"Tough Cookie Serana" makes my daughter Serana a tough cookie, hopefully enough to take on her father where I failed. She has increased stats, more perks and spells, better equipment and some knowledge of either two-handed weaponry or boxing, depending on which version you choose. None of this makes her invincible, but she'll be able to hold her own against most enemies, and with a capable adventurer watching her back there won't be much she can't do.


Tough Cookie Serana has the following features:

• Serana now starts with 200 health, 125 magicka and 125 stamina, and can reach up to level 81.
• In the Standard Edition, her speciality is two-handed weaponry, although she can still use one-handed well enough. She'll have a powerful enchanted greatsword, plus a war-axe for backup, and a bone hawk amulet of fire resistance. Paid for with Harkon's savings, of course.
• In the Hand to Hand Edition, her speciality is unarmed combat. Well, actually it's one-handed weapons. For technical reasons, the best I could do was give her two invisible weapons which use the unarmed combat animations. Just don't give her a better weapon and she's certain to keep using them. Or do give her a better weapon; she won't mind.
• I also gave her a pair of vampire gauntlets to keep her hands warm.
• Serana's spells no longer change as she levels up; instead she has a full set of frost, shock and necromantic magic available at all times, with the Wispmothers' signature Ice Volley as a replacement for Ice Storm that hopefully won't plough through your other followers. I taught her how to summon gargoyles and Soul Cairn monsters as well.
• She has low-level perks for light armour, one- and two-handed weapons. NPCs benefit much more from skill levels than players do, so rest assured Serana will be at or above the level curve for as long as it takes. She has all the half-cost perks for destruction and conjuration magic as well. She even has muffled movement and 30% better stealth, because I want nothing but the best for her.
• I did give Serana a perk for scaling unarmed damage and try to teach her karate, but it didn't work out.
  

A patch is also available to take away Serana's ability to raise the dead, if you find that to be a problem. Not that it's guaranteed to work. I couldn't even stop her walking on the grass and sneaking mudcrabs into the castle when she was a little girl...

~Compatibility~

This mod edits Serana and her two outfits, and replaces her vanilla class with a brand-new one. It will need to be patched for (or allowed to overwrite) other mods that change those records, such as appearance modifiers. Just know that if you plan on parading my daughter around in lingerie, the consequences will be inescapable.

A patch has been provided for compatibility with "Hood Plus Hair for Vanilla Dawnguard" (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/41082); it must be loaded after both mods. It will conflict with the No Necromancy patch, so if you want that and Hood Plus Hair, you must use the combined patch which takes away Serana's necromancy and provides Hood Plus Hair compatibility. And I thought making gargoyles was hard.

Tough Cookie Serana should work fine in the Special Edition and Anniversary Edition, with no dependencies other than the game and a computer on which to play it. The patches provided should work fine with either main file.

• Serana Dialogue Edit: Fully compatible.
• Serana Relationship Revamp: Fully compatible.
• Hood Plus Hair for Vanilla Dawnguard: Patch provided in optional files.
• This is quite a short list. Please feel free to report on whether Tough Cookie Serana works with other Serana-related mods, though, and I may add further details as needed.
  

~Note from Aardvark1998~

I always thought Skyrim was a video game, by definition Not Real, so imagine my surprise when I woke up to an e-mail from Valerica. It turns out she got into modding during her centuries-long stay in the Soul Cairn, and she asked me to share her latest creation with the world. So, here's Tough Cookie Serana! Enjoy.

~Note from Serana~

Mother's always been rather... pushy, and I wonder if she was really being honest about what this mod is for. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to know she still cares about me, but why choose to make me stronger now? Why not before she led me to Dimhollow Crypt and...

Actually, I'd prefer not to get into that right now. Do you mind?