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About this mod
While you were smithing, the Draugr were training...
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The 3rd mod in my Hell's series, this is Hell's Draugr.
Also the latest of my work in doing some file-cleaning on my PC.
The Draugr are one of the most common enemies in Skyrim. You're hard pressed to do a playthrough of any kind where you won't face them in large numbers. If you've been playing Skyrim all this time, you've almost certainly killed thousands of them by now. This mod will give you stronger Draugr, tougher Draugr, more dangerous Draugr.
These are not shambling zombies. These are the mummified, reanimated remains of Nord Warriors! (BLAAAAARGH!)
The Draugr have been re-worked with this mod, giving them a geometric difficulty curve.
Hell's mods are difficulty mods, but it needs to be reasonable. No one wants to stroll into Bleak Falls Barrow on a new play-through and find that it takes an hour to kill each Draugr in there. At the same time, if you have a lot of mods that are great but induce a lot of power creep (Ordinator, Summermyst, etc.) then they can just be too easy. This difficulty mod keeps these factors in line.
In short. Low-level Draugr will be noticeably tougher than they were, but still very much killable for a low-lever player who doesn't suck at the game. But as the Draugr go up in level, the change in difficulty grows. If a baseline Draugr is 2x as tough with this mod as he was before, a Draugr Deathlord is 5x stronger than he was. Indeed high-level Draugr like those found at the end of dungeons should feel much more like mini-bosses than they did before.
Wait, don't ask a question in my comments yet. I can read your mind.......
....
....
....
Yes, you want to know exactly what I did to change the Draugr. Well, in previous Hell's mods I've tried not to share too much information, as not knowing what you're walking into has been an intended part of the challenge. However since Draugr are close to (if not the) most common enemy in the game, I can understand people wanting some details before taking a chance on the mod. So I will give you details.
Draugr have an armor rating now. The higher the level the Draugr, the more significant the armor rating. Deathlords are pretty close to the vanilla game's armor cap. Low-level Draugr have enough to soak a little more damage, but not much.
Draugr have more health, again, higher-tier Draugr get more benefit.
Draugr have perks now. (Yes, perks!) These are primarily perks that improve their weapon-wielding and magic-slinging.
The highest level Draugr (Deathlords, Death Overlords) have had their weapon options massively expanded. It won't be every time, but now, more often than not, when you encounter one of these high-tier Draugr they will (around 85% or so) of the time be wielding enchanted weapons. These guys were somebody in life, now they're armed appropriately. The enchantments options come from both the base game, and from Summermyst. Below level-30, they will still spawn with mostly un-enchanted ebony weapons. Above that, the enchantments come out. At particularly high levels, you might even encounter Draugr wielding stalhrim weapons.
Levels for high-tier Draugr have been raised.
NOTICE: If you do not have a mod that removes or enables you to raise the level-cap for reanimation, you will not be able to reanimate Deathlords or Death Overlords.
Understand before you go into this mod, this is a difficulty-increasing mod. The Draugr will be harder than you are accustomed to, but again, you'll be higher-level before the biggest changes smack you in the face.
Update: I found the Brimstone Edition. It is now available for download. Be advised this version is significantly tougher, including at low levels at may be a greater difficulty increase than a lot of players are interested in. This version is more than a little unfair to new characters. All Dragur now have level scaling, and even early Draugr can scale well into double digits, with the top-tier Draugr going even further than before. Their perks, and special abilities have been further enhanced. And, there is now the potential that high-level Draugr may be carrying a weapon with a special enchantment not available anywhere else. What is it? You'll have to find out for yourself.
Enjoy
Addendum: There is the possibility of a minor display anomaly depending on what interface mods you use. This can make it appear that the Draugr are not taking damage when you hit them. Trust me, they are. You may just have to hit them a few times before it shows on their health bar. For those with some technical understanding who want to know exactly what's going on, click the spoiler tag. Otherwise, just think of it as you having to soften them up before the blows start inflicting meaningful damage.
