Are you certain you're installing the correct version? This is for Skyrim LE. If you have Skyrim SE/AE, you need the file from the SE page which is linked at the bottom of the mod description.
hey it's me again, just want to point out a bit of minor incompatibility with the backport of dungeons revisited. in where the cave that, that has the dagger keeps using the vanilla interior instead of the Dungeons Revisited interior.
and if it's okay with you if, if you dont mind i edit the esp.plugin file's contents to re-balance and fix some of it's contents such as some of the spells causing too much mp to be used like the Grand cross which requires a huge amount of mp. and the holy water's effects aligning on the floor.
Edit: forgot to add this if it's possible a mesh patch to make the vampire killers length the same length as the chain whip's fx. due to the VK's whip fx has a tendency for an unwanted friendly fire with the guards.
-Boss music would sometimes not play during the trial or it would just use the vanilla music instead. -The Laid to rest bug. that another user mentioned but i may have a clue on why choice to ask for any vampire whereabouts wont appear on the dialogue. as it happened on my end recently.
this is probably due to the player deciding to go to movarth's lair without activating the quest. and wiping out the unnamed hostile npc's inside the cave. this will also cause the laid to rest to bug out as well as in Helgi's ghost will not talk to you even when she spawn's in the burned house. the only solution i found is CC the quest stages to that quest or Load a save file in where you haven't decided to raid movarth's lair.
-Whip's memory's whip fx would sometimes be invisible during the fight this happens randomly. -Grand Cross uses way too much mp. as in it requires atleast 1300 mp to be used. the mp cost needs to be reduced to 30 or 100 but add a debuff that reduces mp regeneration for 1 minute. and if the player tries to use it again before the debuff run's out it takes a chunk out of the players hp instead. -Holy water impact fx is lop sided. this is easily fixable by just checking the "Always use world orientation" tab in the explosions fx. also it could use a bit of DoT effect 2-3 damage for 5 sec. in it's base level and 5 damage for 5 sec. on master level.
improvements -as for some improvements for the whip an attack speed of 1.3 is perfect for it and a range of 2.9 for the leather and chain whip. the 2.9 reach matches the leather and chain whips physical meshes length when it's swung. while the VK's reach should be around somewhere around 4.8 or 5.8. since it's physical mesh is quite long.
-Adding Keywords to the weapons and spells. just did this two day's ago and it will save you a lot of headache when you try to give the weapons and spells custom animations. when you use DAR.
not related to the problems or issues but. there is a mod called warrior magic which allows you to use spell during attacking and blocking. and let's just say i combined it with your mod and now the whip shoots fireballs just like in the GBC castlevania games.
1. Script lag or the music commands' inherent buggyness, nothing more I can do. 2. Vanilla quirk or mod incompatibility. I tested clearing Movarth's lair before starting Laid to Rest and everything proceeded as normal, with just Movarth spawning once needed. 3. Script lag/vanilla hick-up. Never saw this during any of my testing. 4. Grand Cross uses only very slightly more MP (To make it a round number) than the vanilla Master Destruction spell Fire Storm, from which the damage is templated from. Obtaining the Master Destruction perk will halve the cost. No further balance changes needed. 5. Last I tested, 'Always use World Orientation' did the exact opposite of what I wanted, but I will test again. Holy Water's high damage potential is offset by the challenge of keeping the enemy in the puddle, same as in CV games. I don't think it needs a DoT as this risks making it even more over-powered. 6. I will consider adjusting the attack speed, but the length was calibrated with the vanilla animations in mind. If the user wishes to change that to suit their animation replacer, they may do so in their own game. 7. I assume you mean creating new keywords and assigning it to each weapon. I will do this the next time I release an update.
So, I think I am having an issue (not because of your mod...it is fantastic. I have played Castlevania is the original on the NES). I have a mod that causes an explosion when undead are killed and I think it may have "flung" the artifact (I am in Movarth's Lair). I am not asking for the exact location, I am just curious as to the artifact, was it laying around or in something. If it was laying around, then it probably got flung somewhere...sad day.
