It starts with a love letter and ends with a running list of everything I’ve learned as I play. Accuracy is neither promised nor implied.
I strongly advise the use of Requiem. If I had to run only one mod, that would be it.
Requiem is an overhaul. I chose it specifically because I don’t know what all it does. I could not have known how good it would turn out.
Requiem is often thought of as a difficulty mod, but that’s not right at all. It does increase lethality (both damage dealt and taken) but only as a means of achieving a believable world. When you are level 1, you will be one-shot frequently by experienced bandits. You can also walk up to any unarmored NPC and thwack them good.
It’s not about making it hard, it’s about making you look at your screen and notice that the guy in heavy steel armor just cleaved your face with a greatsword. It’s about taking the time to think about how swords are less effective against that steel armor than a warhammer. If you want your sweet revenge, you’ll need to regroup and switch tactics. Using the right tool for the job is almost always heavily rewarded in Requiem.
Metagaming is certainly possible, but it’s missing the point. The whole point is to forget about the stats and the damage numbers - to embrace your role in the RPG and just play in an intuitive way. Skeletons are weak to smashing. You can’t make potions without perking into it. When you do heavily perk into something, you become great at it. It becomes a legitimate asset in a world full of monsters and misery.
Somewhere between levels 10 and 20, the tables turn and you’re no longer a helpless welp. You have some experience and some abilities. You’re not running from every wolf anymore, you’re starting to descend into crypts (Bleak Falls Barrow) to take on monsters that most citizens shy away from. You are special because you have become special. Hard work and a thousand close calls are beginning to forge you into the kind of hero the Dragonborn purports to be.
Let’s not just ignore the balance, though. I really like that all healing/stamina/magicka potions are either fortify or recover over duration. They’ve completely stuffed the classic Skyrim playstyle of pausing to spam heal pots. Damage and armor types matter now. Everyone isn’t just a stealth archer now, both because sneaking is harder (basically only muffles your footsteps) and because melee fighting is super fun.
Requiem introduces some hefty stamina management mechanics. It’s not just a simple “don’t spam until you’re out”, like you might expect in a souls or other action game. You really have to pay attention to your total stamina, your regen buffs, when to bash/block/power attack, stamina poisons, and taking damage in general. Your damage and your movespeed are tied to your stamina, so running out is essentially death. Bashing is so much more important for interrupting attacks because they’re actually scary now, and that costs stamina. Great feature.
Combined with the increased lethality and heal-over-time potions, melee combat has become very engaging. Every hit could end you. If you know your next hit will end an enemy, it can be worth the stamina to do a power attack. If the enemy is faster than you, you’ll have to rely on blocks or bashes to survive his power attacks. You have to keep track of distance and timing, while constantly baiting out punishable attacks. This is a stark contrast to the vanilla Skyrim experience of spamming attack and spamming pots.
The world is deleveled. This means you can run into super spooky monsters at level 1 and it gives all the places of the world some deeper identity. Quest rewards are also unleveled, so no need to worry about when to do what. You just do what you can, when you can, how you can.
Health does not regenerate on its own. You need an item called a healing poultice, potions, or some kind of magic to heal up. Some aspects of this are more annoying than immersive. I tend to just take one perk in Restoration, cast a long term heal spell, and wait an (in-game) hour. I do think that having to deal with it overall does improve the feeling after a hard fight, scrambling to find a place to rest.
I won’t list all the changes (because I don’t know them) but I will say that Requiem is very good. It sets out to unapologetically capture the feeling of an RPG. Things matter. Doing what’s intuitive is generally right. There are in-game books that give hints to many of the hidden features. The loot is amazing and actually worth getting.
I hope you’ll look past the outrageously “unfair” feature list and just try it. Just spend a day exploring the mechanics and win a few fights. When you’ve understood how it’s not a difficulty mod and how strong you’ll feel by level 20, then you can trash it on the forums.
These mods combine to grant me an immersive but still enjoyable RPG experience. I addressed only my personal pain points, after playing vanilla Requiem for some hours. I wanted to reduce friction between how I imagined playing and how I was actually playing.
Not being able to fast travel to or from Riverwood sucked. I had to get that Better Fast Travel. I was opening the map every 5 seconds and staring at my compass, instead of the world. Disabling compass and grabbing Paper World Map resolved that.
In pretty much every game, I want a writable book. I like to pass time waiting for things or preparing for sleep by reading or writing notes. I do this in Ultima Online, Project Zomboid, Oblivion, and now Skyrim. However, the game pauses when a menu is open and I play with a controller. This means that reading is not an effective way to pass the time. Auto Input Switch and Take Notes allow me to seamlessly play with a controller and then keyboard into a journal. Skyrim Souls means that time will pass, whilst I write. It’s Heaven.
Finally, Campsite and Dovahkiin Relaxes Too allow me to create the necessary ambience for writing. Campsite uses only vanilla items and does not go over the top with functionality. It’s truly a simple tent and campfire system. It lets me cook. It lets me sleep. It lets me create safe storage for frequently visited places. Dovahkiin fills the only gap that Campsite has, which is letting me sit by the fire.
+ Midgame Additions +
I ended up needing to get Simplest Horses as soon as I got a horse. It creates a hotkey that allows you to tell a horse to stay/follow. Horses are kind of aggressively annoying in vanilla. They follow you everywhere and die frequently by attacking everything in sight. With Simplest Horses, I can park my horse well away from whatever I’m raiding and just call him in for looting. It has made things so much smoother and more enjoyable. Without it, I would probably just go horseless.
I don’t use any formal limitations or constraints, but allow me to briefly describe some things about how I play. I don’t believe in grinding. I consider grinding to be “repeatedly doing something you do not want to do”.
I don’t care one bit, if raising Alchemy will help me afford a horse. I will never think, “I hate fighting spiders but I need 30 spittles”. I may very well spend 6 hours picking flowers and making potions or finding a way to mass-farm spiders – but only if it’s fun. I’ll never aim to make the game less interesting for myself. I will not go out of my way to get good items early. I do not care about winning.
I have disabled my compass entirely. I found that I was looking at it (and the enemy indicators) more than the world. I switched to a paper world map (does not show player position) and use it to plan my trips. While it does still center on my location (not by choice), I have no idea which way I’m facing. I’m forced to look for landmarks and follow roads. I pay attention to the world and get legitimately lost.
Does the river in Riverwood flow towards or away from Whiterun? Guess how I found that out?