Light Weaponry (One-Handed)
Problem: All specialization perks were bad, which made all weapons essentially play the same - with  swords being slightly
superior, due to their higher speed.

Solutions:
- Incorporated Katanas, Tantos, Scimitars, Clubs, Wakizashis, Shortswords, Shortspears, Hatchets, Mauls, and Longswords from "Weapons of the Third Era" and "Heavy Armory".  These weapons are provided in addition to the vanilla Mace, War Axe and Sword (which has been reclassified as a "Broadsword").
- Each weapon type has distinct stats, allowing for a variety of playstyles in combat.
- Generic perks that apply to all one handed weapons have been replaced with perks for different weapon types.
- Added a subtree for unarmed combat which requires the use of an unarmed "weapon" you automatically get on game start.
- Added a subtree for dual wielding.
- Added two perks for spellblades/duelists (empty hand or spell + one-handed weapon)


Heavy Weaponry (Two-Handed)
Problem: Essentially the same as the vanilla One-Handed. Boring.

Solutions:
- Incorporated Glaives, Yaris, Longmaces, Halberds, Battlestaves, Bastard Swords, Nodachis from "Weapons of the Third Era" and "Heavy Armory".  These weapons are provided in addition to the vanilla Greatsword, Warhammer and Battleaxe.
- Each weapon type has distinct stats, allowing for a variety of playstyles in combat.
- Vanilla generic perks have been kept to make Heavy Weaponry attractive compared to the more flexible (but less powerful) Light Weaponry.
- A greater level of specialization of possible with Heavy Weaponry than Light Weaponry, with 2-3 perks for each weapon type.
- Two-handed weapons are initially less effective than one-handed weapons, but scale better as you level up and invest perks in the perk tree.


Heavy Armor
Problem: In vanilla, it's just all-around worse than light armor.

Solutions:
- Mastering heavy armor will make you feel like a tank.  At high levels you will reduce incoming power attacks to regular attacks, ocassionally stagger your attackers when they hit you, and generally take hits like a boss.
- The goofy "Fists of Steel" perk has been removed, all unarmed perks are now available from the Light Weaponry perk tree.
- All armor values have been drastically increased relative to vanilla Skyrim.  The armor cap is 900 armor, which provides 90% protection.  Higher armor values are not wasted because armor can be debuffed.


Smithing
Problem: Too much bang for your buck. The left side of the tree was completely pointless, and there's just very little to do overall.

Solutions:
- Light and heavy smithing progression have been separated into two distinct branches of the perk tree.  Light smithing gives exclusive access to crafting dragon material gear.  Heavy smithing gives exclusive access to the crafting of daedric weapons.
- Material perks no longer boost tempering, and are instead required to temper gear of the associated materials.
- Material perks now unlock secondary effects which are active when wearing a full set of armor of the material the perk is associated with.
- A new perk called "Blacksmith" serves as the root of the smithing perk tree, and improves tempering quality for each point you invest in it.
- Added perks for jewelry, silver weapons, refined silver weapons, breaking stuff down, and creation of a special type of clothing which boosts armor and synergizes with multiple schools of magic.
- Mining ore now levels smithing by a small amount.
- Using the smelter or tanning rack levels smithing.
- Ingots now require 3 pieces of ore to craft, and all ore and ingots have had their prices and weights adjusted to compensate.
- Unlike "Weapons of the Third Era", you will now need to find a particular book in order to craft Eastern Dwemer weapons.


Marksmanship (Archery)
Problem: All perks were either boring "KILL MOAR"-perks or useless.

Solutions:
- Bows were split into two different types based on their material: "Longbows" and "Shortbows" (for heavy and light materials, respectively).  Both Longbows and Shortbows have their own branches in the perk tree.
- Longbows and Shortbows have different strengths and weaknesses.  Longbows are slow to draw, and most effective at long distances, where shortbows are faster to draw, less powerful, and more effective at close range.
- Added a Crossbow subtree.  Crossbows are easier to use, but are only effective through enhancement.  Perks have been added which allow you to repeatedly reforge crossbows with enhancements to address a variety of situations.  Crossbow bolts can also be strengthened and enhanced with various effects.
- All arrows and bolts have been adjusted to be faster and fall slower.  Bolts are generally faster and have greater range than arrows.  Stats vary with the material used.
- Because different projectiles have different speeds the crosshair may not be very helpful.  It's recommended to disable it using a mod like iHud.


Block
Problem: Boring, slightly buggy, and slightly overpowered with "Quick Reflexes".

