ThornswoodHow to join
What you need
Skyrim Special Edition on Steam, on any build. The server runs build 1.6.1170, and Thornswood keeps that build in a game folder of its own. If your Steam copy is on another build, the launcher's Downgrade button asks Steam for 1.6.1170's files under your own account and puts them in Thornswood's folder. Your Steam copy stays on the build it is on. Nothing comes from anywhere but Steam.
Anniversary Edition is not required, and never will be. If you own it, nothing breaks. If you do not, nothing is missing.
Vortex, with a free Nexus Mods account. The mods come from a collection on Nexus, and a collection is a Vortex thing: Mod Organizer cannot install it.
Thornswood leaves the Skyrim you already have alone: you can update it,
verify it and mod it as you like. The launcher builds a game folder of its
own, C:\Thornswood\Game, out of your Steam copy and what Vortex put into it,
and after that it only takes Vortex's files from there. The mods and Skyrim's
archives are hard links, which take no extra space, and the launcher checks
the archives before every Play; everything else is Thornswood's own copy.
Vortex keeps the mods in a profile of their own, so switching back to your
usual profile and running Purge Mods leaves your own Skyrim the way it was.
1. Apply
Thornswood is eighteen and over. Applying is you stating that you are. The rules say what that is about before they say anything else.
Thornswood is in alpha, and the world is open by application. Anyone can download and install it. Play unlocks once you have applied in the Discord and been given the Playtester role, so applying is the first thing to do.
Read the rules first. Then come into the Discord, open a ticket in the applications channel and pick Apply to be an alpha playtester. It asks whether you are eighteen or over, whether you accept the rules, and a few lines about who you want to play and a bug you have run into. It is not an essay and nobody is marking it. Your answers, the rules one included, are kept against your Discord account.
Somebody reads every application and answers it. Once you are accepted, your Discord account is what lets you in. There is nothing else to sign up for, no second password, and no form on this site.
You can do steps 2 and 3 while you wait. Step 4 works once you are accepted. It is an alpha, so things break. Say so when you find something: a bug four people report is a bug that gets fixed.
2. Take the installer
One file, from the Downloads page. Download it and run it.
It is small because the mods are not in it. It fetches Thornswood's own content while you watch, about half a gigabyte, and a connection that drops carries on where it stopped rather than starting again. It puts in the launcher, the script extender and Thornswood's own content, and nothing else.
3. Install the collection in Vortex
Not optional. Without it you have a launcher and no mods, and the server turns you away when you press Play.
The link is on the Downloads page and on the launcher's Diagnostics page. Open it and Vortex takes it from there: it makes a profile for Thornswood, downloads every mod from its own author, and deploys them. Give it time.
If the wrong profile is active in Vortex, the launcher says so before you press Play.
4. Connect your Discord in the launcher
Open Thornswood from the desktop shortcut and press Connect Discord on the Play page. Your browser opens, you say yes, and it closes itself.
You never do this again.
5. Press Play
Not Skyrim. Not Steam. Not SKSE. Always the Thornswood shortcut.
The launcher checks for updates and takes any that are waiting, because everybody has to be running the same files or nobody can connect. It also compares every plugin with the server's copy, byte for byte. If one differs it says so. For Thornswood's own plugin Fix downloads the latest release's copy; for another author's mod it names the mod to update or reinstall in Vortex.
Then the game loads to its main menu and lists your characters, with an empty slot for a new one. Pick one and you are in. There is no address to type and no password to remember.
Your first character
A new character arrives in a quiet stone hall in a tunic and boots, and the race menu opens. That is where you make your face and give your character a name that belongs in Skyrim.
When you close it, the panel behind K opens on its own. It holds the three choices on the Professions page, your class, your profession and the half of it you will make your own, and the town you start in: Whiterun, Riften, Solitude, Windhelm, Markarth, Falkreath, Morthal, Dawnstar or Winterhold.
Only the town has to be chosen before you leave the hall, and choosing it sends you there. You arrive at a quiet spot in or near the town, not in its inn: the stables or the carriage stop at Whiterun, Solitude, Windhelm and Riften, Understone Keep in Markarth, and a quiet corner of each of the other four. The town cannot be changed afterwards.
Your class and profession can wait, and are picked later in the world from the same panel. Until you pick a profession you cannot make anything at a bench, smelting and tanning included, and until you pick a class every seam, carcass, plant, fishing spot and crop turns you away. So do not wait long.
You start with the clothes you stand in and forty gold, once. A Miner, a Farmer, a Fisher and a Woodworker are handed the tool their work needs the moment they pick it. Everything else you earn, make, buy or are given.
The same panel is behind K from then on: your rank, your recipe book and your skill points.
Voice
Voice runs in the launcher, not the game, so leave the launcher open while you play. Hold V to talk, or press O to keep the microphone open. B steps between a whisper, your normal voice and a yell, which change how far your voice carries in the world.
If it goes wrong
Check the known issues first: it lists what is broken right now that the team already knows about. The help page has the usual fixes.
If it is not there, say so in the Discord with what you were doing, what you expected, and what happened instead, or use the report page.
The launcher's own log is at C:\Thornswood\Profile\launcher.log. Crash logs,
if the game closed itself, are in C:\Thornswood\Profile\MyGames\SKSE,
because Thornswood keeps its own My Games folder. In the launcher,
Diagnostics then Build the report puts them in one zip and opens the
folder it is in: drag that zip into your ticket in the Discord.