I've completed testing Draugnarok through all stages and in various places, in SE. Here are my thoughts:
First and foremost, SE seems to have a different cleanup logic that is a double-edged sword for a mod like this. It cleans up corpses very aggressively (you don't even have to leave the cell, I've seen them despawn right in front of me) which seems to be making Draugnarok much, much more stable in SE. I haven't had any crashes. On the other hand, I haven't had any really enormous battles due to the "clogging" problem I had observed in Oldrim, presumably because the same cleanup logic is helping here in lieu of me making my own cleanup back-end for hordes that accumulate in locations the player hasn't visited for some time. Furthermore cities do not accumulate piles of bodies and the entire mod's mood has changed: The effects of the draugr invasion are a desolate, haunted feel to the cities, rather than a gory aftermath of war. D:
Draugnarok remains challenging for low level characters (say, below 20 or so) if you've got other mods that are amping up the overall challenge of the game. Even stuff like Frostfall, because Draugnarok does change the weather and you're constantly wet and cold, rivers and lakes are also a dangerous means of escaping overwhelming odds since you might freeze to death on the other side. Needs mods (and especially You Hunger) add a substrate challenge that, while frustrating to some, I found blends with the overall sense of paranoia and panic that Draugnarok sets up. Of course combat mods - I'm using Vigor and some custom console tweaks like forceav healrate / staminarate - have the most direct impact on whether a gang of 5 draugr are going to be a breeze or a nightmare for you, at level 10 or even level 20. The game's own difficulty setting matters, too. D:
The Pause feature that I've added was useful precisely because I had ramped up the challenge with other mods so much that even at the slowest setting (Protracted) the draugr were just piling on too fast for my character, when I turned on DN at level 10. So I do think it's a useful addition to the mod and I'll be releasing a v1.2 with it. If you Pause during Outbreak you can get a sort of different use out of the mod, though I'd caution that you still have to assume that all kinds of quests can break due to NPC's dying, especially if you turn on the Lethality settings and especially if you use the bEssentialTakeNoDamage=0 setting in your INI. D:
I've thought about other changes I could make to the mod, anything that's quick and easy to do especially. I do have one idea I'd like to explore, going back to the mod's roots, which if it wasn't obvious already is the Berserk manga / anime. :) So it'll be a few weeks of experimenting and finding time to playtest before I release v1.2. Draugnarok is very playable in its current 1.1 state here on Nexus in the meantime. No need to wait if you just want to see what the mod is like - just beware all of the above considerations! D:
I would love to have the option to initiate a timer on the start of Draugnarok, so that it can coincide closely with End Times. Like, having an option to set Draugnarok to start on In-Game Day 80, then having End Times trigger on Day 90 without defeating Alduin, for the world to just s#*! its pants in hellfire and apocalypse.
Amazing mod and the backbone of my Skyrim experience for months now.Just SO SO SO good. You are a genius.
Actually works super well with a survival style play through. Without a mod like this there is no reason to set up camp in the wilderness. This mod makes it so you MUST camp in the wilderness if you want a safe place to be. With "ETERNAL INVASIONS" on it becomes impossible to live in cities, which is why I got the mod in the first place.
Here are some suggestions to really AMP UP THE FUN with this mod:
1)Become Meridia's agent in Nirn and go at the undead with Dawnbreaker! There is nothing like charging into a horde of 20 Draugr with Dawnbreaker and burning them ALL.
2)The Mod is insane fun with Truely Undead and The Walking Draugr -- both of these mods make Draugr resurrect repeatedly until killed by special means. You can set the means of permanently killing them in the MOD manager.....fire, silver etc....
3) NPC dead Body cleaner is amazing with this also. Burn corpses to remove them. A mid-ressurection Draugr can be set on fire and it raises and fights on fire until it disappears in a POOF! Amazing.
4) Try this with Amazing Follower Tweaks and on LETHAL mode. Try to preserve the life of the Jarl. Use amazing follower tweaks to make anyone a follower and use that to evacuate smaller settlements and set up defenses in the throne room. I evacuated the entire population of Riverwood one play through and set everyone up in The Dragon'sreach throne room. Battles of 20 on 20 raged day and night for days. Seeing key figures fall who never fight togather was Epic.I couldn't keep Balgruf alive for more than a week! Then I took the rest of the survivors from Whiterun with me to Fort Greymore, but the dead found us there as well. INSANE FUN.
Okay, THAT is dope as balls. I love that last idea, with AFT. Definitely going to try it out sometime, if not in my current run. Thank you for the inspiration to become a Draugnarok Settlement leader.
If you're still playing around with it all this time later, might I suggest using Lakeview Extended? It's quite nice by itself, and with the theme of a Draugr invasion, it'd be even better.
I tried the last one, installed every follower mod i could find to get anyone to be my follower and to have as many as i need, but it won't work, i can only take 3 at a time for some reason, how did you do it?
Somehow, someway, this mod interferes with Better Courier. I am not sure where but if you use it, the courier will never spawn correctly. Not sure if there is something in scripts that borks with WICourier scripts becauset there are a LOT of scripts to look through and I really don't want to see what is doing it. But suffice to you're going to have to use one or the other.
EDIT: if you disable radiant quests, the courier will not show.
Love this mod, but have a weird incompatibility with the Bruma mod, where literally thousands of drauger are spawning in the air above the gates before Pale Pass, causing the game to crash in that area. Very strange. I would rather see the hordes spawning at points surrounding the cities and towns, then attacking from beyond the walls, making their way to the jarl's halls, instead of spawning inside buildings and walls. Why even build walls, if they don't impede anything? The random encounters outside the cities are excellent, really keeps you on your toes & makes the game more exciting. Will keep this mod, of course, but still trying to find an answer to the Bruma anomaly.
