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We all love fighting the Thalmor, don't we? They are the perfect antagonist that you love to hate, and can beat up on sight without feeling bad about it.
You'd expect this group to only ever use Elven made weapons, but they don't! On lower levels they are armed with common Nord steel.
This mod aims to change that and introduces a new tier of Elven Steel weapons that replaces the normal Steel weapons the Thalmor use.

To complement this new weapons tier, the mod also introduces a new two-handed variant of the common Thalmor soldiers called "Thalmor Vanguard". They'll spawn with two-handed Elven Steel, Elven or Glass weapons at the same level as their one-handed versions, and can spawn anywhere where normal Thalmor soldiers appear.

The new weapons aren't limited to just the Thalmor. I thought it made sense to add Elven Steel weapons to all level lists that also include the normal Elven weapons, so you will find them throughout Skyrim in shops and various enemies (the world just went through a gigantic war with the Elves, so their weapons are going to be spread out all over the place too).
They can be crafted, upgraded, and you might even find some enchanted versions.

Elven Steel weapons are slightly stronger and lighter than common steel and you'll start encountering them at about the same level as Orcish.
 
The set consists of 8 new weapons (Battle Axe, Bow (and arrows), Dagger, Greatsword,  Mace, Sword, War Axe, and Warhammer), and a Shield (heavy armor).
If you also install the optional Heavy Armory Addition, you'll get an extra 5 more weapons (Hatchet, Maul, Shortsword, Shortspear, Spear).


This mod is inspired by Elven Steel weapons for The Thalmor by Snozz2044, and an initial idea and set-up by Petepocalypse.

This mod makes changes to a lot of level lists, so I heavily recommend using Wrye Bash. Appropriate tags have been added to all plugins.

UESSP changes have been forwarded where appropriate.

Patches
The FOMOD installer comes with a couple of patches built in.

   - Audio Overhaul for Skyrim by David Jegutidse & Immersive Sounds - Compendium by lazygecko
Patches some of the weapons to use new sounds from these mods.

   - Believable Weapons by jg1 & Better-Shaped Weapons by LeanWolf
User who prefer more weapons with more realstic proportions will find a patch within the installer.
melius638 kindly allowed me to include his edited meshes. The original mod is found here.

   - CCOR & WACCF by Kryptopyr
There are different variations of these patches included in the installer, but the correct ones should be auto-selected for you!

   - Heavy Armory
Extends the weapon range with 5 new weapons, and merges level list conflicts.
If you installed Heavy Armory's animation files, the Shortspear and Spear will use those animations.

   - Resurgence Series by IconicDeath
Patches the new meshes to use textures and Cubemaps from Resurgence. This patch requires the Elven, Iron and Steel Resurgence mods!
Many thanks to Petepocalypse for providing this patch!
A combination with the Believable Weapons patch is also available.

Recommended
I can highly recommend you get these mods as well.


   - Elven Armors and Weapons Retexture SE by Xavbio
This retexture for the Elven armor and weapons works great alongside my Elven Steel mod. In fact, I've used Xavbio's textures as a basis for creating the Elven Steel textures.

  - Thalmor Rearmed - Equipment Overhaul by Petepocalypse
New Armory: Elven Steel started out as part of Thalmor Rearmed, before growing into it's own thing. I highly recommend this mod as a companion piece to Elven Steel. Patches are available from the Thalmor Rearmed page.

- Will you / can I make a patch for {INSERT MOD X}?
In general, I am likely to make a patch if it is a mod I use myself, or that's otherwise easy to throw together.
But of course, if you want to take things into your own hands and create a patch for any conflicting mod you find, then you are free to do so.

- Where do I find these weapons?
You'll find them pretty much everywhere in the world. In shops, in loot, on bandits and of course on Thalmor soldiers.
They are also craftable with the Elven perk.

- Why is there no patch for Animated Armoury? Your New Armory mods always include one!
In the past it was quite easy for me to make both an Animated Armoury and Heavy Armory patch because the level list edits I had to make were quite isolated. What I would normally do is make one of the patches, and then tweak it slightly to work with the other mod.
While working on the HA patch for this mod however, the weapon distribution became very much tangled into the framework of HA. Making an AA patch isn't as simple as making a few changes, and would require a whole new set of level list edits to distribute all the weapons (which becomes especially complicated with the enchanted versions!). It's a task that I simply don't have time for at this moment. It might come at a later time.

For now, if you use Animated Armory, the main mod still works fine for you, there's just no Armoury Add-on. If you use AA and HA, all you need is the HA add-on anyway!