I hope you all enjoy Ardent Adventure, please feel free to create a video or two of your experience with my new mod!
Future Plans; To create an Anniversary Edition, that covers all the new content. Please be patient, as modding for the Anniversary Edition has become exceedingly challenging due to all the incompatibilities with SKSE dependent mods.
played with this for some time. Not by itself but also with unleveled and T'skyrim, as an alternative to requiem. Only part I really dislike is that only high elves have any kind of decent starting magic. That is not lore friendly. Dunmers are a high magic race, maybe not as high as Altmer but still, more magical than nords, imperials and redguards. And bretons are also greater than average with magic, as they were once called "man mer" for being a mixed elf human race. So giving them almost no starting magic really handicaps any kind of magic user build for these two races, when magic is their specialty! And your mod seems to override mods like imperious. Please rethink that aspect of your mod. If, for example, Altmers start with 100 magic, dunmers could be 75-80 magic and bretons could be 50-60 magic, for example. That reflects the lore as to the greater than average magic ability of those races. A breton starting out with almost no magica would be considered a disgrace or disappointment in lore. Their magica advantage is supposed to balance out their lack of size and strength compared to redguards and nords and imperials.
Hi mary, Every thing you said about the lore is true, elves and Bretons are better at magic. However this mod does not change any lore, only starting magicka. In this mod being an elf or Breton is reflected in your higher magicka regeneration when compared to the other races, which are slower for humans, orcs and Argonians. Every character can still become a great mage, they will just have to level up their magicka and use more magic items to reach those goals. The elves and Bretons are handicapped less and as a result can lean into magic pretty early in the game.
Thank you for your feedback and for trying out Ardent Adventure. It's a challenging mod to say the least and goes against a lot what the more popular mods out there are doing, but it's a mod that I cannot imagine playing without.
thx for the explanation, I'm understanding what this mod does a little better. I'm now thinking I should ditch a lot of those mods that I normally load except for an alternate start and try this on its own to see how it changes things, because I have all sorts of unleveling and increase difficulty mods and magic overhauls in my load order. I might go back to Skryim Unbound instead of Alternate Perspective, because that's a good alternate start if you want to develop your rp character and build it up without having to play helgen, bleak falls and the Whiterun Tower dragon fight.
I'm playing with the AE free update only and BEES, my version used to be 6.640 but it's now newer than that but not the latest update. Hoping this works because now I have to remove my FNIS and install Nemesis to run this. Presumably for your combat mechanics.
I am wondering if the College of Winterhold Quest Expansion will work with this? It just adds some starting errands that you do for the masters at CoW. And is it compatible with Magical CoW mod?
You shouldn't have any trouble with quest mods in general. I've only tested this mod with the Nemesis Engine, but I assume it will most likely work with FNIS. If your new to my mods, and are looking for a very soul-like experience then I would recommend my three big game-changing mods.
These three mods alone will pretty much completely transform your game into a soul-like. I also recommend a Alternate start mod of your choice, I personally use Alternate Start - Live Another Life. Always load Ardent Adventure lower than your Alternate start mod. If you are using Mod Organizer 2, you can create a new profile and try this set up and see how you like it. You can then build on it with all your other complimentary mods like creature and quest mods.
A little late to this. but I have a little info that may help and a question based on what is said in this post.
Info: I have the latest Pandora Behaviour Engine (link to the GitHub page) and it's so fast and easy to use. I've also had no issues at all with any animation mod, where it is compatible with FNIS and Nemesis mods. Caveat that I haven't tried every possible animation out there and lean into OAR (which is DAR compatible and open source) to cover a lot of idles etc.
Query: With regards to magic users you (rougeshot) state that players will need to 'level up' and will relay on magical items at the start of the game. Would this preclude early game entry into COW which requires passing Faralda's test at the bridge? This test can be randomized and I have had her ask for Healing (Restoration School) as well as Flame (Destruction School) spells to be cast in my games. What I'm trying to understand is how this mod would effect early game development and whether pushing perks into magical schools early would make the player too much of a glass cannon.
P.S. Great concept for this mod. I didn't realise how much it did the first time I spotted it.
