After returning to this section of the game I have some thoughts, with the basic premise that this mod is for difficulty and variation of what is supposed to be the endgame bosses, one of which is a god and the rest being his immortal millenia old brothers who have been "awake" under Red Mountain for centuries. A lot of the comments keep complaining about brothers such as Odros. If you didn't want extra difficulty and to be forced to fight the Dagoths in more creative ways than just spamming left click, why download the mod?
I've replayed Dagoth Ur and here's my impression the Ash Vampires and Dagoth Ur:
1. problems in the Ash Vampire AI (vanilla Morrowind), such as them not using their on-use enchanted amulets that they all have, even though it seems like these are supposed to enhance/determine the way they fight. Making the amulets constant effect, or a better solution of instead just giving the brothers a constant affect ability based on their magic amulet/ring/belt so that they aren't too strong when the player acquires them.
2. Endus is still very weak and the workaround in this mod doesn't change much. It removed his conjurations which is what was supposed to make him a threat in the first place, based on his amulet. His conjurations are supposed to be a threat to you, and without them he's just someone who casts a weak and annoying destruction spell at you (which is harmless if you just levitate so that he can't physically hit you). What would've been a good solution is giving him his conjuration spells separately, name it "Conjuration of Endus" or something suitable and add the storm atronach to it so that he can summon them and then back away and keep disintegrating your armor as the summons bombard you with magic (and all 3 atronachs means that at least one of them is likely immune to whatever spell you decide to cast). Since his disintegration spell targets your armour and weapons, maybe you could change his conjurations to ones that physically attack you so that you can be overwhelmed in melee as your weapons and armour break. Even with this, Morrowind would allow you to just kill him and them with spells so it's not as if he'd be broken.
3. Odros is great. Without this mod, who could say that they ever remember who Odros even is, or that it was a memorable fight? His magic attacks are to fatigue and agility, and his sanctuary and chameleon mean he's very hard to hit, like a true hand-to-hand specialist. He's still easy to kill with magic, and with fortify agility/attack it's not even difficult to hit him in melee. I like that you gave him sanctuary and made his chameleon even stronger than his amulet.
4. Araynys is much better than vanilla. I like that you gave him 50% shock resistance, but I personally think that you should change it to 50% magicka resistance, and then add to that ability the same effects as his Soul Ring (minus dispel) so that he has a constant effect fortify health & magic and resist shock & paralysis. This way he'd stand out much more as an obvious mage with both destruction and restoration as his forte and be impossible to just kill in a few seconds with an AoE drain health spell, since by default he has no resist magic. After all, Drain Health in fact has the lowest base cost of Destruction spells and not many creatures are resistant to magic (Drain Health is not elemental damage).
5. Gilvoth. I love that you added silence to his spell, making him the perfect anti-mage character, but I think there is more that can be done for this character. His Hand/Wrath should have the willpower & intelligence damage restored. Immunity to fire and frost is good, but perhaps he should be given something more in line with the Blood Ring. Adding resist magic and fortify health to the elemental immunity ability you gave him would be good, and a dispel spell. Remember, if you don't cast spells against him, all he does to you is damage willpower and intelligence, which are irrelevant if you're going to melee him to death, and merely does a damage health spell. You could change this to absorb health, since he has the 2nd highest vanilla health and high melee damage and should melee you.
6. Tureynul. Personally I would've given him the 50% spell absorption instead of magic resist. I would've added fortify magicka to his ability also. I'm glad you buffed his Hand/Wrath. I would personally take away his shock spell, it's far better if he melee attacks you. Two of his attacks can do 30 and 50 points of damage. His damage fatigue and strength spell is obviously intended to weaken you for him to melee attack you.
7. I liked the change to Uthol. However, perhaps you should switch the Hand/Wrath spell, as it seems more logical to have the on-target spell make you 100% weak to magic and his touch spell destroy your health-fatigue-magic? Or just have the Wrath spell combined with the 100% weakness to magic as well as the damage health-fatigue-magic spell so it's incredibly destructive, and then have his Hand spell damage your agility by a significant amount so he's harder to hit if you engage him at melee range. He comes across as a sorcerer with his purely destructive magic ability. He could do with an ability that gives him the effects from his belt also, so that he's not as easy to kill with magic at range.
8. I like that Vemyn is more dangerous as the wielder of Sunder should be. He could be much more dangerous with the right additions, though. Instead of increasing his minimum attack, you could perhaps instead add a permanent fortify attack, fortify strength, fortify endurance and fortify luck on him to make him a very powerful melee tank, which are the positive permanent effects of Sunder which he wields. His amulet also fortifies his strength, as well as his hand-to-hand and shield, so these should be a permanent ability also. Something like 30-40 strength, 30-40 attack, 20-30 endurance and 20-30 luck as a permanent ability would make him very dangerous in melee, and add the shield spell from his enchanted amulet to his Hand spell so that he has more defence when he engages you.
