Modders have historically put a lot of effort into making Skyrim feel as dynamic and realistic as possible, bringing everything from destructible furniture to gear-equipping animations to the game.
However, aside from adding a range of new NPCs to the equation, there hasn’t been much they’ve been able to do to make Skyrim’s vanilla populace of friends, foes and fighters feel fresh, aside from giving them a bit of a makeover.
Now, though, an interesting new mod is having a go at forcing the game’s NPCs to grow and change at the same rate as the Dragonborn.
Have you ever wanted Skyrim’s NPCs to take their education more seriously?
The mod in question is called ‘NPCs Learn Skills and Spells’ and is the work of modder sasnikol, whose previous work has helped give the game’s anonymous proletariat fitting and unique names, as well as giving dragon souls unique benefits.
This time, they’ve taken on the mammoth task of teaching the masses a few lessons in self-improvement, with the help of the mod ‘Spell Perk Item Distributor (SPID)’, which they worked on alongside fellow modder powerofthree.
Their new mod accomplishes its goal of having NPCs essentially “level up” alongside the player by digging into the skill weights data associated with them, to work out which skills or spells they should be focusing on, and how their learning should progress.
For example, sasnikol says: “Warriors prioritise one-handed and use archery as a secondary skill, so it would be natural for them to get basic perks ‘as soon as they can’ and reach higher perks in one-handed while still getting a few lower perks in archery to keep up with their level.”
In terms of how this applies to spells for mages, the modder explains: “Destruction Mages will (primarily) be learning destruction skills and corresponding spells, as such they'll always have a variety of destruction magic and be good at it.”
The only hangup of the mod at current is its inevitable lack of compatibility with some popular perk and magic overhaul mods, though this will likely be rectified over time as patches are developed.
Regardless of how terrified you are of Skyrim’s NPCs finally learning that sneaky archers are massively overpowered, make sure to follow us for more updates on The Elder Scrolls 6 and the wacky world of Skyrim modding.