Elder Scrolls Gameplay Concept

This is a complete overhaul of the mechanics of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I'll be critiquing the
mechanics and then offering my solution. This is designed for a sequel / remake.

Bethesda used to be known for making top-notch RPGs. Sure, Morrowind and Fallout 3 had bad
aspects, and the writing wasn’t perfect, but it was still iconic. Then, as time progressed,
Bethesda's writing began to go downhill, while their gameplay only improved slightly. They
began to expect modders to fix all the problems of their games, without fixing it themselves.
Bethesda games have become a canvas for aspiring modders. And while that's great for
modders such as myself, I don't think it’s an excuse to make mediocre games. Skyrim could
have been great, and while a lot of people certainly look back at it with that view, I think if you
were to actually critique it you would realize it's mediocre at best. The thing is, the formula for
Bethesda games is perfect. Like, why else would I be prepared to write a 170 page essay on
how I would fix it, the problem simply lies in the fact that the execution has been terrible for the
past 12 years.

Skyrim's writing was… really bad. Probably due to the fact that they had their game designers
write, and gave their very few writers extremely fast quotas. Yeah, I don't think anyone would
disagree how terrible it is. It's fine if your like going airplane mode through the story but the more
you play you start to realize how none of it makes any sense, how the player has no agency or
decision making, how there's very little roleplaying in this RPG, and how every quest boils down
to sacking a dungeon. They took the RP out of ARPG, and left us with an Action Game. Mods
can fix this somewhat, but it's really a fundamental issue. I'll be touching this a little, but I'll be
focusing on another issue - the gameplay. Skyrim's gameplay is completely broken. It's
unbalanced, despite trying TOO hard hardest to be balanced, it's not gripping, it's not intense,
it's not hard.

And yes, while the writing is bad, I don’t want it to become the Witcher 3 or Baldur’s Gate. I think
a fatal flaw with a lot of the people comparing these games to Skyrim is a lack of understanding
of how Elder Scrolls games are RPGs. They are RPGs in the way that the player can become
immersed in them. No games offer the freedom that Elder Scrolls does. They’re essentially
fantasy life sims, allowing the Player to live whatever kind of life they want to. That’s what I’m
going to be leaning in on a lot. So those are the three main things I’m going to be focusing on in
this overhaul: Writing, Gameplay and Freedom.

In my personal dissection of the problems with this game, I'll be using Patrician's Skyrim
Retrospective for a lot of the research, so I recommend you watch those videos if you haven't
already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHP02JEC5H0. I'll also credit Fudgemuppet for
some of the credit here too for their Elder Scrolls 6 series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_WpbVV_l0. Finally, I'll be giving credit as I go to many of
the mods out there, who have inspired large portions of this video. If Bethesda had any brains,
they would do this too.
So all of that is why I'm hitting you with how I would fix Skyrim's gameplay, for implementation in
Elder Scrolls 6 and/or a rewrite.

Why bother with the rewrite? Well, 1. I was in a period where I had a lot of free time. And once I
got sick of playing modded Skyrim, I decided I would rewrite it. 2. It's my way of showing
Bethesda what could be done. On the off chance they see this, I would I hope it could inspire
him. Alternatively, what they've got planned might be far superior, and this will give them
something to laugh at. 3. If ES6 ends up repeating Skyrim's mistakes, it will give me the ability
to reference this doc and say I would have done better.

Please don’t assume I hate Skyrim. Obviously, I wouldn’t devote a 170 page splurge to it if I
didn’t love it. The thing is, it’s an insanely mediocre game with absolutely no competition. For
whatever reason, no one out there has tried to make a Bethesda style RPG. Maybe I wouldn’t
be so butthurt about Skyrim’s downfalls if I hadn’t been playing it for the past 15 years. That
said, it’s such a massive missed opportunity that I can’t comfortably say that’s the case. The
hangup for me is that it has so much potential, it just failed in almost every way imaginable. The
most significant of these ways was the writing. I won’t be rewriting Skyrim here - that’s for a
project later down the line - but I want anyone who reads this to know that this gameplay ideally
resides alongside much better writing, Morrowind style. Obviously a little bit of streamlining is
totally okay, but I’m talking better lore, better villains, better consequences, better choices… the
lot.

So yeah, feel free to do with this as you will. You’ll see as I go on I’m pretty big into roleplaying
and the older games, but I’m not biased. In fact, I think Skyrim streamlined a lot of things well,
and I’m going to be streamlining certain features even more. I’m going to mostly be fixing and
building on Skyrim’s existing features, rather than completely changing them. While a
BOTW-style cooking and alchemy system would be really cool, for mostly convenience sake,
and to serve as a semi-retrospective, I’d rather fix Skyrim’s systems. The new systems however
should change a lot, and that’s where you’ll see more outside influence.

The idea here is to create the ideal ES gameplay formula, not that I necessarily expect ES6 to
be this good. So, with that out of the way, let's get into the gameplay overhaul. Feel free to
browse through the many chapters at your pleasure, although I would recommend that you don't
skip anything and read in all in the correct order, because it's designed as a complete, unbroken
experience.
Graphics
Graphics is an interesting discussion, because there’s clearly two camps. There’s those who
want the pinnacle of realism - the best graphics in any game ever made. I mean, I’m sure
you;ve seen those ~Leaked Elder Scrolls 6 Gameplay!~ videos in Unreal Engine. I think this is
pretty silly, because nowhere has Bethesda ever said they were going to have such crazy
graphics. It’s not really necessary either. If the graphics end up resembling Starfield, maybe with
improved lighting and flora because damn is New Atlantis ugly in certain lightings, and its trees
look terrible, that would be fine.

Assassin’s Creed and Horizon are series with great graphics that I think would fit in nicely.
Modded Skyrim graphics are also unbeatable. I think it’s quite funny that Modders have made
Skyrim look better than ES6 likely will. Rudy ENB is a graphical mod that kind of strikes a good
mix between performance, realism and fantasy:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4796.
UI
The UI in Skyrim was geared for consoles, even if the player isn’t using a console… We need a
better UI that works on both systems. SkyUI easily fits the bill here:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/12604. Here’s some photos to
demonstrate it:
It’s just much more intuitive and easy to navigate, for both PC and Console. The different tabs
can easily be navigated with the bumpers.

Visually, if it looked something like Skyblivion, as seen below, I would be satisfied. It strikes that
medium between fantasy vibes and the modern preset of Skyrim:

For other HUD features:

Actor Info Bars and boss bars like in TrueHUD:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/62775
Oxygen Metre: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/64532
Horse Stamina: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/47076
Quick Loot like in FO4: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/21085

The HUD should be immersive and non-intrusive. This means that the meters only appear when
the player is using them, the crosshair is contextual and only appears while in use, and all other
HUD features only appear when necessary. All the bars only appear in combat or when
decreasing, and the compass can be activated and deactivated, making the HUD completely
invisible when walking through the environment and taking in the graphics.
When the player opens the character menu, it looks much the same. Up will bring them to the
skill tree, down will bring them to the map, left will bring them to the magic menu and right will
bring them to the inventory. In the bottom row the time, date and level are displayed, next to a
prompt that says “compass on/off”. By pressing the “sheath” button in this menu, the player can
turn their compass off and on in gameplay resulting in the HUD having 0 intrusive elements
during normal gameplay. Finally, in place of the “favorites” menu, which was clunky and slowed
down gameplay too much, the wait key now opens a wheel menu. The player can press r1/l1 to
scroll through 4 separate wheels, all of which have 8 slots. Players can favorite an item to add it
to any of the slots on these wheels. It’s kind of like the Starfield favorites menu, but only uses 1
key instead of 4, and has more accessible slots. Opening this menu slows time, but doesn’t
freeze it, to prevent breaking the stream of gameplay. Holding it keeps the menu open, letting go
closes the menu. The player can use the select key to equip their chosen items, before letting
go to resume gameplay. This should make gameplay, especially for mages, much faster paced.
It's only downside is it limits the player to 32 slots total, but I doubt many people exceeded that
on the favorite menu anyway.

Most instances of powers are removed. The power key in Skyrim is now shared with what
functions as a quick spell button. Similar to in Oblivion, Players can press the button with a spell
equipped to it to cast a single spell before going back to their equipped weapon. I don’t know if
this was the case with anyone else, but I felt like powers were easily exploitable, yet rarely got
used. So, of the existing powers in Skyrim, very few will remain. All of the others (mostly racial
powers and standing stones) are removed or a more immersive experience. This is just
preference obviously, but I don't find it very immersive for certain ethnicities or birthsigns to have
magic powers. It’s much better for these effects to organically be weaved into the gameplay, so
Players end up seeing more of it anyway.

Camera
We need to overhaul third person gameplay for Skyrim, since it was really terrible there. I’ve got
a pretty simple list of mods that do just that, first of which is True Directional Movement:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/51614. Most importantly it included
directional '360°' movement. Importantly, this should only happen when the Player doesn’t have
their weapon drawn, since combat requires it. So that the Player can look at their character’s
face while they are walking through a city or something, which is something you can’t do in
Starfield and annoys me endlessly. It also includes mounted directional movement, head
tracking, procedural leaning, improved mounted archery and swimming up/down with the sneak
and jump buttons. ALL of these features should make it across. Also, Better Third Person
Selection: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/64339.
For the 3RD person camera, something similar to Chivalry II is required, due to the combat
systems. See here:

Since it’s convenient to mention now, I wouldn’t mind if the graphics were something along
these lines as well.

As for First Person players, do something like Improved Camera SE:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/93962. No activities should force a
certain perspective. Besides, it would be really cool to be able to see your own body in first
person.
Quality of Life
These are quality of life features, mostly applicable to all Bethesda games, which are still yet to
be implemented in Starfield, and so require addressing in terms of ES6.

To Your Face SE: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/24720

I'm Walkin' Here: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/27742
Vampires Cast No Shadow 2: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/46107
Security Overhaul SKSE: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/58224
Name Those Ash Piles: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/24701
Rain Extinguishes Fire: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/80419
Splashes of Storms: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/72115
Footprints: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/3808
Wade In Water: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/71418
Fire Hurts: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/74064
Sleeping Expanded: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/59250
Go to Bed: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4224
Use Those Blankets: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/75481
Genuinely Intelligent Soul Trap: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/15755
Enhanced Invisibility: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/61950
Enhanced Reanimation: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/43500
Simple Offense Suppression: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/41764
Simply Knock: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/14098
Sharpen Other Swords: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/75237
No More Standing Too Close: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4784
A lantern equipable at any time, similar to the torch in Fallout. Hangs on the Player’s hip, so it
doesn't need to be held. Like Quicklight SE:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/12633

There’s many mods like these, they are just what came to mind. Essentially, I want the world to
be extremely reactive and immersive; to the point it almost feels real.
Animations
Animations need serious improvements in any future Elder Scrolls game. Starfield definitely
made progressive, I love the facial animations despite so many people disliking them, but
there’s still room for improvement. As with the UI, it’s pretty obvious what makes good
animations, so I’m not going to go into detail on them in particular. I’d like to say that games like
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Horizon: Forbidden West and God of War: Ragnarok should be a big
influence. Just make them feel good, y'know, because Skyrim’s animations do not feel good. but
there’s a couple topics I’d like to discuss first. Apparently, Starfield includes updates to the
animation engine, so this should be a safe bet.

First, and arguably the most important, is immersive equipment displays:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/62001. This displays unequipped gear
and custom items on the player or NPCs. It displays every piece of equipment on the player or
NPCs, at once - 1h/2h swords and axes, maces, daggers, staves, bows, crossbows, shields and
torches. It extends to misc items as well, like potions, gold and keys. If we are integrating this
into ES6, then it obviously needs limitations. Like only one two handed weapon can be
displayed, maybe the most recent one, at a time. But the effect is still there. If the player has two
one-handed weapons and one two-handed weapon on their person, all of them should be
visible. Although, maybe give the player the option to make them invisible from the inventory. It
just makes the game so much more immersive to see your weapons on you, and infinitely more
badass to sheath a sword and then pull out a battle axe from behind you. Another change I
would make it that only favorite items get displayed, but for the most part this is amazing as is.
Also add greatsword scabbards, dual wield sheathing and the ability to unequip quivers. Horses
also display the stuff you store in them. This is something i was disappointed to see missing
from Starfield. Hopefully Skyrim can recorrect it.

One of the best addons to this mod is Read the Room:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/77605, which makes your character
unequip their helmet and put it on their waist when they're in a passive area. Simple mod, but a
great enhancement that like no RPGs do, making it super unique.

Likewise, Starfield player characters have very little interaction with the environment. We need
something to the effect of immersive interactions. Nothing too extreme or movement debilitating,
but simply a reach animation when interacting with things that has no effect on movement. Just
a non-intrusive grab animation. Here’s what I’m thinking; when the player interacts with an
object - where that be looting, levers, doors, pickpocketing, lock picking, harvesting ingredients,
opening containers or picking up items, the character will reach out to the location of that
interaction. If the item is high, they might reach up, if low they might crouch slightly, regardless,
their hand reaches that item and then they pull back. There’s no annoying delays or what not -
there’s simply some more interaction in the world in a non-intrusive way. It wouldn't even lock
you in place, just an animation of you reaching out.
Change the idle animations in combat and non-combat situations when holding a weapon. Like
in Smooth Combat: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/52145. So players
walking through a peaceful meadow with their sword drawn or NPCs chopping wood don’t look
like they're ready for war. This is another thing omitted from Starfield. If your weapon is
equipped while walking through a settlement, it looks like you're holding up every NPC that
walks past you. Also add animations for eating, drinking potions and using poisons, to enhance
immersion. Like Animated Eating: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4652.

Add more idle animations, not only for players but for NPCs. NPCs should have more idles in
general. They should also have conditional variants, like elderly people should walk around as if
they are elderly, and children should act lively, people should walk like they're cold in the snow
etc. NPCs should move around more and express themselves when they are talking to you, with
their own animations. Like Gesture Animation Remix:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/64420. I don’t have a huge problem
with Starfield’s characters in dialogue, but I definitely think they could use some more flavor.
More expressions. Like Conditional Expressions:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/45148, and
Conditional Idles: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/34006. I don’t want
NPCs to be staring at me blankly during dialogue.

Skyrim NPCs have pretty much 7 or so general animations, negating combat and magic
(there're a few more than this but I'm generalizing of course). Some more variety is desperately
needed. Instead of animals just guarding their kill, and looking at you menacingly if you get too
close. How about Bears/wolves, predators and such actually bite into and eat the deer they just
killed? NPCs that are scared will fidget at their sheaths, and cower at sounds in the dungeon.
Guards sharpen their swords with a whetstone, fishermen dig into their bait bag and hook it to
the fishing pole, citizens in taverns will eat the food in their inventories. If TES VI wants to sell us
on a living breathing world, animation is a big part of that. NPCs, both people and creatures,
shouldn’t just be walking around, waiting for the character to interact with them. If they are
actually in the middle of something, we truly get immersed in the world. RDR2 nails that. It
seems every conversation with a NPC involves a new animation. Every character you walk past
is doing something unique. If you need to use MOCAP, then why not? I want hundreds of
thousands of animations. RDR2 has 300,000. A third of this might be a number to aim for, if you
really want to do this right.
Controls
This is going to involve a couple of the mechanics I’m going to mention in the future. So
spoilers! I'm going to be referencing Controller, because PC players simply have more keys. It’s
a realistic challenge to try and fit everything onto the Controller. I’ll be using an Xbox controller,
because guess who owns Bethesda now.

LS: Move
RS: Camera
Press LS: Sprint
RS: Change Perspective
A: Interact
Hold A: Grab
X: Draw/Sheath Weapon
B: Dodge
Hold B: Sneak/Slide
Y: Jump
RT: Right Hand / Slash (If melee weapon is equipped)
Hold RT: Power Slash
LT: Left Hand / Block (If melee weapon is equipped)
LT + RT: Bash (If melee weapon is equipped)
RB: Kick / Stab or Overhead (If melee weapon is equipped)
Hold RB: Power Stab or Power Overhead
LB: Equipped Power
Back: Character Menu
From Character Menu:
Right for Inventory, Down for Map, Left for Magic, Up for Skill, X to disable Compass, Y
to Wait, A for Photo Mode, B to go back
Start: Journal and Menu
Up Dpad: Wheel Favourites Menu
Down Dpad: Command Follower
Left Dpad: Whistle Enemies
Hold Left Dpad: Whistle Horse
Right Dpad: Turn on Lantern

This is admittedly a little overloaded, but I feel like it’s intuitive enough. I’ll explain what things
like slashes, stabs and kicks are later.
Attributes

Attributes are added back from Morrowind and Oblivion. Their removal from Skyrim was kind of
inane. Attributes were simply the numerical representation of a character's traits in the game
world. Who's to tell if my orc berserker is stronger than my skinny bosmer thief? Skyrim provides
no way to measure that. Attributes make sense in Bethesda's games not just from an RPG
perspective, but from a "be anybody, go anywhere, do anything" mantra. You can't be something
if that something doesn't exist. Your character is only smart/strong/agile in your head and not in
the game itself. Attributes are not just a measuring stick, but also a type of customization, they
set your character apart not in a visual way, but gameplay wise. Leading to increased
replayability.

They also offer devs more tools for storytelling, like an agility or endurance check in dialogue or
requirements to perform an action. Bethesda has the bad habit of scrapping anything that isn't
perfect the first time, instead of reworking it. Removing attributes only lowered Skyrim's
complexity a little while sacrificing a lot of depth, the opposite of what you want to do.
Considering that both my 80 y.o. grandfather and 8 y.o. nephew can understand the concept of
attributes intuitively, streamlining them into oblivion (pun intended), was a bad decision.
Lobotomizing your games is not a formula for success.

Then again, there’s the argument in Skyrim’s favor, as put best by u/coolwali. “For one, the
range of abilities don't always nicely line up with the attributes/stats a game has. Even using
your later on list, why does agility affect encumbrance more than endurance? What about
crafting and survival skills? Do you need to be intelligent to be able to make a dagger? Even
using other games for example, it can be a bit odd why having high dexterity makes you better
at swinging a sword and doing more damage than the same character using a similar sword but
for strength?

Plus, it sorta locks the player into taking everything from a particular star/attribute. You can't as
easily make a barbarian type character that also happens to be great at lockpicking but bad at
sneaking and pickpocketing because all the combat barbarian skills come from Strength and all
the Sneak skills come from Agility or Dexterity. Skyrim cuts out the middleman and lets you pick
what individual skills/abilities you want to invest in directly from the get go. Allowing you to make
your own build more organically as you play rather than something you select in a menu and
have to build around. Do you want to make a Barbarian who happens to also be good at
lockpicking but no other sneak skill like sneaking or pickpocketing? You can go for it. You don't
need to invest in an agility or sneaking stat first to get that effect. It also makes multiclassing or
switching less painful. Other RPGs may have to rely on explicit respec-ing systems to facilitate
this. Where as Skyrim kinda lets you do it more organically.”
That last point specifically is a pretty common misconception. People say attributes and classes
can't exist because they lock you into playstyles and prevent multiclassing and changing
classes mid-playthrough, and while the former is true, and my attribute/class systems have no
impact on this since they're so freeform, the latter is pretty false. As soon as you've spent 15
perks in Skyrim you've locked yourself into a playstyle. If you want to start using magic at level
15, then the enemies will be way too powerful for you and you'll be forced to stick with
greatswords or whatever you spec-d into. They are equally bad for each other.

Regardless, I think there’s a middleground we can reach. I like the simplicity. HP, SP and MP is
a much more sensible way to measure power from a gameplay perspective, I just think there
needs to be more options on top of that, with fancier names for roleplaying. That's kind of where
this attribute system diverts. It's an in-between of Skyrim and the previous games. You've got
the same attributes that were in Skyrim, with fancier names that "inform typical classes" and
enhance character creation by directly putting a name to their skills, and then you've got a
couple more that make the decision making harder and even out the playing field for all play
styles. There's no correlation between skills and attributes, or intelligence and crafting.

The existence of these new attributes is to even out the 3 playstyles. Now mages will no longer
have to invest in all 3 attributes, making them weaker overall, but their investment will be just as
evenly split as the rest of the classes. The new attributes slows down the excessive growth in
Skyrim, and gives new effects a way to increase when they couldn’t before. For example, Agility
effects Encumbrance, which needed a way to be increased other then via. stamina. Because
this realistically isn’t as good as health increase, it also increases maneuverability, like the
Agility and Speed attributes in Oblivion. This should make the single attribute warrant
investment above the others. Some of these aren't going to make sense yet, but if you come
back here later, you’ll understand better. The latter three are much more loaded to encourage
investing in them. They are as follows:

Strength
Effects total Health Points.
Intelligence
Effects total Magicka Points.
Dexterity
Effects total Stamina Points.
Agility
Effects total Encumbrance, Speed, Jump Height, Fall Damage and Maneuverability while Midair.
Endurance
Effects total Resistance to Wounds, total Weapon Enchantment Decay/Regeneration and Max
Toxicity Point Threshold.
Perception
Effects the chance of Critical Strikes, Weapon/Armor Degradation Rate and chance of triggering
injuries/mutilations.
Motion
This is kind of minor overall, but since Players spend the whole game moving around, I figured it
was worth mentioning. Essentially, we just want the movement of Starfield. Sprint jumps,
vaulting and crouch slides all enhance the experience greatly.

Additionally, to make movement feel more real and less like you are a floating camera, I would
add some behaviors that are generally seen in modern games like Witcher and RDR2.
Essentially, we add an immersive transition behavior added to running movement when
sprinting from standing still, or switching to the opposite direction. We add a stopping behavior
to the end of sprinting. Finally, at the start of a sprint, it will switch to sprint after a dash, adding a
pre-sprint build up. All of these dynamics should make movement feel more real, and less like
the Player is levitating.

I would also reduce the speed of the character initially. This can naturally be countered by
investing in the endurance attribute, but, at least at the beginning stages of gameplay, this also
makes the character feel more grounded.

Physics
Let’s start with one of the biggest updates to our gameplay systems. Now, I know for a fact we
all love ragdolling in Bethesda games. There’s a reason the Thum is so iconic. Yet despite the
fact that Bethesda uses the Havok engine, one of the best physics engines on the market, that’s
really the extent of the fun player’s can have with physics. Sure, telekinesis can be fun, but the
lacking physics really contributes to how stilted and undynamic Bethesda games feel. It's time to
bring things up for modern standards.

So, what are we changing? As I mentioned above, combat now makes use of physics
mechanics. For example; enemies ragdoll when hit in the leg, actors can flung through the air
when hit with a powerful force midair etc. So like getting hit by a warhammer while midair will
ragdoll the player backwards, because realistically getting hit by a baseball bat would send you
back like a baseball. It’s simply the little things like that. Getting hit in the foot sends you to the
ground, enemies may pick up jugs and toss them at the player, getting shot by a powerful arrow
has an impact etc. This is most important for magic, making magical feedback better so that
when someone is set on fire they actually act like their skin is being melted off, rather than
shrugging it off like it’s normal.
We want a consistent physics engine throughout the world that works in a logical and realistic
way. Actually implementing that will be complicated, but worth it. We want it realistic, but not to
the extent that it would negatively impact things - striking a balance between realism and having
it work within the game world. I really think the implementation of this physics engine is a major
development for the Creation Engine. The way the physics engine underpins everything in the
world really offers up a lot of new possibilities and a new scale of reality. For instance, you might
have a puzzle where you make use of the physics, there'll be various ways you can solve that
puzzle. That really opens up a lot of possibilities so there's not just one way to progress in the
game or just one way to solve a puzzle.

It’s easy to say all of this, but how do I want it implemented? Two games represent this system
the best; Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. If you’ve
played either of these games, you’ll instantly know what I mean. In Red Dead, you can seriously
entertain yourself for hours by running your horse into walls. In Zelda, you can throw boulders
onto enemies, and use crates as staircases. It’s kind of hard to explain what I’m trying to
convey, so I understand if you don’t get it, but I’m essentially saying add Zelda: BotW physics.

When actors take fall damage, they ragdoll. It’s a small change, but it would increase immersion
and general fun by a lot. Sending yourself of mountaintops would get a lot funner.

The horse physics in Red Dead was perfection. Seriously, Bethesda needs to straight up
plagiarize this system and Elder Scrolls will be 100x better for it. It’s pretty simple as well; just rig
up the horses to be able to ragdoll when it collides with anything in its path or falls from large
heights. They don’t go flying, rather they hit the ground relatively hard and fast, with the player
not far behind them.

As an addition to this system; let carriages (and any other type of vehicle) actually work. Like
make them rideable across the landscape, rather than glitchy half-entities. And, just like in Red
Dead, make them break during collisions. This means that carriages will be rideable, but they
will also immersively shatter during collisions. Essentially, the carriage, the player and the horse
are three separate actors. During a crash, all three are sent in different directions, and the
invisible glue that tied them together is shattered, although since the player is inside the
carriage they may remain inside of it as they ragdoll around. Once again this is a copy of Red
Dead’s horse riding and carriage systems that I think should be blatantly ripped off.
To support all of these new circumstances to ragdolling, we need to improve the sound design
and animations of collisions while ragdolling, so they feel more realistic and less slippery.
Replace ragdolls so that they bend and twist realistically and fall at a faster velocity, remove
deathspin and increases friction to fix ice-like ragdoll sliding.

A small amount of items, such as barrels, crates, pots and urns, should be breakable. This
wouldn’t add anything but would simply make things more immersive. Similar to this mod:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/28291. Likewise, havok physics should
be added to currently static objects, such as candles and sacks.
To help the player interact with the environment, the grab is improved. Make the mechanic work
like it does in Skyrim. Also, double tapping the button while grabbing something throws it. This
works in tandem with our next feature; the amount of objects that are given physics and be
grabbed is increased; such as barrels, crates, pots and urns. This way, the Player can use throw
these items at their enemies as an offensive maneuver, upping combat dynamics. Players can
toss fire jars into their enemies, for example. The purpose of this is to add interaction with the
environment, and add new layers to combat encounters, such as BoTW and its magnet.

Finally, tapping the Sheath button, rather than holding it, performs a Kick. I'll get into this more in
the combat section, but with relevance to physics, it essentially acts like an instant toss button.
The Player can kick barrels and any other physics enabled object to immediately send it flying
into enemies. Upon hitting enemies, depending on it’s weight, it might send them over. It can
also be used on boulders to make them role, sending them down into camps of enemies, as an
example of the potential. Inspired by Might and Magic, but heavily nerfed, as you’ll see in the
combat section.

As an aside, we need to discuss clothes and hair physics. Clothing/Armor physics in most
modern days are a given yet it’s something that Skyrim lacks. The only time you’ll see physics is
during the, kinda awkward, running animations on certain armours. These “physics” are actually
just extensions of the player character. They are “skirt bones” that are rigged to move with the
player if equipped. There’s no real variety or physics here, it's just some grotesque bone that
protrudes into the player’s skirt, that wags along as they run. When this animation runs forward,
you can’t take into account the bumps and cavities on the road. There’s just no realism. Not to
mention mage robes, or hair, that don’t have any physics at all. Clothes are always in front of
you, always front and center. So when something is off, if they don't move as they should (or at
all) then it’s a constant reminder that something is wrong. Put simply, not having physics makes
your animations look worse. Even if you don’t have good animations, physics can act as a veil.

So needless to say, Skyrim is greatly in need of more physics related to the player’s
customization. Starfield already went half a mile with this by adding physics to clothes, but the
same needs to go for hair, earrings and anything else the player equips.
Combat
I imagine most people can agree that Skyrim's combat is… not great. Now, I think it occasionally
cops some undeserved heat. It’s definitely serviceable, and the biggest restrictor to Skyrim’s
combat, that being first person, is definitely a valid reason behind that. However, I thoroughly
disagree with anyone that says Elder Scrolls combat can’t get any better than Skyrim, purely
because of the first person perspective. It’s definitely a factor that warrants addressing, but it’s
not a valid excuse.

The left/right hand systems are great and innovative, yet combat somehow ends up being a
button mashing simulator. In the end, there's no strategy or skill involved in combat. The player
can choose to block if they want, but there's nothing stopping them from spamming the attack
button until their enemy is defeated. Of course, even if you are blocking, the enemy can
randomly decide to perform a kill move eliminating you instantly. If you ever get into a tight spot,
maybe the braindead ai is swarming you like zombies and you are close to death, you have the
option of shield bashing the enemy, instantly stunning them and removing all sense of urgency.
You see what I'm getting at here? There's no agency or decision making, it's hack and slash at
its simplest form, with a couple additional useless mechanics thrown in. When I find combat in
this ARPG so un-enjoyable, and the writing is so subpar, I really have to begin wondering why I
like it in the first place.

In regards to weapons, swords are the obvious pick. Their critical hit chance is far superior to
the bleeding damage of axes (that doesn't even stack) or the armor rating damage of maces
(when armor rating doesn't apply to most enemies). This needs to be fixed. Combat itself needs
to be made more dynamic, increasing the game’s difficulty by encouraging active resource
management. We need to enhance the existing mechanics of Skyrim’s combat and focus on
tightening the gameplay to allow for more player skill and RPG-like character development. I’ll
go into this more down the line, especially in the magic section, but Bethesda RPGs would
benefit greatly from adapting mechanics found in Immersive Sims like Dishonored and even
Breath of the Wild. In these games, the Player’s environment is their true weapon. Having a
solid combat system is all well and good, but Elder Scroll’s combat should be about
experimentation, adaptation, physics, environment and agency. That's what the Creation Engine
excels at after all. Why not integrate that into the combat?

Now there’s two directions I can visualize ES going. The first, is the ‘Dark Souls’ route, while the
other is more directional combat like in ‘Chivalry 2'. I first want to address how much i dislike the
term ‘Dark Souls combat’. I see so many people say that it wouldn’t be a good fit for ES, but it’s
an important distinction to make that modern combat isn’t Dark Souls combat. Having attack
commitment and stamina management does not make a game ‘Dark Souls’; look to the Witcher
3, God of War, Assassin’s Creed, Ghost of Tsushima etc. Just because ES involves a lot more
humanoid enemies then Dark Souls doesn’t mean we can’t modify it to make it more engaging
in duels. I mean, look at any of the games above. However, the first person argument is totally
valid here. It would be a challenge.
But there’s a combat system that I think would be even better. Specifically, directional combat.
And when I say that I mean specifically Chivalry 2, because most other games, like KC:D, seem
to overcomplicate it in a way unsuitable for ES. If we were to use Chivalry’s combat, very little
changes would be necessary. My only stipulation is that the AI would find it challenging to
behave like a human; I’m not sure if you can program a robot to duck, feint, drag, charge etc. If
they could manage it, then certainly go for it. If you haven't played Chivalry 2, play it. You’ll see
what I mean. It would be a perfect fit. It’s just the AI comment that I can’t really argue with.
Chivalry combat is great because of the movement of the camera, and I’m not sure if AI can
replicate those movements.

So we are at a crossroads here. Bethesda could really go either way, but for the sake of keeping
things simple, I’m going to try a keep to Skyrim’s combat as closely as possible while adding
components from both games.
Feedback / Hitboxes
Although we enhanced combat feedback in the physics section, we still need to enhance the
visuals of combat to make it feel more kinetic. This is really simply actually, with the use of:
1. Block Sparks
2. Hitstop with light camera shake when a weapon connects.
3. Add a streak of air behind weapons when swinging.
4. Flinching/ Hit Reactions/ Havok Hit when hit by weapons or armor. Different from stagger
in that it has no effect on speed or gameplay, the actor simply gets their affected body
part pushed backwards by the force of whatever blow. The actor will visibly flinch in the
direction of the attack swing, which greatly improves the feeling that your hit has
connected.
5. Blood FX is impacted by the direction of the flinch.
6. Recoil when firing a bow or crossbow
7. Real Time Traced Hitboxes. This is really important for our combat. In vanilla Skyrim, the
attack collision actually runs at a single frame and searches for the best target to hit,
usually somewhere in front of the attacker. The way actual visual movement of the
weapon does not matter at all. With realtime tracing, similar to Chivalry II, melee attacks
are now physically accurate. An attack collider is created for a given duration and
attached to the weapon which will collide with other characters' bodies or other objects.
The attacks will naturally hit all targets that they collide with during the swing.
There's no limit to how many colliders are added in an animation. Since the damage is
paired with the weapon, instead of the closest target, it means anything effecting the
weapons animation as it is being traced will effect who it hits. This allows dragging like in
Chivalry, where Players can sweep their camera as the animation plays out to hit more
enemies during the animation then if they had stood still.
8. Attacks are canceled if they collide with a wall, making spacing important in tight areas,
and meaning attacks can be tactfully canceled early by colliding with a wall halfway
through.
9. This should apply to the Player as well, so that they can crouch to crawl beneath objects
and jump over projectiles at their feet.

Ideally, use the Havok physics engine to create real time physically accurate hitboxes. That way,
all future Bethesda games can have 100% accurate hitboxes, collisions, hit reactions, weapon
trails, hitstop, camera shake and recoils. Fallout really needs tracers. This whole section is
inspired by Precision mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/72347.
Attacking
I just wanted to clarify that this isn’t Dark Souls. The actual attacking motion is where the
directional Chivalry II stuff comes in. So as you may have noticed in the ‘controls’ subpage,
there were two buttons for attacking. The first is RT, as always. Since LT is already bound to
blocking, RB is the button for the second attack.

So, as I was saying, where does the directional stuff come in?

Well, the RT attack is a slash attack. It’s essentially what you expect; a quick horizontal swing
that can be chained as many times as you want, from left to right. Sweep attacks are the fastest,
and the nature of their animations means they can hit multiple enemies at once, especially if the
player swings their camera to hit more enemies as the weapon is on screen. Weapons are
actively traced, and the movement of the player's camera affects how many enemies, or where
on the enemies, they damage.

The direction swings come from at first is dictated by what direction the Player’s camera is
moving. If they are moving the camera left, it comes from the left, and the same for the right.
Any chained swings just come from the opposite side of the previous one, but when the Player
is starting a chain they can choose the direction they want to swing from, responding to the
position of enemies and obstacles, like Bannerlord. It wouldn’t really complicate combat, since
there’s only two directions unlike Bannerlords 4, and it doesn’t interact with blocking at all, it’s
simply to increase interaction with the physics.

The RB is a stab or overhead, which involves the player pushing their blade forward, or bringing
their blunt down after a small wind up. They have a longer windup, and cannot be chained, but
deal slightly more damage. There are a couple reasons you might choose to use a stab,
although slashes will be the primary form of attack. First, it can impale lined up enemies.
Second, it can be used to target a specific area of the enemy. The tradeoffs are that it isn’t a
horizontal swing, so it can’t hit multiple enemies in a line. Overheads are the alternative to stabs
for axes and hammers. They behave similarly but strike like a downwards slash, meaning they
are centralized, and generally hit the head first. So they lack the precision of stabs, but still have
more precision than slashes and deal more damage in general.

Both stabs and slashes can be held to increase the wind-up, resulting in increased damage, and
breaking blocks, but a wind down as well and a cost of stamina.

So what’s the point of this? Why have Slashes, Stabs and Powers? Isn’t that just
overcomplicating things? Well… no. And you’ll have to trust me with that, as we move forwards
and see the many interactions these three directional attacks have. It’s not overly complicated,
like in KC:D. It’s not a copy of Chivalry either. There’s no feints, riposts or the like. That is not
what these attack variants exist for. Instead, the slashes and stabs let the player specify where
they want to hit the enemy, like heavies mix up the stamina and poise mechanics. We get the
feel and realism of Chivalry, without the complexity. It’s focusing on the physics angle, which will
only continue.
Then, we change the way attack commitment works. Players can move freely during slashes
and stabs, with exclusively a significant movement speed decrease. This works because of how
we separated the upper and lower boy animations. This isn’t exactly an attack commitment,
since there’s no prolonged wind-up, wind-down or movement data. Players are encouraged to
think before they swing due to the small commitment in movement speed, but it shouldn’t be
that cumbersome to manage. This is my inbetween; we add a small attack commitment to
encourage strategy, but not enough to limit movement or inflict motion sickness.

Power Attacks actually require a couple steps in the direction the Player is moving at the time of
swinging, like in vanilla. They also have a prolonged wind-up and wind-down period. This
means power attacks should require a bit more spacing and forethought then stabs and
slashes.

Stamina
Compared to Skyrim, Magika and Stamina both regenerate about 3x faster, from 2% to 6% for
Stamina, and from 1.25% to 4% for Magicka, because managing stamina specifically is much
more important now, and the wait times for Magika was tedious. Due to this increase, there is
now no difference between Stamina and Magika regen in and outside combat.

You will no longer regenerate Stamina while attacking or blocking, and a fully drawn bow will
slowly drain your Stamina. This means that the only way to regenerate stamina, despite it
regenerating faster, is by not engaging, like in Dark Souls.

Power attacks consume a ton of stamina, about ¾ the initial bar. So, despite their power in
negating blocks, they require the Player to tactfully recharge stamina to perform. Because
blocking attacks require stamina to negate damage to health, and dodges use it as well,
stamina is an extremely important resource the Player cannot afford to waste, adding in stamina
management without complicating things by tying it to attacking.

When your Stamina is exhausted, your character will move and attack 25% slower, deal 25%
less damage with weapons, be 50% less effective at blocking, and take 50% more poise
damage. Unlike in vanilla, power attacks cannot be performed if the Player lacks the stamina,
and there is no stamina exhaustion. This essentially forces the Player to manage their stamina,
or suffer the consequences. Managing it will be especially hard in the early game, but gear and
skills can make it easier in the long run.
Poise & Stagger
Other than Attack Commitment and Stamina, Poise/Stagger is one of the fundamental pieces of
our combat additions. Poise is integral to games like Sekiro and Elden Ring, and they prove
how fun a mechanic like that can be.

So every humanoid actor now has a poise value calculated by their level, health, armor and
stamina, which is on a yellow gauge on top of their health bar. Every offensive action can
damage an NPC’s poise: attacking, perfect blocking, bashing, etc. Poise slowly regenerates
during combat, after a 6 second delay, which encourages players to take initiative in combat,
like it does in Elden Ring. When depleted, the respective actor is high level staggered (I’ll
explain that later). Heavy attacks have hyper-armor, unless they are bashed, light attacks don’t.

Poise is intrinsic to our overhauled stagger system. For those who don’t know, certain attacks in
Skyrim cause an enemy to stagger, interrupting them and temporarily stunning them. This was
pretty broken in vanilla, allowing players to staggerlock enemies. Our changes are this; as I
mentioned above, poise is calculated by level, health, armor and stamina. Actors with a higher
poise value will deal more poise damage to actors with lower poise values, like in Elden Ring.
As an actor’s poise bar decreases, so does their resistance to stagger.

Stagger now comes in 1 of 4 magnitudes. The first level is simply an exaggerated flinch, and
can occur at high poise values from power attacks. The second forces a stepback, and can be
caused by bashes. The third knocks the enemy on their ass, and forces them to stand up again.
The fourth involves the actor ragdolling, making them vulnerable to any follow up attack. As the
poise value of an actor decreases in relation to their actor, so too does their resistance to
stagger.

For example, a high poise Player (heavy armor, high health and stamina) poise breaks and low
poise enemy (generally a mage). This results in a 4th level stagger. However, if a low poise
enemy poise breaks a high poise enemy, it results in a 3rd level stagger. The same goes for
power attacks on full poise. With the heavy armor warrior forcing a 2nd level stagger, while a
light armor scout forces a 1st level stagger. 3rd and 4th levels usually only occur on poise
breaks, unless the poise difference is massive. While slashes, stabs and spells are capable of
dealing small poise damage and level I stagger, the serious staggers come from power attacks,
bashes, strong mage spells and projectiles. However, fireballs may not stagger enemies with
high poise at all, while with low poise they are stunned. This removes the game breaking
stagger locks weapons like fireballs could exploit in Skyrim, without sacrificing the impact when
the enemy is on low poise.
The Player has no poise. Instead, their stamina interacts the same way. Low stamina essentially
means vulnerability to staggers, making it even more essential to look after. This prevents the
Player from having yet another resource to manage, while still implementing the mechanics.
Poise is a players best friend in scenarios with a lot of enemies, as it can take an enemy
temporarily out of the fight. Breaking poise also gives the Player are small amount of stamina,
rewarding them for being aggressive and making stamina easy to manage when they are
fighting lots of enemies with lots of poise to break.

Attacks of opportunity reward the player for seizing the advantage against their opponents and
striking them while they are power attacking, drawing a bow, or casting a spell, by dealing 50%
more poise damage and stagger. This means that power attacks are extra risking to pull off,
especially if the Player is bashed when performing them.