***EDIT*** I just saw a reply you made to someone else saying the artifacts are static and won't be knocked around. So, please disregard the above comment.
FYI...I love the idea behind this. It adds immersion and forces you to "earn" what you get. A lot better than the other "Combat Cross" mod that adds a merchant and you can pretty much "not earn it" (IMO). I Just started playing this mod a few days ago and I absolutely love it.
***Edit...edit***
So, I think I might have discovered a potential bug (or I did something wrong), but I got all the sub-weapons save one (which I imagine would be the axe if it is following the original sub-weapons...which it seams to) and I have already returned Serana. The journal says I need to ask around inn and taverns, but when I go to an inn or tavern, the option to ask if there has been any vampire activity is no longer an option like it has been in the past. To make sure I have been to all the inns and taverns, I checked online and there are no more taverns or inns to discover. So, I think I am at a roadblock because I have to ask around at Inns or Taverns and there are no more Inns and Taverns and the option to ask about vampires is not there. I even when back to all the hamlets, cities and individual inns just to make sure one that previously said "nah, I don't think so" didn't change. I went as far as going to Solstheim and checking all the inns and taverns there to no avail. I have the watch, dagger, water and cross. Seeming the option is no longer there to ask, I decided to go to all of the vampire hide outs that I know of off the top of my head (which is a lot) just to see if the whip resonates, but it was folly. Help please.
If you're missing the axe, the inn in Windhelm should have worked. If not, the hint is 'North of Mixwater Mill'.
Unfortunately, Skyrim's event system can be finicky and not correctly set up a quest if all the quest variables can't be accounted for some reason. It seems to work 9 times out of 10, but someone more experienced in Quest building would have to chime in to tell me how I could make it more reliable.
Thank you. I found the axe (I accidently went in the ruins and had to do the "dreams of the dead" quest...lmao). The Whip's Memory was a really nice touch and I love how you add the music. Ahhh -thinks back-...nostalgic memories. I really had a blast with the entire quest. Very well done. Now I want to pull out my NES, SNES, 64 and PS2. The entire concept is something we need more of in Skyrim. I have to admit, it is frustrating (not the bad kind...the motivating kind) when you go to your third or fourth tavern/inn and they haven't heard of anything...That being said, it is that frustration that drives you to press on and keep looking. Though, I will admit, I was half expecting to see some sort of "guardian" (creature from castlevania) or some type of special vampire guarding the sub-weapons. The way the sub-weapons are done is done well, with them being the way they are (don't want to spoil anything) they are easily utilized in combat. I am pretty sure I used the watch more than anything else. Again...very well done. I do not donate often (because I am usually disappoint with something) but this mod is one of the better ones (IMO) and there is nothing disappointing about it. I look forward to mods you do in the future.
If I may be so bold as to make a few suggestions (based on my personal experience. Firstly, I play on Legendary and have the mod Custom Difficulty (on legendary I do half damage and the enemies do 4.75x damage) and the two battles left me wanting more (of course, I have dodge mods and things in the like). After I beat him the second time, I was waiting for a third. It just seemed too easy of a fight for "proving your worthiness" Again, that is just me...maybe everyone else thought it was just right. My second suggestion, is maybe a follow-up quest line of like a new and terrible evil has awakened because of the energy released when the whip became the Vampire Killer. I mean, after all, that would take an enormous amount of energy to bring an artifact like the Vampire Killer "back to life" so to speak. Maybe something like the return of Dracula and when you beat him, his castle can be you player home...Just throwing ideas.
Thank you so much for your kind words and donation! Balancing is a very tricky thing in Skyrim, especially with everyone's differing mod set-ups. Currently he has about 1.25 the highest health value for Miraak by default, and wields a dragonbone-level weapon, so I'm not really sure what else I could do other than inflate those values, which risks becoming frustrating and un-fun.
