Have been back at Skyrim for a few weeks after a long hiatus. Have a mod list that I really like (though all the "automatic variants do not seem to be doing anything" so I'll definitely consider uninstalling that on a next playthrough.

I'm a huge fan of Hunterborn, Frostfall, Wet & Cold and Realistic Needs and Diseases. I just could not play the game without these.

PerMa I still do not know that well, but I liked it from the moment I set eyes on the new perks, and the more I play it and realize how much more rich it makes the game (in myriad ways ranging from potions, to enchantments, to spells, etc.) . . . I am nearly to the point of "couldn't play without that one too."

The various mods that expand on the character building and start (Racemenu, Alternate Start LAL, Apachii Hair, XPMSE, etc.) I just could not play Skyrim without that stuff.

The Hothtrooper stuff and the cloak mods: absolutely essential IMO. Now that I think about it, the only mods I may jettison on a subsequent startup are DGInvestedMagic (just because it doesn't seem to actually work with PerMa Mage, despite me not bashing it into the patch and loading it where I thought it would work and "overlap" onto the alternate spells in PerMa; I love the mod itself based on playing it in vanilla, and would love if the changes it makes were incorporated into PerMa Mage, but since it doesn't seem to be working, it would be one of the few I'd consider cutting), and the Automatic Variants (which also do not seem to be doing anything to the critters for which it is supposed to create alternates).

V740T_MGolDinS&M "More Gold in Stores and Merchants" . . . on the one hand this makes the game "easier" because one can almost always sell most of the loot or product one has on hand. In that sense, it almost feels like "cheating," but then I think about how tedious it is to have 350 Elk Steaks, 10 Fine Elk Pelts, 8 Fine Deer Pelts, and a buttload of various looted weapons, armor and clutter to sell, and the annoyance of having to ride around an entire province to find enough merchants to sell it all . . . Maybe the values could stand to be tweaked down a bit (Belethor typically has some 15,000 gold and minor merchants usually have at least 1,000; Arcadia seems to always have about 8,000 or 9,000) but on the whole . . . another one I just couldn't play without, and glad I finally figured out how to keep Wrye Bash from turning it off by trying to merge it.

But really, I'm off on a tangent here. I love to talk about mods and get pointers on good mod combos, etc., but the main point of this post was to commiserate about the delicate balance of: making a playthrough sufficiently challenging that it doesn't get dull, while also making proper use of the resources your character has at their disposal to make death as unlikely as possible. Some specific points that serve as examples of this conundrum:

1. Are three followers (Faendal, Marcurio and Lydia) too many (in the sense of taking the challenge out of the game)?

2. Are "Treasured" pelts (a setting in Hunterborn that determines what pelts are worth, so for example, a Mammoth or Sabre Cat Pelt might go for 1,000 to 5,000 gold) another example of "too easy?"

My character, Amelia Rancour, is a young Breton woman who was on her way from the Imperial City to join the College of Magic at Winterhold, when she got all mixed up in an Imperial Ambush of Stormcloaks and nearly had her head chopped off. Devoid of her servants and carriage, she suddenly realized that the wilds of Skyrim were not the best place to try to survive without magic and learned as much as she could from Faendal about hunting and wilderness survival. Using her feminine wiles she managed to "convince" Faendal to become her Follower and moreover to train her for free . . . see here is another one where I have a mixture of feelings . . . On the one hand, it does make sense that Faendal would want "something" for training you. But on the other hand it makes absolutely no sense that he is charging you thousands of gold to train up archery from say 15 to 50, and then willing to let you take away every piece of property in his house and on his person and leave him naked and alone and told to "Wait" just about anywhere you choose to do so.

In sum, while it may be "easy" or perhaps even "too easy" to get training from a follower for free, it is incongruous that someone who literally follows you around like a puppy dog, and obeys every command without question or pause for their own concern forces you to pay them to train you in a skill for which they are a competent instructor.

So yeah, I used the console to pay myself back everytime he trained me and since I had some 6000 gold, I was able to effectively train up archery from 15 to 50 within just a few levels and I let him keep the fee for the last lesson.

This combined with resetting the training regime from a limit of 5 per level to a limite of 8 per level (but note, I use MUCH slower leveling settings, so despite about 50 hours play on this toon, she is only up to level 14 or 15).

So yeah . . . I guess I've done various things that are making my game a bit "easier" than I have in many past playthroughs, but I'm not so sure I don't like it this way.