It essentially discourages holding the block button, and encourages Players to brave the danger
and hit their enemies when they’re open, which is generally going to be when the Player is
staring a blade in the face. Combined with the Stamina mechanic, it encourages quick,
aggressive, fast-paced gameplay, which is ultimately going to be more fun even if the Player
resists it out of anxiety at first.

We also prevent stunlocking enemies by enforcing a 3 second cooldown on stagger. You will
always be able to interrupt an enemy who is power attacking, drawing a bow, or casting a spell
with either a power attack or a bash, even if they are under the stagger cooldown.
Block, Bash, Kick & Counter
This is going to be more dot-pointy:

Because of the directional systems, to block, a player should aim at the tip of the opponent's
weapon, not the opponent's character model. This doesn’t require complete accuracy, the block
is a forgive window that makes up maybe 70% of the center screen, but the Player cannot block
and expect an attack from the side or above/below to be negated. The player also has a subtle
block commitment: tapping the block once will not lead to a quick player jitter, but a consistent
blocking posture for at least 0.3 seconds before the player unblocks. Blocking is no longer
controlled by the Magic Resistance cap (because why was it).

Blocking now negates 70% of damage from most sources, 60% from stabs, and charges 40% of
that in stamina. Shields negate 80% of damage and only charges 20% of that in stamina.
Shields also block all projectile damage completely, meaning the Player has to aim around it.
When stamina is less than enough to block an incoming hit, the actor takes the portion of
damage that's not covered by stamina, and a medium (generally 2 or 3) stagger. When blocking,
stamina does not regenerate. The player can now Timed Block, by blocking an attack within 0.4
seconds of pulling out the block. This deals poise damage, requires less stamina and will inflict
a minor stagger if the opponent is poise.They aren't op, but reward skill with a slight bonus that
can be further improved in the block skill tree.

Bashes are altered to have a different functionality. Bashes will do nothing against an enemy
with high poise who is doing anything but power attacking, drawing a bow, or casting a spell. In
these scenarios, following the rules of attacks of opportunity, the enemy receives a medium
stagger (at high poise levels). This essentially makes them the counter to power attacks, which
are resistant to almost everything else. The thing is, bashes require about half stamina as power
attacks do, encouraging the Player to keep some reserve stamina in case..

So bashings main use is to prevent attacks like powers, spells or arrows that would be
unavoidable otherwise. They inflict a similar stagger as power attacks, but only during moments
of opportunity, for half the stamina cost. They are no longer OP, but have a balanced purpose.

The story is different if an enemy is on low poise (about 10%). If this is the case, the Player can
bash them to instantly stagger lock them, which can send them backwards, off cliffs, into their
friends, traps or anything else, if the stagger is at a 4th degree. If it's a 3rd degree, they will
simply fall on their butt, which is still useful. Bashing an enemy who is in getting up from a 3rd or
4th stagger forces them back down, which can be useful in group engagements to keep an
enemy out of it for a bit. Particularly at the 4th degree, this sends them a decent distance,
allowing you to send them off cliffs, or use them as a bowling ball to knock the feet of your
enemies out from under them. Although it can only be done once before the enemies become
invulnerable to stagger to let them get up.
The “kick” mentioned in the controls section is a bash for people without something to bash with.
It replaces the stab (RB) for the layman without weapons, and is exactly that: a kick. It behaves
exactly the same as aa bash though, useful for preventing power attacks and sending enemies
off cliffs, or whatever or imagination can conjure up.

This bash/kick essentially dials up the fun factor to 11. It’s like the kick in ‘Dark Messiah of Might
and Magic’ that everyones always talking about, but balanced. It increases intractability with
physics tremendously, and actually lets the Player interact with their environment during combat,
but in a balanced manner.

In fact, this bash/kick also interacts with the physics system. By bashing any physics enabled
objects, like furniture, crates, bookshelves or boulders (or ragdolled enemies, for that matter),
the Player instead does a kick animation, or in the case of kicking they just kick like always, and
send the item forwards. Depending on their weight, you might start a boulders descent down a
cliff, or propel a crate directly into an enemies face. You might crush an enemy between a table
and wall, or quickly flick a switch to activate a trap.

As someone with experience with the creation kit, there could be physics enabled furniture in
dungeons, while the furniture in normal interiors could stay the same. It’s definitely within the
realm of possibility. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s possible in Skyrim.

Dodging

By pressing the dodge button the player will do a step dodge, at the cost of some Stamina. To
prevent motion sickness, it’s not a roll, just a little dash. If they don’t want to dodge, players can
avoid damage through movement, blocking, and even bashing already; dodging is just an
alternative for different playstyles. It doesn’t have any eye frames either, so it needs to be used
tactfully. It costs the same amount of stamina as bashes, making it quite expensive and be used
sparingly, mainly for spacing. Its essentially an alternative to bashing, replacing a stagger with a
better position allowing a follow up attack.

So in this way, combat also involves assessing what your enemy is attacking with and defending
accordingly. Both Slashes and Stabs can be blocked, but power attacks have to be bashed or
dodged, at the cost of stamina. The Player needs to play aggressive and reduce their enemies
poise, while taking care of their stamina for power attacks, bashes and dodges, as well as
resistance to staggers against themselves. It’s a complex, dare I say perfect, dance of
mechanics.
Locational Damage, Physics and Injuries
This is where the slashes, stabs and power attacks come in. As I said above, we are going to be
taking some major hints from BotW and integrate physics and experimentation into combat.
Although theirs plenty of strategy in positioning and management already, it lies mainly in where
and how the player is hitting their enemies.

Obviously, as I already said, physics have been updated. The player's environment is one of
their greatest allies, like boulders, crates, rickety balconies that can be destroyed, etc. But
another change we made was the advanced ragdolling systems. So like getting hit by a
warhammer while midair will ragdoll the player backwards, because realistically getting hit by a
baseball bat would send you back like a baseball. Getting hit in the foot (in certain scenarios
below) ragdolls you to the ground. Significant falls make you ragdoll and flail. Getting staggered
to the 4th degree ragdolls you to the ground. Hitting enemies with slashes and power attacks
just right to send them ragdolling is an important part of gameplay.

Locational damage is something from Fallout that surprisingly hasn’t made its way into Elder
Scrolls yet, and it would fit perfectly with our updated physics engine, and where combat really
comes into its own. But first, the basics.

Players can move their camera, if they aren't locked on, to manipulate where they hit enemies.
In its most basic form, Locational Damage rewards archery players for accuracy.

Head: 1.6x damage, only (1.3x against light helmet and 1x against heavy helmet)
Body and Arms: 1x damage
Legs: 0.8x damage

These modifiers are small, so the Player doesn’t exclusively attack the head with stabs, but
meaningful. Players are encouraged to attack the head, but due to our changes to the blocking
window, looking at the head means the lower portion of the screen is vulnerable to attack. It
should also be hard to pinpoint the location of the head, meaning it’s simpler and more
beneficial to strike the body with blades, and only attack the head with projectiles.

Then, we get into injuries. When an actor falls below 70% Health, incoming attacks that connect
will have a 10% chance to injure them. Below 40% Health, this chance will increase to 25%.
Injuries are dependent on the limbs they impact. Actors have 5 “locational limbs”: Their head,
left arm, right arm, left leg and right leg. The amount of damage that a limb has taken as a
portion of the damage the actor has taken impacts the percent chance an injury will occur on
that limb. So if an actor is at 50% health, and 50% of that damage dealt to them was on their left
leg, then their left leg has a 50% chance of being the injured limb if an injury triggers, plus a
divied up percent of torso damage. If the rest of the damage was dealt to the torso, then that
remaining percent is split across the other limbs equally. If the enemy's right arm was damaged,
that arm will have a 5% chance of being the injured limb, plus the divied up percent.
If a Player targets a limb, such as the left arm, then when an injury is triggered they can
maximize the chance the injury will occur at that limb. While the player can generally force
where the injury occurs (along as they aren't accidently hitting the torso), they can’t force the
injury itself. It will always have a 10% chance below 70% health, and a 20% chance below 40%.

Injuries will generally force a stagger as well as some kind of debuff, represented by a symbol
next to their health bar.

Here’s a list of injuries and their effects on the NPC:

Head injury - Medium staggers the enemy and slowly drains their magika for 10 seconds.
Right/Left Arm Injury - Minor staggers the enemy and disarms the arm that was injured for 10
seconds. This disarm includes spells.
Right/Left Leg Injury - Forces ragdoll and slows speed for 10 seconds.

So essentially, injuries add another level of strategy to combat. If the player is facing an enemy
with powerful magic, they may target the head, or if they are fighting an enemy with a powerful
weapon in their arm, they’ll target that arm. This is why stabs are so useful, allowing the Player
to decide specifically where their blade will land. If they don’t care, then they can slash, which
will likely lead to more torso damage, leading to a random injured limb.

The Player can also be injured, although it isn’t dependent on locational damage. It’s a much
simpler system. Essentially, when you fall below 50% Health, incoming attacks will have a 10%
chance to injure you. When you fall below 25% Health, this chance will increase to 25%. This
encourages you to keep high health at all times, realistically.

The injuries are so:

Head Injury - Medium stagger. Magicka Regeneration is slowed by 75% for 10 seconds.
Right/Left Arm Injury - Light stagger. Disarms the Player. Stamina regeneration is slowed by
75% for 10 seconds.
Right/Left Leg Injury - Forces ragdoll. Speed is slowed by 25% for 10 seconds.

The first time you are injured, beyond the temporary effect, you receive a Minor Injury, and your
maximum Health is reduced by 25. When you receive a Minor Injury, there is a one minute
cooldown before you can be injured again. If you are injured a second time, your Minor Injury
will become a Major Injury, and your maximum Health will be reduced by a total of 50 points.

To heal from your injuries, you must rest in a bed or a bedroll. Resting for four hours will heal a
Minor Injury. It will also downgrade a Major Injury to a Minor Injury. If you do not rest and recover
from your injuries within twenty-four in-game hours, you will contract a disease. This encourages
Players to immersively take breaks and rest.
Dismemberment and Gore
Then, finally, we get to dismemberment. Dismemberments only occurs when an injury is
triggered on an actor below 40% health, and a particular limb accounts for 50% of the injury
dividation. That is to say, dismemberments are rare, but Players can force them if they play their
cards right and target a certain limb.

Head: Instant kill… obviously. This is kind of in vanilla Skyrim, but only on death. Now, if a
Player targets their enemies head, they can trigger it at 40% health.
Right/Left Arm: The actor’s arm is dismembered, sending it flying and resulting in blood spraying
from where it once was. This functions as a permanent disarm to that arm, and to two-handed
weapons (since the actor only has one hand, duh).
Right/Left Leg: The leg is mutilated, forcing the enemy to the ground. Rather than die
immediately, the enemy will crawl around with their remaining leg like in Starfield. They might as
well be dead, but still require finishing off.

Essentially, mutilations are permanent injuries, and make combat even more gory and
spectacular. In most cases (except for arm injuries, where there is a case where an enemy uses
a one handed weapon or magic) it completely eliminates the enemy. Arm and leg
dismemberments have a 5% chance to occur when an enemy falls below 10% health. This
exists so that Players who don’t engage with the locational damage system can still occasionally
see dismemberments. Head dismemberments have a 100% chance to occur if the target dies
from a strike to the head.

In terms of gore, the biggest change we need to make is adding deathstates that resemble how
the NPC died. NPC’s corpses will resemble how they died, and upon the moment they lose their
health, the weapon and location of the blow impacts what they look like. Obviously this isn’t an
R18+ game, but I think we can bend the rules. For example, here are some on-death states.

Fire: When an enemy dies while on fire, whether that be enchanted weapons, fire arrows, or fire
magic, their corpse will be charred and burnt. If exposed to prolonged fire their bodies will
vapourize into ash piles.
Frost: The enemy is covered in ice chunks and is blue in the face. If exposed to prolonged frost
effects their body is frozen in place. Their frozen corpses can be shattered into little pieces.
Shock: Their body is dark blue and skeletal.Their skin may turn translucent exposing a
luminescent skeleton. May turn to ash if forced to a prolonged period of shock. Bodies spasm.
Poison: They may spray puke from their mouths, and their skin is a deadly shade of green.
Blood: Their body is deathly pale, drained and skeletal.
Explosion: When dying by explosion, the dead will be encased in ash.
Head / Blade: Beheaded.
Head / Blunt or Arrow: Head explodes.
Arm / Blade: Severs their arm.
Arm / Blunt: Explodes their Arm.
Leg / Blade: Severs their leg.
Leg / Blunt: Explodes their leg.
Torso / Blade: May split their body in half, although rare.

Finally, killmoves only occur in the last opponent of a battle, when the final enemies’ health
reaches zero, and they can’t be performed on the player. Exists for style points now essentially.

Anyway this kind of combat system is completely unique, and works to the strengths of the
Creation Engine and Bethesda RPG. It enhances feedback immensely, as well adding more
strategy to combat. While the locational system isn’t necessary to combat, it’s a key function
and encouraged to be interacted with.

Blade vs Blunt vs Bleed / Critical Hits

As I mentioned above, I miss the gamified difference between Blade and Blunt. It’s fun, and
especially relevant in terms of dismemberments. That said, I don’t mind the one/two handed
thing, and Oblivion classifying axes as blunt was stupid. Surely there’s a good middle ground,
right? Well, yes. And strangely enough it’s found in the worst ES game: Blades. Further, I think
we can make the weapons feel more different by differentiating them through the physics
system, rather than weird stat bonuses. In doing this, we essentially remove the arbitrary
statistical differences between swords, daggers, axes and maces.

Here’s a table of our weapon types:

Misc. One-handed Two-handed Pole-Armed

Blade Longsword Greatsword Spear

Bleed Dagger War Axe Battle Axe Halberd

Blunt Unarmed Mace War Hammer Stave

Every weapon type needs unique animations.

Blades slash. For that reason, they have no trouble cleaving through multiple enemies in one
swing and have greater precision with their stab. For these reasons they are most effective at
crowd control. They deal bonus damage to light armor and shell/scale.

Blunts smash. Each consecutive enemy they hit in a slash takes 20% less damage and causes
the slash to slow it’s movement briefly. As a trade off, they deal greater poise damage, and
improve stagger strength, making them better one-on-one. Instead of a stab attack, they swing
with an overhead strike, which is worse at targeting specific body parts, and cannot damage
lined up enemies, but will reliably hit the enemies’ head, dealing bonus damage. Blunt deal
greater damage to heavy armor and automatons.

Bleeds cleave, and are a perverted mix of Blade and Blunt. They can cut through multiple
enemies easily, but have the overhead strike of the blunts. To make this pill easier to swallow,
their power attacks are 20% faster. This makes them handy in a variety of engagements, but not
as effective in either. Bleed deals bonus damage to unarmored, and skin.

In this way blade, blunt and bleed have specific engagements they are more effective in, but not
enforced playstyle. The cleaving of blade and bleeds make them better in group engagements,
but the better poise damage of blunts results in enemies getting staggered more, which in turn
makes group engagements easier.

Shell, scale, automaton and skin are attributes given to non-humanoid enemies so that no
weapon becomes useless against nonhumans, like Hammers with their armor resistance in
Skyrim. There could be more, but that's all that I think is necessary at this moment.

Critical Hits is something every Player can perform. One of the Player attributes dictates this
chance, but it’s probably somewhere around 0.05% chance initially. Critical Hits deal a baseline
of 1.5x damage, but one of the biggest differences between Blade, Blunt and Bleed comes in
the further impacts of Crits. On a critical, Blades inflict a further 0.5x damage, evening out to 2x
damage. Bleeds however inflict 3x damage total, but over the course of 10 seconds in bleed
damage (as do arrows). Blunts inflict 3x poise damage on top of the 1.5x damage. The
difference is small, but meaningful. And in this case, every damage type is viable in different
ways.
So melee weapons are split into One Handed and Two Handed. There’s also Polearmed and
Unarmed, but we’ll cover that later.

Daggers are standalone for a reason. They tow the line between Blade and Bleed, as they slash
and stab, but inflict the Bleed status effect. That's not only with criticals, but once upgraded, with
every single attack, making them standout. They also have the fastest speed by a margin, and
the lowest reach and damage (shared with unarmed). They are upgraded in the Stealth tree,
and can have the highest sneak attack damage.

One Handed weapons are a middle ground for speed, damage, and length, and can be
combined with another weapon in your off-hand.

Two handed weapons are the slowest, strongest and longest (bar Polearms), but they require
both hands to wield functionally.

See how much more sense the divisions make now? The separation is no longer arbitrary, but
has a legitimate impact depending on a player’s playstyle and the situation they are going into.
Our changes recently have been all about accessing surroundings and killing enemies in unique
ways.

This is a complete tangent, but a far cry style healing system would be cool to see. In Skyrim,
health regeneration in combat is 0.5% per second. This is fine, but I would like to see this
increased to 3% with the added stipulation of requiring the Player to hold the interact button to
begin a healing animation, similar to Far Cry, that depends on the most recent damage type.
Bandages on a cut for Blade, broken bone for Blunt, pulling out an arrow etc. This animation
lasts 3 seconds, and then the 3% recharge begins, with any kind of damage afterwards stopping
the regen and requiring the healing action again. It’s not a huge change, nor is it necessary, just
something I’d like to see for immersion. Potions would still be superior, and start the regen
process without requiring the animation as well, but for characters that aren't alchemists this
alternative would be nice.
Conclusion
Since that was a lot of words, this is where it all comes together. The combat system takes
mainly from Chivalry II, as well as contemporary first person RPGs, to reward skill and speed
just as much as it rewards enginuity.

Attacks are broken up into Slashes, Stabs and Powers. Slashes are better on rows of enemies,
while Stabs are better for targeting damage on single targets, and deal slightly more damage as
well as poise damage, but they are slower and can hit a single player at a time. Powers are
useful for throwing your enemy off their rhythm and breaking their block. Power attacks are very
expensive in stamina, but also deal insane poise damage. They aren't intended to be used
commonly, rather they are a sort of ‘special move’ the Player can use to throw off their
enemies.Stabs are intended to be used the most, as such they have the least stamina cost.
Stabs are intended to be thrown in occasionally, with slower speeds and higher stamina costs,
and Powers are intended to be used rarely, with large wind-ups and Stamina costs. Combat
becomes a delicate weaving of Slashes, Stabs and Powers. Blocking is most effective against
Slashes and Stabs, while Bashes are most effective against Powers. On top of this, evasive
options also include dodges.

As such, the Player engages in a sort of Scissors, Paper, Rock, where they have to desphire
their opponents move and react accordingly. Combat is enhanced further by added Stamina
management for the Player, and poise management for the enemies, which makes the Player
think a lot more in combat, and because it correlates with attack types, it allows Players to
guess their opponents attacks before they come out.

Enemies can be killed in one of three ways. The first involves attacking enemies at their most
vulnerable, and blocking them in high-skill ways, to drain their Poise. By lowering an enemies
poise, they become more vulnerable to staggers, culminating in a complete knockdown.
Alternatively, Players can use the injuries and mutilation mechanics to target enemies’ weak
points, disfiguring them where they are strongest and making killing them easiest. Finally,
Players can choose to use their environment, rather than their weapon. The kick ability allows
them to manipulate the environment on the fly, taking enemies down and kicking them around
with boxes, furniture, traps and boulders, in a similar fashion to Dark Messiah.

The conflict between Slashes and Stabs, and Blade, Bleed and Blunt, all contributes to an
overall decision between hitting multiple enemies at once, or dealing great poise damage to a
single enemy. On top of that, Blades are more effective at mutilation, while Blunts are more
effective at injuries, and they have different types of critical hits.

The beauty of this combat system lies not in its variety of approaches, creativity or high skill
ceiling, but in that it can all be ignored. At low levels, combat plays just like Skyrim with stamina
management, but with the occasional stab, dodge, poise break and mutilation. This system only
requires engagement in its more complicated components at higher levels, allowing casuals and
tryhards to enjoy it alike.
Archery
Archery is probably the most common playstyle in Skyrim, so clearly it’s functional. Then there's
the matter of Sneak Archery. Skyrim added a stealth bonus to arrows for all characters out the
gate. This means that players who like to open up combat with an arrow to their enemies face
will receive damage bonuses and slowly level that skill. As their sneak archery becomes more
powerful, they begin to rely on it, until they eventually forget how to use swords in the first place.
They go from a sword n' board warrior to a Stealth Archer. I think everyone can relate to this,
and the worst part is that it's not skillful or fun, it's like a cheat code. The fix to this is pretty
simple, just lock the sneak bonus to archery behind the Archery skill tree.

As for archery in combat, the controls are: LT can be used to aim, zooming in on your reticle. RT
is still used to fire. RB is a kick.

Drawing your bow while not aiming means the arrows come out with higher force (projectile
speed and distance) but less damage per draw time. This especially applies to firing after a
dodge, which speeds up the draw time by 2x. This essentially makes the bow more effective in
close quarters. It’s a simple change, but an important one. Arrows can also be fired while midair,
maybe a perk can slow down time during this period.

So while stealth archery is still viable, the player can also stand up in a close quarters
engagement. ’m not done with sneak archery though; holding your bow drawn really takes its
toll. A small shake to the camera and controller begins when holding your drawn bow for a
prolonged period of time. This is accompanied with a slow decrease of stamina. Once stamina
is at zero, the arrow is fired. This encourages tactfully drawing your bow. It’s forgiving, since it
only applies once the bow is fully drawn, but it forces more skill. Remember, stamina
regenerates faster now, so it’s not a big deal to lose it.

Crossbows are integrated into the main game, rather than being some weird dawnguard
exclusive thing. Like all enemies can wield them, they can be enchanted, they have unique
bolts, and they have a version for every equipment type. Crossbows are viable, but generally
used by warrior classes who don’t want to put levels into archery. They are useful, especially at
lower levels, but won’t bring archers as far as bows will.

Arrows are 2x more likely to inflict injuries and mutilations. This encourages Player to be smart
about where they aim, instead of mindlessly firing at the body. Also, as I mentioned above,
arrows can cause bleeding on criticals.
Polearmed
While the existing weapon variety in Skyrim was alright, there’s always space for improvement.
The best addition I could think of that would bring an entirely new playstyle to the game is
“Polearmed”.

Above all else, they prioritize distance, rather than speed or damage like light, one-handed and
two-handed. Light prioritizes speed, Two-Handed; damage, One-handed; being a nice medium -
but Polearm focus on distance. They can be combined with shields, but unlike one-handed, they
cannot be dual wielded with any item other than a shield. This differentiates polearms from the
one-handed and two-handed. They have similar versatility to One-handed weapons, just trading
damage and speed for distance.

The slash attacks involve long and wide sweeps covering a large distance. Uniquely, this is not
the main attack, but rather the secondary, since they are more damaging then stabs but take a
long time to charge up and perform. Meanwhile, the stabs of Polearms are their bread and
butter, and come out faster than any other weapon, and can be chained negating the initial
charge up, but with less damage.

The Blade Polearm is a generic Spear. The Blunt Polearm is a stave, something a Monk would
wield. The Bleed Polearm is a halberd. Both Staves and Halberds, despite being blunt and
bleed, do not do an overhead attack, and instead still slash. Halberds and polearms majestically
spin around the wielder with attacks, while Spears are wielded much more awkwardly and
rigidly, with more discipline. Power attacks with both involve a lot of leaping and spinning, like
out of a shaolin temple. As mentioned above, spears are versatile and useful for both playstyles.
I imagine the animations would look similar to that game jam thing Bethesda did where they
added spears. Like the actor is free flowing with the weapon, using it as an extension of
themselves.
Smithing
Smithing in Skyrim was a great addition to ES, but it could still use some improvements. In
particular, I’d like to rewind a little to Oblivion and look at weapon degradation.

Cookbooks & Scrapping

I would add smithing cookbooks across the worldspace that the Player needs to find/purchase
and read to learn the majority of the recipes for weapons and armor. It just makes a little more
sense, and gives smithing some more progression. I would also apply this to the cooking
system, which we’ll be getting into soon enough.

I would also add the ability to break down junk into basic resources that can then be used in
smithing or building.

Tempering & Degradation

Levels in Smithing no longer affect your ability to improve/temper/upgrade items up to 100%
more. This is now related to a perk, which scales about 5 times. So you can temper every item
maximum 5 times. The Smithing skill tree should include; the ability to breakdown items into
materials, improve the efficacy of mining, the ability to craft tools, the ability to craft dwarven
mechanics (Dwarven spiders/spheres/ballistas), the ability to upgrade these dwarven
mechanisms with augments and the existing scale of materials that can be used to craft.
Crossbows and bolts can now be crafted and enhanced at any forge, not just the forge at Fort
Dawnguard.

The nature of Morrowind and Oblivion’s loot systems were that weapons and armor had
durability. This made every item important, and forced the player to experiment with different
weapons, and carry with them a wide variety of loot. Now, durability systems always get a bad
rap, but I personally think that if they are implemented in the right way they only improve a
game’s system. Breakable weapons are a no go for me, but if the durability system is introduced
in a light and non-intrusive way then I don’t think anyone would complain. With this system
weapons suddenly lose a lot of value, and the player is encouraged to experiment. It fixes
issues with loot and progression on such a level that I would consider it necessary.

In Oblivion, weapon health is an indicator of a weapon's condition. If a weapon's health is

reduced, it will do less damage. When its health reaches zero, the weapon breaks and becomes
unusable. Damaged weapons can be repaired using repair hammers, or they can be taken to an
NPC who performs repair services.

This system is fine, but I think we can make it more streamlined for a game as accessible as the
squeal to Skyrim. So when attacking, blocking, hit by enemies, etc. equipment degrades.
Equipment can now diminish into a “degraded” state after use, that is essentially the opposite of
tempered, meaning it is less effective. Tempered weapons and armor will now also eventually
degrade back to their original untempered states upon use. The rate of degradation scales with
material type. For example, Fur, is less durable than Steel which is less durable than the Orcish.
An icon above the enchanting bar represents equipment health, whether that be tempered or
degraded. Items cannot break, they can only lose their tempered state or become diminished.
Since equipment health is interwoven with the temper system, equipment can be repaired in the
same way it is tempered. While weapons can be tempered up to +5, they can only diminish to
-3, which is -42% damage. This way, this addition is unintrusive and only serves to positively
affect gameplay.

Blacksmiths will craft and temper/repair at your request. Enchanters will enchant and recharge
items for you, which allows non-enchanting characters to benefit from the necessary
advantages Enchanting gives. Blacksmiths can only temper/repair items for a high price, but
can only temper once. Likewise, enchanters will have a strict and minimal list of enchants they
can pull from at the lowest magnitude. The cost will also depend on the value of the item, the
materials used by the NPC and your barter skill. Blacksmiths are also limited by the material,
and cannot temper above dwarven or elven. Tempering and enchanting takes time, so the
player must leave and then come back in a day when their item is ready. This makes the
degradation system manageable if the Player doesn’t want to put any points into Smithing.
Same goes for enchanting.

Armour / Apparel
The chestplate is once again split into Circuses and Grieves, or Shirts and Pants, like in
Oblivion. It alone results in a level of customization unmatched in all of Skyrim. While the armor
value is evenly split between the two articles of armor/clothing, they also give the player more
enchanting slots, hence the removal of the enchantability of rings.

With the addition of capes and cloaks that the player can put on their back, and the way
weapons are immersive displayed on the player, characters should start to look much more
drippy. Capes and cloaks provide a good level of warmth for survival mode, but otherwise are
aesthetic additions. Capes hang from the players back while cloaks hang around their
shirt/armor, adding an additional effect of layering. Capes and Cloaks are mutually exclusive,
and cannot be enchanted. I considered adding backpacks, but it’s kind of annoying in CC being
forced to wear backpacks, ruining your character’s style, for the necessary enhancements
Backpacks give. I think it’s better not to have them, then to force Players to wear them.
Jewelry is overhauled. The only enchantable jewelry now are amulets/talismans. Now, the
player can equip a maximum of 5 rings, for aesthetic value, since they have no gameplay effect.
The player can also equip 2 bracelets and a set of earrings.

In vanilla skyrim, the armor rating system is kind of broken, allowing players to become
invincible, in the case of magic resistance, or just arbitrarily limiting their armor rating. In our fix -
each point of Armor Rating reduces incoming damage by 0.15%, up to 75% damage reduction
at 500 Armor Rating. This represents the “soft cap” for Armor Rating. Increasing your Armor
Rating beyond 500 reduces incoming damage by 0.03% per point, up to a total reduction of
90% damage reduction at 1000 Armor Rating. This represents the “hard cap” for Armor Rating.
While the jump from 0.15% to 0.03% might seem extreme at first, the additive nature of Armor
Rating means that the first 500 points provides you with 75% mitigation, while the next 500
points provide you with 60% extra real mitigation. This change allows Heavy Armor builds to
benefit from very high levels of Armor Rating while maintaining the balance of the existing armor
system for light armor and unarmoured users. Players will very rarely exceed 500 anyway.

Finally, the materials used in smithing is expanded. Both Light and Heavy Armor are given a
definitive armor type for each rank, which the Player is encouraged to follow as they level up.
The rate at which the Player acquires these materials is slowed so that even Players at level
100 smithing will only have Daedric gear like 10 levels before the intended level most Players
get it. The left is light and the right is heavy.

Hide/Iron: level 1-7

Leather/Steel: level 8-14
Chainmail/Silver: level 15-22
Scale (Scaled Steel over Leather, Samurai-esc)/Nordic (ESO esc): level 23-30
Adamantium/Dwarven: level 31-39
Elven/Orcish: level 40-49
Glass/Ebony: level 50-59
Daedric Mail/Daedric Plate: level 60 or above

This makes progression more rewarding, since the Players armor progression is strewn out,
instead of them getting and sticking with Daedric from level 25 onwards. It also make light armor
more viable, since it has a rank for every rank of heavy.
Stealth
Stealth in Skyrim is a tricky subject. I don't think anyone would call it particularly bad, it's just
exceedingly mediocre. It essentially amounts to; stay in the shadows, stay out eyesight, kill
whoever's in your way. There's no tools, patrols, takedowns, water arrows, alarms etc. It's
functional, sure, but it's not exactly fun either. Of course, Skyrim isn't a stealth game. It isn't
Thief or Dishonored. But since we are giving combat and magic some treatment I believe that
Stealth deserves some love too.

Stealth AI
As for mechanics, there's a couple tweaks we need to make before we get to the additions.
First, these two mods make AI Detection of the player reasonable. These simple enhancements
alone fix Stealth in various ways, but there's much more we can do to expand it. Like these
mods: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/62546,
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2345. (With respect to the late author)

The second change we are making is enhancing the importance of light. RAID already made
similar alterations, were just gonna amp up the amount of light sources in level design to force
the player to interact with them. Half of stealth gameplay is the level design, and while we can't
really help that for most dungeons, the Thief Guild and Dark Brotherhood deserve some love in
that regard. Making light sources an obstacle is one way we can make traversal more
challenging, like in Thief, which, alongside Dishonored, should be our main influences if we are
turning ES into an immersive sim. Essentially what I’m saying is that level design should factor
in how stealth players might approach it. Make light a key part, and add torches in places
Players might be able to extinguish them to sneak through. Add nooks and crannies for Stealth
players to traverse unseen, and secluded spots they can take out their opponents.

Enemy AI is enhanced further. Rather than simply walking between two points, they can have
patrols with multiple points. This speaking strictly in terms of bandits and such, because gaurds
in cities will have their own routines I’ll mention later. They will search for longer, and won’t
immediately disregard the deaths of their friends. No “Must have been the wind :/”. Assassin’s
Creed does this well. If they find a body, enemies will bring their friend’s body elsewhere to pay
respects, and will put the whole fort on alert, as they should. It would be nice to see NPC
bandits and such given patrols including realistic activities like cooking food. Like they’ll behave
as if going about their life like normal, and at night most Bandits are sleeping, trading the night
watch, making it easier to infiltrate. I think you generate these routes as well, minimizing the
effort required. Just add markers around a camp, like crockpots, campfires, tanning racks etc.,
and when bandits spawn in they randomly generate a route between these markers, as well as
a time at night when they will sleep. And then, if they see a body, they’ll go on mass alert, tell all
of their bandit friends, and get the body buried.
Sentries are filtered and automatically assigned NPCs that carry warhorns around. Alerted
sentries will attempt to sound their alarms, attracting attention from their allies in a much larger
radius than normal. For wider guarded areas, sentry alarms may chain, leading to all enemies in
the entire vicinity being put on high alert. Sentries in the process of sounding the alarm can be
interrupted by stagger or other special conditions. Warhorns are visibly shown on sentry NPCs.
The style and appearance of the warhorn depends on their affiliated faction. Pickpocketing the
warhorn item from sentries will prevent them from sounding the alarm. So will killing, staggering,
or choking them. This prevents players from simply sneaking through a dungeon, ignoring all
enemies, because there's a chance a sentry will spot them, alerting all other sentries behind
them, causing a horde of the enemies the player ignored to come running up behind them.

While holding the whistle button calls your horse, simply pressing it lets you attract the attention
of enemies. We make the Player invisible in tall grass, as in most AAA games nowadays, so
that Players can use the whistle to attract enemies into tall grass or secluded spots. We also
make backstabs way more generous, by which I mean the Player can strike an enemy from the
side with a one-handed weapon and it will still count as a backstab as long as they aren't
spotted. All combined, stealth gameplay in dungeons and enemy camps is essentially a mix of
Thief and Assassin’s Creed. It’s about manipulating light, and your enemies, to slip past them.

Tools

To support these enhancements, players can now craft a couple types of arrows. Most important
of all are Water Arrows, which can be fired at a fire light source (eg. Campfire, torch, sconce,
candle etc.) to put it out, making it easier to sneak by. Guards and enemies will notice when a
light source has been put out, and can relight it. While we're at it, rain will also put these light
sources out. Water Arrows also slow enemies. Fire arrows can be used to relight fire light
sources or oil from afar, or simple light enemies on fire. Electric Arrows and Poison arrows also
exist for continuity's sake, but they can also spread their effects through water from afar. All of
these new arrows can be found or crafted.

Firecrackers can be thrown to create a cluster of noise, distracting enemies to the location the
fire cracker was thrown. They’re essentially a more powerful version of the whistle, which is why
they require resources. Bear Traps can be crafted, picked up and thrown. They will inflict the
bleed damage on enemies that step into them, and must be prepped again before a second
use. Enemies will begin a search after walking through them. Bait can be used to lure animals
out into the wild, like Firecrackers but for non sentient creatures. It comes in meat and berry
variants. Face masks can be worn in regions where the Player has a bounty to avoid being
recognised, although Guards will be suspicious and most people won't talk to you. Committing a
crime with the mask reveals your identity. At a high enough bounty, Bounty Hunters will begin
coming after you, even if you're outside a town or village, like in the wilderness. All tools can be
crafted at Forges and Anvils.
Takedowns
Players can perform takedowns for a non-lethal alternative to assassinating. Choke out enemies
automatically when bashing them from behind, or even bashing an enemy when they surrender
or are on low health. The Player grabs the enemy and chokes them out, with animations in both
first and third person. Takes longer than backstabs. NPCs stay knocked out until one of their
allies wakes them. This opens up opportunities for non-lethal playthroughs, quest objectives or
robbery. It can also be useful in that it doesn't cause a serious crime penalty. This is mainly for
roleplaying though.

Players can also perform aerial assassinations/takedown by attacking while above an enemy,
starting a cutscene where the Player lands on top of the enemy and, depending on whether it's
an assassination or knockout, slit their throat or knock their head into the ground. Not sure if the
Creation Engine could handle it, but it would be worth a try. Inspired by Dishonored.

Security
The first change we are making is to combine lockpicking and pickpocketing into a single skill,
just as they were in Oblivion, called “Security”. Lockpicking and Pickpocketing were great skills
for immersion, but they were never engaging forms of play. They are generally a simple obstacle
for simple loot that is never worth the time invested. The worst part is that both can be
performed without a single perk in their respective skill trees throughout the entirety of a
playthrough. As long as one has enough lockpicks, they can pick a master lock given enough
time. Pickpocketing has a zero skill and is merely a game of chance which is never worth the
outcome. Both involve simply making an attempt and then save scumming until successful.

Lockpicking
Lockpicking needs some changes to prevent players from opening master locks with zero
invested progression. The fix is extremely simple: don’t allow players to lockpick locks above
adept without unlocking a perk, like in Starfield. Instead of being an annoying mechanic, it
simply encourages players to invest a little in the Security tree, or to forgo the extra loot. In
Vanilla, anyone with enough skill can open any lock without a single perk invested. This change
enhances gameplay tremendously.

The lockpicking perks should include the ability to pick advanced/expert/master locks. The
actual minigame itself though I wouldn’t change. To make it more rewarding, the rewards of a
chest are now related to the difficulty of a lock.

Finally, and this is a big change. Time is no longer frozen when picking a lock. Just take a
moment to think about the impacts that would have. Every lock picked, every pick broken,
becomes infinitely more engaging and stressful as you attempt to pick a lock against time, as a
guard’s routing approaches you. It’s a super simple change, but it enhances every aspect of
engaging with the system. If nothing else, I consider this a necessity.

Pickpocketing
I am not a big fan of the percentage based system that Skyrim uses. The system Skyrim uses is
especially horrible without save-scumming, seeing as that is the best method to win at
pickpocketing. Because of this, I think we need to give agency to the players, rather than just
rolling the odds and hoping for the best outcome. I don't mind odds being a factor, but they
shouldn’t be the only factor. I like the idea of being a perfectly skilled thief who, through their
skill, never gets caught. Not to say that it should be impossible for a high-level thief to fail. The
main difference is that the player would feel as if it was THEIR skill that lacked. So here’s the fix;
something that isn’t too complicated and works on many levels.

So when the player decides to pickpocket, they must hold the interact button on the actor they
are pickpocketing. This holding sequence can run for a maximum of 10 seconds. Since we can’t
really run time while the Player is rummaging through pockets, I felt this was the next best thing.
The amount of time the Player manages to hold the pickpocket button on the target without
getting seen impacts the NPC’s inventory window. Difficulty of stealing an object is defined by
the value of the pockets, the item weight, perks, the amount of time the Player held the button
on the actor and the Player’s pickpocketing skill, but it is generally much more forgiving. Most
importantly, the chance is visible. This eliminates unfair chances and save scumming. It’s less
about chance, more about skill. We don’t want to erase are those "fuck me" moments where you
get unlucky and get the whole town on you, just make them less common. It brings skill to
pickpocketing and decentralizes the use of save scumming. Holding the button is incentivised
because it improves odds, but it also requires the Player to be more tactful, ensuring the target
is in a secluded place where they can hold for a sufficiently long time.

Disguise
If a player wears all pieces of a Faction's armor, they will be disguised as a member and can
blend in without getting attacked. Enemies will be suspicious however, and if the player gets too
close to an enemy, remains in the line of sight for too long or simply draws their weapon, the
disguise will be ruined and the player will enter combat. This includes guards, bandits, warlocks
etc. Disguise is a relatively simple feature, and only requires a couple perks to upgrade it’s
effectiveness, letting players get closer and stay in los longer. This is useful for sneaking into
locations without initiating combat, and could be a good mechanic for some quests. It’s just a
fun mechanic we might as well add.
Unarmed

Hand to Hand
Hand to hand was historically a feature in Morrowind and Oblivion, and it’s really fun, so we
might as well bring it back. The basics of this system is simple. Unarmed is the foundation of
combat without weapons, that is to say with bare fists. It deals blunt damage, although Khajiit
and Argonians deal Blade damage due to their claws. The unarmed perk tree makes unarmed
combat viable. With the addition of dodge, dual wielding/unarmed players no longer need to
block, and can instead dodge their enemies. It includes unique abilities like inflicting random
elemental effects or disarming. Unarmed pairs best with the unarmoured skill tree, since
unarmed players will likely need the extra enchantments to fortify their unarmed damage.
Brawlers Gauntlets, like the CC, also provide easy access to this mechanic, since bandits may
use them.

For unarmed controls, RT is a hook, coming from the left or right depending on the camera. It
has high damage, but is slow. RB is a jab, which is faster and can be chained but less
damaging. In this way, unarmed combat is similar to spears in the way jabs/stabs are more
important. LT is a block, but it isn’t very useful. LT + RT, rather than a bash, is a kick, which
functionally is the same thing. Attacks while unarmed are faster than any other weapon, but by
default have the lowest range and damage.

Dual Wielding
Dual wielding works slightly differently. RT is a slash with either weapon, while RB is a stab with
either weapon: same old. LT however is a bash, while LT + RT is a flurry attack, using both the
left weapon and the right weapon to deal lots of damage with consecutive slashes. This can be
used to slowly break an enemies guard, although it slowly drains stamina, but is very useful and
alone make dual wielding viable. The trade off is that dual wielders can’t block, and instead
need to dodge. Additionally, you have a 40% attack speed. This all means Dual Wielding is like
a more aggressive and speed focused alternative to Sword n’ Board. You trade defense for
flurry attacks. It kind of makes sense as well, like people wielding two swords in real life are not
going to be able to block well.
Survival
ES6 needs some more light survival/hunting mechanics to make it feel more immersive and
encourage the Player to engage in the world more.

