New Skyrim mod empowers the weak and spongy NPCs to fight back

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Skyrim‘s combat is by far its weakest element. Over a decade later, fights are more like hitting a giant sponge with a hammer than actual bandits. I don’t think what Bethesda made in 2011 was bad – Skyrim’s a huge game that works in so many ways it’s a miracle – but fighting hasn’t aged well. With so many Skyrim mods aiming to fix that, I’ve got a new creation that completely changes how NPCs act around you. It’s a real treat.

Another day means another Skyrim mod from yours truly. This time it’s Skytactics – Dynamic Combat Styles from ‘Zzyxzz.’ If you’ve found the Bethesda RPG’s aging combat requires an overhaul, this is the mod for you. While plenty of other creations change how you fight, Zzyxzz instead takes aim at Skyrim’s NPCs. Most humanoid enemies are now randomly assigned a new combat style, making them much less predictable.

“Combat Styles decide how NPCs fight,” Zzyxzz writes. “They affect how aggressive or defensive they are, and how often they attack or block. You can also set how they react in certain situations, like when the player power attacks or blocks. Should they power attack? Should they bash? These choices can all be adjusted in Combat Styles. In the vanilla game, they are quite passive, more or less waiting for you to hit them […] If you’re using combat movesets for NPCs, you can be assured they will make more use of their movesets and might even surprise you.”

With 82 combat styles spread across humans, guards, soldiers, forsworn, bosses, and draugr, there’s a lot of variation added to how NPCs fight. Each pool of combat styles is randomly assigned to an enemy NPC every time you reload a save, so you can’t predict how they’ll fight. Enemies can be randomly more aggressive, defend themselves, or fight you in myriad ways every time you boot the game back up.

With other overhauls adding things like Skyrim dismemberment, Zzyxzz’s combat styles are the perfect way to further improve the aging fights. Enemy NPCs are now wildly unpredictable, and while they still only have the same vanilla attacks, fighting them in groups requires more strategy. Everyone’s more active, and guards have been made the threatening force the cities of Skyrim need them to be.

ZZyxzz’s Skytactics – Dynamic Combat Styles is available right here, and while it should be compatible with everything you will need the Skypatcher mod to get it working.

Our breakdown of all the Skyrim console commands and cheats gives you complete control of Tamriel the next time you play. Otherwise, we brought together the best games like Skyrim to play while you wait for ES6.

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