I'm interested in ideas to self-gimp a brand new playthrough. Not necessarily to make it more challenging or balanced, I'm just curious as to how you discipline yourself to work around features that don't suit your taste. To kick-start it, I'll list a couple of things that I set out for myself that enhanced my enjoyment of the game.

- Difficulty: Expert (seems the best option in terms of balance between 'challenge' and 'proportion') as default, changing it to Master when fighting dragons (keeps them more menacing);

- Smithing/Enchanting/Alchemy: Skill Level is capped at Character Level x 2. A simple self-gimp, but it worked wonders for me. Also, I use the Smithing Level as a guiding line for the equipment I'm able to use. For example: if I'm level 20 in Smithing I only use or enchant Iron equipment, so on and so forth. Everything else I find I just ignore it or sell it. Because of the pletora of dungeons and loot available, I end up enjoying reaching new levels, it becomes a better part of the whole experience.

- No "Middle-Saves": this means I only save a game before leaving a settlement/dungeon, never in the middle of it. This ends up making me care for my character a bit more, kiting and fleeing become a part of the battles and it makes it much more interesting to plan out my explorations;

- Loot: I never profit more than 500 gold out of a selling loot from a single Dungeon. To make it more "seamless", I just carry loot I find interesting, not worrying about value. When I'm back in a settlement and I reach the gold cap, I just put all the excess inside a random barrel and use the console to destroy it. A simple and quick system, helps me discipline my budget.

- Follower's Dead is Dead: when a Follower goes into subdued stance (which, for us, would mean dead) I finish them myself (only way to permadeath them) to "rp" his death. This ended up "forcing" me - in a positive way - to search for new Followers, and also made me change my approach to combat. I ended up using Heal Other as an actual useful spell other than a RP tool. Now I actually care for the person travelling with me, he's more than a loot-mule.

- Fast-Travel: I only use it for return journeys. If a place is brand new for me, I avoid FTing to the nearest known place and just follow the compass marker. This enhanced the joy of exploring, finding out new places as I went along.

- Potions: I can only use Potions I craft, loot-potions are just ignored. Not only this made Alchemy into a much more relevant Skill, but gathering materials became an interesting/useful task in and of itself.

No perks.

Some nice ideas in there but, how about doing DID for your character as well as any companion.

i am not a masochist

Absolutely my friend, but I think DiD is such an extreme experience that it has its own intrinsic logic built into it. I plan to have a character specifically tailored for that, I'm just waiting for my work schedule to allow for more than 45 mins. playsessions/day. DiD requires a lot of care.

Other than that, I think there's a middle ground where I can have a more casual playthrough, something in-between.

What bothers me about my playthrough is I maxed smithing and enchanting pretty early. That means all of the gear I find is useless. I'm in double-enchanted dragonplate. I'm not going to find an upgrade to anything, so it kind of ruins the joy gained by finding an upgrade organically.

I would restrict my character to alchemy only. Make each piece of gear found count.

Dont gimp yourself on alchemy blacksmith and enchanting by limiting it at x2 your level just don't buy anything from NPC's to level them just use material's you find its much more fun, and taking the time to go hunting and picking herbs can actually be quit enjoyable, and you may get some random encounters which are always fun.

Tried that, and you're right, it is fun this way. Thing is, from what I've experienced, even then it can get pretty broken pretty fast. x2 cap helps it in the way of exploring each set to the fullest as you're leveling. But I guess in the end these are two ways of reaching the same goal.

The way I do it is simple; I don't fight. Pretty much Ever. My follower can kill dragons and stuff, and it amuses me greatly to wander around looking for minor health potions while draugr try desperately to tickle me as Jordis wipes them all out.

The other day i let my follower kill a special boss all on her own; it was her and a noob ghost that got wiped out all the time versus about 12 draugr and a special draugr death overlord, and she came out of it with 50% of her health remaining...

Was pretty funny, imo.

My self imposed rules are ...

Companion dead is dead.

No fast travel.

Make a save every time my character wakes up from sleeping. If I die, I have to go back to my last sleep save and assume that the events leading to his death were a dream.

Never go back to an earlier save for any reason other than death or to avoid a bug.

I'm contemplating a no potion rule, or attempting to find a mod that makes potions work over time. Being able to instantly drink and benefit from ten potions at once during the heat of battle doesn't sit well.

Also, while it's not exactly a rule, I only use found equipment. I don't build up the skills to craft the uber stuff anyway.

I always play games as difficult as possible due to their inherent exploits like jumping to inaccessible areas to avoid physical foes etc. DiD is kinda harsh so I only resort to a way back save as insurance, kinda cheating the true die hard experience I usually play though.

Other stuff I do:

- 4 potions max
- no carrying any more than 1 extra weapon and certainly not armor etc
- accept enchanted/items as they are
- even essential followers are left outside to guard the entrance/way-points
- only matched armor, if I even wear it

Balance is hard for sure, it takes a great deal of imagination as I'm sure you're aware.