Hunting
Hunting is probably the biggest inspiration we are going to be taking from Red Dead
Redemption 2, because its system is simply unmatched in all other RPGs. Not only is hunting
going to be a robust system now; compared to Skyrim’s nonexistent one, but it’s going to have
its own skill tree. So Hunting gameplay, and its skill tree, makes use of the sneak tools to hunt
prey, whether that be beast or man.

Let’s start things off with the basics; all animals, when killed, can have their pelt harvested.
These pelts can be 1 of three qualities; Poor if the player used the wrong strategy to take the
animal down; Medium if they used the right strategy; and Perfect if the player correctly hunted a
rare legendary animal.

Poor quality pelts are almost useless; they can be sold for very little money. Good pelts are the
most usable. They can be processed into leather, used for furnishings in player homes, used to
craft fur armor, or any other suitable armor. Perfect pelts fetch a lot of money and can be used in
crafting recipes for rare powerful armor for each animal type.

There are multiple factors that go into pelt quality. Unlike RDR2, Elder Scrolls doesn’t have
guns, so rather than using different guns the player has to use different arrows to get a good
quality pelt. This varies between animals.

Another universal factor is where the arrow hits - a good quality pelt requires a headshot and an
instant kill. Any form of trauma to the animal reduces the pelt to poor quality. A good quality pelt
can also be achieved with instant sneak attacks for certain animals. As a general rule, Small
Game Arrows are best for small game (eg. Rabbits, Mice, Pheasants, Squirrel, Toad, Crow,
Hawk, Racoon), Iron/Steel Arrows or Backstabs are better for medium game (deer, jackals,
Dunerippers, Fox, Wolves, Goat etc.), Elven Arrows are better for Large game (Ram,
Sabertooth, Boar, Lions) and Glass Arrows are better for Massive Game (Bear, Bison, Elk,
Moose, Ox, Crocodiles). Enchanted, elemental or poisoned arrows immediately ruin pelts. If the
player fails to instantly kill the animal, it will struggle on the ground (for small and medium game)
or engage in combat (Large and Massive) and the pelt will be ruined. Small and Medium game
tends to bolt as soon as they notice the player, while Large and Massive games are generally
offensive and will fight back - likely killing the player as they are very powerful. Animals are very
perspective, and will easily notice the Player. For that reason, the player will have to be efficient
at stealth to approach animals.
While medium pelts are in abundance, perfect pelts are a much harder find. This is where the
true hunting gameplay loop comes in, because the player will have to use traps and lures to
even have a chance of finding a Legendary Creature. Legendary Creatures will very rarely
spawn in the wilds in specific regions. These regions must organically be discovered, and will
then be marked on the map. These regions are large, and the legendary creatures are unlikely
to spawn in, so Players are going to have to search thoroughly, generally following their tracks in
the dirt. A perk highlights these tracks.

The Player can also plant bait in a Legendary Creature zone, which will attract one if it has
spawned in the area. They may approach the bait and start snacking, allowing the player to
strike or set up a trap. When killed in a poor manner, they drop poor pelts. However if they are
eliminated cleanly with a single critical, they drop a Perfect Pelt.

When an animal is killed, its corpse can be interacted with. Rather than the normal loot table,
the player can choose between picking up the animal using the interact button, or Field
Dressing the animal with the sheath button / the button to open the loot table.

By picking up the carcass, the player carries it around on their back. This reduces
maneuverability and prevents most interactions, luckily the player can easily drop the animal at
their feet at any time. They can also put the carcass on the back of their horse and carry it
around like that. This feature is useful if the player has a quest to bring an undressed carcass to
an NPC, sell the creature whole to a butcher for an even better payout or if they want to bring
the carcass somewhere safer to dress it. Large and Massive Game can’t be picked up. The way
the carcass interacts with the horse is exactly like RDR2. If the horse is sent to the floor, the
carcass is thrown off.

By choosing to dress the carcass, (pressing the sheath button on the carcass) a short animation
plays where the player removes the animal’s organs and then skins the animal, RDR2 style.
After this process, the animal's pelt, whatever quality it may be, is added to the player’s
inventory, as well as any meat, ingredients or other valuables. Pelts can be sold or used in
crafting.

Harvesting a carcass results in a couple items being added to the player’s inventory, depending
on the animal. Every animal has unique meat that can be harvested, each of which have cooked
variants and can be crafted into many rare but powerful meals. They also have unique
ingredients; like antlers, eyes, hooves and claws - all of which can be important alchemy
ingredients and ingredients in the homestead system. Venom is no longer a poison in of itself,
but an ingredient in poisons. Animal bones can be used in jewelry or crushed into bone meal to
speed up planters.
Animal AI
Similar to RDR2, animals should actually behave like animals. They have their own ecosystem,
which the Player can see unfold around them, decentralizing them from the game. Herd animals
travel in herds and they are much more skittish. Predators hunt their prey. Animals will never
fight to the death, they will flee when low. Animals will gather around water at midday, animals
are trailed by their cubs, complete animal food chain etc. Animals hunt, graze, drink, rest
throughout the day, making it much more immersive to hunt them. This is kind of what I was
refering to with NPC animations. We just need a massive variety of interactions and animations
for the animals to have to make it feel like they have their own world the Player isn’t a part of. It
also enhances the hunting experience, because it means the Player can know where to expect
certain animals at certain times.

Animals will NEVER Fight to the Death, they will flee and calm down as soon as they feel they
had enough, potentially to a den of similar animals if they are wolves or bears or the like.
Animals will be scared by Dangerous Monsters such as Dragons, Giants, Trolls, Werewolves,
Undead and Daedra. Skittish animals will flee from magic or fire. Bears will hibernate in winter.
Pack predators will have more confidence in groups, if they lose members of the pack they may
lose confidence and flee. While some animals are skittish, and others are aggressive, some are
simply defensive, and will give the Players warnings before attacking. Predators hunt each other
as well as their prey. A living breathing ecosystem.

Taming
Taming requires investment in the “Hunting” skill tree. Further investment makes taming easier,
and tamed animals more powerful. The player can now tame animals in a lightweight way.
Animals who are fed on bait, whether that be cannibal bait or vegetarian bait, can be tamed.
The player must sneak up on them and, while they’re distracted, continuously interact with them
until they achieve success. The success rate depends on skills, and the power of the animal. If
a tame attempt fails too many times, the animal will flee/attack. Once an animal is tamed, it will
follow and fight for the player. The player is limited by a single tamed animal at a time - taming a
new animal results in the last one being relieved from your service. Tamed animals are not
calculated as followers, and can fight alongside them.

Any animal that can be hunted can be tamed has three attributes: Damage, Carry weight and
Health. Docile animals will carry weight for the player, while aggressive animals will fight for
them. Some tamed animals also have their own unique abilities, similar to Pets of Skyrim. To
view the attributes of your animal, speak with it and choose the command from the dialogue
tree. Tamed animals can be killed in combat. Tamed animals can also be ordered to wait in
place, to follow the player, given direct orders (move to a location, pick up an item, interact with
an object), or get dismissed. In order to restore health, tamed animals need food. To feed an
animal, speak with it and choose the command from the dialogue tree. Feeding restores some
satiation based on the potency of the item, but most animals have a selective diet.
For example, only carnivores and omnivores will eat meat. To give a tamed animal a name,
speak with it and choose the command from the dialogue tree, and type the name. Large tamed
animals can serve as your mount. To ride an animal, speak with it and choose the command
from the dialogue tree. Mount speed varies between animals. If you don’t want to dismiss your
pet forever, you can send them to your home, which can hold a max. of 10 tamed animals,
provided you have built an Animal Sanctuary.

Fishing
Fishing can be leveled in the Hunting skill tree. If possible, I’d make it exactly like fishing in
RDR2. The actual act involves finding a good waterhole, choosing between a range of baits for
your rod and then casting out the rod. You then swivel the rod to attract fish, but not too much as
to scare them away, and once you catch a fish you have to wrestle with it, moving the rod to
prevent it from tearing the line but not too much as to tear it yourself, and then reeling it back in.
RDR’s system is just the perfect mix of serenity and action, and I would copy it 1-1. The Fishing
CC can be completely ignored, except for the catchable things which I think was pretty good
and rewarding. I like the addition of artifacts and junk to the fishing pool, which were not in
RDR2.

The act of fishing has many variables that go into determining what the player catches. The
most important of these are the biome the player is fishing in, the time of day, the population of
fish at the fishing spot and the bait the Player it using. There’s a couple rods that improve catch
rates as well.

Camping
Add the ability to set up a campsite out in the wilderness, again, just like in RDR2. Interacting
with camping supplies in an open space sets up a camp. It consists of a shelter to sleep in, a
couple bedrolls besides for followers, a campfire to cook a limited number of food items, a crate
to sit on and a universal chest whose inventory can be accessed from all locations. Once
placed, the campsite also gets a map marker which can be used for fast travel.

To set up or move your campsite, you will first need to craft Camping Supplies. This item
requires some firewood, leather and iron and can be crafted at any forge or anvil. Only one
campsite can be active at any given time. Advanced Camping Supplies requires iron ingots and
nails, and deploys the basic stuff plus a Tanning Rack, a Cooking Pot and a Smelting Pot over
the fire so you can tan leather, smelt ore and cook advanced meals. Any camping supplies tier
comes with a storage container, a satchel and a sack. These containers are safe and when the
campfire moves so will the loot within the containers.

Bathing
Simple addition. When the player is in combat their clothes and skin gets caked in blood. When
they run and roll around in the dirt they get covered in mud. A debuff decreases the speech skill
when dirty. Going into a body of water washes this off, but so will simply wait for a while. This is
a system in most games nowadays, like Ghost of Tsushima or RDR2, so I would be surprised if
it was omitted from ES6. It's especially effective since it would enhance roleplaying. Imagine
starting the Battle of Whiterun in shiny imperial armor, but by the end of it you're covered in
blood and mud. Players can also visit bath houses to wash off and receive a bonus to speech.
Relaxing in the bath house would feel so much more relaxing now. Bathhouses could
theoretically resemble PG13 brothels. So you’ll see a bunch of rich, fat guys in the higher end
ones, and people slumming it out in dirty bathhouses in lower end ones. There’s certainly mods
out there with a more indepth system - but this, inspired by RDR2, is lightweight and
unobtrusive to Players that don’t want to engage with it.

Survival Mode
The survival mode in CC is fine. The features above, like hunting and camping, would improve it
greatly. I like how warmth is displayed on the compass, although I think we can all agree the
penalties were far too excessive, and screen effects way to aggressive. Skuldafn was
completely ruined for me because the game decided to make me freezing cold and decrease
my health by half the bloody bar and make everything blue. So I would just release Survival
Mode with the initial game, and reduce the difficulty of the eating, sleeping and warmth
requirements, essentially making it more immersive. You’d also need to add in the ability to
overheat, if we are in a warmer area. Zelda: BotW does all of this much better by simply making
heat correlate to armor. If you are wearing lightweight armor, you won't overheat. If you are
wearing warm armor, you won’t freeze. That's all there should be too it. I shouldn’t have to cast
50 warm spells every hour. It shouldn’t involve all these outside factors like it does in Skyrim,
where it seems impossible to be warm. Only in the cases of blizzards should the Player be
forced to set a camp and wait out the night by the fire. So yeah, make it easier, and remove the
annoying screen effects.
Magic

Core Problems

In my view Magic has always been somewhat underwhelming (though, to be fair, combat as a
whole leaves much to be desired) in Elder Scrolls games. In Morrowind and Oblivion, this was
simply because they didn’t really feel or look good, despite being the most powerful branches. In
Skyrim, its the opposite. Things look great, but magic is super weak and restrictive. Obviously,
there has been a general trajectory of "streamlining" features as the games have developed and
this has seen spell effects and entire schools of magic get cut in each new iteration of the main
series. Skyrim cut out spellcrafting with the aim of making magic more accessible, but ended up
nerfing it significantly, in terms of fun and power. By removing spellcrafting, the player is no
longer encouraged to experiment, and instead encouraged to stick to a single spell. This
obviously wouldn’t be a problem if the system in Skyrim encouraged experimentation in other
ways… but it doesn’t. In general I think the bioshock-esc changes Skyrim made to magic, with
the two-hand system and whatever, were smart choices. Magic became more enjoyable in
isolated combat, but less enjoyable in the long run due to the lack of customization.

Skyrim seems to have overcorrected when it comes to the power level of magic. To quickly run
down the things that make it worthless in the long run and the worst of the three branches;
In Oblivion, the power of spells came from spellcrafting. Players could choose an effect, a
projectile type, and most importantly the ratio of magica cost to effectiveness. Extremely
effective spells were going to cost more magika, but magika unintensive spells were less
effective. Everything perfectly balanced. In Skyrim, this customization is thrown out, instead
opting to have multiple unlockable tiers of spell types at different magnitudes. In theory, the
expert level firebolt spell should be a straight improvement upon the apprentice level one, right?
Afterall, it's the upgrade. The iteration. The one you start using when you’re powerful enough.
Well… no, actually. For some reason, they adapted the magnitude/damage relation that spells
had in Oblivion, and made the expert level firebolt spell 69% less magika effective. WHY?! I
understand why it should be a little more expensive, to make it more situational and prevent the
adept level firebolt spell from becoming irrelevant, but 69%?!? Why even use it at that point?!

This illustrates the biggest problem with magic in Skyrim. It’s not about fun, or combining spell
effects, or interesting interactions - it’s about magika management. Skyrim’s spells just use way
too much damn magika. And because it regenerates so slowly, players are encouraged to never
use high-magika costing spells in favor of the less expensive ones. Sure, there are ways to
minimize magika costs through enchantments and potions, but we should be talking about the
baseline, none of those extra effects, and at that point its impossible to use expensive spells, or
anything other then the apprentice level stuff. The majority of game time is just waiting for magic
to recharge, because magicka costs are absurdly high, like 7x higher than is reasonably
common, in contrast to Oblivion and Morrowind which had a static damage to magika ratio. This
just makes gameplay tedious. You cast a spell that depletes all of your magicka for it to only
reduce your enemies health by a sliver.
Magic is unarguably worse then the other two playstyles, and magic mains will usually find
themselves falling behind. Once Magika is depleted, what else is a mage meant to do? Without
Stamina there's a variety of things warriors can do to stay in the fight, yet mages are just meant
to sit around and wait. This pushes hybrid playstyles, cause you might as well have a sword in
your other hand at that point, which is fine for all other play styles but for magic mains makes
their playstyle unusable at higher difficulties. For this reason, magicka needs to be easier to
manage.

One of the biggest issue with spells in Skyrim is how they level and scale. Due to the reasons
above, as the player levels up, their spells become weaker. In the case of destruction, this is
because spells don’t behave like weapons. Weapons can be upgraded, tempered and
enchanted, allowing them to keep pace with the enemies as they level harder. But magic in
Skyrim has none of that. You’re stuck with the 20 odd spells you get. In the case of other
schools, like conjuration and illusion, most spells become useless exceeding level 30. They
seriously just fail on anyone above these levels. So once the player levels up to a point where
their enemies are consistently level 30 they’re… fucked. Seriously. There isn’t anything you can
do about it. Half of your spell pool is now useless. Combine this with the way magicka reduction
in the skill tree is sorted according to spell level, and the player now has way too many required
skill point investments to be subpar, gradually making them comparatively weaker to the other
classes as they level up.

If you ask me, the entire philosophy of magic in Skyrim is backwards. It shouldn’t be about
balanced gameplay where the Player spend all their time managing magicka and levels. Magic
should be about causing chaos. About throwing your enemies into the sky. Using every tool at
your disposal to kill your enemies in such a way that they have no idea what was going on. If we
have to remove Spellcrafting (which I will… kinda), wouldn’t it be much more interesting if new
spell effects could be created on the fly by combining spells in both hands? Why give us
multi-hand features if there's no way that these spells can interact with each other in interesting
ways? Make magic actually fun to use, rather than a series of spreadsheets and spell
spamming.
Changes

General / Spellcrafting

So let’s address these issues, one by one.

First, we make the translation between magika and damage flat at all levels. There’s no
exponential scale of spells costing gradually more comparatively as they get more powerful. No,
if a spell is more powerful, it will cost more in equal measure.

Second, and this is a fairly big change, we add back spellcrafting… somewhat. We remove the
multiple magnitude iterations of spells in a school. Each spell type will be found only once in it’s
respective tree, with a flat rate of damage to magicka. Then, we add the “Spell Altar” which is a
lectern covered in books and paper. It’s a crafting station, and can be found alongside Alchemy
Stations and Arcane Enchanters. Players can use Spell Altars to craft staves and scrolls, but
their ulterior purpose is more important right now. In the interface, the player will see a list of
every spell they’ve learnt. The ones that can be “edited” with the Spell Altar will be highlighted.
These will be the generic bolt and stream spells. Essentially, anything Expert or Master will be
locked, but anything below that is game. The player can select any of these spells to move a
effectiveness/magnitude slider. The more magicka effective, the lower the magnitude. This slider
is flat, because both ends are equally useful in different circumstances. Unlike Skyrim, we don’t
consider the higher damage end inherently more powerful, and therefore in need of nerfing,
since it usually it won’t be.

Certain spell types can also have area of effect / duration edited, reducing the above magnitude
to magika cost slider. You can also add a secondary effect, whether that be elemental,
fortification, weakness, something illusion related etc. Like in Morrowind/Oblivion.

So at any point, the player can move this slider and create a copy of their spell with a different
effectiveness/magnitude, area of effect, duration or secondary effect. They can then forget any
of their previous copies, or straight normally learnt spells, in order to declutter their spell menu.
All of this should give players more freedom. They can choose whether they value effectiveness
or magnitude, without all of the other complicated spell crafting systems. It’s like a spell editor
essentially. All of these services require a payment in ingredients, rather than gold, to improve
the immersion of magic.

The biggest difference with spell crafting is that the Player can access it immediately with the
altars. To counter this, high magnitudes are locked behind skill checks, and obviously the bigger
limitations..
The Spell Altar is also our way of making the process of learning spells more immersive.
Essentially, instead of just interacting with tomes to instantly absorb the information, the player
will need to take it to a Spell Altar. There they can interact with the tome to skip time forwards by
12 hours, having learnt the spell after presumably this time spent studying it. This isn’t intrusive
or annoying to deal with - it serves its purpose effectively in a streamlined way. Learning spells
will feel more immersive and exhausting, while requiring very litttle effort. By using a time skip,
the effort is being put in by the character, not the player.

Fourth, we make it so that spells that would usually fail on enemies above level 30 or whatever,
essentially any spell with the stipulation “up to level x” at the end, now will work on all levels,
with a chance of failure on levels above the x. The higher level the enemy is past a certain
threshold, say, level 30, the higher chance the spell will fail. Then skills in the skill trees can be
introduced that counter this, for example. Combined with our removal of the multiple iterations of
spells in a skill tree, this essentially removes the issue we were having. Magnitude in relation to
illusion spells, for example, refers to this level cap. So a spell with a high magnitude will work
100% of the time on enemies even at level 50, but only for a magicka cost so expensive that no
low level player will be able to afford it. Two birds with one stone. On top of that, and I'll expand
on this in the skill trees section, we remove skill level specific mana proficiency perks. Mana
proficiency for a branch is now an umbrella perk, effecting mana at all levels. This reduces the
amount of skills mages require to be viable, thereby buffing them.

Fifth, we up the dynamic elements of magic. Like I said earlier, Skyrim, for whatever reason,
encourages players to stick to singular spells and elemental trees. We want to encourage spell
synergy, so we change that. Dual casting is removed. Casting two of the same spells
simultaneously will still double effectiveness, it's just players are encouraged to experiment with
the synergies of different spells, rather than using two of the same. It doesn’t make sense to
encourage the use of a single spell in both hands. The point of having two hands is equipping
different shit in them!

Sixth, we bring in the physics system into magic more, so that the player can play around with
their enemies if they are powerful enough. Elements will have more interactions, so that combat
feels more dynamic and realistic. For example, enemies set on fire by powerful mages will
scream in pain and run around burning to death, or enemies frozen by powerful mages will
literally freeze in place, and can be shattered like that. Like in Skyrim, how oil can be found in
dungeons and exploded, we add jugs of water for shock, barrels of poison, boulders to be
pushed, and other items to increase interactivity and environmental gameplay in combat.
Destruction
Addressing each school linearly, I want to discuss how the schools of Skyrim lack impact, and
how we can solve that. Not to say that Elder Scrolls needs to be an immersive sim, but if you
were to compare it to Bioshock or Dishonored, where spells have serious impacts, there’s no
comparison. In Bioshock, if you set someone on fire, they will scream in pain as their skin is
melted off. If you freeze someone, they will be shattered into hundreds of little pieces. In Skyrim,
people will grunt when face melting flame is sent into their face, and will moan when the frost of
a thousand winters is shot up their ass. In Dishonored, a single spell can change everything
about an encounter. Compare that to BotW, where its “spells” can steal people’s weapons, throw
rocks into their face and send them into the stratosphere. The only comparable spells in Skyrim
are rage and pacify. If you want to know what I mean by ‘dynamic combat’ watch Dunkey’s
video on Breath of the Wild and I think you’ll get what I mean. Combat in Elder Scrolls shouldn’t
be weapon on weapon, or spell on spell, but a third dimensional encounter. So, I guess I’m
saying Elder Scrolls should be an immersive sim. At least when it comes to combat encounters.
I mean, why not? The worlds of Bethesda games are already unparalleled in their interactivity,
why not extend that to the combat? And the magic?

In the case of Destruction, this means amping up the raw impact of it tremendously. While we
want it to be far more powerful, we obviously want it to be somewhat balanced compared to the
other Playstyles, so my solution was to lock the higher level interactions behind the higher
magnitudes when Spellcrafting. But before we can address the impacts, we need to address the
elements the Player will be manipulating.

Elements are a good way to make spells easily compressible by new players. I’ll be changing
elements, mostly adding new ones, to improve playstyles and enhance gameplay in general.
Each element will have a unique effect, and the arbitrary health/stamina/mana thing will be only
a minor portion of the old elements. Especially in the case of reducing stamina, which I
removed. So these elements all share the same basic spells, just with different effects. These
elements also reappear in enchantments, barrels around the world etc. The 5 elements are
fundamental to the world of Skyrim now, the first 3 of which can be manipulated as a part of the
Destruction skilltree.

- Fire: Fire spells travel at an average velocity and inflict damage on contact as well as
over time. Fire inflicts a "burn" effect on enemies, continuing to damage them after the
initial form of damage has ended. At higher magnitudes, enemies will no longer simply
burn from your spells but truly be set on fire, making them scream in pain and flail
around, essentially removing them from combat. Fire is incompatible with frost and will
melt ice. It combines with poison to create a damaging “green fire” that both deals
damage and makes enemies susceptible to damage from outside sources. It’s also
compatible with blood magic, and makes bloodfire that heals the player from burning
damage. It will also ignite oil in an explosion. Really all about dealing damage.
 - Frost: Frost spells slow the target's movement while dealing small amounts of damage to
health. At higher magnitudes, it can freeze them entirely. Hitting an enemy while
completely frozen a couple times shatters them into shards of ice. Where suitable, it will
also pull enemies towards you, making it very useful for crowd control. Frost spells
remove the fire effect and amplify the shock effect. Shock can travel through water
making it much more damaging.
- Shock: Shock spells are damaging volts of shock energy that drain health and magicka.
Enemies hit by higher magnitudes of shock will be stunned, resulting in poise damage
and stagger. They jitter, their skeleton partially glowing. Shock has the fastest projectile
speed. Where suitable, its spells will send enemies away, making it useful for spacing in
situations completely opposite to frost. Shock damage can spread through, and is
amplified by, frost/water. Incompatible with poison.

If you couldn’t see by the elements, I’m leaning into the physics of spells, and interactions
between elements. Players are encouraged to combine spells with their left and right hand to
see the results. They also interact with the physics we added in the combat update, so ice
freezes enemies in place and shock can force enemies away from you. Much like in games like
BOTW, you are encouraged to experiment with the physics system and defeat enemies in
unique ways, supported by magic. As lifted above, enemies of fire will act like they are on fire
and scream in pain. At higher levels, enemies can be completely frozen in place, and enemies
stuck by shock will get thrown by lightning. If killed by a certain element, enemy deathstate
change as well. Enemies struck by fire will become ashen corpses, ice will shatter into pieces on
the floor, lightning will become a pile of dust on the floor, poison will melt into a skeleton, blood
will be cold and drained of life etc. These changes not only improve gameplay by making it more
dynamic and engaging, but make it more immersive.

So for the spells…

Novice
Fire, frost and shock have their beam and bolt counterparts here. Both of which can be edited in
the spell altar.

Apprentice
Two new damage types, runes and grasps, are here. Runes are self-explanatory, but grasps are
a small cone explosion of elemental damage in front of the caster, pushing enemies backwards.
The wind grasp in particular is essentially our replacement Thu’um.

Adept
More damage types - cloaks and bombs. Cloaks cause nearby enemies in a small radius to take
Fire damage per second. This can be interrupted by Become Ethereal and similar status effects.
Also comparatively mana expensive to the other spells so far. This spell was, necessarily, nerfed
from Skyrim. Bombs are new are involve throwing an unstable ball of element, which explodes
on impact and leaves an area of effect.
Expert
These are unmodifiable in the spell altar and actually unique.

Molten Rancor - Kick the ground and shatter the Earth infront of you, dealing minor impacts
damage and oozing oil across the ground, synergizing nicely with a follow up fire attack.
Pillars of Flame - Summon a pillar of flame beneath the target location.
Cold Snap - Summons a few orbs of frost that slowly float towards nearby targets, and deal
large frost damage upon hitting them or any other obstacle on the way.
Approaching Winter - Kick the ground and send a slowly approaching wave of ice crystals that
grow from the ground, damaging anyone who stands in them for as long as they remain there.
Thunderball - Summon a unstable ball of shock energy that hovers in the air and fire lightning
bolts at enemies before eventually dissipating.
Twister - Send out a small tornado that homes in on enemies, dealing small shock damage,
moving frome enemy to enemy at it touches them. If it only graces an enemy, it pulls them
towards it. If they are fully within it, it sends them upwards and outwards. Useful for creating
chaos.

Master
Flame Strike - Charge up and deal up to unleash fire in a radius around you, dealing large fire
damage in a massive area.
Reckoning - Charge up and slam into th ground, dealing small amounts of fire damage ina
radius around you, and summoning meteorites that hit the floor and scatter it in oil, synergying
nicely with any upcoming fire attacks.
Blizzard - Charge up and summon a large snowy hurricane that circles around the casting area,
pulling enemies into it and dealing small amounts of frost damage.
Frozen Sun - Summons a large spinning orb of frost that slowly travels to the target location and
hovers there for 3 seconds, spraying ice spikes for frost damage in the radius.
Tempest - Charge up and unleash a beam of lightning that damages all that are caught in its
way. Can readjust aim in the middle of casting.
Thunderstorm - Charge up and slam the ground, creating a tornado around the casting area that
sends enemies upwards and outwards, while striking them with lightning.

So with these changes you can clearly see the formula I’m building up. Novice, Apprentice and
Adept spells are all editable, and intended to last a player their entire playthrough, by giving
them the ability to temper these spells and change their efficiancy/magnitude. Expert and
Master spells are more unique, and intended to give casters more dynamic options in combat,
at the cost of high magicka consumption. You can see these expert and master level spells are
extremely flashy and fun, which is kind of the point of this overhaul. Fire is all about straight
damage. Meanwhile, Ice slows your enemies, and where suitable, pulls the enemies towards
you. Shock is the opposite - it saps magicka and, where suitable, pushes your enemies away
from you.
Conjuration
Conjuration is neat, but it really undersells the premise. Being a lich king with an army of
summons is infinitely more interesting and fun then having a single summon following you
around. As always, Conjuration is far too underleveled and overbalanced removing any
semblance of fun or cool-ness. We need to fix this.

So I have a couple solutions. First let's clarify the types of summons in our new conjuration
system. First there are the normal Minions. Think specters, atronachs and daedra. The second
are Renanimated Minions. The corpse of dead NPCs reanimated to fight for the caster. In
Skyrim, Actors can only have one summoned creature or reanimated zombie fight at a time.
This removes any idea of it being a viable playstyle, since the Player is expected to cower
behind a single summon. To me, it makes way more sense for the Conjuration playstyle to be
about managing multiple summons at one time.

So here’s how we are going to overhaul things. Zombies have a separate counter, which maxes
out at 6. Is this OP? Well, no, because the way zombies work here is very different. They are
much weaker, with about half the health and damage of their living counterparts. Additionally,
they are mutilated much easier. Taking any form of damage has a 10% chance of resulting in a
mutilation, which will leave the zombies shambling around in a much weaker state. Factor in the
fact of the time limit on reanimation, and the fact that they become ashes on dying or timing out,
zombies are much weaker, and require healing and repairing of limbs.

So the playstyle of Conjuration is very different. If the Player wants they can multiclass and do a
bit of Conjuration, but zombies work in a way that they are useless unless the Player is actively
managing them, as well as being quite costly on magicka. People who are actually focusing on
Conjuration now have to manage their summons. They have to look after their zombies,
ensuring their limbs stay intact, and constantly reviving their fallen foes, creating an army to
storm a dungeon with. The normal summons are powerful single warriors, but zombies are
extremely weak alone and strong in groups, meaning the Conjurer must multitask managing
them. This would obviously need some balancing, but like I said before this is a singleplayer
game. Not everything needs to be equalized.

Blood spells are also considered conjuration, but are exclusive to vampires.
Novice
Conjure weak summons, like spectral wolves, scamps and skeletons. Summon a bound dagger.
Raise a weak zombie. Necromantic healing for your zombies. Can all be upgraded at the altar.

Apprentice
Summon a skeleton archer, bound sword and shield, as well as some castable spells:

Consuming Power - Targeted summon gains 50% extra attack damage at the cost of 75%
vulnerability 10 seconds. +
Entropic Armor - Targeted summon is slowed by 50%, but receives 200 points of armor and
30% magic resistance. +
Soul Trap - If a target dies within 60 seconds, fills a soul gem.

Adept
Conjure Fire, Frost, Shock and Poison Atronachs, as well as a Dremora servant and skeleton
mage. Summon bound warhammers, spears, bows. Banish daedra. Increase the speed and
damage of your summons with spells.

Expert
These cannot be edited in the altar.

Blessing of the Harvest - Targeted summon leeches life off enemies with the damage it deals.
Sacrifice of the Soul - Damage self to heal all active summons and give them a temporary
damage boost.
Necromantic Restoration - Restore any injuries or mutilations on a set zombie.
Conjure Spectral Bear - Summons a Spectral Bear for 60 seconds. Can be combined with any
element.
Conjure Daedroth - Summons a Daedroth for 60 seconds.
Conjure Clannfear - Summon a Clannfear for 60 seconds.
Conjure Wraith - Summons a Wraith for 60 seconds.
Corpse Explosion: Violently releases the soul of a corpse, disintegrating it with a magical
explosion that deals damage equal to 40% of the corpse's maximum Health.

Master
Eclipse - Charge up and unleash a large explosion of soul energy. All damage this deals to
enemies is given to nearby summons in health, as well as giving them a speed and damage
buff.
Mass Resurrection: Unleash an explosion around you that reanimates all corpses in the
immediate area.
Conjure Monarch (Fire, Frost, Storm, Poison) - Summons a Monarch for 60 seconds. Monarchs
behave like the Summon Atronach spell but are more powerful and last indefinitely.
Conjure Dremora Lord - Summons a powerful Dremora Lord for 60 seconds.
Conjure Lich - Summons a powerful Lich for 60 seconds.
Restoration
Restoration is great but it lacks any form of damage dealing for mages that want to exclusively
use Restoration. It also kind of bottle necks every player into multiclassing restoration, since
healing spells are so much more accessible then potions. To fix this, we make healing a spell
that needs to be learnt, like all the others. Likewise, by reintroducing classes (more on that
later!) characters that usually wouldn’t interact with magic, like warrior, now won’t, since they
start with far too low mana, unlike the equalized mana in Skyrim.

In general Restoration is fine as is. An offensive option to make it viable was obviously needed,
but that has been fixed by adding the Poison Element. Otherwise, spells and perks will tend to
be more grand now but they won’t be that different from Skyrim.

- Poison: Poison spells deal small amounts of damage and make targets more susceptible
to all further incoming damage from other sources. At higher magnitudes, it can spread
from enemy to enemy like a plague. Compatible with fire, creating a green-fire that both
damages and weakens. At higher magnitudes, the fire can spread as well. Poison can
also spread through water and is amplified with frost, but is incompatible with shock.

Novice
Healing, Ward, Turn Undead as well as a Poison Spray and Bolt. Can be edited in the altar.

Apprentice
Regeneration - Restores small amounts of health per second for 60 seconds. Cast once and
then the effect is active for a certain amount of time.
Heal Other - Restores health to living targets. Fire like a projectile that lands on target and then
heals them quickly over time.
Strengthen Other - Temporarily buffs the target’s damage output and armor.
Poison Rune and Poison Grasp

Adept
Health, Stamina and Magicka fortification and absorption.
Poison Cloak and Bomb

Expert
Circle of Vitality - Creates a circle on the ground that lasts for 60 seconds. Restores health per
second inside the circle.
Circle of Wisdom - Creates a circle on the ground that lasts for 60 seconds. Magicka
regenerates 50% faster inside the circle.
Circle of Strength - Creates a circle on the ground that lasts for 60 seconds. Stamina reduces
50% slower inside the circle.
Circle of Protection - Creates a circle on the ground that lasts for 60 seconds. Undead are
repelled and flee from the circle.
Poison Seal - Curse an enemy with a poison seal, lowering their damage output, giving them
the poison effect, and making them explode in poison on their death.
Venom Spread - Give an ally a blessing of poison, making them deal poison damage with their
attacks, and giving them bonus defense.
Elemental Ward - Negates spell damage. Can be combined with any element in the off hand to
imbue the ward with that element, dealing elemental damage when the ward collides with an
enemy.

Cannot be edited in the altar.

Master
Font of Aetherius - Creates a circle on the ground that lasts for 60 seconds. Restores health,
magicka and stamina while inside the circle.
Font of Immortality - Creates a circle on the ground that lasts for 60 seconds. Increases
maximum health, stamina and magicka threshold greatly while inside the circle.
Font of Decay - Creates a circle on the ground that lasts for 30 seconds. Enemies inside of the
circle take poison damage for it’s duration.
Miasma - Charge up and deal poison damage in a massive area. Nearby targets take extra
damage.

Alteration
Our final change, which is probably the most controversial change, and that is removing the
Illusion school of magic. This is the only case where I think removing a school of magic would
help stream Skyrim towards a positive direction. I mean, think about it. Destruction is obviously
an avid playstyle, as is Restoration and Conjuration. Players can build their characters entirely
around them and it works perfectly. However, Illusion only suits a playstyle in extremely obscure
cases, generally supporting Stealth, and Alteration is quite literally supplemental, designed to
support other playstyles without holding up on its own feet.

For that reason, bringing all of the Illusion skills under the ‘Alteration’ school of magic makes the
most sense to me, afterall Illusion is essentially the alteration of the senses. I won’t be bringing
back new schools either, because I agree with the purposes behind streamlined classifications.
Making every school large, distinct and viable. Also, this way, the four schools kind of neatly fit
into the ways one can manipulate matter. Destruction is the breaking down of matter.
Restoration is the building up of matter. Alteration is the shifting and changing of matter.
Conjuration is the making of matter.
Novice
Oakflesh, which can obviously be upgraded, Candlelight, Clairvoyance, Water Breathing, Calm
and Frenzy as well as:
Swiftstep - Move 25% faster for 15 seconds.

Apprentice
Magelight
Detect Life - You can see nearby living targets through walls.
Open Novice Lock - You can open any lock of Novice difficulty for 30 seconds.
Feather - Your Carry Weight is increased for 120 seconds.
Swift Swim - You swim twice as fast for 120 seconds.
Silence - Living targets have all magical effects removed and won’t cast spells for 5 seconds.
Dispel - Silence yourself, removing all negative effects.
Fear - Living targets flee from combat for 30 seconds.
Command - Living targets are put under your command (meaning they behave like a summon)
for 30 seconds.
Muffle - You move silently for 30 seconds.
Night Eye - You can see in the dark for 60 seconds.
Life Link - Connect two enemies so that they share the damage they receive, reduced to 50%.
Step Through Shadows - Dash to a target up to 150 feet away, reducing armor by 100 points for
10 seconds. Essentially the Blink from Dishonored.

Adept
Elemental Resistance for each element.
Open Apprentice Lock - You can open any lock of Apprentice difficulty or lower for 30 seconds.
Detect Dead - You can see nearby corpses and undead through walls.
Transmute Ore - Transmutes two pieces of Iron Ore into one piece of Silver Ore, or two pieces
of Silver Ore into one piece of Gold Ore.
Telekinesis - Levitates items from a distance. Release the spell to launch items at enemies.
Telekinesis is buffed so that it deals more damage and can hold a larger quantity of items.
Rust - Reduces enemy weapon damage by 25% for 30 seconds.
Corrode - Reduces enemy armor rating by 150 for 30 seconds.
Paralyze - Living targets up to level 30 are paralyzed for 10 seconds max.

Expert
Elemental Weakness for each element..
Open Adept Lock - You can open any lock of Adept difficulty or lower for 30 seconds.
Rune for each Illusion effect.
Acceleration Rune: Cast on a nearby surface, launches enemies in the direction they are
moving.
Invisibility - For 30 seconds, you cannot be seen or heard. Activating an object or attacking will
break this spell.
Pull Through Shadows - Pull targets up to 150 feet away to the caster.
Master
Ebonyflesh - Your Armor Rating and elemental resistances are massively increased for 120
seconds.
Swordbreaker - Reduces enemy weapon damage in a large area by 50% for 60 seconds.
Armoreater - Reduces enemy Armor Rating in a large area by 300 for 60 seconds.
Grand Telekinesis - Levitates creatures and people from a distance. Release the spell to launch
enemies into the air.
Harmony - Living targets in a massive area won’t fight for 30 seconds max.
Mayhem - Living targets in a massive area will attack anyone nearby for 30 seconds max.
Hush - Living targets in a massive area are silenced for 10 seconds max.
Hysteria - Living targets in a massive area flee from combat for 30 seconds max.
Paralyze Rune - Creates a rune that explodes when enemies approach, paralyzing living targets
for 10 seconds.
Slow Time - Bend time to your will.
Control Weather - Changes the weather to the caster's choice.

By merging illusion and alteration, the alteration magic tree can now stand on its own, equal in
relevance to the other three. As well as merging the two, we have reintroduced old illusion and
alteration skills from Oblivion to make it more useful, and even some stuff from Dishonored for
nightblade characters.

So we essentially balanced out all of the skill trees and added a ton of new ones. These spells
should make for a balanced, streamlined and absolutely fun experience. New spells like blast
should help mages keep distance to regenerate stamina, and the way spells interact with
elements essentially integrates spell crafting at a neckbreak pace.

Staves and Scrolls

Staves Scrolls are unchanged, except for the fact that Players can craft them in the Spell Altar.
It’s pretty simple, and essentially works like enchanting. Before the player can craft their own
staves or scrolls, they will need to find or purchase them in the world in order to deconstruct
them and learn their enchantment. This system works similarly to weapon and armor
enchanting, and should be intuitive to the player. Once the player is equipped with an
unenchanted stave or scroll paper, combined with a soul gem, they will be able to create staves
and scrolls at different levels, depending on the value of the soul gem.

That is to say, staves and scrolls are unchanged. I’d add more variants of the two for our new
spells, but otherwise they are fine as is. This crafting mechanic gives Players the opportunity to
RP as scrollswords that exclusively use scrolls and staves without mana, but that’s all it really
exists for.
Alchemy
Alchemy in Skyrim is absolutely broken. Player’s can become gxds by devouring unlimited
potions and walking into a battle zone unscathed. I’m obviously not that serious about keeping
Skyrim balanced, I mean my magic overhaul wasn’t OP but it also wasn’t balanced, but I’m
consistently surprised by how broken Skyrim alchemy is. It’s not just the fact that it’s over
powered, but it’s genuinely a terrible gameplay loop. Walking around places to pick up rare
ingredients is just undeniably not fun, which is a shame when it’s so essential for making broken
builds. The thing is, there’s many easy ways we can fix this, without changing the foundations
too much. This also extends to Food and Brewing, and before I get started let me credit
Apothecary: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/52130 for the bulk of the
ideas here, although I still came up with some stuff myself. While we’re giving out credits, I’ll
also give ups to the Witcher 3, for inspiring a lot of the changes here as well. So, let's get into it.