I cannot tell you how many times at about level 15 or so I've been minding my own business, trotting along on my horse just outside White Run, scoping out game to shoot and get more stinking rich from, and WHAM! right out of the foggy dusk some fricking uber Sabre Cat pounces on me, nearly kills me and turns an otherwise "pretty easy" game into a life and death struggle. The free Faendal training is behind me and there is no going back (and I'm not repeating it with any other followers . . . I figure he did it because they were romantically involved, so unless she "breaks" up with him, it wouldn't go over well to start "bartering" on the same terms from some other guy . . . or gal . . . course then Faendal does keep prattling on about Camilla so maybe he isn't really so committed to Amelia after all . . .) But the other stuff: Treasured pelts (I can literally bring down 10 wolves, 2 bears, 1 sabre cat, 5 elk and 5 deer in the span of one days hunting; this is probably something like 20K or 30K worth of coin when you consider the pelts and meat and I keep all of the ingredients, but then that adds to potions which is another major source of cash) and total number of follower (I believe I have myself set at a limit of 3, even though the default setting for EFF was like 100!? LOL!?

Should I just enjoy myself in the apparent state of being "relatively safe" and try to get as far along in this playthrough without dying, or should I agonize over whether I made the game "too easy?"

Well only you can say if 3 followers makes the game to easy. I know with Adain ( my Avatar) who did MQ and Helgen Reborn... 3 was not enough and he recruited one more. http://i.imgur.com/zghCnXn.jpg, Marcurio, Jenassa, Erik to the right and not in the picture is Lydia. You see Alduin of course, resurecting another dragon , but after he flew away, that dragon called a budy ( or something cause another dragon showed up) So they were fighting one of the named dragons ( using shock) and a fire dragon, dropping meteors. I had the dragons spawn time set so to 96 hr's with a 13 hr random, with a chance of 2 dragons spawning at any time.

But at times I have also had to dismiss followers cause they did make it to easy on my character...Marcurio is really good about that one. He's also my favorite ( non-faction) vanilla follower.

As I don't train generally, unless a needed skill like archery get's behind through dis-use ... I don't lvl my characters because of training... or crafting in general. Then again my characters are sooo specialized that somewhere in the mid 30's there lvl'ing slow's down so much that I don't even pay attention to it any more. I mean Zyne didn't lvl past 37 for almost 50 hr's of play time. 1h, block, heavy, archery, smithing...she had Marcurio along as a mage. ( In the early lvl's she did do some magic, it was in her RP, but not the latter ones)

I think as long as you follow your own RP and "rules" nothing is really wrong or out of sorts.... only if you go out of character for your character.

I add in mod's for specific RP's, sometimes they stick and I never take them out and sometimes I don't like a particular mod for one reason or the other. I ran into that with a follower mod...nothing wrong with the mod itself and the character was really well done, uniquely voiced, had a couple of quest's to help the man out ( lvl'd to high but that could have been when I did them) But... not for me or most of my characters. Just not to my taste, really.

I really like my clothing mods, but their have been some few that I took out of my order, because it changed other clothing to much. I don't mind skimpy but, I don't want every female NPC running around in what look's like a see-threw nightie....toting a battleaxe. I'm not a prude, but... geeze. Everyones different and I make no judgements on their game and how they play it....then again, I put better looking undies on my guys, but not my gals... hmm I must fix that.

Getting thousands of gold for an animal pelt really is a lot, and 3 followers are also a lot.

I agree with previous posters. You seem to be making gathering money way too easy and gaining levels way too hard. Having three followers makes the game too easy and selling a pelt for 1,000 septims is really too much. Additionally adding gold to traders to support the inflated worth of the tusks and pelts adds more ease. If you want the game harder maybe try a mod like 'Trade and Barter' or 'Expensive Investments' (which are two mod I use so I can verify it works) or even 'Darwin's Nightmare' which weighs the economics of the game against the player.

Why are you power leveling through training? Is it to keep up with the slower leveling settings? If you are frustrated you aren't leveling fast enough, why keep the mod? I would think that you would have a mod like that only if you aren't concerned about leveling quickly. Besides that, I'm surprised with 'realistic needs and diseases' active you wouldn't spend all your time training and eating (does training take time in the vanilla game? I don't remember). Maybe you should set a restriction on only gaining one level a game day through training. That's much more realistic. But how realistic you want the game to be is up to you. I think it's important to keep in mind that building the character is part of the experience, not a goal. Also, If you keep getting killed by sabrecats you might want to consider using a mod like 'passive wildlife' or 'one with nature' to make them less likely too attack you.

