Skyrim Redone Vs Requiem

[Danny Hosford]

I know there are several topics about requiem and SkyRe but i wonder if anyone has a good recommendation. I'm doing a custom STEP: extended/SR:LE/REGS install and I am thinking about using ACE and duel with kryptopyrs stealth skills rebalanced, which I love. Is there a good de-level skyrim mod to add to this? Skyrim unleashed maybe? Compatibility is of course great. Maybe an overhaul is better? One thing is I don't want to keep running from enemies the first levels and start quest only to have to flee the dungeons because the enemies are to powerfull. I also want the game to be challenging on the high levels. Maybe a de-level mod is not for me after all but I also hate it when I level up crafting and suddenly all the enemies have levelled up so my character suddenly has become less powerfull. Is there maybe another solution to this than to de-level the game. Our maybe a mod that tells which level a region or dungeon is to help making gameplay in a de-levelled skyrim a little more casual? I have read alot of threads about requiem and SkyRe both here and on the nexus and reddit but need help deciding.

It's difficult to have something both ways. It's true that de-levelled Skyrim makes things hard at the start but easier at higher level and this makes sense. It's not impossible to play at low level for example Requiem you just need to play more intelligently, sure perhaps a retreat is often prudent as it should be for anyone relatively untrained and not suicidal.

That said SkyRe is easy at lower levels as is Skyrim Unleashed, one you could try is Real Unlevelled Skyrim which is part of ERSO and comes with a multitude of compatible options and additions. High Level Enemies of course keeps things interesting at all levels there is another mod that I have come across that I can't remember the name of as I write this post so I will edit that in later but it is designed to keep the game more interesting.

Thanks for your answer! One question about requiem: does it have encounter zones which are harder/easier. What I mean is are there regions which are easier, like some of the other de-levellers have, making for easier lowlevel gameplay if you stick to that region?

A good question I will need to look into it but as far as I am aware Xarrian placed specific amounts of foes in specific areas. He also took away the names e.g. Draugr is all you see when you click on them regardless of whther they are a Boss or not. As far as I am aware there is always variety in that in one area there will be easy foes and harder ones but you wont know other than by how they look and handle their weapons. You can clear bandits at low level but need to avoid letting them gang up on you or hit you with arrows, spells and two handed weapons. The game settings function is deactivated in Requiem in that changing the setting to expert or legendary has no effect. I know that ASIS and RUS has easier areas close to towns and cities. Here is more specific information.

I am using scarcity, morrowloot 4e, ASIS encounter zone, High level enemy SIC edition, no skill limit, SkyRe, uncapper using the Ini from the morrowloot modular pack, for my unlevel fun, works great, play on expert, and adjust difficulty by changing ASIS spawn mob sizes instead of making all the creatures crazy health sinks. Using revenge of the enemy and the ASIS AI for brains. Using deadly dragon and dragon combat overhaul, random encounters (works amazing with ASIS) SIC and OBIS as well.

If you ever still find things easy, add populated dungeon/forts to really up the difficulty. I don't use the roads module or immersive patrols as they make too many massive fights everywhere and leave too many corpses to loot free. Instead use radiance and extended encounters which are more subtle.

After much soul searching and many hours of testing... including trying Skyrim Unleash, SkyRe Encounters, Requiem and ASIS encounters I have decided I DON'T like my monsters deleveled, at high levels there are areas of the game (most of Skyrim actually) that is simply too easy.

What I think would be perfect is a deleveling mod that raises the minimum level of creatures where appropriate/selectively BUT leaving it so that ALL dungeons have unlimited level cap so if I stumble into a "low level" dungeon when I am level 60, it will still spawn level 60 monsters. Yes I know this isn't perfect but as large as Skyrim is, its no daggerfall in size and so I can't really afford to lose dungeons as I am leveling beyond them.

BUT. having said it, loot deleveling and decreasing the amounts of gold in skyrim and nerfing merchants makes for a much more rewarding game. Its actually worthwhile playing a thief now, whereas it was pointless before.

To nerf OBIS, you will need to place Morrowloot 4E (have complete crafting overhaul & remove the relev/delev marker on it after Morrowloot 4E to use CCO's crafting if you want to, recommend nerfing the mining via CCO as well, select fast mining but less ore) and Scarcity below it in the load-order, just so any shared level-lists will have Morrowloot 4E and Scarcity overwriting it in the bash patch.