Potions, Poisons, Toxicity and Addiction

First, we normalize the magnitude of all alchemical ingredients in order to eliminate the
gameplay loop of checking UESP to see which effects have slightly higher potencies, or chasing
Salmon Roe to level up. This does a number of things. It removes Loss Aversion, a cognitive
bias that accounts for the fact that it feels much worse to lose something than it does to gain
that same thing; if all ingredient effects have the same magnitude, then there’s no need to worry
about using an ingredient, and whether there’s a better on out their to use. It also prevents
players from creating broken combinations. It allows the developers to strictly balance the power
of certain potions. Besides, most potions have levels anyway (lesser, normal, greater) so rarer
ingredients can still have more powerful effects. Potion potency is only affected by the players’
alchemy skill level, as well as the amount of ingredients (from 2-4) used to create the potion. All
potions found in the world have the potency of a level 10 alchemy player made with 2
ingredients. So essentially, potions in the world are the weakest possible variation.

Second, we add a toxicity bar that appears alongside the other stat bars when a potion is drunk.
Toxicity is a measure of how dangerous it is to consume a potion. Positions have similar toxicity
values, like all lesser potions share the same toxicity, so the general rule is that the player can
only drink four potions before exceeding their toxicity bar, like in Oblivion. If the player tries to
drink a potion whose toxicity value would exceed 100% of the bar, they are not allowed to, and
must wait for toxicity to decrease in value. While above 90% toxicity, you overdose, stopping all
passive regen to your primary stats until your toxicity decreases below 90%, and giving you
some wacky screen effects. Toxicity finds itself along the other bar perks like hp, sp, mp, but it
will only appear on the hud when the Player drinks a potion. Toxicity slowly decreases, although
it can be sped up with perks. This would require balancing, but let's say it takes 10 real life
minutes to go from 100% to 0%. So you can take a new potion every 2.5 minutes if the average
percent contribution is 25%. Health potions peak at like 20%, so 5 per 10 minutes.
Players can become addicted to drugs and alcohol. Addiction is a group of negative effects
acquired from repeated substance use. It represents a dependency to a substance, or activity,
meaning that one's body (or mind) is in need of a regular dose in order to avoid withdrawal
symptoms. Going cold turkey and suffering the many debuffs of withdrawal can cure addiction.
Additionally, drinking too much alcohol makes the screen blurred and slurs movement. Taking
too many drugs increases fov and vignette. IMMERSION!

Poisons function the same, however they have a suite of versions that boost damage towards
specific enemy monsters, such as daedra and automatons, encouraging preperation. Poisons
impact toxicity, for balancing purposes.

Restore Health, Magicka, or Stamina Potions work over 10 seconds. They do not stack. This
eliminates the biggest problem with Skyrim combat; the ability to drink 50 health potions to
return to full health. Now that potions take 10 seconds to heal the player, they are not an
immediate solution. This, paired with the toxicity system, essentially fixes one of the biggest
problems in skyrim. Fortification potions now have a duration of 60 seconds and a potency of
+50%.

I’m not going to list all the poisons or potions, because that would be tedious. Just trust that all
potion effectiveness has been normalized. Overlapping effects, like minor and major restore
health, would also be removed, due to our normalization of everything. The only thing that can
enhance your potions now is your Alchemy skill. Fortify Smithing, Fortify Enchanting and Fortify
Alchemy are removed to prevent the broken crafting loop. We also have added some fun new
effects, like Water Breathing, Rage, Speed and Polymorph. Similarly to Skyrim, every ingredient
has four effects, they just are all at the same magnitude now. We obviously need a higher
quantity of ingredients, to account for the higher quantity of effects.

Diseases
Before this, diseases were merely debuffs that you instantly acquired and instantly got rid of.
Now diseases progress slowly and grow stronger or weaker, depending on several factors. You
can now learn how to cook home-made medicines and get sick when exploring infected places,
try a cure by resting or get worse by leaving a fatal disease unattended.

Diseases effects are loyal to the original ones, but with some side-effects that make it more
interesting. For instance, if you are infected with a certain disease that causes your hands to
shake, you might have a spasm when overdoing physical activities. Also the regular effects
have been reduced drastically on early stages and increased drastically on advanced stages.
Each disease has 3 stages, the first one pretty really mild and the last one powerful. Every
disease makes an “evolution check” every 42 hours, where it is possible that the disease
evolves or recedes.

First test is to check if the disease evolves. If not, a second check is made to know if the
disease will recede. The probability of progression or recovery of a disease depends on some
factors: First, the player's Disease Resistance. Second, if they are resting properly. Not resting
yields a penalty to the check, while well-rested yields a bonus. The location the player is also
affects this check. Dirty places like dungeons, cemeteries, caves yield a high penalty, while
staying in clean and comfortable places yields a huge bonus. Third, if the player is under the
effect of medicine or blessings.

 he player can buy remedies/medicines now to help the recovery of the disease. These
T
medicines help a lot in the evolution check, and can be crafted after the player learns how by
reading the multiple volumes of the “Natural Remedies” book randomly available on most
vendors, one remedy per volume. Remedies can be crafted in alchemical stations. Praying on
altars yields an increased change of a disease receeding.

Players catch diseases by prolonged exposure to something, rather than randomly. Due to their
impact on gameplay, they are also much rarer. So a player will have to be bitten by a Skeever at
least 8 times in a row to contract a disease from it, or they will have to delve in a sewer for
multiple days etc. The player can catch a disease simply by exploring the world now. Players
are far more likely to get small diseases like the common cold from swimming in frozen oceans,
or food poisoning from eating raw foods, then they are swamp fever from crocodiles.
Enchanting
While Enchanting is just as broken as Alchemy, luckily for us it’s a much easier fix. Credit to
SimonMagnus as always: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/57138.

First, we let the enchanting bar recharge over time, like it could in Oblivion. This is a very slow
progression, so if the weapon is commonly used then the Player will still need to recharge it with
soul gems, but this slow recharge removes some of the annoyance from soul gems and
enchanting. You are no longer forced to recharge weapons you barely use. Honestly, it’s weird
how this was removed in Skyrim to begin with, but it’s back now. From a roleplaying perspective,
it means people with a fire enchantment are no longer forced to condemn innocent people to
eternal damnation in the shadow realm.

Generic enchanted items have been reworked to be consistent with player-created

enchantments at low levels. So generic items will not be 3x more powerful than player
enchanted items.

Visually, enchanted weapons should look like they actually harness their respective effects, like
Visual Animated Enchants: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/82329

The incredible power creep that was possible in Vanilla did not come from enchanting itself, but
from outside effects such as the crafting loop and Destruction perks. Some magnitude values
require balancing, but overall I think a lot of the enchantments themselves don’t really need
much changes. Obviously add more fun enchantments like slow fall, high jump, Battle Casting
(Take 50% less attack damage while casting a spell), Battle Focus (Dodges have 25% longer
eye frames and perfect blocks have a 25% longer window), Martyr (When below 25% health,
gain a temporary boost to damage and speed), Deflecting (50% chance when hit by a spell or
projectile that it will be deflected back to the attacker) to name some ideas.

All types of fortifications, absorption and resistances have a hard cap of 50%. Past that, the
Player will be informed that their enchantment is not doing anything. Additionally, armor
enchantments stack additively with their alchemical counterparts, reducing the power creep that
occurred when combining both alchemy and enchanting on a single character. This change
encourages players to pursue more diverse enchantments rather than stacking the same two
enchantments over and over again.
Unarmored

Mage Armor

When standardizing the value of player-created and generic enchantments in vanilla Skyrim,
one of the difficulties that we will encounter is that mage gear, especially gear with Magicka
Regeneration as an enchantment, was extremely common in Skyrim. Furthermore, the values
on these enchantments were extremely high. Items with 50% Magicka Regeneration can be
found just laying around, free for the taking, despite the fact that a Master Enchanter could only
put 62% Magicka Regeneration on an item in Vanilla. Now that we’ve balanced the game,
overpowered mage gear being thrown at the player is no longer necessary.

So all types of Mages Robes are no longer enchanted. This is because of the reasons above,
but also because the Unarmoured Gear skill tree does all those things but better.

Another issue we have with mage gear is getting mages to actually wear these robes, rather
than, say, enchanted heavy armor. It’s actually a pretty simple fix. So all equipment has a 1
enchantment limit, right? This is unchanged. However, items of clothing, anything that isn’t
considered light or heavy armor, are now considered unarmoured gear (since they are articles
of clothing or robes, not armor) and they possess the unique property to be enchanted twice.
This essentially replaces the double enchanting perk. So players are sacrificing armor for an
extra enchantment. This way I think it’s believable that mages might actually use their robes.
Considering the fact that cuirasses and greaves have been split, the Player can now equip a
total of 6 enchantments (helmet, breastplate/shirt, gauntlets, circusses/pants, boots and an
amulet) or 11 with robes/clothing.

Unamoured gear also gets its own perk tree now; alongside light armor and heavy armor. While
Unarmoured is viable for Thief playstyles, Unarmoured is geared towards Mages while Light
Armour is geared towards Rogues. Unarmoured Gear included robes and clothes. Not only
does unarmoured gear have two enchanting slots, but it also amplifies freedom of movement,
speed, jump height, and defense spells, given the correct perks. Perhaps the most important
perks in the unarmored skill tree is the perk that makes unarmoured clothing improve magicka
regeneration, just like the old enchantments on mage robes.

Loom
No longer must the Player purchase their clothes like a layman - they can now craft them using
the unarmored skill tree! You can create hats, shirts, pants, gloves, shoes, ranging from classy
styles to rugged peasant outfits. You can also create mage robes here. The Loom is a new
crafting station. It uses materials such as hide, leather, jute, flax, cotton and silk, all of which can
be hunted, or gathered, grown and harvested. A couple skill points can be invested her to
improve tailored clothing and robe.
Speech
Speech in Skyrim is… bad. I don’t think anyone would disagree that it’s underwhelming and for
the most part pointless. While it may help with bartering, which is absolutely serviceable, my
issue lies in the persuasion mechanics… or lack thereof.

In vanilla, chances of persuasion success depend solely upon your Speech skill. There’s a set
value the player’s speech must exceed, and once they do they just… succeed. No chance, no
skill, just level up. Intimidation success depends on Speech skill plus the player’s overall level.
So what’s the gameplay here? Intimidation is just… better? Don’t bother leveling speech, just
wait until you are high enough level to intimidate everyone? Not like it even matters, there’s 100
(roughly) speech checks in the game total, which sounds like a lot, until you realize that Fallout
New Vegas had 108 (roughly), which is half the size. Speaking of FNV, skill checks were not
only limited to speech checks but every damn skill the player had, unlocking entirely new paths
to quests then the default one. If you were speaking to a sharpshooter you would relate to them
better if you had a high gun skill, or you might have needed a high explosives skill before you
could persuade someone to give you some dynamite etc.

This meant that your dialogue choices were based more on the overall character you had built,
rather than on some single speech or charisma skill (although investing in speech did help). Not
only does Skyrim not have any unique skill checks, but its speech checks aren't worth a damn
regardless. The most successful speech check will only ever amount to skipping a part of a
quest. So… your reward is less content? Damn Bethesda, you know your writing is trash if you
think skipping it is a good reward. To illustrate this, the only Very Hard speech check, in the
ENTIRE game, is to skip the College of Winterhold test. No, not the class, but the test where
you have to cast a novice spell. How is THAT the only hard speech check?! Skipping an activity
that would usually take 10 seconds?! You KNOW that there's no rewarding content to come out
of the Speech skill if THAT is the only hard speech check!

What makes a good speech system? Well I think it boils down to 2 things.

First, persuasion shouldn’t be simply tied to mashing two numbers together. There have to be
multiple factors, like the sum of the Speech skill AND another skill relevant to the speech check,
as well as a degree of chance. Players should not always be confident in their abilities to
succeed. Even if they have the relevant skills, there should be that slightest 10% chance of
failure.

Second, it should actually be rewarding. Rather then simply skipping content, successful speech
checks should either unlock an entirely new way of playing through a questline, probably
peaceful alternatives that allow the player to play through the game entirely through speech, or
simply through better rewards, like we see in the Witcher 3 where players can convince NPCs of
increasing their rewards, at the risk of ruining their payout.
Third, persuasion should have real risks. Outright lying to someone's face, and then getting
caught in your bluff, shouldn’t be disregarded so easily as it is in Skyrim. In Skyrim, you can
literally try every single persuasion option (not that there's much, but you can convince,
intimidate, bribe or just accept), and the NPCs won’t mind it. Players should be forced to make a
choice, and if they make the wrong choice they should be permanently locked out of benefits of
the other speech options, rather than being able to try for anything. If a player fails a speech
check, there should be consequences, such as lowering a payout for a quest. This way, Speech
feels engaging and consistently entertaining.

Speech Checks
Now that I’ve complained above Bethesda enough, let’s look at how they most recently nailed it.
Persuasion in Starfield is a triumph in my opinion. It (almost) ticks all of my boxes, and actually
makes speech cool again. The minigame they added is probably the best speech minigame in
history - merging stakes and chance with multiple skill checks in a single minigame. It’s
essentially the most efficient way of adding skill check - by making them contribute to a
minigame that involves multiple. The biggest problem is that my final check mark isn’t really
cleared. A lot of time persuasion is used to skip content, but it’s still an improvement.

ANyway, I wouldn't change the actual system, just the writing. Occasionally, skill checks based
on skills levels will be available. Unique dialogue can also be chosen depending on the Player
character’s traits. Skill checks are also useful in the persuasion system, making a point of
persuasion guaranteed during the minigame.

Gambling
This is kind of a smaller thing, but gambling in taverns should be added as a nice break from
combat, with the Speech skill leveling it. Idk what tavern games could be added, like Gwent
would probably be too much, but maybe something like Liar's Dice or Blackjack would be a fun
inclusion. Simply for roleplaying’s sake, cause I love me some RP (if you can’t tell).
Bardship
Bard activities has been missing from Elder Scrolls for far too long, especially Skyrim which had
an entire guild for it despite no actual Bard activities. Morrowind and Oblivion even had a Bard
class, yet no way to play the Lute or Drums. This changes now.

I understand some people want to play as a Bard in combat, I understand that, but I think
playing music is better as just another fun activity your character can do, like gambling, fist fights
or jobs. Say you find a flute in your travels. I think it's only natural you will want to play it for a bit.
It might develop into a habit, it might not, but at least you now have the opportunity to do that.
Via. the skilltree I’ll add some combat bonuses, but for the most part this is a passive activity.

The thing about bardship is that it would allow the Player to quickly grind out the Speech skill,
which would make the progression of persuasion useless. The adverse is also true, where the
Player would immediately be gifted at instruments for simply practicing their persuasion. So
despite being considered apart of the Speech skill tree, Bardship and Speech actually improve
separately. Similar to Skyrim’s Got Talent:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/50357,

The player can now perform with the Drums, Lute and Flute. To play a song, the player can
interact with the instrument in their inventory. Pressing any button will stop the playing. Unlike
the NPCs, the player is not movement locked while playing, and has freedom of movement with
their legs. Every time the player plays, their Bard Skill will increase, which is an invisible stat.
Every Player starts at low Bard Skill.

There are 5 ranks per instrument. You need about 25 points to go from one rank to the next.
Each rank includes 3 to 8 new songs. Some ranks include songs from other ranks when it's
fitting, so the number of songs you can play multiplies.

- Rank 1: Clueless: Sounds terrible. Audience will mostly ignore you, high aggression or angry
mood NPCs will boos and jeer. Gives the Player significant debuffs. No tips.
- Rank 2: Beginner: Sounds competent. Audience will mostly ignore you, high aggression/angry
mood NPCs will still jeer, most low aggression/happy mood NPCs will encourage you and clap.
Gives the Player minor debuffs. Very little tips (Like 1-5 gold per song).
- Rank 3: OK: Sounds competent but with minor mistakes. Audience will gather more and have
a mixed reaction of boos and cheers. Gives neither buffs nor debuffs. Small tips (Like 10-20 per
song).
- Rank 4: Good: Sounds like other NPC Bards. Most nearby NPCs will gather and occasionally
cheer or clap. Gives minor buffs. Decent tips (Like 15-30 per song).
- Rank 5: Master: Sounds the same as Good. Nearby NPCs will gather around you and cheer,
sing, clap and dance. Gives significant buffs (Like 20-60 per song).

Each time you complete a song, your expertise in that instrument increases by 1-3. Final # of
points can vary depending on a couple of things:
- If you have completed the Bard College, you will learn faster (+1 point per song)
- If you are feeling rested (vanilla effect), you will learn faster (+1 point per song)
- The reaction of the NPCs: if you Play in an area with low aggression or positive mood NPCs
that are more likely to cheer for you, you will learn faster (+1 point per song)
- You can also pay a Bard to teach you what they know, which will increase your expertise in
their instrument by 5 points. Keep in mind: each bard can only teach you what they know once.

To tell what rank you are in, just read the messages that appear in the top left corner of the
screen after performing a song.

When playing in public areas, players will slowly receive tips from nearby NPCs depending on
their mood, disposition and your personal Bard rank. Your follower will play along with you to
any song with two parts. At low Bard ranks, the NPCs will ignore the Player, and ones with bad
moods or medium aggression will boo them and jeer. However, as you improve, so will the
crowd's enthusiasm. NPCs will begin to gather around you and cheer, dance and applaud.

At the end of a performance the Player will receive tips. Tips only begin at the Beginner rank,
and become more enthusiastic as your skill increases.

To kind of weave some gameplay in to this system, performing gives debuffs or buffs depending
on your skill level.

All of them last for 10 minutes and might apply after finishing a song. Sometimes you will need a
couple of songs to activate them, the muses work that way.

Drum: +10 Fortify Health / +20 Fortify Health (Can be -10/-20 depending on your skill)
Flute: 10% Disposition Increase with all NPCs / 20% Disposition Increase with all NPCs (Can
be -10/-20 depending on your skill)
Lute: +10 Fortify Stamina and Magika / +20 Fortify Stamina and Magicka (Can be -10/-20
depending on your skill)

Some perks may also improve the usefulness of Bardship in Combat.

Mugging
Mugging takes the yield system and applies your Security skill. It’s essentially an alternative to
Pickpocketing for non-stealth characters, using Instigation value, which is essentially health and
speech skill. Essentially, the player has a new speech option when their weapon is drawn on
any non-hostile NPC. They can instigate a mugging, which checks the Player’s security skill
against the target’s. At that point they will either yield, and the player can interact with them to
extort them of their goods and then send them away, or they will fight back, either with their fists
or a blade, if they are confident, or they will run away, if they have medium confidence. They will
generally yield when damaged enough, at which point the Player can loot them like usual, or
finish them off. You can attempt to do this to shop keeps, in which case the shopkeep will guide
you to a safe of goods, but be aware they will be more resistant, may call guards and will refuse
to trade with you in the future.

Mugging is an alternative to pickpocketing, for less stealthy Players. The benefit of mugging is
that the NPC that is mugged has to report the crime to a guard before it can count (or it just
counts after 1 hour), meaning the player has a decent amount of time to split before their crime
is reported. It is a good idea to disappear after a mugging. This feature is added to fill out the
security skill tree, and add good roleplaying opportunities for criminals who aren't stealthy.

It essentially acts like robbery in RDR2. It’s entirely system based and dynamic.
Leadership
Leadership is the skill focused on a bunch of different activities and mechanics. Honestly, it’s
kinda a mish mash of all the stuff that had nowhere else to go, since I had a free skill in the
combat tree. It includes mounts, shipfaring (Black Flag style) and proficiency of followers.

Followers & Romance

To start, the Leadership improves the Player’s relationship with Companions. It improves the
power of Companions, as well as their responsiveness to directions.

Followers are actually pretty simple to write, since this is a system that Bethesda has already
perfected. Was Skyrim the best follower system? No. Fallout 4 and Starfield have mastered
them. As we are seeing with all these new CRPGs, a lower number of Followers with character
development and real human relationships is the best way to go. With that said, one of my main
goals was to retain role playing elements, and the ability in Skyrim to marry almost anyone or go
out adventuring with almost anyone was really great. So my middle ground is this:

Let’s say 7 fleshed out, Fallout 4/Divinity 2 Original Sin-esc followers in the world is a good
standard to aim for. They have a range of different opinions, making them unique for the kind of
character you are roleplaying as. The majority of them can be romanced in long drawn out
processes. You need to follow their opinions, likes and dislikes to a tea or they won't catch
feelings. Romancing them is really hard. However, should you successfully marry them, you can
give them an Amulet of Mara (or an equivalent) and get married with all your friends watching.

However, we also give the Player the option to recruit any high confidence and high assistance
NPCs they have a positive disposition with. As followers, they will have very little to say. The
Player is encouraged to use the fleshed out Followers, this is here as an alternative. Similarly,
the Player can also select from a range of NPCs to marry, like in Skyrim. Voice Types may be
given more dialogue, but otherwise this is the same. While the Player is encouraged to explore
and marry the fleshed out followers, they aren't forced into it, and can recruit any friend they
make off the street if they wish too, allowing them to forge their own stories.

And since we have marriage in Elder Scrolls, rather than everyone sleeping with each other
cause it's the end of the world, cheating will get you divorced.

The player can give followers outfits for exploration and for casual (cities and homes). This isn't
a massively complicated system, the player can simply request the player wear an outfit at
home/exploring in the dialogue options. The player can also assign a follower home, if they lack
one.
Followers will sandbox around their surroundings when the player is doing other passive tasks.
Followers use spawned horses when the player boards a horse. The horses will roam for a bit
after dismount, before despawning once out of reach. Followers do not use resources, to
minimize annoyment when playing with them. Also remove friendly fire, for obvious reasons.

The fleshed out Followers will improve their skills as they adventure with you. They will
progressively get better at stealth, combat and magic (preferring whatever their specialty is) and
become more useful to the player. They stop leveling with the player at level 90, so they are
useful for the majority of the game. In a similar vein, the combat style of every follower is unique.
Some may be tanks, healers, assassins, mages etc. The Normal NPCs have much lower skill
caps.

Apply a small Weekly Follower Cost to Followers (as a gold sink). This stops if the follower
becomes a spouse, or your relationship grows enough. Also depends on the context of them
joining you, I guess.

Integrate the mood system to followers, so that their surroundings will impact their mood and
disposition. If the player constantly decreases the NPCs disposition by doing things they
disagree with, they will become sad. If disposition becomes low enough, and the NPC
absolutely hates the player, they will leave their services. They may even attempt assassination,
if they think the player is a monster. I’ll explain what confidence and mood means later.

Follower Combat
Using the down d-pad button, the Player can instruct Followers to attack specific enemies, wait
in specific spots, loot, steal, pickpocket or lockpick certain interactables. This is something that
was seriously missing from Starfield, that would improve combat with followers a lot, giving the
Player the ability to direct their followers on the fly.

Additionally, dialogue options could give the Player the ability to make their followers fill specific
roles, whether that be as a healer, a mage or a soldier, depending on their abilities. Essentially,
give the Player more commanding options around their followers..

Equestrian / Mounted Combat

Horses are massively overhauled, since their system in Skyrim (and all other Elder Scrolls
games) was kinda shit. Creation club expanded on Horses a bit, and I liked these new features,
but felt they could've been implemented a bit better.

First, some tweaks. Obviously there’s the new horse physics. Horses will now run away from
combat, rather than engage in it. If engaged in serious combat, a horse may get spooked and
buck the player, before running away. Horses have visible health and stamina bars. Horse
health and stamina is significantly reduced on the onset of the game.
Horses can no longer be purchased, they must be captured in the Wild and registered at stable.
Most of the features are done through dialogue with hostlers, even stuff like changing the
horse's current saddle. A lot of this is inspired by Breath of the Wild.

Now that horses are spooked more easily, wild horses will run away from the player if they spot
them. The player is able to ride Horses by sneaking up to them and jumping on their backs.
Once the Player jumps onto a wild Horse's back, it will jump around wildly and attempt to knock
them off. The player must soothe the Horse until it accepts their control. Their Stamina is
drained while hanging onto the Horse and soothing it, if depleted they are knocked off. It can
vary for each Horse how long it takes to tame them, depending on their stats. After capturing,
Wild Horses can be brought to a Stable to register for a fee of 100 gold to be able to board them
for future use.

When a wild horse is registered, you will be given the option to name it. A text box will appear
prefilled with a suggested name. You can either accept this name or change it to whatever else
you like. After registration, a Horse will have a Saddle and a Bridle.

A new “Whistle” key is added (H on Keyboard, and Left Dpad on Controller);

Tapping H will Whistle, distracting enemies, for usage in Stealth. Holding H performs a much
louder whistle. This calls your most recently ridden horse and orders it to begin following you.
Holding H a second time will instruct the horse to wait at its current location.

 ressing H while looking at your horse or riding it will open its inventory. You can store items in
P
it, just like followers, so that you horse can bear your burdens. Default horses have 100 carry
weight. Holding H will give you a selection of foods to feed your horse, and then plays an
animation of you feeding them.
When ridden, Horses will automatically avoid obstacles and follow paths. A Horse's affection for
the player has a rating from 0 to 100; a Horse with a lower affection level will periodically buck,
turn off-course, and otherwise rebel against the Player’s control while being ridden, requiring
them to soothe it in order to bring it back under control. Affection is increased by soothing a
rebelling Horse, but can also be raised quickly by feeding the Horse foods. At maximum
affection, Horses will not rebel against the Player.

There are three main attributes a horse possesses: Strength (Carry weight and Health),
Endurance (stamina) and Speed (movement speed):

Dark horses tend to have good strength, Pale Horses tend to have good speed, and Brown
horses tend to have good endurance. While no horse is more powerful than the other, they
fluctuate in attributes. The player will have to decide what type of horse they want (likely a White
Horse, which is rarer), and then seek it out.
Speaking to a stablemaster opens a list of all the Player’s tamed horses, their stats and their
affection. Here the player can also equip horse armor and other saddles to the horse, as well as
assign horses to followers. Horse Armour sustains a horse against damage, as well as making
them less likely to buck during combat. Saddles have no effect beyond visuals. Horses can be
assigned to followers at stables. If a follower owns a horse, the horse will automatically spawn
and the follower will board it whenever the player boards their own horse. The follower will
dismount when the player dismounts, and their horse will wait around the same location until it
despawns. When horses die, it’s permanent.

Horses can be mounted from any direction completely seamlessly. Fast mounts are possible if
the player spams the mount key and is sprinting, in which case they will leap onto their horse,
even if it is moving, with no animation between controlling the player's movement and the
horse's movement. Fast dismounts are now possible if the player spams the dismount key.
Executing a fast dismount will make your character jump off the horse immediately and also
draw any equipped weapons on the way down. The location the player dismounts depends on
the directional input. Likewise, dismounting horses normally can happen from any angle.

In combat, given your horse is brave enough, jumping and landing from a jump will kick nearby
enemies, causing damage and knock-down. Galloping on a horse will trample enemies in your
path, causing damage and knock-down.

The player is much more relaxed on their horse. While aiming they will rotate their hips and the
legs to face the direction they are aiming, trusting their horse will ride safely. Pressing the attack
key with melee weapons can happen from both sides, depending on directional input. Casting
spells while mounted is now possible as well.

All of these features are pretty standard nowadays, and I don’t really blame Skyrim for not
having them considering its age, but we really need seamless mounting in ES6. Advancing
Navigation improves all horse attributes in general as well as the efficiency of mounted combat.

Shipfaring
Almost every possible spot in Tamriel (other than Oblivion, where this would need to be
excluded) has a coast. This makes Seafaring a necessary inclusion for any new Elder Scrolls
game. Whether it be pirate based in Hammerfall, Viking based in Skyrim, Oriental in Morrowind
etc.

To this day the best sailing mechanics are in Assassin's Creed, but the most similar to Skyrim’s
gameplay would be Sea of Thieves. For that reason I think we can essentially copy and paste
from those games. It’s also worth bringing Starfield into this discussion. I don’t think naval ships
should be as important as starships are in that game, but the shear customizability should be
strived for.
Ships can be bought at a harbor. The docks behave similarly to Stables, where the player can
buy new ships, look at a selection of their existing ships, upgrade their ships or select a ship for
deployment at the harbor. There are a couple ships to purchase from the beginning (there could
probably be some unique ones as well, which the player can raid and collect). They may come
in corsair, imperial, elven, nordic variants etc., but they essentially boil down to 4 types. Ships
are made distinct by their stats. There's the size (their physical size which equates to their crew
member, amount of masts and cannons, larger ships can ram into smaller ones), the damage
(the power of its cannons), the health (the amount of damage it can sustain), and the speed.

The Rowboat is a boat rather than a ship. It has space for a player and two followers, and
resembles the boat in the Witcher 3, with a small sail and paddles. This boat is designed for
transport rather than combat, and so can be utterly destroyed (like carriages) by dangers on the
high seas. The Rowboat is small, weak, slow and noncombatitive. For that reason, it’s
recommended to only be used to transport across small bodies of water like rivers and bays. It
cna also commonly be found around coasts and at lakes.
The Sloop is a small ship suited to two or three pirate crews. It is more maneuverable and
easier to operate. It has the best overall speed, but its size means it can be crushed by larger
ships, and it has few cannons. The Sloop has low health.
The Brigantine is a medium ship. It falls between the smaller Sloop and larger Galleon in size
and stats.
The Galleon is a large ship that can accommodate up to 5 crew members. It is large and has
lots of health, but is the slowest of the four.

The Sloop, Brigantine and Galleon cannot be piloted by oneself. They require at least two
companions to control the sails, brakes, man the cannons and repair the ship while the player
pilots it, or vice versa. Generally, when a ship is purchased or registered, the player can
purchase Shiphands with it. Shiphands are generic NPCs that behave like Stewards, and will
look after the ship and help you ride it, however they require an upfront payment whenever a
ship is boarded from a dock. When the player is choosing their ship in the dock’s menu, they
can choose whether they want 1-5 Shiphands. You’ll generally want 4 shiphands on the
Galleon, 3 if you have a follower, while the Sloop only requires 2. Shiphands only cost like 50
gold each, so they're not that costly since they’re pretty important. If a shiphand dies, no one will
care sadly enough. Although you’ll get a bounty if you murder them yourself.

Ships can get upgraded health and damage with a high navigation skill. Their size and speed is
set by their type. The player can also customize a ship's figurehead, sails, flag, interior and parts
of the exterior. Probably doesn’t need to be as in depth as Starfield. The interior of each ship is
different due to their differences in size. Variations between ships like imperial or trading ships
also change the interior, although it’s non customizable.
Ship Controls
A Ship acts as a mobile base or a method of transporting the High Seas, containing supplies
and treasure.

Every Ship can sustain damage from various sources and will eventually sink if not repaired.
Most damage to a ship can be fixed with wooden planks - This includes the Hull, Wheel, Masts
and Capstan. Wooden planks are more of a descriptive thing then a resource, the player has to
interact with the hole to repair it, they don’t actually need a wooden plank resource. The most
important location to repair damage is the hull as hull damage allows water to begin flooding the
ship, eventually causing the ship to sink should the water level reach the top deck. The hull of a
ship can take damage from shot Cannonballs, collision with large objects, large waves inside
Storms and explosions. Small ships can be crushed by large ships or monsters, resulting in an
instant destruction of all components of the ship and the player being ragdolled into the depths
of the ocean.

To mobilize the ship, the anchor must be raised and the sails unfurled. Careful sailing will
generate maximum speed or turning finesse. When the ship suffers damage, it must be patched
with wooden planks. If the hull is punctured with holes, the lower deck will start to flood, and
must be bailed out with the bucket. The ship will sink when it is completely flooded, disabling all
ship equipment. The holes can vary in size, which affects the repair time. The other components
can be damaged to reduce functionality: the mast, capstan, and helm.

Most ships will Spawn with the following Features:

Bell: Located at the doorway to the Captain's Quarters. Can be rung to get the attention of the
crew or other nearby Ships.
Brig: A jail cell where enemies can be locked up.
Cannons: A Ship's mounted weapons. Fires cannonballs and even players. A cannon requires a
short animation to be loaded, but cannonballs are not an expendable resource. Much like planks
they are infinite, just require interaction.
Anchor: Immobilizes the ship when lowered.
Crow's Nest: A lookout tower at the top of the main mast, accessible via ladder.
Harpoons: Located near the front of the ship on either side, the harpoon gun can be used to
latch onto surfaces, ships, sea creatures, and other enemies, or to pull players or treasure onto
the ship. Harpoons are instrumentive to boarding enemy ships.
Helm: A wheel that steers the ship, towards its back.
Sails: Operated with Sail Length Cleats and Sail Angle Pulleys. Masts can take damage from
Cannonballs. Uses wind to move the ship, can be adjusted in length and angle to control speed
depending on wind.
Rowboat Dock: A rowboat can be found close to islands or ashore, and can be hung on the
back of every ship by rowing it directly behind a ship. A rowboat can be used for transporting
treasure, storing Supplies or saving everything on a sinking ship. Note that there are certain row
boats that have harpoons on them.
Storage Room: A room with a small kitchen, as well as a treasure chest.
When a player interacts with the helm, they can choose to enter third person or first person. The
Third Person has a view of the entire ship. Controls are relatively simple. The movement keys
move the ship, like in AC or Starfield. Pushing forward raises the sails and increases speed,
pushing backward lowers the sails and reduces speed. Pressing the sneak button lowers the
anchor, immobilizing the ship. The jump key can be used for a boost, useful for when you want
to quickly ram someone, or lose enemy vessels. Wind conditions can slightly slow the speed a
ship goes and the direction their sails face, but it’s not a significant difference.

Pressing the right hand button instructs your followers/shiphands to fire the right hand cannons,
as is the same for the left. If the player is shipfaring by themselves, they will need to to stop
piloting the ship and then go and interact with the cannons, by which point they’ve probably
missed their chance. Pressing the right bumper/left bumper equivalent keys fires the harpoons,
which require a little aiming with the player's reticle. Moving the camera to look over the left or
right will give you a projectile arc of where the cannons would go, holding the fire button and
then moving the left stick positions your aim better.

If the player finds loot at the bottom of the sea, they will want to anchor their ships and then
swim to the bottom, to open the chest.

Ship exploration is made interesting via. environmental encounters on the ocean, whether that
be underwater caves, ship wrecks, leviathan-type creatures, haunted ships, corsair attacks,
stormy weather, miscellaneous islands with things to do on them, or friendly ships like in
Starfield. For the underwater environments, the best way for the Player to organically discover
them would be to put them on the compass, and add a little something poking out of the water
for them to stumble across, which would then display the "location discovered" thing.

To make it feel less barren, you would also want ships to go extremely fast, so that they cover
the ground between landmarks faster. You may also want to make the majority of the gameplay
endgame, so that it doesn’t trivialize land exploration. Make ships extremely expensive, and
require investment in skills, and highly dangerous in the open water, meaning the Player will
have to spend lots of time on the ground before they can begin zooming across the water.

Naval Combat

Naval combat is often fought with cannons, ramming or Boarding enemy ships. A ship's flag will
depict their allegiances. Some ships are completely passive, like Trading Company and Imperial
Ships. If the player wants to aid them, they are welcome to, but it will result in a bounty.

Actively hostile ships that want to raid the player may be corsairs, or even cursed ships full of
skeletons, which are a much higher level. Enemy ships generally contain 6-9 enemies, so it’s
usually a match slightly in their favor. Needless to say, for simplicity ships have very reduced
crew sizes.
The player must use smart positioning to fire cannons at the enemies and position themselves
in a way where they can ram into the enemy ship. A combination of the two will eventually sink
the ship, at which point you can dive underwater and retrieve your profits. The second method
involves firing your harpoons to bring the ship towards you. It will eventually get locked side by
side, and you can board their ship and fight with normal combat, which will inevitably make it
easier to loot. The way this system works is that you're not limited to the aforementioned way of
combat. If you want you can blink on to their ship, fire at them with magic or arrows, or summon
legions of dremora to fight them for you. The world is truly your oyster. Inserting a naval system
into Elder Scrolls would naturally make it the best naval system of any game, not because of the
quality of the system (it can be really half assed if they like) but because of the possibilities.

If cannons in lore are a problem for you, and you can’t think of an explanation, replace them
with giant crossbows. They still function the same, they're just a little less pirate-y. Besides, I’m
fairly sure cannons are in ES lore anyway.

When your ship is damaged, and you're piloting the ship, you can press the sheath button to
send someone to patch up your ship. This will generally be the person manning the sails, who
will run and patch it up, making the sails temporarily unchangeable. The second crew member
is generally manning the cannons. If they are alone, they will have to run back and forth
between the sides. If there are three, the third person will man the left side. If there are four, the
fourth will repair the ship while the first does the sail. If there are 5-6 crewmembers (including a
Companion) they will… hang out.

If you lose a battle, your ship is sunk and the player is forced to retreat. They can recover their
loot by going to where their ship sank, where their chest will be, at the bottom of the ocean,
containing all of the loot it originally stored.

If the player leaves their boat in the middle of the sea or at some random bay, it will despawn
like a horse. While there’s now way to call a ship like a horse, going to a dock and opening the
ship menu will display the ship, where it can be spawned again with all the loot it contained in its
chest.

Players may be forced to fight naval monsters, like krakens and megalodons. The easiest way
to fight them is to fire a harpoon into their back, so that the ship will automatically follow the sea
monster wherever it swims. The player can then fire or strike it from behind, although it may
counter attack and break the harpoon’s line.

I feel like I did a surprisingly good job of describing that. I don’t think any stone is left unturned?
Let me know if there is. This would be such an amazingly fun system. Truly.
Hospitality
Hospitality is an umbrella skill for everything related to settlements, cooking, brewing, farming,
buisnesses and really anything else that involves cultivating something for others.

Hearthfire and Fallout 4's settlements were both met with mixed reviews. I personally loved
Hearthfire - it gave me an excuse to make more money and get fully immersed in the world.
There’s something infinitely satisfying about resting in a how you built, even if there’s very little
customisation. There was so much to do in these houses; I could display my loot, build up my
greenhouse, get a room for the kids - it was fun.

And Fallout 4, was another deal for me. It was far more tedious, due to needing tons of
materials to actually accommodate your people, and statistics driven. Even then it was alright - I
had a lot of fun customizing my house in Diamond City, but it was completely bogged down by
the settlement system. Bethesda using settlements to replace any kind of hand crafted city
absolutely ruined the game for me. I think that everyone can agree that, like, 10-20 settlements
would’ve been great - at that point the system would have been nothing but gold, but 30 is just
way too much. The game became “the settlement game”, rather than what Fallout is normally
known for. Sims Settlements made this pill slightly easier to swallow, but needless to say I
wasn't a big fan. With all that said, a lot of people do love the system. Starfield has watered is
down a lot, which is recording mixed review.

That said, it's just so exciting to think about all of the stuff I can do when I have no blueprints to
tie me down. So I think a blend of what both games did would be perfect. What if there was a
combination of the systems for Elder Scrolls 6? I like these systems, and I get some people find
them kinda "bleh". I have issues with both, but both have a lot of things I like. I don't know if
they'll include the settlement stuff in the next game, but if they do, I want it to be much smaller in
scale compared to Fallout 4, but much more customizable than it was in Skyrim. Of course we
need normal houses in cities as well, but having small slices of land where the player can build
their own home, Hearthfire style, with the customization of Fallout 4’s system would be perfect!

Plots and Properties

So here’s my proposed system; every hold (or region, or whatever they’re going to be called)
has a purchasable property. That’s 16 properties, for one in every city of High Rock and
Hammrfell combined. That’s 9 for Skyrim, 15 for Valenwood and Elsweyr, 10 for Cyrodill etc.

These properties are separated into 2 separate types: Plots and Homes.

These are small stretches of empty land, similar to Hearthfire. The land may be desert, snowy,
forested, beachside etc. The variation of plots lies in their location, otherwise they are exactly
the same. Upon purchase, plots simply have a Workbench.
Interacting with the Workbench for the first time adds the plot to their list of plots. Holding
interact opens the Workbench menu, where the player can transfer items to or from it.
Alternatively, tapping the interact button opens the Workshop HUD, which can be top-down or
POV. With this HUD open, the player can place, scrap, store, and move objects. Essentially
Fallout, but stripped and simplified, since plots are nowhere near as big a deal as settlements.
It’s also simplified in some respects, opting for ease of use over functionality, because, once
again, this isn’t as important as settlements in Fallout.

Placing objects requires certain materials, such as wood, iron, stone and clay. These materials
need to be stored in the Workbench for them to be used when crafting and placing an object.
Trade lines between plots can also be organized. Objects may be broken down into their raw
components by the workbench when needed. For example, a chair can be broken down into
wood. While the workbench's ability to scrap items is normally used to clear pots for building, it
can be used anytime to scrap items by dropping them on the ground, entering the workshop
HUD, pointing at them and selecting the Scrap option; just like scrapping items at the forge.

