Royal Ashta - Akila Belongs to the Ashta

The screenshot and video Akila are only blue because that seems to happen in icy biomes when using Concept Art Akila. This does not change their skin.

Ashta were described by the game designers as "velociraptors combined with wolves". On other planets where they spawn, the generic name of the creature is "Lionbear".

The lore frequently and repeatedly refers to Ashta as a serious threat that keeps bandits moving to avoid them. Alpha Ashta are reported to have been seen as large as a house. Don't worry, I didn't make them that big.

Similar to Terrormorphs, the lore discrepancy between how the story and characters treat Ashta and the aliens we encounter bothered me a lot. I actually began Royal Aliens by attempting to fix Ashta, which was supposed to be my 2nd mod. But the default size for the Ashta is so small that simply scaling them up barely makes a difference.  They still looked small!

Akila fauna now spawns two variants of Ashta. The regular variant, and a larger, more powerful variant based on the quest "Alpha Ashta". Regular Ashta now give double XP (10 base) and Apex Ashta grant 4x (20 base). This makes the challenge of taming Akila somewhat worthwhile.

Both Ashta have increased speed, very slightly increased damage, and level scaling based on Royal Aliens, but a little easier. (I noticed most players like level-scaling when it applies to a standalone faction like Terrormorphs, and the lore seems to support that Ashta should be very dangerous and Akila particularly threatening.)

This mod was not as easy as tweaking other aliens and required tweaking the entire Akila planet. Please let me know further suggestions to improve the planet.

The plugin is named RoyalAkila.esm to help people remember that the whole planet is contained in this plugin, not just the Ashta records. Down the line, if I make Akila better, I might rename the mod Royal Akila.

Video of me dying

(Death requires Royal Aliens 2x damage Very Hard Add-On and using elemental blast instead of Moon Form)

Also shows some of my player dialogue rewrites WIP. :)

My Lawgiver had my new version of Exterminator with 30% damage to aliens and mild burn damage. I am overhauling the vanilla weapon legendary mods to be useful for an upcoming mod: Pirate's Plunder: Better Loot and Mission Rewards for Explorers. 

Compatibility/Load Order:

After anything else that might tweak Ashta. Even Royal Aliens, as I might tweak this mod to offer specif