New Mechanics to Know

Below you will find a list of important new game mechanics that you should certainly know about before playing the list. This does not cover every new mechanic! Read the Notable Mods sections after you have finished the Mandatory Reading sections for even more information.

Complete Combat Overhaul

The way you will perform combat in this mod list is drastically different from Vanilla, in such a way that it is hardly recognizable. These changes are subject to their own page, read about all of the mods affecting combat here!

The above linked page is rather long, and I would suggest you read it after finishing the Mandatory Reading section. You certainly do not have to read it word-for-word, I did my best to describe each mod in as much detail as possible. You will find some entries below related to combat regardless.

When you die, you will resurrect with de-buffs instead of reloading your last save

This mod list uses the mod “Soul Resurrection - Injury and Alternative Death System”. This adds a new mechanic on death, where you will be resurrected on the spot, with a set of de-buffs that represent how you were “injured”.

This mod chiefly exists to prevent re-loading saves while in game, however it presents more interesting gameplay than “Die, reload, die, reload”. The de-buffs can reduce your movement speeds, attribute maximums and regeneration, among a variety of other effects. Running away may be your only option in certain situations!

If you “die” many times, your stress levels will likely be through the roof. Leading into…

You can get stressed in combat, preventing certain types of attacks

If you reach the “Critical Stress” level during combat via “Stress and Fear”, you will be unable to sprint, perform power attacks, or power bashes. You will be left with normal attacks, and running/climbing away from your enemy.

It is possible to temporarily reduce this with Alcohol, but this will introduce further side effects that will reduce the situation even further. If you find yourself in a situation like this, it is best to get away and come back better prepared after you have de-stressed.

Stress is added to your player whenever you get hit. If you can avoid getting hit completely, you will not generate any stress. You can reduce stress by drinking alcohol, eating a warm meal, sleeping in a safe space, petting a dog, playing music, fishing, etc. Read the full mod page for Stress and Fear to see what other options exist to manage stress, and get to know the Fear mechanic. Make sure to keep on top of your stress levels!

Perform Jumping and Swimming attacks

With “BFCO - Attack Behavior Framework” in the list, you are able to perform jumping attacks, and swimming attacks!

• If you CLICK LEFT-CLICK while in the air shortly after jumping, you will perform a light jump attack.
• If you CLICK MOUSE-WHEEL while in the air shortly after jumping, you will perform a jumping power attack.

You can also perform these jumping attacks with a Bow and Crossbow. If you have the Ranger perk in the Archery tree, however, your jumping power attack with archery weapons will change to one with a large amount of acrobatics involved! If you do not have the Ranger perk, you will have a more basic slamming down animation for the air power attack. The light jump attack is always a lighter punch.

Swimming attacks are basic, and can be performed while in a swimming state with a left-click.

The jump attack alone opens up numerous scenarios in combat, and the swim attacks allow you to get at those pesky Slaughterfish, along with attacking other aquatic monsters.

Utilize new Bow Bashing and Combo behaviors

BFCO - Attack Behavior Framework also adds special bow and crossbow bashing and combo attack behaviors. The default animations/behaviors are locked behind the “Ranger” perk in the Archery skill tree with this mod list. However, alternate animations/behaviors are introduced when the player does not have the “Ranger” perk.

With or without the “Ranger” perk;

• If you power attack while sprinting with a ranged weapon, you will perform a kick attack.
• The bow and crossbow light bash remain as they were in vanilla, a simple quick push forward.

If you have the “Ranger” perk;

• With a bow, holding down power attack to power bash will unleash a flurry of lighter-power arrows after a power bash, which repeats as long as you hold power attack.
• When holding down power attack with a crossbow, an acrobatic maneuver if performed, where you continuously move forward and stab with a bolt, which continues as long as you hold power attack
• If you CLICK MOUSE-WHEEL, you will perform a very acrobatic jump backwards, and fire two arrows while in the air. This is the same as the jumping power attack with the Ranger perk.

If you don’t have the “Ranger” perk;

• With a Bow or Crossbow, holding down power attack to power bash will perform a vanilla power bash, however you will also “throw” an arrow towards your target, which repeats as long as you hold power attack.
• If you CLICK MOUSE-WHEEL, you will perform a quick run forward, and slam your weapon down on the enemy.

These attacks are powerful, which is why the more defaults are locked behind an Archery perk. Making good use of these attacks can make you more than formidable!

