Hi all,

I finished Skyrim a while ago, few patches back and before dlcs were out. I'm looking to play again with the addition of mods to make the game more realistic and difficult.

There's a vast variety of mods of all shape and sizes, and I could really use some recommendations and guidance. I have no idea where to start.

The main "issues" I'd like to mod in my game are:

- Gold; It's just not sensible how petty quest can reward you so much gold, or the amounts you generally easily acquire. I understand it has something to do with the scaling.

- Smiting; Is completely unbalanced and overpowered in my opinion, as it seems you're the only one in the world capable of crafting improved weapons. You see them no where else. It needs revamping.

- I would like to add survival aspects like: sleep, water, food, weather, item degradation, etc'. Again, there are so many different mods that do that.

- Basically, I want to have a hard time, any gold coin should count, spending money should be thoughtful. Even bounties are a joke at some point.

I would also not mind hearing about mods that enhance the game itself, rather than it's gameplay (i.e. graphics, UI, etc').

Would appreciate any help and pointers.

TIA

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/11163/? (plus some mods that accompany it well such as: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27563/?, http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/13486/?, http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32448/? and http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/52612/?)

For eating/drinking/sleeping, I'm using http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/26228/? but check out http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/51473/? as well. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/38507/? works with RND - not sure about iNeed.

Mos def Frostfall...

There are quite a few mods that make different changes you are talking about.

Requiem overhauls everything, including the things you mention, but it does overhaul the entire game so you'd need to be okay with that.

http://wiki.step-project.com/Pack:Skyrim_Gameplay_Overhaul

Ah, so I can just pick up parts of this I'm interested in?

Out of everything I heard so far, Frostfall keeps coming for sure.

Exactly Kataka, these are mods that would go nice together in this particular person's vision. Modular always means that you can pick and choose the features you want ^^

Some mods are modular packages, like SkyRe, but some are complete overhauls like Requiem. The advantage of modulars is you can pick and choose and the advantage of an overhaul is it touches everything, is already balanced and of course, works well without doing any tuning.

And yes, Frostfall is a simple, beautifully executed mod. It adds to realism in a fun way as opposed to making it a chore. It also adds to adventure by forcing you into an unknown cave during a bad blizzard or making you camp out in the middle of nowhere. Instead of micro penalizing the player for not constantly managing his status it adds small, dynamic advantages when being warm but punishes your skills and movement speed when freezing to death. And it adds some nice shaders and effects to the character to simulate coldness.

To boot, it adds a bunch of craftable goodies, like tents, cloaks, hiking sticks and backpacks with a carry bonus! It also allows you to craft in the wild (you can make your own tanning post, carry a mortar and pestle for alchemy and even make an enchanting kit). It is a super endorsed mod for a reason!

I personally wouldn't recommend the STEP pack guide instructions, though many of the individual mods are good.

Gold Adjustment by kuertee is probably essential for this, it really makes a dramatic impact on random gold and gold rewards. The default settings are roughly 25% of standard Skyrim; really, since gold is so easy to get, tweak all the optional settings down to 10% or less for the best impact.

Scarcity comes with 10 optional files. If you are thinking of using Scarcity with a needs mod, you may have to exclude the Merchant Item Rarity mod or only use the 2x plugin. This is a limitation with Skyrim where most food vendors are set up really badly and leads to most innkeepers selling no food or drink (only salt).

That would add a lot to the realism of the civil war though, starvation is a problem IRL when these political conditions exist.

I have to say, modding Skyrim seems much more complex than Oblivion and Morrowind, or maybe I'm just getting old ^.^

The process is about the same but Skyrim doesn't like it when you remove mods with scripts from a save....it tends to react by destroying said save So you need to be a bit more careful.

STEP includes lots of stuff that really push the games limits, hence the complex instructions for things like ENBs and whatnot.