bandercoot | The Official Home of Cabbageball

Kick a single cabbage from the gates of Riften to the main gates of Solitude as fast as possible. You may choose any route, but you must survive the journey.

Read all rules in their entirety before beginning. No magic or console commands are allowed after setup, except where explicitly permitted by Challenge Flag or penalty cabbage rules. No fast travel, carriages, horses, boats, or paid transport may be used by the player. Natural cabbage movement through rivers is allowed.

I. Setup & Character Creation

The Build: Start a new game and watch the opening cart cutscene. Create any character build you wish.
Vanilla Only: No mods and no Survival Mode. This is a pure vanilla Skyrim challenge.
No Early Looting: You may not loot any items before the challenge officially begins.
The Teleport: Once Hadvar or Ralof frees you, immediately open the console and type coc RiftenOrigin to teleport to Riften.
The Big Kick (Console Setup): To prepare your "Fus Ro Dah Bank" for the game, open the console and enter the following commands line by line. This will give you all three words of Unrelenting Force and the dragon souls required to unlock them:

player.teachword 13E22
player.teachword 13E23
player.teachword 13E24
player.modav dragonsouls 3

Once entered, open your Magic menu, spend the souls to unlock all three words, and equip the shout.
Initial Save: Pause and Quicksave your game.

II. The Kickoff

The Heist: Once in Riften, steal cabbages from the local carts. The number of cabbages you successfully steal and put in your inventory is your total "Cabbage Roster". Note: Waiting is allowed here; you do not need to kick the cabbage yet while gathering.
The Starting Line: Make your way outside the Riften city gates.
The Drop: Drop your first active cabbage on the ground. Start your timer. The game has begun! Read all rules before starting your timer.

III. Cabbage Mechanics

The Active Ball: A cabbage must always be in play on the ground in front of you. You cannot pick up your only active cabbage just to walk safely to your destination.
The Strike: To move the cabbage, you must "kick" it by walking or sprinting directly into it. You may not use weapons, punches, or shield bashes to advance the cabbage.
The "Fus Ro Dah" Bank: Every time you perform a legal Quicksave (at a crossroads signpost or when a "Location Discovered" notification appears on your screen), you "bank" one use of the Unrelenting Force shout. You can save these up and unleash them at any time to launch your cabbage across the map or blast it out of a stuck position.
Scavenging: Once outside of Riften, any cabbages you naturally find in the wild, steal, or buy along the road can be added to your inventory to increase your backup roster. Note: You can only have a maximum of 10 cabbages in your inventory at any given time.
Handballs: If you accidentally press "interact" and pick up the active cabbage during open play, this is a Handball. You must immediately drop the cabbage and stand completely still for 10 seconds as a penalty before you can kick your cabbage again.
The Carry (Tactical Hold): You are allowed to pick up and hold your active cabbage and run with it for 30 seconds ONCE per run (you must count out loud). It cannot be inside your inventory.
The Sweetroll Sprint (Stamina Buff): If you manage to find, steal, or buy a Sweetroll on your journey, you can eat it to activate a "Sugar Rush." This allows you to pick up the cabbage and run with it for a full 30 seconds (counting out loud) without it counting toward your single free "Tactical Hold." You're allowed a maximum of 3 Sugar Rush's during the game.
Sacrifice Plays (Max 3 per game): You may permanently discard one backup cabbage from your inventory to buy an additional 30-second carry.
Water Hazards: Natural water transport (letting the cabbage float down a river) is completely legal, provided you maintain visual contact with your cabbage.
The active cabbage may not be carried through loading screens, interiors, or fast-travel transitions. City gates are allowed only if they do not trigger a loading screen before the finish.

IV. Survival & Combat

The Realism Weight Limit: You may only equip weapons or use items you find on the road, loot from corpses, or buy from merchants along the way. However, you can only use a weapon if you would be able to realistically use it in real life. The Realism Weight Limit is an honour rule. If you equip something and the audience would reasonably call you a liar, it is illegal. (Example: If you find a 45-weight mace and don't think you could physically swing that in real life, you don't get to use it.)

V. Saving & Penalties

Saving: You are strictly limited to Quicksaves. You may ONLY Quicksave under two conditions: when standing directly next to a crossroads signpost, or the exact moment a "Location Discovered" notification appears on your screen.
Death Penalty: In the event of death, you return to your last Quicksave (not Autosave), and 5 minutes will be added to your final completion time.
Out of Bounds: If your cabbage enters a place where it is visible but cannot reasonably be recovered by kicking, it is stuck.
- If you can still physically pick it up, you may place it on the nearest playable ground next to the hazard, incurring a 30-second time penalty.
- If you cannot reach it to pick it up, it is strictly Out of Bounds. Take a 30-second time penalty and drop a new active cabbage from your inventory at the spot you last struck the lost one.
- If the cabbage is launched out of bounds or disappears into the brush, you must make a genuine effort to find it. If you can't, take a 1-minute penalty, and you must drop a replacement cabbage at a reasonable spot where it most likely landed. If the cabbage is in a location where it is physically possible to kick, but the terrain makes forward progress practically impossible, you may manually pick up the cabbage and place it on the nearest "Path" or level ground that is not further along the route than where you got stuck. Constraint: You must move the cabbage sideways or backward to the nearest safe spot, never forward.
Running Out of Cabbages: If all of your cabbages (active and backup) are entirely lost, the run is not over. You can spawn a new active cabbage using the console command (player.placeatme 00064B3F 1), but you will incur a 5-minute time penalty for each cabbage spawned this way.

VI. Glitches & "The Challenge Flag"

Visual Proof: If a cabbage clips through the map or disappears in front of you, you must have VISUAL PROOF of the glitch occurring for the edit.
If a glitch occurs, you must say "Challenge". You are then allowed to use console commands to drop a free replacement cabbage at the site of the glitch (player.placeatme 00064B3F 1).

VII. The Finish Line & Scoring

The Solitude Putt: The timer does NOT stop when you reach the city limits. The timer stops the moment the active cabbage makes physical contact with the main exterior gate/door of Solitude, the same door used to enter the city from outside.

Base Time from the Riften drop to the Solitude doors Your clock

+5 Minutes for every Death/Reload +5 min

+5 Minutes for every console-spawned penalty cabbage +5 min

−5 Minutes for every unused backup cabbage remaining in your inventory at the end of the run up to a maximum bonus of −25 minutes −5 min

The lowest total adjusted time wins! 🥬