I do have plans for an expansion, including the DDS cards from CotM to change the Flame Whip's element. additions to the castle to hide them , as well as potentially finding and reassembling Dracula's body parts for a boss. The trick is finding the time to work on it, just the smallish dungeon that exists currently took me about two months, but it was also my first ever time making a cell in the CK. Regardless, glad you enjoyed, and hopefully I'll be able to make more in the future.
Pale Pass is the passage between Cyrodiil and Skyrim. In the vanilla game it doesn't have a marker, but it's directly south of Fort Neugrad. The location you're looking for is a fort in that vicinity.
So I found the Imperial Fort at Pale Pass and I've searched the entire place and nothing is happening with the quest. Just a bunch of Imperial soldiers and Stormcloaks fighting it out. I've been in the storeroom, the vaults, the tower, and the main fort but nothing. What am I missing?
So, finally completed this one, and I have to admit, I'm really quite impressed.
First, I love the hidden-away artifacts to find. Some fit better with some playstyles than others (I use the throwing dagger way too much, but it's by far the most perfect for a thief-like character causing trouble from the shadows), but none of them end up as "useless trinkets" to be left behind. The dagger (and its mastered form) is quite useful for low-health picks, allowing for cheap stealth kills when out of whip range. Great for a low/no magic character where I can justify his "magicka use" as just being "Get this knife to go further" and less, "Here, have a fireball."
The throwing cross is amusing to me with how it acts like a boomerang, which I actually like. It's one of the few throwing weapons I could see my character using beyond the knives as "if I miss, it just comes back to me."
The axe is a bit slow on the wind-up, so to speak, which offsets any potential extra damage output, though it can still prove useful for mid-range stealth-kills against vampires.
At first, I thought the stopwatch was going to be the worthless trinket, until I realized how powerful a bit of slowed-time can really be. I've never really used the slow-time shout, or any other mods that claim to slow/stop time because either they felt like a waste (I could be either 100% invulnerable to attack with Become Ethereal, or dishing out some extra damage with a shout), or felt completely imbalanced. This feels balanced enough with a slight leaning toward fun.
The holy water is about the only "hard to use" item. For whatever reason, my brain keeps thinking it has a longer range than it actually does, so I'm forever tossing it in between me and the draugr I meant to drop it on.
Then there's the whip and its upgrades.
I love that it starts out as a seemingly-ordinary leather whip. Perfect for low-level players, ideal for the start of a Dawnguard playthrough. I'm not sure what the requirements were for it to upgrade to the chain whip, but it did so with perfect timing, taking it from a weapon that annoyed bandits to death and bothered vampires to a weapon that wrecked bandits and made very quick work of vampires. This, of course, pushed me to find the remaining artifacts, doing the Laid to Rest side-quest I normally breeze past without ever bothering (mostly because it's typical sloppy Skyrim storytelling. Hroggar's family dies and he's shacked up with Alva the day after? Of course I'm checking her place first. Hroggar attacks right away without warning you're trespassing? Guilty. Now I'm going to find Alva and, oh, how cute, she's a vampire with the same case of criminal stupidity that all of Skyrim has, writing every detail of her life down that would get her killed. I'd have been more impressed with Laid to Rest if Alva and Hroggar were innocent, that the house fire had been an accident caused by fighting vampires in a close space, and that both of them had suspicions about who the vampire was) to complete said sidequest.
So, with all five artifacts in hand, it's off to find an old fort near the Pale Pass, and pass the Trials, so to speak.
Yeah, that fight was brutally hard, and I pull no punches when I say it took me two and a half hours to figure out how to win. Including having to put a pin in it, build some better gear, stock up on potions, and return for another try.
But, getting the true Vampire Killer whip was worth it. This thing melts through vampires like a red-hot chainsaw through butter.
I'm looking forward to going into the rest of Dawnguard with a weapon that makes vampires a non-issue.
Glad to hear you enjoyed it! Always love to get detailed feedback. Oh, and the exact requirements for the Chain Whip upgrade is picking up your second Sub-Weapon. I do hope the Whip's Memory fight was a satisfying level of challenge and not just frustrating though. Balancing is extremely difficult, especially with how varied everyone's mod setups can be, and I definitely don't want it to be too easy due to how powerful the True VK is. Plus, there's really only so much you can do with a humanoid boss in Skyrim without being on an entirely different level of scripting than me.