Sweet.

I only go up to steel plate armour. I'll collect better ones, and improve my plate, but I won't use anything above steel, as anything above that makes me feel out of place. Daedric artifacts are the only exception.
I don't limit myself in any other way however, though I won't buy materials unless I need it to craft something I want (generally corundum).

Here's what I do for my rogue:

Difficult set to master.

No magic spells of any kind, ever. Staffs are a case by case basis (I'll use special staves such as Wabbajack or Sanguine's Rose, but not anything like "Staff of Fireballs")

I won't buy crafting ingredients for smithing or alchemy, all of this I find out in the wild. I also won't buy filled soul gems.

If it's a new place, I won't fast travel.

I don't really feel good about that one. Followers can and will fall to their own idiocy and paint themselves into a corner, and since they dragged you into it you may hesitate the killing blow because it just wasn't fair.

I simply tailor the armour and dam levels to my own desires.

Bit of playing, and I've decided that about 350 is the right armour for me, and dual handed weps doing about 90, max 110 for me is a good level.

It's not really a matter of self-gimping my playthrough, just in what I use to make the game more enjoyable.

The gimping that I'm thinking about is a simple one. Material Limitation. Since they removed the 'need certain material to hurt certain things' you can do the whole game with Iron. Not Banded Iron, not Imperial...just Iron. Or Hide/Fur. Make yourself a savage barbarian, wearing only fur armor, wielding an Iron Battleaxe, and living off the land (all healing must be done by food/eating ingrediants). No potions because potions are for girly-men. No enchanting at all either. Nothing between you and the harshness of Skyrim but some fur, and your trusty iron axe. Maxing out Smithing so you can upgrade those is highly recommended.

I think that would provide plenty of challenge.

I'm a big fan of what you term "no middle saves". I just read Morchai's save on sleep idea, and I dig it. I have my characters (generally) sleep at night already, and it would make those nights lost in the woods all the more tense. And it's a lot less awkward than my current save outside a dungeon technique, where if I die inside my rationalization for moving on and not trying again is "Bad Vibes"

As a pure mage character:

* I never sell items - if I or my companion can't use it i drop it. I do buy items like spell tomes but the limited gold from not being able to sell or pick locks (below) makes them harder to choose between sometimes.
* I never pick locks - i'll have my companion do it if they can - many times they can't
* Perks - I select the perk that has the highest stat, not the one i'd necessarily prefer. If the highest stats perks are currently maxed - I choose the 2nd highest and so on. Example: Conjuration 37 - but the next available perk is @ 40 - I move to the next highest level tree.
* Companion Dead is dead, but don't finish them myself - they do get themselves killed sometimes.
* Except for carriage hire - no fast travel

There are others but those are my main self imposed rules for my pure mage

I also really like the only save on sleep idea. A potion rule I have is that I can only quaff one if I stagger the enemy. I'll allow the enemy to recover after I'm done quaffing to simulate actually taking the time to drink it.

Since it is so easy to stagger someone though I usually have to force myself to only stagger once or twice per combat. Easy enough for a pure mage, as staggers only come from dual casts and random frost atronach attacks.

That's true. The way Followers' scripts are as of vanilla version, I can see myself having to kind of ease up on Follower DiD if they do something utterly stupid.


Absolutely, I don't disagree with that actually. I think it was just a matter of language then, because when I said 'self-gimping' I actually meant it exactly in the way you put it: to make the game more enjoyable.

With new playthrough my character isn't using any magic (no scrolls or staffs either, can only wear enchanted stuff that he has found). Pure sword and board. May not be that challenging as you'd maybe want to, but its fun

I'm not doubting you, but after almost a month playing I have yet to see one of my Followers have a permadeath.

I just did a bit of Forum research and apparently what happens is that, with mages, a Follower's permadeath seems seamless because of area spells that you may cast. It makes sense, especially because I have yet to cast any Destruction spell (I'm big melee fan).

What drove me to start finishing them off to RP their deaths was dragon fights. It may be a bug (though I doubt it), but even when facing Elder Dragons, sometimes the dragon would land and either breath or bite attack a follower. At best, they fall to their knees. Dragon takes off for another flying round and, most of the times, the follower would just come back up. That seems a bit excessive for me, takes a lot of the menacing aspect of facing dragons.

They will die from enemies from time to time. Enemy mages can kill them with AoE spells just as you can. Archers and melee fighters don't attack downed characters and normally ignore them, but they may accidentally hit them and kill them that way. Lydia died my first playthrough because Falmer must have a weird hitbox and one of them attempting to swing at me hit her instead. RIP Lydia...

Well, then I'm just out of bad luck I guess. What I've seen so far is even mages behaving like you said: they don't attack the follower once he's dropped. Oh well, no biggie, but I'll pay attention to it.

But anyways, with Forum Avatars like yours and mine we shouldn't be having a healthy exchange of gameplay experiences right? So, here...