Requiem - My Impression

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W'rkncacnter

Mister Freeze
After years of using SkyRe I decided to give Requiem a try. So after a complete uninstall and re-install of Skyrim to clear out any lingering mod configurations, I installed Requiem along with a handful of other mods I enjoy. This is my first impression after a weekend of playing (with default Requiem settings).

Ouch. Requiem combat is unforgiving.

The first character I made died multiple times trying to escape Helgen. Looking back, that was probably more my fault for forgetting to initially select my first 3 perks. Lesson learned. I installed Live another life and tried again (this time camping in the wild).

Getting hit twice generally means death for my light armor wearing archer. At low levels a wolf is deadly. Where SkyRe made it very possible for a character who only used the bow, I've found with Requiem that I had to invest in single-hand weapon perks in order to survive. Heavily armored foes practically ignore arrows where light armored fall in 1-2 hits. In fact, I've found heavily armored enemies to be the danger to any encounter. SkyRe had this to a degree, but not nearly as bad. It makes sense, of course, and you just have to find a way to work around it. My chosen method for dealing with these juggernauts is poison. I've also found that mounted combat switches to easy mode if you remove the archers from the equation. Mind you, the horse does not always equalize. I ran into two ice spike chucking necromancers who obliterated me time and time again (along with my horse). They didn't bother dual casting, they were too busy slinging spikes from both hands, making the air thick with frozen death.

Undead are truly frightening. Arrows do little to no damage unless you invest in silver arrows (I always wondered why Bethesda didn't include them with silver weapons). Swords are only slightly better. Axes and maces tend to fare better against the unliving (again, as one would expect). As an archer with a sword for backup, that makes the undead practically untouchable for myself. I used my enchanted bow (fire dmg) to eliminate a skeleton in the wilds. I pulled several other skeletons to the giants who dispatched them rather handily. For the skeletons at Hamvir's Rest I used a silver arrow to hurt the closest and killed him with my sword. Then I took his ancient axe and dispatched the rest. The Draugr in the sepulcher required a lot of backpedaling and a mixture of arrows and hacking. I've yet to be able to defeat the three skeletons in the hall of the dead in Whiterun. They generally kill me within seconds of entering. And I fear the eventual trip to Bleak Falls Barrow. At the moment, running is the best method for dealing with the undead. Which, in my opinion, is as it should be. Fear the living, run screaming from the undead. Vanilla and SkyRe both treat the undead as fodder when there should be a healthy fear of things that are unnatural.

Ultimately, I've found that I die about 10x more often with Requiem than I did with SkyRe. I couldn't imagine attempting a "dead is dead" play-through with Requiem. Props to those that do.

I also should mention that I ran across a named bandit in one of the Whiterun hold ruins. He rocked my world for a bit till I managed to defeat him. While not astounding or anything, it was refreshing to see someone other than "Bandit" attacking me.

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Leveling is slower.

I don't inherently see this as bad. I tend to give up on my higher level characters in SkyRe anyway. Using the default of 1 perk per level really makes me think about what I need to survive. With SkyRe I had edited the uncapper ini to give me 2 perks per level due to the sheer number of perks and personal preference. I often ended up with extra perks. Returning to 1 per level has been refreshing.

My archer is currently level 9 after playing for a good 6-8 hours this weekend. In that same amount of time in SkyRe I would probably have been closer to level 15-20.

As a level 8 I was able to clear fort Greymoor's interior only dying once in the prison. Poison saved the day. So even with the slower leveling I'm beginning to be able to accomplish tasks.

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Weight. . .

Everything has weight (aside from quest items). So arrows and gold both weight a fellow down. This is probably my biggest struggle with Requiem at the moment. Not a struggle in the sense that I hate it. I could simple turn those options off if that were the case. No, it is a struggle in that I have to be constantly aware of what I am lugging around. My Bosmer started with a mere 85-90 carry weight. After armor and weapons I end up with very little room for other stuff. I limit the number of arrows I carry to 45 at the max. I ended up spending gold I would probably have saved otherwise because I had nowhere safe to store it. Thankfully, the world allows higher level gear to be available (rarely) at the beginning. I have an elven bow and had an elven sword which are typically lighter than their counterparts.

The weight of gold ended up being a major problem due to the increased cost of a horse. The horse costs 6000 septims which amounts to 60 carry weight. There was no way I was going to be able to lug anything close to that amount around so I ended up joining the companions just to use the chest in Jorrvaskr. I probably didn't have to join to use the chest, but I tend to roleplay so it wouldn't have made sense.

