As you may have noticed, much of the modlist delves into various aspects and mechanics that have in-depth systems. The modlist is built around a completely unleveled world, similar to Requiem, focusing on expanding the world by removing the focus on the player and instead making various enemies and NPCs unique to complete warlords with a reason to fear.
The entire focus of the modlist is to offer a more challenging, brutal, and fierce world that is also fun simultaneously. Throughout this page though, you can find various elements and in-depth guides that provide a look into the systems of the modlist.
Delve into a luxurious and rich list filled to the brim with high-quality DLC-sized mods that focus on expanding and adding the latest content, that’s non-obtrusive and semi-lore friendly.
Much of the content is specifically selected to stay in line with Skyrim’s already existing stories and DLCs to provide a consistent high-quality manor that won’t make it feel out of place.
Listed below are all the major quest and new land mods which are introduced in the modlist:
No matter, you will always be the Dovah, but that doesn’t mean you’re restricted to roleplaying as a Dovah. Much of the list is built with the idea that you’re just another person in a cruel, large, and harsh world that’s out to get you.
First, you start off in a room, with the basics, such as character creation. This is the point where you’re designing your character, the story and what type of elements you will have in the world.
After you’ve designed your character, you’re given a class choice from three major types. Choose the class that best fits you and appropriately plan how your character began their life, what your story is, etc. Much of the aspect of your character’s story lies within your own creativity.
Once you’ve finalized your character, you will randomly be placed anywhere within the world, putting you at a place where it can mean life or death. This means you should immediately plan what your next move is. By default, you’re provided with a quest to investigate Helgen due to some rumors and your adventurous diligence.
This is where your adventure begins.
Within the world of Skyrim, due to the unleveled aspect, various races, creatures, and beasts have had significant overhauls to their stats and have seen a change in the ways they play and feel within the game. Every single NPC, yes, every single one, has been altered in some way to emphasis on the unleveled idea that makes combat equal, yet challenging and require a process of approach. This gives a sense of worry and strategy when encountering various enemies and scenarios, which gives the unleveled feel.
The main way this goes about to doing so, is by altering the stats of the base forms of each NPC to reflect a more realistic and versatile approach to difficulty. The overall stats of an NPC are determined by their race, class, and encounter zone that the NPC resides in. The base stats are set to reflect what every ideal NPC in any region should have, then added on top with their class, such as two-handed, mage, one-handed, etc. and then added with a bit more difficulty based on the encounter zone they are within. Encounter zones range in from an Easy to Very Hard type, determining the amount of difficulty added on top of the NPCs within those encounter zones.
NPC stat scaling and levels are now completely dependent on the location and area which they reside in, meaning no longer are NPC levels and stats tied to your level. This provides a unique look to the world of Skyrim which gives a sense of life, presenting that NPCs have progressed ahead of you. The way this works is by an array of attributes, such as classes, base NPC stats, default race stats, and so on.
The more crucial and vital details to note on how NPC scaling and stats are determined are by their race and class, which determine their overall type of character. This means, one NPC can be completely specialized in two-handed with a large amount of health and stamina, while another is focused on magic and spells, resulting in an overall lower amount of health but increased magicka.
By default, player and NPC race stats such as health, magicka, stamina and carry weight, are as follows:
Additionally, any non-playable race, such as Draugr, Wisps, Ghosts, etc. have all been altered to reduce their overall health pool from increasing to an overly large amount, but to distribute and appropriately reflect the type of NPC they are by race. By default, for the base values, all races have had their health values halved and then added 50 additional health back to them, to appropriately remove the sponginess that may be found on various enemies, I.E. level 40 Draugr boasting a 500 HP pool, which would now have a 300 HP pool. This provides a more streamlined and linear path to determining an NPCs health pool.
Along with that, classes affect the overall amount of health, magicka and stamina received based off the class given.
Various resistances and damage-type resistances have been tweaked or added on to the various amounts of beasts and creatures through Tamriel. This is done through a mod called Enemy Resistance Tweaks, adding or altering resistances based on the type of creature they are.
This provides certain types of resistances that are either beneficial, or crucial to an NPCs survival, meaning they can now have weaknesses that affect how much damage is taken depending on the type of weakness they have. Various amounts of types of NPCs resistance altered or added are listed below:
Horker:
Resist Fire 50%
Horkers also have 50% resistance to Frost with USSEP.
Mammoth:
Resist Poison 75%
Ash Guardian:
Resist Fire 75%
Weak to Frost 25%
Resist Poison 100%
Seeker:
Resist Magic 25%
Resist Poison 25%
Dwarven Automatons:
Resist Frost 100% -> Weakness to Frost 25%
Resist Shock 50%
The changes to automatons are based on my interpretation of the book “Ruins of Kemel-Ze,” and are also a nice buff for ice mages. The Forgemaster is excluded from this change.
