’s been committed for longer than they should.
In these scenarios, paying off your bounty or killing everyone who’s witnessed your lawbreaking is supposed to reset the dispositions of guards and regular citizens. However, as you can see in the video below, when the bug crops up, neither of those actions have the desired effect.
WSkeever’s mod attempts to combat this by clearing the hostility of the crime factions of holds in which you haven’t racked up any bounty whenever you change location, allowing you to try and calm everyone down by running through a door that has a loading screen.
That said, it only works for the game’s vanilla holds and Solstheim’s Raven Rock, meaning that you might still encounter the bug in locations added by other mods, or when dealing with factions like the Thieves Guild, which don’t use a bounty system.
You might also want to check out a couple of wSkeevers other recent works, ‘Green Water Cubemap Fix’ and ‘NPC Stuck in Bleedout fix’, which take care of some other long-running issues in the Bethesda RPG.
Regardless of whether you’re now living happy in the knowledge that your problems perished with the last person who saw you slice Nazeem’s head off, make sure to follow us for updates on Starfield, The Elder Scrolls 6, and the interesting world of Bethesda game modding.
You can also check out our top mods of the month.