rechet

Of course it will. STEP (or at least it's Core version) is the most solid base to build just about anything on. Whether you can install it on an old savegame with a mish-mash of mods, THAT's a different story - most likely not.

There are probably several mods that achieve the result you're seeking, but High Level Enemies has it as an optional install. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27866/?

Let's face it - tradeskills are widely regarded as overpowered. However, there's no need to make players decide between just plain not using them or breaking the game. Here's how I solved it in my current and future games. Chapter One: The issue. Let me specify WHY exactly the tradeskills are overpowered. They break the game's economy. Everyone knows by know that you can get rich by creating Iron Daggers and enchanting them with Banish. Or by doing just about anything with Alchemy in general. Or by smithing items and improving them. None of these require anything more than a way to reset merchant inventories, and widely surpass any income rate you could theoretically gain by just looting dungeons. They break the game's loot system. Since you can get the best items by making them yourself, you're really "not playing to your best ability" if you just abstain from doing so, removing any incentive to loot anything besides quest items. They unbalance the game in favor of physical armor and dps. Enchanting is powerful on its own, but combined with Smithing, the damage and armor scaling just goes through the roof. Can be partially remedied by upping the game's difficulty level, but since magic in general and Destruction in particular scale so poorly, choosing anything but physical dps and/or armor is willingly gimping yourself. They allow for easy and infinite leveling. Even if you were to abstain from direct powerleveling exploits such as repeatedly spamming spells in towns, repeatedly boosting tradeskills from 15 to 100 and making them Legendary is still by far the fastest method of gaining extra levels and perks. Not only that, but the cycle keeps on getting faster due to infinite gold gain exploits (see first point). Their perks are generally stronger than anything else in the game. Using seven perks in Enchanting (to boost skill enchants) leads to +288% dps enchants, ie. more than 40% increase per perk, making even the actual dps perks for weapon skills inferior in the early game. Using seven perks in Alchemy allows the creation of strong Fortify Smithing potions, and even if we consider these seven as "prerequisites" for the seven already mentioned in Enchanting, the net effect is till more than 20% damage increase per perk point spent. STILL better than putting any perk points into actual, you know, dps skills. Using just ONE (!) perk in Smithing puts the game's armor cap into reach without a single perk in either one of the Armor skills. Additionally, it increases the dps Steel weapons by a whopping 60-150 percent (depending on the weapon type), compared to just having 100 skill without that perk. Chapter two: Removing the gold feedback loop. As noted above, it's the possibility of gaining an infinite amount of interest on the initial investment needed to get the tradeskill gold production going that ENABLES most of this. The rest of it is mainly just follow-up effects. Hence, enter Trade and Barter. Strictly speaking, anything that alters the fBarterMax and fBarterMin values is enough including console commands, I just find the mod very well suited to the task. Now the hard part: Deciding the values so that they are large enough to remedy the problem, while small enough to not make trading in general completely null and void. I chose Smithing as my baseline skill to balance around. It's very easy to buy very large amount of supplies for, at least without other, often heavy-handed and/or conflicting mods. It is plain easy to use in extremely large quantities, compared to both Alchemy (mix'n'match) and Enchanting (the amount of keypresses per enchant is astounding). Also, it has the by far narrowest cost/benefit ratio of all tradeskills in vanilla. The best vanilla crafting recipes for most materials produce items that are roughly two to five times the value of the ingredients needed, while improving items heavily depends on the skill itself, including enchants & potions. However, improving has the intrinsic requirement of needing actual base items to apply on. Since we're ELIMINATING the gold feedback loop, all we really need to do is to make sure that creating new items yourself is ALWAYS a losing proposition. Preferably even more so, if you're also doing it with store-bought materials. This puts the absolute minimum required fBarter value to around 2.4 so that you lose 2.4 x 2.4 = 