What’s Arkn-Zel?

Arkn-Zel is a dungeon mod for Skyrim made in the Skyrim Creation Kit’s level editor. I worked on Arkn-Zel for a semester as an independent study starting in January 2016. In Arkn-Zel, a group of miners turned treasure hunters have stumbled upon a forgotten dwemer ruin. Seeking glory and riches they began exploring the ruins, however no one has heard from them since. As the player explores the dungeon they continue to find signs of the miners’ passage, eventually discovering their corpses after they lost a fight with a centurion.

My Role – Level Designer

I’ve run playtests as well as taken critiques on the project and then incorporated that feedback into Arkn-Zel. The project was initially going to be two separate dungeons, however in the early planning phases of the project I decided to make a single level to allow for the creation of a larger dungeon. This allowed me to extend the section of the dungeon players spend in caves, making the reveal moment of the dwemer ruins more impactful.

One of the biggest headaches that I ran into with the creation of this project was making the cave pieces line up and connect properly with the dwemer pieces as they are from different kits. Making sure they lined up properly took up a major portion of my time spent early on when I was grayboxing the level.