Having done this, that SkyRe perk where you can smelt down clutter for its constituent ingots become its weight in gold! I've never taken this perk before making these changes, now it matters A LOT. (come to think of it, I never bother mining before either as looting and melting the loot was much much faster.)

Remember If you are still getting too much loot, just install a higher setting with Scarcity, try 8x loot & 6x merchants to really put the squeeze on loot. Once done, you will find your perk selection become more important and any loot find heaven.

Also: With the uncapper ini that I mention above, I would edit the perk progression BACK to the default SkyRe one by cut and pasting. The ini that I mention above wasn't designed around SkyRe and you need a little more perks when using SkyRe to make it balanced. I like the slower progression to level 30 with this ini, as much of the game is better balanced and more fun between level 15-30 in my opinion, so stretching it a little is a good idea. With the vanilla SkyRe uncapper leveling, you are usually level 14 after one evening's play which is WAY too quick. But I usually edit the ini so that it levels quick up to level 5 so I can specialize my character early on and give it more direction, or else you will be using ALL the skills to just survive, which sort of gives you a "bad" start everytime..

HLE SIC version is based around the non-scaling version of the mod unfortunately and that means only the strongest monsters in each monster group will scale with the character (boss monsters). Just notice that there is a Hardcore patch for HLE which raises the level of monsters encountered (and make changes to the difficulty scaling in-game) this sounds like a good idea to really make them dungeons more difficult without spaming too many spawns via ASIS/random encounters.

Not at all. Som delevellers plugins have a min level and max level set to the same level for all encounter zones. ERSO have most encounter zones with a max level a little higher than min level and some (or all?) high level encounter zones with no max level. These zones will scale up with the player but at some point enemies stop scaling since they have a max level. High level enemies provides high level versions of these enemies and thus allowing them to continue to scale.

Yes, this will mean that I will lose some sense of progression as monsters will keep up with me or even ahead of me... but I can pretend the game is linear and I have just entered a more challenging area. I won't see a REAL difference compared to a unleveled world UNLESS 1) I am comparing the same dungeon between games. 2) You go back to a respawned dungeon in the same game. 3) Maybe outdoor areas, but I suspect even with HLE the outdoor wolves and saber cats aren't going to be leveled up very high, but them outdoor bandits are going to take some imagination to keep the illusion.

There isn't a ERSO map relating to encounter zones. But, there is a general criteria to know their level of difficulty. Places (dungeons, caves, ruins) with necromancers/wizards/vampires/draugrs are all dangerous zones (from level 30 to up). Bandit zones are less dangerous (from level 10 to 25 generally). The animal zones (i.e. animal caves) are the easiest (from 5 to 15 level). Dragon cove are very dangerous (from level 50 to up).

I really do believe some creatures should have a min level, which is fixed by this. I haven't reached high level with a deleveled skyrim but allowing some creatures to continue to scale should fix high level gameplay.

Remember with the "Old Skool" style of RPG, there were many many examples where even though the world was deleveled (which was the norm back then), there were artificial barriers in the game done by the programmers to prevent an early demise or access to high level loot and maintain a sense of suspense. These barriers (like areas in the game that isn't accessible early on) (that can make the game more linear) are NOT in Skyrim, so I don't think that there will ever be a perfect solution as sectioning off Skyrim isn't really an option.

You are correct: I have tried a lot and took the game to level 50+ in each "test", I found deleveled world like Requiem was super easy in the middle of the game and even easier later and the world was so much smaller at any level because you are limited to where you can go, either because the dungeons were too hard or too easy. I lost all sense of exploration. It was terrible for me. The early game of Requiem and Skyrim Unleash was great and I think well tested and balanced, but like many of these mods you can imagine that it would be easier to playtest early levels and I just don't think they are very polish in the mid to high levels.

I prefer using other ways to dynamically adjusting difficulty to suit the level I am at and the style of play I am adopting. The balance could be great with one character, but with another type of character the balance could be totally off. So installing mods that allow you to adjust the in-game difficulty without turning the monsters into health-sinks is the best way to go (in my experience).

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