Legends of the North

Hey, you. You're finally awake.

Legends of the North turns normal Minecraft survival into a Skyrim-inspired RPG.

This is not a Skyrim map, a story remake, or a plugin that throws a few custom items into a menu and calls it an RPG. LotN changes how your character grows: skills improve when you use them, enemies scale into stronger variants as you level up, equipment can be upgraded, enchantments are learned from loot, ingredients can be studied and brewed, and exploration has its own rewards.

You can play it as part of a normal survival server. You still mine, build, explore, fight, farm, and fish. LotN simply gives those things more progression and more reasons to care about them.

At a glance

• 14 skills with separate XP, levels, and perks
• 5 playable races with bonuses and penalties
• Health, Stamina, and Magicka progression
• 6 enemy tiers with scaled stats, names, gear, and rewards
• 8 enchantment families, each with 5 tiers
• Custom alchemy with ingredient research and potion recipes
• Equipment upgrading/tempering from Normal to Legendary quality
• 24 default quests, including repeatable tasks and a main quest
• Shouts, fast travel, fishing, Fishdex, Codex, achievements, temperature, weight, injuries, and more

Make a character

Before normal progression begins, every player creates a character.

Choose a character name, then pick one of five races: Breton, High Elf, Wood Elf, Nord, or Imperial. Each race has strengths and weaknesses instead of being a cosmetic choice. A Wood Elf is better with bows but worse with one-handed weapons. An Imperial gets better prices but slower Stamina regeneration. A High Elf has more Magicka, though shouts take longer to recover.

Your character begins at level 1 with Health, Stamina, Magicka, and carry capacity. Every character level gives you another point to spend on one of the three main vitals.

Skills level through use

You do not level One-Handed by clicking a button or killing random mobs with a bow. You level it by actually fighting with one-handed weapons.

The same rule applies across the plugin:

• Use bows to improve Archery
• Block attacks to improve Blocking
• Wear armor in combat to improve Heavy Armor or Light Armor
• Craft and temper equipment to improve Smithing
• Discover enchantments to improve Enchanting
• Study ingredients and brew potions to improve Alchemy
• Mine, farm, fish, travel, and trade to improve their matching skills

Each skill has its own level cap and unlocks one perk at every level. You can focus on combat, crafting, exploration, trading, or become terrifyingly committed to fishing. Nobody can stop you. That is the danger of free will.

Combat is more than vanilla damage

LotN adds its own combat mechanics on top of Minecraft. Weapon skills, armor, races, item quality, enchantments, critical hits, blocking, potions, and active effects can all change the final result.

Stamina matters too. Attacking, sprinting, power attacks, and holding a shield drain it. Running out leaves you exhausted and unable to fight normally until it recovers.

Hostile mobs are also given levels and tiers. A basic zombie may stay weak, while a higher-tier one can become a Plague Walker, Grave Champion, or Undying Lord with increased Health, damage, armor, equipment, and rewards.

Temper your equipment

Weapons and armor can be improved through the anvil without using vanilla XP.

Place a supported item in the first slot and its upgrade material in the second. As your Smithing skill grows, you unlock more materials and stronger upgrades. Equipment can move through seven quality ranks:

Normal → Fine → Superior → Exquisite → Flawless → Epic → Legendary

Higher-quality weapons deal more damage, while improved armor gains more Armor Rating. Better gear also becomes heavier, because apparently carrying Legendary armor should have at least one downside.

Find and learn enchantments

Enemies can drop equipment carrying enchantments. The item can be used as it is, or destroyed to permanently discover its effects.

Enchanting has five unlockable tiers and eight effect families, including:

• Flame, which burns enemies
• Frostbite, which slows and can freeze them
• Poison, which deals damage over time
• Shock, which can chain to nearby targets
• Vitality, which restores Health
• Fortitude, which improves knockback resistance
• Block, which improves shields
• Execution, which deals more damage to weakened enemies

Higher Enchanting levels unlock stronger tiers and improve the chance of finding equipment with multiple effects.

Experiment with alchemy

Alchemy uses its own workbench instead of the vanilla brewing stand.

Ingredients do not immediately tell you everything they can do. You study them to uncover hidden properties, then combine three different ingredients and try to find a valid recipe. Failed experiments cost ingredients. Successful ones become known recipes and grant Alchemy XP.

Potions can restore or regenerate Health, Stamina, and Magicka; improve combat, armor, Smithing, fishing, or alchemy; resist fire and frost; control temperature; cure injuries; or make the player invisible.

As Alchemy improves, mixtures become faster to brew, stronger, longer-lasting, and more efficient.

Unlock and use shouts

Several Skyrim-inspired shouts with their words, costs, cooldowns, and effects.

Use Unrelenting Force to throw enemies back, Whirlwind Sprint to launch yourself forward, Fire Breath to burn targets, Aura Whisper to reveal nearby mobs, Become Ethereal to avoid damage, and more.

Explore, travel, and survive

Visiting new biomes and dimensions adds discoveries to your Codex and grants progression. The Wayfaring skill unlocks up to three Fast Travel Points, which can be used to travel quickly. Use fast travel when you're not in combat to get back home from adventure.

Survival also includes optional systems for:

• Temperature, affected by weather, altitude, biome, time, armor, and nearby heat
• Carry weight, with penalties for carrying too much
• Injuries, caused by falls

Quests, achievements, and the Codex

The default setup contains 24 quests. Players can track quests through the journal, view progress in a boss bar, and earn character XP, skill XP, items, or economy rewards.

There are adventure quests, repeatable jobs, and a main quest to defeat the Ender Dragon.

Fishing that is actually useful

Fishing has its own skill, perks, economy, rarities, and collection menu.

Catches range from Common to Mythic. Rare fish are worth more money and XP, while the Fishdex records every species, the number caught, the rarest catch, and the most valuable catch.

Fish can be sold directly through the Fish Exchange when Vault and an economy plugin are installed.

Built for servers

Most of plugin's configuration is customizable. Server owners can adjust skill XP, perks, mobs, quests, bosses, equipment, enchantments, alchemy, fishing, survival mechanics, effects, the scoreboard, and more.

Player systems are opened through /lotn. Administrators use /lotnea for Extended Administration.

Requirements

• Paper 1.21.x-26.2
• Vault is optional, but required for balances, money rewards, and fish sales
• A Vault-compatible economy plugin (e.g. EssentialsX)
• PlaceholderAPI is optional and only needed for LotN placeholders

Current state

LotN has reached its first stable releases, but development is still active. New content, balance changes, fixes, and configuration improvements will continue. Existing systems may still be adjusted when something is clearly broken or useless.

Bug reports and feedback are welcome, especially while the plugin is still growing.

Links

• Full Wiki
• Discord
• DevSite
• GitHub

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Legends of the North is inspired by RPG systems from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It is not affiliated with Bethesda, Mojang, or Microsoft.