Improving Skyrim / Recommended Mods thread (Mostly about Requiem)

[Akratus]

Oh you mean getting killed by the very first hit? Yeah no, that could only ever happen if you're an inexperienced player with a bad build.

 

[hell bovine]

So my point? Putting 1 or 2 hit kills into Skyrim, which is in essence a solo FPS H&S, in order to shoehorn it into a "hardcore, oldschool experience" just feels wrong. At the very least, they've picked the wrong game to remake such experience. Do you know why you guys complain "reloading for 10x to kill a bandit is no fun", "forcing me to lower difficulty settings to survive is stupid"? Because unlike a REAL oldschool RPG, which Requiem no doubt is trying to emulate, in Requiem there is no party member to (efficiently) heal or resurrect you, there's no warrior to take the blows from you, there's no legit way to recover from mistakes or try again i.e. Ultima, JA2, XCOM (yep, that's "rebuilding your whole squad").

So yeah, Requiem can be enjoyable, if:
- You use some clever or tough followers to meatshield for you (if you're a rogue or mage) or deal damage (if you're a shield-wall type warrior). From what I've read, you guys don't even use followers? I don't know if Requiem's followers have permadeath, but if they do, then it's still not a solution because Skyrim NPC are dumb and dumb NPC are NOT equivalent to hardcore oldschool RPG team members.
- You're a masochist like DraQ.

tl;dr

Mod in 2-3 followers with different classes with GOOD AI to fill in your lack of skills, and you can turn Requiem into a proper hardcore oldschool (I'm getting sick of those two words) RPG with much less frustration.

I haven't had the time to play at all recently, and I am still stuck at the 1.6 version (so no idea what the recent updates where about), but... unless you approach every battle like you're the beast of of Caerbannog, the 1-2 kills don't happen that often in Requiem. And I have the reaction skills of a snail. (Also, I doubt that a high level destruction mage is going to need a summon or a follower. Just a lot of patience when trying to level up that school.)
As for summon/zombie/minion pathfinding, I find this http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/4020/? makes it slightly more bearable.

 

[set]

hell bovine, 1-2 hit kills are the norm if you're on the defending side in non-plate and have not gotten some of the more powerful +health items (some quest rewards give as much as +60-80 health each). Now, unless you're using a bow or a very strong power attacking two-handed weapon against a significantly weaker enemy, I've never had the same fortune to OHKO something. It takes at least two arrows/swings, fireballs are about the same, too.

You basically cannot get hit. Unless you're in plate, or at least - I've been walking around in legendary armor for testing purposes, and it seems like with a lot of health and legendary plate or better, you can survive a couple forsworn/bandit arrows. Healing through the damage you take is a rather big issue, however. If you and others want to keep doubting us people who are being OHKO'd, I will be happy to find a weekend to capture an average Requiem experience.

 

[Heresiarch]

I've found the possible reason behind the sudden FPS drop after an hour or so - my system's fan didn't kick up until 85 degrees, and with ultra shadows (the shadow map resolution at 4096 being the main culprit) giving my GPU a constant 99% usage, the game seems to have easily kicked my GPU into throttle mode. Now I've installed some utility to make the fan work harder, and reduced the shadow map resolution to 2048 to take off some stress on the GPU, the game seems stabler.

I'm still getting semirandom CTDs, either when I'm looting corpses, or when I'm travelling on the world map. Tomorrow I'm going to clean the "dirty" mods with TES5edit and hope it will help.

During my quest for a stable Skyrim I find that ironically enough, a large number of constructive, useful technical help threads were found in the biggest sex mod community. Perhaps that's due to only true and mature nerds can survive in such forums for a long enough time...

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

If you and others want to keep doubting us people who are being OHKO'd, I will be happy to find a weekend to capture an average Requiem experience.

I don't know how you keep putting up with it. I got fed up with ithe reloads and with morons giving me the oh-so-helpful advice "git good", so I just unchecked it in Mod Organizer and moved on to SkyRe - much better.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

You won't ever git gud with that defeatist attitude.

If you and others want to keep doubting us people who are being OHKO'd, I will be happy to find a weekend to capture an average Requiem experience.

