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MOD LORE
When a mortal being dies under ordinary circumstances, their soul spills forth and leaks from Nirn into the dreamsleeve of Aetherius, where it will remain until a vessel needs to be filled. Here it will bask in a paradise of infinite raw magicka, not to see Mundus again until all former memories and experiences and traces of
- Permissions and credits
MOD LORE
When a mortal being dies under ordinary circumstances, their soul spills forth and leaks from
Nirn into the dreamsleeve of Aetherius, where it will remain until a
vessel needs to be filled. Here it will bask in a paradise of infinite
raw magicka, not to see Mundus again until all former memories and
experiences and traces of the previous holder have long since been
scrubbed away.
Not so for you, Dovahkiin, for within the fragile mortal vessel that keeps you bound to the earth rests the soul of an
ever-lasting Dragon. Like the Dovah of old who are now awakening after
all these years, you are an immortal child of Akatosh, and can never
truly die no matter how many times you are killed. Your soul can seek
out a vessel on its own.
Being a progeny of Akatosh whose birth was foretold of in the Elder Scrolls, you are bound by an implicit pact
with the Divines. Visit any shrine of the Nine Divines, and they will
grant you a refuge where your soul may gather when it loses its way.
Be wary, however. Your soul can reach far across Skyrim in search of a
new vessel, but your old vessel and its worldly belongings cannot. One
who has journeyed far from home and temple halls would be wise to carry
an Amulet of Stendarr with them, for his domain is that of mercy, and
his blessings will protect you accordingly.
DEFAULT MOD MECHANICS
This mod represents an alternative to Skyrim's death paradigm (reload).
Upon "dying" your soul will splinter, leaving behind a shard as it is
recalled to its spiritual bind point. You must then return to the site
of your demise to reintegrate the shard and reclaim your gold (although
what - if anything - you lose upon dying is configurable - more on that
later).
If you die before completing the Unbound quest (escape from Helgen), your death is permanent. Surviving that initial dungeon
is the price of immortality. If you are using an alternate start mod
such as LAL which auto-completes that quest for you, you are all
set. Your initial bind point is the area you were standing when you
completed the Unbound quest (just outside Helgen cave, if you are
playing the vanilla start). Any time you pray at a shrine of the Nine
Divines, you will be asked if you wish to move your bind point to that
shrine. If you have any Amulets of Arkay, you can use the "Prayer of
Sacrifice" power to break one of your amulets and set your bind point to
wherever you're standing at the time.
You will lose all of your gold whenever you die (although this can be configured via the DIHOBehavior global variable such that you lose nothing, or everything except quest
items). You must go back to where you died and reintegrate your soul
shard to get all your stuff back. If you die again before you're able
to get back to your stuff then it's all gone, man. However, if you
happen to be carrying an Amulet of Stendarr at the moment of your death,
you won't lose any items or gold. The amulet will sacrifice itself to
bring you to safety. All spells/shouts are unequipped upon death, so
you should make sure to reconfigure your loadout before charging back
into combat.
You are also able to configure whether you want the loss of a soul shard (i.e., having a second unprotected death before
recovering the shard) to result in permanent attribute damage. By
default, you sustain no permanent attribute damage, but you can set the DIHOAttributeDamage global variable to any value between 0 and 10. If it is set to a
non-zero value, upon losing a soul shard you will sustain permanent loss
of health, magicka and stamina equal to whatever amount you set. Given
that death can be a frequent occurrence, my recommendation would be to
be conservative if you use this feature. Between DIHOBehavior and DIHOAttributeDamage (which operate independently), you have great flexibility in customizing the penalties for death.
Should something truly disastrous happen, type "coc oblivion" to access the
hidden cell used for behind-the-scenes stuff. One of the chests in
there will contain everything you've ever lost by dying, in case of
emergencies such as losing a scripted item that another mod requires in
order to function properly. Don't use this to cheat and get all your
lost items back or else I'll be severely disappointed in you. This cell
also contains a button that gives you an Amulet of Arkay and an Amulet
of Stendarr for testing purposes.
INSTALLATION
Use 7-zip to extract the mod archive to your Skyrim SE Data folder, or use
your mod manager of choice to do the same. I have the main ESP pretty
high in my load order (one of the first ones after the ESMs). It
doesn't seem to conflict with much.
