About this mod
This is an xEdit script that grabs every NPC old level and turns it into a multiplier value. This means every NPC will scale to/around of 0.80 and up to 1.5 times (or more) of what PC level is. It sets a whole new difficulty curve in an extremely BALANCED and CHALLENGING play through. Also encounter zones are uncapped.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
You can grab it here if you like!
I've set this files to old, but you can still use them if you want.
They work differently, and have a few flaws which are mostly covered in my new script, so i consider this deprecated!
Old Update:
+ iShift is now 20 instead of 10. This will set the dificulty curve to earlier in game, multiplier will be below 1 if NPC is lvl10, and grow from there.
+ Options to change RACE Starting values from slight (1/3) to double.
+ Added new script to be able to tune down (limit) any mult value that could have gone too far to avoid insane impossible difficulty late game.
What does it do? (no fluff)
1) By itself it looks for Encounter zones and sets min to 1, max to 0, and removes Never Reset flags if any.
2) Then it looks for NPCs and checks, if NPC has a level mult flag, its skipped. If NPC has a Level, then it does this math:
800 + (Old Level * 10) = X
X gets divided by 1000 (this is how the level mult flag works in xEdit, 1000 = 1.0)
So the result will be a fraction.
E.g. 800 + (32 * 10) = 1120 / 1000 = 1.12
This means that if the player is level 30 and he encounters this NPC (supposed to be lvl32), the NPC will scale 1.12 times PC level. So it'll be level 33.
If you were level 80 and you encounter same npc? Then it would spawn as lvl89. And so on: PC lvl * 1.12
3) Optionaly: it'll also look for all Races and double their Starting HP. (2 options are provided, 1 with no races changes in case you want to use something like NPC Stat Rescaler which i HIGHLY recommend)
This is necessary because when you set an NPC's level mult flag the game will not use some fixed values. (This is how the game leveling mechanic works, it selectively chooses determined stats for Leveled NPCs or it calculates everything from other stats. Kind of.)
Is it compatible with... ?
Everything.
Even mods that relevel/unlevel everything. Even if those mods do it dynamically.
What will happen is that the difficulty will change, because if you understood the formula, difficulty will be set to every NPC individually according to their Old Level - so it wont be based on vanilla game levels, but based on what the mod changed.
I HIGHLY recommend TUS for this, it's also incredibly handy and it also adds perks to a lot of npc, so it'll be more challenging. Even if a boss is lowered to around your level it'll still be a BOSS.
Any other mod of your choice is compatible, even things like SOT, OBIS, everything. Provided you run the script properly that is!
Anything else..?
I haven't had the time to experience every outcome. Specially end-game, but in my testing i found that a few game settings come in very handy to balance NPC to Player and Player stats to NPC scaling.
Should you need more balancing you can try modifying this settings. Copy them to your SSU.esp and see, some mods modify this values, so take them as reference and if you think NPC have a lot of stats lower this settings a little bit and check, if they are too weak.. well you get it.
(Google them for better understanding on what they do.)
From Skyrim.esm - Game Settings:
- fNPCHealthLevelBonus
- fPCHealthLevelBonus
- iADVhmsLevelUp
- iADVSkillsLevelUp
Can i customize it?
Yes. If you read the script there are comments that'll guide you on what you can change and the impact it would have. Its very simple math really.
Anything more else!?
Yes. You have my permission to edit this, use this however you want and all that. If you read it, understand it, ditch it and write a new one better that this script, please send me a pm and share your results with me, i'll be interested.
I've also uploaded it to github: https://github.com/rderasta/Skyrim-Scaled-Uncapped
Any bugs?
Nopes. Very simple and clean changes.
Load Order:
Should be at the bottom. It obviously needs to win-overwrite every NPC, Encounter zone and/or race to work. So it should be as low as possible.
If you make patches of any sort after this, you must verify if changes "transferred" properly, you CAN run my scripts in the patches if you need to.
Uninstall?
Once you've ran the script you can't un-run it. You uninstall by removing the file. Make sure to save properly, cells reset after waiting 31 days in an interior, or so they say.
Nothing should bug.
A word from me:
Hello, whats with that long install process huh, well since i am not a dev, i barely managed to write this scripts, i did it for myself and decided to share it. Consider it open sourced. I wouldn't have made it without reading other dudes scripts like fireunduhb for e.g. So in a way its not even all my code <3
Also wanna thanks everyone in r/skyrimmods that answered me and helped me with my questions.
That said it's impossible for me to improve this much more. Unthinkable for me to make it a zPatcher.
I even had some ideas for more complex formulas but even them are impossible for me to "translate" to code. I hit walls here and there.
So this is it, probably. If i can add/fix anything that comes up I WILL. IF I CAN. This is why i decided to explain how it works as better as i could.
Good fun, have luck!