If you’ve always wanted the NPCs of Skyrim to be smarter, one of the best modders in the community is back with exactly what you asked for. While it’s often all too easy to snipe NPCs with a bow or magic from a place they can’t reach, that’s no longer the case. The bandits are smarter, quicker, and finally a match for your stealth archer build. They’ll also call you out for cheesing them. For shame.
Called NPCs Take Cover, incredible Skyrim modder ‘JaySerpa’ is back with a creation that’s sure to vastly improve all your ranged combat in the Bethesda RPG game. NPCs will now directly work against your cheese strategies, so if you go to a place they can’t reach to snipe them with arrows or keep reigning them down on them, the NPC will relocate.
NPCs will now seek cover to break line of sight in the Skyrim mod, zig-zag more to make them harder to hit, start combat if they see you readying a first strike, and 200 new lines (spliced from vanilla recordings) have also been implemented so they’ll call you out for cheesing them.
Bethesda’s NPCs have never been the smartest so JaySerpa has done it again, giving Skyrim a slight yet dramatic improvement. JaySerpa has already brought over a Starfield feature, improved fishing, and a whole lot more. So this is just another minor addition to their excellent collection.
If you’re a longtime Skyrim player you might be thinking, “Isn’t this NPC behavior already in the game?” and while you’d be right, JaySerpa has an answer for you. “Yes, NPCs ‘try’ to find cover in the base game. But they don’t care if the cover is actually good or not. In 95% of the cases, it ends up with them being wide in the open.” You can see the differences in action in JaySerpa’s above video too.
You’ll find JaySerpa’s Skyrim NPC mod right here, alongside some installation instructions and compatibility information.
If you fancy diving back into Tamriel but want complete control we’ve got all the Skyrim console commands and cheats you’ll need, alongside the best games like Skyrim if you fancy something a little different.
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