as it is now, im relatively at ease exploring the wasteland at lower levels since only low-level creatures will spawn around me. no wanamingoes (MMM), or deathclaws seem to exist when i start out from the vault. then whenever i first see scorpions and robots, i cant help but think "ah i guess ive levelled up enough for them to spawn." an unnatural thought for a post-nuclear survivor to say the least.

so i guess im looking for a mod that makes the spawns more static and is compatible, if possible, with the more popular "overhauls" or "tweaks" out there, sort of like what OOO did for oblivion where parts of the world were dangerous no matter what level the player was. i tried an MMM enleveller (or something like it) before but it seemed to spawn the high levelled creatures more than the lower level ones.

barring that, what would i have to tweak in FO3 edit (GECK often refuses to start on my PC) to change the spawning?

Never been to Old Olney, have you?

not this time around no . but the issue remains for the rest of the wasteland. suddenly seeing creatures that werent there before makes the world seem less "not generated", if that makes any sense.

You know, I agree with you a little there.

Unleveling is kinda built into FO3 already, probably largely because of the response to Oblivion. In FO3 when you first enter an encounter zone (the world is broken up into a moderately large number of encounter zones, inside and out) your level is recorded for that zone, and creatures spawning in it will be appropriate to your level as per normal. This difference is this: if you then go back to that zone 10 levels later, the creatures spawning will still be spawning at the level you were 10 levels ago. This stops for eg you leaving a 'too hard' area of the game, and coming back in 10 levels time only to discover all the creatures are suddenly 10 levels higher too and matching you. Which would kinda svck, and breaks immersion too.

But I do agree having certain creature types only appear at certain levels does break immersion when you realise out of game that you're a higher level. At the same time, you don't want to get your ass handed to you every five feet in a world with creatures you can't hope to deal with yet. I have some ideas.I'll see if I can implement a 'partial' (read: gentler) unleveler for certain creature types and NPCs, and make it an option. It is, afterall, also part of immersion that you come across fights you really should run from and aren't destined to win -- MMM for Oblivion achieved this too -- it's just a matter of not making too frequent or it becomes frustrating, and for the most part features like increased spawns aid this already regardless.

But we'll see

Many moons ago I created a script that gave random chances for specific creatures to spawn and attatched it to the generic Raider spawn point. Then I took a walk around the wasteland and came across raider bases where Raiders were fighting off Enclave, SuperMutants, Ghouls, RadScorps or some times a combination of those. The upshot was that it made it seem less like Raider just sat around waiting for me to show up and that they had other dangers to face. The downside was that it was very incompatible with MMM Increased Spawns, also it spawned whatever creature it chose right next to the Raider so the fight broke out right away and it seemed odd that a SuperMutant would have made it past all the other raiders to be fight the one right in the middle of the base, it was also akward for a RadScorp to be walking along the top of the shelves in the SuperDuper Mart. Though the proximity could be easily adjusted in the script. My purpose behind this script was different that what your asking for, but it's just an idea of a possibility I'm throwing out there.

Well, if Martigen gets to work on this, Im more than hopeful! thanks for considering it at least

Well there was a short way to do this and a long way to do this, with the longer way guaranteed and the shorter way not sure if it'd work.

As it happens, it does The long way would have been to build some new lists and build a spawn routine around these, the short way was to create my own Encounter Zone that removes the level cap and abitarily use it when creatures are spawned based on a percentage chance. It only took about two hours to add with basic testing, but it works rather well. I'm actually thinking I might recommend this as a default feature, because with low-percentage chances it will help spice things up quite nicely.

Note that, while it scales for creatures and NPCs it won't delevel for weapons, as firstly these are loaded via inventories and secondly I wouldn't want to anyway as that could unbalance the type of equipment you find early, not to mention this is best managed through loot mods which MMM deliberately doesn't touch for compatibility reasons.

So this feature is in. I don't expect a new release of MMM for a few weeks yet, there's a huge to-do list of bug reports and new things to add, but when it comes you'll see some new plugins to control it -- tentaively Soft Unleveler Mild and Soft Unleveler hardcoe.