5.76 times the money when buying ingots yourself, ie. just barely negating the five times increase of value in best crafting recipes. However, any modifications to fBarter must also be accounted for, be it via Speech perks, Fortify Barter enchants or the Blessing of Charity in addition to any of the optional price adjustments you choose to enable within Trade and Barter itself. A good rule of thumb here is that you can easily get a combined Barter multiplier of 2 with nothing but the prereq perks on your way to Merchant (as good as an obligatory perk in my book), the blessing and a combination of self-made enchants together with Thieves Guild hat and Dark Brotherhood's "Jester's Clothes". Hence, anything below fBarter 4.8 is dangerously close, and WILL still break as soon as you start taking potential +100%, +200% or even greater base value improvements with nothing but a single extra ingot into account. By playing with the fBarter values alone, you'd need to set it to at least 8 or so to really make sure Smithing doesn't turn into a self-sustaining gold mine, and that would seriously slash any other trading into oblivion. Come on, eight times the markup on buy prices and one EIGHTH of base value when selling!? Thankfully, all we're really trying to curb here is the potential of keeping the gold rolling with store-bought ingredients alone - anything you find yourself shouldn't be penalized so hard. Thus, by keeping fBarter at 8.0 while raising both the Buy and Sell multipliers to +100%, you effectively land at fBarter 16.0 for buying stuff and fBarter 4.0 for selling. Please note that this WILL create extreme inflation on buy prices, but I'll get to that later on. All we really need here is a baseline. http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/images/smilies/smile.gif Chapter Three: Forcing Enchanting and Alchemy to follow suit. Quite frankly, I'm not sure what the designers at Bethesda were smoking when they thought that it would be a good idea that a single Banish enchant would turn 53g worth of ingredients (Iron Dagger and filled Petty Soul gem) into a 2k valued item. Or that you combine up to three ingredients valued from zero (!) to 20g into a potion worth well in excess of 1000 gold. Anyway you put it, trying the fBarter route to curb both of these would require values well above 10.0 to even begin to adress the problem. No, you need more drastic measures here. I decided to go with SIPPS for Alchemy. It makes the rare ingredients - not just marked as rare, but generally hard to acquire in game - to give stronger benefits than your everyday Red Mountain Flower that you can easily gather several hundred of. I modified the gold values further with Tes5edit by quartering them, and added/modified the Alchemy leveling formula to give as much more exp to keep leveling speed as close to vanilla as possible. Furthermore, I increased the gold value of ALL alchemy ingredients so that the cheapest ones start at 10g or so and quickly ramp up to 30g or even 50g a piece. This way, you need a rather high alchemy skill, enchants and perks to be able to push past potions worth just two HUNDRED gold. Which is, incidentally, in the order of roughly five times the value of ingredients put into it. As for Enchanting, the remedy is called SkyTweak. SkyTweak has settings for both enchant value multiplier (I recommend x1.0 instead of vanilla's x8.0) and the soul gem multiplier (x0.25 instead of vanilla's x0.12). This way, the enchants put on the item matter very little in comparison to the size of soulgem used, just as it already is with apparel enchants. Banish is still the best, but only by about a hundred gold per enchant. Compared to the price of FILLED soulgems, these settings make sure you're not making money out of thin air. The infamous Iron Dagger with Petty-sized Banish is only worth like 200-300g, depending on your enchanting skill. http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/images/smilies/smile.gif Chapter Four: Question of power. The tradeskills in general are a difficult bunch, and not only so in Skyrim. Traditionally you had two options: Make them too weak and nobody uses them, make them too strong and you might as well skip developing a loot system in your game. While World of Warcraft is a MMO, its solution was brilliant: Every tradeskill had small but tangible benefits over not having them since you could upgrade even raid tier items with them. And while there's no upgrading enchantments in Skyrim, Smithing DOES apply to all armors and weapons, whether you find them or create them yourself. (Some variants may need a mod fix so that they can be tempered, but that's yet ANOTHER broken aspect in Skyrim.) The big revelation here is that there really is just two possible and