Is there a mod to stop the world from scaling with my level?

[Aelius28]

If this is TL;DR: just read the last paragraph of this post please.

 

The problem (ranty): The world should not revolve around my character. The entire world in vanilla Skyrim levels up coincidentally with the player. Wolves suddenly go extinct, then an epidemic of bears sweeps the lands, then the bears go extinct and the trolls take their place. This all, conveniently, happens right when I reach just the right level to be able to stand a chance against the new enemies. And the friendly people are no exception. At the start of the game, blacksmiths all across the world are completely oblivious to, or unable to craft, high level equipment. A mere few weeks later, while my character was off doing his own thing, the blacksmiths suddenly learned how to craft better equipment! Wow, what a coincidence, right? Just in time too, because my character needs new trusty high-quality equipment since he is now fighting bandits who, themselves, suddenly learned how to make good equipment over the last mere week (maybe they're in league with those blacksmiths themselves!? Ye gods!)

 

Imagine one of the bandits saying to his bandit friend, "Hey, have you noticed how much more powerful we've gotten just sitting here being lazy and not even fighting anything over the last two weeks? Even our weapons have magically morphed into better quality ones!" and the other bandit replying, "Hmm, yeah, there must be some adventurer on the other side of the province who's been killing some stuff." The first bandit thinks for a few moments and, puzzled, inquires, "...Why is that making us more powerful?" The other bandit shrugs, "Hmm, those are dangerous questions you're asking! Best get back to your work."

 

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So, I'm looking for a mod that will make it so that enemies and merchants and loot are basically relatively static, meaning that the world is what it is when I'm on the carriage ride to Helgen and the world keeps on staying the way it is in the upcoming weeks and months of the game time, since the world doesn't (and shouldn't) dramatically change everything just because my character happened to have been roaming around for a few weeks.

 

Some areas should have level 5 enemies, some areas should have level 60 enemies, and they should remain that way forever. The level 5 bandits hiding in their dungeons shouldn't magically become 12x more powerful in a few short weeks, all because my character suddenly started to walk around and do stuff. Nor should the level 60 dragons suddenly magically find themselves 12x weaker just because my character hasn't killed enough bears and picked enough locks yet.

 

A mod called PISE caught my eye, but the mod's description seems to say that another mod, ASIS, has taken up the reigns of that task. So I went to the ASIS page and tried to find out if it does the same thing PISE does. I was shocked to find that a mod which overhauls the game's entire fundamental system of enemy difficulty and item availability was described in a single sentence: "Generally tends to be semi-static, with zones given level ranges 20 levels wide (ie, 35-55, 10-30, etc)." Wtf? "Generally" semi-static? How generally? And what does "semi"-static mean exactly? How semi? Which zones were given which level range, roughly? What does the "etc." part mean? Does that mean it goes beyond 55? Does that mean there are other ranges aside from the two mentioned? It's utterly and completely asinine and insane to me that the readme for such a huge change to the game is a single ambiguous sentence.

 

I then found a mod called "Skyrim Scaling Stopper", which does what it says except it limits the enemies to an average level of less than 20, with only 3% of enemies being higher than level 21, and that's only in designated non-"safe" zones. Other zones are even easier. So basically, the game is over by level 30 because it would be stupidly easy no matter where you went and no matter what you fought.

 

I then found a mod (authored by none other than the SkyRe author himself!) called "WTF" which claims to provide the ability to assign "minimum levels to all encounter zones." Hooray! I found the mod I've been looking for, right? Wrong. What the mod description not only fails to mention, but outright LIES about (as the author himself admits to in the comments to his mod,) is that it's still limited by the level limits in game. I'll let the mod author himself admit to lying his pants off (apparently, he doesn't seem to realize this...) - "The numbers affect chosen enemies from an assigned leveled list. If the mine lists contain maximum enemies with level 5, a WTF level of 70 will just mean that the enemies in the mine will always have the maximum level of 5, regardless of when you enter the mine." So, basically, his mod makes it so that enemies can be the same level that they would be in vanilla anyway or even lower level.

 

Those are the only mods I could find that tackle this glaring and fundamental problem in vanilla Skyrim. So, does anyone know of any mods besides "WTF", "ASIS", or "Skyrim Scaling Stopper", that make it so that enemies and merchants and loot don't level up with you? Or does anyone know what exactly that component of ASIS does? Preferably in more detail than a single ambiguous sentence, since the author already provides that. Thanks!

[Aiyen]

Main problem with static worlds is that you run into the issue of limiting what you can add yourself in any meaningful way.

