Exhaustion - Incremental Fatigue is an ultra-lightweight fatigue/injury system that adds an extra layer of strategy and immersion to your gameplay. As a stat is damaged, so is your ability to fully regenerate that stat. This doesn't affect your regeneration rate, instead it caps the percentage of each stat that you can passively regain. Once you hit this limit, your natural regeneration is halted and you will need to sleep to remove exhaustion and regain full natural regeneration. Until then you can still rely on potions, spells, enchantments or food to restore your missing stats.

Having exhaustion cap regeneration, as opposed to reducing your stat pool, has a number of advantages:

• You can clearly see your current exhaustion from how much of each stat you are missing in your stat bars.
• You can still use stat restoring potions or spells to restore your stats to their true maximum.
• Perks, enchantments and food that increase regeneration rate still work and allow regeneration past the cap set by your exhaustion because exhaustion only blocks your natural regeneration. Through appropriate gear and perks, the player can develop "exhaustion resistance".
• Capping regeneration inherently penalizes health less than the other stats because base health regen is slow. This avoids heavy-handed health penalties that force regular resting.
  

Each of your stats has a cap, above which your regeneration rate is reduced by 99% (leaving 1% keeps the stat bars visible). When your stats take enough damage to cross a threshold the cap for that stat is reduced by a set penalty. All caps are reset by sleeping. The starting value of the caps and the penalty and configurable in the MCM.

• Each cap starts at 105% (configurable in the MCM). This means that at first your stats can fully regenerate, with an additional 5% buffer before any exhaustion kicks in.
• Stat damage is anything that depletes a stat. For health this means taking damage. For magicka it includes casting spells or being hit by shock spells. For stamina it means sprinting, power attacking, shield bashing or being hit by frost spells. If mods add new systems that deplete your stats these will automatically be included too.
• The thresholds are at 100%, 75%, 50%, 25% and 0%. As such, casting a cheap spell that costs 5% of your magicka crosses only a single threshold and so your magicka cap is only penalized once. Alternatively, sprinting from full stamina until you run out crosses all five thresholds and so your stamina cap is penalized five times
• The penalty for crossing a threshold is that your cap for that stat is reduced by 0.5% of its current value (separately configurable for each stat in the MCM). If the caps start above 100% it can take a while for them to drop below 100% and for exhaustion to kick in. Because the penalty is a % of the current cap, the rate at which you accumulate exhaustion slows over time.
• When you sleep, for each hour slept all caps are increased by 10% (configurable in the MCM), until they reach their starting value (105% by default). Sleeping rough halves the rate at which exhaustion is removed (again, configurable in the MCM) so sleeping in inns/homes is best. Due to how the engine handles sleep, when you wake up, health is always fully restored, while stamina will be restored to its cap and magicka is restored to a little below its cap (though it will quickly regenerate to its cap).
  



Requirements
SkyUI - for the MCM

Installation
Download and install through your mod manager of choice. It is safe to install on an existing save. The plugin is ESL-flagged.

Updating
Check the update notes. Updates that change script properties will require a new game.

Uninstallation
Safe to uninstall at any time.

Performance impact
None.

Compatibility
Compatible with everything.





Building Your Character - diverse and fun builds with strengths and weaknesses
Master of One - A perk overhaul that transforms perks from generic character progression into a means to craft unique and specialized builds.
Curse of the Firmament - A standing stones overhaul that emphasizes tough choices.
Legacy - A race overhaul that bring strengths and weaknesses to each race.
Acolyte - A progressive-yet-unobtrusive religion overhaul with a long path to divinity.

Enemies and Combat - challenging, varied and fair combat
Know Your Enemy (armor module, patcher version) - A resistance and weakness overhaul for enemies and armors.
Know Your Enemy 2 (armor module, integration patch) - An upgraded resistance overhaul: more damage types, more configuration, more polish.
NPC Stat Rescaler - A patcher that adjusts player and NPC stats for faster, fairer, and less spongy combat.
Enemy Releveler - A patcher that adjusts NPC levels to truly delevel the world.

Stats and stat growth - drawing out character growth to stave off premature godhood
Exhaustion - Incremental Fatigue - An ultra-lightweight injury/fatigue system.
Exercise - Incremental Growth - An add-on for Exhaustion that converts fatigue into stat growth.
Geometric Stat Growth - Stats grow by a configurable percentage on level up, instead of a fixed value.

Miscellanea
Challenging Spell Learning - Spell Tomes trigger a costly ritual you must pass to learn spells.
Trainers Galore - An expansion of the training system designed for "training only" leveling.
Pick Your Poison - An alchemical handbook to support strategic foraging.
Configurable Perks Per Level - An MCM to edit how many perk points you get on level up.
XP Editor - A patcher that adjusts xp gain and leveling.
Sightseer - Standing Stones - Guidebooks for the standing stones, collectibles to find, and a hidden quest to unite them.

Mod Lists
Thoughtful Skyrim - A small, gameplay-focussed modlist that rewards preparation and planning.





Thanks to colinswrath and SimonMagus for making incremental injuries which I love and heavily inspired this mod (see sticky post for how the two mods differ). Thanks also to SimonMagus for prompting me to make this. Thanks to u/dragonmonday for creating the image used on this mod page.