Argentum - True Weakness To Silver

In the Elder Scrolls games, different enemy types possess different weaknesses and resistances. Traditionally, werewolves and undead are sensitive to silver, and take more damage from weapons made from that material. This is the case in Skyrim as well, but, unlike other weaknesses, weakness to silver is not applied as a magic effect. Instead, silver weapons have a script that adds the "Silver" perk to the player when they are equipped, and removes it again when they are unequipped. This perk makes silver weapons deal a set amount of extra damage to undead creatures and werewolves.

There are three problems with this approach:

• []Perks cannot be added to NPCs via script, which means silver weapons do bonus damage to werewolves and undead only when wielded by the player.

  []The Silver perk increases the damage of silver weapons by 20 points against all undead and werebeasts, regardless of their race, level or stats. This is inconsistent with other weaknesses, which are set as a percentage rather than a fixed amount.

  []The 20 points of extra damage make one-handed silver weapons much more effective than two-handed ones. Silver swords have their damage boosted to 350% (from 8 to 28, and that's before applying modifiers from skill levels, perks and tempering), while greatsword attacks get boosted to 218% (17 to 37).

  Argentum addresses these issues by making weakness to silver an enemy trait rather than a weapon property.

  Argentum does three things:

  • []It removes the damage effect from the vanilla "Silver" perk. This ensures compatibility with mods that add new silver weapons. Argentum needs to be loaded after any other mods that modify this perk.

    []It adds a new perk, "Weakness to Silver", and distributes it to the appropriate NPCs using SPID. The affected NPCs are vampires, draugr, skeletons, ghosts, werewolves and werebears.

    []It adds the "Weakness to Silver" perk to the player via quest. This ensures that the player is also affected by silver weapons when they turn into a vampire or werewolf.

    Argentum is available in eight different versions. All of them make undead and werebeasts take extra damage from silver weapons:

    • []Undead (vampires, draugr, zombies, skeletons and ghosts) take 200% damage.

      []Werebeasts (werewolves and werebears) take 225% damage.

      Argentum also offers three other optional features.

      []Daedra are weak to silver, and take 175% damage from silver weapons.

      []This option should not be used with Daedric Entity Restoration Project, as that mod already adds weaknesses and resistances based on weapon materials to daedra.