Mods that make gameplay harder/more immersive

[Raffaeli]

I am planning on doing a playthrough where I basically make the game really hard. What mods do you recommend that make the game tougher, but not unreasonably. Like adding hunger and thirst, adding more monsters, improving enemy AI, adding realism, better equiping enemies, etc. But nothing that straight up reduces my HP to 1 or something.

Any other must have mods are appreciated too, like dance of death, sounds of skyrim, follower tweaks, bandolier, etc.

I would appreciate if you told me whether the mod could be found on the nexus or the workshop.

I look forward to your input and thanks for your help.

[AnkhAscendant]

Climates of Tamriel together with Frostfall - Hypothermia if you want, well, hypothermia, snowstorms and water that will kill you.

And SkyTEST and/or Real Wildlife if you want more animals (good for your basic needs and Frostfall food-and-tent making.)

 

Pick-a-needs-mod (Imp's More Complex Needs, Nord Needs, TRO, SkyRealism F&F, etc... ) I use ICMN because it's A) the most complex and thus the hardest, and B) the only one the accommodates Vampires, as far as I know. It also has Dawnguard and Hearthfire patches (they're by other people, so just search for "More Complex Needs" and they'll come up.)

If you want to improve your combat (read: more realistic and thus harder), Duel or Duke Patrick's (I favor the latter, many swear by the former). And if you want to improve your magic at the same time, Balanced Magic. I'd use the vanilla settings rather than one of the optional files, since it's the most challenging.

 

If you have a good computer, try SkyMoMod (with or without the lore-friendly patch) and Warzones. I warn you my 32-bit Vista computer can't handle Warzones.

Deadly Dragons does what it sounds like, and then some.

 

ASIS, Skyrim Scaling Stopper, and Economics of Skyrim for general immersiveness and making the game less centred around you, the player. ASIS improves enemy AI and lets them use potions and spells they couldn't before, putting them on a level playing field with you. SSS removes the level scaling, so you'll meet the same bandits in the mine at level 3 as you would at level 40 (most often things in the level 15-20 range, sometimes lower, occasionally higher; there's a tougher optional version). Economics stops merchant leveling and adds regional values for various items. Be careful with load order on those, it seems like {Bashed Patch->SSS->ASIS->Economics} would work the best (because SSS and EoS both affect merchant leveling, and ASIS should improve the SSS spawned people), but I haven't tested it very thoroughly.

 

Kuertee's Skill-Based Damage and Magnitude Multipliers makes both you and the NPCs much more deadly. I ave 0 idea how it gets along with the combat and magic overhauls, but it seems like it would work as long as you load it after. (I admit I never thought about it until just now, I've just used it.)

 

Sands of Time adds random encounters when you sleep, fast travel, wait, or go walking in the world. All of these encounters try to kill you of course. Immersive Patrols and Radiance both add new NPCs, the former split up into several smaller parts that you can activate as you want (werewolf encounters, more civil war patrols, more Dawnguard/vampires, etc.) and the latter adds encounters based on things you have done, which is nice.

 

Everything with SkyRealism in the name is something you should check out. (Link to IndigoNeko's page.)

 

Shameless plug, the mod linked in my signature adds racial changes to all base stats, which could make it much harder or much easier, depending one whether you play against type (Altmer heavy-armor-fighter, for instance).

 

Think that's enough to start with? :P

 

(Edit: Links added, Nexus only. I know ICMN, Frostfall, Real Wildlife, and CoT are available on the workshop, don't know about any of the others.)

Edited October 18, 2012 by AnkhAscendant

[Raffaeli]

Thank you for the detailed response, I appreciate it.