» Thu Dec 27, 2012 9:31 am YASH
Yet Another Skyrim hardcoe mod
Your game. My vision.
Introduction
YASH is my personal attempt to make the game mechanics more interesting, by adding subtle but substantial gameplay elements in a strictly lore-friendly way. It's primarily aimed at hardcoe roleplayers but due to its nature it should please just about everyone. I'm not a pro when it comes to modding but I'm stubborn as hell when I have to learn new things and I did my best to make the whole thing work as intended. I spent almost one month with spreadsheets doing the math, typing in boring numbers and generating graphs. Then I started modding. The main goal is to start as a complete nobody, suffer greatly at first and feel a real sense of accomplishment when you level up and increase your skills. YASH is not necessarily harder than vanilla but its gameplay is way, way different.
YASH abides by three strict rules:
- Never, ever affect the player with something that will NOT affect the NPCs. Never. If your Khajiit character run fast it's because ALL Khajiit in the game run fast. If your Redguard character is more skilled with one handed weapons it's because ALL Redguards are more skilled with one handed weapons. If your Bosmer character can deal more damage with bows and draw them fast it's because ALL Wood Elves are more skilled with bows. And so on. The essence of the mod is that you are NOT anything special compared to other people, save for your innate ability to shout.
- Don't disrupt the vanilla mechanics: improve them. YASH intentionally does NOT add new perks, new skills, new spells, new weapons, etc. Instead, it improves the existing game elements by making them more interesting and useful, sometimes essential to proceed.
- Replace the player skill with the character skill. YASH is not aimed at button mashers but at players who carefully plan their characters.
Major gameplay changes
Spoiler
Unique Races
They are now really unique, have different stats, traits and abilities and choosing a race actually affects the gameplay. To name a few, Altmers regenerate magicka more quickly, Orcs are best at smithing and Redguards swing one handed weapons faster. Note that as I stated above this does NOT affect the player alone. It affects the race, therefore ALL Khajiit regenerate stamina quickly, ALL Nords have a low magicka pool and regenerate it slowly, ALL Wood Elves have a low initial carry weight, etc. This obviously applies to followers as well. The list can go on and on, suffice it to say that every race has now [initial skill bonuses and abilities aside] 14 different stats, all affecting the gameplay in one way or another.
No level scaling
You're not the center of the world anymore. The world lives a life on its own and it does NOT depend on you anymore. 1645 leveled lists have been edited with a collection of xEdit scripts I made myself to make it so that the more valuable items are rare and the less valuable items are spread all over the place. There is NO hand placed loot, everything is placed with a so refined formula that some leveled lists contain up to 100 automatically generated entries. Even I have no idea where the more valuable loot is. The same applies to creatures and NPC, the harder enemies are rare and the easier are more common.
Skill requirements for weapons
Even in the lucky event that you find an Ebony Battleaxe or a Glass Bow after one hour of play, you'll not be able to use it properly until you meet the skill requirements for that weapon. You'll be slow and clunky and won't deal a great amount of damage. Again, your skill will be almost meaningless, while your character skill will be essential. I can't stress this enough: this applies to everyone else as well. If you happen to stumble upon a low skilled bandit wielding a Glass Mace you'll notice that he will be slow, clunky and not very efficient with it.
Foods and drinks
They now serve a purpose. Instead of creating a primary needs system I took a completely different approach: you're not forced to eat to stay alive but if you DO eat you'll gain good bonuses to Magicka, Health and Stamina that will last for a long while. Raw foods boost attributes a little, cooked meals boost them way more. So, you wake up in the morning, have a good breakfast and your attributes are boosted til lunch. You eat your lunch, mixing several foods to maximize your attributes and you're done until dinner. As a rule of thumb wine and meat based meals increase Health, alcoholics and fish based meals increase Magicka [hey they contain phosphorus after all!] and vegetables based meals increase Stamina. Gameplay-wise the system works by a simple association of ideas: you see meat, you think Health. You see fish, you think Magicka. You see an apple, you think Stamina. The game will warn you if you eat too much [but you will NOT receive any penalties by doing so], so eat up and don't worry about being a glutton.
Open encounter zones
Think you can enter a cave, awake a snow bear and just run like hell? Think twice. Enemies will now follow you everywhere, in some cases if you make a Draugr angry enough he'll chase you to the death outside his barrow! Be more careful next time you want to loot a cave.
Altered items names and stats
Everything [and I mean everything] is altered in some way or another. All potions have been renamed with meaningful names so that you know their magnitudes with a blink of an eye -- the 6 magnitudes are now added as 6 different suffixes: Weak, Average, Strong, Great, Extreme and Ultimate. All items have been reweighted and all weapons damages and armor ratings have been altered to match their material inherent power [Iron is weak, Dragonbone is REALLY strong etc].
Improved combat AI
Enemies are now smarter. They'll dodge and block your attacks more often, be more aggressive when you give them openings and know whether it's time to flee or time to continue fighting. More than 100 AI stats have been altered to improve the combat system.
Unique Races
They are now really unique, have different stats, traits and abilities and choosing a race actually affects the gameplay. To name a few, Altmers regenerate magicka more quickly, Orcs are best at smithing and Redguards swing one handed weapons faster. Note that as I stated above this does NOT affect the player alone. It affects the race, therefore ALL Khajiit regenerate stamina quickly, ALL Nords have a low magicka pool and regenerate it slowly, ALL Wood Elves have a low initial carry weight, etc. This obviously applies to followers as well. The list can go on and on, suffice it to say that every race has now [initial skill bonuses and abilities aside] 14 different stats, all affecting the gameplay in one way or another.
