By
Renora1976
This is the 2.0.0 version of the Mermaid Race mod, which has been pretty much rewritten from scratch to improve stability, reliability and allow many new features. The goal of this mod is to provide a roleplaying experience. An old lore book will give you the key to become a bride of the ocean, but while a mermaid can live forever under the sea and can even, with sufficient skills in magic, turn in a human-like siren with unnatural charm over mortals almost at will, you will always look at the skies with cautiousness, because turning in a mermaid under the rain while miles away from the coast can be quite an embarassing experience.
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IMPORTANT: LetsTestThis, who did the work to make the animations compatible with LE and SE, provided the following installation instructions:
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Posted June 12
I copy pasted this post from my post here. If you need me to comment on anything please mention me as I am unlikely to monitor both threads.
As mentioned above I spent roughly an afternoon messing with the animations in an effort to ultimately make it compatible with Special Edition. Since I didn't understand how to generate new behaviour files and couldn't figure out how to convert the existing ones to Special Edition the resultant mod requires DAR though it works fine with the recently released Open Animation Replacer aswell.
Quick installation guide for SE users:
Install the meshes and textures used for the tail, you do not need to activate the esp.
Install Dynamic Animation Replacer or Open Animation Replacer.
Install the SE version of the file attached to this post.
For potential LE users who wish to use the race in conjunction with DAR the LE version is also attached.
What I did in detail:
Removed the behaviour files and switched both races to the normal behaviour files.
Previously the mod had a custom behaviour file associated with the race which handled all the animations. From my observations DAR didn't know how to handle this though, leading to t-posing when it was installed. In order to work around this I removed the behaviour files and instead pointed the race to the normal behaviour files for female player characters. This resulted in the normal animations playing for the tail race however which is why I then set up the animation folder structure to tell DAR to apply the included animations to the tail race. Since the folder has been assigned a rather high priority I don't forsee any conflicts with other mods using DAR.
As a result the animations now worked fine with DAR on LE which is the LE prefixed file I attached. However t-posing was still observed in SE since the animations didn't have the SE format. This leads us to the next step
Converted the animations to the SE format using this guide.
The resultant files then had the correct format for SE and seem to work fine on SE from my testing. This resulted in the SE prefixed file that I have attached.
A smarter person than me might have been able to figure out how to convert the behaviour files to SE instead of just ripping them out and pointing the races at the default behaviours but this works perfectly fine.
On an unrelated note I adjusted the voice of the races to FemaleEvenToned as I was experiencing oddities with other mods trying to play voice files that didn't exist for femaleYoungEager. If you dislike this change you may want to swap it back in SSEdit.
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Now, for the features to expect in detail:
New race that can be selected from the race menu, switched to using console or be turned into via roleplay method.
All vanilla races except Argonian and Khajiit can now become mermaids and properly reverse to their original races.
A craftable potion (cooking recipe), Mermaid Tears, that can turn any race into a mermaid with flavour text and animations during the transformation or can turn a mermaid back in the original race.
Fully animated movement and idles both on land and swimming for the tail form.
Strong health regeneration and speed bonuses for mermaids swimming in water - in a game without fast travel, this makes rivers, lakes and the sea a quite useful "highway system" to travel around Skyrim.
Bonuses to speech and pickpocket for leg form mermaids (using their charm for negotiation and distraction).
Lore-consistent transformation from leg form to tail form: swimming in water will transform your character instantly, being caught in rain will transform her after a while, same for snow but taking more time. You can dry either by getting inside or in clear weather. For weather-based transformation, flavour text will warn you of the transformation steps until you end up as a half-fish flapping on the ground and clothes besides you, which can be, well, quite an embarassing situation in combat, especially as a tail form mermaid is massively slowed down on land. The weather tracking system was completely restructured and is now continuous both for being wetter and drier. There's a "wetness" value that goes from 0 to 100: if you are in siren form and the value is 100, mermaid transformation. Being in the rain makes the value go up, being in the snow makes it go up slower, being under ward reduces or stops it as long as the ward is active (ward effects not fully tested), being in clear weather and/or inside makes the value go down. Swimming in water, outside the obvious instant mermaid transformation, puts and keeps the value to 100 so you have to dry afterwards, even if the weather is clear. The drier you are while in mermaid form, the higher you get bonuses to Alteration, making the Siren Form spell cheaper. Your bonuses disappear once reverted into siren or when being wet again.