Equip your armor, weapons, and magic with LamasTinyHUD and Wheeler

LamasTinyHUD and Wheeler provide you with instant access to your entire arsenal of armor, weapons, and magic. With LamasTinyHUD, you can configure sequential loadouts for gear in your left and right hands, as well as your Shouts/Powers. The mod also allows you to cycle through restoration potions for health, stamina, and magicka. The mod will intelligently use the best restoration potion it can use. You can also place any potion of your choosing in the loadout.

You can name and select your active Preset within the MCM menu. Your loadout presets are saved to .ini files inside the Overwrite mod, at the bottom of the left pane of Mod Organizer within the SKSE/Plugins folder.

Wheeler allows you to access a Wheel Menu, one which is extremely responsive and easy to use. You can add multiple pages to your Wheel Menu, and add a large amount of items to each wheel.

To learn how to use both of these mods, be sure to check the Important Hotkeys Wiki page to see all available hotkeys, as well as what you need to do to utilize them. It would also be a great idea for you to read the mod pages for both of these mods, as they will provide you with even more information about how they work.

The dialogue camera will switch between you and the NPC

When you are speaking to an NPC, the camera will turn to face the speaking NPC. This provides a great boost of immersion for many, but it is quite subjective. If you dislike this, press F while in dialogue to switch to the 1st person dialogue camera.

Access new Custom Skill Menus in the Tween Menu

When you open your Tween menu, you will notice you now have an extra button labeled “Custom Skills”. Within here, you will find six new skill trees that you can progress through! There are four trees for Warriors, Mages, Thieves, and Priests respectively. These four trees are a part of the Sets of Skills mod that you can read about here, and allow you to further buff your character with benefits specific to your build! You will get a new perk point to use in either of these trees on a new game, as well as every 5 levels.

You will also find the following three unique perk trees;

• A “Dragonborn” tree, dedicated to increasing the power of your Shouts!
• A “Sanguine Contempt” tree, dedicated to increasing your vampiric powers!
• A “Vigilant of Stendarr” tree, dedicated to increasing your combat prowess against undead and daedra!

If you meet either of those bills, be sure to check the perk trees and read the descriptions of them in the UI!

Encounter creatures while you play and fill out your Bestiary!

As you slay, activate, or conjure creates, entries for those creatures will be added to your Bestiary, which you can open with the Semicolon ; key. Each entry will have an image of the creature, its resistances and weaknesses, along with the loot it drops. A description of the creature including lore and what ways it may attack is included here as well.

It’s a very fun time seeing the Bestiary fill up as you encounter more and more creatures! A constant effort is made with this mod list to ensure that all creatures have a bestiary entry.

Take notes in your Journal!

By using the Apostrophe ’ key, you can open your Journal! Here, you can create any arbitrary text entries you wish, categorizing them how you see fit. You can use this to make actual journal entries from your character’s perspective, or to simply keep a to-do list.

When you first open the journal, you may find that it is not positioned as you would like. Use SHIFT+ARROW KEYS to move the Journal to your desired position.

As you create new entries in selected sections, use the arrow buttons at the bottom right and bottom left of the UI to move between entries.

Play the Triple Triad card game with NPCs

As you loot NPCs, you will come across a variety of Card Packs that will give you different “Triple Triad” cards. With these, you will be able to play the Triple Triad game with most NPCs in the world! In order to do so, you will need to buy a Triple Triad Board from a General merchant such as Belethor in Whiterun. After you own this, all cards you get from loot will be placed in a virtual chest you can access with the board in your Misc inventory section, instead of being placed in your inventory. You will also be able to challenge NPCs to a duel with a dialogue option.

This game is derived from Final Fantasy, and is relatively simple however requires a bit of learning. The winner of a Triple Triad game usually gets to take one card from the loser, and you have the option to bet Septims on a game. Depending on where you are in the world, different “rules” will be enabled that change the way the game plays!

Read the mod page for Triple Triad in Skyrim at the following link for the rules of the game! Triple Triad Card Game Mod Page

Play instruments, and improve your skills as a Bard!

If you click on a Lute, Flute, or Drum in your inventory, you will begin to play a song! At first, your skills will be…bad, to say the least. You may suffer debuffs, and the songs you are playing will be noticeably bad. Those around you will lament at your musical attempts!

As you keep playing, however, your skills will increase, to the point that all the patrons in a tavern will cheer for you! A few people at the Bard’s College are also able to give you lessons, for a price.

