Vanilla Balancing Improvements

Hey guys!

In the 4.0 preview post I talked about dropping the Morrowloot concept and opting for vanilla loot with some improvements instead. There are various versions of Morrowloot with different features but overall it's centered around deleveling loot and eliminating the upper tiers (Glass+) from random loot. Deleveled loot means you can get lucky at a low level and find something incredible valuable which wouldn't happen in vanilla where loot always depends on the player's level.

At the end of the day my fondness for Morrowloot is a leftover from my "realism and immersion" days of modding when Campfire, Frostfall, and Immersive Armors were staples in my mod order, too. For the v+ TPF setup, Morrowloot is ultimately a bad fit as it completely turns the loot system on its head and makes sweeping balancing changes.

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Skyrim is a power fantasy. You're a nobody, then you're the bloody Dragonborn, hero and leader of half a dozen factions. You basically eat Daedra for breakfast with a dragon or two as appetizers before lunch. That's the core appeal of the vanilla game. And personally that's why I enjoy Skyrim (in addition to the incredible world). It's time for TPF to also go back to the roots.

So what's wrong with vanilla loot?

The core problem is inherently a Bethesda thing: There is just TOO bloody much. The sheer abundance of any kind of loot, rare or common, is present in Skyrim as well as in Fallout 4 (and likely the older games, too, but I haven't played them yet). Balancing Fallout is a little easier in my experience as the abundance of for example drugs (specifically Stimpaks) is so ridiculous that the game doesn't instantly get harder when you start reducing them.

One problem directly caused by item abundance (in both games but most noticeably in Skyrim) is that in order to sell all the junk from the latest dungeon, you often need multiple vendors. Those merchants are not that rich, and your stuff is worth a fortune. And you have tons of it.

Fixing the abundance?

Many attempts have been made: Lower carry capacity - but that just results in frustrating amounts of inventory management. Lower sell prices - but that makes certain stuff completely worthless (literally, at times). Less rare loot - but that makes dungeon crawling extremely unsatisfying.

Ultimately I believe there is no way to really "eliminate" loot abundance. The game is simply built on it: You slay your way through dozens of bandit camps, warlock fortresses, and witches' covens that each are full of stuff you can pick up - it's a big old sandbox for medieval power fantasy fetishists. So let's stop trying to reinvent the wheel and accept that the existing one is not perfect.

Toning down the abundance

Make rare loot a little rarer

"But Phoenix! You just said that rarer loot makes dungeon crawling unsatisfying!"

I did, but there is such a thing as middle ground, no? I honestly don't know (yet) how to implement this but my thoughts were along the lines of removing enchanted loot from small chests and making soul gems (especially high tier ones) less common. Not to the point where you barely ever find something worthwhile - nobody likes empty chests! But just a little less might go a long way.

Location related loot

This one I really like and have started implementing: The idea is that you will ONLY find Dwemer weapons and armor in Dwemer ruins. In Falmer ruins, you have Falmer weapons with a chance to get lucky and also find Dwemer stuff, perhaps even enchanted. At higher levels, Dwemer ruins will be "worth it" because of the rare ingredients and high tier soul gems you can find there (and the odd enchanted Dwemer weapon or armor).

In other areas of the game, this requires a bit more work: For example, if I want to limit Forsworn to using Forsworn equipment with the occasional Dwemer weapon, I would probably have to create a second tier ("Ancient Forsworn Sword" or something along those lines) in order to protect balancing. Otherwise they might beat you up at lower levels and pose absolutely no danger at higher ones.

Other examples would be Orcish equipment in Orcish settlements, aMidianBorn Thalmor armor only on Thalmor, and so forth.

Removing Daedric and Dragonbone equipment from random loot

"But Phoenix, you said that the Morrowloot thing of removing stuff from random loot is not very v+!"

Let's call this a compromise, shall we? With WACCF, Daedric is the best generic equipment in the game and it would be a fine reward for a master smith to be able to craft those. However, Daedric equipment can also be bought from the Dremora Merchant from Dragonborn (requires an Elder Scroll) or crafted in the Atronarch forge (requires 90 Conjuration). It would still be accessible but no longer in the possession of random Warlock dude.

As for Dragonbone, well, perhaps there are dragon bones around from the first war against Alduin (although you never find any). I would personally prefer if they weren't randomly found regardless but I don't have a compelling argument other than "it feels wrong."

More (semi-)static loot

A danger when reducing rare loot is that certain unique encounters suddenly have very unrewarding loot. Due to the nature of the vanilla system, they may also drop non-location related stuff that doesn't make sense if location related loot is otherwise implemented. The easiest (really, the only) way to fix this is to give these enemies a fixed inventory.

To give you an example: Remember Movarth Piquine, the vampire dude in that cave near Morthal? He usually drops vampire robes and boots. Morrowloot replaces his inventory with high level robes and an Ebony axe (or a Daedric sword?) but also increases his stats to the point that he'll chew right through any sub-level 40-50 Dragonborn to prevent them from getting a strong weapon early on.

That's in the spirit of a deleveled Skyrim which is unfortunately very counter intuitive. Getting your ass whooped by a dungeon boss and realising that you'll have to come back later (and clear the dungeon all over again) is pretty depressing. Now in TPF with Arena's encounter zone levels, Movarth still isn't a snack for any low level Dragonborn but far easier than in Morrowloot. Only to loot a boring set of vampire robes and boots from his corpse.

The solution: He'll always have tier 4, 5 or 6 Destruction robes with the tier depending on the player's level. It's still leveled loot but guaranteed to be worthy of a unique boss encounter.

Other stuff

Ok, this is getting way too long. Beyond everything I already talked about, I am looking to decrease gold rewards in general and quest rewards in particular so that you don't get stupidly rich quite so fast (it's inevitable that you will be rich eventually) and potentially increase prices for homes, horses, and inns. Travelling by carriage was already made more expensive in a sensible manner by the mod CFTO which I appreciate.

Feedback?

While I primarily wrote all this stuff down in order to clear my own head and get a better idea of what I want, I'm also very interested in feedback from you guys! As loot is a pretty major part of Skyrim, this affects every user of TPF and I would love to hear your thoughts in advance. The changes I discussed all make sense to me but I don't have much experience rebalancing a huge bloody game so I'm open to suggestions and corrections!

Feedback is best left on our Discord server as I and others will be able to directly respond there.

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Finally I would like to thank everyone for their support. Every content creator under the sun does it all the time, but that doesn't make it less true or heartfelt! I really am incredibly grateful for all the kind words from our #thank-you channel and other places as well as the donations I received recently. Guys, 4.0 isn't even out yet!

Speaking of 4.0, I still don't have an ETA but progress is being made. Umgak has been hard at work this past week, building a cool new mod from the ground up for TPF as well as redoing the conflict resolution. It'll be done when it's done. =)

Until then, happy modding!

Phoenix