Please do. It'll be fun to be able to see how you roleplay your naked tank.

 

[Tigranes]

This mod is pretty nuts. I did bunch of stuff and got to Level 3, got 2 block perks, heavy armour perk, one handed perk. Couldn't find anything significantly better than imperial armour & sword from prologue in Whiterun or Riverwood. I took on the bandits outside the Bleak Falls Barrow about a dozen times but found that I can't take on meleeing two people at once, and I didn't want to arrow cheese from a rock, so I went to Dragonreach and bought some spells. Apparently, the basic Fundamental spells cost 1000+ magicka. So I got the novice perk for that magic school. Which reduced a basic Summon Zombie to ~400 magicka. Obviously, I have 200 as a Breton.

I don't mind the difficulty and I'm starting to get into its particular style of melee, but I don't like being stuck in terms of the crafting, enchanting, purchasing, spell learning I can do. I hope I'm just missing something?

Edit: I just checked, and I can't even cast Light.

 

[set]

Basically, you have to grind 10 or 20 levels doing crafting, lockpicking and such. A good place to do this is the Morlog Bol quest and get that priest into the bottom of the house. Rescuing him is a little tricky, since you have to sneak past or fight a couple of forsworn archer packs (which will OHKO you with absolute certainty), but if you do something like this, you've got an NPC down there in the bottom of that house, you can beat him down to close to death, then use restoration spells to heal him. You can then recover your magicka/stamina with food and repeat the process, building up your combat skills. You will also get legendary armor from paladin what's-his-face - though killing him will require a fair bit of AI cheesing (abuse the geometry in the house enough and you'll eventually get him to bug out). You'll also get a very powerful mace which is pretty handy if you need to leech some stamina.

This is basically the only way you can play the mod, because as you say, it's pretty unfeasible to progress via combat. Consider yourself a harmless villager until at least level 20 (though you can scrape by fighting things if you don't mind dying and reloading constantly).

Finally, I'm still playing the mod because it's at least a little challenging right now, even if the challenge is pretty bullshit-based. I'm out of games to play and I don't feel like starting a new character in SkyRe or whatever.

 

[DraQ]

This mod is pretty nuts. I did bunch of stuff and got to Level 3, got 2 block perks, heavy armour perk, one handed perk. Couldn't find anything significantly better than imperial armour & sword from prologue in Whiterun or Riverwood. I took on the bandits outside the Bleak Falls Barrow about a dozen times but found that I can't take on meleeing two people at once, and I didn't want to arrow cheese from a rock, so I went to Dragonreach and bought some spells. Apparently, the basic Fundamental spells cost 1000+ magicka. So I got the novice perk for that magic school. Which reduced a basic Summon Zombie to ~400 magicka. Obviously, I have 200 as a Breton.

You need battlemage branch heavy armour perks to make casting in heavy armour remotely possible.
Otherwise - casting, heavy armour, pick one.

DERP.

Derp indeed.

 

[Tigranes]

Yeah, I worked it out. Seems a bit too punitive, I like the restriction but Light shouldn't cost 250 magicka until you get 25 heavy armour and invest in the perk.

Stripped, cast a summon, and with its help finally took down those bandits. Obviously now there's 3 more outside the barrow gate. I'm pretty sure that this mod will shine in medium levels, but it's really annoying as fuck when I'm still Level 3/4.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

This mod is pretty nuts. I did bunch of stuff and got to Level 3, got 2 block perks, heavy armour perk, one handed perk. Couldn't find anything significantly better than imperial armour & sword from prologue in Whiterun or Riverwood. I took on the bandits outside the Bleak Falls Barrow about a dozen times but found that I can't take on meleeing two people at once, and I didn't want to arrow cheese from a rock, so I went to Dragonreach and bought some spells.

You...turned around and tried something else? But that is the First Dungeon™! You can't just walk away. Sure, there's nothing stopping you from doing that, but...you just can't!

