Overhauls the following animals and creatures in Skyrim:

• Bears
• Chaurus
• Deer
• Elk
• Giants
• Horkers
• Hunters
• Mudcrabs
• Mammoths
• Sabre Cats
• Slaughterfish
• Spiders
• Spriggans
• Spriggan Matron
• Trolls
• Wisps
• Wisp Mother
• Wolves
  

Nearly all animal characteristics have been tuned, tweaked, and improved!  This mod does not change the appearance of animals (no mesh, texture, animation, or sound changes). This mod is 100% script free and edits no leveled lists for maximum compatibility.

Animals are tougher, more intelligent, have improved and added abilities, and have realistic movement.  This mod is my vision of what Skyrim animals should have been like.  Overall, they are more deadly and dangerous.  Generally, most animals are peaceful creatures unless you get too close or provoke them.  The exception to this is the frost/ice/snow variants of animals and creatures (bears, wolves, sabre cats, spiders, and trolls).  Be warned, they are aggressive and more powerful than their vanilla counterparts!  They will mess you up, you have been warned.

This mod only affects the animals and creatures listed above.  You may need other mods to balance these out with the other Skyrim inhabitants (i.e. make the other enemies more difficult).  I did not attempt to balance this out with the base game since nearly everyone mods Skyrim.  There are plenty of mods that can fill this gap.  Base Game Balanced patch now available.

I wanted my mod to challenge the player and force them to change their tactics and adapt to dangerous enemies. The game gets boring if players
always think they are in a winning situation. I wanted some encounters to be above the player and stop the hack and slash tactics that most
players utilize. Chaurus, in particular, are best dealt with at range with arrows or magic. They have improved resistances to several damage
types but all of my creatures have a weakness that can be exploited.  Players who say, "I just want to play a warrior and not use bows or
magic" will not fair well with my mod. You cannot be a one trick pony and succeed. You have to be able to adapt to unique enemies now who are
perfectly capable of taking out the player if good tactics aren't employed.  If one tactic or damage type isn't effective, try switching to a different one!

Different animals and creatures require different tactics. Players can play a pure warrior but they need a good ranged attack. They also need various weapons with different damage types:  Fire, Shock, and Frost. Trolls are very difficult to deal with unless you exploit their weakness. The Trolls weakness is the Chaurus's strength (hint). For the most part, in vanilla Skyrim, any damage type will do 100% damage to 95% of the enemies in game. My mod aims to change this and give enemies more diverse strengths and weaknesses (as lore friendly as possible).

Adapt and come prepared, or die! Welcome to a new game experience!

• Tougher animals and creatures (health increase was just a small part of this)
• Higher Damage (animals base and special attacks do more damage)
• Fully Level Scaled
• Damage Scaling
• Reduced Movement Speed when Injured
• Improved Abilities
• New Race Abilities (as lore friendly as possible)
• Strengths and Weaknesses (as lore friendly as possible)
• Realistic Movement and Speed
• Realistic Behavior
• Improved AI
• Faction Fixes and Improvements
• Race Fixes and Improvements
• Combat Style Improvements
• Large creatures can knockdown opponents
• Paralysis Defense - Magic Resistance
• Kyne's Peace and Animal Allegiance shouts are improved with added benefits
• Base Game Compatible / No Scripts / No Leveled List Edits / Highly Compatible
  

This mod is script free and doesn't modify any leveled lists. It was built with maximum compatibility in mind.  This mod is base game compatible and does NOT require any DLCs or Unofficial patches to play.

It is compatible with High Level Enemies, Revenge of the Enemies, Skyrim Immersive Creatures, Combat Evolved, Perma, etc.

The mod is compatible with 'Sands of Time', 'SkyTEST', and 'One With Nature' with the patches in the Files section.

Animal Tweaks is mostly compatible with the 'Immersive Detection of NPCs' mod.





Place this mod after most or all of your encounter mods and Combat Evolved, Perkus Maximus (Perma - main modules, not Patchus Maximus), etc. or just before your bashed patch.  Animal Tweaks needs to be the last mod in your load order that edits animals. It does need to be placed before SkyProc patches such as Perma or SkyRe. It must be placed after Height Adjusted Races with True Giants if you are using that mod. All Animal Tweaks patches need to be placed after Animal Tweaks.esp in the load order and after both mods that are affected.





Extract the contents of the .7z file
Copy 'Animal Tweaks.esp' into your Skyrim Data folder and activate it.





Delete 'Animal Tweaks.esp' from your Data folder.