No level scaling
You're not the center of the world anymore. The world lives a life on its own and it does NOT depend on you anymore. 1645 leveled lists have been edited with a collection of xEdit scripts I made myself to make it so that the more valuable items are rare and the less valuable items are spread all over the place. There is NO hand placed loot, everything is placed with a so refined formula that some leveled lists contain up to 100 automatically generated entries. Even I have no idea where the more valuable loot is. The same applies to creatures and NPC, the harder enemies are rare and the easier are more common.
Skill requirements for weapons
Even in the lucky event that you find an Ebony Battleaxe or a Glass Bow after one hour of play, you'll not be able to use it properly until you meet the skill requirements for that weapon. You'll be slow and clunky and won't deal a great amount of damage. Again, your skill will be almost meaningless, while your character skill will be essential. I can't stress this enough: this applies to everyone else as well. If you happen to stumble upon a low skilled bandit wielding a Glass Mace you'll notice that he will be slow, clunky and not very efficient with it.
Foods and drinks
They now serve a purpose. Instead of creating a primary needs system I took a completely different approach: you're not forced to eat to stay alive but if you DO eat you'll gain good bonuses to Magicka, Health and Stamina that will last for a long while. Raw foods boost attributes a little, cooked meals boost them way more. So, you wake up in the morning, have a good breakfast and your attributes are boosted til lunch. You eat your lunch, mixing several foods to maximize your attributes and you're done until dinner. As a rule of thumb wine and meat based meals increase Health, alcoholics and fish based meals increase Magicka [hey they contain phosphorus after all!] and vegetables based meals increase Stamina. Gameplay-wise the system works by a simple association of ideas: you see meat, you think Health. You see fish, you think Magicka. You see an apple, you think Stamina. The game will warn you if you eat too much [but you will NOT receive any penalties by doing so], so eat up and don't worry about being a glutton.
Open encounter zones
Think you can enter a cave, awake a snow bear and just run like hell? Think twice. Enemies will now follow you everywhere, in some cases if you make a Draugr angry enough he'll chase you to the death outside his barrow! Be more careful next time you want to loot a cave.
Altered items names and stats
Everything [and I mean everything] is altered in some way or another. All potions have been renamed with meaningful names so that you know their magnitudes with a blink of an eye -- the 6 magnitudes are now added as 6 different suffixes: Weak, Average, Strong, Great, Extreme and Ultimate. All items have been reweighted and all weapons damages and armor ratings have been altered to match their material inherent power [Iron is weak, Dragonbone is REALLY strong etc].
Improved combat AI
Enemies are now smarter. They'll dodge and block your attacks more often, be more aggressive when you give them openings and know whether it's time to flee or time to continue fighting. More than 100 AI stats have been altered to improve the combat system.
Minor gameplay changes
Spoiler
- skill increases [and therefore leveling up] are half as slow
- no difficulty settings. Altering the game difficulty in the game menu has no effect anymore: YASH has its own difficulty setting
- you can drop quest items. They are renamed as something like *Golden Claw*, so that players know they are important [still working on this - way harder than I thought due to how the USKP alters several quest records]
- race-specific skills aside, all initial skills start from 0. You read it right, you start as a complete nobody
- running and attacking with melee weapons drains stamina. Draining all your stamina pool will NOT prevent you from running but it will prevent sprints and power attacks
- potions cure over time
- the first perk of each skill tree has a skill requirement
- carry weight is not stamina dependent anymore. Instead, you gain a bonus to your carrying capacity at each level, race-dependent, regardless of which attribute you choose to increase at level up
- timescale is set to 12, so that 1 hour in game = 5 minutes IRL, to accomodate the foods and drinks timed boosts
- you can chop wood 10 times in a row
- creatures venoms are more letal and last longer
- the player has no starting spells anymore
- the spinning death animation is replaced by a ragdoll
- common jobs will pay less, houses cost more, bounties are higher, spell books cost more, etc.
- can't remember, there are hundreds of minor changes, can't list them all
- skill increases [and therefore leveling up] are half as slow
- no difficulty settings. Altering the game difficulty in the game menu has no effect anymore: YASH has its own difficulty setting
- you can drop quest items. They are renamed as something like *Golden Claw*, so that players know they are important [still working on this - way harder than I thought due to how the USKP alters several quest records]
- race-specific skills aside, all initial skills start from 0. You read it right, you start as a complete nobody
- running and attacking with melee weapons drains stamina. Draining all your stamina pool will NOT prevent you from running but it will prevent sprints and power attacks
- potions cure over time
- the first perk of each skill tree has a skill requirement
- carry weight is not stamina dependent anymore. Instead, you gain a bonus to your carrying capacity at each level, race-dependent, regardless of which attribute you choose to increase at level up
- timescale is set to 12, so that 1 hour in game = 5 minutes IRL, to accomodate the foods and drinks timed boosts
- you can chop wood 10 times in a row
- creatures venoms are more letal and last longer
- the player has no starting spells anymore
- the spinning death animation is replaced by a ragdoll
- common jobs will pay less, houses cost more, bounties are higher, spell books cost more, etc.
- can't remember, there are hundreds of minor changes, can't list them all
What I'm still working on: magic and enchanting system, skill requirements for armors and lockpicking, lock bashing, some minor features and whatever comes to mind until I'm fully satisfied with this thing.
Planned release date: somewhere around march 2013.