If you are using ELFX, there is also a merge patch included which merges changes to a few cells.
Load this AFTER both this mod's main ESP, and after all of the ELFX
ESPs. If you are not using ELFX, do not use this merge patch.
UPGRADING TO A NEWER VERSION
Upgrading to a newer version of the mod on a running game is supported as of
version 1.1.4. If you have a version prior to 1.1.4, DO NOT TRY TO
UPGRADE MID-GAME.
If you have version 1.1.4 or later and want to upgrade the mod to a newer version, here are the steps:
1. Enter the console and type "set DIHOState to 3" (minus the quotes).
2. Wait for the message indicating that shutdown is complete (should take around 5 to 10 seconds).
3. Confirm that you no longer have the Prayer of Sacrifice power or
Dovahkiin Immortal Soul permanent ability (on the magic screen).
4. Save your game.
5. Exit Skyrim.
6. Upgrade the mod.
7. Launch Skyrim and load your save from step 4.
8. Enter the console and type "startquest MacDIHOController" (minus the quotes).
9. Within a few seconds you should have your Prayer of Sacrifice power and Dovahkiin Immortal Soul back. Continue playing.
UNINSTALLATION
I don't recommend uninstalling the mod from a game in progress. Removing
mods mid-game is asking for trouble. However, if you are determined to
do it, I have built in support for it as best I could, beginning with
version 1.1.4 (this will not work on earlier versions). Here are the
steps:
1. Enter the console and type "set DIHOState to 9" (minus the quotes).
2. Wait for the message indicating that shutdown is complete (should take around 5 to 10 seconds).
3. Confirm that you no longer have the Prayer of Sacrifice power or
Dovahkiin Immortal Soul permanent ability (on the magic screen). Any
attribute damage inflicted by the mod will have been reversed, and any
items you lost from failing to recover soul shard(s) will have been
returned to you.
4. Save your game.
5. Exit Skyrim.
6. Uninstall the mod.
7. Launch Skyrim and load your save from step 4. Click ok at the warning that a mod is missing.
8. Continue playing.
CHANGES FROM OLDRIM
This is a port of BLOODGAZM's mod for old-school Skyrim. He gave permission
for others to extend/modify his work as they see fit. In this spirit, I
altered his mod to suit my tastes by making the following changes:
The mod's configurable item loss is controlled by a new global variable named DIHOBehavior (DIHO being short for Death Is Highly Overrated).
Setting DIHOBehavior to 0 has one other use. If you die with DIHOBehavior set to 1 or 2 (thus losing your items and/or your gold), and have
second thoughts about what's happened (either you regret the harder
setting you chose, or you feel sure you will not be able to get to your
soul shard safely, or a giant knocked your body into outer space and you
*know* that your soul shard is not accessible, etc.), immediately set DIHOBehavior to 0 upon respawning. This will cause your items/gold *not* to be lost
upon your next death. In fact, if you die again under less difficult
circumstances, your new soul shard will have all of the items/gold you
were afraid you'd never get back. THIS ONLY WORKS IF YOU SET DIHOBehavior TO 0 BEFORE DYING A SECOND TIME.
If you really mess up and die twice before having your epiphany that you wish you'd had DIHOBehavior set differently, you will have to resort to the original mod's safety
mechanism (typing "coc oblivion" at the console to go backstage). But,
consider this: Bonesy is still down there. I may have removed him from
the mod's scripting, but I like to think he is imbued with the undying
spirit of BLOODGAZM, the original mod's creator. You don't want to
disappoint him, do you? Because he's watching. He's always watching.
We mustn't upset ol' Bonesy.
INCOMPATIBILITIES
A few things to mention here. Evidently this mod does not play nicely
with Frostfall - dying from exposure results in a permanent death loop.
I may reach out to that mod's creator for advice on a compatibility
patch, but I don't use Frostfall, so this isn't a huge priority for me.
Another user had this to say:
Save Overhaul is NOT compatible with this mod.
Alternate Actors is NOT compatible with this mod.
I'm not sure if those mods exist for Skyrim SE yet, but if they do, you've been warned.
THANKS
To BLOODGAZM. His original mod for Oldrim rocked.
When a mortal being dies under ordinary circumstances, their soul spills forth and leaks from
Nirn into the dreamsleeve of Aetherius, where it will remain until a
vessel needs to be filled. Here it will bask in a paradise of infinite
raw magicka, not to see Mundus again until all former memories and
experiences and traces of the previous holder have long since been
scrubbed away.
Not so for you, Dovahkiin, for within the fragile mortal vessel that keeps you bound to the earth rests the soul of an
ever-lasting Dragon. Like the Dovah of old who are now awakening after
all these years, you are an immortal child of Akatosh, and can never
truly die no matter how many times you are killed. Your soul can seek
out a vessel on its own.
Being a progeny of Akatosh whose birth was foretold of in the Elder Scrolls, you are bound by an implicit pact
with the Divines. Visit any shrine of the Nine Divines, and they will
grant you a refuge where your soul may gather when it loses its way.
Be wary, however. Your soul can reach far across Skyrim in search of a
new vessel, but your old vessel and its worldly belongings cannot. One
who has journeyed far from home and temple halls would be wise to carry
an Amulet of Stendarr with them, for his domain is that of mercy, and
his blessings will protect you accordingly.
DEFAULT MOD MECHANICS
This mod represents an alternative to Skyrim's death paradigm (reload).
Upon "dying" your soul will splinter, leaving behind a shard as it is
recalled to its spiritual bind point. You must then return to the site
of your demise to reintegrate the shard and reclaim your gold (although
what - if anything - you lose upon dying is configurable - more on that
later).
If you die before completing the Unbound quest (escape from Helgen), your death is permanent. Surviving that initial dungeon
is the price of immortality. If you are using an alternate start mod
such as LAL which auto-completes that quest for you, you are all
set. Your initial bind point is the area you were standing when you
completed the Unbound quest (just outside Helgen cave, if you are
playing the vanilla start). Any time you pray at a shrine of the Nine
Divines, you will be asked if you wish to move your bind point to that
shrine. If you have any Amulets of Arkay, you can use the "Prayer of
Sacrifice" power to break one of your amulets and set your bind point to
wherever you're standing at the time.
You will lose all of your gold whenever you die (although this can be configured via the DIHOBehavior global variable such that you lose nothing, or everything except quest
items). You must go back to where you died and reintegrate your soul
shard to get all your stuff back. If you die again before you're able
to get back to your stuff then it's all gone, man. However, if you
happen to be carrying an Amulet of Stendarr at the moment of your death,
you won't lose any items or gold. The amulet will sacrifice itself to
bring you to safety. All spells/shouts are unequipped upon death, so
you should make sure to reconfigure your loadout before charging back
into combat.
You are also able to configure whether you want the loss of a soul shard (i.e., having a second unprotected death before
recovering the shard) to result in permanent attribute damage. By
default, you sustain no permanent attribute damage, but you can set the DIHOAttributeDamage global variable to any value between 0 and 10. If it is set to a
non-zero value, upon losing a soul shard you will sustain permanent loss
of health, magicka and stamina equal to whatever amount you set. Given
that death can be a frequent occurrence, my recommendation would be to
be conservative if you use this feature. Between DIHOBehavior and DIHOAttributeDamage (which operate independently), you have great flexibility in customizing the penalties for death.
Should something truly disastrous happen, type "coc oblivion" to access the
hidden cell used for behind-the-scenes stuff. One of the chests in
there will contain everything you've ever lost by dying, in case of
emergencies such as losing a scripted item that another mod requires in
order to function properly. Don't use this to cheat and get all your
lost items back or else I'll be severely disappointed in you. This cell
also contains a button that gives you an Amulet of Arkay and an Amulet
of Stendarr for testing purposes.
INSTALLATION
Use 7-zip to extract the mod archive to your Skyrim SE Data folder, or use
your mod manager of choice to do the same. I have the main ESP pretty
high in my load order (one of the first ones after the ESMs). It
doesn't seem to conflict with much.
If you are using ELFX, there is also a merge patch included which merges changes to a few cells.
Load this AFTER both this mod's main ESP, and after all of the ELFX
ESPs. If you are not using ELFX, do not use this merge patch.
