LE Skyrim Hardcore Mode

[CliffracerFan]

One thing I've heard a lot of gamers wish for in Skyrim (myself included) is a Survival/Hardcore Mode mod, similar to the Hardcore Mode of Fallout: New Vegas. Something that increases the level of realism by requiring food, water, and sleep, or something which makes wounds, exhaustion, exposure during severe weather, and disease more serious. The goal would be to increase immersion and realism, and make the game more challenging, while staying true to existing in-game features.

 

I've only dabbled in modding in past TES titles, but as soon as the Construction Set gets released I'm hoping to get my Learn on and put together something along these lines. Before that happens, I want to get a feel for what people want out of a Hardcore Mode mod. What sort of things would you like to see as options or features, and what don't you want to see? Comments and critiques are more than welcome; the more ideas and opinions I have, the better I'm able to plan and design it. Here are a few ideas I'm mulling over right now.

 

1) Drinking and eating would be necessary.

There would probably be an increasing Stamina Regen penalty for starvation and dehydration, which could eventually spread to Magicka/Health Regen, and possibly be lethal. So far, the mod would include a carried waterskin item, a system for drawing water from wells and natural bodies of water, and might allow for disease to be spread by drinking bad water. I might model food rot as well (dungeon delving into ancient tombs shouldn't yield fresh fruits and veggies), though that will likely be a bit more difficult. Prepared food would focus on long-term benefits as well, such as regen bonuses, increased move speed or carry capacity, etc. instead of essentially being weak potions.

 

2) You would need to sleep regularly.

Not sleeping would impose a decrease to your Max Stamina, and possibly cause skill penalties. I'm not sure what penalties I want to assign to exhaustion, aside from a % decrease in damage, movement speed, and/or carrying capacity, so suggestions would be great. The mod would include placeable camp items, such as a crude fur or straw mat, a bedroll, a campfire which consumes firewood and allows for cooking, and/or a tent or log lean-to shelter. Odds are, there would be an increased risk of being attacked when sleeping outdoors, however.

 

3) Exposure to severe weather and cold could be lethal.

Since the game is set in a cold climate, I'd like to model the dangers of hypothermia. Exposure to extreme weather, swimming in cold water for a long time, and so on should be dangerous... I imagine a small bit of cold damage over time would work, which increases with the time you stay exposed or the severity of conditions. Not sure how best to handle warming up by a fire, or drying off yet... I'll have to think on that.

 

4) Exhaustion and carrying a lot of loot should present a challenge.

Depleting stamina should do more than just prevent power attacks, such as creating an increasing chance to stagger or stumble while running, or even causing you to collapse for a moment. I might force the kneeling/collapsed state if stamina is fully depleted, for enemies as well as the player, which presents a challenge as well as a tactical opportunity. Shield bashes and unarmed attacks may deplete stamina as well. As it is, arrows and gold weigh nothing, and potions are terribly light; adding weight to the above would force people to store items and loot at home, and prevent them from carrying a small arsenal on their backs. Being 50% encumbered or more might also cause decreased move speed or Stamina Regen, while over-encumbrance would make you collapse completely, unable to move. To balance this with the existing system, I'd probably decrease the amount of stamina drain from power attacks and running (and possibly from ice damage) while increasing default carrying capacity.

 

5) Some other miscellaneous tweaks.

I'd like to to disable fast-travel, since in-game wagons already allow fast travel for a fee (this would probably be an optional feature, since I know a lot of people love their fast travel). I'd like to make diseases a bit more serious, allowing them to progress and potentially kill you. I might slow down the game clock a bit too, to make days stretch out a bit more... as it is, the days seem to go by too quickly, which could be annoying with daily food and sleep requirements.

[CampanaAliquanta]

There are a few projects like this planned already, such as this one:

http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/462397-total-realism-overhaul/

 

I agree though, I would love to see additional realism in the game. The food/sleep and temperature systems would be the most important for me.

[MrMiggins]

Everything you mentioned sounds great... also disabling the quest markers in-game (on the maps it's ok). Right now Skyrim is simply a game of "follow the quest marker". It would actually be nice to have to ask yourself once in a while "Now what?".

[runestyr]

Disclaimer: I'm not fond of super-detailed character development. So I usually avoid mods like this. But...

 

With the massive amounts of food to be found in the game, requiring us to eat is acceptable. Ditto for sleep -- bedrolls are everywhere. Quest markers can already be turned off in the vanilla game.