I'm glad you are enjoying the mod. In regards to magic, this mod was designed to challenge the player in the early game. This mod makes magic pretty powerful, so I tried to balance it by starting the player off with less Magicka and no starting spells. Depending on the race you choose, you may start the game with no magicka at all. This is only meant as an obstacle to overcome and to give you a real sense of progression when leaning into magic.
I usually focus on just surviving the first few levels and focus on my fighting skills, before choosing perks in the magic schools, but that's just me. You'll still be able to complete most quests for the College of Winterhold, but you'll need to level up your magicka and perks enough to actually be able to cast the appropriate spells. That's where the challenge really lies, is surviving in Skyrim without magic in the early game.
In regards to changes in your mods to stagger (both Ardent Adventure and Smite and Stagger), particularly with spells, you made those edits to spells individually by hand, right? That would mean that with any added spells, one would need to patch them to have a similar effect?
Hi Bushido, Yes I added the stagger effect individually and with different magnitudes for each and every spell, Shout, staff, etc. To be honest I don't even use other spell mods, because the vanilla spells with this mod make every other spell mod feel obsolete. But if you are interested in patching your favorite spell mods then yes you will need to add the stagger effect to every offensive spell in that mod. If your familiar with SSEEdit then it's just finding the free time to make a patch for your favorite spell mod. Perhaps if there is enough demand I will create a patch, for some of the most popular spell mods.
Hey tsalbmrots, This is not something I can really change easily, remember that these Creation Club plugins were included for free in the Anniversary update that was pushed out by Bethesda. My guess is you never updated or you reverted your Skyrim Special Edition to before the Anniversary update, so that's probably why it says it's missing. If you don't want to update, what you could do is download the Ardent Adventure for legendary edition and port it over. That would probably work, but keep in mind I haven't tested it myself. Most mods work as long as you port it over correctly using a Nif Optimizer for any meshes that have to come over.
I hope you found this helpful, and thanks for trying out Ardent Adventure it's one of my all time favorite mods that I've created so far, even though it doesn't get a lot of downloads. I know it can be a bit intimidating for most users, but once you get the hang of it, no other mod comes close to duplicating the gritty combat and sheer violence this mod creates.
sí, este es precisamente el problema, por el momento tendré que probar otros mods conocidos para simular el modo supervivencia, agradecería un parche a esta imcopatibilidad.
hi Rogue, I have enjoyed your mods previously. Is there a way I can use this without Race Menu? Edit: I tried this mod and it works fine without race menu, is Race menu a hard requirement? really love the combat of this mod.
Glad you're enjoying the mod, Race Menu is required due to the new racial skeletons that are included with the files. I know for my own game that I get CTD's without Race Menu. I recommend using Race Menu to avoid any issues when it comes to the new skeletons. The combat is pretty great isn't it :)
Hey Rouge, I think I diagnosed an unintended consequence of the way the conditions are set up for the stamina drain when running...
Effect 1 Condition A = must be running (GOOD) Condition B = has keyword armor cuirass (GOOD) Condition C = has keyword armor light (BAD)
Effect 2 Condition A = must be running (GOOD) Condition B = has keyword armor cuirass (GOOD) Condition C = has keyword armor heavy (GOOD)
In my paraphrase example above, I've graded each condition as good, with the exception of one, for the following reason...
The condition C, does not only look at cuirass pieces. It looks for ANY worn item, so a pair of heavy gauntlets for instance would satisfy this condition under Effect 2, while a LIGHT cuirass would still satisfy the condition C under Effect 1.
In practice this means that wearing ALL heavy outfit drains stamina slower than wearing a mix of light and heavy. (Because wearing strictly heavy only fills conditions for Effect 2, but not Effect 1) Whereas wearing a mix of light and heavy fills all conditions, thereby qualifying for double punishment (both effects active). Make sense?
My personal solution - There are probably better solutions to think of, but below is what I came up with for my own game...
1) remove the condition labelled BAD above (so there's never an added punishment for for light as opposed to heavy)
2) Tweak the magnitudes of Effect 1 and Effect 2, so that Effect 1 is 3x what effect 2 is. (Ex, effect 1 magnitude=0.75, effect 2=0.25) (for my taste i actually went with 0.15 and 0.05, so my character can jog for an extended distance, but still not infinite like vanilla)
The end result - The result of these tweaks is that (and this is the actual description i created for the effect on my own game, see below)...
