Improving Skyrim / Recommended Mods thread (Mostly about Requiem)

[whatevername]

Doesn't raising something like mammoth require pretty much endgame level
spells?

No, you need raise dead I or II in Requiem, which I had at about lvl 5 or so. You run around some obstacles to avoid being one-shotted and your skeleton hits a mammoth and dies and you summon it again. In vanilla you won't be able to scratch a mammoth at lvl 5 because of its health regen.

And it really doesn't make sense to me to hold back and keep raising some weak corpse when I can raise a mammoth.

 

[Gnidrologist]

What's the general consensus on werewolf thing? I would sleep to get that bonus, but i never seem to remember anyway, so i guess there's no point in not becoming one. No other drawbacks as far as i've read.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I thought that by "SR" Gnid meant SkyRe. Things should definitely not be this harsh in vanilla, even on Expert. Actually difficulty doesn't affect friendly NPCs so Farkas shouldn't be getting rekt by those enemies anyway. Then again maybe it's like Oblivion and doing guild quests at high levels makes them go zonkers.

No, you need raise dead I or II in Requiem, which I had at about lvl 5 or so.

Uh, I remember even trolls resisting my raise attempts early on. What are Raise Dead III and IV supposed to be used on, then?

edit: I remember reading that the author wants to make the other schools work like Illusion (all spell work on all enemies, but they have a bigger chance of resisting crappier spells) in newer versions, and last version I played was 1.21 or so. I hope it isn't that, I hate random chance of success for that sort of thing.

 

[Gnidrologist]

By SR i meant SkyRim. And yes, there are pretty harsh fucks out there. Last example the crazy dude, who touches himself with rats in the Honeymoon brewery caves. He killed me with a single or two fireballs few times. I couldn't get to him with my sledgehammer, because a bunch of rats were in my way all the time. His single fireball takes away almost all of my 180 HP. So i had to stealth shoot all the rats one by one and only then i proceeded to first stealth shoot the guy, then hide behind the rock and ambush with hammer. Still, he almost killed me. I had like 5 HP points left.
I don't use any other than UI mod and it's the ''Legendary'' version.

And yes, Farkas was getting slaughtered, when i thought i should just let kill him those baddies for me. Fact that the combat is so hectic that you would regularly miss or even worse, hit your own friend doesn't help either.

 

[Drax]

Maybe the problem is that your "party" was made up of just 2 tanks, try bringing some support followers, like a healer, to be able to leroyjenkins the fuckers.

 

[Drax]

Or git gud.

 

[DraQ]

By SR i meant SkyRim. And yes, there are pretty harsh fucks out there. Last example the crazy dude, who touches himself with rats in the Honeymoon brewery caves. He killed me with a single or two fireballs few times. I couldn't get to him with my sledgehammer, because a bunch of rats were in my way all the time. His single fireball takes away almost all of my 180 HP. So i had to stealth shoot all the rats one by one and only then i proceeded to first stealth shoot the guy, then hide behind the rock and ambush with hammer. Still, he almost killed me. I had like 5 HP points left.

Something tells me you would absolutely *love* Requiem.

 

[granit]

The thing about story in Skyrim is install mods that let you have your own story (Alternate start - Live another life , etc). Because that story is a lot better!

 

[Lord Carlos Wafflebum]

I can't wait until Bethesda starts making games by throwing together some assets and a vague story outline, and just releasing that with the creation kit to "let modders make the kind of game they want to play." Cue millions of dollars rolling in; Todd Howard announces his purchase of Iceland which he renames Bethesdaland featuring a theme park with rides based on all your favorite Bethesda games mods.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Or git gud.

Well it's kinda hard to git gud, when i'm constantly killed by an automatic cut scene. Or maybe one has to have some meta knowledge about which quests/dungeons to take first. For example, the fort with bandits further down the road from Solitude was laughably easy. Everyone there died from couple of arrows or one hit. Then again, on the third thief guild's mission where you have to tail the lizard into grotto behind warehouse, it's impossible to even scratch most marauders, while they kill with the cutrscene spell in two seconds. Again have to use cheesy tactics like sitting in the pond and shooting arrows into oblivious orc's asshole.

Oh and the problem with companions is that they are more of a nuisance in the hard battles. And they die just as quickly.

 

[Gnidrologist]

By SR i meant SkyRim. And yes, there are pretty harsh fucks out there. Last example the crazy dude, who touches himself with rats in the Honeymoon brewery caves. He killed me with a single or two fireballs few times. I couldn't get to him with my sledgehammer, because a bunch of rats were in my way all the time. His single fireball takes away almost all of my 180 HP. So i had to stealth shoot all the rats one by one and only then i proceeded to first stealth shoot the guy, then hide behind the rock and ambush with hammer. Still, he almost killed me. I had like 5 HP points left.

Something tells me you would absolutely *love* Requiem.

Did it remove cutscene kill and set it back to normal bashing? Yeah yeah, i know.

 

[Drax]

Oh and the problem with companions is that they are more of a nuisance in the hard battles. And they die just as quickly.

Thus, the never ending quest for modding nirvana.

 

[whatevername]

BTW don't install AMD CRAPALYST 14.12 unless you want to try your chances at getting pink fog and flickering water in skyrim.
CATACLYSM 14.4 is ok.