From here, things are mostly the same. Players can build with structures like walls and floors,
with a wide variety of sets like Nordic Stone and Colovian Wood. Alternatively, they can use
prefabs, which are functionally similar to Hearthfire. Essentially for people who want a ranch but
don’t want to build it from the ground up. Prefabs are fully constructed rooms that connect to
each other like jigsaw pieces, with designated spots where doors can connect. This means a
room prefab can function as a house by itself, and it will look that part, or it can become a
smaller piece of a larger mansion seamlessly. Unlike Fallout 4, which had very little work put into
prefabs, the prefabs in our system are immensely important here.

They can then flesh out their constructed house with furniture, decorations, lighting and crafting
stations. Outside, they can decorate the exterior of their house. This includes Animal Pens,
Apiaries, Fish Hatcheries, Gardens, Farmland, Grain Mills, Stables, Wells, Fountains, Hedges,
Lattices etc. We want an emphasis on beauty and visually appealing exteriors.

As you can see, the focus isn’t on creating large settlements full of NPCs. It’s about creating
your dream home in the countryside. Essentially Hearthfire with more customization.

With your plot in place, there’s a lot more to be done. Passive income is a big part of your plot,
given you’ve placed the correct objects. First though, we have to talk about your steward.

Housecarls are removed, now the sole runner of your estate is your Steward. Most followers can
be Stewards, as can a couple misc. NPCs - mostly people who sit around in Taverns with
nothing else to do. Stewards now cost 100 coins per week, which shouldn’t be much
considering the profit they will make for you. With a steward in place, the player can select the
new “Let’s talk about my property” option in the dialogue menu. With animal pens in place, the
player can pay money to fill out their pens with Cows, Chickens and Goats. They can also
request their horse be brought to their stable, and then pick from a list of their horse’s names.
Just as in Hearthfire, Planters are found in gardens and farmland (which are 4x larger gardens).
All Vegetables and most plant ingredients can be used in planters. Fences can be placed
around the fertile land.

We’ve added a degree of passive income. Once the player has set up their exterior, with animal
pens, apiaries, fish hatcheries, grain mills, planters and wells, they can place a “Harvest Chest”.
With the harvest chest in place, it will begin filling up with milk, eggs, honey, fish, grain,
auto-harvested crops and water, as if your Steward is farming for you. You can use these
resources liberally, or set up a trade route with your steward, where a certain threshold of the
resources will be automatically sold to a nearby settlement, replacing those items in the chest
with the profits in gold, or sent to a different plot.

There has to be a limit on the amount of pens, hatcheries, planters etc. to prevent the player
from farming too much money. This system integrates farming into Skyrim in an immersive and
fun way, where the player can build a ranch on almost any plot of land. That said, if they don’t
want to, they simply don’t have to invest in the system, or bother hiring a Steward, and build
massive mansions on their plots. The size of plots are decent, but not massive, so the player
has to choose how they want to use the space wisely.

The alternatives are homes. Homes can be bought in cities, and are generally located within
that city like the homes in Vanilla Skyrim. However, rather than coming empty and forcing the
player to purchase furnishings, the Workbench is required to place Furniture, Decorations,
Lighting, and Crafting Stations to furnish a house, like Homeplate. Houses come in a decrepit
state, and require the player to put a lot of work in to fix them up. The workbench has limited
functionality. For example, only a few structures can be placed, and no prefabs or exterior
objects can be used. Stewards cannot be hired for Homes, but you can send followers to
housesit them.

Homes end up being much simpler then plots - since they are essentially just stripped
functionality for players who don’t want to bother with all the farming stuff or custom built
exteriors. The distribution between plots and homes should be relatively equal. While most cities
will offer a home, and most towns will offer a plot, this won’t always be the case.

As in Hearthfire, the family you send to your homes will voice their pleasure/discomfort at their
living situations… just now you change it! First, once you have a family, you can tell them to stay
at one of your homes. You can also move them at any time. You can also tell your Followers to
treat one of your homes as their home, where they will wander, eat, sleep and guard - like a
housecarl (since we removed them).

House can contain a single follower as well as your family. Your family consists of your spouse
and three (up from two) children. So that means a maximum of 5 NPCs can reside in your
home, and 6 on Plots, including your Steward.

All of your residents have a happiness meter, which is counted from 1 to 100. Happiness is
dictated by many variables. Most important of which is beds. Your house needs one bed per
resident to keep the residents happy; ideally, the bed should be covered from rainfall.
Residents will assign themselves to available beds automatically upon arrival or as beds are
built.

The second most important factor, exclusive to family, is “connection”; the player must visit the
home a sufficient amount of times otherwise your family will complain about your absence, and
their happiness will decrease.

The third and fourth factors, exclusive to plots, are food and water. These don’t apply to homes,
because residents have easy access to markets. Every 24 in-game hours, food will be
consumed by residents from any chests within a plot. A passive auto-harvest is required to keep
residents well fed, while what isn’t eaten by the residents gets sold (provided you set up a trade
route with your follower). Likewise, water works similarly, but is less important. You’ll need a
steward and a well to create a passive income of water, which residents will consume.

When happiness is at low levels, residents will moan and complain, while at high happiness
levels they will be satisfied. If they stay at maximum lowness for a long time, they will leave.

There are no chances of plot attacks, unlike Fallout 4. That said, there may be some random
encounters like thieves or vampire trespassing where having a follower to protect you will be
helpful.

As for some additional tweaks, Apiaries are no longer a container. They can be harvested once
a day for honey. Once you've taken the honey, you can harvest them again for some
honeycomb or maybe some bees. You only need to take the honey for the respawn timer to
start. If you go near an apiary you'll hear the buzzing of bees, and you may see some flying
around too. Butter churns now convert milk into butter. Because that's how they work in real life.
Not sure what the plant thing was about.
Farming
As I said above, farming is mostly unchanged. The one change I would make is requiring a hoe
to harvest most crops, similar to how you need an axe to chop wood or pickaxe to mine ore. The
Player can place planters like objects in the Plot edit menu.

Food
Food items provide long-lasting buffs to Health Regeneration, Magicka Regeneration, and
Stamina Regeneration, making them viable to interact with. The type of buff a food item
provides, and the magnitude of that buff, are based on the items used to create the food. Meats,
stews, and breads provide Health Regeneration; desserts and cheeses provide Magicka
Regeneration; vegetables, and soups provide Stamina Regeneration. Since players can have
one source of each buff active at a time, we encourage the consumption of a wide variety of
food items. All food items last for 10 minutes.

They are obviously also important for survival mode. So these foods come in 3 magnitudes; the
first are 10% foods, they are raw or uncooked items that are not intended to be eaten in their
current state. The second are 25% foods, they represent the basic components of a full meal.
Most of these recipes simply require combining salt with one additional ingredient. 50% foods
represent the highest quality meals you can create. Most of them require additional ingredients
such as Garlic or Lavender. We also obviously add lots of new foods as well. These changes
differentiate food from potions and gives the Player a reason to engage with cooking.

Drinks and Brewing

Ales, meads, whiskeys, and rums buff the player’s Stamina and reduce their Magicka, while
wines and brandies buff the player’s Magicka and reduce their Stamina. All alcoholic drinks last
for ten minutes.

As a minor addition, players can now use the Brewer crafting station to craft many alcohol items
which used to be only bought. You can brew your very own beer, ale, wine and various other
drinks. Brewing crafting stations look like small kegs with taps and are distributed around the
world, usually near cooking stations. Brewing recipes require simple ingredients so most players
should have access to the ability to brew drinks from the start. For example, Apple Cider
requires 2 Green Apples, Nord Vodka requires 2 Potatoes, Redgard Beer requires 2 corn etc.

Both Cooking and Brewing have a couple perks in the Hospitality tree.
Woodcutting & Mining
I don’t really think woodcutting needs changing. It’d be nice if you could dynamically cut down
trees like in BotW, but if the engine isn’t going to allow for that then it’s not a huge dealbreaker.

As for mining, I would make it so that Iron and Corundum Veins are infinite, letting the Player
essentially mine them for the end of time. The other, more valuable, ores are the ones that can
be exhausted, and need to be recharged overtime. This simply removes a small annoyance that
existed for seemingly no reason.

Additionally, in order to mine or woodcut at someone's mine/lumber mill, you need to pay for
permission from them, or be hired by them to do the job for them.

Business Ownership
The final aspect of the Hospitality tree is the ability to purchase and run a business. How it
works is relatively simple:

Across the many cities and towns, there are a couple vacant properties in market districts,
potentially one for every two city/town. This property will either be a run-down shop, or a literal
market stall. The Player can purchase the property, the market stall obviously for much cheaper,
and then may have a large upfront cost to repair it. They can then choose a name for their new
store, and use our interior building system (or select from some prefabs) to decorate their new
store. They then can choose what type of store they want it to be, whether it be general goods,
jewelry, armor, weapons, food, drinks, potions, a museum etc. Finally, the Player can hire an
NPC to run the store.

Once the store is up and running, the Players job is simply to supply it with goods. This can be
done by automatically linking a ranch to the shop, or by manually creating the goods and giving
them to the employee to stock the shelves. The Player doesn’t actually work for their own store,
but they can speak to customers. The better quality their products are, the more money they
receive. As long as the store has goods, the Player will receive passive income. This system is
exactly full of depth, but it’s a nice distraction.
Vampire
In Skyrim, the vampirism system is quite literally backwards. For some reason, the less a
vampire feeds, the more powerful they become - and the weaker to sources like sunlight. This
makes no sense! You would think it would be the opposite - like vampires that keep their
cravings satiated are more volatile, while Vampires that edge on mortality are more human-like
with less strengths but also less weaknesses. So here’s my new vampire system, most of the
heavy lifting done by Simonmagnus (surprised?):
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/3928.

Vampirism

Vanilla Vampirism is neither deep nor engaging. Its passives and Greater Powers are weighted
towards Stage 4, meaning the quickest way to "level up" is to simply ignore Vampirism entirely.
By contrast, our rewrite is designed to make both Stage 1 and Stage 4 desirable for different
builds. I would also overhaul the Vampire Lord’s perk tree and its level-based scaling to ensure
that the Vampire Lord stays powerful and fun to use throughout the whole game.

Vampirism is not a blessing. Ancient vampires may be powerful and feared among the
populace, but they start their unlife in a weakened state and must overcome hardships to attain
the power they seek. Molag Bal's presence gnawing at the sanity of every vampire is known as
"the Beast", a primal force that possesses weakened vampires and drives them to ruin. It is
important to stay well fed and healthy to avoid its temptations, lest you find yourself unable to
heal or getting attacked by a mob of townsfolk.

As a vampire, you must feed. Each day that goes by without feeding makes you thirstier and
weaker. There are four stages of thirst and you progress to the next stage after a certain amount
of hours without feeding. All Vampires benefit from a number of passive abilities based on the
stage of their Vampirism. Vampires also have access to a number of powers. Generally
speaking, Greater Powers are weighted towards Stage 1, so you must feed to maintain access
to them. By contrast, Blood Magic grows stronger as you progress to Stage 4, allowing Stage 4
Vampires to heal.

Sated
Blood Magic - Learns Blood Spray and Bolt, which heals the damage dealt.
Supernatural Resistance - Your Frost Resistance is increased by 50%, and your Poison and
Disease Resistance are increased by 100%.
Weakness to Fire - Your Fire Resistance is reduced by 50%.
Weakness to Sunlight - While exposed to sunlight, your Health, Magicka, and Stamina
Regeneration are reduced by 100%.
Trespassing Curse: When trespassing in someone else's home, lose 10 points of Magicka per
second.
Parched
Undeath - You resist 10% of incoming weapon damage, but healing spells are 50% less
effective.
Blood Magic - Learns blood Rune and Grasp.
Supernatural Resistance - Your Frost Resistance is increased by 50%, and your Poison and
Disease Resistance are increased by 100%.
Weakness to Fire - Your Fire Resistance is reduced by 50%.
Weakness to Sunlight - While exposed to sunlight, all attributes are reduced by 3, and your
Health, Magicka, and Stamina Regeneration are reduced by 100%.
Trespassing Curse: When trespassing in someone else's home, lose 10 points of Magicka per
second.

Thirsty
Undeath - You resist 25% of incoming weapon damage, but healing spells have no effect.
Blood Magic - Learns Blood Cloak and Bomb.
Supernatural Resistance - Your Frost Resistance is increased by 100%, and your Poison and
Disease Resistance are increased by 100%.
Weakness to Fire - Your Fire Resistance is reduced by 100%.
Weakness to Sunlight - While exposed to sunlight, all attributes are reduced by 4, and your
Health, Magicka, and Stamina Regeneration are reduced by 100%.
Trespassing Curse: When trespassing in someone else's home, lose 10 points of Magicka per
second.

Bloodstarved
Out of the Shadows - All NPCs recognise you as a vampire; they will flee from you in terror and
place bounties on your head.
Undeath - You resist 50% of incoming weapon damage, but healing spells deal damage to you.
Blood Magic - Learns two expert level blood spells, the first a wide aoe explosion, and the
second an array of blood missiles.
Supernatural Resistance - Your Frost Resistance is increased by 100%, and your Poison and
Disease Resistance are increased by 100%.
Weakness to Fire - Your Fire Resistance is reduced by 100%.
Weakness to Sunlight - While exposed to sunlight, your Health, Magicka, and Stamina are
reduced by 50, and your Health, Magicka, and Stamina Regeneration are reduced by 100%.
Trespassing Curse: When trespassing in someone else's home, lose 10 points of Magicka per
second.

Vampire Powers
All Vampires have the following abilities:
Enthrall - Completely dominate an NPC and make them your thrall. The NPC can become your
follower (if possible) but will otherwise stay in one place - waiting for their master to return and
feed on them. If your victim has a stronger constitution than you, then your enthralling may be
unsuccessful and they will become hostile. You can only have one thrall at a time.
Hunter’s Sight - For 60 seconds, you have improved night vision and you can detect nearby
creatures.
Vampire’s Seduction - Surround yourself in a seductive aura for 60 seconds. Activating a target
places them under your command for 1800 seconds.

The following are stage exclusive:

Champion of the Night - Surround yourself with a cloud of vampire bats, draining 12 points of
Health per second for 120 seconds. (Stage 1)
Embrace of Shadows - Cloak yourself in shadows for 60 seconds. Attacking or activating an
object will not break this effect. (Stage 1, 2)
Reign of Terror - Manifest your vampiric presence, causing the living to flee for 60 seconds.
(Stage 1, 2 and 3)
Blood Ward - Cast a strong ward that drains the life of anyone nearby, healing the user. (Stage
1, 2, 3 and 4)
Mortal’s Mask - As a blood thirsty vampire, all NPCs will attack you on sight. In order to prevent
this, you can use this spell to feign yourself as a mortal. Problem is, this spell consistently drains
magicka, and stops working once magicka runs out. So it won’t last long, but can be used to run
a couple errands. (Stage 4)

Feeding returns you to the previous level. To feed, activate a sleeping person or a person
affected by the Vampire's Seduction power and choose "Feed". Perks and abilities offer
additional ways to feed, including sneak feeding, combat feeding, etc.

The idea is that if you constantly feed then you’ll stay the most human-like, with the most unique
powers, but you’ll also relinquish the strong blood magic, resistance and other innate strengths
of bloodthirsty vampires. Despite their stength, bloodthirsty vampires are also nosferatu looking
ahh, and make people flee on sight. So there's a tradeoff. The game forces you to feed,
because otherwise you’ll become hideous, but it also rewards you for edging the line if you like
blood magic or damage resistance. Most friendly vampire NPCs are somewhere in the middle,
and that’s the most reasonable place to stick around.
Vampire Lord
In the Vanilla game, Vampire Lords gain extra Health, Magicka, Stamina, Armor Rating, and
Unarmed Damage based on your PC's level. I would increase the scaling for each of these stats
to ensure that Vampire Lords are competitive in the late game. In addition, I add up to 25%
Magic Resist to the level-based scaling mechanic. Vampire Lords also have 100% Poison &
Disease Resistance, 100% Frost Resistance, and 100% Weakness to Fire. Finally, vampire
lords now scale up to level 70, rather than 40.

In addition to these general changes, I would also expand the vampire skilltree to 26 perks, to
be on par with the other large skilltrees and give the form more longevity. Perks that enhance
the combat potential of a Vampire Lord, give them new spells and powers and enhance their
experience in mortal form. All vampire powers are the same as vampire lord powers - there are
no powers exclusive to Vampire Lords. Vampire Lord skill points can be gained by draining
NPCs. The amount of drained NPCs per skill point depends on the amount of unlocked skill
points, like with werewolves and heart eating.

Vampire Bloodlines
Enemy vampires are no longer scattered groups of what essentially amount to bandits. Rather,
there are multiple bloodlines that reside within dens, similar to witch covens. Players can
choose to clear out the vampire dens, slowly making every bloodline extinct. However, if the
Player contracts vampirism from a particular clan, and ultimately succumbs to the disease, they
will later receive a mysterious note telling them to rendezvous at one of the bloodlines’ bases.
There, they can choose to kill the bloodfather and remove their vampirism, or join the bloodline’s
faction. Doing so will unlock the bloodline’s unique powers and abilities. The other factions will
remain hostile, but every base with the bloodline you joined becomes peaceful.

Other than their unique powers, joining a vampire bloodline gives the player a new home with
things like thralls and torture devices and a contractor that will give them radiant quests. The
Bloodfather also has a unique short questline.

This addition is to make the vampire system more lore friendly, immersive, realistic and
generally funner, since players can now choose between multiple home bases and vampire
powers. You could potentially add unique(ish) questlines for each of them, or just some radiant
quests. Just the opportunity would be nice. They don’t even need to be joinable, although that
would be preferable. The world building added by these unique vampire bloodlines running
around is immense.
Werewolf
In Vanilla, Werewolves are largely forgettable. Becoming a Werewolf has no effect on your
human form, and transforming is rarely a good idea due to their low damage and their lack of
healing. We want to address these and other problems by overhauling the Werewolf perk tree,
expanding the Werewolf’s selection of Howls, adding new passives to mortal form, and
introducing a forced transformation mechanic for Werewolves who try to suppress the beast
within. Thanks to Manbeast: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/44746

Lycanthropy

All werewolves benefit from the following passive while in mortal form:

Lycanthrope - Your Disease Resistance is increased by 100%, but Silver inflicts 20 more
damage on you.
Unnatural Claws - +10 Unarmed Damage.

In the Vanilla game, the Werewolves gain extra Armor Rating and Unarmed Damage as they
level. I would extend this mechanic to include Health, Stamina, and Magic Resistance (like their
counterparts, the Vampire Lords). This ensures that Werewolves stay relevant at higher levels of
play. Werewolves also benefit from several miscellaneous bonuses, such as reduced fall
damage and increased power attack damage. This is because right now werewolves are
underpowered in the late game. They lack survivability, a heal on demand, any useful synergy
with mage characters, and even basic features like being able to loot corpses or revert to mortal
form at will, forcing players to leave loot behind.

In addition to these changes, I would also expand their skill tree to 26 perks. Beyond standard
improvements to damage and survivability, I would give them access to 5 unlockable howls.

The Howl of the Hunt: For 30 seconds, you have improved night vision and can detect nearby
living creatures.
The Howl of Terror: Enemies are staggered and flee in terror for 30 seconds.
Howl of Rage: For 60 seconds, your Movement Speed is increased, and your Health and
Stamina Regeneration are increased as well.
The Howl of the Pack: For sixty seconds, you summon a pair of wolves to aid you in battle.
The Whisper of the Moon: For 30 seconds, you cannot be seen or heard, and your critical
chance is increased by 100%. Attacking will break this effect.

In our new system, Werewolves gain access to five different Howls. Unlike in the Vanilla game,
new Howls are unlocked directly through the perk menu. In addition, you have access to a
“Howl menu” while in beast form, which functions the same as the wheel menu. Howl of the
Hunt is the first unlockable perk, while the others are unlocked at the end of the skill tree. You
also start with the ability to revert back to your mortal form.
Werewolf power attacks have also been nerfed so that they can no longer instantly knock down
enemies, the player must first unlock the associated perk. This is to make werewolf gameplay
more involved, until the player levels into an unstoppable beast.

Werebeasts can now loot and interact with objects. Things like picking ingredients, opening
doors/levers and looting corpses. However, lacking opposable thumbs, they can’t pick locks.

Werewolf transformation has a one day cooldown, like in vanilla. Feeding on hearts now only
contributes to the skill tree - the beast form lasts a set 4 minutes no matter how many hearts
one eats. This makes beast form a limited but powerful transformation, since eating hearts was
a pointless feature because players could essentially just transform forever. This single change
overhauls gameplay entirely, because being a werewolf is now a “get out of jail free” card, rather
than a source of unlimited power.

Consequences
Something Skyrim really missed was adding consequences to taking on these forms. They
should come with huge upsides, but also massive downsides.

As a Werewolf, if you refuse to feed the beast within, you will start to lose control of your
transformations. After three days without transforming, you will receive a warning that the beast
is stirring. After five days without transforming, you will be forced to transform. When the Masser
is at a full moon, come midnight, this meter is disregarded and the player is forced to transform
anyway.

If you don’t eat a heart for more than five days, you receive massive debuffs to all attributes.

Witch Hunters might randomly spawn and attack you in a random event.
Receiving the Beast Blood

Both Skyrim and our rhetorical Elder Scrolls 6 have a questline the player can pursue to
become a werebeast. Rather than shoved into a warrior faction, the witch covens can now gift
the player with the beast blood, should the player prove their worth.

Unlike Vampire Covens, the various Witch Covens are non-hostile. While each coven is different
aesthetically, by joining a single coven, the Player obsentivally joins all of them, opening the
Player up to a universal short questline, some radiant quests and vendors. There is no
gameplay difference, and they are all considered to be under the “Witch” faction. Witch Covens
can also cure the beast's blood (and vampirism).

Alternatively, inspired by the excellent Bloodmoon expansion for The Elder Scrolls III:
Morrowind, the Sanies Lupinus disease makes its return! This new disease can be caught from
werewolves (10% chance each strike). If you do not cure the disease before it fully develops,
the player will become a werewolf. It's meant as a role-playing immersive wilderness alternative
to completing questlines.

The purpose of this overhaul was to make werewolves a much more valid transformation;
almost on the level of vampires. Werewolves are only weaker than Vampires because they have
nowhere near the amount of downsides, although there are now obviously certain weaknesses
to being a werewolf, such as forced transformations. The idea is that werewolves lean into the
“get out of jail free card” position they held in vanilla, but were not fully because of things like
feeding. Well, now feeding has no effect, but werewolves can interact with their surroundings so
it doesn’t matter as much. Anyway, these changes should enhance werewolf gameplay
significantly!
Faith
One of the biggest pillars of worldbuilding is cultures and religion. Religion is what creates a
society. Morrowind was full to the brim with religious politics and lore. The world of the Elder
Scrolls is full to the brim with interesting religions, yet Skyrim threw all of that away in favor of
the nine divines. The original Nordic pantheon illustrated the Nord’s warfare culture - like these
religions have narrative purposes - but Bethesda just discarded it all for “streamlined” :p. I want
to see way more religions in our next Elder Scrolls games, and I want to see them used to flesh
out a world. Aedric Cults, Daedric Heretics, Dissident Priests, Ashlanders, Imperial Cults,
Vigilants of Stendarr, Orcs of Malacath, Orders of Holy Knights etc. I want nuance and religious
warfare.

To compliment these changes in writings, we are adding a functional way to represent one’s
religion. We are adding religion and worship. Pray, worship at shrines and follow the tenets of
your deity to strengthen your bond with the deity and eventually reward you with divine strength.
This addition enhances roleplaying immensely. It also adds new layers to gameplay, and adds
new unlockable powers the player can use to enhance their power, like doomstones, oblivion
gates or standing stones. Likely most mainstream players would invest in this system, but it
would be a treat for more experienced players. Credit to Winteersun, made by the legend
EnaiSiaion: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/22506.

First, to supplement these systems, there are two new perks, Pilgrim and Cultist respectively.
The Pilgrim perk is in the Restoration tree, and it governs gods such as the Divines, Auriel, and
the All-Maker. The Cultist perk is in the Conjuration tree, and it governs gods such as the
Daedra. They double the strength of the relevant blessings.

Prayer
The first time you pray at a shrine, you will receive a Lesser Power called Prayer. This power will
allow you to meditate in order to receive a blessing from the last shrine you prayed at. You can
only worship one deity at a time, since the prayer ability only works for the most recently prayed
shrine. Praying in this manner has much less of an effect on disease stage recession than
worshiping at a shrine.

The player’s relationship with their deity is dictated by the “favor” stat. Use the Pray power to
kneel and enter a meditative state, raising your favor and displaying your current favor. While
you can pray as often as you wish, praying at least once a day is the best one can raise their
favor. This increases favor by roughly 4%. There has to be a work around to prevent players
from sleeping through the day to skip this process, which should be pretty easy to implement.
You can also worship at the shrine of your deity. Worship is equivalent to prayer, but raises favor
by a larger amount, probably 5%.

Going two days without prayer diminishes worship by 4%, and by 4% for every day after that. If
favor reaches 0%, the prayer power is removed and their deity abandons them.

Although visiting their shrine is the most common way to become a follower of a deity, there are
other ways. In particular, when you interact with a Daedric Prince or any other deity in a quest,
they may offer for you to immediately become their follower, with favor at 25%, regardless of
your race or other requirements.

Upon reaching 50% favor, the deity contacts the player. The player receives a unique
power/effect they can use for as long as favor remains above 50%. At 90% this power is buffed.

The Deities
There are 26 deities; 9 Divines, 16 Daedra, 4 Elven Gods (Auriel, Jephre, Magnus &
Phynaster), 6 Yokudan Gods (Rputga/Tallpapa, Leki, Morwha, Onsi, Sakatal & Tava) and Kyne.
This is designed for a game set in Hammerfell; you would want more deities for the people the
game is set in, so take 5 away from Youka (leave Tallpapa) and give it to whoever (Nords for
Skyrim, Khajiit for Elswyere, Atakota and The Hist for Argonians, otherwise dispose of them)

Illegal acts diminish favor for the Divines, as well as the Elven, Yokudan and Nord gods, while
good acts (like completing morally good quests and giving to the homeless) gives additional
favor. The opposite is true for the Daedra and most Khajiit Gods. Some particularly vile Daedra
will require sacrifices to maintain favor, while others, like Azura, require additional devotion.
Most deities have unique tenants the player must follow to ensure they increase favor. The
player is informed of these when they first receive the prayer power.

Generally, the tenants will be 1-3 rules the Player must upkeep, otherwise they will lose all favor.
Molag Bal will want a sacrifice of blood once a week, the Divines won’t accept any kind of crime
etc.

The Shrine Blessings have similar statistics to vanilla Skyrim, there’s just far more for each
deity. These essentially amount to buffed status effects.

So worship has the benefit of shrine blessings every day upon prayer. Once the player reaches
50% favor, they also receive another unique effect/power. These powers are much more
interesting then the shrine blessings, and can open new levels to gameplay. I won’t list them out,
I recommend you simply browse Wintersun and imagine what these effects/powers could be.
Finally, at 90% favor, your deity congratulates you and buffs your unique effect/power.

That’s it! Just another layer of gameplay to increase roleplaying and immersion! Pretty Simple!
Thanks!
Leveling / Loot
Credit to Arena: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/33487 and Open World
Loot: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/49681 for most of the work here.

Skyrim’s insanely leveled encounter zones and loot progression cops a lot of flack nowadays.
People often see Morrowind as a superior system; making all enemies loot unleveled from the
player for an immersive sense of realism. Every encounter zone (eg. dungeons) are given a
specific level before the game starts, and all the enemies and loot within it will treat the player
like they are that level, even if they are. This has some positives; like it definitely improves
immersion and prevents players from acquiring all Daedric gear within 20 levels because
Daedric gear is so fiercely guarded by high level enemies. There’s also a nice feeling about
being absolutely destroyed in a dungeon, and being forced to train up so that you can tackle it
later. This also has some problems though, because this is the exact system Fallout 4 used, and
strangely enough it also received massive flack for being unleveled and “unbalanced”. I never
see anyone bring this up, but it continues to be obscene to me how Skyrim and Fallout 4 have
gotten the same amount of criticism for doing exact opposite things! Surely this tells us
something; we can’t go all in on one or the other, we need to find a happy medium.

Vanilla's design is a truly open world where you can complete any content at nearly any level.
While that has its own obvious purpose, it leaves any concept of "aspirational content" outside. I
like my RPG to have content that is too hard for a new character, where powerful items and
enemies are not the product of randomization designed to cater to you. I want to be able to say
"I beat this part at this level" like it means something, and for the most coveted items to be
limited in supply and truly stand out! But I also don’t want to be constantly rejected from
everywhere I go, and for early games to be an absolute slog. But first, I’m going to need to get a
little bit tech-y.
Enemies and Encounter Zones

We want to increase the game’s difficulty and provide an organic sense of progression. We can
do this by tiering dungeons according to enemy type. This encourages the players to make
judgments about the difficulty of an encounter based on experience and intuition, rather than
consulting a complex chart or having to read level numbers on a map. This approach allows us
to provide players with a more robust sense of progression while retaining the freedom and
independence an open world game should possess.

Encounter Zones are unfortunately a bit technical, so to explain what we change, we need to
explain how the game populates its dungeons.

An Encounter Zone is essentially a set of rules that allow the game to determine what enemies
it will populate a dungeon with. The Encounter Zone that controls Bleak Falls Barrow, for
instance, has a range of 6 to 20. When you enter a dungeon for the first time, the game will
dynamically set the level of the dungeon as close as it can to your level, within the range
provided by the Encounter Zone. This means that if you enter Bleak Falls Barrow at level 2, the
dungeon will be set to level 6. If you enter Bleak Falls Barrow at level 15, it will be set to level
15. And if you enter Bleak Falls Barrow at level 35, the dungeon will be set to 20. Once the
game determines what level the dungeon is, it can begin populating the dungeon with enemies.
This is controlled by the Leveled Actor Multiplier.

The Leveled Actor Multiplier is a second set of rules that determine how the game will populate
a dungeon. There are actually four different Leveled Actor Multipliers: one for “easy” enemies,
one for “normal” enemies, one for “hard enemies,” and one for “very hard” enemies. Without
these four multipliers, dungeons would be filled with the same type of enemy. In our earlier
example, we said that if you entered Bleak Falls Barrow at level 2, the dungeon would be set to
level 6. When you walk into the dungeon, even though it’s level 6, almost every enemy would be
level a 1 Draugr. This is because most spawns are flagged as “easy” enemies. A few enemies
would be level 6 Restless Draugr, because these spawns are flagged as "hard" enemies. The
boss, on the other hand, will be a level 7 Draugr Overlord, because he is flagged as a “very
hard” enemy, and thus will be higher level than the rest of the dungeon. The Leveled Actor
Multiplier is what populates the dungeon with enemies of different levels, providing the player
with a more varied experience. In addition, some Leveled Actor Multipliers follow specific rules.
For instance, the "easy" multiplier takes any enemy up to or below its chosen enemy, and the
"very hard" multiplier will always pick the next enemy up from "hard," even if it has to go higher
than the multiplier would normally allow.

As its name suggests, a Leveled List is a list of entries broken down by level. Leveled Lists are
used for many things throughout the game. In this context, they are lists of enemies. The
Leveled List for a Draugr spawn might include a Draugr at level 1, a Restless Draugr at level 6,
a Draugr Wight at level 13, a Draugr Scourge at level 21, and so on and so forth. The important
thing to understand here is that the Leveled List stops with the Draugr Deathlord at level 40. The
game decides which enemies to pull from the Leveled List based on the rules set in the
Encounter Zone and the Leveled Actor Multipliers. Changing those will change what enemies
the game spawns, but it will not add new enemies to the game. This means that each enemy
type has a natural ceiling for how high it can scale, and that ceiling is determined by the
enemies in the game’s Leveled Lists.

Now that you understand how Encounter Zones, Leveled Actor Multipliers, and Leveled Lists
work, he can now explain what he did in his mod, Arena:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/33487, which we will be stealing for our
remake.

The first thing we do is increase the Leveled Actor Multipliers. You’ll see higher level enemies
earlier. In Vanilla, these levels were extremely low (easy enemies were set at one 3rd of the
dungeon level!), and combined with low ceilings on Encounter Zones, meant that you were still
encountering a lot of level 1 Draugr at level 40 and above. Now these levels are higher. Easy
and normal enemies will be closer to your level. Hard and Very Hard enemies will be higher than
your level. This will introduce an extra level of difficulty to the game. The Leveled Actor
Multipliers look like this:

Easy: 0.75x, Normal: 1.00x, Hard: 1.25x, Very Hard: 1.50x

The second thing we do is tweak the Encounter Zones of every area in the game. We raise the
maximum limit on most Encounter Zones greatly, so that the game won’t be too easy at higher
levels, and set the minimum level based on a series of easy-to-understand rules that largely rely
on enemy type. In general, minimum encounter zone levels look like this:

Level 05 - 70: Bandits, Goblins, Weak Animals (eg. Skeevers, Spiders)

Level 10 - 75: Undead
Level 15 - 80: Mages, Strong Animals (eg. Bears, Sabertooth)
Level 20 - 85: Falmer, Automatons, Lamia
Level 25 - 90: Vampires, Beasts (Giants, Centaur, Dragons, Dreugh)
Level 30 - 95: Lich Dungeons
Level 50 - 115: Daedra

The result of these Encounter Zones is that the player is able to combine the freedom of an
open world game with the progression you experience in a leveled one. If you’re level 8, you
can walk into any Bandit dungeon and know that with good play and a few potions, you’ll be
able to complete it. However, if you stumble into a Vampire den, you may want to turn around.
However, once you’re closer to level 25, you’ll be able to return and complete the dungeon--in
fact, by level 25, you’ll largely be equipped to tackle any encounter in the game. Then, once the
Player is high enough level, the challenge will begin to fade away as the Player outlevels their
enemies, removing the problems with overscaling like in Oblivion. Bethesda could potentially
experiment with increased spawns to supplement weaker enemies, so challenge is retained with
an increased amount of enemies to throw around.
On top of that, I think Bethesda should experiment with regional encounter zones. If you didn’t
know, Skyrim’s encounter zones actually get harder the more elevated you get. High up in the
mountains, everything is higher leveled. I’d apply this to every game by making it based on
holds/regions. So Whiterun and Falkreath might follow the rules above, but in Windhelm the
Bandits might be 10 levels stronger. This is diegetically fed to the Player via. The NPCs, who will
talk about how much stronger enemies are in certain regions, and how adventurers should
avoid those areas until they are strong enough. This just adds to the leveling experience even
more, giving Players something to work towards. They still have a lot of freedom, but this small
restriction makes the experience of leveling up feel more significant, unlike in Oblivion where
everything is so rigorously scaled that you can barely notice yourself getting more powerful. In a
game set in the Iliac Bay, I imagine the High Rock areas would be lower leveled, while the Alik'r
Desert would be extremely challenging.

Leveling
On that note, we need to have a quick moment to discuss leveling. I see a lot of people
lamenting the addition of Legendary Skill Trees recently, because they “allow the player to level
infinitely, removing the sense of roleplaying because one player can unlock every skill in the skill
tree”. Originally, you could only level up until all your skills were maxed, and then you would stop
leveling up. The devs then made it possible to “Legendary” your perk tree, allowing you to
infinitely level. Now, many players rely only on a few skill trees in a playthrough. For example,
most of the time, I never use heavy armor. In the old system, this would have meant I was level
capped even earlier than other players might have, unless I decided to start working on those
skill trees, which I would rarely even consider doing. In the new system, I can completely
abandon any skill trees that I do not wish to use in a save game, and still level endlessly.

Vanilla has 251 perks in the game. Originally, there was a level cap of 81, which meant a
maximum of 80 perks could be acquired. The addition of Legendary Skills let players level past
81 all the way up to 252, acquiring every perk in the game. So, given you’ve been reading my
nondiegetic thought streams for 150 pages, you probably realize that I’m big on roleplaying. Yet,
I don't have a problem with this system. That’s because legendary skills had no impact on the
“soft-lock” of leveling. Realistically, in a sensible amount of gameplay time, with the majority of
content complete, Skyrim players will be maxed out around level 70. This is because leveling
slows so much, and xp becomes so useless, the player feasibly can't gain skill points anymore.
So unless you are criminally devoted to Skyrim, most players will be leveled at level 70
anyways, which is still immersive because they are only hitting one third of the skill tree.
Overall, I have no problem with the way leveling works in Skyrim.
One change we do need to make is to rage that max. Considering that we will roughly double
the size of the perk tree, they are hitting only a sixth of what the skill tree has to offer. To
compensate for this, we are going to be soft locking players at level 100 now, rather than 70,
giving them 30 more perks for a full playthrough. This is why the level caps in my overhauled
Encounter Zones were so high.

This is just personal taste, but I’d also like to extend the period of time the Player struggles as a
weakling. It’s kind of an iconic experience in bethesda games, and rpgs in general, where the
Player is absolutely useless, and really struggles in combat. They are forced to use everything
in their equipment, and their environment, in order to stand in the most trivial tasks. This is a
period of time in these games that I really enjoy, so it’s a shame to me that they only really last 5
levels, or, like, two bandit forts. This seems like a good time to cover how leveling will work in
general in my ideal Elder Scrolls game.

So, in our design, level 1 to 14 is the weakling stage. The period of time the Player is useless is
stretched out dramatically. Level 15 to 24 is the remainder of the Early Game. The Player
continues to mostly deal with humanoid enemies and do some early stage main quests and
guild quests. Level 25 to 50 is regarded as Mid Game, at this stage you should have gathered
some solid gear and have a sufficient build for mid stage main quests and finish the guild
quests. After level 50, you have entered the Late Game. At this stage you should have a
concrete build for most of the challenges in the game. You start to hunt down the appropriate
artifacts for your build or craft your own as you begin to unlock the higher end loot in dungeons,
all of which are stored behind quests and dungeons that account for that level. Level 100 is
around the point when you have done most of what there is to see, and have a finalized build.
Leveling is soft-locked, and the game, for most intents and purposes, is done.

Loot, Leveled Lists, Container Records and Outfit Records

So we are letting players explore the map, for the most part, depending on their own pace and
desire. Each dungeon and zone has a min and max level, depending on its enemy type. Zones
with powerful enemies, unique bosses or artifacts inside tend to have higher min/max level, all
of which I mentioned above.

We will not entirely remove high level loot from the level list. Instead, we make the loot mostly
dependent on the Player's level. The high tier loots (glass, ebony daedric) will only be found in
the boss chests or if the player is a high enough level, in an encounter zone with high level
enemies. These higher-end equipment are made much more valuable, as they should be, rather
than an expendable resource. The justification behind this is to make the higher-end loot feel
more valuable, like it did in Morrowind, and make progression feel more immersive. The
philosophy behind this is that the high level gear, especially the weapons, are not the end-game
items. Instead, Artifacts are considered the ‘peak’ of power for most Players… or you can
enchant and temper your own.
In our design, level 1 to 25 is considered to be Early Game, you mostly deal with humanoid
enemies and do some early stage main quests and guild quests. Level 25 to 50 is regarded as
Mid Game, at this stage you should have gathered some solid gear and have a sufficient build
for mid stage main quests and finish the guild quests. After level 50, you have entered the Late
Game. At this stage you should have a concrete build for most of the challenges in the game.
You start to hunt down the appropriate artifacts for your build or craft your own as you begin to
unlock the higher end loot in dungeons, all of which are stored behind quests and dungeons that
account for that level. Level 100 is around the point when you have done most of what there is
to see, and have a finalized build.

The loot you get is largely based on the player's level, but not in the broken vanilla way of
seeing every bandit running around with glass gear and draugr swinging ebony weapons on you
at high level! To create a balanced playthrough with a sense of progression in an immersive
way, we restrict the best gear to the boss chests of the high level enemies. The normal enemies
will swing around the most powerful gear for what it makes sense for them to wield.

Other than the player’s level, leveled lists and container records take into account the loot’s
surroundings and position. Powerful loot, such as equipment that is Glass, Ebony or Daedric,
has a very rare chance of generating in bandit camps, even if the player is a high level. Daedric
armor will only generate around daedra, dwarven armor around dwarven ruins, Elven Armor
around elven ruins, Orcish armor on Orcs etc., all of which require a reasonably high level to
even generate in the first place, let alone taking into account their location. Unique items like
powerful enchanted gear are usually exclusive to bosses or boss chests, which are also an
important factor when leveled lists are being generated. Finally, the difficulty of a lock impacts
the loot inside a chest, if it has to be picklocked.

