Preface

Undeath is an awesome and ambitious mod, but sadly it has not been updated in 4 years, and has a lot of bad modding techniques; making it a very dirty mod. It includes clunky and inefficient scripting , as well as dirty edits. ‘

Undeath has very inefficient scripting : it uses a 10second onupdate loop for very minor features. This is a wholly unnecessary burden to script load. The dark resurgence ability is also scripted poorly, firing onhit instead of making the player essential via ref alias and having a onbleedout function. This flawed scripting creates inconsistency in the phylactery regeneration ability, causing it to not work for fall damage or for simply taking too much damage.

The mod makes wild edits to things not even relevant to the mod, editing vanilla spells and some npc templates.

This means that Undeath could overwrite other mods which NEED to overwrite those records, causing inconsistency and bugs. For example, Aurora and Corpse Preparation both make necessary edits to vanilla spells, spells which Undeath edits too. This means that if those mods are loaded before Undeath, undeath will cause issues with those mods.

Undeath’s implementation of the “Dark Pact” ability is also problematic. Dark Pact is supposed to let you reanimate 4 more minnion, at the cost of preventing you from using summon spells. Antioch implements by adding conditions to all vanilla summon spells. However, he does not integrate USLEEP changes, reintroducing the spell absorb bug that USLEEP fixed. He also inadvertently breaks the Elemental Potency perk. This implementation is also flawed as it does not apply to mod spells obviously, which is funny because 90% of Undeath players would use spell mod packages.

What he should have done was to attach an entry point to the Dark Pact perk which would mod the spell duration of spells with the “magicsummon” keywords to 0. This is a clean mechanic that prevent the player from using summon spells with Dark Pact active, without having dirty edits. This will also work for modded spells, making the game more consistent.

A Fix For The Mod? On Classical Lichdom

I fixed most of Undeath’s issues with my mod Classical Lichdom. The scripting has been improved immensely. Antioch’s archaic and clunky 10 second onupdate loop has been reworked into a registerforsingleupdate chain that polls every 30 seconds. Undeath’s script load is negligible now.

The buggy “Dark Resurgence” script was also overhauled to be bleedout-based instead of firing onhit. In the original mod, the ability didnt work for fall damage or if you took more dmg than your base health. That is no longer the case. The ability works 100% of the time now. I also streamlined the ability, removing obtuse parts of the script. Dying immediately teleports you to the phylactery now, instead of the waiting 15 seconds for you to “collect souls” nonsense.

The cooldown of the dark resurgence script was also removed, making you truly immortal as a lich should be. Undeath has become a legitimate “Death alternative” style mod now.

Classical Lichdom also removed the immersion breaking console command race change required of Immersive Lichdom. It makes the custom lich races obsolete, providing instant compatibility with other custom race mods. It also fixes the issue where if you have the black shroud, you become the flesh lich when you are supposed to be a skeletal one.

However, without access to distribute the Undeath esp, I cannot totally remove his wild edits. I can only fix most of his egregious edits by copying USLEEP records and some ITM records to overwrite Undeath’s edits. This fixes the pertinent issues of the USLEEP-fixed spell absorption bug, broken elemental potency perk and the Dark Pact summon limitations.

This fixes Undeath’s issues for the general user, but what I did were technically dirty edits. The use of “Identical to masters” records was the only way I could fix Undeath’s issues without permission to redistribute Undeath.esp. Naturally, this means that there could still be potentially inconsistencies and conflicts if this mod or undeath is loaded after mods which edit the same things.

Which is what the guide below is for! The guide will tell you how to remove Undeath’s dirty edits, as well as the ones in Classical Lichdom. This ensures that regardless of load order, Undeath will not cause issues with other mods.

How To Clean Undeath With xEdit

Requirements

Undeath

TES5Edit, which is also called xEdit.

Undeath Immersive Lichdom – Improves on Undeath greatly, and also needed for Classical Lichdom.

Race Compatibility – Requirement for Immersive Lichdom. No longer needed after you follow the steps below. Can be substituted with a dummy esp. *Ignore this if using Immersive Lichdom 3.6 or if you are on SSE, racecompat no longer required.

Undeath Scyre Fix – Necessary fix

Undeath Classical Lichdom -Necessary fixes.

The 5 Steps To A Clean Undeath

Step One

-Open up Undeath Classical Lichdom in xEdit. This should load all the relevant plugins.