Remember though that the items NPCs spawn with depend on their level not on the players level.
Leveled Item lists use the level of the actor that accesses them (despite the flag incorrectly saying "PC Level"). NPC equiment isn't actually leveled in Fallout3.

So if you spawn the higher level Talon/Raider/Enclave variants, they will automatically come with the more advanced weaponry, nothing you can really do about that I'm afraid.

Ah, at least that's accurate then, so if a higher-level NPC spawns he'll have the equipment he should have.

I don't know how unbalancing that might be, I'm not involved in the loot mods. What about the additions in FWE? Would it have an impact there? I'll need input from the FWE and FOOK teams, but if need be the unleveling module could be applied to creatures only.

Not really a big deal in FWE.
Even if you should get lucky this way and get your hands early on something like a M72 Gauss Rifle or a Vindicator minigun, you're not really gonna have enough ammo to fire it very often at a low level, so it wouldnt be anything unbalancing on our end.

Cool. Plus, we can assume, you have to kill such an opponent using it against you first too! I guess if you manage to, you probably deserve the rewards.

The only thing I'm thinking about at the moment is whether to modify the percentage down for super mutants. If the base chance is 10%, you'll see encounter an unleveled foe every now and then in the wasteland for eg. Some mutie zones, with increased spawns, could see a good chunk of high-level muties spawning however, which may make it prohibitively hard. Similar thing for Ghoul populations, though as they're not as tough I think that'll work fine and just be a little extra challenging.

Yeah need to be careful with the super mutants. Especially if the player has Broken Steel you dont really want them encountering Overlords at a low level.

I don't know.. Would seriously add to the run for your life image FO3 has. It did not enforce it in the vanilla game, but I think encountering Overlords at low level should be fun.

Mh not really due to how the Overlords are set up. The problem is that each of their shots does 30 points of unblockable magic damage(unless you have FWE or another mod that removes this installed), additionally to the insane damage of the tribeam laser rifle.
The moment you get into their sights it'll be zap-zap and you're dead if you dont have plenty of hitpoints and DR under your belt. This wouldn't be any skill contest, but simply butchering the player and in the worst case could block access to an entire area for the player(especially in DC ruins which could *really* annoy some players trying to do the MQ). I really don't think it would be much fun encountering these if your level isnt even two digit.

If you play a stealth-based character with a realistic sneak boost in the dark, you can get around okay at lower levels in my experience (assuming you're highly specialized). Doing this with 3-5 increased spawns, increased universal damage and responsive kill reactions *is* pretty difficult, but that's probably the point. Though, there are definitely a few areas where it's a little unfair. Fast traveling to somewhere like clifftop shacks and having an overlord waiting within inches of your arrival-point breaks immersion a bit, because of course a sneaking character wouldn't travel this close to an enemy if at all possible. Then again, there's just not much room in locations like that to begin with. If there were a mod creating a chance for an opposing faction to spawn in areas like Clifftop Shacks, this could probably help with the immersion aspect. Though, I'm not sure if it would cause other problems. I always thought it would be cool to see Reilly come out and help you every once in awhile. Though, I think her hesitation to do so is understandable.

As far as DC goes, I usually use a scoped (and silenced if possible) weapon to set off cars and buses at night. Then again, highly explosive rusting vehicles are a bit unrealistic... Part of the immersion issue here is probably related to the fact that a lot of super mutants have a pretty limited patrol zone. It would be easier to lay mines and other more realistic traps if they patrolled over a broader area in some cases (the area around Freedom Street Station is probably a good example if I remember correctly).

I guess my point is that tougher enemies could be avoided at lower levels, but it might cater more towards a stealth play-style and not be very well balanced for other styles.

I would also love to have Overlords in my game below Level 10. :woot: The key to Overlords is to remove the weapon. No weapon; no problems. I think we might be in the minority here, though, harmy.