Here is a rough level range for reference:

Fur/Iron: level 1-7
Leather/Steel: level 8-14
Chainmail/Silver: level 15-22
Redgard Mail/Nordic: level 23-30
Adamantium/Dwarven: level 31-39
Elven/Orcish: level 40-49
Glass/Ebony: level 50-59
Daedric Mail/Daedric: level 60 or above

So by the time the Player is a little bit into the end game, they will begin to find daedric level
stuff. Obviously there’s a lot more tiers, for a lot more sets of armor, because Players need to
have a straightforward line of progression since they won’t have Daedric stuff at level 30. The
left is the Light Armor stuff, while the right is the Heavy Armor stuff. Some are also weapons,
some are not. I think this range of armor materials is very solid, and you’d be hard pressed
finding something better. It’s a nice range of cultures and stuff from past games.
So if you go into a dungeon before level 60, you won't find any ebony items. And you also won't
see ebony gear in some of the low level bandit caves which are capped at level 60. Also, the
chance for a bandit camp to have anything above nordic is very low. I could go on, but you
probably get the idea.

In Skyrim, as the levels go up, weaker creatures will be replaced by higher level forms of that
creature, for example: Bandits, after a certain level requirement has been met, will start to be
replaced with Bandit Outlaws, Bandit Thugs and so on. Then the Easy leveled enemies will
become Bandit Outlaws and the Hard leveled enemies will become Bandit Plunderers. The
enemies gear will now reflect their level, so lower level enemies will be equipped with leather
while higher level enemies will be more likely to have elven and orcish. Or a higher level mage
character will have expert level spells. Their level would also impact their health, stamina,
magika, damage multiplier, armor rating multiplier and leveled lists.

We also fix a very serious problem with vanilla Skyrim. The mass influx of resources. Every
chest, creature, and container seems to have gold or gems in vanilla. To combat this, we
remove a lot of the gold change you receive from opening every container. Animals will no
longer drop gold or gems, most enemies won't have gold on their person when you search their
corpse. Chests have a 25% chance for gold but will contain other clutter items.

Lockpicks in loot have been drastically reduced. Now you may need to buy some lockpicks or
craft them if you have a mod that allows that. Lockpicks become much more of a resource and
not an expendable stockpile. This also gives more value to the lockpicking perk tree.

We also make the different weapon types progress in line with the armor progression of their
counterpart in terms of damage, which wasn't the case in vanilla Skyrim, for some reason.

So if all of that isnt enough of a middle ground between leveled and unleveled, I don't know
what possibly could be.

Artifacts

Since artifacts are almost the peak of power in our rewrite, they need to be MUCH more
powerful. To make Artifacts fulfill the role they now play in the end-game, most artifacts are no
longer leveled items. The ones you receive early in the game can receive a small radius of
leveling, but, for example, all Daedric items are locked to a specific level.

Second, they are no longer leveled. They're power equates to the point at which the player will
get the artifact (aka the difficulty of the related quest). Third, the Player can temper artifacts they
find just as many times as other weapons, keeping them in the game for much longer.

Eg. Unique Uniques: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/31612

They should also all have unique appearances, to separate them from the average weapons.
Eg. Artefakes: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/41254.

Economy
Trade in Skyrim is oversimplified and uninteresting. A particular type of merchant always has the
same amount of gold and offers you the exact same prices as the same type of merchant in
another part of the country. Merchants in small towns differ very little from those in the larger
cities, and the only factors that affect price are your speech skill and any barter enchantments
you might have. We want to change that. Thanks to Trade and Barter:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/23081

There are four factors that affect a trader’s prices and gold:

LOCATION - Each area and the cities/town within it have their buying and selling rates set
individually to reflect their size, wealth, access to supply and shipping routes, or status as a
trading center. Merchants in cities charge higher prices when selling their wares, but they are
also willing to pay more for premium goods in order to make sure that their shops stay
well-stocked. Prices are lower in smaller towns, but merchants also can't afford to pay you top
septim for your goods.

MERCHANT TYPE - You can adjust price variables for different types of merchants to reflect
where they fall within the economy and the supply chain; First, you save money when you buy
directly from the source. Producers have low overhead and can give you better deals on the
goods you buy from them; however, they also can't afford to pay much for any goods you're
trying to sell. Second, Crafters & Specialists have higher prices than buying raw materials
directly from farmers and hunters, but they are still less expensive than purchasing from the
general merchants who resell the finished goods. Third, General Goods traders buy low and sell
high in order to turn a profit. Expect to pay more when buying goods from them, and don't
expect them to pay you full value for the goods you sell. Finally, don't expect any favors from
Fences. Selling stolen items is going to cost you, so don't expect to get top dollar for ill-gotten
goods.

RELATIONSHIP - You know all those silly little fetch quests and other tasks that people ask you
to do? Now doing favors for merchants and winning their friendship actually has some impact
and can have long-lasting benefits for you. Increasing your relationship rank with merchants will
reward you with better prices.

Merchant gold is impacted by location and merchant type. General Goods Traders in Cities will
have much more gold then Producers in small towns or the wilderness.
Food sold by inns and general merchants depend on their location. For example, inns located in
a coastal area will sell more products from the sea (horker, clam, salmon), inns in a tundra
valley will sell more elk, mudcrabs, mammoth, etc. Likewise, alchemists' inventory now depends
on the natural resources of their respective hold.

Services cost more: 50 for a night in an inn (instead of 10); 50-75 for a carriage ride (instead of
20-50); houses cost 2x more. Crafted potions, enchanted items and food are worth less,
preventing the player from getting rich quick. Bartering is a lot harsher. Players will have to pay
a lot more and make a lot less with low speech values to make advancement in the speech skill
more noticeable. So the min and max multiplier for bartering are both exaggerated.

One obvious place for improvement over Skyrim is the game economy. In particular, it was too
easy to accumulate gold. Mages needed to buy increasingly powerful spells, but, thanks to the
ubiquity of weapons and armor as loot, everyone else didn't have anything to spend money on.
Even the mercenaries would follow you indefinitely for a modest one time payment. That's a
shame, because there are bits of Skyrim's design, like the repeatable job quests, that feel like
earning money should have been something the player had to think about. And having to think
about earning money would help with the role playing experience - when you need money do
you go bounty hunting? Do you steal? Chop wood at the lumber mill?

This is a bit of a tangent, but players shouldn't HAVE to be warriors and dungeon delvers. I
mean most would, but those who want to roleplay an immersive life can do that. Want to live in
the woods making money from hunting animals and selling them to the butcher? Do that! Want
to live in the city working at the inn before purchasing a market stall from the local hag and
begin selling the art you make, eventually getting married and settling down? Do that! Want to
live in a Riverside lodge, making money from cutting down trees and working in the mines? Do
that!

This goes without saying, but add more jobs and ways to make money. Not necessarily soaking
money is easier, but for rp potential. You should be able to serve as a waiter or a cook at an inn.
You should be able to sell goods in the marketplace (owning a store is a complicated alternative,
I don't think we need it but you could do that as well), you should be able to make money from
being a Bard and then gamble yourself into poverty.

Since we have so many more ways of making money, we need better money sinks as well. The
hearthfire homes were great, why not expand it by rebuilding a ruining city, such as Helgen. You
don't become its ruler or anything, but you are the primary funder behind it. Maybe archeology
excavations could be funded to get unique artifacts. Essentially, making seeing the world around
you change is the reward, instead of anything artificial. Also add negotiations for quest rewards,
at least for things like bounties. This also gives some utility to the otherwise shallow Speech
skill.
Enemy NPCs
Naturally one of the most important parts of the combat - the enemies. Below is our
comprehensive suite of fixes to improve them.

Spawning

Enemies are a big part of gameplay in Elder Scrolls. Yet, every faction seemingly has one or two
enemy types that are just copy and pasted everywhere. This is how we fix that:

Each enemy faction type has various variants. This is similar to Vanilla, but now, as the enemy
type ranks up, so will the amount of variants. So, in keeping with our bandit analogy, normal
Bandits can be One-Handed Light Armored, Two-Handed Heavy Armored, Archers or Unarmed
Brawlers. These enemy types have different rarities, One-Handed Light Armored would be the
most common. Then, the Outlaw level has the same classes but additionally Spellswords with a
blade in one-hand and a spell in the other, Scouts with dual daggers and extreme movement,
Sentinels use Shields and Spears, Healers use Restoration spells to help their allies and
Poachers with Powerful Bows and the ability to call animals to their aid. At the Thug Level,
Wizards have access to powerful spells, mainly destruction and restoration, Nightblades with
Daggers and Alteration Spells and Alchemists with one-handed poisoned blades. Up another
level, Inquisitors with Enchanted Heavy Weapons and Armour and Conjuration spells and
Berserkers dual wielding blades in light armor yet with immense health on top of all the others.

In this example there are now 17 different bandit classes. The beauty of this system is that as
the player increases in level, the weaker enemies will comparatively become weaker while the
hard enemies will become more comparatively hard. This gives the player the illusion of
progress as the most common enemies pale in comparison, yet the hard enemies will still
challenge them.

Additionally, we up the amount of enemies spawned in every dungeon from Skyrim, but around
1.4x. This is because of the increased power level of the Player. Now that melee combat allows
the Player to hit multiple enemies at once, as well as stun, injure and stamina drain them, and
the magic is much stronger with a wider variety of spells, and that Stealth has a much more
diverse range of tools, the amount of enemies needs to be increased to compensate for this.
Storming a fort should now be a bonafide bloodbath, with the Player cutting through hordes of
enemies.
Combat AI
Improve enemy AI. This would single handedly fix a lot of the problems with Skyrim’s combat,
and most Bethesda games in general. Enemies' pathfinder better; they will calculate their moves
and distance instead of blinding walking towards the player, and will never swarm the player. If
they find themselves at an optimal distance, they may try to close the gap with a power attack,
or circle behind the player while their friend strikes from the front. A maximum of two enemies
can engage the player at any one time, while the others might take a few steps back and
spectate, or figure out the most advantageous position to attack the player from when a chance
opens up, or try and circle them.

They are more cautious, depending on their class they may block more often, perform counters,
dodge etc. NPCs will attack as a group and care about their livelihoods. Enemy AI in vanilla are
all zombies, it really doesn’t take a genius to figure out what makes good combat AI.

While Skrim AI acts like zombies, they somehow have the reflexes of a ninja. They will always
face the player, and will never miss a fired arrow. We reduce turning speed and tracking
performance of all NPCs, so that players can work around enemies and so that they can
feasibly miss arrows.

Variety
On top of general increased variety in enemies, enemy factions should have more variety in of
themselves. By which I mean, there should be multiple bandit factions, warring it out, instead of
a general umbrella branch. These branches have unique gear and fighting style, making combat
unique against them. Essentially, imagine the difference between the forsworn and the vanilla
bandits, but with maybe four variants spread across Skyrim. Same goes for Draugr, who should
have had different factions with slightly different aesthetics and abilities. This would improve
variety in gameplay greatly at little cost.

Strengths and Weaknesses

All enemy types have certain strengths and weaknesses, impacting play against them. This is in
respect to the 5 elements and the 3 forms of fighter damage; blade, blunt and arrows. Certain
ores may be stronger against certain beasts as well, for example silver blades deal more
damage to wraiths and werewolves. To prevent this system from getting confusing, all enemies
of the same type share the same weaknesses, even if it doesn’t make much sense. The one
exception would be elemental atronachs, who would have strengths and weaknesses
depending on their elements. As listed above, the enemy types are Man, Mer, Beast, Aquatic,
Automaton, Draconid, Undead, Insectoid, Ogroid (goblins, centaur, trolls and ogres),
Lycanthropes, Wraith and Daedra. These strengths and weaknesses are by no means essential
to combat encounters, they just add an extra layer of depth that layers can choose to interact
with if they wish too.

Bosses
All of the beasts and bosses of the game should have better telegraphed attacks and just better
movesets, to make them funner to fight without the new humanoid mechanics like poise,
counter, bash, dodge etc. That is, they don’t just walk up to you and instantly deal damage like
in vanilla Skyrim. They don’t need to be souls-like, but it would be nice if we could get close. To
bring things back to BotW again, the Lynels were fantastic bosses that fit perfectly into the
setting. We could easily add centaurs to the same effect, but we could also add massive
dremora knights with large scale movesets like in Dark Souls. Just some more memorable and
unique boss fights, rather than Ysgramor’s 500 Dragon Priests.

For most boss fights, our locational damage systems should be disabled, so that they aren't
trivialized. However, with our other additions to combat, like dodging, perfect blocks, poise etc.,
they should still feel way better then in Skyrim. On the other bosses, certain enemies such as
Centurions would be greatly enhanced. Imagine cutting at it’s wires, slowly deactivating it’s
weaponry and malfunctioning!
NPCs
Elder Scrolls NPCs have a range of topics that need to be discussed. For the most part, in
previous titles the world felt much more alive, because NPCs had a much more diverse opinion
on th ePLayer, depending on disposition, responsibility and reputation. Skyrim fucked it up, and
we need to fix it once again.

Mood
Before we get into the disposition shit, we are adding a couple supplemental “NPC States”.

NPCs can now have “moods” which are represented by their facial expression. Their
environment, recent actions and general change impacts their mood. There are 4 possible
moods an NPC can have.

Fine: This is the most common mood. Nothing particular; the NPC is fine. The NPCs face is
plain and unemotive.
Happy: Positive things have happened to the NPC recently, such as their enemy dying or their
village being freed, and as a result they are in a good mood. The NPCs face is smiling.
Sad: Negative things have happened to the NPC recently such as their family dying or their loot
being stolen. As a result, they are in a bad mood. NPCs with bad environments, for example
they are stuck in the rain or they are homeless, are more likely to be sad. The NPCs face is
depressed.
Angry: This is an alternative way to react to negative events. NPCs with voicesets that are
condescending, haughty, grumpy, shrill and drunk are more likely to be angry. Anger stems from
blatant disrespect most of the time. The NPCs face is full of anger.

Disposition
In Morrowind and Oblivion disposition is indicated with a scale from 0 (with the subject really
hating the player) to 100 (with the subject really adoring the player). In these games, the player
is able to attempt to persuade almost every character in the game.
In Skyrim, the system works differently. Here, disposition is indicated with a scale from -4 to +4,
with -4 standing arch nemesis and +4 for lover. Disposition in Skyrim is invisible to the player,
and unchangeable unless they kill a family member in front of the NPC’s eyes, or do a single
favor for them. Skyrim’s disposition system is so lazy. If you do 1 quest that benefits an NPC
they suddenly get moved to “friend or ally” status which also means that they are available for
marriage status (for NPCs who are marriable). The literal laziest possible system Bethesda
could have implemented.

To know what we need to bring to the table going forward, let’s first look at the past. In
Morrowind, disposition begins at a set value depending on each character's base value, race,
faction reactions etc. Initial disposition is influenced by the Nerevarine's race, global reputation
and the reputation they have within certain factions. The latter affects characters belonging to a
faction and fractions related to it, be it positively or negatively. For example, the Imperial Mages
Guild are strongly opposed by the xenophobic house of Telvanni. If the Nerevarine rises within
the mages guild, characters belonging to Telvanni will drop in disposition. On the other hand,
other characters belonging to other Imperial factions, such as the Fighters Guild will like the
player more for it. The apparel being worn also has some influence on persuasion. Wearing a
full suit of Daedric armor, whose value reaches a total of thousands of septims, will cause
characters to take the player much more seriously compared to wearing cheap clothing.

Disposition can then be altered from the initial value through the persuasion menu. This menu
can be accessed by pressing "Persuade" at the upper left corner of the dialogue menu. When
the player attempts to persuade another character, they have the following options: Admire,
Intimidate, Bribe and Taunt. These persuasive actions can be performed indefinitely, in
particular using Taunt to lower disposition and the others to raise it.

In Oblivion, there’s the infamous wheel minigame. This is probably the origin of Skyrim’s shit
system, after Bethesda was scared of the contempt for this wheel minigame. Of course, never,
for the love of all that is mighty, ever return to this system. The player can either Boast, Joke,
Admire, Coerce or Bribe. The player's disposition is also determined by their fame and infamy.
Having a high fame will result in characters on the right side of the law liking the player more,
while criminal characters will start to dislike the player, while having a high infamy will result in
the opposite.

The goal with our disposition system is to make your interactions with friends, followers,
spouses, and rivals be much more suited and immersive, without turning the game into the
Sims.

Your friends will always talk to you like friends, your rivals will always talk to you like rivals. All
followers will have additional dialogue for MANY different situations. They will have much more
to say than the same 3 greetings and 2-3 farewells. They also have much more dialogue for the
follower commands. Meaning, they won't use the same line over and over when asking them to
trade items, wait, ask a favor, follow, dismiss, etc. Followers will also have dialogue for every
situation of combat. You will hear them yell out when starting combat with an enemy, and
remark in relief or possibly arrogance when combat is over. Friends talk to you more like friends.
Followers have more to say when speaking to them. If your spouse is a follower, he/she will talk
to you like a spouse instead of a generic follower. NPCs who dislike you (not bandits and
forsworn, but citizens of towns and cities) will have more insults to say and may even completely
stop talking to you if you continue to pester them. Rivals will use more insults, some of which
depend on the race or gender of the player.

Players should be able to have long winded conversations with NPCs about their history. They
don't need to be beneficial, they don't need to impact lore in any way, they just need to add
depth and character to cities and its inhabitants. Players should have multiple dialogue options
when choosing how to respond to NPCs. They can act like a jerk, a saint, a racist, a hero, a
weakling, a scholar etc. They characterize themselves in their responses. This obviously ties in
with our dialogue section, and my point remains the same. Just give us 1000s of dialogue lines
with NPCs that don't do anything or go anywhere. That simply exists to flesh out the world.
Starfield did this pretty well, but cities simply had too many unnamed NPCs. We want the best of
both worlds. Essentially we add thousands of voice lines for every generic voice type so that
you can have an organic expansive relationship with anyone you meet.

Additionally, we are going to go back to the 100 disposition system. Every friendly NPC, not
enemies or radiant NPCs, have a disposition with the player. It starts at a basic 40, and can be
raised and lowered through reputation, alliances and the deeds you complete for the NPC.
Unlike Morrowind and Oblivion, and more like Skyrim funnily enough, disposition is mostly out of
the player’s hands. The primary way to increase disposition is by completing quests for the
NPC, however, inspired by Red Dead Redemption 2, there's a small dialogue feature integrated
for players to increase immersion.

Essentially, when the player starts dialogue with an NPC for the first time in 24 hours, they can
choose between six fairly nondescript options, on top of the regular dialogue options.
“Greet” is presumably a gentle, friendly conversation starter. The NPC will thank the player and
go on their way, with disposition rising slightly. Having a high speech skill raises it higher. This
works best if the NPC has a “Fine” mood, but works most of the time regardless.
“Joke” only works if the NPC has a happy mood, but is very effective.
“Comfort” only works if the NPC has a sad mood, but is very effective.
“Admire” only works on happy NPCs with high confidence.
“Boast” only works on happy NPCs with low confidence.
“Diffuse” only works if the NPC has an angry mood, but is very effective.
“Flirt” only works on marriable NPCs who are happy.
“Taunt” can be used to pester an NPC. It will put them in an angry mood, lower disposition, and
if you pester them enough they will either refuse to speak to you, if they have low confidence, or
outright attack the Player, if they have high confidence.
NPCs will surrender if they get close to death. Killing them anyway results in jail time. If the
taunting fails while the character already has a low disposition, the character will only denounce
the player as being pathetic.

These eight dialogue options keep disposition sweet and simple. Since one can only be used
once per day, the player generally has to be careful in their decision since there’s a variety of
factors that can impact the right choice. There’s a tiny bit of strategy, but for the most part is a
streamlined version of the Morrowind system. The player simply has to dissect the NPCs mood
and then react accordingly.

What does this achieve? Well it keeps relationships alive. Even when the player has exhausted
conversation options, the player can now do something as simple as greet their friends every
day. It also gives a way to raise disposition, even if it is extremely slow. This is designed to be
lightweight and non exploitable.

Disposition should be impacted not only by what the player does for the NPC, but their race,
gender, fame, infamy, faction alliances and how you present yourself in specific environments.
To dynamically change how the Player is responded to in environments, Disposition can be
changed very easily.

If you are a dark elf, some racist Nord will never raise your disposition above 20. If you're a
Khajiit, another Khajiit might give you a quest exclusive to Khajiits, because he trusts his people
more. If you're the leader of the mage guild, a mage might praise you, while a necromancer
might always hate you. If you walk into the king's hall in underpants, everyone will disdain you,
give you a temporary disposition decrease, and tell you to get out etc. If you’re drunk, that's an
increase in your disposition. If you’re covered in mud and blood, that's a decrease. Persuading
people will always raise their disposition. Failing persuasion will lower it. High Speech skill
raises the effectiveness of greetings, thereby increasing disposition. In fact, Speech increases
disposition gain everywhere.

All told this should massively improve Player interactivity in the world. Essentially, they can see
their choices in their environment. If they are famous for their heroics, the NPCs will treat them
as such. If they are infamous for their villainy, then the NPCs will run in fear or jeer them. If the
Player constantly taunts an NPC, they will have a bad relationship. If they joke with them, they
will have a good one. If they are an Argonian, the Dark Elves will dislike them. If they are a High
Elf, fellow Altmer will like them. If they are a thief, other thieves will like them. If they are a hero,
nobles will trust them. Hugely dynamic and immersive.
Responsibility
Responsibility, like in Oblivion, is an internal game attribute between 0 and 100 for NPCs that
determines the NPC's lawfulness. If an NPC has a responsibility of 30 or less, they will complete
illicit acts. This is a system from Oblivion, and there’s no reason we can’t bring it back -
especially if we are reintroducing proper disposition, fame and infamy.

Responsibility also affects an NPC's disposition toward you, depending on your infamy. NPCs
with low responsibility will like you if your infamy is high. Similarly, NPCs with high responsibility
will dislike you if you have high infamy.

If an NPC's responsibility is 100, they will immediately report crimes, giving you a bounty
whether or not a guard is present. Those with low responsibility, such as members of the
Thieves Guild, will not report you, even if they see you commit a crime. Instead they will simply
comment on the crime being committed. An NPC with a responsibility from 90 to 30 will not
report crimes as long as their disposition doesn't drop too low and will allow some of their items
to be taken, after that they will report crimes, for example, a 50 responsibility NPC will not report
crimes if their disposition is above 50.

Confidence / Aggression / Assistance

Confidence, aggression and assistance were all stats in Skyrim you didn’t see much. We bring
them all back. Confidence is an internal game attribute for NPCs and creatures which
determines what percentage of their health an actor must lose before fleeing from combat.
Aggression governs how likely an NPC is to attack you when provoked. Assistance governs
how likely an NPC is to help others who are engaged in combat nearby. All values can range
from 0–100. Confidence and Aggression also affects the chance an NPC will attack the player if
their disposition is low enough, while low confidence/aggression NPCs will simply ignore you or
let themselves get bullied by you. Fleeing NPCs may run to a nearby guard and follow them
around. Confidence and Aggression determines how NPCs will react to getting robbed, whether
they fight, run away or submit. When a Player is trying to get a bandit to submit, to turn in as a
bounty, their confidence determines how likely they are to give up. Rallying can be used to raise
confidence.

Assistance is also the NPC’s “kindness” attribute. Essentially, NPCs with high assistance wont
send hired thugs after the Player, because they are considered kind and loving.
Fame and Infamy
Fame and Infamy in Oblivion was awesome, not only did it determine how people react to you, it
had mechanical value such as improved prices from merchants as well as the entire Knights of
the Nine questline having a fame requirement. It was like the ultimate immersive experience for
NPCs to actually react to the type of person you were, rather than treating a massive dragon
eating paladin like a welp or a thief. It's ridiculous how you're the Dragonborn, and leader of
multiple factions and too many people treat you like you're nobody. Realistically, everybody
would know who you were. You'd be the talk of the town. Yet the Companions will call you a milk
drinker even if you’ve saved their lives multiple times over.

Some people believe that Reputation was “gamey” because it allowed NPCs to react to things
they realistically wouldn’t know the player had done. This is true, to an extent, but it’s easily
fixable. Reputation, contrary to what some people say, is not "gamey" but the opposite: a very
simulationist context in video games, a copy of real world societal interactions. Really we just
need reputation systems where NPCs don’t acknowledge achievements that they realistically
wouldn’t have heard of.

In Oblivion, fame is increased by completing positive quests. It increases NPCs' disposition,

capped at +20 disposition, or a fame of 67. Certain quests also have a Fame requirement
before the quest can be started, preventing known criminals from becoming Paladins. Infamy is
the opposite of Fame. Infamy affects the disposition of characters you meet. The exact effect
depends upon the NPC's responsibility. NPCs with high responsibility will dislike you because of
your infamy. At lower responsibility, disposition decreases less rapidly with Infamy. For NPCs
with a responsibility of about 10 or less, their disposition will actually increase as you gain
Infamy. Disposition will be modified by at most 20 points due to Infamy. Infamy limits your
access to certain quests. It can be increased by completing certain immoral quests, failing
certain moral quests, choosing the immoral path in quests or getting caught completing
immoral/illegal activities such as stealing and murder.

We want to adopt this. Fame and Infamy are two separate scales that increase side by side.
Based on your reputation score, many of the game's NPCs will change how they respond to
you. Your choices will now matter for how people perceive you - and not just whether or not
you've delivered/fetched something for that particular NPC.

With no fame or infamy, a relatively unknown character will now be greeted with dismissals. A
player with high fame from good deeds will be greeted with compliments, and an evil outlaw will
be greeted with scorn or completely avoided out of fear. With high infamy guards will now also
act as if they’re a little wiser to your criminal activities and comment with greater suspicion.

In our system, fame is influenced by the quests a player has completed. Infamy is influenced by
completing certain immoral quests, failing certain quests, choosing the immoral path in quests
or getting caught completing immoral/illegal activities such as stealing and murder. Not getting
caught has no effects. Infamy can be decreased by choosing the moral path in quests and
aedra worship.
So, if this makes sense, a player will start out with 0 fame and 0 infamy. Fame naturally
increases as time goes on, and the player will gradually become more well known and famous.
Infamy influences how the player is treated once they are famous. If infamy is a higher score
then fame, the player will be treated poorly like a villain. Luckily infamy can be decreased by
completing good, righteous acts.

What impacts do these two scores have? Well, much like Oblivion, they have a maximum of a
20 point impact on disposition with every NPC. High fame and infamy results in a high impact on
disposition, whether that be negative around the responsible or negative around the
irresponsible. High fame and low infamy results in the opposite. Low fame and low infamy
results in 0 changes, while low fame and high infamy results in a medium impact on disposition.

More importantly, NPCs have specific voice lines to react to the player depending on their fame
and infamy scores, like the mod i mentioned earlier. Having a relatively high infamy will result in
most NPCs disliking you (due to disposition) but having extra voice lines accusing you of being
morally bankrupt and a criminal (which they won't say if they have a high disposition). Having an
extremely high infamy will result in NPCs straight up ignoring you in fear.

Fame and Infamy would work really well with our religion system as well. Players must be at low
infamy if they want to worship Aedra, and the opposite for Daedra. Aedra Shrines straight up
won't work if the player is wicked. Cults will come after the player if they violate certain Daedra
in their quests. Just more unique interactions that reflect the player's reputation.

NPC AI
This is a seemingly obvious note, but NPC AI should be more intelligent. A return to the radiant
AI systems in Oblviion would be nice, but at the very least NPCs need more expansive routines,
with a large degree of reactions to circumstances like rain (for example, standing under a rafter
so as not to get wet). Red Dead 2’s NPCs, who you can follow go about every single detail of
the day would be nice, or something close. Again, you could generate these routines with AI,
and generate the degree of variance, whether that be stealing for food or going out hunting
depending on responsibility and confidence too. Oblivion’s system wasn’t inherently broken, it
was just poorly implemented in that specific game.

So yeah, AI along the lines of the AI Overhaul:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/21654 where NPCs act more
intelligently and are more reactive. When NPCs have free time they can be doing whatever. And
no not sandbox one area they really could be doing anything. They may be at different parts of
the city, shopping or at home. They interact more with the environment around them. They may
read a letter or book, search containers, drink, eat, observe, etc. ‘Haunting’ and ‘Mourning’ were
removed from Skyrim, when they probably shouldn't have been. We restore it, so unique NPCs
can now express anger/grief after a relative or friend dies, run away to be left alone for a
moment, or greet you differently as they mourn, and be in a perpetually sad mood. Visiting the
grave will be added to their routine. With haunting, when an unique NPC with family dies, there
will be a random chance that they will -after some time- "resurrect" as a ghost that will follow a
relative for the rest of the game. Only NPC with generic voice files and only a couple NPCs in a
whole save.

In a similar vein to NPCs React to Necromancy:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/70428, NPCs should, well, react to
necromancy. If the Player casts a normal summon around NPCs, they might react shocked or
distrusful, but there are no consequences. If they revive a corpse or summon a skeleton, or
anything else necromantic, NPCs will react depending on their aggression stats. If they are low
confidence, they will act confused, and not really know what’s going on. If they are high
confidence, they’ll hate the Player and tell them to cut it out and leave, resulting in a lower
disposition. If they are high aggression, they might draw their sword and engage in combat. If
the revived zombie is the NPCs friend or family, the reaction is always bad and the disposition
decreases by 2x. Guards will warn you to cut it out, and if the Player refuses to leave or stop,
they arrest them.

Appearance
Character design is a massive part of the Skyrim modding community. The amount of available
presets and character mods is absolutely astounding. So rather than speaking about things I
don’t understand, I’m just gonna drop links to the best character overhauls (imo) that agree with
my philosophy. Tldr; NPCs need to be more attractive without being models. We want to strike a
middle ground between realism and pleasantry. Also, we want to retain the visual differences
between elves and humans. Their weird appearance in Skyrim and Morrowind is much
preferred then the blueberries of Oblivion. That said, they could probably look a little less alien.
Here’s some good mods:
Northbourne NPCs is the best example of this (All of them, the link is just to Whiterun):
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/35404.

Children are really important to overhaul! We can’t have the same potato clone children running
around everywhere!
RS Children (Easily the best from this small niche):
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2650
Beast races are a little more complicated. In general, they deserve more unique customisation
options. For beasts, this one is 100% the best:
BeastHBBB: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/38480

For those who don’t know, Khajiit morphology is a really unique bit of worldbuilding that rarely
gets used to its full potential (especially in the actual games.) While Skyrim’s default, lynx-like
Khajiit design suits its northern aesthetic, it doesn’t represent established Khajiit lore very well.
There are 17 different kinds of Khajiit- the mod below includes the most important 7 types to
Skyrim's default Khajiit, excluding the quadrupedal khajiit that realistically wouldn’t leave
Elsywere. While ideally the player should get to choose between at least a couple of these,
inserting them into the Khajiit population is a good compromise. If we're talking realistically,
Bethesda isn't gonna create 17 new models for Khajiit types that will rarely be used. Ideally, they
include the Cathay (current Khajiit), Cathay-Raht, Pahmar-Raht, Dagi-Raht and Ohmes.
Project ja-Kha'jay: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/57610. While we are
talking about Lore additions, some Bosmer should have antlers, as in this mod:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/33349.
Quests
While this isn’t really a detail of gameplay, and more for the writing side of things, I thought it
was worth mentioning a bunch of things loosely related to quests that Bethesda needs to touch
up their ideologies on before going into Elder Scrolls 6. My main takeaway though is that the
Player needs more agency. The only Bethesda game, including Starfield, to do this properly has
been FNV. Starfield was a step in the right direction, and I know ES has never been known for
its decision making, but ES6 is as good a spot to start as any.

Quest Markers
I don’t necessarily think quest markers need to be removed, just tuned down from Starfield or
Skyrim. Like if I get told to look for a book in a room, there shouldn’t be a marker telling me
where to go. That search for the book is a nice change of pace in a quest, so trivializing it is
stupid. I’m not suggesting we go Morrowind, just turn down the amount of markers where they
would ruin unique gameplay opportunities.

Side Quests
The first is to actually do with quests. Make them more robust! If there’s any lessons to take
from the Witcher 3, Bethesda should give their quests actual stakes, and should give the player
actual agency in what they do. The majority of quests, save for the really misc. ones, should
have multiple outcomes. Not only are these outcomes dependent on the player choices, but on
their successful speech checks, their traits and their gameplay style. So most quests should
have multiple outcomes that can be initiated by the player. They should have real agency and
contribution. Additionally, like Witcher 3, make more quests morally gray. Like give us a lesson
in all of the dialogue, rather than mindless action. Give quests layers and make them feel more
real, and more immersive to choose paths in.

In a similar vein, while we are making decisions, outcomes shouldn’t be so obvious. When a
Player makes a choice, you need to throw an absolute curveball at them, to intellectually
challenge them. Witcher did this great as well.

Quests need to have impact and consequences, not only on themselves but on the world
around them. Most infamous of Oblivion quests was "Paranoia", this is because there were
many decisions you could make during the course of that quest that would have a massive
impact on later parts of it. It was the type of quest you could play multiple times with completely
different experiences, where the player really saw the consequences of their actions. These are
mechanics that CD Projekt Red focuses on. Almost everything you do in the Witcher 3 has an
impact, whether that be on the main quest, unrelated quests or simply the world and its people.
Knowing that every choice you make will actually have consequences that extend beyond your
pay is really important if we want to bring these games to the next level.

Helping the Forsworn escape should completely shift the political climate in Markarth - it should
add a new quest to the civil war where you need to defend Markarth from the Forsworn, or to
help them take it. When quests feel really impactful, that's when players enjoy completing them.
For some other Skyrim examples, completing the Civil War should completely change the cities,
and repair them from siege damages. The Gildergreen should regrow once it’s been healed.

I think Starfield made a lot of great steps towards these types of ideas, but there’s still a little
ways to go. The cities are great, and packed with great, choice-driven quests, but the impact is
simply not there. If I eliminate the Disciples from Neon, I should be able to see how this impacts
the city.

To do with this, there should be better dialogue options for players. Player’s should actually get
to contribute to conversations, rather than having inconsequential braindead dialogue. The
choice between two options that sound the same and lead to the same conclusion. The worst
example of this I can't think of is during the Companions Questline. After Farkas turns into a
werewolf unexpectedly and slaughters 10 men who we know nothing about, the best the writers
could do was “Are you going to turn me into a werewolf?”. Followed by Farkas saying “That was
the Silverhad. They don’t like werewolves, so they don’t like us”. Wow, what a robust narrative.
What if my character is a werewolf hunter? What if they have a phobia of werewolves? What if
they’re extremely excited to become a werewolf? Why on earth would their first response be
that of all things? So give us multiple options in dialogue, reflecting different character types.
Y’know, when we meet the Greybeards, let us say “You don’t look like much” rather than the
generic stuff. So in summation; give us agency and let us roleplay - on top of giving us agency
and impact on the narrative of quests.

And this agency extends beyond the writing. I think the actual approaches to quests, as well as
the quests themselves, need to have more options for completing them, as well as more variety
in general. I’ll talk about this more later, but my general rule would be that all fetch quests are
radiantly generated, while any quest involving custom writing should have a little more depth.
When I talk about quest approaches, KC:D did this great. Almost anything you get told to do has
multiple ways of getting done. In a game like ES, this is the only sensible way to design quests.
Especially with our expanded Speech system, this would make quests and repeat playthroughs
way more engaging.

Bethesda's catchphrase for quest making during Skyrim was "keep it simple stupid". The fact
that they honestly thought quests were better if you kept them linear and generic is genuinely
baffling. Sure, they shouldn't be confusing - but quests should have layers, multiple routes,
moral ambiguity and unique gameplay to the point that they really stick with you.

The decisions you make should have an effect on the world around you. Whether that be as
simple as the downfall of a certain character, the thriving industry of another, or the entire
destruction of a city. You should be able to look at the world around you and recognize that you
changed things.

Finally, quest objectives need to be more interesting than “go here and kill this thing.” That’s
what radiant quests exist for. Considering our wide range of gameplay additions, this shouldn;t
be challenging either. Witcher’s solution to this is to make every quest an investigation. That’s
not a bad approach, definitely better than Skyrim, but I still think there’s room for improvement.

Rather than endless fetch quests, the player should be tasked with unique goals, like sneaking
into a masquerade ball, solving a murder mystery, searching for a mysterious character in a
crowded city etc. Look at the Witcher 3; the majority of quests there are fetch quests with
combat in the middle, yet the writing makes it interesting to play out, since there are multiple
directions the quests can always go and many morally ambiguous choices to be made.

Dungeons
Dungeons as a general rule should be more complicated than in Skyrim. That's not to say that
Skyrims were bad, but you could tell they were made with a strict formula in mind. Designers
were told they had to make dungeons completely linear and without any non-streamlined
mechanics that might prevent dimwits from completing dungeons. Designers, without the ability
to leverage difficulty through complex dungeon designs or challenging puzzles, end up making
long hallways of combat encounters. Dungeons end up being a slog of combat, but hey, at least
it’s streamlined right?!!1?1 Now that we’ve enhanced combat, this isn’t as much of an issue, but
dungeons deserve to stand out rather than become one of the mindless rest. The Dwemer
Spider during the Thief Questline is a perfect example of a great dungeon-exclusive mechanic.
Whas it utilized well? No. But my point still stands. All dungeons should have something that
makes them stand out.

So let’s break it down to the basics. Skyrim has (roughly) 80 dungeons. Let's say 20 of those
are “puzzle” dungeons; dungeons that are built around some form of exclusive mechanic that
requires actual complex thought, rather than matching images. Things like the Dwemer Spider
or the Forgotten Seasons creation. Imagine guiding the spider through the wall avoiding
obstacles and open levers for the player to progress. Or trying to get a dwemer elevator ascend,
and using its brake mechanics to use momentum to propel it upwards. Just 20 dungeons need
somewhat challenging puzzles, that village idiots can simply ignore if they can’t solve. Another
20 can be complicated in layout, with multiple routes through the dungeon, most of which lead
to dead ends with secrets hidden in every crevice. Similar to Morrowind or Oblivion. The
challenge of these dungeons, rather then combat or puzzles, is simply navigating them, since
they tend to expand both vertically and horizontally and it is very easy to get lost. They tend to
be stunning and unique in their layout and atmosphere, like legacy dungeons in Elden Ring.
Another 20 are more combat focused and have a unique combat encounter at their end. This
includes completely unique and memorable Elden Ring Style Bosses (might as well make use
of our combat mechanics), or wave onslaughts like at Dustman’s Cairn. The final 20 are like
existing Skyrim dungeons - mostly linear and monotonous. They may have simple puzzles or
traps, but nothing on the levels of the others. These are the dungeons used in radiant quests,
that exist to fill out gameplay time. They aren't completely redundant - they just won't be
remembered like the other 60.

See what we’ve done here? Rather than packing all 3 into single dungeons, doing them all
poorly and making them blend together in how amazing and complex they are, we lean into
different strengths with each dungeon, with an even split between the 3 mechanics. Rather than
be remembered for EVERYTHING all at once, dungeons will have aspects, whether that be
unique mechanics, atmosphere or bosses, that make them remembered. Quality over Quantity.
When you talk about a dungeon, it won’t be about how amazing the overall experience was, but
how amazing the specific thing it was aiming for worked, which is generally what happens
anyway - we just play into it. If a player struggles with puzzles, they can do the mazes, if they
get lost easily, they can do the boss fights, if they’re not good at combat, they can do the linear
stuff, or maybe their goods at puzzles etc. We’ve made dungeons less linear, better puzzles,
better challenges, but all in separate cases. This retains the simplicity of vanilla while enhancing
certain experiences tenfold. The motto is that if one type of dungeon is too hard, the player can
go to a different one. This is the best philosophy for dungeons IMO.

A potential downside to worry about, as said by u/coolwali, is that players can do dungeons in
almost any order. This makes it risky to make more complex puzzle dungeons because a player
can accidentally stumble onto one without doing any of the previous ones. For that reason, each
new dungeon would have to introduce new ideas and explore those ideas to a satisfying extent
within a condensed timeframe. Another problem is that a player wouldn't know what kind of
dungeon they are getting until they get into it. It would be really frustrating to make progress into
a dungeon, only to get stuck due to it being a puzzle you have never seen before, or it being a
maze you've never seen before, or being unable to beat a tough boss. Especially worse if
there's no way to fast travel out of dungeons.

Plus, unlike something like BOTW which is extremely hands off in what its quests ask of the
player, it's not uncommon for TES games to send players into dungeons to resolve quests. If a
quest sends a player to go do a puzzle dungeon and the player cannot solve it, they are locked
out of other content as opposed to not being able to complete that one specific dungeon.

