Skyrim Co-Op Mod Is Finally Here With Skyrim Together Reborn

Things are getting a little crowded in Tamriel, as a long-awaited mod finally adds Skyrim co-op so you can enjoy it with your friends. In the 11 years since The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim released, Bethesda has continued to churn out cash-grab updates. Thankfully, the modding community has kept it alive in a very different way.

In 2022, is anyone really playing the Vanilla Skyrim? Boot up the average version of the fantasy epic, and chances are, someone has tens (if not hundreds) of mods installed. We previously showed off one player running 1,500 Skyrim mods that looked like a computer-melting, new-gen, remaster waiting to happen. 

How Does Skyrim Co-Op Work?

Over on NexusMods, Skyrim Together Reborn finally adds co-op to the game - doing what Bethesda has never been able to do. Despite taking J'zargo or Cicero along with you, playing as the Dragonborn can be a little lonely sometimes. 

The Together team called the mod a "passion project" that has been crafted by volunteers. Although it's been tested with 30+ players, it's still not classed as an MMO. This shared quest progress has been a hit among the game's still ravenous fan base, meaning Skyrim Together Reborn has been downloaded 72k times in just a matter of days. To put it into context, the second most popular Skyrim mod is currently a sexy nun outfit from June that's been downloaded 30k times. 

To play Skyrim co-op, you'll need the Skyrim Special Edition version 1.6 on Steam and will ideally not have any other mods apart from the address library for SKSE installed. Take your new character to the end of Helgen and then try to connect to a server. 

Does Skyrim Co-Op Actually Work?

Prior to the mod's release, the devs explained that it's not a perfect experience because it's almost impossible to build this from scratch without the source code from Bethesda: "Please keep that in mind when playing Reborn. The mod won't be perfect," said the devs. "It will occasionally crash, some quests will break, there will be bugs. This is not fixable. This is just the reality of making a multiplayer mod instead of having a massive studio like Bethesda make a multiplayer game. Still, it's playable, it's fun, and it's a lot better than the old Skyrim Together mod, which was the goal of Reborn."

Skyrim Together Reborn is aimed at two to eight players at a time, with the team adding. "The aim of the mod is to develop a true Skyrim multiplayer experience that brings online multiplayer into this otherwise strictly single-player game." While we're The Elder Scrolls 6 is still years away, at least there's still plenty to have us coming back to Skyrim. If it's not Bethesda itself adding fishing, it's modders giving us the co-op we've always dreamed of.