UPGRADING TO A NEWER VERSION
Upgrading to a newer version of the mod on a running game is supported as of
version 1.1.4. If you have a version prior to 1.1.4, DO NOT TRY TO
UPGRADE MID-GAME.
If you have version 1.1.4 or later and want to upgrade the mod to a newer version, here are the steps:
1. Enter the console and type "set DIHOState to 3" (minus the quotes).
2. Wait for the message indicating that shutdown is complete (should take around 5 to 10 seconds).
3. Confirm that you no longer have the Prayer of Sacrifice power or
Dovahkiin Immortal Soul permanent ability (on the magic screen).
4. Save your game.
5. Exit Skyrim.
6. Upgrade the mod.
7. Launch Skyrim and load your save from step 4.
8. Enter the console and type "startquest MacDIHOController" (minus the quotes).
9. Within a few seconds you should have your Prayer of Sacrifice power and Dovahkiin Immortal Soul back. Continue playing.
UNINSTALLATION
I don't recommend uninstalling the mod from a game in progress. Removing
mods mid-game is asking for trouble. However, if you are determined to
do it, I have built in support for it as best I could, beginning with
version 1.1.4 (this will not work on earlier versions). Here are the
steps:
1. Enter the console and type "set DIHOState to 9" (minus the quotes).
2. Wait for the message indicating that shutdown is complete (should take around 5 to 10 seconds).
3. Confirm that you no longer have the Prayer of Sacrifice power or
Dovahkiin Immortal Soul permanent ability (on the magic screen). Any
attribute damage inflicted by the mod will have been reversed, and any
items you lost from failing to recover soul shard(s) will have been
returned to you.
4. Save your game.
5. Exit Skyrim.
6. Uninstall the mod.
7. Launch Skyrim and load your save from step 4. Click ok at the warning that a mod is missing.
8. Continue playing.
CHANGES FROM OLDRIM
This is a port of BLOODGAZM's mod for old-school Skyrim. He gave permission
for others to extend/modify his work as they see fit. In this spirit, I
altered his mod to suit my tastes by making the following changes:
- Punctuation/grammar cleanup
- Script formatting cleanup, addition of script comments
- Script optimizations (e.g., eliminating unneeded Game.GetPlayer() function calls)
- Your Dovahkiin immortality is now implemented as an ability which you can see on the active magic effects screen.
- The Prayer of Sacrifice power is now granted directly to the player, as
opposed to receiving a spell tome which you must use (and could potentially lose). - Initial bind point is now wherever the player is standing upon completion of the Unbound quest, instead of high up in
the mountains. I know the original author chose his initial spot based on lore, but in terms of gameplay, it really didn't make much sense.
- Removed Bonesy from scripting (i.e., there is no longer a pile of bones
at your "corpse"). This feature seemed glitchy (when I would enter the cell containing my corpse, sometimes a few bones would appear near my player, nowhere near the corpse).
- Removed loss of dragon souls upon death. This feature didn't make sense to
me. I get why worldly items wouldn't follow your soul to its bind point, but your innate dragon power is the very reason you are immortal, according to this mod's lore. Why would part of that power be bound to your remains instead of staying with your spirit?
- You "respawn" with partial health, because that seemed fitting.
- I shrunk down the size of the beam of light which represents the player's
corpse (in this version of the mod, it is a soul shard). Instead of needing to activate it, you need only run into the beam in order to reintegrate the shard (and thereby retrieve your gold/items).
- Instead of needing to *wear* an Amulet of Arkay in order to receive
protection (i.e., to be protected from losing items/gold on death), you now need to be *carrying* an Amulet of Stendarr (God of Mercy). This eliminates the need to consume your amulet slot with a lesser item.