I thought the Whip's Memory fight was a satisfying challenge. Once I actually got into it being a fight that was going to take more than just a few split seconds (I play on Adept with some fairly-high-damage weapons available to me, and some vicious spells that use a lot of magicka if I'm playing a mage character, so most fights go fast), I was able to adapt and start strategizing.
Switching out from Chain Whip to an Elven Dagger with a paralysis enchantment on it helped a ton, along with finally hot-keying my health potions so I could tap one key to gulp down a potion in a time of need. That, and remembering an old rule of combat: It's better to block instead of being hit, but it's better to dodge instead of block.
Probably would have been better if I'd actually worn a heavier suit of armor than my Thieves' Guild armor, but... I wasn't thinking about damage reduction in the moment...
It was a good fight, and once I got out of the usual "Bandit goes squish in two or three hits" fighting style, I did a fair bit better. Likewise, realizing that, no, I'm just taking that much damage by running in and trying to face-tank the whip, it's not some sort of "Reflect Damage" enchantment hitting me with the aftermath of my own weapons, well, that also helped in that fight, because I started experimenting with weapons to see what would give me the best balance of maximized damage while also letting me still be defensive.
That, and I'm 100% sure I was under-leveled for that fight. I went in at Level 10... So, I kinda went looking for trouble on that one.
Have you completed the vanilla quest Laid to Rest, as hinted at by the note in Moorside Inn? Talking to Jonna should have updated the quest and put a marker on it. If it didn't, that's something I'll need to fix.
111 comments
I seem to be missing a mesh. when I equip the whip i get a giant red exclamation mark.
What could I be missing?
and if it's okay with you if, if you dont mind i edit the esp.plugin file's contents to re-balance and fix some of it's contents
such as some of the spells causing too much mp to be used like the Grand cross which requires a huge amount of mp. and the holy water's effects aligning on the floor.
Edit:
forgot to add this if it's possible a mesh patch to make the vampire killers length the same length as the chain whip's fx. due to the VK's whip fx has a tendency for an unwanted friendly fire with the guards.
I would prefer any fixes be integrated into the main mod file. What exactly are the issues?
The mesh has nothing to do with hit length. If you want to make the full VK's hitbox shorter, just adjust the weapon's reach value in the esp.
-Boss music would sometimes not play during the trial or it would just use the vanilla music instead.
-The Laid to rest bug. that another user mentioned but i may have a clue on why choice to ask for any vampire whereabouts wont appear on the dialogue. as it happened on my end recently.
this is probably due to the player deciding to go to movarth's lair without activating the quest. and wiping out the unnamed hostile npc's inside the cave. this will also cause the laid to rest to bug out as well as in Helgi's ghost will not talk to you even when she spawn's in the burned house. the only solution i found is CC the quest stages to that quest or Load a save file in where you haven't decided to raid movarth's lair.
-Whip's memory's whip fx would sometimes be invisible during the fight this happens randomly.
-Grand Cross uses way too much mp. as in it requires atleast 1300 mp to be used. the mp cost needs to be reduced to 30 or 100 but add a debuff that reduces mp regeneration for 1 minute. and if the player tries to use it again before the debuff run's out it takes a chunk out of the players hp instead.
-Holy water impact fx is lop sided. this is easily fixable by just checking the "Always use world orientation" tab in the explosions fx. also it could use a bit of DoT effect 2-3 damage for 5 sec. in it's base level and 5 damage for 5 sec. on master level.
improvements
-as for some improvements for the whip an attack speed of 1.3 is perfect for it and a range of 2.9 for the leather and chain whip. the 2.9 reach matches the leather and chain whips physical meshes length when it's swung. while the VK's reach should be around somewhere around 4.8 or 5.8. since it's physical mesh is quite long.