Fish anywhere that there is water!

As long as you have bait, you can equip a Fishing Pole, and swing it in the direction of water. This will then start the Fishing minigame, giving you a “Fishing Supplies” underneath where you swung to continue fishing afterwards. This marker disappears after you leave that immediate area.

No longer are you required to find the “Fishing Supplies” placed in the world to fish. Just do so wherever you find water!

You can use this to fish in places that you certainly should not be able to. Fish responsibly!

Utilize your Horse Whistle, Horse Saddlebags, and quickly dismount your Horse

Immersive Horses is used in this modlist, and it adds great tools for using your horse. Use the “Horse Whistle Power” in your Powers menu to summon your horse wherever it may be. If you sneak and activate your horse, you can access a Saddlebag inventory, as well as many other advanced features related to managing all of your owned horses.

You can also perform a quick-dismount using the “V” key. This will cause you to quickly hop off the back of the horse into a combat-ready state.

Interact with the world while riding a Horse

You can now talk with NPCs and harvest ingredients/open containers while you are riding a horse.

Interact with NPCs from a distance

You can have conversations with any NPC from a distance! Press the B key to initiate Remote Interactions! This allows you to have full conversations with any NPC without being next to them, opening up a huge door for immersion in many situations. You can use this against enemies as well, potentially opening up new strategies in combat!

Use your Follower Menu

With the H Key, you can open the quick follower menu. Here, you can tell all or selected followers to wait, follow, teleport, or open their inventories. This is a very quick way to interact with your followers!

Recruit more than one follower with “Leadership” Speech perks

By default, you can only recruit one follower at a time. If you take the “Leadership” perks in the Speech tree, however, you will be able to recruit one more follower.

There are three separate Leadership perks, each unlocking an additional follower slot after you have unlocked all three perks in that tree. Start with the perk at the bottom!

Knock on doors

If you interact with a locked door in non-hostile areas, you are given the option to knock on the door instead of pick the lock. If there is an NPC inside, there is a chance they will let you in! This chance is improved dramatically if you have a relationship of some type with the NPC who owns the dwelling.

Light up the area with your Quick Lantern

By using the L key, you can turn on your Quick Light! This replaces a Torch, and can be configured to be a Candlelight spell instead within the MCM.

Fast traveling requires Gold

When you Fast Travel, you will be charged Gold! The amount is dictated by how far you are traveling. You can still fast travel if you don’t have enough Gold, but you will incur Fast Travel Debt. Incurred debt will be included in the cost of subsequent fast travels until you have enough money to clear it.

Climb any ledge that you could reasonably climb, or jump over any wall you could vault over

When you walk up to a ledge that your character could reasonably climb, you will see a glowing green orb appear at the ledge. Press your Jump key (ALT by default), to initiate a climbing animation! This is very Assassins Creed-style, allowing to to scale just about anything! The same thing will occur when you walk up to a low wall/fence that your character could vault over.

Throughout the world, you may also find glowing glowing white orbs. These are pre-placed traversal points, and can allow you to climb up a larger ledge, climb a ladder, or any number of things. Keep an eye out for them!

Lay down on the ground

By performing either one of the following actions, you can lay down on the ground! This prevents enemies from seeing you, but it does not make your hitbox smaller. We can hope for Dynamic Collision Adjustment compatibility in the future!

• Hold SHIFT while sneaking to slowly go prone.
• SHIFT + W while sneaking to jump into prone.
• Hold SHIFT while prone to get up again.
• SHIFT + A/D to roll left or right respectively.

Keep in mind that you can only perform this action with your weapons sheathed. You cannot lie down with your weapons, fists, or magic out.

Find and use a variety of new weapon types

As you play, you will find many new weapon types such as Rapiers, Katanas, Pikes, Halberds, Quarterstaves, Scythes, and more! These weapons have varying damage values for the tier they are in, to compensate for the usually faster animations involved. These weapons benefit from existing weapon type perks. Make sure to take note of the following;

• All Pikes, Halberds, Scythes and Quarterstaves in the game are classified as Battleaxes, and will benefit from perks for Battleaxes.
• All Rapiers and Katanas in the game are classified as Swords, and will benefit from perks for Swords.
• Claws in the game are classified as Daggers, and will benefit from perks for Daggers.
• Dai-Katana weapons in the game are classified as Greatswords, and will benefit from perks for Greatswords, despite their “Katana” keyword in the Inventory.

