Browse any RPG forum, and sooner or later one is likely to come across gamers complaining about a useless item. Usually, it’s hyperbole, but one mod for The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim adds an item that isn’t just useless, it actively hinders the player. The funniest part is that it’s one hundred percent working as intended.
The item in question is the Ring of Burden added by Skyrim's Artifacts of Skyrim - Revised Edition mod. For a single gold coin, players can acquire a useless trinket that takes up half their inventory space.
Reddit user currentlyintheclouds found it in the shop of Bersi Honey-Hand, a merchant in the city of Riften. The Ring of Burden has no enchantments, no armor value, and weighs 150 pounds. Even a bargain-basement price of one gold piece seems a bit like Bersi might be overcharging.
The item itself is a reference to Skyrim’s predecessor, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Players who want to rise through the ranks of Cyrodiil’s Mage’s Guild need a recommendation from the leader of each city’s guildhall. The guild leader in the city of Cheydinhal sends the player to retrieve the Ring of Burden from the bottom of a nearby well. A sick joke from the quest giver, players find it on the body of a Mage Apprentice who drowned trying to retrieve the ridiculously heavy ring. Interestingly, there is a Burden status effect in Oblivion, but the Ring of Burden does not apply it to the player character. It’s just absurdly heavy.
Presumably, the Ring of Burden in Artifacts of Skyrim – Revised Edition is the same object the player encountered in Cyrodiil 200 years earlier. How or why anyone would lug it across the mountains to Riften is another question entirely. The mod adds around 200 items scattered across the lands of Skyrim and Solstheim. It includes a mix of original creations plus quest items and other references to Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. The mod also adds a museum where players can display the artifacts.
Players can download Artifacts of Skyrim – Revised Edition from Nexus Mods. In addition to the items and museum, it also gives Skyrim six new dungeons. The mod-maker wants players to stumble across the artifacts organically, though the mod includes four in-game books containing hints and lore. And to be clear, not all of the artifacts are as useless as the deliberately inconvenient Ring of Burden. Although, it seems to have given some Reddit users a few good laughs.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is available on PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.