2025 continues to be the year that gives Elder Scrolls fans everything they could possibly want—except for The Elder Scrolls 6. We’ve already had one Oblivion remaster with a second potentially on the way, while Morrowind’s premiere modding team delivered a massive new chunk of the province the vanilla game only explored a fraction of. Now the Skyrim modding community has gotten in on the action with the release of a truly massive unofficial expansion that has been in development for more than 10 years.
Lordbound transports Skyrim adventurers to the all-new valley of Druadach, a wartorn region that has recently reestablished its connection to the provinces of Skyrim and High Rock. The mod sees you embroiled in a conflict between the Imperial Legion and a band of Orcs holed up in a mountain fortress, one that just so happens to be smack in the middle of a trade route between High Rock’s capital Jehanna and Skyrim’s largest city, Solitude.
The mod mainly adds what you’d expect from a fan-made expansion. A big chunk of land to explore, two new cities, multiple smaller settlements, fifty new dungeons, forty more quests, twenty new creatures, extra weapons, armour, potions, spells, etc. The modders estimate this adds up to more than sixty hours of additional adventuring, equivalent to one Death Stranding or half a Baldur’s Gate 3.
There are a couple of more specific features worth highlighting though. First, the mod team claims that Lordbound includes “the biggest main quest you’ve ever played in Skyrim” with a branching narrative where your choices will “change the state of the valley.” You can choose to assist the Imperial legion in ousting those pesky fortress-dwelling orcs, for example, or help the Orsinium natives turn the castle into a new home.
Alongside this, some of the dungeons in Lordbound are pretty ambitious, at least according to a review recently posted on Lordbound’s ModDB page. “I personally loved the concepts for some of the dungeons,” writes Mr.Picklebum (don’t we all love the Internet?). “Just seeing how far Skyrim can be stretched with a creative look—I can highly recommend!”
It’s good to hear players are enjoying Lordbound, as they’ve certainly waited long enough for it. Lordbound first promised to expand Skyrim way back in 2014. When PC Gamer last covered it in 2018, it was due to release later that year. Needless to say, the mod has been on something of a journey since then, the kind of journey that normally involves sirens and lotus eaters.
This is explained by former team lead Mr Cosmogone in Lordbound’s most recent dev blog, published a few days prior to launch. “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.” As with many long-term modding endeavours, it seems Lordbound has witnessed several changes of leadership across its development, with Mr Cosmogone taking over from another modder, Neshkor, “under whose leadership most of the valley and a handful of features were brought to a functional level.”
Things came to a head approximately two years ago when, having burned out on the project himself, Mr Cosmogone raised the possibility of open-sourcing the mod. This almost happened “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.”
It seems those modders seized the opportunity. “Fast-forward to today, and I could not be happier to have trusted Kiria, Raz and the others with Lordbound,” Mr Cosmogone writes. “When a volunteer project of this scale releases, it is nothing short of a miracle.” That is certainly true. Countless modding projects like this promise fans the world, and only a fraction ever deliver.
That said, it is worth noting that, while Lordbound is playable, it isn’t 100% complete. Although the mod features human voice acting, Mr Cosmogrove says it is still “very much in progress,” as the team only recently completed building the quests. Mr Cosmogrove also points out that the mod is “simply too big to be tested as rigorously as we’d be perfectly happy with,” so expect to encounter bugs as you play. Nonetheless, even with Lordbound released, the team remains “committed to finishing this project that some of us have worked on for nearly a decade.”