-Adding Keywords to the weapons and spells. just did this two day's ago and it will save you a lot of headache when you try to give the weapons and spells custom animations. when you use DAR.
not related to the problems or issues but.
there is a mod called warrior magic which allows you to use spell during attacking and blocking. and let's just say i combined it with your mod and now the whip shoots fireballs just like in the GBC castlevania games.
and that's just it. and nothing else.
2. Vanilla quirk or mod incompatibility. I tested clearing Movarth's lair before starting Laid to Rest and everything proceeded as normal, with just Movarth spawning once needed.
3. Script lag/vanilla hick-up. Never saw this during any of my testing.
4. Grand Cross uses only very slightly more MP (To make it a round number) than the vanilla Master Destruction spell Fire Storm, from which the damage is templated from. Obtaining the Master Destruction perk will halve the cost. No further balance changes needed.
5. Last I tested, 'Always use World Orientation' did the exact opposite of what I wanted, but I will test again. Holy Water's high damage potential is offset by the challenge of keeping the enemy in the puddle, same as in CV games. I don't think it needs a DoT as this risks making it even more over-powered.
6. I will consider adjusting the attack speed, but the length was calibrated with the vanilla animations in mind. If the user wishes to change that to suit their animation replacer, they may do so in their own game.
7. I assume you mean creating new keywords and assigning it to each weapon. I will do this the next time I release an update.
***EDIT*** I just saw a reply you made to someone else saying the artifacts are static and won't be knocked around. So, please disregard the above comment.
FYI...I love the idea behind this. It adds immersion and forces you to "earn" what you get. A lot better than the other "Combat Cross" mod that adds a merchant and you can pretty much "not earn it" (IMO). I Just started playing this mod a few days ago and I absolutely love it.
***Edit...edit***
So, I think I might have discovered a potential bug (or I did something wrong), but I got all the sub-weapons save one (which I imagine would be the axe if it is following the original sub-weapons...which it seams to) and I have already returned Serana. The journal says I need to ask around inn and taverns, but when I go to an inn or tavern, the option to ask if there has been any vampire activity is no longer an option like it has been in the past. To make sure I have been to all the inns and taverns, I checked online and there are no more taverns or inns to discover. So, I think I am at a roadblock because I have to ask around at Inns or Taverns and there are no more Inns and Taverns and the option to ask about vampires is not there. I even when back to all the hamlets, cities and individual inns just to make sure one that previously said "nah, I don't think so" didn't change. I went as far as going to Solstheim and checking all the inns and taverns there to no avail. I have the watch, dagger, water and cross. Seeming the option is no longer there to ask, I decided to go to all of the vampire hide outs that I know of off the top of my head (which is a lot) just to see if the whip resonates, but it was folly. Help please.
Unfortunately, Skyrim's event system can be finicky and not correctly set up a quest if all the quest variables can't be accounted for some reason. It seems to work 9 times out of 10, but someone more experienced in Quest building would have to chime in to tell me how I could make it more reliable.
If I may be so bold as to make a few suggestions (based on my personal experience. Firstly, I play on Legendary and have the mod Custom Difficulty (on legendary I do half damage and the enemies do 4.75x damage) and the two battles left me wanting more (of course, I have dodge mods and things in the like). After I beat him the second time, I was waiting for a third. It just seemed too easy of a fight for "proving your worthiness" Again, that is just me...maybe everyone else thought it was just right. My second suggestion, is maybe a follow-up quest line of like a new and terrible evil has awakened because of the energy released when the whip became the Vampire Killer. I mean, after all, that would take an enormous amount of energy to bring an artifact like the Vampire Killer "back to life" so to speak. Maybe something like the return of Dracula and when you beat him, his castle can be you player home...Just throwing ideas.
I do have plans for an expansion, including the DDS cards from CotM to change the Flame Whip's element. additions to the castle to hide them , as well as potentially finding and reassembling Dracula's body parts for a boss. The trick is finding the time to work on it, just the smallish dungeon that exists currently took me about two months, but it was also my first ever time making a cell in the CK. Regardless, glad you enjoyed, and hopefully I'll be able to make more in the future.