Q&A
Q: So, does this just make the Draugr into huge damage sponges?
A: That's actually not as straight-forward a question as you may think. What's a damage sponge to a player who's DB does 50-damage a hit, may be a one hit kill to a DB that does 500 a hit. That said, I didn't want to go overboard with one of the most common enemies in the game. Its the highest-level draugr where you'll see the most change, and even then it was to give them the feel of "miniboss" not "epic-quest / playthrough-end boss". Besides, I did more than make them tougher. (Hint. You probably don't want to eat a power-attack from a Deathlord.)
Q: Can you change (X)?
A: No. In the last couple years I haven't had time to play much, or mod. This mod was originally meant to be part of a much larger undead overhaul. But since I will not have time to finish that in the foreseeable future, I'm releasing this Draugr-specific mod.
Q: This is too much! The Draugr are op!
A1: The name of the mod is Hell's Draugr.
A2: You've had a decade to get good.
Q: Its not working! You suck DKhanno!
A: Load order. Fix it.
Q: Is this compatible with (insert 3rd party mod here).
A: Now you see, it depends, and if you've been playing and modding Skyrim this long, I hope you've learned something about conflict resolution along the way that doesn't involve putting a mace in someone's face. In case you haven't, let me explain a bit how these things work.
You see Skyrim has data.
Mods come in and change the data.
If two mods try to change the same data, the last one in the load-order gets the last word.
This means that any other mod which modifies the Draugr has the potential to conflict with this one. Most of the common creatures in the game are based on "templates". This template is a base creature, and variations are created on that base creature. That saves some poor, under-paid programmer the effort to enter the same data over, and over again. This mod modifies the templates that the Draugr use. Any other mod that does the same thing is going to conflict. The winner will be whoever is lowest in your load order. At a minimum, using a bashed patch should at least carry over the inventory changes for the Draugr by merging leveled lists. (You are using a bashed patch, right? Right?) But if you want what this mod has to bring, make sure its lower in the load-order than anything else which might modify the Draugr.
Q: I found a bug, when I'm done telling you how bad you suck at modding, what should I do?
A: You might consider telling me what the bug is, so that I can fix it when time permits.
Q: Its still not working! You still suck DKhanno!
A: PEBKAC
Q: Does this modify every Draugr in the game?
A: No. But it does get most of them. The ghosts in the final mission of the Mage's Guild quest are technically Draugr in the game's code. But, ghost is not Draugr. So I did not change those. Most any other Draugr however has been effected. Remember what we talked about above, the changes of this mod can potentially carry over to other mods if they pull certain data from the templates without changing it. Think of it this way. The Draugr have no constitution, they are not all created equal. You may not know ahead of time just how tough the Draugr you're about to pick a fight with really are.
Q: Will you make a version that doesn't require Summermyst?
A: No. Frankly it would take too long to go back and gut the leveled-list changes I made. If someone else wants to do that and upload, they are free to do so and do not need to ask my permission ahead of time.
Q: I played your other Hell's mods. They suck!
A: Well then, guess what you shouldn't do with this mod?
Q: I played your other Hell's mods, will this one get a Brimstone versions?
A: I think so. I actually created a Brimstone version for my own use. Problem is, I can't remember where on my computer I saved the file. I'll come across it eventually and upload it. The Brimstone version however is a much larger difficulty spike than I suspect most players will be interested in, so its not going to be a priority to locate and upload unless a lot of people were to request it.
--------------------
My other mods.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/34338
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/42108
Also the latest of my work in doing some file-cleaning on my PC.
The Draugr are one of the most common enemies in Skyrim. You're hard pressed to do a playthrough of any kind where you won't face them in large numbers. If you've been playing Skyrim all this time, you've almost certainly killed thousands of them by now. This mod will give you stronger Draugr, tougher Draugr, more dangerous Draugr.
These are not shambling zombies. These are the mummified, reanimated remains of Nord Warriors! (BLAAAAARGH!)