9. Dagoth Ur could still stand to be buffed. I feel that his health should be higher than 1500, since he is stronger than Vivec, Almalexia and Sotha Sil. He beat the latter two and Vivec cannot defeat him either, and he has constant access to the heart. He should be level 100, as Vivec and Almalexia are, so why isn't he? Vivec also has 10000 magicka, by a comparison Dagoth only has 3000. His health and fatigue should definitely be higher than 1500, since he is stronger than the Tribunal gods, and because it can also be reduced if you kill his brothers. Killing each brother reduces Dagoth's stats by: strength -5 pts, willpower -5 pts, speed -5 pts, health -50 pts, fatigue -50 pts, magicka -250 pts so Dagoth Ur's stats should be increased to account for this. Otherwise he potentially only has 1150 health and fatigue, and 1250 magic if you defeat his brothers. He also loses 35 strength, willpower and speed if you defeat them. Being level 100 with higher attributes would compensate for this. The resist magic and sanctuary are extremely good bonuses to his already vanilla fortify attack and fortify strength. Potentially shield is better than sanctuary for Dagoth Ur because he doesn't have a particularly high agility to begin with. Perhaps you could increase his vanilla fortify attack from 50 to 100?
I also want to comment on some other aspects: I think Ash Vampires should have soul values of 600 so that they fill a grand soul gem by themselves, and to distinguish them from the majority of other creatures in the game. If their value is 500, then you have to search for a creature with a soul value of 100 to trap. I love that you added the missing Dagoths back into the game. Named Ascended Sleepers have fewer spells, different levels, different health, and far weaker melee than the generic variant and don't drop ash salts. I'm not sure if you changed this in your mod, as I forgot to check. I don't know if you changed the soul value of Ash Ghouls Gares, Ganel, Mulyn & Velos from 280 to 300 or made it so that they can drop ash salts I don't know if you gave Ascended Sleepers a permanent ability Dagoth Baler may be undead(?) I can't remember if you made all ash creatures 75% resistant to fire or not since they were all Dunmer once
I'm getting missing textures for some ash vampires, like the one in Odrosal. I'm not 100% sure if this is related to this mod, but I ended up with two keenings and a pink dude.
https://ibb.co/7X8qhyM
It may be because the mesh from this mod no longer is compatible?
shouldn't the order of difficulty be Solthiem > Sixth House > Tribunal ? Tribunals story is based on the idea that the Vvardenfell crisis is already complete. (although, yes, there is text for getting there before beating the main game)
There's a flag that prevents you from getting very far in Tribunal's main quest before completing Morrowind's main quest. Arguably, Tribunal should be easier than Sixth House since the final boss's source of power has been destroyed by the time you get there, and Bloodmoon should be hardest because your opponent is an actual Daedric Prince, not some hopped-up mortal in a state of decline.
You don't fight the full power of the Daedric Prince in Bloodmoon, you only fight one of his Aspects which could lorewise definitely be rivaled or surpassed by Dagoth Ur or Almalexia. Especially since Dagoth Ur should still be a very powerful ancient sorcerer with or without the Heart. Almalexia is still a very powerful mage as well as a warrior and is equipped with some extremely powerful artifacts like Hopesfire and her Mask which is probably enchanted.
Tribunal = Bloodmoon = Sixth House depending on the monsters. Lorewise a single Ash Vampire would destroy any single werewolf.
Something to do with "evil GMSTs" and GMST contamination. I don't remember the specifics but the issue involves Tribunal and Bloodmoon adding new GMSTs and, if you used a mod which didn't have their GMSTs in the Construction set, you'd have buggy values when you actually play the game and it'd be a whole mess.
Suffice it to say, Tribunal and Bloodmoon are commonly listed as requirements so players using these mods don't suddenly have unexpected systemic problems. Note that I've been playing this on OpenMW which doesn't have issues loading mods WITHOUT Tribunal/Bloodmoon so I don't have first-hand experience dealing with the "Evil GMST" issue, but it is apparently a severe issue for the normal version of the game.
Love the mod but I'm really not a fan of the approach to Odros. Making it effectively impossible to hurt him unless you're a mage completely penalizes non-mage builds.
Yeah... i was starting to think Odros was bugged until i saw this thread. It's extremely unfair to fighters. Even throwing a dispel at him did not remove the Sanctuary, so it's nearly impossible to kill him with my character. Throwing magic summons, like various atronaches barely scratch him. And he recovers health. That does not help either.
Just max/near-max out your relevant weapon skill and agility, or bring a magic ring with a useful attack spell, and he should be defeated very easily. If you have Fortify (weapon skill) items equipped then even 100 Sanctuary + Agility should be surmountable.