distinctly intresting states for tradeskills: Either you can create items that are better than the loot you find, or you can't. There's no real difference whether they differ by a little or by a lot, since you just always select the better. (Role-playing reasons aside.) And in terms of balancing them, it's actually better if they are just as close to each others as possible. IMHO, using the game's standard random loot equipment as a balancing point is just as good as any. It's also a whole less intrusive than going through the hundreds upon hundreds of premade items. In order to achieve this, I used Enchanting Rebalanced. Instead of capping at +100% perks, you end up with +50%, putting self-made enchants more in tune with loot you can find, surpassing the best ones only at extremely high skill levels (think 160+) and maxing out at just a few percent above them: 29% instead of 25% for most skills at 199 skill. Additionally, since you only ever need Fortify Smithing and Alchemy when crafting AND their effects stay permanently, a nerf to the base value of these enchants from 8% to 6% leaves them a couple percent points below the best random loot at 25% a piece. Alchemy is even worse in its vanilla state: it's completely worthless without external aid and tremendously powerful when backed up by both perks and enchants. Hence, I added similar nerfs to the Alchemy perks (Tes5edit) as Enchanting above and dropped its huge skill scaling of 1.5 to just 1.2, but instead increased its base power multiplier from 4.0 to 6.0 (all three of these edits courtesy of SkyTweak) so that you get at least SOME use out of it with minimal perk investment. Together with the modifications present in SIPPS, you need at least 100 skill with decent enchants to beat the store-bought potions and elixirs. And since Fortify Alchemy enchant is nerfed, you need just a hair above skill 100 in both if you rely on self-made enchants alone. Chapter Five: Inflation and how (not) to tackle it. Now that both gold production and power curve of tradeskills is fixed, let's tackle with the fallout effects, of which buy price inflation is the worst. A fBarter value of 8.0 combined with a +100% buy price modifier means that everything you'll buy also costs 16 times its base value, and still at least x8 with the standard Fortify Barter equipment. While that's a LOT, let's see how it actually effects you, for each and every item category. - Ingredients, ores/ingots and soulgems ARE the reason why these edits are necessary. Working as intended. - Weapons. Hands up, how many of you has ever purchased a non-enchanted weapon from a merchant? Thought so. And pretty much the only reason to buy an enchanted one is to get your hands on the enchant. Which is exactly the thing we're trying to DIScourage. Arrows play a minor part in Archery dps and anyone can produce Iron Arrows themselves (DLC and/or appropriate mod needed). So, doesn't really matter. - Armor. Same as with weapons, with the possible exception for the various mage robes. Then again, you are guaranteed to find generic robes already in Helgen and you can get Archmage's Robes fairly early in the game. Besides, aren't the mage items traditionally the most expensive ones around? Yes I'm looking at you, Robe of Vecna from BG2! - Potions. In vanilla, potions are plentiful already as it is, without having to buy them, apart from the occasional Enchanter's (or Blacksmith's) Elixir. If you wish to get more, may I suggest the now non-sucky Alchemy even without heavy investment into it? - Scrolls. I have zero experience with these and intend to keep it that way. Even in vanilla, the effects are barely justifiable compared to the gold for just selling them. - Food. Inconsequential to boot and dirt cheap even at x16 prices. - Books. The only expensive AND potentially required ones are spells. Just dropping their base value does the trick, or if you also mod magic to not suck quite as badly as in vanilla, maybe even justified? - Non-merchant merchandise such as carts, horses, houses, bribes and a handful of quest items aren't affected in any way by these settings. So, unless you both play as a mage AND are extremely bothered by the increased one-time cost of buying your spells, none of the inflation issues are game-breakers. Besides, if you really wish to rebalance the game's trade system decently, you'd do better to keep looking for complete overhauls such as the (now obsolete) Economics of Skyrim. Chapter six: Fine-tuning the fBarter value. IMHO the Bartering system is a brilliant idea, having many different factors affecting both buy and sell prices. However, once you apply a modicum of powergamer's approach to it, it's really poorly balanced. Just the items available via Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood questlines make a bigger total contribution to the available Barter modifiers than completing the entire Speech perk tree. The more you limit and/or nerf the amount of Barter modifiers available in the game, the less you need extra headroom when setting the fBarter values in Trade and Barter mod. This lessens the extra burden put on loot you find yourself and lowers the inflation necessary on bought items. My next go at Skyrim will happen with halved values on ALL Fortify Barter effects, except for the ones in the actual Speech tree. This allows me to keep the "expected" Barter multiplier much closer to 1.5, and thus requiring a fBarter value of no more than 3.6 (bare minimum) and thus fBarterMin at 5.0 is plenty already. Chapter seven: Physical vs Destruction. While this has nothing to do with tradeskills directly, I'm including it since I'm making these changes partly so that I don't need to go into such extremes to boost Destruction damage. It has been demonstrated several times over that as long as your Smithing improvements stay at or below Legendary, the dps of various skills isn't skewed all that much. But as long as the only thing boosting Destruction dps directly are just two perks per element and the occasional Alchemy potion, any sort of balancing between them is going to be hopeless. Not to mention that would require the total gutting of Smithing, a thing we're trying to avoid. Now, you COULD just use SkyTweak to boost Destruction directly, but then you end up with the hybrid problem of it being powerful for everyone. Doesn't matter whether you're pure mage or not. The question becomes then, what does a mage have that hybrids do not? Answer: Available enchant slots (no physical dps, remember?) and heaps of mana. Hence, a combination of Simple Magic Rebalance and Mastered Magicka fits the bill perfectly. Please note that SMR partially overwrites SIPPS, so you might need Tes5edit to carry over the SIPPS values to SMR. And finally, as for the Smithing skill itself: The recently published Complete Crafting Overhaul finally lets you separate smithing improvements getting better from the materials you're allowed to work the skill on. Plus it's extremely customizable to suit everyone.. and then some. Shameless promotion, but kryptopyr seems to know what she's doing. http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/images/smilies/smile.gif

I didn't actually touch the Magicka/Health/Stamina points much at all. Rather, since the early skill levels contribute less character exp than in vanilla (anywhere between 30 to 90 percent nerf when below 25 skill), the character levels will come considerably slower in the very beginning, so the "double stats" boost between levels 2-9 are needed to bring back the vanilla stat increase rate. Considering you're (effectively) playing at a "Legendary plus two missing tradeskills" difficulty and STILL find it easymode (whoa!), I'd rather try reducing the overall amount of points available. You could try setting them like this (same for all three stats): 1=20 10=10 20=5 30=2 This way, you'll first get an initial burst of stats to quickly get away from "getting one-shotted" and "always out of mana" zones, even faster than in vanilla, but once you're past level 20, you'll only see much slower improvements, and once you're past 30, the improvements become marginal indeed, even if the mobs you face keep on getting stronger and stronger. Or, at least that's how I'd do it if I wanted to get into serious hardcore difficulties. :)

For those interested, here's how I decided to solve it. First of all, I divided the skills into four main categories: Obligatory, augmenting, optional and low-impact. Obligatory skills are the ones that you really can't do without, at least not without severely gimping yourself. There are three of these: defense, offense (close range) and offense (long range). However, the trick here is that there's always at least two skills that fulfill the requirement of each AND the choice is going to exclude the other options. For example, there's very little point in investing heavily in both Destruction and Archery, since you can't use them both at the same time anyway. Hence, you get three groups of mutually exlusive skills here: One/Two-handed is the close range offense group, Archery/Destruction are the long-range offense group and Heavy/Light armor (or even Alteration) is the defense group. Mages might use Destruction also at close range, although mage + melee is generally a Bad Idea . Augmenting skills are the ones that augment at least one of the obligatory skills. All three tradeskills are included here, as they have significant impact on all three obligatory categories. You COULD opt out of these, but you're going