The best way to solve this would be to make the type of dungeon aesthetic correlate to the
dungeon gameplay type. So Dwemer ruins would be puzzles, catacombs would be mazes and
bandit lairs could be the generic dungeons and every once in a while you'll run into a boss fight.
Make sure the quest specific dungeons aren't too complicated, so that only radiant quests will
lead Players to puzzles, and you should be fine.
Faction Quests
Ina similar fashion, faction quests should have real roleplaying potential. Rather than following a
linear path to ultimately become the Guild Leader, factions should be moldable, so that the
player can bring them in the direction they think suits best.

Now, Morrowind and Oblivion didn't have this feature. Faction quests were still linear, yet to this
day they are amazing questlines. This proves that faction quest lines don't need to be
constructive - they just need to be well written. Sadly, Skyrim's faction quest lines were terrible.
The majority of them had endless plot holes, uninteresting stakes, and they lasted like 5 quests
each. In my Skyrim rewrite I went into more detail, but needless to say there's not a single good
faction (although the Dark Brotherhood is certainly the best out of the shit show). So really, while
moldable factions would be an amazing feature, which I'll be integrating into rewrites/prewrites,
as long as the quests are interesting and well written, that's all that matters. I found while
rewriting that what felt most natural was having one moment towards the end of the uestline
where the PLayer would make a decision, that would reflect their overall ideaology with the
faction, that would massively change the ending. It’s not exactly a complex tapestry of decision
amking and impact, but as long as we get something as simple as that - just a single choice - I’ll
be satisfied. Alternatively, in my Thieves Guild rewrite, I made a series of choices contribute to
one of two endings. This could also work - so that the Player’s overall behaviour reflects where
the guild ends up..

Factions shoehorn you into their respective ideologies and philosophies. Now, one solution is
adding more factions with differencing ideologies (as discussed below) and warfare between
them. But another option is letting us shepard the path of a faction into a way of our choosing.
Maybe we can choose between making a robinhood style Thieves Guild that gives to the poor
(like in Oblivion), or a Mafia style Thieves Guild that has a tight grip on all the money flowing
through a city (like Morrowind). Alternatively let us choose between being an invisible Thieves
guild in the shadows, and a Thieves Guild that everyone knows exists, but can't speak of
because all the money is flowing to the right place, and the thugs are beating on the right
people. In Skyrim, we should have been able to discard the Nightmother with Astrid, choosing to
grow a real family, and the generic pathline. We should have been able to choose to hunt
werewolves rather than become one.

If you a join a faction, a faction with differing ideals should have lowered disposition and you
should be locked out of joining them, like Skyrim's philosophy of letting one character be
everyone was terrible, because if watered down every faction’s unique playstyle into generic
dungeon crawling. Any warrior can play through the Mages quest line and save the world,
before joining the Dark Brotherhood and becoming a tyrannical murderer, then join the Imperial
Legion after assassinating the Emperor. You just lose immersion when this is possible - the
writing should encourage multiple playthroughs with different characters to see what is possible.
We also deserve some more factions. Not necessarily as large as the big four, but maybe
another 4 factions with half as many quests each, with unique mechanics. Having unique niche
factions for the player to join would enhance roleplaying. For example, if you're a mage, there
should be two magic guilds - the main one for normal people and a slightly smaller one for
necromancy and conjuration, probably a witches faction. This way they can align the characters
motives, personality and playstyle with their faction.

Factions warfare between these factions of differing ideologies would be cool as well. Like in
Morrowind, how the thieves guild has you assassinate the Fighter's Guild. Maybe the
Necromancy Guild has to dismantle the Mages Guild, or a Paladin Guild hunts down the Dark
Brotherhood etc. Choices that impact the world around you is what I'm seeking here, similar to
the ability to bring factions in different directions. But back to the main point, more niche joinable
factions, like the Bards College if it was done properly with more quests, a series of infinite
radiant quests, actual benefits to the Bard playstyle and quests that involved being a Bard and
Bard gameplay. Ways to represent our character through the organizations they associate with,
and the organizations they dismantle.

So my general formula for factions would be:

Main Factions:
- Fighters Guild
- Mages Guild
- Thieves Guild
- Dark Brotherhood

Minor Factions:
- Arena-type thing (Main questline of taking down a main list, before moving on to radiant
stuff)
- Witch Coven (As well as a quest to destroy them all)
- Vampire Covens (Multiple to choose from, so this is technically bending the rules, each
with a couple quests and then a series of radiant stuff)
 - And then one wildcard (Hunter’s Guild, Bard’s College, Corsair’s Guild etc.)

Faction quest lines should have better, slower pacing alongside faction ranks. As in Oblivion
and Morrowind, factions ranks slowed faction quest lines with a bunch of misc objectives so
they weren't rushed. The player was forced to do miscellaneous tasks related to the guild before
they could progress in its story. This system feels like what radiant quests were designed for, yet
SKyrim barely makes use of that. The problem with the Companions isn’t that it used radiant
quests as content, just that it had like 5 actual quests besides. Radiant quests could easily be
the filter to make players actually prove their mettle, rather than becoming the Headmaster in a
week, but in Skyrim they are barely used. Most guilds use radiant quests as an infinite
endgame, and an immersive way to infinitely interact with the faction. This honestly isn't the
crime though. It's my opinion that radiant quests are best used to fill up those periods between
main quests and promotions where the player will be doing fetch quests regardless.

Might as well make it random for different playthroughs at that point, right? As long as the real
content is distinguished and makes up for the filler, then it's really not different from Oblivion or
Morrowind, which also has a lot of filler nearly indistinguishable from radiant stuff. The real
kicker is that the handcrafted content in the Companions is indistinguishable from radiant
content. It's all so bland that you really can tell the difference. I'm not gonna remove the periods
of radiant quests, in fact I'm gonna add them to most of the other factions to make them last
longer, but I will make the main content stand out more.

Yeah quests should actually resemble the guild they are involved in. In my rewrite, the
Companions questline involved a lot of dungeoneering, but also a lot of investigation. Solving
mysteries and following trails I think is the easiest way to make the generic melee faction
interesting, like in the Witcher. For the Mages guild, I made it involve a lot of unique dungeons
that included puzzles that required magic. Make Players actually participate in magic to join the
Mages guild. For the Thieves Guild, I would make thief segments much longer and more
involved, like they are in the Thief or Dishonored games, and make the punishments for failure
much stricter. If a Player fails somewhere important, they should absolutely be kicked from the
guild, instead of the guild constantly bending over backwards to let themselves get cucked by
the warrior slaughtering everyone in their theft missions. At the very least, make radiant quests
a punishment that force the Player to prove their worth before they can continue. For the Dark
Brotherhood, make assassinations resemble the Hitman games, with various different
techniques and large levels to kill your targets in, that make use of all the new mechanics we
have added.

In general, I think Faction Quest Lines should last 20 quests, plus some side stuff. 6-ish of these
should be required radiant quests. 3 at the beginning, and 3 in the middle, to make things travel
slower.
Rank Progression
Speaking of factions, rank progression for sure is something that I think could be improved a lot.
I feel like ranking up in a faction should be a product of several factors. Progressing in that
faction's main quest line of course. But also, like I said above, gaining the respect/trust of your
superiors in other ways -- radiant quests, favors, gifts, sharing knowledge, etc. Furthermore, I
think you should need to demonstrate aptitude in that faction's relevant skills to rank up.
Meaning stuff like, knowing how to cast certain spells and/or being a certain skill level, etc. I also
think factions should have more player choice baked in -- maybe depending on your decisions,
one of two different senior officers could ascend to guildmaster -- or neither, and you leapfrog
them both if you make the right choices. Hell, what if you could choose to join the "bad guy"
faction for each guild. In Skyrim this would be stuff like the Penitus Oculatus, the Silver Hand,
etc. What if destroying the Dark Brotherhood had been a 5-quest long chain and unlocked
access to the Penitus Oculatus' Skyrim HQ, with unique vendors, quest givers, trainers, etc.?

In my rewrite, I had four ranks for each questline. So about a rank per 5 quests. This felt organic
to me. I would make it so your standing in the faction, as well as your relationship (your
reputation/rank) in other factions, should all be displayed somewhere in the menu.

The civil war system definitely needs an update as well. I'll get into more detail in their
respective rewrites, but battles need to be much, much larger - with far more soldiers and
chaos. And the sides need to feel different, so your choice actually mattered, and you were
forced to tackle the optics of your faction.

Timing
Since we've made a lot of changes to leveling, so that players will still be challenged by level
100, it makes sense to change quests to accommodate this. More insanely difficult quests
should be triggered once the player reaches a higher level. Once the player is no longer
challenged by bandits and the like, new quests taking them to insanely challenging slices of
Oblivion with Dark Souls bosses at the end should begin popping up. Instead of throwing all the
content at the player at level one, have it organically grow.

As the player levels, their surroundings rebuild. Cities destroyed by war will be rebuilt,
checkpoints get established etc. The world doesn't feel stagnant. Perhaps a letter boy shouts
new news every morning, spreading word from the rest of Tamriel about heat happening in their
provinces while the player experiences Hammerfall.
Cities
There is nothing more underwhelming than walking to one of the mighty seats of power in the
North, to find literally 20 houses huddled around a slightly larger house. Now if you compare this
to Novigrad in the Witcher 3, Whiterun just doesn’t stack up. It’s literally a glorified peasant
village. The use of “districts” like the Cloud District seems arbitrary, when each district consists
of 5 houses, 10 seconds away from each other. Of course there’s engine limitations, but with the
latest and greatest Creation Engine this shouldn't be as big of an issue. New Atlantis was big
enough, but it’s performance was weirdly terrible. I’m going to chalk that up to the weird
mechanics of Starfield’s planetary system. So I’m going to make the brave assumption that
you’re average city in ES6 can be as big as the Imperial City, running at 60fps with next-gen
graphics. What does that mean? Well…

The Imperial City has a population of 192. Solitude has around 60 NPCs. Solitude has around
20 builds, while the Imperial City, following the same ratio because I couldn’t be bothered to
count the whole city, is 60. The Imperial City is 3x larger than Solitude. That is to say, I want at
least a couple cities in ES to be as big as the Imperial City, with multiple districts between
loading screens to keep performance.

If we have a game set in Iliac Bay, that’s 17 cities. I would personally remove Gilane, Hegathe
and Jehanna from the equation, which brings that count down to 14. Let’s say that we call
Daggerfall, Wayrest and Sentinel the “main cities”, these should all be Imperial City sized, with
60 buildings and 200 NPCs (discounting what I’m following this section up with). Then the rest
of the “minor cities” are still Solitude sized, dwarfing the likes of Dawnstar or Winterhold.
Winterhold in particular is literally 3 buildings. “City” my ass. This may be idealistic, but it’s not
out of the question. Then there’s a bunch of towns from Daggerfall.

The different districts and the economic class NPCs represent should have more character. The
economic district should be full of horses carting goods, warehouses and merchants. People
walking cows, dogs and chickens into the market - dense noise. The rich districts should be full
of nobles sucking up to the king with daily tributes. The poor districts should have slums multiple
outcast homeless, with the Underworld brewing in the shadows. Past the chaos, outside the
walls of the city, are sprawling farms and suburbs stretching into the plains - people that want
the safety of the city without its noise. We want character in these cities - a true atmosphere. We
want them to feel lived in, where the player feels small surrounded by the sheer scale of the
sprawl.

Each city should be unique in what it possesses. Not only should their guilds differentiate them,
but their buildings and shops. Only one city should have a cobbler, while another has a theater
performing the Lust Argonian Maid. There should be more unique shops like Radiant Raimond,
that target specific demographics with unique items. Like a Jewelry Store, Hunter's Store, Heavy
Armor Store, Crossbow Store, Stave Store, Brawlers Store, Akaviri Relics Store etc. Cities and
their districts should be differentiated by their buildings.
A Lot of these buildings don't have to be functional, they could just be there for atmospheric
purposes, but one particular feature I think would be cool are Banks. Rather then loaning
money, which would be ofc useless, Banks could be a way of trading old currency you find (like
Yokudan or Dwemer coins) for Septims, eg. The Witcher 3.

Cities will also have festivals on certain days of the year, making them feel more alive. Imagine
walking into Solitude and the Burning of King Olaf is happening through no meddling by the
player, and it's 10x as large. Everyone is out in the streets, celebrating in traditional dress with
streamers on the floor and giant braziers burning all around. This simply enhances how lived in
the cities feel, and how dynamic the world feels around you

Really we want the world to feel like it doesn't revolve around the player. Everything would
happen as it is happening, even if the player wasn't there. Animals hunt, people celebrate,
bandits raid etc.

In terms of the actual designs of the city, Bethesda has always had that down (after Morrowind).
Clutter is seriously amazing in Starfield, and I think it’s really important to add character to a city,
but I trust that the clutter department is really gonna flex on us in ES6.

Inconsequential NPCs
Elder Scrolls has always upheld a standard of not generating random NPCs to fill out a city,
something that most RPGs do nowadays and tends to make a city feel empty and devoid of
character. While this is a nice standard to hold, it’s ultimately pretty irrelevant, since a lot of the
cities and towns end up getting filled with random named NPCs that may as well be generated.
For that reason, I would fill out cities and towns with 33% randomly generated inconsequential
NPCs. Generated in a similar way to “The Dark Brotherhood Forever!” quest in Skyrim. These
NPCs have basic voice types and cannot have conversations. They are named in a pattern with
a adjective followed by a noun, eg. “Disgruntled Worker”, “Bored Mercenary”, “Grief Stricken
Drunk” or “Beautiful Maiden”. Their appearance is randomized, while their outfit is dictated by
their noun.

People sometimes say that cities would lose their character if they were populated with a bunch
of nameless NPCs, but that’s essentially what most NPCs in Skyrim are like. Most of them,
despite having a name and face, have no unique dialogue or personality. It’s okay to have
inconsequential NPCs between the detailed and complex NPCs. A somewhat even split
between these two types, so that cities still have a unique cast of characters and feel, would be
nice. I think, in general, cities should be 1.5x populated, with one third of them being named and
the other half inconsequential. So while the Imperial City had 200 NPCs, our Imperial City-sized
city has 275 NPCs, half of the unnamed, filling out the markets and taverns without homes to
return to.
Like all the shopkeepers will be unique, with Ysolda and Nazeem walking around the
marketplace, but multiple inconsequential NPCs fill out that space in between, living in the
gutter, browsing the market, relaxing under the gildergreen, wallowing in the Drunken Huntsman
etc. Fill out the city with unique buildings rather than fluff, like bathhouses, banks, schools,
garrisons, factories, gardens etc.

Why bother with this addition? Well, this “radiant NPC” mechanic has multiple benefits. First,
Bethesda doesn't need to spend any time on the useless NPCs and can focus on the fleshed
out ones. Second, they respawn after a week, with different names and faces. This means that
even after a player clears out a town, 25% of its residents will immersively continue to live there.
So even if the player clears out the city, but leaves the Ruler alive because he’s essential, the
city will realistically become repopulated and work under the king again. Third, this lightens the
load on GPU, as they can have very lightweight routines, they don't interact with other NPCs,
they can't be interacted with (you can't rob or pickpocket them, though you can randomly murder
them) and they don't need all the stats that normal NPCs have putting a strain on the GPU.

These inconsequential NPCs fill out areas that should be crowded, such as bars and markets,
and despawn as soon as the time of day doesn't fit their location. Very simple way to increase
the population of towns by 1/4 without any actually work.

Town Cryers
One of the best ways to improve the immersiveness of the world would be to make it so that
news and events would organically occur in and outside of the Player’s control. Town cryers
could take to the streets and announce the latest news of outside the map. The latest goings-on
in Cyrodiil or Morrowind, or perhaps the latest actions of the Player. So it feels like the world is
truly alive. Essentially an immersive news system. Potentially NPCs could interact with each
other, talking about this news as well. News could be level locked, so that certain news would
only come out after the Player has been around long enough.
Radiant Systems
This is gonna be a collection of radiant systems that I think Elder Scrolls should add, improve or
bring back since Skyrim. For those who don’t, radiant is synonymous with “random”. I
recommend you search up what radiant means in Bethesda games before getting started on
this. I really think Bethesda should return to the well of “radiant” systems, because that’s what
made Elder Scrolls special from the beginning. While I would love massive randomly generated
worlds like in Daggerfall, we need to stick with the path Bethesda set ES on. Instead, I want to
to expand on the radiant systems we can pack in here.

Bounties
To expand on radiant bounties, before we get into radiant quests as a whole, we make them a
little more dynamic and involve some Player agency. Inspired by Headhunter:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/51847

First, you will need to get proof that you completed the bounty. When you kill the target of a
bounty, the bandit/beast will receive an item in their inventory. When you loot them, getting this
item will fade out the screen for a second and the bounty target will lose their head, and it will be
stored in the player’s inventory, as well as on their hip.

For those playing a more lawful / forgiving character, bandit leaders who have a bounty on them
can be captured and brought to justice. To capture a bandit leader, they must kneel. It's similar
to that interaction in vanilla where low health enemies will say “I surrender!” and then continue
to fight anyway. However here they will remain kneeling until you talk to them and order them to
get in handcuffs. They can then be looted via dialogue. Next step is talking to a guard and
handing over the prisoner. Captured bandit leaders will follow the player around like a follower,
but won’t support them in any way. If the player makes weird movements and the bandit can’t
pathfinder towards the player, rather than teleport towards them they will simply despawn and
the quest will fail, so the player has to either walk straight to a city or fast travel there to stop the
bandit from escaping.

The bandit will be taken by the guard to the nearest prison, where the prisoner will stay
permanently. The guard will return to his or her post. Prisoners can be visited, but they won't be
happy to see you. There's a limit of 7 or 8 maximum prisoners. Once the limit is reached, the
oldest prisoner is executed off-screen to make room for the new ones. There’s a rare chance
this execution will happen as a world encounter.
Radiant Quests
I think Radiant Quests get a bad rep. The fault doesn't lie in their design being intentionally
duplicitous, but rather a failure in presentation by the designers. In all honesty, I think they're a
pretty great system. They essentially remove all of the work required for the necessary grunt
work quests early in factions, allowing the quest designers to focus on more hand crafted
content. Like I don't think that the early radiant stuff in the Companions is at all different to the
early stuff in the Fighter's Guild. It's a smart reallocation of resources. Not to mention the impact
it has on roleplaying. If someone wants to roleplay themselves in a faction, radiant quests allow
them to immersively interact with the faction even if they've finished the main questline. Like,
don't lie, you occasionally went back to the Night Mother to complete radiant assassinations
after completing the main DB questline.

Their existence clearly isn't the problem, it's simply how they are presented. I think most
people's dislike of radiant quests stems from a time when they thought they were completing a
normal quest, only to arrive at the location and realize it was radiant, and that there was no
meaningful story going on, and the player felt duped. The player receives a quest such as "Helm
of Winterhold" expecting it to go somewhere, only to find out that the helm is at a radiant
dungeon, and there's no underlying plot revolving around the Great Collapse, or the Jarl of
Winterhold, or some thief that felt the need to steal it. And this goes both ways. Not only are
radiant quests presented as main quests, but some main quests are virtually indistinguishable
from regular quests. Like, for example, did you know that 'The White Phial' isn’t radiant?
Because it’s barely indistinguishable from them.

So what’s the solution here? Well there three. First, restrict the use of radiant quests to factions
and, occasionally, miscellaneous NPCs in cities. For the most part, radiant quests should be
infinitely repeatable chores the player can do to immersively rack up cash. For the most part,
random NPCs should not be asking you to get their 'ancestral shield' inside a random dungeon
or kill their 'old friend' who just so happens to have become a bandit. If they do, that should
mean the quest is going somewhere. We are essentially going to prevent fooling Players into
expecting more than something radiant.

Second, we need to make the writing of normal quests better, really. More unique, intriguing etc.
Radiant quests are perfect as filler, but every unique quest should be easily distinguishable. If
an NPC requests you save their buddy from some slavers, it better go somewhere. We
essentially make radiant quests obvious in the world. Stop camouflaging them with the existing
quests, and make it clear that when a player asks an NPC "hey, got any work?" it's going to be
radiant. If they speak about it beforehand, prompting you to ask for more information, then it's
uniquely crafted.
Finally, I think there is room for more complexity in the radiant quests. Daggerfall, whose quests
were for the most part radiant, had some good examples of this. Some of them even involved
choice!

Alright, so I'll stop waffling and actually propose a system. So there’s five types of radiant
quests:
- Those given by Citizens and found on Notice Boards
- Those given by Workers
- Those given by Nobles
- Those given by Criminals
- Those given by Guilds

We start with the Citizen Quests. These are given by minor named NPCs found in towns, think
Ysolda or Nazeem, and found on Notice Boards, that can be found in the center of cities.
Essentially, any character that can be initiated in conversation, which excludes the
inconsequential NPCs, can be asked a question along the lines of “Got any work?” This part is
very important. We want to signal to the Players that these are radiant quests by forcing the
Player to initiate first. This is similar to asking Innkeeps for bounties, but it can now be
performed on any named citizen for a range of tasks. When asked, the NPC will have a 10%
chance of saying something like “As it just so happens, yes! [Radiant Quest dialogue here].”
The other 90% of the time, the NPC will say no, and recommend the Player check out the cities’
noticeboard. If the Player gets a quest from the noticeboard, they are directed towards the
random NPC that gave it, and then go straight to the Radiant Quest dialogue. The noticeboard
is the primary way of getting radiant quests, but sometimes NPCs will skip the middleman and
ask outright if the Player initiates. The Notice Board will sometimes have prompts leading to
mainline quests, but will generally be full of radiant quests.

They are as follows:

- Retrieve a Family Heirloom: retrieve an artifact in a dungeon
- Gather Groceries: Collect a range of ingredients, materials and foods for an NPC. Can
vary depending on the NPC that gives it out. Blacksmiths will want ingots and other
materials, Alchemists will want alchemy ingredients, Rangers will want pelts etc.
- Temper Weapon/Armor: Temper an NPC's weapon or armor.
- Enchant Weapon/Armor: Enchant an NPC's weapon or armor.
- Retrieve Weapon/Armor: Retrieve a particular weapon or armor piece. Will generally
need to be collected off the enemy that wears it, or crafted. Doesn’t give directions to the
location of the armor - it’s up to the Player to find it.
- Collect a Book: Retrieve a book for a mage. This book is extremely rare and only found
in a specific dungeon.
 - Bandit Bounty: As mentioned above, the bandit might have a bit of dialogue before you
engage them, and they may surrender, which means they can be handed in alive.
- Goblin Bounty: Bandit bounty but for goblins. They can’t be spared.
- Beast Bounty: Similar to giant and dragon bounties in theory. Just a bounty on a large,
tough to kill creature found nesting in the open world. Some creatures are more
intelligent, and will require tracking and following a trail of corpses to a den.
- Rescue Citizen: Rescue a citizen kidnapped by bandits.
- Deliver Item: Deliver an item from one NPC to another.
- Pickup Shipment: Pick up a shipment from one NPC for another.
- Deliver Cargo: Deliver wares via. boat or carriage, no fast travel allowed. May encounter
looters or other threats to your cargo along the way.
- Escort NPC: Escort an NPC through a city or through wilderness. Generally a hostile
faction, or viscous beasts, will attack the NPC, requiring the Player defend them.
- House Exorcism: Kill the undead infesting someone's house in a city.
- Animal Extermination: Kill the wild beasts infesting someone's house in a city.
- Shake Down: Track down an NPC, and either “rough them up” or convince/intimidate
them into handing over debt money.
- Guard Job: Guard an NPC in their own home from an attack from assassins. There’s an
alternative for shopkeepers, where the Player has to defend their wares from thieves. In
both variants, the assassins/thieves will offer the Player more money if they help them.
- Fool’s Gold: Trail an NPC’s routine, which will eventually lead to a stache of deeds owed
to the employer. Can convince the NPC to hand it over without following them, or can
make a deal with them to let them go free for a rare item.

The next radiant quests come from Nobles, found in their castles. Unlike Skyrim and Oblivion,
where guards just let you into castles like you aren't a massive threat, guards will not permit you
to enter castles, or to talk to their king/queen, unless the Player has accrued some fame and
honor. If the Player is known as a hero, they will permit entrance. If they are unknown or known
as a villain, they will not. The radiant quests from Nobles are unique from the ones from normal
citizens, and require this high honor, or access to the castle via another quest or trait, to receive.

So these are the Noble quests:

- Contraband Smuggling: Meet a suspicious contact with some extremely rare contraband
for the noble. In the middle of the dealing, you are ambushed by some bandits that want
the jewelry for themselves. Fight them off, then return it to the noble.
- Business with Vampires: Deliver a holy item to a noble's contact — although some
vampires also want the item.
- The Daedric Book: Deliver a rare book to a noble's contact — although some daedra
want to take it from you.
- For the Books: Get citizens of the town to pay their taxes - through force or otherwise.
- Escaped Prisoner: Find and kill an escaped prisoner taking refuge in a local bandit
camp.
- Rogue Court Mage: Find and kill an evil mage in a local dungeon.
- The Heirloom: Retrieve an heirloom stolen by a band of bandits/goblins.
 - A Peace Offering: Deliver some jewelry from one noble to another.
- Jail Keeper: Defend a jail from bandits trying to break a friend out.
- Out of Hock: Recover a valuable item from a shopkeeper for a noble. Can either pay for
it, persuade for it, or steal it.
- The Duel: Duel a warrior for the honor of a noble.
- Postman: Deliver a confidential letter, or follow the letter’s content for a better payout but
worse reputation.
- Bandit Raid: Defend a city from a bandit siege.

The next set of Radiant Quests come from criminals. Similar to Nobles, Criminals will only
associate with you if you have a required infamy level. However, you need to be famous for your
criminal behavior, rather than noble behavior.

By reaching the required infamy threshold, the Player unlocks a lot of fences, as well as the
following radiant quests from Criminals:
- The Deal: Act as the muscle in a skooma deal. However, you quickly become the
negotiator, deciding whether the meeting goes sideways or not.
- Payback: Make a public example of someone by beating them up in a tavern.
- Escort Job: Escort a criminal, fight rival criminals who try to intercept.
- Punishment in Death: Eliminate a bandit who crossed the criminal.
- Illicit Delivery: Deliver a package containing skooma to a local.
- Arms Supply: Deliver a weapon to a guild member in a local town.
- The Rich Merchant: Shake down a rich merchant for a shipment of his belongings.
- Fishing Pockets: Steal an item out of a target's pocket.
- Simple Burglary: Steal a special item from a wealthy home.
- Simple Framing: Place an item as evidence inside a wealthy home. Sometimes, a rial
thief will be already in the process of stealing something.
- Minor Heist: Steal a particular item from a local store.
- Major Heist: Steal bonds from a local bank.
- Temple Call: Steal a religious item from a regional temple.
- Great Heist: Steal some jewelry from Noble’s heavily guarded palace.

Other than the above, guilds, like the Fighter’s Guild, also have a range of radiant quests.
Probably with more complexity to help them stand out.

The final way of obtaining a radiant quest would be by talking to any NPC at a workplace. Unlike
the average NPCs who have a low percent chance to give out a bounty quest when prompted,
NPCs at work have a 100% chance to say yes, and give a radiant quest related to their job. The
Player would always have a prompt to ask "got any work?" or "Need a favor?" We just need to
make it clear to the Player from the start these are radiant and infinitely repeatable - only really
existing for quick cash or roleplaying. Completing these would improve their disposition towards
the Player, and make the Player immersively feel like they are completing grunt work.
Additionally, by exclusively completing these quests for these occupations, the Player would
essentially be employed by them, adding another layer of immersion. Functionally similar to the
mods Side Quests of Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/54245
and Jobs of Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/7925.

The workers and their respective jobs/quests are:

- Farmers: The Player is instructed to harvest and return plants on their farm. Potentially
even run grain through a mill, milk cows, herd sheep, catch wild horses - general ranch
activities.
- Blacksmiths: The Player is instructed to forge items for the Blacksmiths. Similar to the
smithing tutorial the Player can perform with Blacksmiths, they are told to forge, temper,
break-down etc. weapons and armor, as well as gather the materials necessary to do so.
- Tailor: Like the Blacksmith but for clothes at the Loom.
- Cook: The Player can talk to any Innkeep to get a job in their kitchen. They will be given
the ingredients and told to cook a couple food items before handing the food items in.
- Butcher: Hunt a particular animal and bring the corpse back to the Butcher (unskinned).
- Lumberjack: Like in Skyrim, chop wood for an NPC at a lumber mill, give them the wood
in exchange for gold.
- Miner: Like in Skyrim, speak to the person running a mine to gain permission to use the
mine and work for them, mining a specific amount of ore.
- Fisherman: Catch fish for gold.

Yeah, that's how I would do radiant quests. No more trickery or misunderstandings. It is made
clear to players that these quests are inexhaustible so that we don't encourage grinding (unless
the Player wants to immersively roleplay as a chef). Rather then giving Players that rude shock
when they realize bounties aren't hand crafted, they should no from the beginning that any
quest requiring initiative will not lead anywhere, and that these quests should not be grinded
outz rather completed for a quick buck.

Location Claiming
After clearing out certain camps or forts, the Player can claim the locations, stabilizing the
province one area at a time.

Essentially, the Player can now claim bandit outposts for the faction they support. After clearing
an area, waiting or leaving the fort will clear it and lead to it being taken over by the faction they
claimed it for, whether that be the Stormcloaks, Imperials, Forsworn, Dawnguard etc. We
wouldn’t want it to apply to every base, so the Player can still revisit some places at higher
levels, but as long as some areas let the Player see their impacts on the world this system is
doing its job.
Radiant AI
As a side note, it might be time to return to the well of Radiant AI for NPCs. I think Bethesda
could successfully pull it off, if they put more effort into it then they did in Oblivion. Truly the
possibilities are endless. The player would have almost infinite encounters in a populated area,
considering that the NPCs would be able to interact with each other and the world in infinite
ways. This, combined with the higher quantity of NPCs, the greater variety of shops and
vendors, the high quantity of animations for NPCs, the larger cities themselves etc. Cities
should really feel populated and vibrant.
Radiant Encounters
This is the newest Radiant system we are adding. I’ll try and break it down as simply as
possible, but it’s worth mentioning it's a tale in two pieces.

First, NPCs from towns, villages and strongholds, whether that be friends, foes, nobles,
shopkeepers, workers etc. may rarely be involved in some world encounters. These range from
as simple as a shopkeeper walking back to their city with a goat in tow, after making a trade for
some good loot, to an NPC hunting with some friends, traveling to nearby ruin, traveling to a
nearby jail, followers fighting a beast etc. These encounters are extremely simple but immersive
as you watch NPCs actually leave their cities. They require very little dialogue, maybe even
none at all, because they don’t initiate or prompt anything, they simply illustrate NPCs living
their lives. They aren't scripted per NPC, but rather randomly selected, using a voice type for the
dialogue.

The second is an extension of this mechanic. Radiant Encounters are randomly generated
NPCs that will spawn in various situations across your world. They are similar to Radiant NPCs,
with the exception that they are far more dynamic and interactable. A Radiant Encounter NPC,
or RENPC can generate in many situations; whether that be as a Bandit Leader, Prisoner in a
Jail Cell, Drunk in an Inn, Mercenary on the Road, Guild Member or Assassin the Wilds. Unlike
Radiant NPCs, their name is structured with a proper name followed by an adjective that
describes what defines them at that moment. Eg. “Torvar the Strong”, “Mikel Songsword” and
“Wylia the Hunter”.

RENPCs may have small amounts of dialogue related to their situation, and may give the player
a request to help them with that same situation. After this first encounter; the player will go on
their way and these RENPCs, will be stored in a database. They will be removed from that
location, much like normal encounters and unlike normal NPCs. Then, the next time a player
enters an area that can hold a RENPC, or they roll a random encounter that involves a RENPC,
one of these RENPCs may be pulled from their database and be placed into the world again, to
interact with the player again. In this second encounter, they will mention what happened last
time they met, whether that be in gratitude or outright anger. Not only this, but their name and
appearance will reflect what happened in their last encounter.

For example, the player faced a Bandit Boss, and burned off his face with fire magic. Poor ol’
Torvar the Strong will then reencounter the player in another Bandit Base. His beard is now
permanently ablaze, and his name is “Torvar Firebeard”. He will shout to the player how he used
the fire helped him conquer a new set of bandits, how the fire is really a blessing not a curse,
and how he will bless the player with the glory of flames. Clearly he’s lost his nuts and bolts, and
that’s all because of the player. Kill poor Torvar again, and the player encounters him outside a
riverside Inn. Torvar has become a drunken fool. He hates the player for ruining his life twice,
but simply lacks the strength to fight. Torvar can then be found again in a prison cell, named
“Torvar the Fool”. He begs the player to break him out, and they oblige. Before he runs into the
distance, he thanks them for giving him a second chance. Meet again and Torvar is a monk,
training in the mountains. He praises the player for showing him a better way and for their
humility and generosity. He gifts them with an amulet named “Torvar’s Amulet” in gratitude. He
stays there for the rest of the playthrough, and is deleted from the database of future
encounters. Especially when you factor in our dismemberment system, imagine encountering
NPCs with dwarven limbs replacing those you chopped off?

See how much this would improve immersion and connection with the world? The fact that
every bandit leader may come back to haunt you gives you so much more reason to choose
wisely. It enhances the bounty system as well, since sparing the bandit leader has advantages.
Overall, this is obviously heavily inspired by the Nemesis system in the Middle Earth Shadow
games. You may be thinking about the infamous patent, but this actually doesn’t violate that
system, since it isn’t hierarchy based. Nonetheless, I imagine it would be coded similarly. Like a
list of possibilities that can change an NPC whenever you encounter them, and the result of
those possibilities affecting them in their next encounter.

Just imagine how much this would improve those generic dungeons radiant quests send the
Player on. If everytime they begin one they begin to wonder which RENPC they will see this
time, if it will be a returning bandit leader or a new one entirely. I seriously feel like this system
would improve the games dramatically.

On top of that, a kind of Death Alternative system that triggers in these dungeons would be
really cool. Maybe not during boss battles, since those are intended to be hard and require
reloading saves, but maybe occasionally when the Player dies in the wilderness or in a fort, they
would wake up in the middle of nowhere, in a cage in a bandit camp or in the middle of the
ocean on a slaver’s boat with their loot. So begins a short quest where the Player re-aqquires
their loot and gets their vengeance, supporting that ‘write your own story’ thing we were going
for. It wouldn’t exactly add much to the day to day gameplay, but it would be cool to see
nonetheless, and would work really well with the RENPCs.

Radiant Economy

General goods merchants will sometimes pass the weapons and armors you sell them onto
bandits or other NPCs that use that particular gear. Bandits may equip items sold to general
goods merchants. Items may circulate the economy and end up in some other Merchant’s shop.
There is a chance for certain merchants to 'stow away' weapons and armor you sell to them.
Stowed items are put into a 'database' which is shared by merchants and bandits across
Skyrim.

When their cell loads into the game memory, Bandits have a chance to choose an item from the
database. Bandits choose according to their weapon class; fighters draw weapons & armor,
mages draw staves & robes, archers draw bows & light armor etc.. This is a very rare (probably
1/20) occurence for normal bandits, and slightly commoner (1/10?) for bandit leaders.

Work similarly for merchants; when loading their sale list they may pull an item from the
database that they will try and get the player to purchase again. Anyway, it’ a simple change but
would make the world feel even more alive and breathing then we’ve already made it at this
point.
Skilltree

The Skill Tree in Skyrim was one of its biggest issues. Not only were its “perks” generally boring
statistical increases, but they often made no sense, straight up lied to you about what they did,
or were completely broken. The best example of this, for me at least, is the “Intimidation” perk.
This makes Intimidation more effective, and can be unlocked at level 70; WHERE THE PLAYER
CAN ALREADY PASS ALL INTIMIDATION CHECKS. THIS PERK IS LITERALLY USELESS.
Not ONLY is it boring, but it’s actually pointless.

I’m not in the party that Morrowind and Oblivions systems were better; I actually like perk trees if
they are done well. Just Skyrim doesn’t do them well.

Perk Trees

Okay now to get to the good stuff. All of the skills I described in detail in the above sections, I’ll
just be talking about what their skill trees would actually look like here.

There’s two mods that overhaul the Skilltree in Skyrim the best; Adamant:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/30191, is what I will be referencing the
most, since it is amazingly balanced. It thoroughly overhauls the game’s skill trees in order to
provide the player with compelling choices and smooth progression from start to finish. While it
increases the total number of perks by a small amount, it avoids bloat, sprawl, and power creep
by balancing its selection of perks around Vanilla perk gains. Meanwhile, Ordinator:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1137 is a lot less vanilla friendly. Yet it
adds a total of 469 new perks, all of which are far more interesting and fun play styles than
Vanilla.

Basically, Adamant should be the base for most of this, while we will occasionally integrate the
fun stuff from Ordinator. It should be unrecognizable by the end.

Every skill tree now varies between 18 and 28 perks, unlike vanilla skyrim that ranged from
9-21. So most skill trees are doubled in size. Most perks are more interesting now as well.
Factoring the 3 new skill trees as well, there are roughly doubling the perks in the game.

Some skills are unlocked by default for the player, like Arcane Blacksmith, and all directional
power attacks. The unique properties of Dual Casting were removed (reason given in the
combat section), as well as weird combat additions like critical charge and power bash.
The Warrior

One-Handed
The One-Handed skill governs proficiency with One-Handed Weapons, fast weapons with
medium damage and low reach. We start with simple statistical increases to damage and
stamina costs. The tree then splits into three branches; blade, bleed and blunt. The perks
emphasize what makes blade, bleed and blunt unique.

Off to the side, there's a branch that improves dual wielding. Improves the speed of dual
wielding, the damage of flurry attacks, and, at the highest perk, a rage on entering a fight,
increases dual wielding speed and damage. Higher up, the Blade and Blunt branches converge
to increase general slash speed, damage of stabs, makes attacks from sprinting a guaranteed
critical hit and poise damage of power attacks. Higher yet and kills refresh stamina, as well as
add a new attack coming out of dodges.

Finally, there's a power called “Windcaller”, where the Player wields the weapon and spins it
above their head, summoning powerful damaging winds that damage everyone in an aoe
around them. Only usable while the weapon is equipped. We end up with around 26 perks.

Two-Handed
The Two-Handed skill governs proficiency with Two-Handed Weapons, slow weapons with high
damage and medium reach. Start with simple statistical increases to damage and stamina
costs. The tree then splits into two branches; blade, bleed and blunt.

Off to the side, there's a couple perks that improve two-handed in general. Slash attacks reduce
the target's attack damage for 3 seconds. Stab attacks lower enemy attack speed. Power
attacks deal up to 100% more damage below half Health. The damage bonus increases as your
Health decreases. Improve poise damage of slashes, speed of stabs and damage of power
attacks. Bashing to interrupt a power attack before it hits allows you to follow up with a power
attack within 2 seconds to deliver a critical strike that deals two times critical damage. Finally,
there’s an unlockable power where the Character jumps and performs a powerful stomp sending
all enemies around them to the ground like a thu-um. Overall, around 26 perks.

Pole-Armed
The Pole-Armed skill governs proficiency with Pole-Armed Weapons, medium speed weapons
with low damage and high reach. Start with simple statistical increases to damage and stamina
cost. The tree then splits into two branches; blade, bleed and blunt. Off to the side, there's a
couple branches that improve the effectiveness of shields with spears. Improves damage while
attacking mid-air and mid-air dodging exclusive to Spears. Finally, the Player unlocks the ability
to Spear Throw, by holding the bash button while blocking with a spear. It deals more damage
then shield throws, but needs to be recollected. Equates to 26 perks.
Heavy Armor
The Heavy Armour skill governs proficiency with Heavy Armour, Armour that sacrifices speed for
fortification, as well as defense utilizing Block. Start off with a bonus to armor rating when
wearing four pieces of heavy armor (all but one). Overtime, it weighs half as much and slows the
Player down half as much, and they take less damage when they fall below half Health while
wearing four pieces of heavy armor. Similar perks improve health regeneration, general poise,
resistance to power attacks and damage reflection.

At higher levels, when struck by a power attack or power bash, your attacks deal 125% more
damage to the attacker for 5 seconds if wearing four pieces of Heavy Armor. Then, the chance
of enemies running away in fear as you kill their friends, or simply approach them, is increased
dramatically. Finally, when struck by a power attack, the attacker's strike rebounds forcefully as
if striking solid rock, staggering them and potentially knocking them to the ground.

As for Blocking, we give it a large branch for itself. Despite the tree being called Heavy Armour,
Block is the first available perk, letting Players with Light Armor who want to Sword n’ Board
access the initial perks. While the rest of the Heavy Armor stuff branches out from here, Block
has its own branch. Starts with an increase to blocking proficiency. Then moves on to increase
the speed of bashes, the poise damage and stun of bashes. Eventually, bashing causes
enemies to take 25% extra damage for 10 seconds.

