Now, we will finally begin to work with the Creation Kit to create our own items. Anyone who owns Skyrim already owns the Creation Kit. You simply need to download it through the tools section in your Steam Library. Once you have the Creation Kit installed and launched, you are ready to begin the tutorial.

• Skyrim Creation Kit Change Armor Slot Machine
• Skyrim Creation Kit Change Armor Slots

If you take a look at that formlist it will show you the keywords you can select from. Usually they select the body slot(s) where the enchantment can be worn, and you pick the one that matches the armor. The keyword 'ArmorClothing' specifies that this armor is neither Light nor Heavy, and 'VendorItemClothing' determines who you can sell it to. In Skyrim you need to set the body slot used by a piece or armour in two places: In the Dismemberment data of the nif file; In the Armor addon and Armor items in the Creation Kit; IMPORTANT: The body slot you set in the nif file and in the CK must be the same, or your armour will be invisible in game.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a sword.

Step 1: Loading the Skyrim Master File

The easiest way to create your own items is to edit a current item. To do this, we will first load up the Skyrim master file so we can see all the items in the game.

1. Go to File>Data…
2. A new window should open up called “Data.”
3. Double click on the square next to “Skyrim.esm” so that a black “x” appears. See Figure 1.
4. Hit “OK.”
5. After a few moments, a prompt should appear, press “Yes to all.”

Figure 1: Load the Skyrim master file so that we can base our mod off of existing items.

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The Creation Kit will freeze up for a few moments as it loads the file.

Step 2: Finding the Item to Edit

Once the Creation Kit has finished loading the master file, your ‘Object Window’ should be now be populated with a huge amount of objects.

1. In your “Object Window”, go to Items>Weapon>WEAPONS.
2. In the “Filter” type in “ironsword”.

Near the bottom of the list, you should see “IronSword”. See Figure 2.

Figure 2: Here is where the IronSword object is located.

Step 3: Editing the Item

If you double click on the “IronSword” it will bring up the item’s object window where you can edit nearly every aspect of the weapon. However, for the purposes of this tutorial we will only be concerned with a few of these fields.

• ID: This is the string that the game uses to identify the item in the Creation Kit.
• Name: This is the name of the item as it will appear in-game and in menus.
• Value: This is the base price of the item.
• Weight: This is the base weight of the item.
• Speed: This is the base attack speed of the weapon.
• Damage: This is the base damage of the weapon.
• Crit % Mult: This affects how often the weapon will score a critical strike.
• Crit Dmg: This is how much additional damage the weapon does on a critical strike.

Figure 3 shows the ModSword object window with these fields filled out with my customized stats.

Step 4: Saving our Mod

Once you are satisfied with the stats on your weapon, you are ready to save your new mod.

1. Hit “OK” on the item’s object window.
2. Hit “Yes” on the prompt to create a new form for the item (unless you want to overwrite the existing item).
3. Search for “ModSword” in the “Filter” and our new item should appear.
4. Go to File>Save.
5. Save our mod as “ModSword.esp”.

Now, our mod should show up in our SkyrimData folder as “ModSword.esp”.

Step 5: Loading up our Mod

Now, if we launch the Nexus Mod Manager, our mod should appear in the “Plugins” list. Simply click the check box next to your plugin to ensure that the game will load your mod. See Figure 4.

Figure 4: Our ModSword is now loaded into Skyrim's mod load order.

Finally, you are now ready to launch Skyrim and play with your new item.

In order to obtain your item simply:

1. Load a saved game.
2. Press the tilde (~) key to bring up the console window.
3. Type the following exactly as it appears: help “mod sword” 4
4. Take note of the string of letters and numbers that appears next to the name of our item.
5. Give yourself the item by typing the console command: player.additem <ITEM ID> <NUMBER OF ITEMS>

Figure 5 shows what our weapon looks like in-game.

Figure 5: Our newly created (and overpowered) sword.

Skyrim Creation Kit Change Armor Slots

Congratulations! You have successfully created your first mod!