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New Skyrim mod gives its best side quest the expansion it deserves

Prolific Skyrim modder 'JaySerpa' has overhauled the Dark Brotherhood in the RPG, giving you more ways to both join and destroy the group.

Skyrim mod Dark Brotherhood: a man with long brown hair and short beard looks confused

If Skyrim is great at anything, it’s the incredible side stories. Between the Companions, College of Winterhold, and the war between the Stormcloaks and Imperials there’s an entire world to get lost in, never mind Alduin’s impending threat. Every time I revisit Skyrim my mind always goes back to the Dark Brotherhood, though, with the note of a handprint and the words “we know” one of the coolest mysteries in the entire game. Now, one of Skyrim’s biggest modders has revamped the Dark Brotherhood, giving us all a reason to visit them again.

The next big Skyrim mod from ‘JaySerpa’ overhauls how you find and destroy the Dark Brotherhood in an effort to make “a more cohesive quest.” Arguably the group with the best set of sidequests in all of Skyrim, there are now new choices, dialogue trees, and fights in the ‘Destroy the Dark Brotherhood’ questline.

“The vanilla ‘Destroy the Dark Brotherhood’ quest is very lackluster,” JaySerpa says of the RPG. “You immediately get the password and location of the sanctuary, you go in and you kill everybody. Boring! You will now have to discover the password on your own, meet a new character, and track down a couple of assassins outside the sanctuary.”

On top of the new ‘Destroy’ quest changes, there are multiple ways to meet the Dark Brotherhood in the first place in the mod. Now, if you kill any of the 13 Dark Brotherhood targets, and not just Grelod, you can be kidnapped by the group.

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Each of the Dark Brotherhood members you need to kill has a new combat mechanic too, and you can even see the gang at work out and about while you hunt them down, but killing them on the job certainly won’t be easy.

The previously deceased character Gaston Bellefort has also been added to the mod with original writing and voice acting, letting you meet him before the Dark Brotherhood sends him to sleep with the fishes.

In typical JaySerpa fashion, this Dark Brotherhood mod aims to organically expand part of the Bethesda game a decade on. So instead of feeling like everything is out of place, you should not even notice that it’s a mod.

JaySerpa’s Dark Brotherhood overhaul can be found right here, with compatibility requirements and more outlined on the mod page.

If you want more from Tamriel we’ve got you covered with everything we know about the Elder Scrolls 6 release date, alongside the best games like Skyrim if you want something a little different instead.

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