to be much weaker if you do. Which is completely fine if you want to roleplay and/or increase the challenge of the game. Hence, the "choice" here really boils down to which difficulty setting you want to be playing on. For those claiming Skyrim to be too easy, try Legendary difficulty without tradeskills. I dare you! Optional skills are exactly that: optional. You could skip them altogether or make any one of them the centerpiece of your character. What they do have in common is that you most likely wish to pick at least SOME of them to suit your preferred gameplay style. Blocking makes close range encounters much more survivable, but you could opt to Stealth your way into victory. Or why not become an Illusionist for some divide & conquer goodness, or Conjure up some aides to do it for you. Restoration can both seriously cut regeneration downtime and allow for much longer skirmishes before having to resort to potions. Finally, we have the low-impact skills, where it doesn't really matter either way. It's actually hard to avoid leveling Speech, and both Lockpicking and Pickpocket are ultimately just means to some extra loot. By grouping the skills like this, it's IMHO pretty straightforward to deduce how much they should contribute to your level. - Obligatory: Biggest overall effect on your character's level, both during the standard 15-100 skill range and past the 100 skill mark. Since it's not really feasible to level more than one skill of each type, EVERYONE except for the really, really extraordinary variants will end up with exactly three such skills, retaining perfect leveling balance. - Augmenting: Very little or no leveling effect at all. Altering the game's difficulty slider doesn't alter your character's level, so altering the difficulty by opting out of any/all of these shouldn't either. This also makes it possible to further alter the difficulty impact of each by nerfing/boosting each one of them to taste. - Low-impact: Very little or no leveling at all. The gameplay effects are small either way, just as their effect on your overall level should be. - Optional: Normal effect on leveling, but greatly reduced effect past 100 skill. These skill tend to plateau in effect: Summons stop improving, durations become long enough to no longer matter with improved magicka regeneration, blocking has a hard 85% damage reduction cap and Sneak can't get any better once you're effectively invisible to all mobs. These are the ONLY skills that really vary in number between different character builds, but the more of these you use, the less you'll be leveling your obligatory skills. A blocked hit won't increase your armor skills, NPCs killing each other means less available main dps skill exp for you, ditto for your summons, and while Sneak attacks surely are powerful, you'll only ever get a single hit's worth of exp to the dps skill by performing it. Edit: Here's the relevant part of my uncapper .ini file. I wanted to allow tradeskills past 100, but with extremely hard and ever increasing penalties so that they won't manage to spoil game balance "too soon". I've also nerfed all three of them to "down to the ground, baby" level. I didn't touch the leveling speed of skills themselves at the 15-90 skill range since that tends to cause all sorts of wonky behaviour with trainers and skill books. [SkillCaps] ; Set the Skill Level Cap to ; Between 0 and 10000; ; Using too low or too high values may crash the game. Handle them with caution. ; Default game value = 100 iAlchemy=255 iAlteration=255 iArchery=255 iBlock=255 iConjuration=255 iDestruction=255 iEnchanting=255 iHeavyArmor=255 iIllusion=255 iLightArmor=255 iLockpicking=255 iOneHanded=255 iPickpocket=255 iRestoration=255 iSmithing=255 iSneak=255 iSpeech=255 iTwoHanded=255 [SkillFormulaCaps] ; Set the Skill Formula Cap to ; If your skill level is higher than the cap set below, then the skill level showing in game will be capped and displayed in red color (like if it was affected by a negative enchantment) ; Between 0 and 10000; ; Using too low or too high values may crash the game. Handle them with caution. ; Default game value = 100 iAlchemy=255 iAlteration=255 iArchery=255 iBlock=255 iConjuration=255 iDestruction=255 iEnchanting=255 iHeavyArmor=255 iIllusion=255 iLightArmor=255 iLockpicking=255 iOneHanded=255 iPickpocket=255 iRestoration=255 iSmithing=255 iSneak=255 iSpeech=255 iTwoHanded=255 [EnchanterCaps] ;However high the Enchanting skill is, the following values set an Enchanting skill level cap when using the ingame Enchanter. ;If bSkillFormulaCaps is enabled, then the following values are also capped by iEnchanting inside [SkillFormulaCaps], if iEnchanting is lower. ; Between 0 and 10000; ;Max Enchanting skill level for enchantment