This is the start of my creature mod for Skyrim. It might evolve into something as large as Creatures for Morrowind, or be smaller then my Critters of Oblivion mod, all depends on how much the CK likes me ( ) and community resources.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/PLA%20-%20Beasts.esp - Feel free to test

Most of us feel that the game world is lacking in varity in the creature department, and hopefully Beasts will eventually resolve this. In the manner of Creatures and Critters, Beasts will try as much as possible stick to the theme of the game world. Unfortuantely, this is a very limited pallete to work with. Morrowind was alien, with bugs and reptiles being the main creature base, Oblivion was common fantasy and daedra, and Skyrim is just Celtic influence. Beasts will be avoiding the trick of making many variations of the same creature and calling them new creatures. I'd rather have 2 new unique creatures, then 20 variations of an existing creature.


To start with, Beasts adjusts simple things, as I'm learning the CK. I'd like to get peoples opinions about what feels wrong, unbalanced, odd about existing Skyrim content, I don't yet want to know what new creatures people want to see. I'm not a modeller or an animator, just someone who can combine together community resources.


Changes made so far:

• Reduced the magic regen rate of crMagickaRecovery02, used commonly by some NPC mages to buff their magic regen. Let them run out of magic!
  
• Increased speed of some prey creatures
  
• Introduced a Chaurus Hatchling and Wild Chicken
  
• Made some actor levelled lists <= players level
  
• Introduced some randomness into bandit spawns
  
• Ensured that Dwemer constructs only ever drop 1 soul gem, and chance reduced. Way too easy to gather soul gems.
  
• Doubled the wander distance of various AI packages
  
• Rebalanced ambient creatures, way too many foxes compared to hares
  
• All bandits have chance of helms and gauntlets, added gloves, hats and arm/head bandages to their level 1 outfits, and adjusted lists to favour warmer clothing/armour
  
• Low chance of an enemy (Bandits, Forsworn, Witches, Daedra, Warlocks, Spriggan, Ghost, Skeleton) being spawned by the ambient creature and prey lists, to add more action in the world
  
• Added Ghosts to Draugr levelled lists, only affects wandering Draugr, not ambushers. These are nord NPCs with a varity of ghostly equipment that is unlootable. They are levelled up to 25
  
• Adjusted Game settings slightly influenced by PISE AI adjustments, just not as strong.

Changes in progress:

• More skeletons, so that they are not always level 1!
  
• Shade Ghost, deadly ghost that should be highly magical, and drains abilities - very rare.

Things I'd like to see in future:

• Boars
  
• Daedra from MW/OB (Golden saints more like MW with metallic skin, not the normal NPC types in Shivering Isles)
  
• Cattle herders (like the Guar/Shalk herders in Morrowind Creatures)
  
• Enemy NPCs with companion animals, like the random friendly hunters you can encounter
  
• Dwemer construct variations
  
• Other flying enemies, apart from dragons (Skyrims version of Oblivion gates!)
  
• Enemy NPCs that have a chance of running to the nearest weapon rack/container to try and find better equipment, before engaging you in battle. Managed it in Oblivion, totally lost as to how to do this in Skyrim

One way to make ghosts more exciting (very simple to do too) is to make their armor take up slots its not supposed to, like hands, feet, head, etc. Or make versions of the stuff with only 1 foot, 1 hand, and keep the vanilla animations.

Edit: I did this with the Night Mother in my CNRP mod: Came out pretty nice: http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b355/ShinGouki2002/nightmother-1.jpg

You could also swap them with Draugr,

I like that night mother variation. That would make a good generic ghost. I may have to ask you how you achieved that, I've not yet experimented with playing around with body parts (hmm, that sounds wrong...)

Sounds awesome!
How about some Morrowind creatures on the Eastern border? Like cliff racers, guars or netches. Or would the mountains keep them out?

Good to hear you're working on this. I never play MW without Creatures.

Just a small update, as I've been focusing on my loot mod

Changes aimed currently at Bandits:
* Executioner Cuirass, Boots and Gloves have been copied, and turned into Reinforced Leather armour, and given to bandit lists. It's between Leather and Scaled in stats
* Adjusted Bandit cuirass lists, so it's more common to have bandits wearing more then just a kilt
* Bandit Mages now have a chance of wearing robes, unenchanted or basic enchanted versions

Planned update:
At all levels, have a bandit entry of each racial type. "Outsider" races will have less spawn chance then the "locals"
Experiment with giving the more magical race meele bandits simple destruction spells
Experiment with giving most bandits access to a basic healing spell
Low spawn chance "Adventurer" that can be found, fighting off everything just like the player. Rival Dragborn perhaps?

Pool from the Daedric worshippers:

* Crazy, half naked werewolf men. They have lost their minds to Hircine and only the hunt remains inside them.

* Demented Sheogorath followers that attack randomly wearing chefs clothing wielding butcher knives, bards swinging instruments, or war-widows using their Conjuration magic to keep their departed loved one's soul on this plane.