I don't, however, feel a great need to see Reavers any earlier. I can wait on those. :laugh:

I just ran into a Deathclaw Matriarch right at level 11, that IMO is a beast much worse than an Overlord, because you can't just run from it or shoot it's weapon out. I wouldn't mind an overlord here or there. Heck I think I ran into the Behemoth by Rivet City / Jefferson Memorial at like level 5 or so.

I agree. DM is faster and hits harder. That's why I'm not excited about Reavers sooner; they are just so fast and hit so hard. Overlords are pretty stupid and slow. I've also had Behemoths that early or around that; maybe 6 or 7.

I've experimented with this in my game, changing the creature leveled lists to spawn weak and tough spawns at all levels. I changed it to just spawning weaker creatures at earlier levels with the tougher creatures appearing later but keeping the chance of weaker creatures spawning as well just to keep the variety. It was the lack of variety of spawns after about level 5 which made me alter the lists. I like seeing the occasional molerat or ant in the wasteland instead of nothing but Deathclaws and Yao Guai and Radscorpions over every hill.

Having high level creatures spawn at low levels though, its not so much the player who would have trouble with this as they can outsmart it, it's the npc's. I had a high level albino radscorpion spawn near the supermarket and it lay waste to everything in its path. It took a group of outcasts and myself to eventually kill it but I was the only survivor. Personally I do like the challenge of high level creatures at low levels but it was not fun seeing half the npcs mindlessly run up and mêlée this creature that they obviously had no chance of killing. Perhaps instead at lower levels a weaker version of the same creature could spawn so there isn't this reminder of your level when you start seeing the higher level creatures.

This might be more a problem with the NPCs in that situation. If NPCs entered a sprinting flee mode when the albino scorpion started its attack, it would probably be a more realistic reaction. Faster and more intelligent NPC fleeing is probably one of those things that would work well with static spawns. It could also reinforce the idea that you have to pick your battles in the early part of the game, and choose when to retreat and come up with a different plan. If the player sees a group of Outcasts sprinting away from an albino radscorpion, it would probably make them think twice before going in with guns blazing. It would also be a bit hilarious (in an "I'm glad that's not me" kind of way).

Yeah Behemoths start appearing from level 5 with MMM. That's one high-level encounter that can occur at any time at the moment.


If you're using MMM weaker creatures will always have a chance of spawning at higher levels, though for areas with defined Encounter Zones they will still apply a minimum as they should. Wasteland, however, has no Enounter Zone so you'll always be able to see molerats up to albino radscorps.


This is true, we could well see local populations decimated by the odd high-level creature. I can look at weakining these encounters when they appear, or perhaps that's just a side-effect of the dangerous world of the wasteland?

I think, at a least, I'll halve the chances for SMs and Ghouls unleveled spawns to appear, given their volume of spawning.


This should probably happen to some degree but I haven't checked -- MMM makes NPCs more likely to flee, especially if wounded, and the engine uses level difference as the primary driver to determine when to flee. As a high-level encounter would be a huge level gap, they should flee naturally without much prompting. The only tweak I might make is to lower the flee-check timer to give them a chance to register for fleeing before they get whacked. This is actually quite a long delay in vanilla F3, and is already shortened in MMM but I might lower it further.

Knowing that the fleeing mechanics are already in MMM makes me like the idea of static spawns more. Watching NPCs flee at high speed from an epic beast while the player lays low and tries not to be noticed makes it a whole new wasteland for me. Though, there were problems related to fleeing and NPCs in vanilla, particularly around the regulator HQ. Finding where Sonora ran off to without using console commands could be a quest in itself at times.

Maybe un-level NPC also? Although that would require an overhaul of sorts.

? Already done. That's part of what Kai and I were discussing, how it would affect weapon inventories.

Ok, taking a look there's actually a way I can do this so that Albinro Radscorps, Ghoul Reavers, and Super Mutant Overlords don't spawn with the unleveler -- basically, keeping the uneleveling to the vanilla creature base, unaffected by DLCs.

Would that be the preferred way? Very easy to set it up either way.