Hardcore Mods Suggestions

[Komnemnos]

Hey there, I'm just returning for a Skyrim playthrough and I'm not up-date with some of the newer and updated mods. I 'm looking for suggestions or mod lists for mods that can raise the challenge or difficulty to the game while adding new items, quests etc.

[Azakiel]

there are quite a lot of mods available to increase challenge/difficulty in the game depending on what your play style is, and what you are looking for. Some of the ones I use are as follows:

 

Realism/Immersion

Frostfall: introduces the concept of exposure, meaning that you can no longer spend weeks in game wandering around skyrims frozen north and suffer no ill effects. As you get colder, you will receive various skill penalties, regeneration penalties etc., until eventually you die of the cold.

Realistic Needs and Disease: Introduces the need for your character to eat, sleep and drink on a regular basis or suffer various penalties. Also introduces intoxication if you drink to much alcohol, and increases the danger posed by disease.

Magic

Mighty Magick: General magic overhaul, improves perks and adds a variety of new spells. This also include an enchanment rebalance module, which closes a lot of enchament loopholes, and (in the words of the mod author) contains significant nerfs to the enchanting system.

Combat

ACE - Combat Skills: Modular overhaul of various elements of the game including Smithing, Armour, Melee Combat, Archery etc. Includes a realistic fighting module which applies various penalties depending on your situation (for example, only wearing 1 or two pieces of armour, sneaking etc.)

Deadly Dragons and Deadly Monsters: Adds new (more dangerous) kinds of dragons and increases the general difficulty of dragon combat. Difficulty level can be tweaked through the Mod Configuration Menu (if you have SkyUI installed), allowing you to adjust dragon health, melee damage, magic/breath damage, armor values, and resistances all independently of one another. Deadly Monsters also allows you to apply similar difficulty tweaks to various NPCs (including undead, humanoid races, animals etc.)

Stealth

Stealth Skills Rebalanced: Increases the difficulty of Sneaking, Lockpicking etc., alters the perk trees for some of the stealth skills and various other minor tweaks.

General

ASIS: This is a utility that creates a dynamic patch base don the mods you have installed, and among other things adds perks and spells from mods you have installed to npcs you encounter in game, and increases the number of creatures that spawn at a given spawn point. This is particularly useful if you have mods like ace or mighty magick installed as it will mean your enemies benefit from new spells or perks as well as yourself.

 

You should also make sure to get the latest version of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch, and the Unofficial Patches for whichever of the DLC you have installed, as these will fix numerous bugs that Bethesda still have not got around to dealing with.

[Komnemnos]

Thanks for the quick response. I'm just curious, I've been hearing a lot about SkyRE and I'm confused whether it is worth it or not.

[Azakiel]

to be honest I've never used SkyRe so I can't really comment on it. All I can say is that it is an overhaul mod which makes quite a significant amount of changes (which is why seeing SkyRe compatibility patches on mods is so common).

 

if you use ACE, Stealth Skills Rebalanced and Mighty Magick you will already be overhauling a lot of what I believe SkyRe affects, but to a much less radical degree, meaning mods are pretty much compatible with them by default.

 

I'd suggest taking a look at the descriptions of ACE, Mighty Magick, SSR and SkyRE, and see which one(s) fit you play style and what you are looking for best

Edited April 11, 2013 by Azakiel

[ArtMurder]

SkyRe is REEEAALLLY worth it, it is incompatible with alot of mods but it is better then all those mods put together anyways, because it does soooo much, and re-balances the ENTIRE game fairly! It's 'adept' difficulty is about as hard as vanilla 'master' difficulty!

 

Also, Dragon Combat Overhaul for dragons (works with Deadly Dragons!) and WTF, a program like ASIS that adds in random crazy enemies in logical places, and relevels dungeons and such, so that you never know what you are encountering.

 

I personally use SkyRe + ASIS + some of ESRO + WTF for a very realistic and difficult skyrim. ^_^ If you are getting SkyRe, ASIS and WTF, you can also grab the tool Reproccer, which makes all weapons/armors/etc. compatiable with skyre through one simple patch. If you combine these with a program called 'SUM' that will run ASIS, Reproccer and WTF all together (alongside BOSS) you can make repatching and reordering your game as simple as clicking ONE time! ^_^

Edited April 11, 2013 by ArtMurder

[Komnemnos]

How about quest mods that synergize well with the other mods?

[GrimyBunyip]

Don't forget Skyrim AI Editor.

 

there aren't many mods that change combat style AI.

[DreamKingMods]

How about quest mods that synergize well with the other mods?

 

I remember seeing that Frostfall has built-in support for the well-regarded Wyrmstooth quest mod.