" Running with any 'armor' on torso drains stamina, but less so (0.75x) if not wearing ANY 'heavy' armor apparel. "
It's not a perfect solution. For instance you could be wearing a complete heavy set, but just switch torso to robes and run endlessly, vs other scenarios where you'd experience the drain despite an overall lighter outfit... But that already existed the way you originally had it anyway. The main point of my fix is that you'd never be punished more for any piece being light armor as opposed to heavy armor. I hope this made sense, it felt easier doing it than trying to explain it, lol.
Take care and thank you as always for all your awesome work! ~dan
Thank you for your insight and feedback, I noticed the effects were not quite right once you pointed it out to me. After a bit more testing, I will update the mod with your recommendations for the conditions. Because Skyrim CK uses very limited keywords when it comes to armor, the ultimate solution would be to create a new keyword for all the vanilla and CC armors that clearly defines a Heavy Cuirass as a separate keyword. The problem with adding new keywords to armor is that the mod would need a patch for every other armor mod on the Nexus, which is something I'm not really interested in pursuing.
I could just apply the stamina drain to just the player, but that doesn't feel that great when your fighting loads of enemies and you are the only one who is loosing stamina. I tend to avoid scripted mods that do this because of the script lag it causes with my pc. So for now your solution will probably stand unless I find a better one later down the line.
Thank you for taking the time to improve on the mod, the excitement in your post is what I enjoy most about modding.
Hey, one more question, I thought of putting out some variation of the fixed "running stamina drain", as a standalone mod by itself, but thought I'd better check with you, as the core idea is really your invention. Is that something you'd be okay with me doing? ~dan
Just a heads up/update, my version of the running stamina cost has become fairly polished at this point (v2.4), I just want to make sure you know that you are free to use any or all of it to implement into your mod if you so wish! Talk to you later my friend! ~dan
Hello, I love this mod for the challenge it provides, but I have a problem only when I use my bow. I have no stamina expenditure with my bow and can therefore shoot a hundred arrows without any effort, whereas I actually lose stamina as soon as I use a sword or a mace. I don't know if other people have the same problem, but if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear from you. I've moved the mod down the list but it doesn't change anything. My other mods that affect combat are Advantageous Armor, Block Enchantments, Decapitation fixes, Enemies Can't Block While Exhausted, Enemy (R)Evolution of Skyrim, Full Combat Regeneration, High Level Enemies Redux, Naptime Lite, Simple Slow At Zero Stamina, Precision - Accurate Melee Collisions, Stagger Direction Fix and Wait Your Turn.
Hi Robot, I'm glad you're enjoying the mod, it's modders like you that remind me why I enjoy modding. To answer your question, if you are not seeing the stamina drain when using a bow, then that should also mean you are not seeing it when using any two handed weapon? It could be you are using a modded bow or two-handed weapon that is not classified correctly as a two-handed weapon or bow, you can confirm this by using a vanilla hunting bow, iron great-sword, etc. and see if the stamina drain works on those vanilla two-handed weapons first. If the vanilla weapons work, then there is your answer, if not then you'll have to become much more familiar with my favorite tool SSEEdit. There comes a point for every modder to take the plunge into SSEEdit, especially when using large load orders, the stamina drain is an active affect that is applied to every race in the race records. So you'll need delve into it and see what could be affecting Ardent Adventure. The last possibility could be a conflict with a scripted mod, but those are much more difficult to figure out, because the only real way to figure that out would be to remove your mods one at a time until the stamina drain is working again, and then add your mods back in until you find the culprit mod. This is easy with small load orders, but becomes a real chore once you have a large load order. Now you know as much as I do when it comes to troubleshooting mods. I hope you find this helpful my friend.
I do have conflicts highlighted in red but only with USSEP like 100% of players I imagine (who can play without USSEP these days?) and Ardent adventure is loaded well after anyway, so it's probably not that.
Love the mod so far! It is pretty far reaching in scope but I like enough of the ideas that it has been worth making a bunch of custom patches for my modlist. After playtesting for awhile I would offer two suggestions. 1. Is there anyway to reduce the amount of staggering when you or an opponent is wearing just clothes? As it stands I can be trapped in place by one wolf and staggered like 7-8 times, essentially locking me in place until I die, which feels weird and unfair. 2. I really like the idea of stamina drain from armor, but could it be changed so that each piece of armor drains a little, culminating in total to 1/s or 2/s depending on if the set is light or heavy armor? It feels like cheating to be wearing all heavy armor except the chestplate and not suffer any stamina drain.