* Molag Bal worshippers in the midst of a "domination" of some poor soul, wielding a Mace-alike of your own (but much inferior.)

* Random worshippers lending aide, healing you, even Soul Trapping animals upon their death depending on whether you chose to help during their respective Daedric Quest (example, getting the Azura Black Star makes you less likely to find help from Azura worshippers.)

* Rarely, you can encounter a Mythic Dawn fanatic, but they are often alone.

* More Afflicted spreading their disease by Pyrite's will.

* Random corpse eaters on a recently decimated battlefield via Namira.

...And so on.

Sounds like just the sort of visionary mod that Skyrim is in desperate need for. It's great to know that there are still dedicated modders like you bringing your ideas to fruition! Even if this can capture but a fraction of Creatures' wonder, it'll be a must have.

I'm not sure how complex the AI packages can get with the CK, but I would love to see some variation in wolf behaviors and spawning. I find it exceedingly ridiculous that wolves only seem to come in groups of two or three and attack anything with suicidal gusto. It would be far more immersive if small pairs of wolves like that would be passive and defensive, whereas potentially larger packs of wolves would actually hunt prey, including the player. Additionally, observing wolves and other predators in the wild, their AI always seems to reset or flick over to alternate targets after they take down another prey animal, such as elk or rabbits. While making feeding animations would be overly elaborate, tweaking their AI so that they remain in place to guard their kill would seem more natural.

Cheers!

Nedius wildlife mod sounds like just what you need. I'm thinking of using it myself.

At the moment, due to all the current limitations just focusing on making the existing stuff better in my mind. New content by modders will be slow, and could even be slower then Morrowind and Oblivion.

There's a lot of potential with the existing resources in game, but they've just been badly implemented.
Take for example, the Executioners gear. Minus the helm, that's a nice bit of leather gear, but it's just clothing.
Plus, if Pants could have seperated from Shirts, we could have a greater varity of looks, oh well...

My AI changes haven't been major yet, but even increasing wander distance makes for more encounters between NPCs and creatures out in the wilds.
In one example, I saw a fire mage run off to attack something as I was approaching a cave. Naturally, I followed to investigate, and saw him attacking some spiders. He dealt with them, when suddenly this bear wandered up behind him, and ripped his spine out. I dealt with the bear, started investigating the corpses, then was ambushed by some wolves.
So where there were a series of nearby spawnpoints, that could never interact, now they can.

Anyway, we shall see what develops with Beasts

Update:

Updated various GMSTs that affect combat, using PISE as a guide. Changes are a bit weaker then PISE changes, and I haven't change magic combat settings, as I feel mages are overpowered as it is.
Bandits have a chance of a basic spell to support their meele. Either basic destruction, or a healing spell. I believe I've seen some archers make use of the healing spell with their limited magic.
Adjusted bandit curaisses so that they favor being fully clothed over semi nakedness
Copied Executioner clothing to light armour, and added to bandit outfits

Planned Updates:
Instead of more races for bandits, I'm going to add a small chance of a different type of NPC appearing with bandits, such as Thalmor Agents, Skooma Smuggers, Dark Brotherhood Assassins, etc, etc. No doubt all these special characters would interact with bandits to do their dirty work, get information, trade, etc, etc. This will add a bit more variation to bandit dungeons.
Tougher Skeletons, really annoying that skeletons are only low level
Change ghosts to use unplayable equipment, and give them special draining enchanted weapons to make ghosts a bit more deadly
Make a more ghost like NPC taking advantage of missing body parts as per shingouki's example
Add skeletons and ghosts to Dragur non ambush lists for more variation in tombs

This sounds like a lot of fun. I was a huge fan of your Creatures mod in Morrowind, so there's no doubt in my mind that I'll love this, too. Keep up the good work, Piratelord!

Thalmor and dark brotherhood assasins together with simple bandits withput a tory Behind it? Mh, I must say, I don't really like this idea.
I don't see the fitting to ther nature, of course it can give exeptions, but I think, that''s a scenario which woul fit better to questmods, then to random spawns.

Well, I'm thinking the idea is that it leaves you wondering what they are up to, without you being the focus of what they are up to, and do the usual of saving the world.
You can already get Radient DB assassin attacks, so it's just an extension. Although off course, with Dark Brotherhood, if you've joined them, they shouldn't attack, so that gives an headache.
Thanks!

Spent the evening dealing with Ghosts.

Looking at what Beth put in the game, it looks like they intended to put NPC ghosts more into the game as enemies, based on the bandit actors, but they hit a snag. Their ghost NPCs used Bandit Levelled Lists as a base, but you can't put NPCs using Levelled Lists into a Levelled List, so the idea was generally abandonded.
So, what I've done is totally ignore all the existing ghosts, and made my own.
There are 4 types based on Nords, 2 meele, and 2 magic. I've excluded missile, as ideally they should shoot phantom arrows, but the arrows shouldn't be lootable. I don't believe this is possible.
They have their own unique equipment lists, clones of various armours, clothes and weapons. This lists are unlevelled, but weighted towards lower level gear. None of the equipment is lootable (as they are ghosts, I hate that with vanilla ghosts, being able to loot gear off them!).
The NPCs themselves are levelled to the player, up to a max of 25 and based on the level 3 bandit templates. I chose this method as ghosts shouldn't be too common, and making a ton of NPC entries would have been a bit overkill.
Their weapons have an enchantment that will drain health, stamina and magica slightly over 5 seconds.