Burnt Spriggan:
Weakness to Frost 25%
Frostbite Spider:
Resist Poison 50%
Gargoyle:
Resist Magic 25%
Giant:
Resist Frost 25%
Resist Poison 50%
Frost Giant:
Resist Poison 50%
Hagraven:
Resist Magic 25%
Magic Anomaly:
Weakness to Magic 100%
Nobody likes these things.
Riekling:
Weakness to Poison 50%
Troll:
Increased Health Regeneration
Frost Troll:
Resist Frost 33% -> 75%
Increased Health Regeneration
Ash Spawn:
Weakness to Frost 25%
Draugr:
Weakness to Fire 25%
Wispmother:
Resist Frost 50%
Weakness to Fire 25%
Death Hound:
Weakness to Fire 25%
Fire, Frost, and Storm Atronachs:
Resist Poison 100%
The way encounter zones add to the difficulty of the base stats of NPCs is by multiplying the levels of the NPCs default base level and increasing that value by a predetermined amount.
These amounts are as follows:
The reason it starts to decline at Hard spawns is to prevent an absurd amount of increase in levels for NPCs which are already an elevated level, such as Dragon Priests, Alduin, Dragons, The Ebony Warrior, etc. NPC levels throughout encounter zones are also varied, based on a min-max value, that determines what level each NPC should be rather than being a completely static level throughout the entire encounter zone. This means, you can see a tier of NPCs ranging from level 20 all the way to 40 as you progress through the dungeon, and depending on the NPCs which are placed within that dungeon, provide a more yielding and challenging way of evaluating your approach to the boss at the end.
Additionally, the encounter zones have been Morrowloot-ified, in a sense, to offer a more interesting loot pool that provides an interesting and potentially yielding reward depending on the difficulty of the dungeons. This can lead to some interesting aspects of loot that can be a God roll loot piece or be a few extra septims.
You may have noticed that, by default, survival mode is on. This is intended, and meant to be on by default, as it is the way the modlist is built. It is, after all, a crueler and more challenging world. Survival mode is integrated using the Creation Club survival mode, for a more streamlined and direct implementation of survival that fits perfectly into the base game without too many obtrusions. On top of that, Survival Mode Improved is used to introduce a more fair and lenient survival experience.
Your character’s overall warmth and cold resistance is determined by the type of gear you wear. This means, if it looks warm, it likely is. Armors such as fur armor, compared to steel plate, will have an increased amount of warmth coverage which can determine the amount of cold damage taken.
In regions of Skyrim, it will be moderately warm, but can become chilly and cold at nighttime depending on the area you are in. Weather also has a huge effect on the temperature, affecting your character’s warmth and comfort. This means, if it is raining, your character’s wetness and temperature can overall drop and cause chilly or very cold temperatures, affecting attributes such as your total health and delicate procedures, such as lockpicking and pickpocketing. To negate this, there are alternatives, such as warming foods, or potions, to resist the cold. Vampires, however, have increased resistance to cold progression by up to 85%.
Areas where it may seem cold, such as The Reach, have their own delegated temperatures. Each region has a slight difference in how temperature will play and overall affect your character. Places where freezing water may be present will not be an immediate threat but can potentially harm your character in a drastic way that reduces your ability to function normally. By default, Nords are 15% resistant to the cold naturally and Khajiit are 10% resistant.
Seasons also have a large effect on the overall warmth and temperature, meaning when Winter and Autumn come around, the regions temperature can change slightly or drastically, requiring you to approach your travels in an alternative method such as carrying a tent with you, or preparing a campfire in designated regions.
The stages of cold are as follows:
You may have noticed that, by default, survival mode is on. This is intended, and meant to be on by default, as it is the way the modlist is built. It is, after all, a crueler and more challenging world. Survival mode is integrated using the Creation Club survival mode, for a more streamlined and direct implementation of survival that fits perfectly into the base game without too many obtrusions. On top of that, Survival Mode Improved is used to provide a more refined and improved survival experience that emphasizes the use of eating food more regularly for increased benefits and overall satisfaction.
Food satisfaction is based on the portion of the food, such as venison compared to bread. The rate at which food restores hunger is as follows:
The rate at which you gain hunger has been reduced, to 10pts/hr. Food also can have some variables, such as eating raw food. This means there’s the potential to receive food poisoning, which can be detrimental to your character’s survival.
Additionally, Vampires no longer require food, and will now need to rely on the existing feeding mechanic present to satisfy your needs.
The stages of hunger are as follows:
Unlike before, sleep has been turned into a more forgiving experience, which does not force your character to sleep within every 10 minutes, IRL. The rate at which your character produces fatigue has been changed to 10pts/hr, resulting in a slower rate of fatigue increment. Sleeping restores 30pts of exhaustion for every hour slept.