Edit: also just a heads up but the High Elf starting magicka needs to be brought up by 50 points. Currently it is sitting at vanilla, which means high elves start with 0 magicka due to the offset.
Hi There, Glad you are enjoying the mod so far. Answer 1) Ardent should only affect NPC's and humanoid creature's like Drauger, if wolves are staggering you then it could be you are using my other mod Savage Skyrim?That mod is brutal by design, no amount of armor or level will keep you from being mauled by animals.
Answer 2) I always play Ardent with Advantageous Armor, and the chest piece is the center of that mod, so I wanted to keep things consistent and compatible, so they can be used together seamlessly.
I will double check the High Elves and make sure they are working correctly.
66 comments
I hope you all enjoy Ardent Adventure, please feel free to create a video or two of your experience with my new mod!
Future Plans; To create an Anniversary Edition, that covers all the new content. Please be patient, as modding for the Anniversary Edition has become exceedingly challenging due to all the incompatibilities with SKSE dependent mods.
Thank you for your attention to detail, it's been corrected my friend.
Hope you like the mod, it's a game changer.
Every thing you said about the lore is true, elves and Bretons are better at magic. However this mod does not change any lore, only starting magicka. In this mod being an elf or Breton is reflected in your higher magicka regeneration when compared to the other races, which are slower for humans, orcs and Argonians. Every character can still become a great mage, they will just have to level up their magicka and use more magic items to reach those goals. The elves and Bretons are handicapped less and as a result can lean into magic pretty early in the game.
Thank you for your feedback and for trying out Ardent Adventure. It's a challenging mod to say the least and goes against a lot what the more popular mods out there are doing, but it's a mod that I cannot imagine playing without.
Enjoy the mod my friend.
I'm playing with the AE free update only and BEES, my version used to be 6.640 but it's now newer than that but not the latest update. Hoping this works because now I have to remove my FNIS and install Nemesis to run this. Presumably for your combat mechanics.
I am wondering if the College of Winterhold Quest Expansion will work with this? It just adds some starting errands that you do for the masters at CoW. And is it compatible with Magical CoW mod?
If your new to my mods, and are looking for a very soul-like experience then I would recommend my three big game-changing mods.
Savage Skyrim
Advantageous Armor
Ardent Adventure
These three mods alone will pretty much completely transform your game into a soul-like. I also recommend a Alternate start mod of your choice, I personally use Alternate Start - Live Another Life. Always load Ardent Adventure lower than your Alternate start mod. If you are using Mod Organizer 2, you can create a new profile and try this set up and see how you like it. You can then build on it with all your other complimentary mods like creature and quest mods.
The main thing is to have fun!
Info: I have the latest Pandora Behaviour Engine (link to the GitHub page) and it's so fast and easy to use. I've also had no issues at all with any animation mod, where it is compatible with FNIS and Nemesis mods. Caveat that I haven't tried every possible animation out there and lean into OAR (which is DAR compatible and open source) to cover a lot of idles etc.
Query: With regards to magic users you (rougeshot) state that players will need to 'level up' and will relay on magical items at the start of the game. Would this preclude early game entry into COW which requires passing Faralda's test at the bridge? This test can be randomized and I have had her ask for Healing (Restoration School) as well as Flame (Destruction School) spells to be cast in my games. What I'm trying to understand is how this mod would effect early game development and whether pushing perks into magical schools early would make the player too much of a glass cannon.
P.S. Great concept for this mod. I didn't realise how much it did the first time I spotted it.
I'm glad you are enjoying the mod. In regards to magic, this mod was designed to challenge the player in the early game. This mod makes magic pretty powerful, so I tried to balance it by starting the player off with less Magicka and no starting spells. Depending on the race you choose, you may start the game with no magicka at all. This is only meant as an obstacle to overcome and to give you a real sense of progression when leaning into magic.