magnitude. iMaxEnchantingLevelForMagnitude=199 ;Max Enchanting skill level for enchantment charges ;A value higher than 199 will cause inconsistencies in vanilla Skyrim. iMaxEnchantingLevelForCharges=199 [SkillExpGainMults] ; Set the Skill Experience Gained Multiplier to ; betwen 0.0 and 10000.0 ; Using too low or too high values may crash the game. Handle them with caution. ; Default game value = 1.0 ;(Setting bUsePCLevelNotBaseSkillLevel to 1, will use Character Level instead of Base Skill Level for the subsections) fAlchemy=1.0 fAlteration=1.0 fArchery=1.0 fBlock=1.0 fConjuration=1.0 fDestruction=1.0 fEnchanting=1.0 fHeavyArmor=1.0 fIllusion=1.0 fLightArmor=1.0 fLockpicking=1.0 fOneHanded=1.0 fPickpocket=0.4 fRestoration=1.0 fSmithing=1.0 fSneak=1.0 fSpeech=1.0 fTwoHanded=1.0 bUsePCLevelNotBaseSkillLevel=0 ; All the subsections of SkillExpGainMults below allow to set an additional multiplier depending on the base skill level, independantly for each skill. ; The format is PlayerLevel = Multiplier. You can specify many different levels. ; If a specific level is not specified then the closest lower level setting is used. ; Default value: 1=1.0 [SkillExpGainMults\Alchemy] 1=1.0 90=0.8 125=0.6 150=0.4 175=0.2 200=0.1 [SkillExpGainMults\Alteration] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [SkillExpGainMults\Archery] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [SkillExpGainMults\Block] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [SkillExpGainMults\Conjuration] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [SkillExpGainMults\Destruction] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [SkillExpGainMults\Enchanting] 1=1.0 90=0.5 100=0.4 125=0.3 150=0.2 175=0.1 [SkillExpGainMults\HeavyArmor] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [SkillExpGainMults\Illusion] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [SkillExpGainMults\LightArmor] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [SkillExpGainMults\Lockpicking] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [SkillExpGainMults\OneHanded] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [SkillExpGainMults\Pickpocket] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [SkillExpGainMults\Restoration] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [SkillExpGainMults\Smithing] 1=1.0 70=0.5 100=0.3 125=0.2 150=0.1 175=0.05 200=0.02 [SkillExpGainMults\Sneak] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [SkillExpGainMults\Speech] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [SkillExpGainMults\TwoHanded] 1=1.0 100=0.5 [PCLevelSkillExpMults] ; Set the Skill Experience to Player's Character Experience Multipliers to ; betwen 0.0 and 10000.0 ; Using too low or too high values may crash the game. Handle them with caution. ; Default game value = 1.0 ; (Setting bUsePCLevelNotBaseSkillLevel to 1, will use Character Level instead of Base Skill Level for the subsections) fAlchemy=0.1 fAlteration=1.0 fArchery=1.0 fBlock=1.0 fConjuration=1.0 fDestruction=1.0 fEnchanting=0.1 fHeavyArmor=1.0 fIllusion=1.0 fLightArmor=1.0 fLockpicking=0.1 fOneHanded=1.0 fPickpocket=0.1 fRestoration=1.0 fSmithing=0.1 fSneak=1.0 fSpeech=0.1 fTwoHanded=1.0 bUsePCLevelNotBaseSkillLevel=0 ; All the subsections of PCLevelSkillExpMults below allow to set an additional multipliers depending on the base skill level, independantly for each skill. ; The format is PlayerLevel = Multiplier. You can specify many different levels. ; If a specific level is not specified then the closest lower level setting is used. ; Default value: 1=1.0 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\Alchemy] 1=1.0 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\Alteration] 1=0.4 25=0.6 50=0.8 75=1.0 100=0.5 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\Archery] 1=0.7 25=0.8 50=0.9 75=1.0 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\Block] 1=0.4 25=0.6 50=0.8 75=1.0 100=0.5 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\Conjuration] 1=0.4 25=0.6 50=0.8 75=1.0 100=0.5 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\Destruction] 1=0.7 25=0.8 50=0.9 75=1.0 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\Enchanting] 1=1.0 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\HeavyArmor] 1=0.7 25=0.8 50=0.9 75=1.0 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\Illusion] 1=0.4 25=0.6 50=0.8 75=1.0 100=0.5 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\LightArmor] 1=0.7 25=0.8 50=0.9 75=1.0 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\Lockpicking] 1=1.0 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\OneHanded] 1=0.7 25=0.8 50=0.9 75=1.0 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\Pickpocket] 1=1.0 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\Restoration] 1=0.4 25=0.6 