Solutions:
- When blocking and getting hit within 0.4 seconds, you perform a "timed block" that staggers the attacker and reduces the damage taken by 33%.
- Added new perks which revolve around timed blocking, and debuffing attackers/enhancing bashes.


Sneak
Problem: Haxx.  Makes you feel like you're cheating.

Solutions:
- Instead of cheat-like passive boosts, the new tree adds gameplay options - slow time after dagger sneak attacks, instantly kill sleeping targets, craft utility arrows, and enhance your ability to sneak with destruction spells (which has been added).
- Sneaking is made more difficult and rewarding through a variety of adjustments as listed below:
- Enemies search for you way longer during all phases of detection, but have a smaller detection view cone.
- Increased initial damage multipliers: doubled initial dagger sneak damage multiplier to x6, increased initial two-handed sneak damage multipler to x3, increased initial unarmed sneak damage multiplier to x6.
- Increased sneak experience rewarded from bow sneak attacks
- Equipment weight, light, and player movement now have a greater influence on the effectiveness of sneaking
- Sound has a slightly reduced influence on sneaking success to balance perk changes which make it harder to reduce
- Crime report distance has been greatly reduced
- Replaced "Fortify Pickpocket" enchantment with "Deadly Touch" (+damage/ignore armor) and "Prism" (+armor/resist magic)
- Replaced "Fortify Lockpicking" enchantment with "Fortify Fingersmith"
- You now deal 34% less damage to targets that are searching for you.


Alchemy
Problem: Overpowered and boring.

Solutions:
- Still somewhat overpowered, but the old nemesis of balance (the crafting cycle) has been removed.
- Added crafting of explosive (non-elemental) arrows and bolts
- Added crafting of adhesive explosives
- Added trap enhancement (see "Wayfarer")
- All potions and poisons have been slightly buffed in overall magnitude, but now work over time (except for "Cure Disease" and "ultimate" potions).  Potions usually work over four seconds, poisons over three seconds.
- "Lingering" poisons have been greatly buffed, and work a lot longer than regular poisons
- Improved the effectiveness of "Fear" and "Fury" poisons
- Weapon skill related potions have been nerfed (they're still good)
- Added stamina and magicka regeneration to Skooma
- Adjusted prices as necessary to compensate for changes
- Renamed everything to minimize inventory clutter


Speechcraft (Speech)
Problem: Not worth the investment.

Solutions:
- Vendors are deleveled, and everything is expensive.  If you want to make buying and selling items profitable you're going to have to invest in Speechcraft.
- Added a new branch to the tree to handle shouts.
- Using shouts levels speechcraft.
- Shouts have been rebalanced.
- Added perks for disguising yourself.  Go ahead and put on some Forsworn armor, walk into Markarth, and then lure the guards to your new friends. ;)


Fingersmith (Pickpocket + Lockpicking)
Problem: "Pickpocket" used to be rather bad (but funny), "Lockpicking" was just completely useless.

Solutions:
- "Fingersmith" is a new perk tree created from the Pickpocket and Lockpicking perk trees. It has all effects from both trees, and a few additional perk ranks when appropriate. It levels from both picking locks and pockets.


Wayfarer (NEW)
A new perk tree which takes the spot Lockpicking used to have.

Description:
- The main branch contains core "Lore" perks.  Each of these perks covers a certain types of enemies and enables progression towards other perks in the tree (they don't do anything by themselves).
- Additional perks which are based around the core "Lore" perks allow you fight enemies more effectively, detect them, or even make them non-hostile.
- Other perks in the tree allow you to collect, craft, and place traps.  You can drop traps from your inventory and then move them around like normal objects.
- Other perks allows you to move faster in the wilderness, resist disease/poison, or enhance your ability to gather resources.
- This skill tree progresses as you travel throughout skyrim and make use of the mechanics associated with the perks it offers.
- The Survivalism plugin enhances this perk tree with perks related to Chesko's Frostfall.


Light Armor
Problem: It used to be just a better version of Heavy Armor.

Solutions:
- Mastering Light Armor allows you to dodge attacks and completely negate damage when doing timed blocks with light shields.
- Light Armor will allow you to survive a few hits, but not as many as Heavy Armor.
- All armor values have been buffed.


Conjuration
Problem: The vanilla tree had only one decent perk - "Twin Souls". And once you had that, you already finished Conjuration... also, all reanimation spells are just progressively stronger versions of one spell, which is boring.