Essential
Unofficial Skyrim Patch
Unofficial Dawnguard Patch
Unofficial Hearthfire Patch
Unofficial Dragonborn Patch
SKSE (latest non-alpha/beta version is highly recommended)
BOSS (outdated and no longer being developed) Or LOOT
Wrye Bash
ENBoost (only if not using a full ENB - use version 0.236 of ENBSeries)
SkyUI
Fuz Ro Doh
Brawl Bugs - Compatibility Edition

User Interface
Immersive HUD - iHUD
Less Intrusive HUD II
Extended UI
Better Dialog Controls
Better MessageBox Controls
Categorized Favorites Menu
A Quality World Map

Combat
Deadly Combat, Or Duel - Combat Realism, Or Ultimate Combat
Combat Evolved

Encounter
Animal Tweaks
Deadly Wenches
OBIS - Organized Bandits In Skyrim
Skyrim Immersive Creatures
Deadly Dragons (don't install the optional Deadly Monsters component - it conflicts with too many other mods)
Bellyaches New Dragon Species
Immersive Patrols II
PermaZONES - Dangerous Encounter Zones for Skyrim
Populated Forts Towers Places (Google 'Erkeil Team – SKYRIM MODS')

Encounter - For High End Gaming Systems, Highly Optimized Games, and Advanced to Guru players
The Way of the Dovahkiin - Ultimate Deadly Encounters aka Sands of Time (don't install this mid-game!)
WARZONES 2015 - Civil Unrest (don't install this mid-game!)
High Level Enemies - scaled version - add all the DLC optionals - I prefer not to use the SIC edition if also using Revenge
Revenge of the Enemies - use the SIC Revenge patch from the SIC site

Quest
The Paarthurnax Dilemma
Barenziah Quest Markers
Dragon Priest Mask Quest Markers

Follower and Dialog
Extensible Follower Framework (latest version) (highly recommended) Or Amazing Follower Tweaks
Follower Commentary Overhaul
Guard Dialog Overhaul
MFVM - More Follower Voices Mod Plus Khajiit Marriage
Sleep Tight

Gameplay
Perkus Maximus (Perma)
PerMa Compatibility and PaMa Patches (PCaPP)
Defluffing PerMa and PerMa Extended Perk Descriptions
Perma Patches and Tweaks
Weapons and Armor Fixes Remade (use 01 WAF Complete and 08 True Orcish Daedric + any needed patches)
Elys Community Uncapper (use the INI from the Combat Evolved or PCaPP site)
Longer Durations and Annoyance Fixes
Forgotten Magic Redone
The Real Way to Shout
Marked for Death - Ultimate
Simple Spell Scaling (if not using Perma)
NPCs Protected Redux with Uncapped Followers
Backup Movement Speed Reduction
Treebalance - Speech Tree (if not using Perma or a Speechcraft perk overhaul)

Werewolf and Vampire
Better Vampires - ML (turn corpse feeding OFF - buggy) - need someone to tell me how to turn off slow motion attacks, PM me
Bloodthirst - Vampire NPCs can feed
Dark Maneuvers
Moonlight Tales - Werewolf and Werebear Overhaul or Moonlight Tales - Werewolf Essentials
Heart of the Beast - Werewolf Sound and Texture Overhaul (Alpha sounds, meshes, textures)
Werewolf Perks Expanded

Miscellaneous
VioLens - A Killmove Mod
Unread Books Glow
Lanterns of Skyrim (set timer to 120 seconds)
New Bard Songs
NPCs of Dibella
Immersive Wenches
Smaller Atronachs
Face Light
Faster GET UP STAND UP animation
Realistic Ragdolls and Force - use the Realistic version - you ONLY need the ESP
XP32 Maximum Skeleton -XPMS - use the 1.9x version unless you have to have HDT (should be the last mod that you install)
Glowing Ore Veins
Faster Mining
More Firewood per Chop

Sound
Better Animal Footsteps (install this mod first (before other sound mods) to allow other sound mods to overwrite some files)
Audio Overhaul for Skyrim 2 (make sure you add patches for any needed mods)
Immersive Sounds - Compendium (make sure you add patches for any needed mods)
Fantasy Sountrack Project + Combat Music - Google 'AceeQ Modding' (use non-replacers) (make sure you add patches for any needed mods)
Immersive Skyrim Thunder
Enhanced Draugr FX
Enhanced Beast FX
Thundering Shouts

Guides and Tutorials
Skyrim Guides and Tutorials

Utilities
TES5Edit (release version) or TES5Edit (pre-release version - recommended)
TES5Edit Merge Script
Optimizer Textures (use minimal setting - don't include BSAs)
Optimizer Textures – Improved INI file
Savegame Script Scalpel - Papyrus Data Transfer
BSA Unpacker

Make sure that you install any needed mod requirements/dependencies and compatibility patches for the mods that you use. Please pay close attention to this! Follow ALL mod instructions for each mod that you install!

These are the Core mods that I run and have been running many of them for years without issue. The above mods I recommend without reservation and are generally solid and well written.





