The intent of this mod is to make faction progression slower and more deliberate. You have to choose your goals and plan towards them. This is achieved by multiple changes:

Different factions have different initiation requirements.
No great House will ever pick up a nobody right off the prison boat. Fighters Guild aren't picky, but Mages Guild is partially academic organization, so above average intelligence is expected. Imperial Legion and Imperial Cult just get whatever they can get.

Progression is harder
You probably can get the first few ranks in a level or two, but becoming a high-ranking member is a task requiring your focus. You aren't supposed to max out every guild in one vanilla playthrough with this mod. tl;dr - the higher you go, the slower you'll raise in ranks.

Attributes are important now
Attribute requirements in vanilla were so low you might as well not have any. Now you need to have your main attribute in the 60-70s to reach the max rank. Secondary skills also need to be higher. The main skill progression remained more or less the same on higher levels, I think vanilla's 90 for max rank is reasonable.

Attribute requirements are unsynchronized
Now first faction's attribute is it's main one, and the second is secondary. To raise in the Thieves Guild agility is more important than speed, and in Mages Guild intelligence is more important than willpower. The difference is slight, but it's enough so the same character would advance at different rates in guild with mirroring attributes - like Mages Guild and Telvanni.

Favored attributes are changed
Some attribute requirements didn't make sense. Thieves Guild specifically asks for "agile and quick", while in game you need agility and personality. House Hlaalu is a traders and schemers, yet they don't care about you having personality in zeroes. Now, Thieves Guild requires Agility and Speed, and Hlaalu Personality and Agility.

All the factions now favor 7 skills instead of 6
It MIGHT make your progression easier, but with this mod your bottleneck would be attributes, not skills. Still, now Fighters Guild will finally respect your spearmanship. Indirectly makes speechcraft more useful, since I used it as a plug-in skill in cases there I wasn't sure what to add. Being a people pleaser is a benefit in any career, after all.

Dialogue Integration
All the dialogue topics reflect the new requirements. This change might seem obtrusive, but it shouldn't bring any conflicts.


Mods changing the same thing this one changes are incompatible, naturally.
Mods adding faction quests, new factions, changing cells etc. all should be compatible.
Mods changing "requirements" dialogue topics should be overwritten by mine, or you'll get wrong requirements explained to you. That's not critical, however.
There is an alternate esp file in the main archive forwarding TR_Factions changes. Use it if use Tamriel Rebuilt factions module.


Less More Exclusive Factions is complementary to this. The mods are balanced around each other, but are fine on their own.


General balancing.
Mod-added factions.
(Maybe) changing the dialogues to reflect the changes.


This mod is it's own thing, but Higher Faction Requirements was a great inspiration. Go endorse them. Maybe you'll like their approach better, too!
Higher Faction Requirements by KingFeraligatr
Higher Faction Requirement - TR compatible version by FlinSunset