50=0.8 75=1.0 100=0.5 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\Smithing] 1=1.0 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\Sneak] 1=0.4 25=0.6 50=0.8 75=1.0 100=0.5 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\Speech] 1=1.0 [PCLevelSkillExpMults\TwoHanded] 1=0.7 25=0.8 50=0.9 75=1.0 [PerksAtLevelUp] ;Set the number of perks gained at each level up. If a specific level is not specified then the closest lower level setting is used. ;Default game value is one perk per level (you can also use float as value, for example 1.25 per points per level) ; Level (2..10000) = Perks (0..255) ; ;In the following inactive commented example the player will gain 1 perk per level at and from level 2 to 9, then 2 perks per level at and from level 10 to 29, ; then 4 perks per level at and from level 30 to 94, then no perk at all per level for level 95 and above ; ;2=1 ;10=2 ;30=4 ;95=0 2=2 10=1 [HealthAtLevelUp] ;Set the number of health points gained at each level up when Health is selected during the Level Up screen. If a specific level is not specified then the closest lower level setting is used. ;Default game value is 10 points per level ; Level (2..10000) = Points (0..10000) ; ;In the following inactive commented example the player will gain 10 points per level at and from level 2 to 9, then 20 points per level at and from level 10 to 29, ; then 40 points per level at and from level 30 to 94, then no points at all per level for level 95 and above ; ;2=10 ;10=20 ;30=40 ;95=0 2=20 10=10 [MagickaAtLevelUp] ;Set the number of magicka points gained at each level up when Magicka is selected during the Level Up screen. If a specific level is not specified then the closest lower level setting is used. ;Default game value is 10 points per level ; Level (2..10000) = Points (0..10000) ; ;In the following inactive commented example the player will gain 10 points per level at and from level 2 to 9, then 20 points per level at and from level 10 to 29, ; then 40 points per level at and from level 30 to 94, then no points at all per level for level 95 and above ; ;2=10 ;10=20 ;30=40 ;95=0 2=30 10=15 [StaminaAtLevelUp] ;Set the number of stamina points gained at each level up when Stamina is selected during the Level Up screen. If a specific level is not specified then the closest lower level setting is used. ;Default game value is 10 points per level ; Level (2..10000) = Points (0..10000) ; ;In the following inactive commented example the player will gain 10 points per level at and from level 2 to 9, then 20 points per level at and from level 10 to 29, ; then 40 points per level at and from level 30 to 94, then no points at all per level for level 95 and above ; ;2=10 ;10=20 ;30=40 ;95=0 2=20 10=10 [CarryWeightAtHealthLevelUp] ;Set the number of "Carry Weight" points gained at each level up when Health is selected during the Level Up screen. If a specific level is not specified then the closest lower level setting is used. ;Default game value is 0 points per level ; Level (2..10000) = Points (0..10000) ; ;In the following inactive commented example the player will gain 10 points per level at and from level 2 to 9, then 20 points per level at and from level 10 to 29, ; then 40 points per level at and from level 30 to 94, then no points at all per level for level 95 and above ; ;2=10 ;10=20 ;30=40 ;95=0 2=10 10=5 [CarryWeightAtMagickaLevelUp] ;Set the number of "Carry Weight" points gained at each level up when Magicka is selected during the Level Up screen. If a specific level is not specified then the closest lower level setting is used. ;Default game value is 0 points per level ; Level (2..10000) = Points (0..10000) ; ;In the following inactive commented example the player will gain 10 points per level at and from level 2 to 9, then 20 points per level at and from level 10 to 29, ; then 40 points per level at and from level 30 to 94, then no points at all per level for level 95 and above ; ;2=10 ;10=20 ;30=40 ;95=0 2=10 10=5 [CarryWeightAtStaminaLevelUp] ;Set the number of "Carry Weight" points gained at each level up when Stamina is selected during the Level Up screen. If a specific level is not specified then the closest lower level setting is used. ;Default game value is 5 points per level ; Level (2..10000) = Points (0..10000) ; ;In the following inactive commented example the player will gain 10 points per level at and from level 2 to 9, then 20 points per level at and from level 10 to 29, ; then 40 points per level at and from level 30 to 94, then no points at all per level for level 95 and above ; ;2=10 ;10=20 ;30=40 ;95=0 2=20 10=10

Are you sure you also enabled that part of the mod, in the first third of the .ini file? Most of the options are disabled by default, including exp multipliers.