Solutions:
- Distinct subtrees for Necromancy and Daedra summoning as well as a bunch of new spells.
- Both Dremora and Daedra now gradually scale with your level.  Investing in the perk tree will increase the rate at which they scale.
- Dremora now require either a human heart or part of your own life force in addition to their base magicka cost to be summoned.
- Necromancers can learn to collect bones, hearts, and flesh from corpses which can be used to create skeletons.
- Necromancers can learn to communicate with their minions to issue commands on the battlefield.
- Changed reanimation spells to work on all human-like creatures and have greater duration.
- Reanimation spells now yield different types of thralls, allowing for greater variety and tactical decision making when building your undead army.
- Added a new perk "Gravebound" which makes reanimated creatures permanent and prevents corpses from turning to ashes.


Destruction
Problem: Only good for stagger-locking.

Solutions:
- "Impact" has been nerfed.
- Added a perk "Careful Studies" which works similar to how the Overdraw, Armsman, and Barbarian perks worked in the weapon trees.
- Added a perk "Elemental Ram" which reduces enemy spell resistance each time you hit them with a spell.
- The Novice, Apprentice, Adept, and Master perks now enhance the magnitude and reduce the cost of Destruction Spells by 25%.
- Added a perk which allows you to debuff enemy armor using fire magic.
- A total of six new high-level perks allow for highly specialized spellcasters.
- Spells have been rebalanced and redesigned from the ground up.  The general trend is spells now grow in effect rather than magnitude.
- High-level spells offer secondary effects such as AoE, DoT, or faster charge speled in exchange for higher magicka cost.  This adjustment allows low-level spells to still be useful as a high-level mage.


Illusion
Problem: For most of the game it's overpowered. Late game it's useless without dual casting.

Solutions:
- Removed the AoE variants of Fear/Frency/Calm.
- The first pillar of the new perk tree is about direct manipulation.  This covers vanilla effects, debuffs, charm-like abilities, and the power to force targets to commit suicide.
- The second pillar of the new perk tree revolves around a special immobile summon called "Phantom Image".  By directing spells at the summon, a mage is able to create stronger effects and circumvent certain limitations.


Alteration
Problem: So much potential, yet so few possibilities...

Solutions:
- Added a ton of new perks and spells.  You can now enchant weapons in combat, create dwarven constructs from dwemer scraps, teleport, walk on water, and more.
- Added perks which enhance the existing mage armor spells and a bit more of everything.


Restoration
Problem: Similar to Alteration.  Limited variety, and a bit too easy to abuse.  Anti-undead spells suck.

Solutions:
- Restoration skill now affects the magnitude of wards and healing spells.
- Added auras, curses, and plagues, as well as perks to support them.
- Added some new anti-undead spells.
- Added a new "spell combo" mechanic.
- Wards have been reworked to have greater variety.
- Added a very special master level reanimation spell to complete the school.


Enchanting
Problem: Overpowered, yay! Also a grindfest without equal.

Solutions:
- Added perks that allow the crafting of spell scrolls.  You can create a scroll without knowing the spell it casts if you have the associated perk and materials to craft it.
- Added a new perk "Arcane Archery" which allows you to cast spells which travel alongside fired arrows.
- More perk investment is required to advance the core enchanting tree.  Reaching the "Extra Effect" perk now comes at a cost. 
- Perks have been rearranged.
- Allows you to craft the exploding elemental bolts from Dawnguard and elemental traps (see Wayfarer).
- Adjusted the gear restrictions for certain enchantments, generally increasing restrictions.
- The "crafting cycle" enchantments have been replaced.  They still appear on certain quest reward items but should not be obtainable.
- The strength of spells cast through scrolls now scale with Enchanting directly.
- Using scrolls and "Arcane Archery" spells now levels enchanting.


Other Changes

Skyrim Redone...
- Fixes a bunch of bugs
- Increases vendor inventory respawn time to 6 days.
- Adjusts dual-casting spells to have 200% cost and 220% magnitude.
- Distributes spell books for new spells to loot tables and appropriate merchants.
- Distributes new weapons to both enemies and vendors.
- Distributes Dawnguard Crossbows to soldiers and ocassionally bandits
- Adds a more potent version of the Frostbite Venom poison which can be dropped by Giant Frostbite Spiders.
- Modifies the in-game help menu to reflect the changes, and edited/added a few loading screens as well
- Modifies, buffs, and delevels pretty much every unique item/artifact in the game
- Adds a respec potion. You'll get one for when updating/installing SkyRe, and can get further potions through the console (help "respec")

Key
- Blue Items: Passive abilities.
- Purple Items: Triggered abilities.
- Red Items: Activatable abilities.