Highly Recommended System Specs:

Windows 7 64-bit or Windows 8 64-bit
Intel Core i7 Quad-Core or Intel Core i5 Dual or Quad Core Processor
8 GB DD3 RAM (or more)
Nvidia GeForce 580, 680, 770, 780, 970 or faster Video card with a minimum of 2 GB VRAM (3-6 GB VRAM is optimal)
Optimize your Skyrim setup using all of the advice in this guide - How to Have the Best Modded Skyrim Experience

If you don't have the Optimal System Specs then choose 1K versions (whenever possible).

Bethesda Hi-Res DLC Optimized - Full 1K (use this instead of the Official High Resolution Texture Packs!)
Langleys Textures Workshop - all-in-one
Dust Effects
Vivid Clouds and Fogs
Realistic Clouds - 2K
Luminescent Luna Moths - CyanMoth
Better Dynamic Snow
Quality Snow HD 4K - works with Better Dynamic Snow
Quality Snowflakes
AURORA - v2 x2048
Real Roads for Skyrim
Ruins Clutter Improvement
Skyrim Realistic Overhaul - SRO - Google 'Skyrim Realistic Overhaul - SRO torrent' - beware that many torrent clients and torrent sites are fully of viruses, malware, and spyware - PM me for recommendations
Skyrim Realistic Texture Overhaul Landscape - don't use LODs
SkyFalls and SkyMills - if installing manually make sure you check each folder for files - it's super easy to miss some and will break your game if you do - carefully follow all instructions!
Cinematic Fire Effects 2 HD
SMIM - Full - use the all-in-one ESP
Skyrim HD 2K - Full
Moss Rocks - use SMIM compatible version
Skyrim Realistic Texture Overhaul Dragons - download the Deadly Dragons and Bellyaches New Dragon Species addons
Project Parallax Remastered HD 2K - only if using an ENB
Project Parallax Stonewall Update - only if using an ENB
Vivid Landscapes - Dungeons & Ruins - 2048 - use SMIM and Better Dynamic Snow patches
Vivid Landscapes - Volcanic Area - 2048 - use HQ Parallax optional
aMidianBorn Caves and Mines
Skyrim Flora Overhaul - Full Regular - v.2.0 alpha or newer
Realistic Aspen Trees
Vivid Landscapes - Cliffs & Creeks - 2048
Superior Rocks - Light Grey HD-2K NEW
Seasons of Skyrim ENB - (personal preference is True HDR with No DOF optional)
Real Ice - Azure Glacier - 2K + Parallax - install less bright addon
Vivid Landscapes - Tundra Moss Revised - red - use Parallax Map addon (if using an ENB) plus the SMIM patch
Realistic Water Two - High Resolution
Realistic Water Two - ENB Textures - only if using an ENB
Watercolor for ENB and Realistic Water Two - only if using an ENB - follow all instructions!
SkyFalls and SkyMills - (Main mod already installed) - install Parallax (if using Project Parallax Remastered), Realistic Water Two patch, LOD addon
HD Enhanced Terrain PRO - Blended Version
Vivid Landscapes - Orc and Farmhouses - 2048 - use SMIM Ropes and SMIM Carriages downloads
Rustic Windows
High Quality Food and Ingredients
Jen's 2K Food and Ingredients
Realistic Sun and Sunglare - Climates of Tamriel not needed or required
Realistic Smoke and Embers
Detailed Rugs
Natural Grass Texture Floor
High Definition Ivy
Webs
Better Nirnroot
Blacksmithing Design HD
Roadsigns Redone
Animated Dwemer Lift Load Doors
EWIs Glowing Mushrooms, Hanging Moss, Blackreach Mushrooms, HD Thickets
Skygazer Moons - 2K
Oil - 2K
Realistic HD Ores
Realistic HD Ingots
Realistic HD Misc
PELTAPALOOZA - Pelts of Skyrim Expansion
Verdant - A Skyrim Grass Plugin (shorter grass version) (set iMinGrassSize=75 for best results)
Rustic Pottery
CM Bark - need the URL, please PM me
4K Parallax Treebark - 2K - use Realistic Aspen Trees patch
RUSTIC POTIONS and POISONS - 2K
Embers HD - 2048 - install forges addon
Vivid Landscapes - Tundra Region - 2K - install any patches that you want
Lock o Motion

Make sure that you install any needed mod requirements/dependencies and compatibility patches for the mods that you use. Please pay close attention to this! Follow ALL mod instructions for each mod that you install!

These are the Core mods that I run and have been running many of them for years without issue. The above mods I recommend without reservation and are generally solid and well written.





Mod inspired by Lore-Mongering Beasts by Rennn
Bethesda - For the awesome Elder Scrolls series and their Construction Kit
The Nexus Staff - For putting together a forum for sharing mods and bringing this community together
GhostAgent - For creating the description page design and graphics