 

[Ziem]

By SR i meant SkyRim. And yes, there are pretty harsh fucks out there. Last example the crazy dude, who touches himself with rats in the Honeymoon brewery caves. He killed me with a single or two fireballs few times. I couldn't get to him with my sledgehammer, because a bunch of rats were in my way all the time. His single fireball takes away almost all of my 180 HP. So i had to stealth shoot all the rats one by one and only then i proceeded to first stealth shoot the guy, then hide behind the rock and ambush with hammer. Still, he almost killed me. I had like 5 HP points left.

Something tells me you would absolutely *love* Requiem.

Did it remove cutscene kill and set it back to normal bashing? Yeah yeah, i know.

you can disable killcams with pretty much any killmove mod (dance of death/violens are the most popular ones)

 

[Gnidrologist]

Isn't that artificial? The very principle of insta critical one shot death that you can't even anticipate is probably still there. It's in the game mechanics, no?

 

[Gord]

Or git gud.

Well it's kinda hard to git gud, when i'm constantly killed by an automatic cut scene. Or maybe one has to have some meta knowledge about which quests/dungeons to take first. For example, the fort with bandits further down the road from Solitude was laughably easy. Everyone there died from couple of arrows or one hit.

Skyrim's scaling is reduced in comparison to Oblivion, meaning that you can find more dangerous enemies if you are further away from settlements, or at higher altitude in the mountains.
Also the level range of a region is somehow linked to the first time you enter said region, I think. At least that's what I seem to remember from vanilla. Might be wrong, though. Also don't know how exactly quest-lines are scaled.
The un-interuptible kill-moves can happen whenever an enemy does enough damage to kill you with his attack and can be a bit annyoing.

Anyway, you sure you are running vanilla? Or did you fall victim to this:

 

[Gnidrologist]

Well, the first dungeon in Companions quest line isn't far away or at high altitudes. Also the lizard/warehouse quest for thiefs is an early one, i suppose, no?

And no, i think i was fairly adept in combat for my level at the time . Now at level 23 i have:tTwo handed combat in 40-50s. with several perks, including the armor penetration with warhammer. Maybe my armor skills were on the light side. Got to 40 in light armor now, at level 23. Was round 14-16 in the dungeon with Farkas.

My version of the game?
The.Elder.Scrolls.V.Skyrim.Legendary.Edition-WWW. Look it up. There wasn't said anything about added content, except all the official addons/hd texture packs.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Well, the first dungeon in Companions quest line isn't far away or at high altitudes. Also the lizard/warehouse quest for thiefs is an early one, i suppose, no?

And no, i think i was fairly adept in combat for my level at the time . Now at level 23 i have:tTwo handed combat in 40-50s. with several perks, including the armor penetration with warhammer. Maybe

Lol wat, I had 2h in 70s by lvl 20 and this was in Requiem.

 

[Gord]

Lol wat, I had 2h in 70s by lvl 20 and this was in Requiem.

I'm only at ~50 with my main combat skill at level 18 with my current Requiem char.
Some spread is normal, depending on what stuff you use. I'm a bit baffled how someone can have such trouble in vanilla Skyrim without having excessively leveled non-combat skills, though.

 

[Gnidrologist]

And why would that be so? I mean, i haven't explored even 1/20 of the land, not even mentioning the huge list of incomplete quests still hanging on from the few places i have explored. Do you need to max out your char before you even head out int ''real world''? The fuck?

 

[DraQ]

Or did you fall victim to this:

Well, that's one of the few ways Requiem actually makes Skyrim easier.

(It makes the Draugr start like in the last frame, though.)

 

[Ziem]

The very principle of insta critical one shot death that you can't even anticipate is probably still there. It's in the game mechanics, no?

no..

 

[Gnidrologist]

Some spread is normal, depending on what stuff you use. I'm a bit baffled how someone can have such trouble in vanilla Skyrim without having excessively leveled non-combat skills, though.

Maybe i did something wrong somewhere. Me thinks the main problem is enemies getting way too many criticals on me. There are often times, where i get cinematically mauled, before i even get a chance to make one hit and then after a reload with the same guy we bash each other for 10 seconds and i usually win then. Also note that i haven't had any problem with dreugrs of any level, even the lords or what was that. Killed a werewolf in the vampire den with no problem. It's the common bandits/marauders that sometimes seem too badass. Not always though. The silver hand guys were the most painful ones,especially given that Farkass was underwhelming.
Then again, as i said, the fort that needs to be cleared out to join imperials was piss easy. Also the pirate lizard and her crew that ambushes you on the ship went down from couple of strikes. Very uneven and there's no way of telling which encounter will be hard/easy.

 

[DraQ]

Regarding instakills - are there any mods that disentangle them from cinematic finishers?
As in: instead of triggering finisher the moment the attack starts and can 1hk the target they would trigger the finisher the moment such attack actually hits?

 

[Gord]

(It makes the Draugr start like in the last frame, though.)

Maybe in respect to lvl 1 chars. But that's probably not different to Requiem's bunnies.
What makes the Draugr challenging initially are their specific resistances/immunities in combination with their ubiquity.
With the right gear or spells even a comparatively low level char can taggle them, maybe with the exception of the dungeon bosses.
For my heavy armor swoard'n'board char the biggest challenge was actually finding a single fucking silver weapon (which don't seem to show up in (m?)any vendor lists).