De-level skyrim recommendation

[dreadflopp]

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.

Edited March 16, 2014 by dreadflopp

[Smile44]

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.

 

The main problem that people have with a mod like Requiem is that the challenge at later levels is greatly diminished, part of the reason that stats progress at half the normal rate.

 

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.

 

Another one you can try ASIS Enciunter Zones, in combination with Morrowloot perhaps. There are more but I am not sure how up to date they are. I'll get back to this when I am back at my PC.

 

[dreadflopp]

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?

Edited March 16, 2014 by dreadflopp

[dreadflopp]

Smile44 (or someone else) do you have any thoughts about morrowloot and unofficial morrowloot-skyrim overhaul?

[Smile44]

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.

 

 

1.1. The world's leveling system

In general, Requiem makes most aspects of the leveled world from Skyrim static and therefore independent
of your level. You will find all enemies the game has to offer right from the start, if you visit the wrong
areas, and you can find any equipment right from the start. In general, the following changes have been
made to the leveling system:

– All encounters are no longer leveled, the appearance of a given NPC or creature only depends on
your current location and chance.
– Some leveled lists have been altered in their general outcome to support the immersion, for example
you will see more small than large mudcrabs and more wolves than bears.
– Loot is no longer dependent on your level, but high quality items are of course much rarer.
– Quests rewards are decoupled from your level.
– Most locks are no longer leveled.
– Trap damage is now independent of your level and therefore much higher than in Vanilla Skyrim,
often even lethal.

Apart from these changes to the leveled lists the NPCs and creatures themselves are subject to major
changes. The different versions of enemies (e.g. "Bandit", "Bandit Marauder", "Bandit Thug" etc) now
share the same name, but the different versions still exist. But in contrast to Vanilla Skyrim they will
not replace the low-level versions but instead they will mix with them, giving you a variety of differently
skilled opponents within one faction. If you find a particular specimen of a given faction much more difficult
than his friends, then he is likely much more experienced than they are.
The NPCs themselves no longer level with the player, since the previously discussed mixing of different
variants offers a much better way to include some variance into the skills of faction members. In general,
the different factions or creatures can be classified into three tiers, which are shown in Table 1.1.
14

1.2. Attributes, Skills and Perks

low-level encounters                                                   mid-level encounters                                                   high-level encounters
skeevers, mudcrabs                                                   soldiers and guards                                                                   giants
slaughterfish, horkers                                                            draugr                                                                          vampires
wolves, bears                                                               witches/hagravens                                                                    mages
bandits                                                                                   trolls                                                                               dragons
forsworn (if still human)                                                   icewraiths                                                                            falmer
humanoid skeletons                                                              spiders                                                                   dwemer automatons
frostbite spiders (baby size)                                                mammoths                                                                      werewolves
                                                                                         fire atronachs                                                                 dragonpriests
                                                                                        frost atronachs                                                                  most daedra
                                                                                                                                                                                  elite soldiers

Table 1.1.: A rough classification of the enemies you will encounter on your journey. Low-level enemies
are in general manageable from the first level on if you use your brain. Mid-level encounters
can in principle also be mastered from the first level on, but these will require a great deal of
preparation at this point of the game. Finally, high level encounters are a one-way ticket to
Oblivion, unless you come well prepared and experienced.
If you are looking for a mod that delevels the world like described above, but are uncomfortable with all the
other changes and additions from Requiem, you should instead check out Skyrim Scaling StopperM9
or Skyrim UnleashedM10.

 

 

Hope this helps.

 

Edited March 16, 2014 by Smile44

[dreadflopp]

I think I'll try requiem. Much less work for me since you have done so much compatiblity testing and conflict resolution :)

[Garfink]

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.

 

Also use trade and barter using the settings recommend in the scarcity mod along with lower quest gold mod to make the skyrim economics much much tighter.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Works amazingly well together.

Edited April 25, 2014 by Garfink

[dreadflopp]

Will def check scarcity and see if it fixes high leveled loot added by obis. Actually made a pack to delevel skyrim :)

[Garfink]

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.

 

I guess I could manually setup WTF, but I just don't think it worth all the effort.  

 

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..

Edited April 26, 2014 by Garfink

[dreadflopp]

Thanks will try that. Probably add obis to my and nicopads pack. I think you could easily remove the Max level from the deleveling plugin in with automation tools

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49373/?

 

Not all High level encounter zones in ERSO have a Max level. By add high level enemies these zones will continue to scale up with you.

Edited April 26, 2014 by dreadflopp

[Garfink]

If that is the case, then can I assume the same can be said of ASIS encounter zones or SkyRe encounters if I am using High Level Enemies??

 

Meaning:  does HLE uncap all encounter zones beyond the limits set by encounter zone mods?

 

Edit:

 

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.

Edited April 26, 2014 by Garfink

[dreadflopp]

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.

Edited April 26, 2014 by dreadflopp

[Garfink]

I see.  So HLE provides a larger variety of leveled creatures so those pesky bandits will have uber versions as you level beyond the vanilla bandit maxes.  

 

In that case I will probably not bother with delevellers and use the hardcore patch of HLE to raise the average level of enemies encountered, so my dungeons are more dangerous.  

 

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.  

 

I can live with that in a game world as "limited" in size as Skyrim.  

Edited April 26, 2014 by Garfink

[dreadflopp]

There are problems with a delevelled world. You seem to have done much more testing than I when it comes to really trying it out.

This is what Erkeil answered when I asked him about the layout of the encounter zones in ERSO:

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.

The problem with your setup would be enemies that should be hard/easy being to easy/hard.

[Garfink]

Sounds like there is no perfect solution.  

 

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.  

 

The game world being so sandbox style with a rather weak journal system just isn't cut out to be deleveled.

 

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).  

Edited April 26, 2014 by Garfink