What it does

Daggerfall Combat turns Skyrim's melee into a directional system inspired by Daggerfall and Mordhau. You choose the direction of every swing- overhand, diagonals, horizontals, rising cuts, underhand, or a straight thrust- and the game plays a matching attack animation. The weight of your weapon, the direction you swing and how well you chain your attacks all change how hard and how fast you hit.

• 8 swing directions + a thrust — each direction has its own animation for one-handed weapons, greatswords and battleaxes/warhammers, in third and first person, standing, moving and power attacks.
• Remappable controls
• Combos — the follow-up from the opposite side is full speed; repeating a direction is slow; everything in between is prorated. Thrusts count as orthogonal to every swing.
• Weapon weight matters — a percentage per weight unit: heavy weapons hit harder on overhand swings and lighter on rising ones, and are punished harder for bad combos. A dagger barely changes.
• Combo stamina — clean combos are free; a bad combo costs stamina
• Sweet spot — hits near the tip deal up to x1.25, hits near the hilt down to x0.5. Applies to everyone, NPCs included.
• Wind-up timing — combo slowdowns stretch the wind-up, not the swing itself, so the strike still lands crisply.
• NPCs fight directionally too — enemies use the same animations and favour good follow-ups (the optimal combo or one step off it).
• Off hand & dual wield — mirrored direction animations for a one-hander in the left hand.
• On-screen indicator — a ring around the crosshair shows your pick, each attack's speed and damage, and the best follow-up.

Controls (all remappable in the MCM)

• Left mouse — attack in the current direction (hold for a power attack)
• Move the mouse while attacking — picks the direction (Aim with mouse motion)
• Hold X + move the mouse — aim precisely; the camera stays still
• Mouse wheel forward — thrust
• Home — toggle the indicator
• End — cycle 8 directions / 4 cardinal / 4 diagonal

Requirements

• SKSE64
• Address Library for SKSE Plugins
• Open Animation Replacer (3.2 or later) — plays the direction animations
• SkyUI and MCM Helper — for the settings menu (without them, edit the .ini)
• Precision — needed for the directional damage bonus and the sweet spot

Supports Skyrim SE and AE (tested on 1.6/1.7 runtimes).


Installation

1. Install the requirements.
2. Install the main file (Daggerfall Combat) with your mod manager.
3. Install the Animations file (direction animations for Open Animation Replacer).
4. Ensure Animations is later in your load order.
5. Enable DaggerfallCombat.esp (ESL-flagged, takes no load order slot).
6. Settings: Mod Configuration → Daggerfall Combat.

Uninstalling: safe to remove between saves; the plugin keeps its speed changes out of your saves.


Compatibility

• Other attack animation mods — the direction animations sit at a high OAR priority, so they replace other attack animations for the player and NPCs while this mod is active. Movement, idle, sneak and non-melee animations are untouched.
• Combat overhauls that change attack speed — should stack, but untested; report what you find.
• Precision — fully supported (damage hooks go through its API).
• Daggers, unarmed and staves keep vanilla animations.

Known limitations

• Some moving attacks use standing swings (the legs don't step).
• Sprint power attacks lose their lunge; most power attacks share the normal swing for their direction.
• Dual-wield double power attacks (both blades) stay vanilla.

Credits

• Bethesda Game Studios — Skyrim, and the original attack animations the direction set is built from; The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall for the idea
• Triternion — Mordhau, the other half of the inspiration
• KG — KG Animations - Two-Handers and KG Animations - One-Handers and Dual Wield, used as source animations for several directions
• Ershin — Open Animation Replacer and Precision
• ianpatt, behippo and the SKSE team — SKSE64
• meh321 — Address Library for SKSE Plugins
• Ryan McKenzie, powerofthree, alandtse and contributors — CommonLibSSE / CommonLibSSE-NG
• Exit-9B — MCM Helper
• schlangster and the SkyUI team — SkyUI
• Omar Cornut — Dear ImGui (the on-screen indicator)
• The Mutagen team — plugin generation
• ClaudeAI - Writeup for most of this page, research and implementation.