The vanilla potions are too easy to use, and the poisons are too weak. In Skytoxin, poisons are something you truly need to fear, and nearly all potions will come with side-effects, just like real medicine.

Skytoxin does not touch the alchemy skill tree, and almost no changes have been made to the ingredients. The things you brew yourself will naturally have side-effects if you mix it wrong, and Skytoxin mainly puts focus on the default potions and poisons.





With very few exceptions, every potion will come with penalties. Just like in real life, consuming medicine will result in side-effects. The more powerful the potion, the more the side-effects will hurt.

Using potions to restore Health will be exhausting, and thus drain Stamina. Potions that fortify Health will do so to a much greater magnitude than in the vanilla game, and be useful in the short term. However, they will have a negative long-term effect as they slowly drain the user's Health over time.

Using potions to restore Stamina in one way or another, will take a toll on the user's health. It can be compared with doping; putting chemicals in your body to increase your performance is not healthy.

Potions that restore magicka will have a temporary effect making the user more vulnerable to magic, and in some cases, they may also be a little bit poisonous.

Potions that fortify different types of skills will generally just be a bit poisonous for the sake of correlating with the rest of the mod (such as a potion of lockpicking, speech or smithing), or they will result in a negative impact for some type of opposite skill.





Most poisons have been renamed after real-life toxins (such as Tetrodotoxin), or based on some sort of system that sounded viable and lore-friendly (such as Necromancotoxin). Poisons that damage Health will more than often be far more potent than what's necessary in order to take out the victim. Their damage will rather be based on how much Health they would have had the potential to damage. This is inspired by, but not based on, the LD50 system that is used in real life for classifying toxicity.

One single dose of one of the weaker poisons, Curare, is enough to kill some of the weaker humans, whilst others are too strong. One single dose of the most potent of all poisons however, Botulinumtoxin, would be enough to kill over 120 mammoths in Skyrim. This is obviously not a necessary game mechanic, but considering 500 g (17.6 oz) of this toxin has been estimated to be able to kill every single human on Earth, this felt as a necessary feature to implement, in order to at least approach reality. Admittedly, the poisons do indeed cause a lot of damage, which is one reason for why this mod preferably would be enjoyed playing on the higher difficulties.

Both the normal, as well lingering Health damaging poisons, will cause their damage over time. The normal ones will increase potency and duration the better they get. The lingering ones however, will get weaker, but also get a huge boost to duration (up to several real-life hours). The latter category can thus be a great asset for roleplaying purposes. Poisons that only paralyze the victim have also had their duration increased a lot.

The really interesting poisons are to be found in the categories of fear and frenzy. The low level limits have been greatly increased, so the toxins will affect most people and animals. Some of the more potent frenzy poisons actually provide a huge Health and attack boost to the victim, which can cause quite some chaos, such as in a bandit lair, or even in a city. It's a much more stealth-based option than magic, as well as it's more realistic. Some of these toxins have been based on real-life narcotic preparations, such as Phencyclidine (PCP). For those however, the scientific names have been kept in order to point out that it's about the effects of the toxins, not making the game inappropriate.

Your own arsenals of poisons are not the only things that have been improved. Trap darts, spiders, Chaurus and Falmer all now pose a much deadlier threat. Getting stung or bitten is certainly something that should be avoided. If you are, you better bring something to restore your Health, because there isn't any antidote to magically remove the poisons anymore.


Why choose Skytoxin?

Unlike most other mods that affect poisons or alchemy, the aim with Skytoxin is not only to change the gameplay, but also to give the poisons more depth than just "strong poison" and "deadly poison". The names and effects are far from scientifically accurate, but they are still following a system, and the different effects are much more characteristic. In future updates, Skytoxin is intended to feature even more detailed and unique effects from the different toxins.


Balancing

With Skytoxin, you will be able to get your hands on items that have the potential to cause more damage than any other (serious) weapon, spell or item ever seen in the game, and probably in any mod as well. However, take into consideration that the poisons will be very expensive and, as you know, can only be used once per dose (or twice with the right perk). In other words, you can't just use Skytoxin and suddenly get bored because no enemies stand a chance against you.

With Skytoxin installed, it is no longer possible to cure poison immediately. For users who dislike this, there is a patch available here, which will make it work as in the vanilla game again.


Installation

Using Vortex is the recommended method.


Requirements

All you need is SSE.


Compatibility

Skytoxin should be fully compatible with anything as long as it doesn't change the names or effects of the non-craftable potions and poisons. It should definitely be compatible with any alchemy mods. 

If you have another mod that changes potions and poisons, placing Skytoxin later in the load order will automatically overwrite the affected ones, whilst unique potions and poisons added by other other mod will remain without any changes.



Falltoxin, a Fallout 4 version of this mod, is also available here.