Description
The full list of changes this mod makes are too numerous to mention here, but I have included a definitive list in the Docs section for those who wish to read it. Instead, I will give a quick overview of some of the main areas, and try to explain the feeling I am aiming for.
Leveled Lists and Loot
The Manual of Arms and Armour books state that the higher material grade items can only be found in ancient treasure hordes. Lies! Get to a certain level in vanilla Oblivion, and every man and his dog wears ebony, elven, glass, and even daedric armor.
No more—the loot system has been exhaustively overhauled. The items carried by NPCs and in loot are now capped at a certain level appropriate to the character and location. You won’t see bandits wearing anything above chainmail armour, and generic loot has also been capped at Mithril and Orcish material. The best loot has been transferred to the boss chests located at the very end of dungeons, and only ancient tombs and ruins have a chance of concealing the highest level glass, elven, and ebony gear. To find daedric gear, you must travel to the plains of Oblivion itself, or delve deep into the twisted dungeons in the realm of the Mad God. Futhermore, items will no longer stop spawning when you get to higher levels—iron armour will remain common throughout your adventure, as it should be.
Boss chests also contain various other valuable treasures, ranging from silver and gold clutter, to valuable gemstones and jewellery. This acts as the prize for completing a dungeon, and will be the primary source of income for dungeon delvers. Ayleid containers may also contain additional Welkynd Stones, and Varla Stones can even occasionally be found in boss chests. Thieves also have a chance of finding more valuable loot in homes across Cyrodiil.
Ayleid coins and gold clutter have been added to act as treasure items, and several underused vanilla items have been distributed to existing loot lists. This includes fine iron and steel weapons, all enchanted arrows, and leather bracers, amongst others.
All weapon and armour loot will now also have random health and enchantment charge, determined based on the inventory it is found in. NPCs skilled in Armourer can also carry items with up to 125% repair condition.
Creatures and NPCs
Creatures will no longer stop spawning when you get to a certain level—you can now always encounter Zombies, Imps, Scamps, etc regardless of your level. Furthermore, all random spawns points have been capped, so that tough creatures such as Liches, Minotaur Lords, Storm Atronachs, etc will now only spawn at boss-level points, usually at the end of dungeons. Boss chests contain the best loot, but they’re also the best guarded!
To balance this feature, some low level creatures now have a chance of spawning in groups once you reach higher levels. For example, you can now encounter a pack or wolves in the wilderness, or a squad of skeletons in a dungeon.
Speaking of skeletons, they will now wear helmets appropriate to their level. You can now easily tell skeleton champions apart by their ebony or elven helmets before you go charging into combat.
Character Stats
Player health is now calculated as twice your current endurance, with no level up bonus. This means your maximum health is less, and tank characters will have to rely more on good quality armour instead. It also prevents the meta game of raising endurance early, which is off-putting, difficult to understand for new players, and breaks immersion.
Magicka regenerates much more slowly, but spells in general cost much less if you are skilled in the school. This means that spamming spells in no longer a viable tactic for most characters unless they specifically excel in the arcane arts. Characters with spell support may find that they need to pack some more potions of sorcery for their adventures. Draining a spellcaster’s magicka is also far more determintal now, and will force them to engage you prematurely in close combat.
The fatigue system has been overhauled to create a balance similar to Morrowind. Fatigue will drain whilst running, but only VERY slowly—much slower than it regenerates whilst not running. The rate of fatigue drain is influenced by the amount of equipment your carrying, so travelling light will prevent you getting tired as fast. Those skilled in athletics may even be able to regenerate fatigue whilst running when they are carrying less, and a master of athletics will always slowly regenerate fatigue, regardless of their encumbrance. Fatigue is now a resource that has to be monitored during combat, just like magicka or health. Potions, food, and drinks all restore more fatigue, and can be found more often in loot. You may find that you have to slow to a walk or rest for a short period of time between fights, and this immerses you in your character's sense of exhaustion. It's also a great opportunity to survey your surroundings and take in some of the amazing Cyrodiilic vistas that you usually run straight by.
I designed the new fatigue system with a low-level, heavy armour spellsword, unskilled in athletics in mind (the worst-case scenario). I found that the new fatigue drain whilst running was perfectly playable—you only have to slow to a walk for less than 30 seconds at most after heavy combat to regenerate your fatigue fully from zero. Running alone with no breaks will usually take 5 minutes or more to fully drain your fatigue.
Your maximum encumbrance is now three times your strength, rather than five times. This is quite a severe limitation on your inventory space early in the game, and you will now have to make more decisions as to whether you really need to pick an item up. Do you really need to be carrying a shield? Should you carry a shortword as backup instead of a longsword? Can you wear clothing or light armour instead of a piece of heavy armour? Do I really need an Alembic? These will be things that you now have to consider, and it will enhance your immersion in the game world. Don't worry, characters with high strength will still be able to wear a full set of heavy armour, and feather is now a much more valuable enchantment at all stages of the game. Burden can be more potent against your foes too, as the effect is more likely to immobilise them and will also make their fatigue drain quicker due to the fatigue changes.
The movement speed penalty for worn equipment weight has been reduced, meaning that heavy armour has one reduced downside versus light armour. The Light Armor master rank bonus has also been reduced, meaning that heavy armour will always provide more protection than light, making it the armour of choice for tank characters. Playing a heavy knight should now be less painfully slow, and heavy armour in general is less of a dud choice.
Gameplay Balancing
A range of other tweaks have been included to generally balance various other aspects of the game and make all play-styles feel more natural and worthwhile. Overpowered aspects of the game have been toned down, whereas some others have been modified to behave more like you would expect to enhance immersion. These include changes to alchemy, sneak, pick-pocketing, hand-to-hand fighting, barter, persuasion, skill leveling rates, and more. The aim here is subtlety. Wherever possible, only minimal behind-the-scenes settings have been altered so that most information pertaining to the vanilla game's item and character stats, etc is largely still correct.
Although slight, these changes can have a large effect on how you play the game. For instance, playing an unarmed monk is now a perfectly valid choice, as you can be skilled in marksman and hand-to-hand will remain a viable back-up combat skill throughout the game. Alchemy is less potent for those not skilled in the craft, and so it is harder to create potions more powerful than those found in loot for most characters. Persuasion and barter are much harder unless a character specialises in them—some merchants may not even haggle with novice mercantile characters at all! The list goes on.
These tweaks were all carefully designed by me with inspiration from the vanilla settings, often using extensive spreadsheets and play testing. I tried my best not to make any changes that could be considered ham-fisted or arbitrary. Settings were only changed if I thought it was necessary, fit with the vanilla feel, and would improve the gameplay experience. Wherever possible, I built around the vanilla settings instead of replacing them entirely. For example, most fatigue settings are the same, and only a small handful have been altered to create the new system.
Included in these tweaks are fixes for creature power attack damage and damage for creatures which carry weapons. In the vanilla game, creature power attacks did no extra damage, and some creatures with weapons actually did less damage than those that didn't.
Consistency
All the changes made by this mod have been made to be consistent with the vanilla game—the goal is to make it appear as though they could have been there from the start. This means that all loading screens, menu text, and tutorial messages have been updated to reflect the new features. A handful of new loading screens have also been added to explain extra details, and these all use vanilla loading screens which were rarely seen in the vanilla game.
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