Difficulty level to play on?

[tomomi1922]

I just tried Legendary difficulty. Sheesh, I am a veteran gamer, I can handle it. But... It's not hard. It's just taking FOREVER. Everything is a damage sponge. It is all there is when I looked up, it is only Damage Dealt and Damage taken. Sad. I remember back in Mass Effect, easy mode is just aim and shoot, but hard modes require knowledge of damage types. Who resist what, and weak to what, mess that up, and we will fight until we run out of ammo and die, while barely scratching the enemies. I think same with Dragon Age. I felt good playing at the hardest mode in Dragon Age.

So what does everyone play on? I go back to Expert. Reasonable to me, at my current level 23. Enemies are not push-over, but not taking 2-3 damage per hit.

 

Edited July 1, 2018 by tomomi1922

[tizerist]

Difficulty just affects combat, same as in Fallout. I find playing on easiest the best, otherwise you spend more time swinging your sword rather than exploring.

[Deleted55545892User]

I just play Adept, but with Wildcat and Mortal Enemies.. and a few things here and there. But that's basically a good "vanilla +" - those two mods. I can't reiterate enough what a small mod like mortal enemies does for the game. It's never going to be an action game, but it's more in line with how they work. I also ported Deadly Dragons from LE...which is a must for me. There's a ton of dragon mods, but this one has an MCM and gives the Dragons some extra powers. I mostly want the MCM though, just in case they get too easy. I start off the game by boosting all of their health, dmg, and resistances 25% (on top of the hardness Deadly Dragons already boosts). It's not easy, but not hard exactly. But for example, that first Watchtower fight will more than likely kill all of your guards and usher in reinforcements.. possibly killing them too. It's up to you and Irileth!

 

You could spice it up with Ultimate Combat, but the reason I prefer Wildcat is the minimal scripting. For something like combat that's always there and persistent, this seems the way the go.. even on 64 bit.

 

Wildcat also has an injury system that makes combat more unpredictable. Battles can turn around, if you break an arm or something. You never know.. and that's what the game needs. And the good thing is, the injury system isn't persistent. It'll only last until you regen health.

 

Last but not least, I use Morrowloot.. which is it's own form of hardness. No one more fancy schmancy gear.. at least not easily.

 

BTW, Ultimate Combat is developed by a Japanese guy who seems to know what he's doing. All of his mods are useful, but his combat has a JP feel to it.. complete with pattern recognition and boss battle type of fights. It doesn't feel like Skyrim anymore, if that's what you want. That's why I contrast it with Wildcat, which is more like a better vanilla. He had a Dragon mod on Oldrim too (Ultimate Dragons), but it isn't ported yet. It follows the same scheme.. the dragons have patterns to their attacks and more akin to Japanese games. The only prob is they stay on the ground too much.

[Rasikko]

Once you reach a high level and max AR, it doesn't matter what the difficulty is. At that point you'd have to look for mods that increase difficulty in some way.

Edited July 2, 2018 by Rasikko

[Deleted55545892User]

I should add that survival is good too. Other mods do similar things, but it's a nice one stop.. and some of it aids difficulty. Regen rates, can't level up until rest (like old TES).

[tomomi1922]

I should add that survival is good too. Other mods do similar things, but it's a nice one stop.. and some of it aids difficulty. Regen rates, can't level up until rest (like old TES).

Speaking of, I am using the mod Mini Needs from Lovers Lab. So far it works out for me pretty well because it lets me adjust so many things. It's funny it even let the player character pee and poop. But the best part I like about it is that I can remove/adjust a lot of default penalty. A lot of these interfere with the fluidity of game play and make it just stress enducing and annoying. Like bathing needs, this mod has penalty of Speech and adding a layer of dirt onto the player if he/she is getting dirty. Problem is the dirty is so evenly applied onto the skin it looks so bad. I turned it off (or maybe thinking about editing a custom dirt overlay). In fact, all I really need is just a nagging reminder that my character needs to eat, drink, sleep, pee, etc...

 

There are some penalties that really make sense, like lacking food will reduce carrying weight capacity, stamina, stamina regen, weapon speed, etc... But I took off run speed reduction because it has been in conflict with many mods that alter run speed like Better Vampires, Wet and Cold (slower run speed in storm), and I personally made an .esp to slightly change run speed. When all of these run speed compounded in, the game could no longer keep up with the calculation, and I ended up with 65% run speed for particularly no reason (in door without sun, without storm, not hungry sleepy nor thirsty ....).