Step Two

-Remove these records from BOTH Undeath and Undeath Classical Lichdom. Not all of the following records exist in Classical Lichdom; that is fine.

Spell Records

ConjureFrostAtronach

ConjureStormAtronach

DetectDead

ConjureFamiliar

DeadThrall

Blizzard

Revenant

AbDragonPriest

IceStormLeftHand

ConjureFrostAtronachLeftHand

ConjureFlameAtronachLeftHand

ConjureStormAtronachLeftHand

IceSpikeRightHand

RaiseZombieLeftHand

dunReanimateSelf

doomRitualability

ConjureFamiliarRightHand

ConjureFlameAtronachRightHand

ConjureFrostAtronachRightHand

ConjureStormAtronachRightHand

ConjureDremoraLord

ConjureDragonPriest

DlC1VampireGrip

DLC1ConjureWrathman

DlC1ConjureMistman

DLC1ConjureBoneman

DLC1ConjureGargogyleLefthand

Dlc2ConjureAshSpawn

DLC2ConjureBardInstruments

DLC2ConjureSeeker

DLC2ConjureAshGuardianLefthand

MagicEffects Records

SummonFlameAtronach

SummonFrostAtronach

SummonStormAtronach

SummonFamiliar

MGRSummonArnielEffect

SummonFlameThrall

SummonFrostThrall

SummonStormThrall

ReanimateThrallFFAimed

dunRannveigSummonGhost

SummonFlameThrallPotent

SummonFrostThrallPotent

SummonStormThrallPotent

SummonDremoraLord

SummonFrostAtronachNPC

SummonStormAtronachNPC

SummonDragonPriest

EnchSummonFlameAtronach

EnchSummonFrostAtronach

EncHSummonStormAtronach

EnchSummonFlameThrall

EnchSummonFrostThrall

EnchSummonStormThrall

SummonWrathman

SummonMistman

SummonBoneman

DLC01SummmonSoulHorseEffect

DLC1nVampireBloodyGripCloakEffect

Non-Player Character Records

EncSkeleton01AmbushMelee1HShield

TreasCorpseSkeleton

EncDraugr01Template2H

EncWarlock01TemplateNecro

EncSkeleton01AmbushMelee1H

EncDraugr01TemplateMissile

EncDraugr01Template

EncSkeleton01Melee1HShield

EncSkeleton01Missile

EncSkeleton01Melee2H

EncSkeleton01Melee1h

LvlWarlockNecromancer

-Note that the ReanimateSecondayFFAimed and ReanimateSecondayTargetActor magic effects should not be removed from the Undeath esp, they are used for a minor Undeath perk. They allow the player character, after reading a series of books in Undeath, to reanimate thralls without disintegrating the bodies after the effect expires.

Step 3 (Skip if using Immersive Lichdom 3.6 or on SSE)

-Remove these records from Undeath Immersive Lichdom. Classical Lichdom automatically assigns undead keywords, making the custom races unnecessary. The only record in your remaining in the esp’s race section should be “necrolichrace”.

ArgonianRaceLich

BretonRaceLich

DarkElfRaceLich

ImperialRaceLich

NordRaceLich

RedguardRaceLich

OrcRaceLich

HighElfRaceLich

WoodElfRaceLich

KhajiitRaceLich

Step 4 (Skip if using Immersive Lichdom 3.6 or on SSE)

Rightclick on the Immersive Lichdom esp, then click “Clean Masters” and then “Sort Masters”. This step makes Race Compatiblity no longer required for Immersive Lichdom. You are now free to uninstall Race Compatibility IF you are using Mod Organizer.

Step 5

Exit TES5Edit, and select to save ONLY Undeath , Undeath Immersive Lichdom, and Undeath Classical Lichdom. If you are using Mod Organizer, you may uninstall Race Compatibility as it is no longer needed. I do not recommend uninstalling Race Compatibility if you installed it with NMM, as the mod contains loose vanilla script overwrites.

Thats it?

Yep! You are done! Hurray! If you followed these steps, the Undeath Classical Lichdom load order no longer matters as all the “dirty edits” are gone.

Enjoy a clean and bugfree Undeath experience! 😀

Edit: I was granted access to update Immersive Lichdom and I have personally strippped out the Race Compatibility requirement in version 3.6 – steps 3 and 4 are now obsolete.