Keep yourself dry to delay or cancel the transformation process:
Oakflesh, Stoneflesh and Ironflesh spells with slow down the weather effect on you, Ebonyflesh will stop it entirely and Dragonhide will even allow you to go for a swim without popping a tail.
Dynamic difficulty for transforming back in leg form:
When a tail-form mermaid either enters a building or gets ashore in clear weather, an Alteration school spell will be made available that will become progressively less magicka-intensive over time (as the mermaid dries, with flavour text). Casting it will turn you back in leg form.
All altars will turn a mermaid back in leg form when activated, giving you a way out, albeit one that can be a bit far away depending on where you got caught by the rain.
If all else fails, quaffing a Mermaid Tears potion will turn you back in an Imperial, but you'll need another bottle to become once again a mermaid.
The idea is that turning into tail form is a pretty big commitment for a low level character and you might want to keep some enchanted objects on hand to reduce the cost of alteration spells and/or increase your magicka reserves unless you want to flap your way towards the nearest altar. For a high level character, switching between forms is a lot more convenient.
Once you're mermaid (tail form) or siren (leg form), you can craft scrolls that provide you with a one-off mermaid-to-siren spell.
Curse mechanic: With lore-consistent causes, your character can become cursed, turning into a mermaid, both in body and soul. All flavour text will change accordingly, mermaid and siren powers will be stronger but reversing to siren with spells has a chance to fail and reverting fully with a potion becomes impossible unless you use a potion made with Alchemy 100 skill.
The potions and curses are still the two ways to become a mermaid, but now must be unlocked through reading a book with a bit of mermaid lore. When loading the game with the mod, the game will check out your Alteration skill: if the skill is under 25, it will wait roughly 30 minutes, as it probably means a new character and you're stuck in Helgen, that kind of stuff. If not, it will trigger right away and make a small show with a journal being magically sent to you, with an introduction to the mermaid books and a strong hint to where you can find it.
Once the book is read, you will be able to produce the Mermaid Tears potions (as long as your Alchemy skill is 20 or more) with increasingly efficient recipes. At skill 100, you can craft a Perfected Mermaid Tears potion that act as the curse or can remove the curse at will (while turning you back in the original race).
Once the book is read, you can also be victim to the curses. The first one happens when you extinguish the lighthouse during the "Lights Out!" quest, the second has a 5 % chance to trigger whenever you attack with your weapon while in direct proximity to a shipwreck (you will see a warning message whenever you come close enough).
The curse now has additional flavouring, with pretty much all of the flavour text around the transformations being changed to reflect that your character is now a true mermaid with the soul of one rather than a mortal temporarily with this form.
In mermaid form, you have a Mermaid Voice ability that sends a spell in front of you. If it hits a humanoid NPC at most 10 levels above yours (20 for a cursed mermaid), it rolls a dice (easier success on males than on females, even easier for a cursed mermaid) which, if successful, causes the target to become allied with you and run towards you as long as you are fully swimming. If you leave the swimming state for even an instant, whether by jumping or coming ashore, the spells break and the NPC returns to normal. If the NPC remains under your spell and reaches water, they'll remove their clothes and swim towards you, and when they reach you, bit of FX and they will die, their body sinking to the bottom. There is a 2.5 % chance of every such victim cursing an uncursed mermaid, increasing 0.5 % with every new victim and resetting to 2.5 % after triggering the curse. Each new victim will also provide 100 XP in Speech and Alteration.
When cursed, you get a special black soul gem with a huge selling price and a potion recipe that requires 40 Alchemy only, using that gem to make the potion. It acts as a one-off cursebreaker, breaking the curse itself but still keeping you as an uncursed mermaid. If you get cursed again, the only way to get the gem again is if you used the cursebreaker potion before.
Mermaids heal faster when swimming.
Compatible with Better Vampires without the need for a patch, but not necessary to have it either.
Mortal -> Siren: Mermaid Potion
Mortal -> Cursed Siren: Perfected Mermaid Potion
Siren/Mermaid -> Mortal: Mermaid Potion or Perfected Mermaid Potion
Cursed Siren/Mermaid -> Mortal: Perfected Mermaid Potion
Mermaid -> Cursed Mermaid: Mermaid Voice curse
Mortal -> Cursed Mermaid: Shipwrecking or grave disturbance curse
Cursed Siren/Mermaid -> Siren/Mermaid: Soul Potion
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