One prime example is dragons... if you do the main quest up far enough random dragon encounters will start to happen.

However if the dragons level is WAY WAY ahead of your own (And they will be, even more so if you use dragon mods) then you will get one shot. And these encounters will happen out in the middle of nowhere. You can ofc. just wait until you are high enough level, but there are also other quests events that do a similar thing where they add new actors, which if too high are just going to prevent you from ever doing anything related to said quest.

 

Also mods that add extra spawns with non vanilla records will not be usable unless they have a direct patch, since they will most likely always be too nasty or too puny, it is really hard to control random encounters in a static world.

 

My solution to this was to use Higher level enemies, in conjunction with some modified lists of my own. This mod has two settings.... scale all enemies up to your level, or only the "boss" in a pack, while the rest are spread a few levels below. (I like this since it makes mini bosses more interesting, and it is fun to knock a random lowly bandit out in a punch from time to time.) What I have done with the gear is made sure that no bandit will get higher level items, and severely limited enchantments on their weapons... since I just do not want to see bandits in daedric armor... ever. Also does it so that merchants lists are set so they do not start to sell daedric stuff for example, giving you a reason to seek out dangerous bosses, or leveling smithing.

On top of this I also use skyrim immersive creatures, with added spawns, which adds all sorts of interesting enemies (more dangerous ones at night) which keeps the game fresh, since you never really know what awaits over the next hill. If you had a static game world this would no longer be the case.

 

I also got extra vampires and werewolves running around at night.... so along with frostfall then going out at night is just about a death wish if you are not really well equipped, and/or escorted.

 

 

ASIS is not really suggested to be used anymore (PISE even less), since it is so outdated these days. What it means with semi static, is that there are random encounters as part of the game. These take random enemies from a list and puts it into the gameworld relative to what level you are.... a so called leveled list.

 

Also unless you ever go in and check the mods, then you will never really be told what regions or areas are what level.. you are going to have to find this out the hard way! Which means you can spend quite a bit of time just running away from stuff.... the idea sound good on paper, but trust me it gets tedious really fast!

 

In short static game worlds are not really that fun when you get into it.... scaled enemies etc. are a better solution, the main problem in the vanilla game is that they stop scaling after a while... which just makes gameplay really boring, since you are going to be overpowered almost no matter what after level 40 (This get fixed by many many mods, higher level enemies being one of them). However if you are really adamant about trying it out, then try out some of the mods you have already found.

(A note about the WTF one... I think it is the one that randomizes every dungeon and area each new game.... it is more hilarious then anything since you can get end game content that is set to level 1 and you will blow all the fools up.)

 

Hope that gives a bit of stuff for thought etc.

[Aelius28]

Thanks for the in-depth reply :)

 

What mods would you recommend, then?

 

Also, the WTF mod doesn't seem to randomize every area. Like the author himself states, if a vanilla area is set to have a max enemy level of 5, then WTF will not adjust it higher than 5. So basically, you can never encounter an area with enemies more difficult than vanilla. In which case, I don't even understand what the point of the mod is.

[torminater]

It then makes it a lot more interesting to enter a cavern, if there could be lvl 1 or lvl 40 enemies, especially in the early and mid-game.

 

 

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[Spock]

Requiem might be for you. It changes a lot of things throughout the game though (please see the nexus page for further information).

[Sakedo]

I second the Requiem suggestion. It completely removes level scaling from the world and makes the whole thing far more immersive and challenging. I can't go back to Vanilla after trying it -- once you get past the initial difficulty and play smarter rather than brute forcing everything, it's a real adrenaline rush that's like nothing I've experienced in gaming except for high intensity PVP games. Except Requiem doesn't require interacting with a bunch of griefers

[rootsrat]

I tried Requiem as well for a short while and, aside from the fact that I was getting lots of CTD's (even with vanilla game + Requiem only!), I thought it's more suited for a mage character. For some reason a warrior character that I created just didn't feel right. I had a feeling it's faster paced gameplay than vanilla (or SkyRe for that matter) and somehow it felt right to be a mage... Just my 3c.

[torminater]

Bring a brute won't get you far. Early on a thief/Mage character has it a lot easier than somebody relying on melee alone.

 

 

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[Aelius28]

If I don't want Requiem, what's the next best thing?

[Aiyen]

Higher level enemies and some other mod that handles merchants.

I used immersive loot as a base for my setup. However there was quite a few things I did not agree with the mod on... but at least it provides the forms that you need to edit, and while boring then it is not difficult to edit the leveled lists.

 

However I am not aware of any mods that does all that you want without being an overhaul that adds lots of other stuff as well.