I usually focus on just surviving the first few levels and focus on my fighting skills, before choosing perks in the magic schools, but that's just me. You'll still be able to complete most quests for the College of Winterhold, but you'll need to level up your magicka and perks enough to actually be able to cast the appropriate spells. That's where the challenge really lies, is surviving in Skyrim without magic in the early game.
Enjoy the mod my friend.
In regards to changes in your mods to stagger (both Ardent Adventure and Smite and Stagger), particularly with spells, you made those edits to spells individually by hand, right? That would mean that with any added spells, one would need to patch them to have a similar effect?
Yes I added the stagger effect individually and with different magnitudes for each and every spell, Shout, staff, etc. To be honest I don't even use other spell mods, because the vanilla spells with this mod make every other spell mod feel obsolete. But if you are interested in patching your favorite spell mods then yes you will need to add the stagger effect to every offensive spell in that mod. If your familiar with SSEEdit then it's just finding the free time to make a patch for your favorite spell mod. Perhaps if there is enough demand I will create a patch, for some of the most popular spell mods.
Saints & Seducers.esm.
Curios.esl
survivalmode.esl.
I thought this mod only require racemenu ? Can you clean the mod from required master files? :)
I want to really use your mod. But I don't turn the garbage my skyrim using creation club mods...
I think, nexus-modders always create better work than bethesda.
This is not something I can really change easily, remember that these Creation Club plugins were included for free in the Anniversary update that was pushed out by Bethesda. My guess is you never updated or you reverted your Skyrim Special Edition to before the Anniversary update, so that's probably why it says it's missing. If you don't want to update, what you could do is download the Ardent Adventure for legendary edition and port it over. That would probably work, but keep in mind I haven't tested it myself. Most mods work as long as you port it over correctly using a Nif Optimizer for any meshes that have to come over.
I hope you found this helpful, and thanks for trying out Ardent Adventure it's one of my all time favorite mods that I've created so far, even though it doesn't get a lot of downloads. I know it can be a bit intimidating for most users, but once you get the hang of it, no other mod comes close to duplicating the gritty combat and sheer violence this mod creates.
Edit: I tried this mod and it works fine without race menu, is Race menu a hard requirement?
really love the combat of this mod.
Glad you're enjoying the mod, Race Menu is required due to the new racial skeletons that are included with the files. I know for my own game that I get CTD's without Race Menu. I recommend using Race Menu to avoid any issues when it comes to the new skeletons.
The combat is pretty great isn't it :)
I think I diagnosed an unintended consequence of the way the conditions are set up for the stamina drain when running...
Effect 1
Condition A = must be running (GOOD)
Condition B = has keyword armor cuirass (GOOD)
Condition C = has keyword armor light (BAD)
Effect 2
Condition A = must be running (GOOD)
Condition B = has keyword armor cuirass (GOOD)
Condition C = has keyword armor heavy (GOOD)
In my paraphrase example above, I've graded each condition as good, with the exception of one, for the following reason...
The condition C, does not only look at cuirass pieces. It looks for ANY worn item, so a pair of heavy gauntlets for instance would satisfy this condition under Effect 2, while a LIGHT cuirass would still satisfy the condition C under Effect 1.
In practice this means that wearing ALL heavy outfit drains stamina slower than wearing a mix of light and heavy. (Because wearing strictly heavy only fills conditions for Effect 2, but not Effect 1) Whereas wearing a mix of light and heavy fills all conditions, thereby qualifying for double punishment (both effects active). Make sense?
My personal solution -
There are probably better solutions to think of, but below is what I came up with for my own game...
1) remove the condition labelled BAD above (so there's never an added punishment for for light as opposed to heavy)
2) Tweak the magnitudes of Effect 1 and Effect 2, so that Effect 1 is 3x what effect 2 is. (Ex, effect 1 magnitude=0.75, effect 2=0.25) (for my taste i actually went with 0.15 and 0.05, so my character can jog for an extended distance, but still not infinite like vanilla)
The end result -
The result of these tweaks is that (and this is the actual description i created for the effect on my own game, see below)...
" Running with any 'armor' on torso drains stamina, but less so (0.75x) if not wearing ANY 'heavy' armor apparel. "
It's not a perfect solution. For instance you could be wearing a complete heavy set, but just switch torso to robes and run endlessly, vs other scenarios where you'd experience the drain despite an overall lighter outfit... But that already existed the way you originally had it anyway. The main point of my fix is that you'd never be punished more for any piece being light armor as opposed to heavy armor. I hope this made sense, it felt easier doing it than trying to explain it, lol.