If anything, I think the Ash Vampires are still far too weak and need to be massively buffed to handle the kind of builds you can make in Morrowind. However, their slow attack animations make Ash Vampires difficult to really buff since they're practically in perpetual slow motion and easily dodged.
@YoshiSaito I think you're right, I've just replayed the Dagoth Ur section and I think the Ash Vampires and Dagoth Ur are still too weak. Problems are still present in the Ash Vampire AI as well, such as them not using their on-use enchanted amulets that they all have, even though it seems like these are supposed to enhance/determine the way they fight. Making the amulets constant effect or just giving the brothers a constant effect so that the amulets aren't too strong for the player would be a good fix. Endus is still very weak and the workaround in this mod doesn't change much. It just removed his conjuration spell which is what was supposed to make him a threat in the first place, based on his amulet, and make him able to threaten you.
@eledin By the time you're fighting the Dagoths, you have a hoard of artefacts and should have your own enchanted equipment and some maxed stats so there's no reason to not have a means of killing Odros. Dagoth Ur has had Odros guard Keening for centuries and he should just be weak enough to be killed by someone with a normal sword? The point of this mod is difficulty.
140 comments
I've replayed Dagoth Ur and here's my impression the Ash Vampires and Dagoth Ur:
1. problems in the Ash Vampire AI (vanilla Morrowind), such as them not using their on-use enchanted amulets that they all have, even though it seems like these are supposed to enhance/determine the way they fight. Making the amulets constant effect, or a better solution of instead just giving the brothers a constant affect ability based on their magic amulet/ring/belt so that they aren't too strong when the player acquires them.
2. Endus is still very weak and the workaround in this mod doesn't change much. It removed his conjurations which is what was supposed to make him a threat in the first place, based on his amulet. His conjurations are supposed to be a threat to you, and without them he's just someone who casts a weak and annoying destruction spell at you (which is harmless if you just levitate so that he can't physically hit you).
What would've been a good solution is giving him his conjuration spells separately, name it "Conjuration of Endus" or something suitable and add the storm atronach to it so that he can summon them and then back away and keep disintegrating your armor as the summons bombard you with magic (and all 3 atronachs means that at least one of them is likely immune to whatever spell you decide to cast). Since his disintegration spell targets your armour and weapons, maybe you could change his conjurations to ones that physically attack you so that you can be overwhelmed in melee as your weapons and armour break. Even with this, Morrowind would allow you to just kill him and them with spells so it's not as if he'd be broken.
3. Odros is great. Without this mod, who could say that they ever remember who Odros even is, or that it was a memorable fight? His magic attacks are to fatigue and agility, and his sanctuary and chameleon mean he's very hard to hit, like a true hand-to-hand specialist. He's still easy to kill with magic, and with fortify agility/attack it's not even difficult to hit him in melee. I like that you gave him sanctuary and made his chameleon even stronger than his amulet.
4. Araynys is much better than vanilla. I like that you gave him 50% shock resistance, but I personally think that you should change it to 50% magicka resistance, and then add to that ability the same effects as his Soul Ring (minus dispel) so that he has a constant effect fortify health & magic and resist shock & paralysis. This way he'd stand out much more as an obvious mage with both destruction and restoration as his forte and be impossible to just kill in a few seconds with an AoE drain health spell, since by default he has no resist magic.
After all, Drain Health in fact has the lowest base cost of Destruction spells and not many creatures are resistant to magic (Drain Health is not elemental damage).
5. Gilvoth. I love that you added silence to his spell, making him the perfect anti-mage character, but I think there is more that can be done for this character. His Hand/Wrath should have the willpower & intelligence damage restored. Immunity to fire and frost is good, but perhaps he should be given something more in line with the Blood Ring. Adding resist magic and fortify health to the elemental immunity ability you gave him would be good, and a dispel spell. Remember, if you don't cast spells against him, all he does to you is damage willpower and intelligence, which are irrelevant if you're going to melee him to death, and merely does a damage health spell. You could change this to absorb health, since he has the 2nd highest vanilla health and high melee damage and should melee you.
6. Tureynul. Personally I would've given him the 50% spell absorption instead of magic resist. I would've added fortify magicka to his ability also. I'm glad you buffed his Hand/Wrath. I would personally take away his shock spell, it's far better if he melee attacks you. Two of his attacks can do 30 and 50 points of damage. His damage fatigue and strength spell is obviously intended to weaken you for him to melee attack you.
7. I liked the change to Uthol. However, perhaps you should switch the Hand/Wrath spell, as it seems more logical to have the on-target spell make you 100% weak to magic and his touch spell destroy your health-fatigue-magic? Or just have the Wrath spell combined with the 100% weakness to magic as well as the damage health-fatigue-magic spell so it's incredibly destructive, and then have his Hand spell damage your agility by a significant amount so he's harder to hit if you engage him at melee range. He comes across as a sorcerer with his purely destructive magic ability. He could do with an ability that gives him the effects from his belt also, so that he's not as easy to kill with magic at range.
