Skyrim Special Edition

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OperatorCactus

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OperatorCactus

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About this mod

This mod brings an unleveled experience to the world of Skyrim. With stronger equipment but more dangerous foes your adventurer has to be prepared to survive.

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Translations
  • Russian
  • Polish
Changelogs
Morrowloot fixes the loot, Skyrim Unleveled fixes the NPCs.
 
Designed from the ground up to work alongside Morrowloot, Skyrim Unleveled creates a challenging experience with stronger equipment and more dangerous foes. The world, loot tables and npc distribution are no longer revolving around the player. Acuity is rewarded. Only the prepared will survive.


A version for Classic is Available here.


An Overhaul of the World

Along with de-leveling Skyrim’s NPCs, Skyrim Unleveled makes many tweaks in order to create a cohesive overhaul of the game’s mechanics.
This mod touches almost every aspect of gameplay. 
  • Loot fits the power level requirement to obtain it.
  • A small chance for rare loot in boss chests invokes a D&D-like sense of discovery.
  • A few new enemy types to increase the power cap for hostile NPCs.
  • Equipment is re-designed for specific roles with both strength and drawbacks which allow for more nuanced builds.
  • A new magic scaling system.
  • Hand placed enemies to increase difficulty of select dungeons.
  • Derived attributes make speccing into stamina, magicka or health more substantial.
 
 
An Unleveled Skyrim

  • Both overworld and dungeon NPCsare no longer dependent on your level. Tread carefully.
  • Every playstyle has a place in the world. Though Skyrim Unleveled is difficult, clever play will see the player through all content the game offers.
  • Damage dealt and received is multiplied by 4, creating frenetic encounters where movement, positioning, resources and equipment can all attribute to your success or failure.
  • Weapon balance, artifacts, NPCs and others are overhauled.
  • Quest dungeons are tougher, giving a sense of weight to your accomplishments.
 
Significant Equipment

  • Armor rating has been increased across the board. As a result, armor penetration is very important in Skyrim Unleveled.
  • Heavy armor offers unparalleled protection but stunts spellcasting, though spellcasting performance can be improved through training. Heavy Armor protects against arrows but does not fare as well against crossbow bolts, due to crossbows being able to inherently ignore the added protection against arrows Heavy Armor grants. Crossbows do not ignore armor rating, though.
  • Light armor provides little protection but allows the wearer to move freely and dodge attacks, as well as cast spells more easily. Light armor grants a little magic resistance per piece worn, allowing the wearer to reach the magic resistance cap quicker.
  • Clothing provides no protection and leaves the wearer vulnerable for a long time during their path, but allows for the most effective spellcasting which can become very powerful in its own right.
  • Each weapon type now has a certain strength. Maces penetrate armor because they swing slowly. Swords swing fast, but offer no armor penetration. War Axes usually fall in between these two types. 
  • Bows are ubiquitous, fast, and strong, while crossbows have lower raw damage or a significantly slower firing speed but pierce armor. 
  • Legendary artifacts such as dragon priest masks are buffed so they are both in accordance to their status in the lore and accordingly game-changing.
  • Crossbows are distributed among npcs and a few are hand-placed.
  • Certain enemy types have enhanced abilities, such as trolls regenerating health quickly or spriggans being resistant against blunt weapons such as maces. Other enemy types have been given a clearer role: Falmer are all about poison damage, forsworn are agile and hit fast, and mages are easy to take down until they get their armor spells up.
 
 
Scaling Magic

  • Spells of all schools now scale in power or duration with the level of the skill.
  • Destruction spells have the most intricate scaling, with novice, apprentice and adept spells scaling linearly and expert spells scaling exponentially. As your destruction level increases, your spells deal more damage.
  • Alteration spells scale by duration instead of magnitude, as do Conjuration Spells.
  • Regular Restoration spells like Repel Undead or Wards scale to less of an extreme degree than sun spells or other Restoration spells that deal damage.
  • Illusion spells scale very subtly, if at all.
  • Enchantments are completely unaffected.


 
 
Installation

This mod is very easy to install. Despite the scope of this mod, all you need to do is install it like any other mod using your preferred mod manager. You might need some patches with mods that add or edit hostile NPCs. Quest mods which add new enemies also fall under this category. I will expand on this in the appropriate section.

After installing the patches required, if any, make a bashed patch to merge the leveled lists and possible save yourself a plug-in slot or two. If you use Morrowloot (or any of its variants), placeSkyrimUnleveled.esp and any patches below your morrowloot plugin and its patches. 
This mod has been designed with morrowloot in mind and will forward any changes made by the mod that would otherwise be overwritten by my mod.

After having installed the mod, it is wise to rebuild your bashed patch, so leveled lists are merged. 
If no bashed tags appear, add these tags: Relev, Delev, Stats. Then rebuild. You can add bash tags by right-clicking the bash tags box and selecting the relevant 
tags.
 
 
Compatibility

This mod has the advantage that it is fully compatible with all perk overhauls! It has been tested with the majority of EnaiSiaion's mods.First and foremost this mod edits hostile NPCs and leveled lists. Logically, any mod that changes leveled lists by adding new enemy types requires a patch. The enemies themselves also need to be buffed to be as strong as other hostile NPCs you find in Skyrim.

Secondly, mods that do the same thing as Skyrim Unleveled might need a patch or could have a soft incompatibility. Any mod that vastly overhauls weapon damage against enemy types might need a patch, such as know your enemy.

Some creature races such as spriggans, trolls, draugr and dwarven automatons have their racial abilities edited. Mods that edit these records need a patch.

Mods that directly counteract the style of this mod by making enemies scale with the player in strength are fundamentally different and will clash with this mod. A mod that does this, for example, is Advanced Adversary Encounters.

Combat mods that edit weapon damage need this feature disabled or this modifier set to 1. This can usually be done in an MCM or a patcher, such as in the case of Engarde. Skyrim Unleveled has been carefully balanced using active play over a time span of twoand a half years and any other damage modifier than 3.97 would upset the balance of the mod. 
 
 
What this mod doesn’t do
 
  • Edit dragon NPC records and fights
  • Edit animal wildlife behaviour
  • Change meshes and textures
  • Change the soundtrack
  • Change quest lines
  • Change perk trees
  • Change spells directly
  • Change Alchemy, Smithing and Enchanting
  • Change bartering
  • And probably a lot more



Credits go to laurasantenni for their premission to use the assetsin their aetherial armor mod: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23530/?
Credits go to gutris for their permission to use their assets in the wooden
crossbow mod: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/77426/?


This mod is licensed under: CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0