Take care and thank you as always for all your awesome work!
~dan
Thank you for your insight and feedback, I noticed the effects were not quite right once you pointed it out to me. After a bit more testing, I will update the mod with your recommendations for the conditions. Because Skyrim CK uses very limited keywords when it comes to armor, the ultimate solution would be to create a new keyword for all the vanilla and CC armors that clearly defines a Heavy Cuirass as a separate keyword. The problem with adding new keywords to armor is that the mod would need a patch for every other armor mod on the Nexus, which is something I'm not really interested in pursuing.
I could just apply the stamina drain to just the player, but that doesn't feel that great when your fighting loads of enemies and you are the only one who is loosing stamina. I tend to avoid scripted mods that do this because of the script lag it causes with my pc. So for now your solution will probably stand unless I find a better one later down the line.
Thank you for taking the time to improve on the mod, the excitement in your post is what I enjoy most about modding.
~dan
~dan
Enjoy my friend.
Talk to you later my friend!
~dan
I love this mod for the challenge it provides, but I have a problem only when I use my bow. I have no stamina expenditure with my bow and can therefore shoot a hundred arrows without any effort, whereas I actually lose stamina as soon as I use a sword or a mace. I don't know if other people have the same problem, but if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear from you. I've moved the mod down the list but it doesn't change anything. My other mods that affect combat are Advantageous Armor, Block Enchantments, Decapitation fixes, Enemies Can't Block While Exhausted, Enemy (R)Evolution of Skyrim, Full Combat Regeneration, High Level Enemies Redux, Naptime Lite, Simple Slow At Zero Stamina, Precision - Accurate Melee Collisions, Stagger Direction Fix and Wait Your Turn.
I'm glad you're enjoying the mod, it's modders like you that remind me why I enjoy modding. To answer your question, if you are not seeing the stamina drain when using a bow, then that should also mean you are not seeing it when using any two handed weapon? It could be you are using a modded bow or two-handed weapon that is not classified correctly as a two-handed weapon or bow, you can confirm this by using a vanilla hunting bow, iron great-sword, etc. and see if the stamina drain works on those vanilla two-handed weapons first. If the vanilla weapons work, then there is your answer, if not then you'll have to become much more familiar with my favorite tool SSEEdit. There comes a point for every modder to take the plunge into SSEEdit, especially when using large load orders, the stamina drain is an active affect that is applied to every race in the race records. So you'll need delve into it and see what could be affecting Ardent Adventure. The last possibility could be a conflict with a scripted mod, but those are much more difficult to figure out, because the only real way to figure that out would be to remove your mods one at a time until the stamina drain is working again, and then add your mods back in until you find the culprit mod. This is easy with small load orders, but becomes a real chore once you have a large load order. Now you know as much as I do when it comes to troubleshooting mods.
I hope you find this helpful my friend.
After playtesting for awhile I would offer two suggestions.
1. Is there anyway to reduce the amount of staggering when you or an opponent is wearing just clothes? As it stands I can be trapped in place by one wolf and staggered like 7-8 times, essentially locking me in place until I die, which feels weird and unfair.
2. I really like the idea of stamina drain from armor, but could it be changed so that each piece of armor drains a little, culminating in total to 1/s or 2/s depending on if the set is light or heavy armor? It feels like cheating to be wearing all heavy armor except the chestplate and not suffer any stamina drain.
Edit: also just a heads up but the High Elf starting magicka needs to be brought up by 50 points. Currently it is sitting at vanilla, which means high elves start with 0 magicka due to the offset.
Glad you are enjoying the mod so far.
Answer 1) Ardent should only affect NPC's and humanoid creature's like Drauger, if wolves are staggering you then it could be you are using my other mod Savage Skyrim?That mod is brutal by design, no amount of armor or level will keep you from being mauled by animals.
Answer 2) I always play Ardent with Advantageous Armor, and the chest piece is the center of that mod, so I wanted to keep things consistent and compatible, so they can be used together seamlessly.
I will double check the High Elves and make sure they are working correctly.