By the way, the readme explains how magic costs work.

edit: Oh, you went back there. Don't bother trying to clear the place that early, the Whiterun dragon will rape your 5th level ass.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Finally, I'm still playing the mod because it's at least a little challenging right now, even if the challenge is pretty bullshit-based. I'm out of games to play and I don't feel like starting a new character in SkyRe or whatever.

Understandable. Who knows, maybe you'll get used to it and learn to like it. Then you can be just like Draq and CK...

Actually, you may just want to switch to SkyRe while you still can...

edit: Tigranes, if you can make it to Winterhold, you can get a random novice spell cheap as part of the entry process.

edit2:

Don't bother trying to clear the place that early, the Whiterun dragon will rape your 5th level ass.

BS. I killed him at level 6. Dragons are weaker than the dragon priests ironically. I needed to use semi-cheese tactics like hiding in the tower and sniping with every wand, arrow and spell I had while all the guards were slaughtered though. Melee was suicide - which is actually something I liked about the mod given that it's a dragon. Not worth the other stuff it does though. Just got SkyRe and a dragon mod instead...

 

[Clockwork Knight]

BS. I killed him at level 6.

So you're saying that you didn't have trouble with an enemy that gave me a hard time...yet whenever I say that archers aren't really that bad you call me a liar because omg omg those railguns are unbeatable no one could possibly deal with them without cheese it's broken omg

 

[Commissar Draco]

BS. I killed him at level 6.

So you're saying that you didn't have trouble with an enemy that gave me a hard time...yet whenever I say that archers aren't really that bad you call me a liar because omg omg those railguns are unbeatable no one could possibly deal with them without cheese it's broken omg

Maybe Meredith and Guards killed it for him, I went there level 15 and it was MUCH too soon; spend entire fight inside the tower poping one arrow from inside and healing my ass for 5 minutes or so untill Meredith got him; good girl for ash Elf.

 

[Tigranes]

This mod is pretty nuts. I did bunch of stuff and got to Level 3, got 2 block perks, heavy armour perk, one handed perk. Couldn't find anything significantly better than imperial armour & sword from prologue in Whiterun or Riverwood. I took on the bandits outside the Bleak Falls Barrow about a dozen times but found that I can't take on meleeing two people at once, and I didn't want to arrow cheese from a rock, so I went to Dragonreach and bought some spells.

You...turned around and tried something else? But that is the First Dungeon™! You can't just walk away. Sure, there's nothing stopping you from doing that, but...you just can't!

By the way, the readme explains how magic costs work.

edit: Oh, you went back there. Don't bother trying to clear the place that early, the Whiterun dragon will rape your 5th level ass.

Well, it worked out. I eventually settled on 80%/80% damage, and on the third time back, got through the Bleak Barrow bandits with the help of a Draugr Warrior (which I had to summon naked). The warrior was then indispensable for the spider mini-boss, as well as a 75% poison resist potion I picked up somewhere. Used the slamming spike door and other traps to get rid of most of the Draugr, but by that point I finally started to pick up on the melee mechanics. Seems like lots of foot movement combined with strategic choices on when to block as well as when to strike.

The final room was insane, but thankfully I could lure 3-4 draugr at a time, use the summon to flank them, and still barely make it alive each time. Took a long, long time to beat the Draugr Lord that spawns when you pick up the Shout, though, burned through every useful potion I had.

Whiterun dragon was actually much easier, I was Level 6 and could hardly damage it but NPCs did most of the work while I used sprint to dodge the big balls of fire. At least the dragon is actually lethal, now.

Currently Level 7 and hitting the 25 heavy armour / etc skills to get 2nd tier perks, finally feel like somewhat live-able now. I expect to go heavy armour/block with some alteration or conjuration. Just wandered into the Silent Moon camp north of Whiterun, managed to get through the other goons but the leader with thunder AOE arrows and the orcish mace may be impossible. Have to say that after several hours of frustration it's starting to show its charm, I'm enjoying it a lot at the moment.

 

[Commissar Draco]

It's very satisfying when you and your PC finaly git gut. Tried to play SkyRe but it has no challenge after playing Requiem what's ever. Install the mod expanding Compagnions it will give ya free bed and some quest for rookies to git gut into 20 level where you advance from peasant with sword into semi proficient Warrior.