 

The real survival realism would be a *gradually* spread of your reputation. I provoke the Thalmer into attacking me every chance I get, because their attitude annoys me and my game characters clearly see them as the biggest threat to peace and prosperity next to the dragons. Most games take the easy route, and either ignore reputation or use a simple-to-code Insta-Reputation system, where every member of a faction all over the world knows within seconds of you doing something for/against one of their members, that they should like you more or less than the last time they saw you. That's not realistic. But if I regularly appear at merchants in the major towns selling Thalmor robes by the dozen, but am also seen praying at Talos' shrine, people will eventually connect the dots. I should start getting late-night visits from Thalmor Justicars, and it would be easier for them to find me since I'd be required to sleep. I know the game already has some of this -- I was attacked by a DB assassin (don't know why) very early in the game, and also attacked by a thug hired by a well-known crime figure after the quest involving a horse. But both those were (apparently) one-time events.

 

The other realism I'd like to see is NPCs who drop below 5% health should not merely duck out of combat for a few seconds, regenerate to 10% health, then dive back into suicidal combat. They should actually attempt to run away, or if they are carrying a quest item or have nowhere to run, they should surrender and let you take their stuff.

[mabus4444]

In Oblivion I remember a mod like this where the amount of stuff you carried affected your health. Rather than make you stop being able to run, if you were overburdened, it made you lose health. It's an interesting idea anyway. I tried to do something like that a bit manually, you know, forcing myself to buy some food and eat it, and sleep at night, but honestly if you don't HAVE to, it all seems kind of pointless and you stop doing it.

 

I love the idea of having them run away at 5% ... 10% even, it makes sense. An idea re food and sleep is to maybe decrease the stamina/health/magicka by 10% every day you don't do those things, so after a few days you really need to (after 5 days your powers are halved).

[thedude420]

i just think it's funny how the food is useless in this game to begin with, why even have it. its good for when you start the game but as you collect and make potions thought the game it soon becomes virtually useless.

[80smetaldude]

Another thing that would make a good hardcore mode would be reducing the amount of health you get / level. By the time you are 50th level most players are sporting 300+ health and toting around 120+ heal pots.

 

To make a challenging game you need to tweak a lot more than just adding weather/eating/rest... the overall "unrealistic" things in the game need to be tweaked "harder". Just tossing this out because even with these extra things all characters eventually get to that god-mode status where everything dies easy as pie. Make the higher level chars a bit less powerful and the game stays difficult/challenging at the later stages too.

[Allephus]

I like this overhaul in the Mod Talk forum.

 

http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/518351-ultra-mode/page__p__4226785__hl__%2Bultra+%2Bmode__fromsearch__1#entry4226785

 

I had a similar suggestion, that didn't compile so many ideas into one. But it would be great to overhaul the difficulty all together.

 

I like the Quake 3/Quake Live categorization of skills.

 

Tier 4: Veteran: Proficient at pain. Dealer of death.

 

Tier 3: Warrior: Formidable in battle, but room to grow.

 

Tier 2: Skilled: A dangerous combatant, refining the craft.

 

Tier 1: Trainee: Learning the ways of the Arena Eternal.

 

If you split hardcore into 4 tiers, each succeeding tier adding a new factor, and removing another factor as suggested in...

 

http://www.thenexusf...alism-overhaul/

 

....then for anybody who has basically wanted to up the ante in Master difficulty could do so in a gradual fashion.

[Jeffman12]

Another problem with this is hot springs might not register as sources of heat, though I imagine that if you managed to make fires have a some sort of effect it wouldn't be hard to give hot springs the same effect.

[DragomirTheSlav]

I was thinking about that even before the game was released (I mean I was hoping for some survival mode like from Fallout NV).

 

To all the necessities that were described in the first post I would add another thing, that imo is completely a must. To be honest, Bethesda drove me mad by making the equipment undestructable. I know that running around with a bag of 20+ hammers and then smithing your sword on a stone was somewhat silly, but not as much as not taking care of your equipment at all. Simple adding endurance to equipment, and it's already more challenging to go to the ruins. Weapons should be repairable. It should work like in some old games, Diablo, or Arx Fatalis for example. Whether you decide to not take your jagged sword to the smith, you should be able to restore some endurance points by reforging it in smithy or tempering the blade with a grindstone. But it would come with some cost, while restoring endurance, you would lower the max endurance, the amount would depend on your smith skills (if you're a master smith you could repair your equipment without penalties). I think this system should go with survival mod, as what you depend on in wilderness is your equipment.

 

And if you want to have some more challenging trips I recommend to install Realistic Lighting Without Post Processing. The torches are finally useful!

If only they would burn out after some time...