Greetings fellow horse lovers!

I wish to bring you all a good news. Even though I was working on Dawnguard updates and releasing new features I was at the same time working on bringing mounted combat for followers to reality. It took me months to find a way to cheat the game to allow followers to keep weapons drawn while riding, to mimic combat behavior, weapon attacks and actual hits. It has been very hard to make followers hit anything because no attack data is used when playing animations directly and not through combat engine.
I had to make special weapons for mounted combat that will deal no damage and cause no hit effect, then use scripts to calculate collision distance, play attack animations and then simulate hits. I'm yet to decide how to distribute these weapons, some like using daggers, some swords, maces, axes, two handed stuff, so I'll probably make special version of each vanilla weapon and match it with armor type worn by follower or something like that. Followers will be able to engage in melee mounted combat only.

At first I was sceptical that making something like this with only Creation Kit and Papyrus would be possible but now I know I was wrong. There were ups and downs during the course of research and testing and I almost gave up on the idea but luckily some tests proved to be successful and now I can proudly announce the release of this feature. Ground work is completed, tested in game and everything is working like a charm. Combat behavior is fully scripted with couple of tricks here and there to make it look like it has been done by game developers themselves and reach the level of quality that matches my standards.

All mounted combat mechanics are completed but it is hard to say when it is going to be done. You know me, when I say it will be out in a week that means in three days and this one should be out till the end of august.

Until then everyone should get their hands on Dawnguard because it is a base of my work now and this new feature will not be available for vanilla Skyrim.


I trully hope that mounted combat for followers will bring all your enjoyment to another level.


Alek