Greetings from the future!!! Darndest thing happens between my Bruma mod and Draugnarok, when I try to walk to the pass leading to Bruma, the game starts framing like crazy. The farthest I've gotten before crashing indicated there were countless drauger hanging in the sky around the gates to Bruma. I even tried a "kill all" command, but the engine couldn't deal with the thousands of corpses (I guess) and crashed immediately. Still love this mod, but to access Bruma I have to disable it. Weird...I have no idea where all the dead folk are coming from, and why they're hanging around in the sky.
101 comments
First and foremost, SE seems to have a different cleanup logic that is a double-edged sword for a mod like this. It cleans up corpses very aggressively (you don't even have to leave the cell, I've seen them despawn right in front of me) which seems to be making Draugnarok much, much more stable in SE. I haven't had any crashes. On the other hand, I haven't had any really enormous battles due to the "clogging" problem I had observed in Oldrim, presumably because the same cleanup logic is helping here in lieu of me making my own cleanup back-end for hordes that accumulate in locations the player hasn't visited for some time. Furthermore cities do not accumulate piles of bodies and the entire mod's mood has changed: The effects of the draugr invasion are a desolate, haunted feel to the cities, rather than a gory aftermath of war. D:
Draugnarok remains challenging for low level characters (say, below 20 or so) if you've got other mods that are amping up the overall challenge of the game. Even stuff like Frostfall, because Draugnarok does change the weather and you're constantly wet and cold, rivers and lakes are also a dangerous means of escaping overwhelming odds since you might freeze to death on the other side. Needs mods (and especially You Hunger) add a substrate challenge that, while frustrating to some, I found blends with the overall sense of paranoia and panic that Draugnarok sets up. Of course combat mods - I'm using Vigor and some custom console tweaks like forceav healrate / staminarate - have the most direct impact on whether a gang of 5 draugr are going to be a breeze or a nightmare for you, at level 10 or even level 20. The game's own difficulty setting matters, too. D:
The Pause feature that I've added was useful precisely because I had ramped up the challenge with other mods so much that even at the slowest setting (Protracted) the draugr were just piling on too fast for my character, when I turned on DN at level 10. So I do think it's a useful addition to the mod and I'll be releasing a v1.2 with it. If you Pause during Outbreak you can get a sort of different use out of the mod, though I'd caution that you still have to assume that all kinds of quests can break due to NPC's dying, especially if you turn on the Lethality settings and especially if you use the bEssentialTakeNoDamage=0 setting in your INI. D:
I've thought about other changes I could make to the mod, anything that's quick and easy to do especially. I do have one idea I'd like to explore, going back to the mod's roots, which if it wasn't obvious already is the Berserk manga / anime. :) So it'll be a few weeks of experimenting and finding time to playtest before I release v1.2. Draugnarok is very playable in its current 1.1 state here on Nexus in the meantime. No need to wait if you just want to see what the mod is like - just beware all of the above considerations! D:
Actually works super well with a survival style play through. Without a mod like this there is no reason to set up camp in the wilderness. This mod makes it so you MUST camp in the wilderness if you want a safe place to be. With "ETERNAL INVASIONS" on it becomes impossible to live in cities, which is why I got the mod in the first place.
Here are some suggestions to really AMP UP THE FUN with this mod:
1)Become Meridia's agent in Nirn and go at the undead with Dawnbreaker! There is nothing like charging into a horde of 20 Draugr with Dawnbreaker and burning them ALL.
2)The Mod is insane fun with Truely Undead and The Walking Draugr -- both of these mods make Draugr resurrect repeatedly until killed by special means. You can set the means of permanently killing them in the MOD manager.....fire, silver etc....
3) NPC dead Body cleaner is amazing with this also. Burn corpses to remove them. A mid-ressurection Draugr can be set on fire and it raises and fights on fire until it disappears in a POOF! Amazing.
4) Try this with Amazing Follower Tweaks and on LETHAL mode. Try to preserve the life of the Jarl. Use amazing follower tweaks to make anyone a follower and use that to evacuate smaller settlements and set up defenses in the throne room. I evacuated the entire population of Riverwood one play through and set everyone up in The Dragon'sreach throne room. Battles of 20 on 20 raged day and night for days. Seeing key figures fall who never fight togather was Epic.I couldn't keep Balgruf alive for more than a week! Then I took the rest of the survivors from Whiterun with me to Fort Greymore, but the dead found us there as well. INSANE FUN.
I wont play the game without this anymore.
....just so good! Amazing work unuroboros.
If you're still playing around with it all this time later, might I suggest using Lakeview Extended? It's quite nice by itself, and with the theme of a Draugr invasion, it'd be even better.
EDIT: if you disable radiant quests, the courier will not show.
I would rather see the hordes spawning at points surrounding the cities and towns, then attacking from beyond the walls, making their way to the jarl's halls, instead of spawning inside buildings and walls. Why even build walls, if they don't impede anything?
The random encounters outside the cities are excellent, really keeps you on your toes & makes the game more exciting.
Will keep this mod, of course, but still trying to find an answer to the Bruma anomaly.
Excellent!
Darndest thing happens between my Bruma mod and Draugnarok, when I try to walk to the pass leading to Bruma, the game starts framing like crazy. The farthest I've gotten before crashing indicated there were countless drauger hanging in the sky around the gates to Bruma.
I even tried a "kill all" command, but the engine couldn't deal with the thousands of corpses (I guess) and crashed immediately.
Still love this mod, but to access Bruma I have to disable it.
Weird...I have no idea where all the dead folk are coming from, and why they're hanging around in the sky.