As a heroic adventurer, it’s easy to fight your way through crowds of enemies, leaving a trail of anonymous corpses behind. Who were they? What were their names? There is little reason to know or care. And even if one of them is strong enough to beat you, you can just reload your last save and try again until you kill them, the ultimate cheat code.
But 2014’s Shadow of Mordor added a compelling wrinkle with its nemesis system. When an uruk or orc defeated you, it would receive a promotion and rise in Sauron’s ranks. It would gain momentum and acquire a catchy nickname, and become much less anonymous. Your nemesis suddenly felt like a real character and turned the fight with them into bitter grudge fights. Random Orcs even became famous in some circles.
Now you can experience those grudge matches in Skyrim too. The Shadow of Skyrim – Nemesis and Alternate Death System (opens in new tab) mod will turn any enemy you defeat into your nemesis, from dragons to trolls to bandits, yes, even mud crabs.
The biggest change is that if you fall into battle now, you don’t actually die, you just get knocked out. Instead of reloading your last save, you wake up somewhere else on the map. Some of your gear might be gone – your nemesis could even use your weapons and armor if it’s superior to their gear. You can also have a debuff: for example, if your nemesis defeated you with a power attack, you can get the ‘off balance’ attribute, meaning you are more prone to being knocked down in combat. Your nemesis, meanwhile, has gotten stronger and may have improved stats and a new buff, making them even harder to defeat.
And of course you have a new quest in your log: revenge. Find your nemesis and destroy them. It’s the only way to remove those debuffs, and you don’t want some bandit bastard out there with your favorite sword, do you?
I played with Shadow of Skyrim a bit today and while it’s not perfect (especially the respawning system), it’s still pretty damn enjoyable. Outside of Whiterun with my level 1 character, I let a wolf beat me. I woke up unarmed in a cave and unfortunately there was a troll about five feet away. The troll immediately tore me apart and I woke up somewhere else, this time luckily with no enemies around.
But I had my first two enemies! They were shown in the Shadow of Skyrim menu as “Confident Wolf” and “Dangerous Frost Troll” and I had the option to follow them as quests. I also had two new debuffs: one made my attacks on animals weaker and one reduced my burden. I quickly found my lost gear and defeated the wolf (he didn’t use my weapons, probably due to lack of thumbs), followed the troll and killed him, dispelling my debuffs.
I’ve also tried it with human enemies. I walked into Warmaiden’s and started beating Ulfberth War Bear until he pulled his huge hammer and beat me to a pulp. When I woke up in Dragonsreach, he had a new title, “Ulfberth War-Bear Belly-Piercer”, which doesn’t really evoke fear. An unnamed Whiterun soldier I fight also defeated me, and his name became “Guard Mickal the Sunderer”, which is a bit better. And of course I let myself be beaten by a mud crab. It had to be done. It was named “Gargantuan Mudcrab”, although it remained quite small. But I imagine it’s gotten quite a boost now.
Shadows of Mordor is a bit of a bear to install if you start with a clean vanilla version of Skyrim Special Edition or Skyrim Anniversary Edition (or Skyrim SEVR). Shadow of Mordor has half a dozen other mods it depends on like SkyUI and SKSE, and some of those mods have their own dependencies, plus there are different versions of different mods depending on which version of Skyrim you’re using. Start at the Shadow of Mordor mod page (opens in new tab), which will tell you what you need to make it work. I also recommend using the . to use Vortex mod manager (opens in new tab).
There’s also a problem with random encounters at the moment: if you’re defeated by an unnamed rando, they’ll disappear from the world, along with the gear they’ve taken from you. If you are worried about losing your precious stuff, you can also disable this feature in the mod’s menu.
Here are some interesting additional details from the mod page:
- To avoid trouble, enemies that are quest-related, essential, or summoned cannot become your nemesis.
- By default, enemies 25 levels above the player do not become your nemesis when they defeat you. This is to avoid getting Nemeses that are too hard to defeat; this option can be disabled/customized.
- If you’re beaten somewhere you can’t get back in, the game will automatically save and you normally die and return to the main menu so you can reload your last saved game. Returning to the main menu prevents the Save Reload bug.
- If someone (such as an NPC) also kills your arch-enemy, or if they die, the player debuff will be removed, but no reward boost will be awarded for not killing the arch-enemy.
- You can have up to 5 Nemeses at any one time. When your Nemesis slots are full, no new enemies can become your Nemesis. This is to prevent the player from getting rid of unwanted debuffs by dying over and over.
- Reward buffs and Debuffs are only permanent until your 5 slots are full. After that, the oldest reward improvement/debuff will be replaced by the newest reward improvement/debuff
- Your followers can optionally revive you if you fall into battle. Followers have a limited time to defeat your enemy and revive you. When you are revived, you will not receive any defeat penalties and will regain some of your full health.
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