Dead is Dead, Difficulty Setting and Mods

With the Dead is Dead thread going strong, the DiD competition and associated threads running, there's been a lot of talk on the subject lately. It kinda seems like when discussing DiD, difficulty settings and mods are always a part of the equation, and frequently a topic for conversation. So, let me tell you the dumb thing I did.

I entered the DiD competition. No, that's not the dumb thing though. For the competition, I disabled some mods and changed my difficulty setting from Adept to Expert. You might think this made my game tougher, but that's not the case because I normally run with Deadly Dragons/Deadly Monsters so an unmoddded Expert didn't seem difficult at all. But then...

I got my character killed, and was out of the competition. I wanted to put my game back together because I had a level 34 DiD character so I decided to get Wrye Bash working. I've had difficulties with that forever. Anyway, I digress. The long and the short is that I got Wrye Bash working, reactivated my mods and went back to playing my character... only to be killed a short time later at level 37. I was having a hard time figuring out why, until (after deleting my saves and starting a new character) I looked at my settings and noticed that the difficulty was still set on expert, making a Falmer Shadowmaster nearly unbeatable when Deadly Monsters was added in.

So, the result was that I decided to keep the expert setting, but dial back Deadly dragons a touch. So now, the difficulty setting is Expert and Deadly dragons adds another 50% to dragon/monster attributes and damage (melee and magical). I think it's roughly equivelent to playing on Master, except for the dragon skills that don't exist without the mods. I turned it down to that point because other wise the dragon skills are just not survivable at higher levels.

Anyway, one of the DiD players who's hooked on Legendary was asking about it, and suggested he'd like to see what my game looked like. In response I made a video, it's short and kinda jumbled, but I wanted to show the dragon's skills as well as the normal stuff, and it's hard to make a short video about a long subject.

Anyway, if you decide to watch it, here's what you should know. The settings are as I mentioned above, and the character is,

on the plus side:
Breton (25% magic resistance)
Has the Lord's Stone active
Has an AR of about 107 I think
Has enchanted items granting 15% Frost Resistance
and a 30% damage bonus to two-handed.
Arkay's Blessing (+25 to health)
Amulet of Arkay (+10 to0 health)

His natural health is about 220

On the minus side:
Only level 14
His Shouts are "Fus Ro (no duh, man )" and whirlwind sprint
Has no companion
Has only the "summon familiar" spell in conjuration,
Has only Flames, Sparks, and Ice Spike for destruction,
Has only Heal
He's not good at Alchemy

If you don't happen to have or know about Deadly Dragons, the reason the green glow is mentioned is that it means green glowing critters are allied with the dragon by his skill. Also, the frost dragon uses some kind of ice storm that seems almost like an exploding projectile, and I don't know what it is exactly, but it's pretty deadly if it hits you directly.

The video is https://youtu.be/T48MQWXt5GM.

So, do you play DiD, and how do you set your difficulty? Do you use mods to alter difficulty one way or another?

The link to the video isn't working, at least for me.

Fixed (I think) thanks for telling me!

It's good to go now. The competition is the first time I've done DiD on expert. I don't have many mods installed but I like the challenge on expert. Think I'll change all my DiD characters to that setting.

Yeah, if I didn't have mods, I'd at least be playing Expert, or more likely Master.

I typically run SkyRe on adept, with Deadly Dragons, Civil War Overhaul and a bunch of immersion type mods. SkyRe on Adept is more difficult that vanilla expert. It changes many things, including damage (everything is deadlier), leveling of enemies and equipment (bandits love crossbows and they hurt!). If I'm doing DiD (I also play non-DiD characters) I'll keep Deadly Dragons fairly tame, usually just upping the attributes and allowing special moves.

I've heard a lot about SkyRe, though I've never tried it. does Civil War overhaul turn that more or less lame questline into something worth doing?

I think CWO is a great mod. Some people say it's buggy, but it's actually worked better for me than the vanilla version. The way the mod runs, it is really a long quest line. Read the description on nexus. It explains the mod really well, and is also very amusing.

Edit: And the Stormcloaks get giants! Giants!

Adept with Deadly Dragons ,Morowloot 4E,Frostfall ,limiting smithing to only creating gear and weapons(no "tempering"),enchanting limited(Only one time enchanter and non of the elemetal perks)and also no loop abuses.

I don't do Dead is Dead, but I run Death Alternative. So not quite as hardcoe but nasty enough where I have to really be careful. With DA you can be enslaved by Falmer, vampires, bandits, be soul trapped by necromancers etc. You will also be stripped of gold/items which you can get back (typically through force) if you choose. So I don't do any reloads, my characters have to live with their choices.

As far as mods that affect difficulty I use PerMa, ASIS, Deadly Dragons/Creautures, Immersive Creatures - I think that's it off the top of my head. ASIS coupled with PerMa is what really bumps up the difficulty. Right now I'm on expert which seems to be my sweet spot. I'd say it's close to master or legendary vanilla.