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About this mod
Fixes the leveled loot distribution system in a vanilla-friendly way without overhauling it.
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Descension
The Glory of Cyrodiil
Requirements:
None
The Glory of Cyrodiil
Requirements:
None
Description
Light armor is made from fur, leather, chainmail, mithril, elven or glass. Mithril, elven and glass are exceedingly rare and are only found in ancient ruins and remote tombs... Blacksmiths can forge heavy armor from iron, steel, dwarven, orcish, ebony or daedric. Iron and steel plate mail can be found in most any blacksmith's shop. The other materials are rare and armor made from them is only found in ancient treasure hoards hidden deep underground.Manual of Armor
Descension is a vanilla-friendly mod that fixes Oblivion's immersion-breaking leveled loot distribution system. It is a heavily reduced version of Ascension made specifically for the remaster that aims to fix the worst aspects of the loot system without overhauling it.
Changes:
- Removed higher tier weapons and armour from NPCs common. This includes Mithril, Elven, Glass, Dwarven, Orcish, Ebony, and Daedric.
- Removed Glass and Daedric armour and Daedric weapons from boss NPCs. The boss NPC leveled lists are no longer 'leveled', so that their equipment is randomised amongst the available tiers instead of always being the highest level. This means that boss NPCs use higher-tier gear, but not always the same tier.
- Repeated similar changes to the two above for staves and scrolls. NPCs now do not carry the highest level of either unless they are a boss, which means you must now find them in dungeon chest loot.
- Added more items to dungeon chests to offset the lack of valuable armour loot from NPCs. This addresses the very low amount of loot in the vanilla game, which often goes unnoticed as NPCs dropped more than enough gear. Care was taken to ensure that these new item additions match the vanilla loot distribution for each dungeon type as closely as possible.
- Added enchanted arrows to dungeon loot where logical. They were completely missing in the vanilla game and could only be found on a select few NPCs and creatures.
- Increased the level range for creatures from 8 to 15. This allows more low-level creatures to spawn when you are a higher
level, meaning that you won't always be fighting the top three highest level creatures all the time. - Decreased item drop rates for NPC potions, scrolls, and enchanted jewelery. This is to preserve the game's economy and make chest loot more valuable compared to NPCs.
- Replaced instances of 'loot' leveled lists being used by NPCs, and vice versa. This allows the rarity changes above to be more accurate.
- Added logical value to valueless armour and weapons. This prevents them being free to repair. Examples of this include Blades armour.
- Added some additional enchanted items to leveled lists that were missing in the vanilla game for no reason.
- Added Fine Iron and Fine Steel weapons to leveled lists. This adds more variety given the now reduced pool of weapon tiers used by most NPCs.
- Added Potions of Respite to potion leveled lists. They were previously very rare in the vanilla game and were only available in generic potion loot rather than 'restoration' potion leveled lists like for other restoration potions.
- Added a chance for Goblins outside of the starter dungeon to use Clubs. Again, this adds more variety.
- Added a chance for Dremora Valkynaz to use claymores and battle axes, rather than always using warhammers.
- Added a chance to find Leather Braces instead of Leather Gauntlets. Leather Braces were only available in certain locations in the vanilla game. The difference is purely cosmetic.
- Corrected some instances of clothes containers containing the wrong class of clothes.
- Added weight and value to Torches. This means that they can now be bought from merchants.
- Added a small degree of randomisation to Torch loot in certain containers. This prevents them from always holding 2 Torches every single time.
- Added an optional file to further increase drop rates from vanilla loot tables. This was added because many vanilla weapon and armour leveled lists only have a 10% drop rate, meaning that dungeon loot could sometimes be underwhelming.
- Added an optional plugin to make the tutorial slightly harder by some item drops in the starting dungeon and balancing the Rusty and Worn armours against other low-level gear. This makes your start in the world slightly harder (but not by much) so that you are incentivised to go out and find new gear.
The changes above aim to play within the vanilla leveled system 'rules' rather than completely changing how loot spawns like in Ascension. I made this mod because porting Ascension to the remaster required a lot of comprimises. A lot of key balancing features had to be dropped, meaning that the mod didn't reflect the original or land very well with users' expectations, especially casual users playing the game for the first time. This is probably more like the mod that they were actually looking for.
It also buys me time to make a full port of Ascension that lives up to the original when modding for the remaster is more developed.
Modular gameplay tweaks from the larger Ascension mod are available on the Ascended Gameplay Tweaks mod page. These can be used alongside Descension.