A single class character (ie. pure warrior, thief or mage) sort of plateaus in the character level 45-55 range and has no way of advancing past that, unless training the remaining skills. Yes, I'm aware of Legendary skills option, but THAT has got to be the most convoluted, unintuitional and immersion-breaking way of bypassing the levelcap. Hence the Uncapper solution. Edit: Also, IMHO it also takes care of the "master of a few vs. jack of all trades" dilemma - a hybric character at skill 100 and perks is just as good at a skill than pureclass at 100 skill and perks. Now, if you pit against a skill level 120 pureclass (concentrated effort on just a few skills) and a skill level 102 hybrid (no that much time to push past the cap for individual skills), that's wholly another ballgame. :)

Mostly everything listed under the STEP Project (Skyrim Total Enhancement Project) at http://wiki.step-project.com/STEP:2.2.7 is just eye candy, while (trying) to stay true to the original game as much as possible. Highly recommended, although the installation might be a bit steep for someone playing for the first time.

Generally, aesthetics mods without any major gameplay elements are neither required nor intrusive. So they're fine either way. From a purely "MUST HAVE" point of view, there's nothing much beyond the unofficial patches. SkyUI comes close, but it's not really a must have in the very strictest sense.

I'd like to hear your opinions about the leveling system in Skyrim. Here are my personal pet peeves with it, plus proposed solutions using the almighty Community Uncapper. 1) Single class characters are greatly limited in what level they can achieve. Thus, they can only hope to achieve so many total points in Health, Magicka and Stamina. Perks are fine though, since there aren't so many trees to put them in. 2) Hybrid characters achieve greater levels with ease, removing the stat point issue. However, in order to receive enough perk points to spread around, they're pretty much forced to level ALL skills - leading to all sorts of metagaming with available training points, trying to AVOID leveling in order to not miss training opportunities etc. 3) You need high character level to get a decent amount of stat points, yet there is an incentive to stay at lower levels due to the enemy level scaling. 4) There's an inherent risk in dabbling too much in utility skills (Speech, Lockpicking, Pickpocket) in that you'll meet tougher opponents without having the necessary combat skills to tackle them. 5) Reaching 100 in any skill is a two-edged sword - while you naturally would like to get there ASAP, you lose a big incentive for using that skill once you get there, since it no longer helps your character's progression. So, how about solving the issues above like this? - Reduce the amount of character exp awarded for low skill levels, while increase them for higher ones. This removes the incentive to train off-skills, unless you can expect to get them all the way to 90+. (Think skill books and such.) Even then, you'll better be sure to train the ones you actually use to max first, since they no longer stop contributing to your level shortly thereafter. - Reduce the amount of character exp awarded by utility skills. IMHO tradeskills belong here as well, considering how hard it is to gather enough money to pay for training using the said tradeskills. - Reduce both the leveling speed and character level contribution of skills past the 100 mark. That way you never lose the sense of advancement, while not breaking the balance (neither in terms of gameplay nor leveling) unless you REALLY put your back into it. I THINK (and here's where I need input from you guys) this solves all of the points above in a minimally intrusive way? Please note that due to the exp reductions in early game (both early skill levels and the utility skills that traditionally level 'too fast' compared to everything else), the actual character level will lag behind a game with standard rules at first. Thus, I'd also increase the actual contribution of the early levels, both in terms of perks and stat points per level, until level 10 or so. This way, your standard lvl 50 singleclass dude would equal lvl 60 in normal rules, while the hybrid guy would need serious investment all across the used skills to reach the corresponding spot of the old lvl81 cap - but WITHOUT the off-skills. Also, I kind of implied it but better to put in print: I find the game's own "legendary skills" system of going past the level cap extremely unintuitive, convoluted AND immersion-breaking, so that's a definitive no-no.