First, I love the hidden-away artifacts to find. Some fit better with some playstyles than others (I use the throwing dagger way too much, but it's by far the most perfect for a thief-like character causing trouble from the shadows), but none of them end up as "useless trinkets" to be left behind. The dagger (and its mastered form) is quite useful for low-health picks, allowing for cheap stealth kills when out of whip range. Great for a low/no magic character where I can justify his "magicka use" as just being "Get this knife to go further" and less, "Here, have a fireball."
The throwing cross is amusing to me with how it acts like a boomerang, which I actually like. It's one of the few throwing weapons I could see my character using beyond the knives as "if I miss, it just comes back to me."
The axe is a bit slow on the wind-up, so to speak, which offsets any potential extra damage output, though it can still prove useful for mid-range stealth-kills against vampires.
At first, I thought the stopwatch was going to be the worthless trinket, until I realized how powerful a bit of slowed-time can really be. I've never really used the slow-time shout, or any other mods that claim to slow/stop time because either they felt like a waste (I could be either 100% invulnerable to attack with Become Ethereal, or dishing out some extra damage with a shout), or felt completely imbalanced. This feels balanced enough with a slight leaning toward fun.
The holy water is about the only "hard to use" item. For whatever reason, my brain keeps thinking it has a longer range than it actually does, so I'm forever tossing it in between me and the draugr I meant to drop it on.
Then there's the whip and its upgrades.
I love that it starts out as a seemingly-ordinary leather whip. Perfect for low-level players, ideal for the start of a Dawnguard playthrough. I'm not sure what the requirements were for it to upgrade to the chain whip, but it did so with perfect timing, taking it from a weapon that annoyed bandits to death and bothered vampires to a weapon that wrecked bandits and made very quick work of vampires. This, of course, pushed me to find the remaining artifacts, doing the Laid to Rest side-quest I normally breeze past without ever bothering (mostly because it's typical sloppy Skyrim storytelling. Hroggar's family dies and he's shacked up with Alva the day after? Of course I'm checking her place first. Hroggar attacks right away without warning you're trespassing? Guilty. Now I'm going to find Alva and, oh, how cute, she's a vampire with the same case of criminal stupidity that all of Skyrim has, writing every detail of her life down that would get her killed. I'd have been more impressed with Laid to Rest if Alva and Hroggar were innocent, that the house fire had been an accident caused by fighting vampires in a close space, and that both of them had suspicions about who the vampire was) to complete said sidequest.
So, with all five artifacts in hand, it's off to find an old fort near the Pale Pass, and pass the Trials, so to speak.
Yeah, that fight was brutally hard, and I pull no punches when I say it took me two and a half hours to figure out how to win. Including having to put a pin in it, build some better gear, stock up on potions, and return for another try.
But, getting the true Vampire Killer whip was worth it. This thing melts through vampires like a red-hot chainsaw through butter.
I'm looking forward to going into the rest of Dawnguard with a weapon that makes vampires a non-issue.
Switching out from Chain Whip to an Elven Dagger with a paralysis enchantment on it helped a ton, along with finally hot-keying my health potions so I could tap one key to gulp down a potion in a time of need. That, and remembering an old rule of combat: It's better to block instead of being hit, but it's better to dodge instead of block.
Probably would have been better if I'd actually worn a heavier suit of armor than my Thieves' Guild armor, but... I wasn't thinking about damage reduction in the moment...
It was a good fight, and once I got out of the usual "Bandit goes squish in two or three hits" fighting style, I did a fair bit better. Likewise, realizing that, no, I'm just taking that much damage by running in and trying to face-tank the whip, it's not some sort of "Reflect Damage" enchantment hitting me with the aftermath of my own weapons, well, that also helped in that fight, because I started experimenting with weapons to see what would give me the best balance of maximized damage while also letting me still be defensive.
That, and I'm 100% sure I was under-leveled for that fight. I went in at Level 10... So, I kinda went looking for trouble on that one.