Whew, well I felt like pushing things to the limit, so I finally plugged this one in and gave it a go with my level 20 Ordinator character (Perfectly aware while doing so that you said anything < 25 would be a bad idea). I'm happy to say that with help from Julan, I managed to beat all of the citadels on hardest vanilla settings (Except for the battle with Dagoth Ur, I had to tone it down against him.) without cheating.
Spoiler Except for the Indiana Jones moment in Vemynal, I did have to cheat my way out of that one because speed is not my character's forte. I couldn't even outmaneuver that boulder by equipping Sunder and using he amulet of Heartheal! I made sure however, to do the other ruins after that by loading saves I made previously instead of continuing from the one I beat Vemynal in, so that I didn't suffer from broken scripts.
The exterior changes to the ruins (Dagoth Ur in particular) are beautiful to say the least, the challenges were out-of-the-box, the traps were amusing, and
Spoiler The Solsthiem Dwemer ruin with the Easter egg was hilarious. The Breserk Ash Vampire scarred the crap outta me, I would've been utterly [censored] if it wasn't for Julan. When the vamp attacked, he brought my health down to a sliver and forced me to the ground with his first blow, but then Julan charged in and slashed him on the shoulder, forcing him down as well. From there, somehow we managed to keep him on his knees with brute force until he died. I felt introducing that creature was a little bit lore-breaking, but not so much that I object. After all, the Tribunal and Dagoth Ur are a little messed up in the head, so I just pretended the berserk guy was another kin of Dagoth Ur, whom he refused to even acknowledge the existence of because he was extra-wacko.
I also liked the changes you made to the battle in the heart chamber, it made the struggle a bit easier in some aspects, a bit harder in others, and far more epic overall.
Spoiler Astral Dagoth was ultra-cool, and I liked Dagoth Ur's attempt to flee when you destroyed the heart, that little missing piece of logic in the vanilla game disappointed me a bit.
You also made the battle far more companion-friendly in my opinion. With the vanilla fight, Julan would always get his but kicked while I went for the heart, but in this mod he can hold his own as long as I
Spoiler make sure he doesn't stay in the 'crypt' with Voryn.
I do have a couple suggestions, first one is to add some Dagoths into the new cells (The Ash Ghoul and Ascended Sleeper types, NOT the Ash Vampires), there were plenty of regular ash ghouls and ascended sleepers, but none of them were Dagoths, which disappointed me a little for some reason. The second would be to make the Great House Dagoth compatibility patch you said you might get around to one day. GHD and DNGDR would be heaven on Red Mountain! (Somewhat literally!
) And I drool with ecstasy just attempting to imagine what you might do with Nereveral! :drool:
One problem with that though, is that then having fully voiced lines from the built-in DU voice addon would seem a little out of place since it wouldn't do anything for GHD dialogue. But I'm confident that you could find a work-around for that.
Excellent work though! A++ form me.
Edit: Whoops, I forgot to ask a couple questions. First off,
Spoiler How many Arrows of Slaying did you make? I found 2.
Second, did you add in a texture replacer for the Dagoth Ur creature? Because he looked regular to me, but his Kin were clearly remade, and he was too in your splash screen pack.
-DL :chaos: