Skyrim’s map is dotted with ancient temples, tombs and ruins. In the vanilla game, these dungeons are usually populated by the undead, mainly draugr, occasionally skeletons or ghosts. But encounters with these enemies tend to be a bit underwhelming, due to the lack of variety in appearance and skill between them. All draugr wear the same armor pieces, and their tactics are extremely limited. Fights with “unique” bosses usually feature some interesting mechanic, but even these draugr use the same model as regular enemies. Skeletons are unarmored Level 1 pushovers. Ghosts are just semi-transparent glowing bandits.

“The Restless Dead” breathes new life into these rotting corpses by overhauling pretty much every aspect related to the undead.

Features:

Localized Enemy Spawns:

Dungeons populated by the undead have been grouped into different categories:

Dragon Cult Temples
Solstheim Tombs
Ancient Tombs
Special Dungeons

Each dungeon type spawns specific foes that fit its theme.

Increased Visual Variety:

New draugr and skeleton models have been added, making it easier to deduce an enemy’s class and level

Smarter and Tougher Enemies:

Encounters with the undead have been made more challenging and dangerous

All undead enemies were assigned new classes.
Stats and levels for undead enemies were revised and modified as necessary.
New enemy level tiers were introduced, the highest being seven. Tier 7 enemies scale up to Level 100, though at a slower rate than the player.
Leveled skeleton variants were introduced.
Leveled lists were modified to ensure that specific enemy types get the right equipment. Ebony items were removed from leveled lists. Ancient Nordic weapons were nerfed slightly. An extra tier was added to equipment lists for enemies in Ancient Tombs.
Undead enemies’ armor was given an actual armor rating.
New spells were added to certain enemy classes and bosses.
Undead enemies received perks that provide bonuses to attack, defense and spellcasting abilities based on their skill levels.
New combat styles were added to ensure that enemies make the most out of their skills, perks, spells and equipment. Higher level enemies are more skilled at combat.
Named bosses were given unique skills, perks, spells or equipment that set them apart from regular enemies.

New Features:

(Note: All of the following features have been implemented in part, but will be expanded further in later updates).

New unique bosses were added to dungeons that didn’t have one (still a work in progress, a number of dungeons have a placeholder NPC for now).
Most named bosses carry unique items (hold on to these items for now, as they will be reviewed and modified at a later date).
Dragon Priests and dragon worshippers may drop bone charms when they die. Don’t dispose of these bone charms yet, as they will be used to boost and upgrade Dragon Cult artifacts (which will be part of a later update).

LE: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/115811

SE: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/94100

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This mod looks like a real work of passion - the detailed write up the author provided makes an interesting read:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/articles/53488

I will most definitely add it for my next load order when it is developed a little more.