The Draugr have been re-worked with this mod, giving them a geometric difficulty curve.
Hell's mods are difficulty mods, but it needs to be reasonable. No one wants to stroll into Bleak Falls Barrow on a new play-through and find that it takes an hour to kill each Draugr in there. At the same time, if you have a lot of mods that are great but induce a lot of power creep (Ordinator, Summermyst, etc.) then they can just be too easy. This difficulty mod keeps these factors in line.
In short. Low-level Draugr will be noticeably tougher than they were, but still very much killable for a low-lever player who doesn't suck at the game. But as the Draugr go up in level, the change in difficulty grows. If a baseline Draugr is 2x as tough with this mod as he was before, a Draugr Deathlord is 5x stronger than he was. Indeed high-level Draugr like those found at the end of dungeons should feel much more like mini-bosses than they did before.
Wait, don't ask a question in my comments yet. I can read your mind.......
....
....
....
Yes, you want to know exactly what I did to change the Draugr. Well, in previous Hell's mods I've tried not to share too much information, as not knowing what you're walking into has been an intended part of the challenge. However since Draugr are close to (if not the) most common enemy in the game, I can understand people wanting some details before taking a chance on the mod. So I will give you details.
Draugr have an armor rating now. The higher the level the Draugr, the more significant the armor rating. Deathlords are pretty close to the vanilla game's armor cap. Low-level Draugr have enough to soak a little more damage, but not much.
Draugr have more health, again, higher-tier Draugr get more benefit.
Draugr have perks now. (Yes, perks!) These are primarily perks that improve their weapon-wielding and magic-slinging.
The highest level Draugr (Deathlords, Death Overlords) have had their weapon options massively expanded. It won't be every time, but now, more often than not, when you encounter one of these high-tier Draugr they will (around 85% or so) of the time be wielding enchanted weapons. These guys were somebody in life, now they're armed appropriately. The enchantments options come from both the base game, and from Summermyst. Below level-30, they will still spawn with mostly un-enchanted ebony weapons. Above that, the enchantments come out. At particularly high levels, you might even encounter Draugr wielding stalhrim weapons.
Levels for high-tier Draugr have been raised.
NOTICE: If you do not have a mod that removes or enables you to raise the level-cap for reanimation, you will not be able to reanimate Deathlords or Death Overlords.
Understand before you go into this mod, this is a difficulty-increasing mod. The Draugr will be harder than you are accustomed to, but again, you'll be higher-level before the biggest changes smack you in the face.
Update: I found the Brimstone Edition. It is now available for download. Be advised this version is significantly tougher, including at low levels at may be a greater difficulty increase than a lot of players are interested in. This version is more than a little unfair to new characters. All Dragur now have level scaling, and even early Draugr can scale well into double digits, with the top-tier Draugr going even further than before. Their perks, and special abilities have been further enhanced. And, there is now the potential that high-level Draugr may be carrying a weapon with a special enchantment not available anywhere else. What is it? You'll have to find out for yourself.
Enjoy
Addendum: There is the possibility of a minor display anomaly depending on what interface mods you use. This can make it appear that the Draugr are not taking damage when you hit them. Trust me, they are. You may just have to hit them a few times before it shows on their health bar. For those with some technical understanding who want to know exactly what's going on, click the spoiler tag. Otherwise, just think of it as you having to soften them up before the blows start inflicting meaningful damage.
Spoiler: ShowAlright, Bethesda games (Skyrim, Fallout 4, etc) with level-scaling have a threshold where if an enemy's health gets too high due to scaling, it overflows into a negative number. When this happens, the enemy spawns in game with negative health, and dies the very first time it suffers damage of any kind. I haven't raised any of the Draugr high enough for that to happen. However in working on my other Hell's mods, I got in the habit of giving more health through fortify-health abilities, rather than messing with health offsets. In testing I've been able to push an NPC's health as high as I want without issue using this method. So, its part of my design philosophy now.