8. I like that Vemyn is more dangerous as the wielder of Sunder should be. He could be much more dangerous with the right additions, though. Instead of increasing his minimum attack, you could perhaps instead add a permanent fortify attack, fortify strength, fortify endurance and fortify luck on him to make him a very powerful melee tank, which are the positive permanent effects of Sunder which he wields. His amulet also fortifies his strength, as well as his hand-to-hand and shield, so these should be a permanent ability also. Something like 30-40 strength, 30-40 attack, 20-30 endurance and 20-30 luck as a permanent ability would make him very dangerous in melee, and add the shield spell from his enchanted amulet to his Hand spell so that he has more defence when he engages you.
9. Dagoth Ur could still stand to be buffed. I feel that his health should be higher than 1500, since he is stronger than Vivec, Almalexia and Sotha Sil. He beat the latter two and Vivec cannot defeat him either, and he has constant access to the heart. He should be level 100, as Vivec and Almalexia are, so why isn't he?
Vivec also has 10000 magicka, by a comparison Dagoth only has 3000. His health and fatigue should definitely be higher than 1500, since he is stronger than the Tribunal gods, and because it can also be reduced if you kill his brothers. Killing each brother reduces Dagoth's stats by: strength -5 pts, willpower -5 pts, speed -5 pts, health -50 pts, fatigue -50 pts, magicka -250 pts so Dagoth Ur's stats should be increased to account for this. Otherwise he potentially only has 1150 health and fatigue, and 1250 magic if you defeat his brothers. He also loses 35 strength, willpower and speed if you defeat them. Being level 100 with higher attributes would compensate for this. The resist magic and sanctuary are extremely good bonuses to his already vanilla fortify attack and fortify strength. Potentially shield is better than sanctuary for Dagoth Ur because he doesn't have a particularly high agility to begin with. Perhaps you could increase his vanilla fortify attack from 50 to 100?
I also want to comment on some other aspects:
I think Ash Vampires should have soul values of 600 so that they fill a grand soul gem by themselves, and to distinguish them from the majority of other creatures in the game. If their value is 500, then you have to search for a creature with a soul value of 100 to trap.
I love that you added the missing Dagoths back into the game.
Named Ascended Sleepers have fewer spells, different levels, different health, and far weaker melee than the generic variant and don't drop ash salts. I'm not sure if you changed this in your mod, as I forgot to check.
I don't know if you changed the soul value of Ash Ghouls Gares, Ganel, Mulyn & Velos from 280 to 300 or made it so that they can drop ash salts
I don't know if you gave Ascended Sleepers a permanent ability
Dagoth Baler may be undead(?)
I can't remember if you made all ash creatures 75% resistant to fire or not since they were all Dunmer once
making all the Dagoth villains tougher ... even the common Ash ghouls and whatnot and the boss fights ... excellent
https://ibb.co/7X8qhyM
It may be because the mesh from this mod no longer is compatible?
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/47498
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/49493?tab=description
Tribunal = Bloodmoon = Sixth House depending on the monsters. Lorewise a single Ash Vampire would destroy any single werewolf.
Suffice it to say, Tribunal and Bloodmoon are commonly listed as requirements so players using these mods don't suddenly have unexpected systemic problems. Note that I've been playing this on OpenMW which doesn't have issues loading mods WITHOUT Tribunal/Bloodmoon so I don't have first-hand experience dealing with the "Evil GMST" issue, but it is apparently a severe issue for the normal version of the game.
If anything, I think the Ash Vampires are still far too weak and need to be massively buffed to handle the kind of builds you can make in Morrowind. However, their slow attack animations make Ash Vampires difficult to really buff since they're practically in perpetual slow motion and easily dodged.
I think you're right, I've just replayed the Dagoth Ur section and I think the Ash Vampires and Dagoth Ur are still too weak.
Problems are still present in the Ash Vampire AI as well, such as them not using their on-use enchanted amulets that they all have, even though it seems like these are supposed to enhance/determine the way they fight. Making the amulets constant effect or just giving the brothers a constant effect so that the amulets aren't too strong for the player would be a good fix.
Endus is still very weak and the workaround in this mod doesn't change much. It just removed his conjuration spell which is what was supposed to make him a threat in the first place, based on his amulet, and make him able to threaten you.
@eledin
By the time you're fighting the Dagoths, you have a hoard of artefacts and should have your own enchanted equipment and some maxed stats so there's no reason to not have a means of killing Odros. Dagoth Ur has had Odros guard Keening for centuries and he should just be weak enough to be killed by someone with a normal sword? The point of this mod is difficulty.