Prepare to Die, Dragonborn

Prepare to Die, Dragonborn plays Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition's own player mechanics on your Skyrim character: its movement, rolls, weapon move sets, guarding, parries, backstabs and ripostes, with Dark Souls' own timing. Every time Skyrim starts, the mod finds your installed copy of Dark Souls, opens its archives and decodes the animations and data it needs — nothing from Dark Souls is shipped.

What you get

• Dark Souls movement and camera — walk, run and dash in your weapon's Dark Souls stance, at Dark Souls' speeds, seen from the fixed Dark Souls camera behind you. No first person.
• Dark Souls attacks — every melee weapon swings with Dark Souls' move set for its kind: light combos, heavy attacks, the kick, running attacks, plunging attacks, two-handing, left-hand attacks and bare fists, each with its own Dark Souls motion value and timing. Hits go through Skyrim's own damage, so your skills and perks still count.
• Weapons bounce off walls mid-swing and off enemies blocking with a heavy shield.
• Guard, parry and poise — Dark Souls' damage cut, stability and parry window; enemies have poise, kicks break their guard, and a parried enemy stumbles open. Two-handing puts your shield on your back.
• Backstabs and ripostes — Dark Souls' paired animations on you and your victim, with critical damage.
• Rolls and backsteps with i-frames — the light, mid or heavy roll by how heavy your gear is.
• Dark Souls jumping and falls — the running jump out of a dash, Dark Souls' landings, and falls that hurt (20 m kills).
• Dark Souls stamina — low costs (light attack 6, roll 10), fast recovery between actions, none while rolling or swinging; an action needs its whole cost.
• Bows in Dark Souls' stances: arrows fly where you face, or at your lock-on target.
• Feet on the ground on slopes and steps.
• Gamepad in Dark Souls' layout, with every Skyrim menu still a button away.
• Magic, shouts, sounds, music and quests stay Skyrim.

Single player.

Controls

• Gamepad (Dark Souls layout): RB light, RT heavy, LB guard / left-hand attack, LT parry, B tap = roll / hold = dash / tap while dashing = jump, A activate, X tap = quick item (favorited potions and food) / hold = draw or sheathe, Y tap = one-/two-hand / hold = Shout, D-pad left / right = next favorited item for that hand, D-pad down = next quick item, D-pad up = Favorites, Start = Journal, View tap = Tween menu / hold = Wait, R3 lock-on, L3 sneak.
• Keyboard/mouse: left click tap = light attack, hold = heavy, forward + left click = kick, right click = guard / left-hand attack, left Alt or mouse 4 = parry, G = one-/two-hand, tap Sprint = roll / backstep, hold Sprint = dash, Jump while dashing = jump, middle mouse = lock-on.

With a controller connected, Skyrim itself ignores keyboard and mouse.

Needs

• Skyrim Special Edition 1.7.104 (the current Steam version; tested). 1.6.1170, 1.6.1179 and 1.7.99 are supported too but untested.
• Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, installed through Steam. Without it, Skyrim tells you so and plays unchanged.

Credits

Made by puddinboots, built with Claude. Address Library for SKSE Plugins by meh321 (bundled with credit). Melee hit pipeline approach after SkyCraft by chasmlol (MIT). CommonLibSSE-NG by Ryan McKenzie, powerof3, CharmedBaryon, alandtse and contributors. Havok spline decoding after HavokLib by Lukas Cone and SoulsAssetPipeline by Meowmaritus & Katalash. Dark Souls formats from SoulsFormats by TKGP. Ultimate ASI Loader by ThirteenAG. Dark Souls © FromSoftware / Bandai Namco; Skyrim © Bethesda.

Licensed GPL-3.0-or-later.