Where this can become a minor issue is how some interface mods display enemy health bars. In which case they show the bar only as the NPC's base health. This causes oddities where an enemy can appear to have say 700/500 health. The excess 200 is the fortify health effect. So even though the enemy is losing health, the red in their health bar won't change until the bonus HP from the fortify effect has been bludgeoned through. The only ways I could get around this would be to either A) Stop using the fortify tool. (Won't do it, solves too many problems), or directly affect the interface (not my mod to be messing with). So that leaves this minor issue, that for many people may not even be an issue depending on how their interface mods work.
Q&A
Q: So, does this just make the Draugr into huge damage sponges?
A: That's actually not as straight-forward a question as you may think. What's a damage sponge to a player who's DB does 50-damage a hit, may be a one hit kill to a DB that does 500 a hit. That said, I didn't want to go overboard with one of the most common enemies in the game. Its the highest-level draugr where you'll see the most change, and even then it was to give them the feel of "miniboss" not "epic-quest / playthrough-end boss". Besides, I did more than make them tougher. (Hint. You probably don't want to eat a power-attack from a Deathlord.)
Q: Can you change (X)?
A: No. In the last couple years I haven't had time to play much, or mod. This mod was originally meant to be part of a much larger undead overhaul. But since I will not have time to finish that in the foreseeable future, I'm releasing this Draugr-specific mod.
Q: This is too much! The Draugr are op!
A1: The name of the mod is Hell's Draugr.
A2: You've had a decade to get good.
Q: Its not working! You suck DKhanno!
A: Load order. Fix it.
Q: Is this compatible with (insert 3rd party mod here).
A: Now you see, it depends, and if you've been playing and modding Skyrim this long, I hope you've learned something about conflict resolution along the way that doesn't involve putting a mace in someone's face. In case you haven't, let me explain a bit how these things work.
You see Skyrim has data.
Mods come in and change the data.
If two mods try to change the same data, the last one in the load-order gets the last word.
This means that any other mod which modifies the Draugr has the potential to conflict with this one. Most of the common creatures in the game are based on "templates". This template is a base creature, and variations are created on that base creature. That saves some poor, under-paid programmer the effort to enter the same data over, and over again. This mod modifies the templates that the Draugr use. Any other mod that does the same thing is going to conflict. The winner will be whoever is lowest in your load order. At a minimum, using a bashed patch should at least carry over the inventory changes for the Draugr by merging leveled lists. (You are using a bashed patch, right? Right?) But if you want what this mod has to bring, make sure its lower in the load-order than anything else which might modify the Draugr.
Q: I found a bug, when I'm done telling you how bad you suck at modding, what should I do?
A: You might consider telling me what the bug is, so that I can fix it when time permits.
Q: Its still not working! You still suck DKhanno!
A: PEBKAC
Q: Does this modify every Draugr in the game?
A: No. But it does get most of them. The ghosts in the final mission of the Mage's Guild quest are technically Draugr in the game's code. But, ghost is not Draugr. So I did not change those. Most any other Draugr however has been effected. Remember what we talked about above, the changes of this mod can potentially carry over to other mods if they pull certain data from the templates without changing it. Think of it this way. The Draugr have no constitution, they are not all created equal. You may not know ahead of time just how tough the Draugr you're about to pick a fight with really are.
Q: Will you make a version that doesn't require Summermyst?
A: No. Frankly it would take too long to go back and gut the leveled-list changes I made. If someone else wants to do that and upload, they are free to do so and do not need to ask my permission ahead of time.
Q: I played your other Hell's mods. They suck!
A: Well then, guess what you shouldn't do with this mod?
Q: I played your other Hell's mods, will this one get a Brimstone versions?
A: I think so. I actually created a Brimstone version for my own use. Problem is, I can't remember where on my computer I saved the file. I'll come across it eventually and upload it. The Brimstone version however is a much larger difficulty spike than I suspect most players will be interested in, so its not going to be a priority to locate and upload unless a lot of people were to request it.
--------------------
My other mods.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/34338
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/42108