Difficulty and Leveling
Descension makes no changes to vanilla difficulty or leveling. However, be aware that the remastered game is much easier than the original game for many reasons, including:
- Player health is much higher than the original, even if you were to efficiently level your Endurance as much as possible. It is also retroactive, meaning that it is much easier to end up with high health.
- Fatigue plays almost no role in the damage that you deal in the remaster.
- Creature health, damage, and fatigue has been drastically decreased.
- Leveling speed, both of skills and player levels, has been drastically increased. Minor skills are also only marginally harder to increase than major skills now.
Due to the points above, I would recommend playing on a higher difficulty. However, you may need to use another mod to reduce the extreme vanilla difficulty settings (it's the same system as the original game, but removes the slider that allowed for marginal increments).
I also recommend you use a mod to decrease leveling rate. An optional file is included here that includes various plugins for
customising major and minor skill rates.
If you want to play a balanced and immersive game, I recommend you play the original Oblivion, as it has a much more developed modding scene and experienced community. My Through the Valleys guide or Reign of the Septims are both good starting points.
Recommended Mods
Balanced NPC Level Cap
Balanced Unleveled Rewards
Simple Creature Level Cap
Complete Clutter and Crop Ownership
Balanced Unleveled Rewards
Simple Creature Level Cap
Complete Clutter and Crop Ownership
Installation
Manual Installation:
- Download the main file from this mod page.
- Navigate to your Steam\SteamApps\common folder.
- Add the .esp files from the download to the \Oblivion Remastered\OblivionRemastered\Content\Dev\ObvData\Data folder.
- Open the plugins.txt file in the \Oblivion Remastered\OblivionRemastered\Content\Dev\ObvData\Data\ folder.
- At the bottom of the file, add the line Descension.esp to the end.
- Repeat the above steps for any other plugins that you have added.
- Make sure that Descension.esp is loaded before other files from this mod or your game will crash on start!
I do no provide instructions for mod managers, so make sure you are familiar with how to use whatever mod manager that you choose.
The main download contains the Balanced Tutorial Loot.esp file that reduces some potion, lockpick, and arrow loot in the tutorial dungeon and rebalances the Worn and Rusty armour stats. This file is recommended. Remove this file if you do not want these changes.
You can install this mod on an existing save - you do NOT need to start a new game.
Optional Files
- Descension Patches - Contains patches for Balanced NPC Level Cap, and Hooded Outlaws. Descension does not require a patch for Unofficial Oblivion Remastered Patch or Balanced Unleveled Rewards - just follow the load order below to resolve conflicts.
- Descension Increased Equipment Loot - Increases the drop rate of the low-chance vanilla armour and weapon leveled lists. Specifically, it doubles the chance of the 5% and 10% leveled lists.
- Slower Leveling - A range of plugins to decrease skill leveling rate by different amounts. This is because a lot of people find leveling to be too quick in the Remaster. There are separate plugins for major and minor skill rates, so just pick the rates that you prefer. The percentages refer to the increase in skill experience required to increase a skill level, i.e. 25% = 25% more experience, resulting in 25% slower leveling. Note: the leveling rate of minor skills has been dramatically increased in the remaster. In the original game, minor skills required 67% more experience to increase than major skills. In the remaster, they only require 17% more experience. One of the plugins decreases the minor skill leveling rate by 43% to make it match the original game.
The recommended load order for the main mod and various other plugins is:
- [Main Oblivion Remastered Files]
- Unofficial Oblivion Remastered Patch.esp
- [Other Mods...]
- Clutter and Crop Ownership.esp
- Balanced NPC Level Cap.esp
- Simple Creature Level Cap.esp
- Simple Creature Level Cap - UORP Patch.esp
- Hooded Outlaws.esp
- Hooded Outlaws - Balanced NPC Level Cap Patch.esp
- Descension.esp
- Balanced Tutorial Loot.esp
- Balanced Unleveled Rewards.esp
- Descension - Hooded Outlaws Patch.esp
- Descension - Balanced NPC Level Cap Patch.esp
Uninstallation
Reverse the installation steps.
You can uninstall this mod on an existing save - you do NOT need to start a new game.
Compatibility
Do not use Descension with Leveled Creature and Item Diversity or similar mods. Descension is designed to work with the existing leveled item system and changes like this can mess with the intended item levels.
My Mods
I spend a lot of time creating and supporting my mods, so any donations are gratefully received.