Additionally, Vampires and Werewolves no longer receive the Well Rested bonus. This means you can no longer receive a 10% increased rate to skill progress. If you’re resting in an exterior area, such as camping, you can now receive the Rested bonus to provide a 5% increased rate to skill progress.
The stages of Fatigue are as follows:
As you may immediately notice, or in due course, the world is an unforgiving place that should not be treaded lightly. Combat and the difficulty determined is based on an NPCs experience and role. This means, they could be a class act like your typical Nazeem, who would rather cower and fear for their life, or be an outright bull like The Ebony Warrior, who may have the most indulging experience and strength ever seen.
The combat is designed to be slow-paced, fit for several types of styles of combat, which offer a more rewarding and pleasing battle. While a mage may be an adequate build for most fights, they are highly vulnerable to physically based damage, like melee and archery. A two-handed build is steady and strong, that packs a punch but can be their demise if not carefully planned. A sword-bearer may be the difference between successfully attacking an opponent while being able to maneuver their way around, with that being a spell in the offhand or wielding a shield.
If you’re an advocate for magic and spells, you may be interested in the process of how to become a masterful Archmage with a plethora of powerful spells at your arsenal.
The way spell learning and tomes work now, is by a logical and sensible approach, to alleviate the tome-eating habit that Skyrim introduces in the vanilla game, with an actual progression-based system that makes learning powerful and useful spells worth the time and effort. Now, the system focuses on making tomes worth the effort and time of collecting rather than being a side task to gather up as many as you can and then use all of them in one sitting.
Learning spells is now actually dependent on the school of magic you are willing to invest in. This means, the higher your skill in that school of magic, the more efficient you can learn a spell. This can be alleviated by either receiving training for that school of magic, or by continuously practicing and leveling up that specific skill.
If you’ve already learned a tome, your character makes notes on that tome, allowing you to progress your notes of that specific tome and letting you collect more tomes. To learn based off these notes, you can study them from the Miscellaneous tab, which will allow you to progress those specific spells progress, and depending on how skilled your school of magic is for that tome, can define the amount of time it takes to learn it.
If you’re a non-magic focused character, or just starting out, you have the chance to fizzle, or fail a cast for the spell at that current time. Depending on the spelling of the school of magic skill level, fizzles can be a common occurrence. However, this can be avoided by progressing that spells school of magic to alleviate the number of failed castings you can perform.
For the exact levels of what spells can fail to cast, see the following (Pulled from the FIZZLE mod page):
Physical-based combat, such as hand to hand and swords, have had a significant overhaul to accommodate the difficulty found within the modlist. Much of the melee combat and damage dealt by weapons are based off raw values that deal a specific amount of damage, which gradually increases as you progress your skills.
Combat is more lightweight, and vanilla-like compared to other setups but has had extensive additions such as parrying and timed blocks. To start with, swings and attacks take stamina, but also reward stamina back based on successful hits. This is to encourage a more aggressive and logical approach to attacking, rather than spamming left-click, for a more streamlined combat system.
Based on your current state, exhaustion can come into play, for both you and NPCs. This means that if you’ve reached a state of exhaustion, you deal half as much damage while NPCs simply can’t attack. Exhaustion is caused by consistent attacking after you’ve depleted your stamina, encouraging you to plan your swings appropriately and to prevent spamming of attacks.
Depending on your state of stamina, blocking can reduce the rate at which stamina regenerates back. This is to encourage yourself and NPCs to let go of the block button for an opportune moment to strike. Along with that, blocking has a new method of use, allowing you to parry attacks and retaliate back with a clean and decisive strike. Not only does this work with melee weapons, you can now also block projectiles, such as arrows, spider spit, and any projectile based magic. However, blocking can cost either Stamina and/or Magicka, depending on the type of block that is occurring.
Along with all of the new melee focused changes to combat, archery has had a large overhaul to make it a more interesting and fun role to play. No longer are shots based on the bow and arrow you are using, but also feature locational damage and damage dealt.
Archery has had a new system set in place, to offer true locational damage that focuses on increasing the damage dealt based off the location hit on an enemy. This can range from the head all the way to spine, meaning each area has a specific multiplier tied to it to increase, or decrease, the amount of damage dealt.
Additionally, depending on what the wearer has equipped, armor can now make a major difference in how your arrows interact and hit the target. This means, if you are wearing a full set of Steel, Dwarven, Elven, etc. armor, then the arrow can rebound, rendering your hit null.
Headshots also have a real and expected use, bringing actual logical sense to an arrow going through a head of an NPC. No longer will they be pelted to the brim with arrows in their head, but instead they now have a chance to immediately take a huge amount of damage based on where they’re shot in the head. This expands upon the idea to rather than making your target a pin cushion, to actually focus on those specific areas when possible to deal a larger portion of damage.