 

[Lancehead]

So Tigranes, how are you dealing with archers?

 

[hell bovine]

hell bovine, 1-2 hit kills are the norm if you're on the defending side in non-plate and have not gotten some of the more powerful +health items (some quest rewards give as much as +60-80 health each). Now, unless you're using a bow or a very strong power attacking two-handed weapon against a significantly weaker enemy, I've never had the same fortune to OHKO something. It takes at least two arrows/swings, fireballs are about the same, too.

You basically cannot get hit. Unless you're in plate, or at least - I've been walking around in legendary armor for testing purposes, and it seems like with a lot of health and legendary plate or better, you can survive a couple forsworn/bandit arrows. Healing through the damage you take is a rather big issue, however. If you and others want to keep doubting us people who are being OHKO'd, I will be happy to find a weekend to capture an average Requiem experience.

By non-plate do you mean light armor? (Or whatever it's called right now, I think they changed it to something else.) I think that it's probably the most difficult option for melee, if not for the entire game, because Requiem is not very balanced when it comes to combat. My necromancer would die a squeaky death of he got hit, but that was actually easy to enough to avoid, even when faced with the tragic farce that is minion pathfinding in Skyrim. However, I tend to avoid any close combat, because mudcrabs have better reaction times than me. My point is, I don't doubt that for some characters Requiem will be a 1-2 hit kill game, but it's not the 'norm' for everyone.

 

[Akratus]

Basically, you have to grind 10 or 20 levels doing crafting, lockpicking and such. A good place to do this is the Morlog Bol quest and get that priest into the bottom of the house. Rescuing him is a little tricky, since you have to sneak past or fight a couple of forsworn archer packs (which will OHKO you with absolute certainty), but if you do something like this, you've got an NPC down there in the bottom of that house, you can beat him down to close to death, then use restoration spells to heal him. You can then recover your magicka/stamina with food and repeat the process, building up your combat skills. You will also get legendary armor from paladin what's-his-face - though killing him will require a fair bit of AI cheesing (abuse the geometry in the house enough and you'll eventually get him to bug out). You'll also get a very powerful mace which is pretty handy if you need to leech some stamina.

This is basically the only way you can play the mod, because as you say, it's pretty unfeasible to progress via combat. Consider yourself a harmless villager until at least level 20 (though you can scrape by fighting things if you don't mind dying and reloading constantly).

Finally, I'm still playing the mod because it's at least a little challenging right now, even if the challenge is pretty bullshit-based. I'm out of games to play and I don't feel like starting a new character in SkyRe or whatever.

Dude, what in the unholy fuck?

Are you like, new to games?

 

[Gord]

BS. I killed him at level 6.

So you're saying that you didn't have trouble with an enemy that gave me a hard time...yet whenever I say that archers aren't really that bad you call me a liar because omg omg those railguns are unbeatable no one could possibly deal with them without cheese it's broken omg

Thanks to the NPCs helping you in the fight, the dragon isn't much of a problem indeed. My lvl15 mage could damage him (just not fast enough), but without the meatshields NPCs, I wouldn't have survived for long. With them however, the fight was easily doable.

When fighting dragon priests you are usually doing it alone (or with a companion/summon), not with 5 NPCs soaking up the damage.
However, while I agree with Lambchop on the issue of archers being badly balanced (not unbeatable, just done bad), I don't think the Dragon Priests are. They are clearly high-level enemies and should be treated as such (in comparison archers are encountered everywhere from the beginning).

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

I know they are high level enemies. I just felt like they should be treated more like liches rather than having them be able to soak hundreds of damage points. They're magic users not warriors. Use high level ward spells etc to increase DR temporarily or give them a spell to increase their armor rating, but not HP bloat (heck, even insane regen doesn't make sense. They're magic users, give them healing spells.). Plus, I don't like how requiem decided to shoehorn them into the mages guild questline. Everyone is like, "Run to Labyrinthian, the world will end!!!", oops, sorry - looks like I have to drop the quest for a while as there are unavoidable dragon priests in here. Sure I can take out a shadow dragon no problem - the dragon being what was supposed to give me trouble in that room according to the writing - but those priests are too much.