- You are invulnerable for 10 seconds after respawning (while your avatar
is transparent). If your bind point happens to be surrounded by hostiles, this gives you a short period of time in which to GTFO and not get caught in a death loop. - The script to bind your soul to a shrine of the Nine Divines now attaches itself to the shrines
dynamically at runtime. This means that edited copies of the shrines are no longer contained in this mod's ESP, thus improving its overall compatibility profile. Upon entering an area with a shrine, it will take a few seconds for the script to attach, so if you pray immediately and are not given the bind option, wait a second and try again (pray harder!). - Implemented a new global variable, DIHOPollingInterval, which controls the frequency of the script's heartbeat (default is 3
seconds, but it can be set to any value between 1 and 5 seconds). - By default, you are granted your immortality upon completion of the
Unbound quest. If you'd rather have the granting of that power delayed until you are first summoned by the Greybeards (their "call" after defeating your first dragon), set DIHODelayedStart to 1 (or any non-zero value, really). - Added a lore-friendly book which attempts to integrate the mod's mechanics
into the world somewhat. This is intended not so much as a "manual" for explaining the mod's function as it as a bit of additional flavor. The book is dynamically added to one levelled item list at runtime (so, no editing of base game resources in order to maintain maximum compatibility). The levelled list in question is used primarily at the College of Winterhold, so that's where to look for the book. - You are now able to configure whether you want the loss of a soul shard
(i.e., having a second unprotected death before recovering the shard) to result in permanent attribute damage. The DIHOAttributeDamage global variable is set to zero by default, but you can set it to any value between 1 and 10 in order to sustain permanent loss of health, magicka and stamina equal to whatever amount you set upon loss of a soul shard.
- Configurable item loss. This is the biggest change.
The mod's configurable item loss is controlled by a new global variable named DIHOBehavior (DIHO being short for Death Is Highly Overrated).
- The value of this variable can be checked by typing "GetGlobalValue
DIHOBehavior" (minus the quotes) at the game's console window. - The value of this variable can be changed by typing "Set DIHOBehavior to
X" (minus the quotes, and with X representing the new value) at the game's console window. - The default value is 1 (recommended). At this setting, you will lose all gold upon dying. You will receive
this gold back if you successfully reintegrate your soul shard. If you die again before reintegrating the shard, all the gold that body was carrying is gone for good. - The main alternate setting is 2 (hardcore). This setting most closely emulates the original mod's
behavior. At this setting, you will lose *everything* except quest items upon dying. You will receive all of your possessions and gold back if you successfully reintegrate your soul shard. If you die again before reintegrating the shard, all the items and gold that body was carrying are gone for good. You will receive a set of beggar's robes upon respawning to preserve your modesty. - The other alternate setting is 0 (Happyville). At this setting, you lose nothing upon
dying. You are simply returned to your bind point so that you can try harder next time. - Any setting other than 0, 1 or 2 will be interpreted as 0 by the mod's scripts.
Setting DIHOBehavior to 0 has one other use. If you die with DIHOBehavior set to 1 or 2 (thus losing your items and/or your gold), and have
second thoughts about what's happened (either you regret the harder
setting you chose, or you feel sure you will not be able to get to your
soul shard safely, or a giant knocked your body into outer space and you
*know* that your soul shard is not accessible, etc.), immediately set DIHOBehavior to 0 upon respawning. This will cause your items/gold *not* to be lost
upon your next death. In fact, if you die again under less difficult
circumstances, your new soul shard will have all of the items/gold you
were afraid you'd never get back. THIS ONLY WORKS IF YOU SET DIHOBehavior TO 0 BEFORE DYING A SECOND TIME.
If you really mess up and die twice before having your epiphany that you wish you'd had DIHOBehavior set differently, you will have to resort to the original mod's safety
mechanism (typing "coc oblivion" at the console to go backstage). But,
consider this: Bonesy is still down there. I may have removed him from
the mod's scripting, but I like to think he is imbued with the undying
spirit of BLOODGAZM, the original mod's creator. You don't want to
disappoint him, do you? Because he's watching. He's always watching.
We mustn't upset ol' Bonesy.
INCOMPATIBILITIES
A few things to mention here. Evidently this mod does not play nicely
with Frostfall - dying from exposure results in a permanent death loop.
I may reach out to that mod's creator for advice on a compatibility
patch, but I don't use Frostfall, so this isn't a huge priority for me.
Another user had this to say:
Save Overhaul is NOT compatible with this mod.
Alternate Actors is NOT compatible with this mod.
I'm not sure if those mods exist for Skyrim SE yet, but if they do, you've been warned.
THANKS
To BLOODGAZM. His original mod for Oldrim rocked.