Redguards

- Desert Training: Being the most talented warriors in all of Tamriel, "Desert Training" gives Redguards an initial advantage in melee combat, increasing their base stamina by 50.
- Sandstorm Charge: For 15 seconds, time is slowed down by 25% and you move 15% faster.  Usable every 2 minutes.


Nords

- Warrior Heart: As your health decreases, your weapon damage grows.  Deal double damage while below 5% health.
- Last Stand: When activated, you take no damage and regenerate no health for 7 seconds. Once the effect expires, you lose all your stamina.  Refreshes after resting.


Imperials

- Imperial Charisma:25% better buying and selling prices.
- Tactician: Whenever you successfully block an attack you drain the attacker's stamina by 10%.
- Attack Order: Followers deal 25% more spell and weapon damage, but also suffer 25% more spell and weapon damage.  They move and attack 25% faster.  Lasts for 5 minutes and shares a 10 minute cooldown with Guard Order.
- Guard Order: Followers deal 25% less spell and weapon damage and take 50% less damage from spells and weapons.  Lasts for 5 minutes and shares a 10 minute cooldown with Attack Order.


Argonians

- Resist Disease: 50% disease resistance.
- Waterbreathing: Breathe underwater.
- Protective Scales: Argonians take 15% less damage from daggers, swords, war axes, greatswords and battleaxes.
- Claws: Unarmed attacks gain bonus damage. It starts at 10 damage with 100 stamina, and increases by 1 damage for each ten points of stamina you have. Maxes out at a bonus of 30 damage.
- Histskin: Activate to triple regeneration for health, stamina, or magicka at the cost of all regeneration for the other two attributes.  Can be toggled.


Wood Elves

- Wild Hunt: Increases bow damage against non-playable races by 25%.
- Wild Companion: Calls animal companions to your aid.  The summoned companion is leveled and behaves like a summoned creature (but doesn't count towards the summon limit).  The companion summoned depends on the location you are in.  In snowy regions you summon snow bears, in caves a chaurus, and everywhere else you summon wolves.  Companions are summoned for 5 minutes.  Has a 10 minute cooldown.
- Wood Lore: Allows you to enhance arrows with magical explosives at forges.  Enhanced arrows apply an area effect which paralyzes enemies for one second and reduces the damage they do with light and heavy weapon damage by 30% for 10 seconds.


High Elves

- Highborn: +50 magicka.  (same as vanilla)
- Channel Magicka: While active, both spell cost and magnitude grow based on your available magicka at the time of casting.


Dark Elves

- Dunmer Heritage: 50% fire resistance.  (same as vanilla)
- Ancestor's Wrath:  When you drop below 50% health, the ability triggers.  Provides a 50% bonus to the magnitude of fire-based spells.  Enemies get a flame cloak effects which scales with level (+3 every 10 levels) from a base of 5 damage/second to a maximum of 17 damage/second (before bonuses, including the Ancestor's Wrath damage bonus).  Players get a 15% chance to avoid incoming physical damage instead of the flame cloak.  Refreshes after resting.
- Ancestor's Fury: If your health drops below 30% you trigger a huge explosion and two angry Dunmer ancestors come to your aid.  The ancestors are leveled and use strong weaponry.  Player only, can trigger once per day.


Bretons

- Mixed Blood: Now provides only 15% magic resistance instead of the vanilla 25%.
- Twin Blood Summoning: For 60 seconds you can summon without limits, while health and stamina take continuous damage and ”Mixed Blood” is negated.  Spell with a casting time of 10 seconds, can be cast again after resting.
- Twin Blood Eruption: For 60 seconds, all spells are twice as strong and cost half as much magicka, while health and stamina take continuous damage and ”Mixed Blood” is negated.  Spell with a casting time of 10 seconds, can be cast again after resting.


Orcs

- Orcish Smithing Lore: Passive buff which gives 25% improved tempering.
- Berserker Rage: Doubles damage output and reduces incoming damage by 25% for 60 seconds.  Requires sacrificing 25% of your current health to activate and causes beneficial potions to be 50% less effective during its duration.  Requires resting between each use.


Khajiit

- Feline Athletics: Khajiit move 20% faster, take half fall damage, and jump 50% higher.
- Survival Instinct: Once per day, if your health drops below 25%, your movement and attack speed increase by 25% for 30 seconds.
- Claws: Unarmed attacks gain bonus damage. It starts at 10 damage with 100 stamina, and increases by 1 damage for each ten points of stamina you have. Maxes out at a bonus of 30 damage.
- Night Eye: Toggleable night vision.