The Player also unlocks some new techniques. Holding the Bash button performs ‘Shield Toss’,
where the Character throws their shield and it rebounds of enemies before returning to their
arm. Sprinting with a shield raised performs ‘Shield Charge’, where the Character charges a
short distance with their shield raised, knocking all enemies to the ground. Finally, there’s a
power called ‘War Cry’, that causes enemies to flee in fear.

You may also want to consider locking the higher-end heavy armors, Dwarvern onwards, behind
perks. Same goes for light armor. Roughly 24 perks total.

Smithing
The Smithing skill governs proficiency when Smithing tools, weapons and armor. Leveling
smithing no longer automatically contributes to your ability to temper items, all Players can
temper up from a diminished state to normal, but the additional 5 tempers are locked behind
skills. Smithing requires more perk investment than Vanilla, but is also more flexible.

So 5 perks are dedicated to tempering tiers. The other branch dictates what weapons and armor
you can forge. Starting with Leather/Steel, then Chainmail/Silver, then a perk for Scale/Nordic
and finally a perk for Adamantium/Dwarven. Then the branch splits further, and the Player can
choose to invest in Elven and then Glass, or Orcish and then Ebony. Both end up at Daedric.
This is 9 perks.
A separate branch lets you break down common types of weapons, armor and other junk at the
smelter for a small amount of the materials used in crafting them. Followed by a perk reducing
the cost of tempering and increasing the amount received from breaking things down. Then you
get some perks for crafting jewelry, as well as more unique tools like Dwarven spiders/spheres
and ballistas (one for each level 40/60/80 respectively). Created automatons are stored in stasis
cubes until activated from your inventory. Another perk lets you apply elemental effects to the
stasis cubes to make them even more powerful. A final branch removes the second degradation
tier from weapons and armor entirely. So around 22 perks total.

Leadership
The Leadership skills governs proficiency when Horse Riding, Shipfaring and leading
Companions. The justification for them all being under a single branch is that horse riding
technically involves leading a horse, while ship faring involves leading a ship of men and the
part Companions come in is obvious. Perks include new horse combat moves, like running
enemies over, drifting, and standing on top of your horse, as well as increase their stats and
maneuverability, as well as your horse combat damage, in general. There’s also buffs to ship
stats and maneuverability, and potentially some unique fun stuff like the ability to force enemy
ships to surrender. Then there's a branch for companions, increasing the rate at which they gain
affinity, improving their health and carrying weight, and gives them the ability to essentially
revive you when you are killed. Also improves the amount of directions you can give them in
combat. Finish it up with a weapon power with multiple tiers, in ‘Rallying Flag’ the Character
plants a flag in the ground that buffs nearby allies speed and damage, as well as giving them a
random elemental effect. All up this has around 18 perks.

Hospitality
Hospitality is another umbrella skill tree for plots, farming, wood cutting, mining, food, brewing
and business ownership. It’s essentially a series of “life skills”, not much use in combat but good
for generating revenue. Some perks improve the animation speed of harvesting crops, cutting
trees and mining ore, and lets you gather additional items from singular interactions. Other
perks improve the speed and success rate of farming crops, cutting trees and mining ore.
Unlock new plot objects to improve your ranch, and the cargo links between ranches and shops.
Improve the effectiveness of food and drinks, as well as unlocking new gourmet recipes. Finally,
improve the profitability and potential of personal businesses. Equates to about 18 perks.
The Mage

Alchemy
The Alchemy Skill is the art of brewing magical potions and deadly poison. Leveling alchemy
generally reduces the tedium involved in using the skill. The first perk improves the strength of
brewed potions and poisons. Followed by a branch for poisons, where they can last up to 5 hits
and get even stronger, and then a branch for potions, where they last for longer and are
stronger. Then a branch that makes eating an ingredient reveals all of its effects, and then
another that lets you gather one/two extra ingredients from plants. The final perk lets you create
twice as many potions and poisons from the same number of ingredients. Add a branch around
toxicity. Whenever you exceed the 80% toxicity threshold, the next strike against you inflicts the
attacker with a powerful poison that deals points of damage per second for a short period.
Another increases your damage and magic resistance the higher your toxicity value is. That’s
roughly 18 perks.

Destruction
The Destruction skill governs proficiency with destruction magic. It’s the harnessing of the
elements of fire, water, ice and electricity. It starts with a simple magicka consumption reduction
for ALL destruction spell levels. The reduction per skill level was actually absurd. Like,
two-handed wielders don’t have to increase damage for every individual level of their weapon,
so why did mages? We also remove the dual casting perks, since dual casting, and the absurdly
exploitable stagger related to it, don’t align with our goals for magic. In its place, we add a perk
with the ability to maintain multiple runes at once. Then the tree splits into three branches for
each element. Each increases the damage of its respective spell, followed by an additional
effect - armor rating reduction for fire, attack damage reduction for frost and double damage on
enemies above 75% health for shock. Then a perk for each that applies the “wall” effect from the
original spell to every instance of the element, essentially meaning fire spells leave a trail of fire
that burns enemies, frost spells leave a trail of icicles etc.

Then a perk for each that enables a magical mutilation. Essentially, when an enemy falls below
25% health, there’s now a 10% chance the enemy will explode in fire, ice or shock depending
on the spell being performed on them at that moment, similar to dismemberment with melee
weapons. This explosion deals damage of that element to all nearby enemies, and reduces
them to ash. Then a perk that creates an AOE effect when casting a particular element - for
example, when casting Fire Spells all nearby enemies have a reduction in fire resistance, Frost
Spells all nearby enemies will be slowed, and Shock Spells create random offshoots of chain
electricity. We top off these branches with a single perk they converge on, that enhances the
damage of spells of different elements for 5 seconds after switching off a different spell of the
other element, encouraging the Player experiment with combining elements. Equates to roughly
26 perks.

Conjuration
The Conjuration skill governs proficiency with Conjuration magic. It's the manipulation of the
soul, reanimation of the dead and the summoning of Daedra. It starts with 3 simple magicka
consumption reductions for ALL Conjuration spell levels. This is followed by a series of perks
that make summoned minions last longer, improves their armor rating and magic resistance,
increases their damage and gives them extra health, stamina and magicka. There’s a separate
branch for reanimation, that increases their speed and another gives them the ability to
regenerate health, stamina and magicka.

Follow it up with a perk that makes reanimated minions explode in soul energy when they are
defeated. Another lets reanimated minion last forever, instead of disintegrating after the time
limit. Finally, the Player unlocks the ability to have 2 active summons. There’s a separate branch
for Bound Weapons, that makes them last longer, gives them a chance of dealing a random
elemental effect, increases their damage and makes them reduce enemy magic resistance. In
addition, add an elemental branch for Soul Magic, similar to destruction. This is 7 perks. The
bonus effect reduces enemy magic resistance. End up with roughly 26 perks.

Restoration
The Restoration skill governs proficiency with Restoration magic. It’s the manipulation of life
energy. It starts with 3 simple Magicka reductions for ALL Restoration spell levels. We go on to
make healing also apply a temporary damage resistance, makes them twice as strong on
targets below 50% health, and lets the Player revive themselves once per day if their magicka
bar is over a certain threshold. Then there’s a perk for the ward spell, making it absorb magicka.
Then make Turn Undead spells deal damage over time. Then 7 perks for the Poison element.
Then a perk that makes it so when you enter combat you rapidly regenerate points of Magicka
equal to half of your Restoration skill level per second, diminishing over the course of 15
seconds. Then a perk that adds a chance to summon a divine spirit when the player is casting
restoration spells, the player can treat this spirit like a temporary summon that they have to heal.
This divine spirit deals fire damage with a holy mace. Another lets you summon 2 divine
spirits.Then a park that, in combat, lets you gradually accumulates ambient lifeforce from the
environment and releases it in periodic bursts, healing you 100 points every 30 seconds. 22
perks all up.

Enchanting
The Enchanting Skill is the art of binding magical spells to weapons and armor. Make this
exactly the same as Adaman, but replace the final perk ‘Twin Secrets’ with the ability to learn an
item's enchantment without destroying it. Along with Adamant’s scrollsword perks, we add two
more. A perk that means when a staff is equipped, all weapon enchantments drain 25% less
charge. Another increases attack damage and spell damage and when a staff is equipped on
the other hand. This is 18 perks.

Alteration
The Alteration skill governs proficiency with alteration magic. It’s the alteration of reality or one's
perception of reality. It starts with a simple Magicka reduction for ALL Alteration spell levels.
Follow it up with branch for Oakflesh and Ebonyflesh, increasing their duration, improving their
magic resistance, then a perk that makes them apply to all nearby allies when casted, and
finally a 25% chance to absorb the Magicka from incoming spells while under the effects of
them. Then a branch for the spells originating in the illusion tree, making them apply to undead,
and another perk for daedra and automatons. Then a perk that makes actors under the effects
of rage, command or courage have increased magic resistance, armor rating and attack
damage. Then a perk that makes enemies under the effects of silence, calm or fear have
reduced armor rating, magic resistance and attack damage.

Then a perk called “Dream Thief” that lets you activate sleeping victims to steal their dreams,
increasing the effectiveness of your Alteration spells by 50% temporarily. Chance to fail and
alert the victim, based on Illusion skill. Another lets you activate sleeping victims to project
yourself into their dream, improving their disposition towards you. Then there’s a branch for
general combat. A perk that makes you turn briefly ethereal when you fall below 15% Health
due to combat damage. Then a perk that makes it so that whenever you attack with a weapon,
reduces the magic resistance of nearby enemies within 10 feet for 4 seconds. Then a perk that
makes you radiate a dampening field, preventing enemies within 25 feet from regenerating
Magicka. Finally a perk that causes dealing melee damage to restore some magika. Roughly 22
perks all up.

Unarmored
The Unarmoured skill governs proficiency with clothing and robes, that sacrifice protection for
an additional enchantment slot. Perks mainly enhance protection with no armor, enhancing
magic resistance and elemental resistance specifically. For example, there’s a perk that
prevents the player from taking damage more than 50% of their hp bar if they are wearing
clothing or robes. There’s other perks that enhance speed in unarmor, improve magicka
regeneration in unarmor and increase dodge eye frames while wearing unarmor. Then there’s
some perks for a battlemage playstyle. Whenever you cast a spell with one hand, you deal 20%
more attack damage for 4 seconds. In another, whenever you cast a spell with one hand,
reduce the armor of nearby enemies within 10 feet by 150 points for 4 seconds. All up, the tree
has the minimum 18 perks.

The Thief
Sneak
The Sneak skill is the art of moving unseen and unheard, and striking from the shadows. Those
who are skilled in Sneak can even hide in plain sight. Start with improvements to detection while
sneaking. Then we split into four branches. The first makes spells casted while sneaking silent
to others, and the other improves damage of spells while sneaking and undetected. The second
branch improves damage of bows while sneaking, which, as I mentioned above, should remove
the allurement of Stealth Archery since Players will need to invest in the Sneak tree in order to
engage in that playstyle. The third branch improves the damage of sneak attacks with
one-handed weapons - and then specifically daggers. Sneak attacks are stronger in power than
in Vanilla, but require more perk investments. That evolves into making dodge rolls while
sneaking silent, no longer triggering traps, moving faster while sneaking, outlines all humanoids
within 150 feet that are detecting you with a green glow, a perk that places a tripwire behind the
player when they slide every 30 seconds, that knocks enemies who run into it, and then the
ability to crouch, stopping combat for a moment, and forcing distant opponents to search for a
target, every 10 seconds. The final branch applies to daggers. It gives the daggers an increased
chance of critical hits, and then guarantees minor bleed damage whenever hitting enemies, and
then makes that bleed apply to magicka and stamina as well. Equates to roughly 18 perks.

Unarmed
The Unarmed skill is the proficiency fighting with no weapons in hand; with bare fists; the
quickest form of combat with the lowest reach and damage. Start off with increases to the
damage of Unarmed. Then branch into movement, attack speed and poise damage increases.
Then make blocking while unarmed as effective as blocking with a weapon. Then make critical
hits paralyze targets, instead of the effects of blade or blunt. Then increase the poise damage of
Unarmed attacks of opportunity, and add a timed dodge mechanic that lets the player stagger
enemies at the 4th degree if they successfully dodge within a short time period. Then, your
unarmed attacks deal 30% extra damage against targets that fall below half Health. Then,
unarmed power attacks deal random elemental damage. Just a bunch of buffs to fighting while
unarmed, emphasizing movement and poise control. Should end up equating to 18 perks.

Hunting
The Hunting skill is the art of track and hunting targets, both beast and man, as well as
efficiency with sneak tools. So the perks here improve damage and duration of sneak tools,
such as caltrops, bear traps and smoke bombs, and reduce the costs of crafting them. Makes
animals less skittish around you, improves your damage against them and makes the money
received for hunted creatures more profitable. Also improves the likelihood of finding legendary
animals when hunting, add the ability to see the tracks of both animals and man when crouching
(the footsteps glow on the ground, making them easily trackable), improve luck while fishing,
speed and loot from skinning, improves proficiency at taming and adds more tameable animals.
Essentially enhances every aspect of hunting gameplay. Should end up around 18 perks.

Archery
The Archery skill governs the use of bows and arrows to attack from range. Start with damage
increases. That develops into draw speed increases, improved poise damage from fully drawn
arrows, improved speed while bow is drawn, decreased stamina cost of firing arrows and
increased chance of causing injuries. Then improve the bleed of critical hits with a bow, make
zooming in with LT slow time, and finally slow time by drawing while Mid Air. This branch is
focused on the Long Ranged effectiveness of Archery.

In a separate branch, emphasis the short range abilities we added to bows. Improve the
damage and stamina cost of quick firing and dodge firing. Make bashes with bows a guaranteed
3rd degree stagger. Then remove stagger and reduce damage on the character when their bow
is drawn. Crossbows are designed to be bows for people who don’t want to invest in bows; so
they only benefit from the initial perks in this tree. Around 22 perks all up.

Light Armor
The Light Armor skill governs proficiency with Light Armor, Armor that sacrifices fortification for
speed, as well as dodging and general evasion. Start off with a decrease for dodging stamina
cost. Then move in to improving armor rating when wearing light armor. Overtime, it weighs
nothing and doesn’t slow the Player down at all, and they take less damage when above half
health with three four pieces of light armor. Similar perks improve health regeneration, stamina
regeneration and resistance to injuries. Eventually, while sprinting in Light Armor, you take 50%
less damage from attacks. Blocking has no impact on movement speed.

At higher levels, when struck by a power attack or power bash, your attacks deal 125% more
damage to the attacker for 5 second. Then, the chance of enemies running away in fear as you
kill their friends, or simply approach them, is increased dramatically. Finally, when struck by a
power attack, the attacker's strike rebounds forcefully as if striking solid rock, staggering them
and potentially knocking them to the ground. The final perk, called “Wardancer” increases your
attack damage and critical damage after 10 seconds without getting hit in combat, stacking 3
times. Getting hit removes this, but increases speed temporarily.

So it’s not so much exclusively dodging as it is damage evasion, facilitating Sword n’ Board that
uses Light Armor, as they get block perks encouraging movement, with a small investment into
that initial perk in Heavy Armor, because everything else there is for bashing. The power here is
“Barbaric Roar”, a roar that increases the damage of the following attack, as well as buffing
speed until that attack is performed. So we end up with roughly 26 perks.

Security
The Security skill is the art of lockpicking, pickpocketing and disguise. Start with statistical
improvements to lockpicking, pickpocketing and disguises. Then add a branch to lockpicking,
making advanced, expert and master locks pickable. Progress it to unlock wax keys, pick
starting closer to the lock opening position. Finally, make Dwemer Automatons lock pickable,
which hacks them into serving you. You can only have one hotwired automaton at one time.The
branch for pickpocketing adds the ability to silently harm enemies by placing poisons in their
pockets while pickpocketing, as well pickpocketing weapons and armor, and then some general
looting related perks, like increased gold and rare loot found. Any perk that improves
Pickpocketing makes the new minigame easier, as well as improves chances of pickpocketing
hard items. The third branch is smaller, and makes disguises flawless. Should end up with 18
perks.

Speech
The Speech Skill is the art of persuasion, bartering and performing. Those who are skilled in
Speech receive better prices from merchants and are more likely to convince others to do as
they ask. Start with increased chances in the persuasion minigame. This alone has 3 tiers,
which then advances into general bartering skills. Things like improved prices, improved
chances when bartering, merchants have extra gold for bartering, can sell any type of item to
any kind of merchant, the ability to bribe guards to ignore crimes and the ability to invest in a
shopkeeper’s business to increase their available gold, and then to sell stolen goods to them.
There’s also some perks for bardship. The thing about bardship is that it would allow the Player
to quickly grind out the Speech skill, which would make the progression of persuasion useless.
The adverse is also true, where the Player would immediately be gifted at instruments for simply
practicing their persuasion. So despite being considered apart of the Speech skilltree, Bardship
and Speech actually improve separately. Bard Skill improves by, well, being a bard. After playing
a song, the Player receives tips and a debuff/buff depending on their skill. The Speech Skilltree
has a couple perks that improve the versitility of Bardship in combat. There’s three perks, one
for each instrument the Player can learn. For the Lute, playing in combat reduces the armor
rating of all nearby enemies while buffing the damage and defense of all nearby allies. For the
Flute, playing in combat forces the two nearest enemies within 100 feet to dance spellbound,
preventing them from acting. For the Dums, performing in combat unleashes shockwaves,
dealing 50 points of damage to nearby enemies within 30 feet and pushing them away slightly.
There’s also a perk that improves the buffs that come from Playing instruments, and doubles the
money gained from performing. The Speech tree has 18 Perks total.

So in the end, the perk trees have some form of continuity. Most consist of 18 perks, with
weapon types and the damaging magic schools have 26, and some minor offensive skills having
22. This is roughly 468 perks.
Character Customization
The character customization system of Skyrim is hotly contested. Some want to return to the old
roleplaying ways, while others like Skyrim’s streamlined systems. I’ll be trying to hit a nice mix
where possible.

Races
To start, the character’s race is the very first thing a player will select when starting a game. I’m
in the camp that Greater powers never get used and clutter gameplay, the opposite of
streamlining, and so should be removed in favor of stronger, more desirable passives, with the
occasional power. Although each race has been designed to fill a specific role, the nature of
these bonuses allow for a broad range of builds to benefit from them. In addition, the differences
in attributes and skills have been increased, to place more emphasis on the player’s choice of
race.

All Races start with a standardized 10 in Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, Agility, Endurance and
Perception. That means 100 HP, MP and SP, 250 Encumbrance and some other trivial numbers
for Toxicity, the Enchanting Bar, Critical Chance etc.

All skills now all start at 10, down from 15 in Skyrim. “Major Skill” means it starts at 20,
“Depreciated Skill” means it starts at 5, “Minor Skill” means it starts at 15.

Argonian
+2 Endurance
-2 Intelligence
Major Skill: Alchemy
Minor Skills: Alteration, Sneak, Security, Pole-Armed
Taste for Poison: Your Poison Resistance (element) is increased by 50%
Histskin: Your Disease Resistance is increased by 50%
Marsh Dweller: You can breathe underwater and swim 50% faster.
Beast Firsts: Unarmed attacks deal bleed damage.

Breton
+2 Intelligence
-2 Agility
Major Skill: Conjuration
Minor Skills: Enchanting, Unarmored, Alteration, Restoration
Natural Warding: Your Magic Resistance is increased by 25%, and you have a 25% spell
absorption of the Magicka from incoming spells.
Shimmering Threads: Weapons and armor are 15% weaker, but enchantments on them are
15% stronger.
Dark Elf
+2 Intelligence
-2 Dexterity
Major Skill: Destruction
Minor Skill: Archery, Light Armor, One-handed, Sneak
Ash Born: 25% Fire Resistance.
Ancestor’s Wrath: Once a day, when the player reaches low health, a burst of flames emits from
the Player, haunting enemies with burning wraiths, burning all enemies who get too close for 8
seconds.

High Elf
+2 Intelligence
-2 Strength
Major Skill: Enchanting
Minor Skills: Alteration, Destruction, Restoration, Unarmored
High Born: 15% weakness to all Elements, but 15% elemental damage increase.
Golden Mantle: Casting has no effect on speed and magic is casted 25% faster.

Imperial
+2 Perception
-2 Endurance
Major Skill: Speech
Minor Skills: Leadership, Light Armor, One-handed, Restoration
Star of the West: Kills regenerate a portion of stamina and increase melee damage by 25% for 5
seconds.
Fortune of the Emperor: You receive 10% better prices, and you find extra gold in your travels.

Khajiit
+3 Agility
-2 Strength
-1 Intelligence
Major Skill: Security
Minor Skill: One Handed, Unarmored, Unarmed, Sneak
Feline Prowl: All forms of movement make 50% less noise.
Rawlith Khaj: Claws deal 5 additional damage and bleed damage.
Night Eye (Spell)
Nord
+2 Endurance
-2 Intelligence
Major Skill: Two-handed
Minor Skills: Leadership, Heavy Armor, Hunting, Smithing
Child of Skyrim: 50% Frost Resistance
Breath of Winter: Once a day, when the player reaches low health, a burst of cold wind emits
from the Player, dealing frost damage to all enemies who get too close for 6 seconds.

Orc
+2 Strength
+1 Endurance
-3 Intelligence
Major Skill: Heavy Armor
Minor Skills: Two-handed, Polearmed, Enchanting, Smithing
Tempered Skin: 50% Shock Resistance
Berserker Rage: Once per day, when the player reaches low health, they become consumed
with rage. Speed and Damage is increased by 50%.

Redguard
+2 Perception
+1 Dexterity
-2 Intelligence
-1 Strength
Major Skill: One-handed
Minor Skill: Archery, Light Armor, Pole-Armed, Leadership
Conditioning: 75% Disease Resistance.
Red Sand Dance: Once per day, when the player reaches low health, time slows to a crawl and
the player enters a battle trance with unlimited stamina.

Wood Elf
+2 Dexterity
-2 Strength
Major Skill: Archery
Minor Skills: Hunting, Unarmed, Sneak, Hospitality
Green Pact: Interact with a corpse to ritually consume it. Gives Fortify Health, Fortify Stamina
and a 15% speed boost for 300 seconds. (900 second cooldown).
Wild Senses: Stand still for 4 seconds while sneaking to sense moving targets within 350 feet.

With these changes, races are made very unique, and begin to occupy unique roles. Argonians
are geared towards alchemy and stealth, Breton and Altmer are kind of Glass Cannons, and
Redguards have my favorite ability.
A common sighted problem players have with Races in Skyrim is how they are all built the same
with very little variety in height. Despite how unique each of the 10 races are proposed to be,
and their historical disparity in strength, size, and speed, all of their bodies look exactly the
same, and the height differences between them are smaller now than they ever have been in
previous games. I have a fix for this. FK’s Diverse Facial Skeletons:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/38563

This gives all races and genders unique height and body morphs based on lore and abilities,
making their height differences more apparent. In the vanilla game, high elves stood around
6'4", shorter than in any other modern ES games, and the shortest race, Wood elves, stood
around 5'9, barely shorter than Imperials/Dunmer/Khajiit. We diversify the genders, making the
women slightly shorter than the men. Finally, the proportions to make each race have a unique
silhouette, no longer will the likes of Imperials, Bretons, and Nords be impossible to distinguish,
nor Wood Elves/Dark elves. Now each race has a unique height and proportion fitting to their
abilities, lore, and stats in previous games. This should improve the feeling of races significantly.

High elves are traditionally the tallest race in Elder Scrolls, towering above the other races.
We make them an imposing 6 '7'' > (Almost a head taller than an imperial), with long legs, a
slender figure, and narrower shoulders, with females slightly shorter. The Orcs stand around
6'4", slightly taller than in Skyrim. They have been scaled in proportions to have a more brutish
appearance, slightly hunched figure, massive shoulders, large torso, strong legs and arms, and
overall a more powerful appearance as they should. In previous games, Nords have been as tall
as Orcs, and just as strong. Now they sit right behind orcs in terms of size and height, being
slightly smaller. They have broader shoulders, larger hands and bigger chests.

Argonians are slightly taller and leaner. They have been made to look less human with long
slender limbs and lengthened necks and claws. Most importantly, they are now slightly hunched,
are now digitrade and will walk on their toes. Shoes can still be equipped, they just won’t be
visible. Their trails will also hang out their backside in most armors. Redguards are around
Argonians in height, with long slender limbs and an athletic sprinter’s physique. Redguards now
have broad shoulders, narrow waists, and powerful arms and legs.

The dunmer have longer legs, narrow waists and a more gracile appearance compared to the
more stocky races like Nords and Imperials. They remain of average height, albeit slightly taller
than Imperials and Khajiit due to slightly lengthened limbs. The Khajiit have been given a sleek
and slender frame, with long limbs and claws. Like Argonians, they have digitigrade legs where
shoes are invisible. We want to improve on Argonians and Khajiits so that they no longer look
like people in costumes, and look more like actual beast hybrids!

Imperials have no changes save for a ratio height change on females, making the women
slightly shorter. The Bretons are historically the weakest of all humanoid races. They are now
slightly shorter than imperials and much more slender. The shortest humanoid race by far, the
Wood Elves are nonetheless a scrappy and agile race. They have lengthened bones with strong
forearms, narrow waists, and well developed backs and shoulders, standing around a nice 5’6”.
Classes

Classes could be brought back for the role play aspect, and to help build characters. However,
on the counter argument, Bethesda likely removed them because of the concept of having to
choose the skills you want to focus on before you even play the game. Skyrim's system lets you
adapt your character based on your developing playstyle. With previous games you were stuck
with whatever you picked even if it's completely impractical to the way you play.

It worked well enough in Morrowind because you have 5 Major Skills, and 5 Minor skills, and
there were 27 total skills, so there were a lot of skills to choose from, plus the game wasn't level
scaled so no matter how badly you made a character, you'd eventually reach a point where
things became a lot easier. Not to mention you had unlimited training per level, so it was a lot
easier to 'fine tune' a character if you thought you'd messed up your skills and attributes a bit.

In Skyrim, though? Well, you're a lot more flexible. Rather than being something from the start,
you become something - you become what you want to be. Which is a bit more organic than
deciding what you already are at the start of the game, isn't it? At the start of the game, you
know barely anything about the game, and you might accidentally make a warrior but want to be
a mage instead, and it's a lot harder to switch over in Morrowind or Oblivion than it is in Skyrim.
Additionally, from a certain perspective, Skyrim's no-defined-classes system lends itself to
roleplaying better, e.g. a mage who decides to give up magic for one reason or another; or a
warrior who becomes disillusioned with honor and turns to thievery instead. I think the best
system would let you choose some skills that started higher and advanced faster, but that's
about it.

So my solution is enhanced Classes. Classes impact certain skills, just like Races, but overall
their impact isn’t so huge as to lock a Player into a certain playstyle. Bethesda games are
unique for the fact that every character can multiclass, and I want that to stay the same, but I do
think they would benefit slightly from some more railroading so as to facilitate melee, magic or
stealth playstyles, which don’t really exist in Vanilla. Here are the classes:

Each class bestows a 10% increase in xp gain for 4 skills. The skill efficiency bonus’
encourages the Player to follow a certain playstyle, without forcing it.
They are:

Acrobat
Efficient Skills: Light Armor, Sneak, Archery, Security
Agile burglars, long jumpers and second-story men. These thieves avoid detection by stealth,
and rely on mobility and cunning to avoid capture.

Agent
Efficient Skills: Speech, Sneak, Security, Alteration
Charming when they can be seen, and nearly invisible when in shadow.

Archer
Efficient Skills: Archery, Hunting, Light Armor, Alchemy
Fighters specializing in methodical long-range combat and rapid movement. Opponents are
kept at distance by ranged weapons and swift maneuvers. They rely on stealth to survey routes
and opponents, using ranged weapons and skirmish tactics when forced to fight.

Assassin
Efficient Skills: One Handed, Sneak, Archery, Light Armor
Ruthless murderers and principled agents of noble causes. Nimble and quiet, they move in
darkness to strike at the unsuspecting. Locks hold no doors shut for them.

Barbarian
Efficient Skills: Two Handed, Hunting, Unarmored, Enchanting
The proud, savage warrior elite of the plains nomads, mountain tribes, and sea reavers. Brutal
and direct, lacking civilized graces, they are like a storm, swift and powerful. Finding little use for
heavy armor, they excel in frenzied single combat.

Bard
Efficient Skills: Speech, Hospitality, Hunting, Alteration
Artists, loremasters and storytellers. They crave adventure for the wisdom and insight to be
gained, and but usually lack the utilities to preserve them from the perils of their educational
experiences. They may not be interested in combat or magic, but their sheer will, cunning and
enginuity makes up for it. Where profit can be found, so can they.

Battlemage
Efficient Skills: Leadership, One-Handed, Light Armor, Destruction
Able to resolve most conflicts with either spell or sword. They are a deadly mix of scholar and
soldier.
Crusader
Efficient Skills: Two-Handed, Long Armed, Heavy Armor, Restoration
A combatant who wields the power of brute strength and medicinal knowledge. Cheating death
after every fight, they rely on their keen knowledge of restoration to fight yet again. They do well
by doing good.

Healer
Efficient Skills: Restoration, Leadership, Alchemy, Enchanting
Spellcasters who swear solemn oaths to heal the afflicted and cure the diseased. When
threatened, they defend themselves with reason and disabling attacks and magic, relying on
deadly force only in extremity.

Knight
Efficient Skills: One Handed, Long Armed, Heavy Armor, Leadership,
Of noble birth, or distinguished in battle or tourney, they are civilized warriors, schooled in letters
and courtesy, governed by the codes of chivalry. The most noble of all combatants, strong in
body and in character.

Monk
Efficient Skills: Unarmed, Security, Alchemy, Restoration
Quick and cunning with the empty hand, they are strong in spirit. Students of the ancient martial
arts, they prefer to solve conflict by fist and healing magic. At peace with their nature, they
possess great knowledge of restoration and the alchemical makeup of the world.

Nightblade
Efficient Skills: One-Handed, Sneak, Alteration, Destruction
Spellcasters who use their magics to enhance mobility, concealment, and stealthy close combat.
They have a sinister reputation, as thieves, enforcers, assassins, and covert agents.

Pilgrim
Efficient Skills: Speech, Smithing, Security, Hospitality
Hearty folk, well-versed in the tomes of old. They profit in life by bartering in the market, or by
persuading the weak-minded. Interested in coin over honor or glory, these philanthropists follow
the gold. They’ve mastered the way of the tongue, rather than the sword.

Rogue
Efficient Skills: One Handed, Archery, Sneak, Light Armor
Adventurers and opportunists with a gift for getting in and out of trouble. Relying variously on
charm and dash, blades and business sense, they thrive on conflict and misfortune, trusting in
their luck and cunning to survive.
Scout
Efficient Skills: Hunting, Archery, Sneak, Unarmed
Preferring the rolling countryside to the city life, the forests rather than busy highways, they are
gifted with the ability to evade, guard and protect themselves with great proficiency.

Sorcerer
Efficient Skills: Destruction, Conjuration, Restoration, Unarmored
Besting the most well-equipped fighters, they rely on the spells of the mystic arts. Varying widely
in temperament and motivation, they share but one thing in common - an avid love of
spellcasting and a mind more powerful than the sharpest blade. They take to adventuring not for
gold or honor, but for the detailed notes they can ascribe from it. Ingenious and inquisitive to a
fault, there are little lengths they would not go to for answers.

Spellsword
Efficient Skills: One-Handed, Leadership, Destruction, Restoration
Spellcasting specialists whose magical ability is only rivaled by their skill with a blade.
Well-suited for careers as mercenaries, adventurers and soldiers-of-fortune.

Witchhunter
Efficient Skills: Archery, Conjuration, Enchanting, Smithing
Dedicated to rooting out and destroying the perverted practices of dark cults and profane
sorcery. They train for martial, magical, and stealthy war against vampires, witches, warlocks,
and necromancers.

Wanderer
Efficient Skills: None
A hero with no name. It’s often said the greatest legends come from the greatest obscurity.

I removed the Warrior, Mage and Thief since they had come to represent bigger things since
Morrowind, but otherwise the classes here are the same.
Traits
While I appreciated the extra help star signs provided in class building, I felt that they don;t
really contribute to roleplaying at all. Like, why do I care when I was born? Additionally, I really
liked traits from Starfield, but making character creation consists of races, classes, star signs
and traits felt like too much. So instead, I decided to integrate star signs into traits. I won’t list
them all, but here’s a couple ideas:

Bad Personality
All NPCs have -20 disposition on you permanently, but intimidation is always successful.

Botched Heist
5000 gold bounty in all holds, but your heist compatriots can be found across the map, and must
be interrogated to piece together the heist and find the 20,000 gold hoard hidden somewhere.

Cultist
Increase relationship with Daedra much faster.

Fluent in Giantish
Interact with Giants to calm them and speak with them in their native tongue.

Pilgrim
Increase relationship with Aedra much faster.

Sign of the Atronach

You have a 50% chance to absorb the Magicka from incoming spells. However, you cannot
regenerate Magicka in combat (you can outside of combat).

Sign of the Lady

Your Health, Magicka and Stamina Regeneration are increased by 50% when you fall below half
Health, Magicka, or Stamina, but your total Health, Magicka and Stamina is reduced.

Sing of the Lover

Once a day, when reduced to low health, emit a burst of power paralyzing all enemies in a small
radius around you.

Sign of the Mage

Mage Skills have xp gained 10% faster.

Sign of the Thief

Thief Skills have xp gained 10% faster.

Sign of the Tower

You reflect 50% of incoming melee damage back at your attacker, but it drains your stamina.
Sign of the Warrior
Warrior Skills have xp gained 10% faster.

Village Idiot
Receive a range of “dumb” dialogue options, similar to when you have low intelligence in F:NV.
May sometimes lead to unique quest branches, but will generally result in funny responses.

Visage of Umbra
You have the blade Umbra from the beginning of the game. It’s extremely powerful, and levels
with the Player, but the sword will often give you vile requests, such as murder, you must fulfill
unless you risk massive debuffs. At level 20 a quest will begin where you can rid yourself of the
blade or bind yourself to it.

That’s a couple, but I’d aim for 30-ish if the Player can equip 3.

Character Creation
This is a very important factor in my opinion. While character creation was good in Skyrim, it
could definitely use some improvements, mainly allowing players to customize much more, and
general improvements on skin textures etc. There should be much more options for hairs,
tattoos, makeup, freckles, overlays, eyes etc. The goal here is for those who love Character
Creation to be able to post their presets online with vanilla Skyrim. Weight is an important factor
here. I think it’s fairly important to add variety to NPCs in general size and strength. The quality
of polygons in character heads and facial expression obviously needs to be improved, though
it’s safe to say Starfield has that covered. NPCs should be expressive during conversations and
actions, and should look like real humans, almost indistinguishable from real life with the
amount of polys and detail.

Anyway, Starfield, for the most part, knocked this out of the park. The character creation is
super in depth, the skin overlays are diverse, and the weight options add a lot to character
creation. A Black Desert: Online character creation system would obviously be great, but I think
if we were to solely get Starfield’s system, then no one would complain.

There are a couple things it was missing though. Mainly, I think it needed like double the amount
of haircuts. I’ll never understand why Bethesda makes 10 balding hairstyles out of 30. I think
you need to double the amount of hair cuts, and increase the diversity a lot. I also think makeup
could use some improvements, mainly let players equip multiple makeup, body paint and scars.
Add some body paints as well, like stuff to put on your belly and arms, and improve piercings.
Let me play as a Goth Vampire Girl damnit!

For beast races, BeastHHBB is a mod that perfectly shows the diversity possible. Just take a
quick browse and you’ll realize the full potential of the beast races:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/38480

I also liked the molder-by-hand thing in Fallout 4. Hopefully that makes a return.
Summary
So in conclusion, I think we can boil this down to a couple key features.

Improve Aesthetics; change the hud to be non-intrusive, and improve graphics as well as
animations to truly immerse the Player in the world.

Improve Combat; Take hints from Dark Souls and Chivalry to create a combat system that
perfectly mixes complexity with streamlined-ness. Make combat more complex, involving three
types of attacks, stamina management, dodges, deflects and poise. Give various options to
approach combat, whether that be draining stamina, breaking poise or mutilating enemies.
Make that a part of the differences between Blade and Blunt. Make crowd control and poise
damage/mutilation an important part of the differences between the types of attacks, as well as
the types of weapons. Make combat a balance between Slashes, Stabs and Powers and their
distinct defensive maneuvers. Enhance magic as well, giving it greater longevity, as wella s
more power and diversity in spells, making it just as viable as melee. Altogether, focus on fun
over balance. Increase the amount of enemies in encounters, to make up for the added
efficiency in combat for both playstyles. Add variety to enemies to enhance this.

Improve Gameplay: Tighten issues, streamline concepts, expand of features - make every
single type of play balanced and fun. Improve key features of Skyrim, such as alchemy,
enchanting, lockpicking and pickpocket, to be similar, but altogether better. Add new aspects of
gameplay, such as unarmored or cooking, to add more diversity to playstyles and make certain
builds more viable. Enhance stealth to be far more challenging and engaging, working around
light and distractions similar to games like Thief or Dishonored. Make companion mechanics
better with more decision making and leadership. Fix leveling and exploration.

Improve Agency and Impact; Add new factions and alternative questlines in factions to reflect
your character. Add immense amounts of decisions and options in quests to reflect a true RPG,
such as the Witcher or Baldur’s Gate. See these decisions have impacts on the world around
you, changing the environment, NPCs and questlines themselves, to improve roleplaying and
make repeat playthroughs entertaining. Make quests, and general dialogue, less railroad-y and
give the Player room to express themselves. To this extent, and various skill checks, speech
checks and persuasion/intimidation/wisdom options to change your experience depending on
your strength. Essentially, lean into the benefits of encouraging repeat playthroughs, letting
Players repeat the game endlessly following new branches, instead of discouraging them.
Improve Roleplaying: Enhance character creation through the use of diverse races, classes and
traits to make every playthrough unique and reflect the character your roleplaying, including not
only strengths by weaknesses. Improve life-sim elements by many alternatives to
dungeoneering, whether that be farming, business owning, bardship, hunting, fishing, camping
or the various other jobs one can take from business owners. Using reputation and disposition
systems of old, make the Player really feel like the character they are roleplaying, as the NPCs
around them treat them according to their fame, alignment, race, factions etc. Make certain
factions cancel eachother out, make certain race or fame specific quests to reward the Player
for roleplaying. Make vampire and werewolf forms more powerful, at the cost of more tradeoffs,
to make being one truly immersive and a give-and-take situation. Add a variety of faiths the
Player can follow for a similar effect. Help them integrate themselves in the world, and give them
plenty of opportunities to release who they are out into it.

Improve the Scale: Make cities larger, dungeons more complex and expansive, add more tiers
of loot, add way more magic, weapon types and armor types, make maps bigger, improve
enemy variety, make skill trees larger, make smithing, disease and similar systems more
expansive and more engaging. Make the game bigger, and naturally, better than ever.

Improve the Sandbox; open up the physics engine to modern standards. Integrate physics into
combat and traversal and make it a selling point - make the sandbox realistic. Improve traversal
with better horses, shipfaring and better movement in general.

Improve Immersion; Events dynamically happen around the Player - NPCs travel, animals
behave realistically, town cryers call out news, environments change and evolve, sometimes
with absolutely nothing to do with the Player, to decentralize them from the world and make it
feel living and breathing. At the same time make it extremely reactionary, changing visibility
depending on their actions, to the same effect. Make the world feel lived in. Make the Player feel
small. Make cities feel living and breathing and absolutely massive. Make the world feel like it
doesn't revolve around the player, yet let their actions have an impact on it to make those
moments they're important impactful, like Red Dead Redemption.

Where to go from here? Well despite calling this the ‘ideal’ Elder Scrolls game I still think there's
room for improvement. I think you could improve the ‘dynamic world’ idea a lot more. Expand on
the light nemesis systems I’ve got, and make the economy, the faction and the world really
reactive to what happens. Like what Todd said in that Skyrim interview; burning down a lumber
mill crashes the economy in a region. Imagine watching bandit factions fighting it out, and
clearing out dungeons changes the standing of the factions. Kingdoms war, and your choices
impact who takes control, like Bannerlord or Kenshi. Needless to say, I think there’s a lot of
room for the growth when it comes to those types of systems, but I’m confident the general
gameplay is perfect.

Anyway, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Thanks for taking the time to read my
scramblings, to the 0.1 percent of people that actually bothered. Good to know there are people
out there just as crazy as me.