I bought my horse just before ending play on Sunday. Prior to that I had been using the skooma smuggler's horse outside Whiterun. But it is incredibly annoying to have to continually chase that horse down. Horses have their own saddlebags which should greatly improve my quality of life.

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Potions have been renamed. Skyre did this as well. I have no preference really. I do like the option of poisons that apply their effect immediately and those that take time (but are often stronger). In addition, healing potions all take time for full effect (much like SkyRe).

Not regenerating health can be annoying, but just requires a bit more preparation. So carry weight is added to with necessary potions.

Stamina drains with practically everything. Sprinting, running (yes, running), jumping, pulling the bow, blocking, and swinging a weapon. I found carrying stamina potions was needed as well. Dropping your weapon in combat with completely drained stamina is a real possibility. Again, it makes sense. I can't go hopping all over my yard and expect to be fresh as a daisy afterward. As a Bosmer, I was able to eat raw meat to regenerate a large portion of stamina (outside of combat) so the issue can be mitigated to some degree.

The economy is unforgiving. Everything costs a fortune and I sell for a pittance. Steel armor looted from enemies sells for about 50 septims and the merchant turns around and sells it for over a thousand. And that is with one perk invested in speechcraft (in a useless attempt to lower the cost of the horses). But in a game that is relatively easy to become obscenely wealthy, I don't feel that the economy is out of place. Besides, I can't carry all that heavy money around with me anyway.

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Magic.

I only fiddled with it for a little bit. My level 9 archer does not use it (perk points are too precious).

Placing a perk in the initial magic school gives you the option to choose 2 spells to immediately learn (you start with zero). This is nice as one of my big disagreements with both vanilla and SkyRe is the sheer monetary cost for a mage as opposed to a warrior. Mage has to purchase both their armor spells and their weapon spells whereas a warrior can generally loot whatever they need. Spell books are typically not found on bodies or lying around except in certain areas. However, I found that one of the spells I chose actually cost well above the maximum mana I had. There is no indicator for this when initially picking the spells. A minor gripe, but annoying nonetheless.

Restoration didn't include a minor healing spell (at least that I saw - no descriptions just names) in the lower level spell list. This might be by design (to keep every yahoo from choosing restoration to get around the not regenerating health limitation) but I thought it odd. Healing Aura was in the list but it was the one that cost way more magicka than I had.

I'd like to attempt a run through with a mage character in the near future to see if magic is better balanced than vanilla. SkyRe did a pretty good job of making mages viable early game despite the enormous monetary costs.

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I've probably missed some things. Overall, I'm enjoying the mod. I did have to deactivate Dragonborn because the patch I found for it caused a CTD. Compatibility-wise I haven't noticed any issues. It's been around long enough that most major mods either have a patch or already work with Requiem (similar to SkyRe).

Ultimately, I was feeling a little burnt out on the game and switching to Requiem has given me a bit of the drive back. Being overloaded much of the time walking back to Whiterun has also allowed me to sit back and enjoy the beauty of the game for 10 minutes at a time. I'm still impressed at the incredible vistas in this game.
 

COOLBEAN

New Member
Ok from what you have said Requiem sounds pretty hard, i was planning to use it but now i am leaning toward SkyRe. I found all the Requiem patches i need for my other mods and was wandering if SkyRe also had patches for other mods?
 

Wippii

Bookworm
Ok from what you have said Requiem sounds pretty hard, i was planning to use it but now i am leaning toward SkyRe. I found all the Requiem patches i need for my other mods and was wandering if SkyRe also had patches for other mods?


It sure does. The main one is called the ReProccer, but there are various other patches as well, including patches for the ReProccer.
Search the Nexus for "SkyRe Compatibility and ReProccer patches" (would link but I'm using Steam's in-game browser) for the largest package.
 

W'rkncacnter

Mister Freeze
I uninstalled Requiem. It wasn't that it was too hard. I could see that as I leveled I would quickly become a force to be reckoned with. Instead, it was that I was leveling too slow. After uninstalling, I found that in the amount of time it took me to gain 2-3 levels in Requiem I had leveled 8-10 times in vanilla. I don't have that amount of time to devote to my playing. I'm not reinstalling SkyRe. I'm waiting for PerMa to finish it's beta testing and then I will give that a run through.
 

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