Utilize Crafter’s Link Stones to access your crafting items from anywhere

If you craft a “Crafter’s Link Stone” at the forge, and place it inside a container, the materials in that container will then be accessible from any appropriate crafting apparatus! You would want to place one of these in any containers you store your ingots, pelts, and other materials inside. Then, you can craft with those materials from any Forge, Tanning Rack, etc.

This is a bit of an immersion-breaker, however it is incredibly useful, and you can ignore the feature if you wish.

Throw a stone to distract enemies

With the Throw Stone power, you can throw a small stone you found on the ground. This allows you to get the attention of enemies, and send them where you would like quite easily, without wasting arrows or even needing a bow. You can also use these to trigger Runes, for you Warriors with no spells.

Conceal your identity with face masks

At a Tanning Rack in the Clothing category, you can craft a variety of colored Face Masks. When equipped, these face masks will prevent you from getting a bounty for crimes you commit while wearing the mask! If anyone sees you put on or take off the mask, any bounty will be automatically transferred over. Be sure to put on and take off the mask while you are out of sight!

Peek through keyholes in doors

By walking up to most doors, and holding SHIFT and pressing E, you can initiate a door peek! This will allow you to view what is behind a door before opening it. You cannot do this to all doors, and you will receive a notification message if you try to do this on a incompatible door.

Use SHIFT + Interact to initiate a few unique animations

With the same functionality is the above “Peeking”, feature, you can use SHIFT + E to initiate a few unique things! If a bard is playing music, this allows you to clap for them! You can also pet your horse rather than jumping onto it. Try it out on various things!

Open locks with Two-Handed weapons, Fists, or Power Bashing

Power attacking a locked chest, door, or even wire-trap with a Two-Handed, Fists, or using a Power Bash can potentially unlock it! Whether or not you unlock the lock or not, depends on either your Two-Handed skill, Hand-to-Hand skill or Stamina amount. Reference the below table to see what you can unlock at which levels. Your Security skill WILL NOT increase if you open a lock this way. If you do not have the requisite skill level or stamina, nothing will happen when you attempt.

Many locked chests within Dungeons now have a key

Many previously unlocked chests in Dungeons are now locked, and have a hand-placed key somewhere nearby. This provides more opportunity to pick or bash locks, but you can always find them if you look hard enough. Better Third Person Selection also makes it much easier to spot these keys!

Have blacksmiths and mages craft and enchant things for you

By speaking to a Blacksmith, you can ask them to improve your gear, or craft entirely new equipment from the Forge menu! This will cost you Gold, at a much higher rate than the materials would cost themselves. Blacksmith’s can also only craft gear up to their Smithing level.

You can also commission Court Mages and certain other mages to enchant or recharge your gear!

Casting spells takes a lot longer if you are not skilled

If you have a low skill level in a School of Magic, it can take you a very long time to cast spells. As you level up a skill, it will take you significantly less time to cast respective spells. You will reach Vanilla cast speed at Level 30 in a skill, and have near-instant cast times at Level 100!

You can no longer instantly learn spells

Instead of consuming a Spell Tome instantly, you will instead be offered a choice of how many hours you wish to study the spell tome. After you have studied the specified amount of hours, you will learn the spell. The amount of hours required is dictated by your skill in the respective School of Magic for the Spell Tome. You can study in sessions, to spread out your learning. If you are very unskilled, it can take you a very long time to learn a high-level spell!

Cast Spells as Lesser Powers

Using the Voice Spell powers in your Powers menu, you can assign Spells of your choice to a Power! This will, in short, allow you to cast spells of your choice like a shout! This is great for Alteration or Illusion spells, but can also be used for Destruction spells! This mod opens up a new door for Spellsword gameplay!

You can actually sleep in beds

When you activate a bed, your player will get onto the bed, tuck themselves in, and start snoozing! You can remain in this sleeping idle for as long as you want. To actually sleep, press the T (wait) button, which will open the sleeping menu. Pressing any other keys while in the idle will cause your character to get up.

You can decant your Potions at a Cooking Pot

This allows you to turn all of your small restoration potions into larger ones. For instance, 3 Minor Health Potions becomes 1 Plentiful Health Potion, and so on. You can convert directly from Minor to Ultimate potions! This only works with the base restoration potions, and not with player-made restoration potions.

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