Also, coming form someone who has a pretty heavy mod list, it is difficult to find a good balance with mods. It takes time and experimentation. Ultimately the experience is what you make of it. If you like playing an easy game or a super hard one, the choice is yours.

Ah, thanks guys! In a following playthrough I will definitely check out those economics mods

Good reality check on the pelt values and the number of followers In Hunterborn there are four or five increments: Cheap, Default, Valued, Treasured.

I figure: it is a frozen landscape so pelts ARE going to be valuable, but maybe Treasured is one notch too high. Luckily that is a setting I can change in MCM . . .

Appreciate your feedback, and now feel clear and "empowered" to take action:

1. For this playthrough:

a. lower pelt values by one notch;

b. Always leave at least one follower at home (maybe even leave two of them). I think I'll keep them in my services but just leave them at Breezehome, and rotate them out after each sortie. When I face some serious badness I may have all of them tag along.

Apart from the suspiscion that three was making it too easy, the way they behave makes three of them quite annoying: constantly bumping into me when I'm setting up camp and processing animal carcasses, etc.

2. For next playthrough, check out an alternate economics mod.

One of the things I like to do is leave my followers somewhere they can stay out of my characters way when he or she is doing something. It's one of the reason's I like AFT, though UFO may have the same type feature. Plus depending on the mix of followers, I may set someone like Jenassa to "bow only", so that she stays out of melee range, especially if my character is melee. Ok we are heading into a cave ( know it's really prior knowledge but) I know that it's a twisty narrow tunnel cave system, I have Jenassa wait outside, sand-boxed with "dismiss but hang out here" , because her ranged attacks aren't going to be the biggest help. I does mean I have to back track, but that's ok to.

But if I had Jenassa and Marcurio, I would leave her general, because I would want her to close in and Marcurio to stay at range using magic. Just remember to set the "ignore friendly fire" and they won't start beating up on each other instead of the Draugr Deathlord you are facing.

I used UFO for a long time, then a link Mofakin posted to a "Known Mod problems" page on Steam made me think to try an alternate. I'm using EFF for this playthrough (Extensible Follower Framework).

I like it a lot. The command wheel it uses by itself is very nice. Also it seems noticeably less buggy and laggy.

One thing I do NOT like about EFF: apparently one cannot set followers to "Non-protected" status (or whatever it is called). In reading the UESP on Followers I get the impression there are effectively three stages for "protection" of NPCs:

1. Totally unprotected, subject to dying by any source of damage or lost hit points

2. "Protected" (apparently this is the "default" for all player followers in vanilla?): means the character will not die when they are reduced to zero health but will go into "staggered mode," at which point most enemy will start to ignore them. They CAN still die if they suffer more damage (e.g., from a stray arrow, or area of effect damage) but in my experience so far, no one has died in situations where I have typically had followers die using UFO.

3. Essential, which we all know means the NPC just cannot be killed at all.

The interface for "Importance" in EFF has three choices:

"Default"

"Protected"

"Essential"

Whereas UFO seems to have two (maybe three:

"Everyone dies . . ."

"You are Important . . ."

In my experience the former setting in UFO means: they die pretty often. Given "default" for all player followers is already "Protected" I'm not sure why the EFF designer configured it that way.

I suppose if I were intrepid enough, I could dig into that code and change it? Would that be a bad idea once a mod has already been put into play?

ADDIT: this is probably partly why I'm finding this playthrough to be "almost" too easy: in UFO, followers are quite mortal and I would typically lose two or three by the time I reached level 15. Uthgerd and Lydia in particular seemed to bite the bullet easy (where as Erik and Faendal seemed strangely resilient, but I digress). In EFF, they are always at least protected, so lots of scenarios where they would have been dead in UFO they just go temporarily out of the action and I finish things up and they stay alive.

Okay, so I downed the pelt values one notch. Having looked at it a bit more, I'm not sure that was the main part of my problem though. With a thieves guild helm (+10%), an herbal tea (Speech +10 IIRC) and a fortify barter potion (prices + ~15%) values for pelts when sold range from about 95 to 2500, with the high value being for something like a "Superb Snow Sabre Cat Pelt" or something similarly rare. Fine wolf pelts sell for about ~100, and fine bear for maybe 900. That doesn't seem too badly out of whack. Still one notch down will be good to add a bit more challenge.

I jettisoned Lydia and Faendal and have been cruising with just Marcurio and the game feels challenging again, meaning, if I don't watch myself I could die. Versus before when trolls and giants were virtually vaporized within seconds!