BS. I killed him at level 6.

So you're saying that you didn't have trouble with an enemy that gave me a hard time...yet whenever I say that archers aren't really that bad you call me a liar because omg omg those railguns are unbeatable no one could possibly deal with them without cheese it's broken omg

Knew you'd try that argument. I'm saying the game is unbalanced as fuck and is still a broken mess in spite of the author's hamfisted attempts to add more challenge for "teh hardcore realism". 2-3 archers are more of a pain than the first dragon. Also, I did have a tough time with the dragon and he was unbeatable in melee - as I said, but he hardly mopped the floor with me, despite my low level - being the "wounded dragon" that he was and fighting all the backup I had on that mission.

edit:

My point is, I don't doubt that for some characters Requiem will be a 1-2 hit kill game, but it's not the 'norm' for everyone.

At close range arrows deal around 300 damage. Yes, that's the norm - unless you block using a shield. Played it, saw it, uninstalled it. Also, enemy mage spells are mostly instakills at low levels - especially fireballs.

 

[Heresiarch]

Do you guys actually use followers? Is it not feasible to use followers to go dilute the damage spike a bit? If you've Interesting NPC installed there are some very badass, free, well written NPCs to hire as well.

 

[set]

I use followers on and off. They trivialize all of the challenge. If you don't use them, at least as a pure melee character, the game is unplayable until you start cheesing and equip yourself with high grade armor you shouldn't have access to right away.

 

[Akratus]

Oooooh. Maybe that's why I don't find archers annoying at all. They use my follower as a pincushion.

 

[DraQ]

Well, it worked out. I eventually settled on 80%/80% damage, and on the third time back, got through the Bleak Barrow bandits with the help of a Draugr Warrior (which I had to summon naked).

Battlemage build is extreme slow starter in Requiem (although it does seem to pay off in the end), so I'm not sure if its good for your first char.

So Tigranes, how are you dealing with archers?

Actually, Archers aren't much of a problem if you go heavy and sword+board.

By non-plate do you mean light armor? (Or whatever it's called right now, I think they changed it to something else.) I think that it's probably the most difficult option for melee

Actually, as long as you aren't swamped or shot at light armour is pretty awesome. You move faster and swing faster so you can evade, hit and bash with impunity.

If you still fear going into melee, a nice 2h weapon can help you keep your distance.
Archers can be a problem, but going light allows you to supplement your combat with stealth and unhindered archery of your own, you can also cast without problems if that's what you want.
Aside that, extra speed and faster swings give you opportunity to not get shot when shot at.

Do you guys actually use followers? Is it not feasible to use followers to go dilute the damage spike a bit? If you've Interesting NPC installed there are some very badass, free, well written NPCs to hire as well.

Followers are pretty critical for most builds in Requiem and, although they are protected (so they only get downed by enemy actions), you can't really use them as cheesetanks because they get downed easily by intensity of Requiem rape at which point they no longer attract enemy attention, and become liability by only serving as obstruction to your own attacks, especially AoE ones.
I also think they take much longer to recover in Requiem once downed, plus there are always paralyzing attacks and toxins that can disable your followers for *prolonged* periods of time.
Still they can be very effective at complementing your tactics as long as you support them, give you opportunity to pincer enemies or strike at openings, serve as nice anti-gangbang protection and can save your ass after you get hit by a disabling attack.
You can also try more advanced tactics - Skyrim's command interface is ass, but since NPCs told to wait somewhere still engage enemies it might be worthwhile to set one up as melee assault and initiate combat by sniping from another location or vice versa.

As for interesting NPCs mods, they work on separate script so you can have one normal and one interesting NPC flowing you at a time, giving you an actual mini-party.

Going for full stealth might make followers a bit of a burden, though - they try to sneak, but they are, well, AI and don't really understand the concept of letting situation cool down once the enemy gets slightly suspicious. You'll also often prefer ones that make up for your weaknesses, so chances are that if you're an ultimate ninja, your follower may be a clattering tank.