Team Fortress 2 Weapons in Skyrim
This is one of those “does what it says on the tin title” articles, but if you’re in the mood for really utterly breaking the lore (and perhaps the law) in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, then this article is for you.
First off, where do you get this glorious add on? Simple. The Steam Workshop. As much as the Nexus Mod Manager and all that are great, just clicking “subscribe” works well too. I found these mods by typing TF2 into the search bar. There are three addons for the TF2 weapons, a melee add on, a crossbow add on and a gun add on. You need the crossbow addon for the gun addon to work. You also need Dawnguard. Where do you find them in-game? Good ol’Riverside, the small village you end up in if you follow the Imperial guy at the start of the game while Helgen goes kablooey. Fun fact, the Bionicle Weapons Canister also spawns nearby if you have that addon too. Comes with free soul gems. Another fun fact, you find random teams of mercenaries in inns and stuff. Kinda creepy since their faces don’t move. They just say generic stuff though.
Waiting for you are three trusty Nord merchants. Actually, it’s Sniper (selling melee weapons), Medic (selling crossbows) and Engineer (selling guns) all waiting for you. Alright their mouths don’t move and the rigging is a bit off, but they’re functional. They’ll just lounge around there, occasionally drinking from awkwardly small cups and whacking at a workbench. They’ll give you a hand if a dragon swoops down, with Sniper and Engineer running in like lunatics and Medic sniping with his crossbow. Alright, Sniper normally uses his Huntsman, but I stole that from him and gave it to my husband, Derkeethus. Stupid Scouts-Many-Marshes and Shahvee refused to give me the quest to marry them.
A quick heads up, you can also buy ‘armor’ that turns you into the TF2 classes, red or blue. Looks awful on Argonians and Khajiit though. Also, these weapons cost a fortune. The Medi Gun healing staff (it’s literally held as a staff) costs 9k even with my high speech perks. The armor is expensive too, but you don’t really want the armor. So, care to tell us about these weapons, Medic? Sure.
Honestly, most of them are, well, basic. They just look oversized and silly, especially so with the melee and gun weapons. My favourite is the Knife, which has alright base stats but my high smithing and one-handed skills make it a force to be reckoned with, on par with ebony. All the items are enchantable and upgradable, but some have custom descriptions which override any enchantment text. You wouldn’t know that my Knife has the ability to eat your soul until I killed you with it. With a backstab. Skyrim backstabs put TF2 ones to shame if you have the right stuff. The ranged weapons? Well, they vary considerably.
First off, we have the Huntsman. It’s a standard bow. You can improve it with a wooden plate of all things. Not iron or steel like other weapons, a wooden plate. I can’t say how strong it is because that depends so heavily on your archery skill. Mine’s 100, boosted by gauntlets of peerless archery. But even without perks, the Huntsman does its job and looks a lot nicer and, paradoxically, more realistic than over bows. Worth picking up if you haven’t unlocked the more advanced levels of smithing perks yet.
The guns though, the guns… They’re all built off the Crossbow added in Dawnguard. The Crusader’s Crossbow is literally a reskin with (I think) some tweaked stats and uses default bolts. The guns sold by the Engineer can use default bolts too, but there’s also three types of ammo available, some of which you can nick from the workbench nearby. Remember, you can mix and match ammo and weapons, so feel free to use rockets in your Tomislav or flares in your shotgun. Normal ammo is the same as a steel bolt, but rockets explode (with a tiny radius mind you) and flares have a fire effect.
Most of the guns are just reskins. They have similar fire and reload speeds to the crossbow and don’t do much else. The shotgun was a disappointment as it only fired one bolt/ammo/whatever at once. The Sniper Rifle lacked a scope. But there are a couple of weapons that surprised me. The Tomislav is automatic. It fires a stream of ammo, for a lot of damage. But the thing is huge and bulky and covers up a large amount of the screen, an issue with all weapons apart from the Huntsman. Unlike the Syringe Gun.
Yes, the Syringe Gun is automatic and is just as powerful as the Tomislav. Coupled with a large amount of ammo (which I forgot to mention you can craft, under Steel Smithing), you are nigh unstoppable. I killed an ancient dragon with my syringe gun with ease, and that was before I upgraded it. Of course, my high archery skill helps, but even then, as long as you have lots of ammo, you’ll kill everything. Everything. What’s that? Alduin’s hiding in Sovrngrade? Those revered dragons in the Vale pissing you off? Not any more.
Are there any bugs with this mod? I’ve only seen two so far, one where you can’t stop firing your automatic weapons which can be fixed by changing weapons and sheathing, and one where you can’t seem to fire crossbows properly, but that can be fixed by reloading. Remember, regular saves are your best friend!