I've then modified Draugr spawn NPC markers to use new lists, they are weighted to favor what they originally spawned, but they will also spawn ghosts and eventually skeletons. Any ambush spawn NPCs have been adjusted to ensure they are not using the non-ambush NPC spawn markers.
I'm hoping this will prevent there being "sleeping" ghosts in the tombs.

Melee ghosts? I know they have been like that throughout the series, but it just seems wrong - that they can hit you but unless you have a magic weapon they cannot be hit. If we are to take the literal interpretation of ghosts (literal interpretation being in surplus in these games) then ghosts would have no physical means to attacking.

What other kinds of attacks that less material would be fitting -- drains, curses, perceptual disturbances, etc. What it when they hit with their weapons these kinds of effects happened instead of health damage?

... oh that is right - we don't have attributes anymore.

Indeed on all points. I also want to make a more advanced phantom ghost that is like the Morrowind Bonewalker, a royal pain due to it's damage/drain spells, but it's not really going to be that effective in Skyrim.

Plus, just discovered that all the scripts on my ghosts have vanished, and I believe it's because I put them in levelled lists. I don't think you can have scripts on Actors and have them in levelled lists. That's a real serious bug/design feature, and means no ghosts, and a waste of an evening.

I recall CorePC stating something (not sure) along the lines that Skyrim (like the fallouts) don't use leveled lists for all encounters and that they are placed actors or something.

Sorry - not much help here - maybe I read wrong.

That's right. A lot of stuff is hand placed and set to respawn, but there are also a number of levelled lists being used, which I'm modifying. It's just that I don't think you can have an actor with a script on it in a levelled list. The engine removes the script.

At this rate, I'm going to abandon Skyrim modding, complete the game, and head back to Morrowind....

Nooooo! I can't imagine ever playing Morrowind without Creatures, but Skyrim could certainly use your magic touch...what if you were just to add some of your more complex additions as encounters (it'd make them a little rarer unless you're up for lots of hand-placing, but on the other hand more exciting when the player finds them), and add unscripted Daedra, Guars, etc. to the levelled lists as variants of existing creatures?

Hm this would be really a shame, I was really happy when I saw that you have made the creatures mod fMorrowind an now going on with Skyrim.

Corepc has confirmed the script problem with levelled lists.

I should hopefully be able to give the NPCs the ghost fx shader without a script, and just have a normal corpse instead of the pile of goo. Watch this space.

I don't like hand placing generic creatures, where's the variation in gameplay? Levelled List spawn points much better

I don't see the problem, hand placed creatures always fits perfect to their eniviroment oder dungeon.

Well, a list themed to the dungeon/environment does the job too, but I'm "old Skool" MW where everything was lists.


Anyway, back on topic. Managed to eventually find another ghost in my save game (not many untouched tombs left in the areas I've explored ). Has the shader now, but odd thing is, on death, they turn 90% transparent and lose the blue ghost effect Not too concerned about it, but they work fine, although naturally may need some balancing. If a CK fix get's released to fix the script issue, then they will get updated.

Next stop, the pathetic skeletons.


Edit: Updated OP with current progress, and the current ESP if anyone wants to give it a whirl at current development stage.

Looks promising! Thanks for all your efforts.

This looks very promising and I wish you all the best with it. Do you remember Waalx animals and creatures? We were discussing it a while ago and the last I heard from Waalx was his intending to go travelling. I asked permission to use the creatures in Mesogea and he kindly granted it. He brought his mod up to a very high standard then basically passed the baton to anyone who wanted to take it on and develop it. Skyrim would be astounding as a basis for this and now we have the huge world size issues sorted the possibilities are enormous. Middle Earth will need populating with creatures, the open borders and extended landmass mods that bring in beyond Skyrim will need beasts and I will be actively seeking diverse wildlife for Mesogea to go from the pine forests of the north, through deserts, jungles and so forth.

Last discussion about Waalx in Skyrim: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1272777-waalkx-animals-and-creatures-skyrim/page__p__19272604__hl__waalx__fromsearch__1#entry19272604

If you can bring in the kind of diverse beasts that the Skyrim platform desperately needs you'd become a bloody hero to some of us.

Elephants, wooly Rhino, hyenadon, diverse spiders (Shelob and Mirkwood), Lions, leopards, lizards, scorpions the list is endless.

If you can crack through getting custom stuff into the world there's a lot of people out there who would put them to good use. All the best.

Looks like this is gonna be one heck of a mod will be keeping an eye on this one thats for sure. Keep up the great work PirateLord