[mothergoose729]

You would probably be a big fan of requiem then. I would give that a go. I stand by SkyRe, which probably has something close to a "semi static scalling" also. Depending on how hardcore you are. With SkyRe I do get the sense that my character is growing in the world not with it, and after about 50 or so hours of gameplay you do get to the point where you roll over most stuff but do find the rare challenge or can still die if you get reckless.

 

So in short, try one of the more popular overhaul mods.

[Aelius28]

Wait, so with SkyRe, things will be ridiculously easy by, say, 75 hours of gameplay time? So, with SkyRe, the game lasts a WEEK, given that I play most of the day? That's ridiculous... I've spent the last two weeks just getting MODS for crying out loud, and now I find out that the whole game will last a few days... great.

[Aiyen]

Well you can use mods to reduce how fast you gain new skill by quite a bit... will make the game last quite a bit longer. But it allows you to get grind level that fits you.

[0cu87]

If you don't want to try Requiem (which is a shame), maybe take a look at Skyrim Unleashed?

[tecxx]

ah, great. this is exactly the thread i am looking for, better yet, that i wanted to post myself. i would like to share my experience about this topic to the thread opener, sorry if this gets a little bit long to read ;)

 

first off, a little background story. i took a lot of time to follow the step 2.2.7 and 2.2.8 guides as well as the skyrim revisited guide (great work, btw!), trying to understand even the smallest details and putting together a perfect base setup. i was even following ddsopt and tes5edit guides, then putting a nice enb on top which i even customized myself.

 

on top of the step 2.2.8 setup i added climates of tamriel, live another life, frostfall hypothermia and realistic needs & diseases. i tested this combination for some time, apart from reducing the difficulty settings in RND (it got annoying very fast) everything was fine and dandy.

 

so, i started to tackle the last part of my modding adventure: finding the right combination of mods to

A) remove or reduce monster leveling, because it simply annoys me

B) make the game a little bit harder in terms of loot and gear to be found

C) reduce the speed of skill leveling a bit

 

 

after many hours reading through various nexus mods, here is what could fit my request:

- skyrim redone

- skyrim unleashed

- skyrim scaling stopper

- requiem

- morrowloot

- asis encounter zones module

- wtf random encounter zones

- SPERG

 

i'd like to share my experience with skyrim unleashed and SPERG:

the game was extremely challenging, from the very beginning - with the Live Another Life mod active i had nothing, not even money to buy a bow and arrows. this can be crafted with the mod, which takes time, and this is where RND kicked in. i didn't have money to buy food or water, and was constantly tired, and instead of making the game more fun the exact opposite happened. i changed the RND settings to very easy levels and continued to struggle may way forward.

i tried fighting some bandits, i basically got kicked in the face everywhere i went. i tried running around in the wild, and got eaten by sabre cats. i was short of giving up and looking for different mods, but with a follower the game started to get somewhat playable, so i continued. also, the crafting changes and trade changes were not bad, so it was ok. i thought i had found what i was looking for.

 

but then, when my char was short before reaching level 5, i went out to the woods and noticed a group of thalmor getting beat up by a group of stormcloaks. i went to the dead bodies, and looted 3 sets of elven armor plus gear worth of 5000 gold. my previously leather armor and wooden bow level 5 char is now dressed in elven gear and shoots dwarfen arrows, and owns half a house. that somewhat killed the game for me.

i also noticed that fighting enemies that are at a much higher level made my archery skill skyrocket. it took just some shots for the archery level to be raised. i am now close to archery 50, with a level 5 char. also not what i intended.

 

(in case someone read this far: i would really be interested if the thalmor-stormcloaks thing happens in vanilla too, or was it caused by changes in skyrim unleashed?)

 

i then tested the asis encounter zones module, it made my game CTD everytime i entered the bleak falls barrow zone. it was reproducable, so i kicked it.

i then replaced skyrim unleashed with scaling stopper, the 3 different dungeons i tested were vanilla-skyrim-easy, not sure if that was just bad luck, maybe i need to test it more.

 

 

so this is where i am, right now i wouldn't know what to recommend. i need to test requiem, but i fear it will be too hardcore for me.

morrowloot sounds extremely interesting, as it could solve the loot issue, but i need to test it. SPERG is definitely awesome, but i need to tune the leveling issues with the community uncapper (which is part of STEP anyway). what to do about monster leveling, i don't know.

 

i'm very open to suggestions and will monitor this thread.

 

edit: as mentioned in this thread, High Level Enemies sounds interesting. i may give it a go with SPERG+morrowloot.