UESP Forums

It appears to be common knowledge that killing the ash vampires was originally supposed to make Dagoth Ur weaker. However, doing this the ordinary way, i.e. assault all their forts, killing them, and then going to Dagoth Ur, apparently makes no difference, since (if I'm understanding correctly) it's not possible for the game to modify Dagoth Ur's stats before you enter his cell.

In that case, in the Vanilla version of the game (let's suppose on Steam, with all the latest updates from Steam and everything, but no mods) if I enter Dagoth Ur's cell, then leave without killing him, and then go around and kill all the ash vampires, does that actually work in making Dagoth Ur weaker when I RETURN to his cell? Or does that not work either, and it's entirely impossible whatsoever to make Dagoth Ur weaker?

You understand correctly. Scripts which reference objects will only work on that object after it has been loaded in the game, and the only way to load Dagoth Ur is to enter his cell. So the ash vampire scripts that are supposed to weaken Dagoth Ur when the ash vampire is killed won't work unless you've visited Dagoth Ur's cell first. That being said, what you propose to do should work, with the following caveat (which I'll put in a spoiler tag in case someone who actually hasn't finished the game yet is reading this):


It would be an interesting way to actually get the ash vampire scripts to work as intended. Try it out and let us know what happens.