LE VERSION: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/102180


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

Ever thought it was odd that the College of Winterhold has a gigantic magical ball that can destroy the world floating merrily in it's front hall and the only Thalmor agent you have to deal with is Ancano?

Same here. (And yes, I know there's Estormo, but he's hardly a challenge.)

This mod changes that.

This mod is in ESPFE format, so it won't take up a slot in your load order.



DETAILS:

How do the ambushes work?

This mod adds ambushes to most locations you visit during the College of Winterhold quest line. These ambushes are spawned when the Player passes through a trigger box when the relevant CoW quest is active. I've been pretty careful about how I placed the trigger boxes, so unless you have a mod installed that radically changes a CoW quest location you should be good to go.


What about the new Thalmor spawns?

The spawns are drawn from the vanilla Thalmor leveled lists, so any combat mods, etc. you have installed that affect the Thalmor lists will affect this mod's spawns. There are several Thalmor spawned at each ambush, and they range in level from Medium to Very Hard.


What locations have been modified?

Saarthal, Fellglow Keep, Mzulft, Labyrinthian, Winterhold. Oh, and Dead Man's Respite. There's a bonus ambush when you do the Bards College quest.



KNOWN ISSUES:

If you find any bugs, let me know in the comments.

Not a bug, but something to be aware of: the final ambush is a big one. I have a medium rig and a *heavily* modded game and noticed a slight hesitation as I went through the trigger box. Be warned.

Also, in one or two of the ambushes you might see the spawns pop in if you're looking in the right direction. I was able to avoid that for the most part, but there are one or two places where it would have made the mod a lot more complicated, and I opted for simplicity.

There shouldn't be problems with Winterhold overhauls unless they make changes to the road that runs through the town. Even then, the worst that will happen is one of the Thalmor might spawn inside an object and be a bit angrier than usual.

Likewise, mods that heavily alter the other locations of the CoW quests may cause the ambush spawns to happen in odd places, or not at all. There shouldn't be any game-breaking problems, however.



KNOWN COMPATIBLE MODS:

Not So Fast - Mages Guild (changes quest timing)
Greater Saarthal (changes Saarthal)
Nordic Ruins of Skyrim (changes Saarthal and Labyrinthian)
Immersive College of Winterhold (changes the College of Winterhold)
Winterhold Restored (overhauls Winterhold)
JK's Skyrim (overhauls Winterhold and lots of other places)



LOAD ORDER:

Should be OK anywhere. Run a conflict check in xEdit to be sure.



INSTALLATION/UNINSTALLATION:

Install with the mod-manager of your choice or drop the esp and bsa into your Data folder. This doesn't require a new game, though it's not going to make much sense to install it if you've already gotten the Staff of Magnus.

Uninstallation is not supported. Revert to a save made before you installed the mod.



PERMISSIONS:

- Please do not repost this mod on another site without my express permission. I like to support my mods and I can't support what I don't know about.

- Translations on the Nexus are fine, no need to ask for permission, though I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know and if you add a link back to this mod. If you want to post a translation to another site, please ask me first.

- If you want to use this mod as the basis for your own mod, that's fine so long as you credit me and provide a link back to this mod.

- Ports to consoles: I don't have any way to do this, as I play Skyrim on the PC. If you want to port this, you may, but you must credit me as the author of the original mod, link back to this mod page on Nexus and support the console port yourself.


CREDITS:

MissEyre for helping me test the SSE port
Bethesda for Skyrim (in all its forms)