YASH mod for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

YASH is an old-school overhaul that alters every single game mechanic in a strict lore friendly way. The mod introduces several mechanics: unique vanilla races, race specific perk ranks, no level scaling, skill requirements for weapons and armors, weapons and spells damage scaling to skill level, spells casting failures, food and drinks timed attributes bonuses, open encounter zones, enemies weaknesses and resistances, droppable quest items, potions curing over time, and much, much more.

YASH is my personal attempt to make the game mechanics more interesting, by adding subtle but substantial gameplay elements in a strictly lore-friendly way. It's primarily aimed at hardcore roleplayers but due to its nature it should please just about everyone.

The main goal is to start as a complete nobody, suffer greatly at first and feel a real sense of accomplishment when you level up and increase your skills. YASH is not necessarily harder than vanilla but its gameplay is way, way different. Note that YASH is supposed to be played at Adept difficulty level.

YASH abides by three strict rules:

- Never, ever affect the player with something that will NOT affect the NPCs. Never. If your Khajiit character runs fast it's because ALL Khajiit in the game run fast. If your Redguard character is more skilled with one handed weapons it's because ALL Redguards are more skilled with one handed weapons. If your Bosmer character can deal more damage with bows and draw them fast it's because ALL Wood Elves are more skilled with bows. And so on. The essence of the mod is that you are NOT anything special compared to other people, save for your innate ability to shout.
- Don't disrupt the vanilla mechanics: improve them. YASH intentionally does NOT add new perks, new skills, new spells, new weapons, etc. Instead, it improves the existing game elements by making them more interesting and useful, sometimes essential to proceed.
- Focus on character skill over player skill. YASH is not aimed at button mashers but at players who carefully plan their characters.

Before playing the game with YASH on you should enter the right state of mind. YASH is a LONG and HARD journey from zero to hero. You die because you're supposed to die. You survive when you're supposed to survive. They die when they're supposed to die. You start as a whelp, weak and lacking any skill whatsoever, and you're supposed to play as such.

You MUST start a new character to run YASH. The mod does NOT work with existing characters and it should NOT be uninstalled from an existing character.

UNIQUE RACES

They are now really unique, have different stats, traits and abilities and choosing a race actually affects the gameplay. To name a few, Altmers regenerate magicka more quickly, Orcs are best at smithing and Redguards swing one handed weapons faster. Note that as I stated above this does NOT affect the player alone. It affects the race, therefore ALL Khajiit regenerate stamina quickly, ALL Nords have a low magicka pool and regenerate it slowly, ALL Wood Elves have a low initial carry weight, etc. This obviously applies to followers as well. The list can go on and on, suffice it to say that every race has now all its stats and skills altered, all affecting the gameplay in one way or another.

RACE SPECIFIC PERKS

Long story short: ALL perks stats have been altered in a way or another, more perk ranks are available and some bonus perk ranks are available only to certain races. You can also "skip over" perks without being forced to pick perks you don't like just to reach the perk of your choice. Also, the first perk of each skill tree has a skill requirement. And since you are now able to pick more perk ranks, every 20 skill levels you gain a bonus perk point to spend as you wish. These features allow for very specific character builds without the need of leveling up at all costs just to gain a perk point.

NO LEVEL SCALING

You're not the center of the world anymore. The world lives a life on its own and it does NOT depend on you anymore. More than 2,000 leveled lists have been edited with a collection of xEdit scripts I made myself to make it so that the more valuable items are rare and the less valuable items are spread all over the place. There is NO hand placed loot, everything is placed with a so refined formula that most leveled lists contain up to 100 automatically generated entries [most vanilla lists have 20]. Even I have no idea where the more valuable loot is. The same applies to creatures and NPC, the harder enemies are rare and the easier are more common. Long story short: there are others like you in the world who have improved their skills and can give you a very hard time in combat. No hand placed loot means that there are no hand placed items, but bosses will often carry powerful weapons and boss chests will often contain valuable loot: to encourage exploration most lists have been moved from merchants inventories to bosses chests.

SKILL REQUIREMENTS

Even in the lucky event that you find an Ebony Battleaxe or a Glass Bow after one hour of play, you'll not be able to use it properly until you meet the skill requirements for that weapon. You'll be slow and clunky and won't deal a great amount of damage. Again, your skill will be almost meaningless, while yourcharacter skill will be essential. I can't stress this enough: this applies to everyone else as well. If you happen to stumble upon a low skilled bandit wielding a Glass Mace you'll notice that he will be slow, clunky and not very efficient with it. The same applies to shields, if you lack the required skill for a specific material you'll block much less damage then usual. Cuirasses and boots will slow you down. Helmets will slow your magicka regeneration, gauntlets will double the spell cost and halve the spell magnitude. Skills increases with armors and weapons you're not skilled with are reduced to one fifth. Also, you'll either love or hate this one: you will often fail at casting spells until you reach the minimum skill requirement [this applies to NPC as well].

SKILL IS EVERYTHING

Skill governs everything you do. The damage you deal with a weapon, the chance to pick a lock or to pickpocket, the magnitude and duration of a spell, the power of an enchanted item, the chance of successfully extract ingredients from harvested plants. Everything. All spells scale to skill level, up to twice the magnitude and duration once you reach 100 in the school of the current spell. All weapons scale to skill level, up to twice the damage once you reach 100 in either one handed, two handed or marksman. When you equip a weapon its damage will instantly update accordingly to your skill. When I say EVERYTHING I mean it. You have to be skilled in Smithing if you want to temper weapons and armors. You have to be skilled in Enchanting if you want to enchant whatever you like with whatever spell you like. And so on.

FOOD AND DRINKS

Do not underestimate the power of a good meal! Food and drinks now serve a purpose. Instead of creating a primary needs system I took a completely different approach: you're not forced to eat to stay alive but if you DO eat you'll gain good bonuses to Magicka, Health and Stamina that will last for a long while. Raw foods boost attributes a little, cooked meals boost them way more. So, you wake up in the morning, have a good breakfast and your attributes are boosted til lunch. You eat your lunch, mixing several foods to maximize your attributes and you're done until dinner. As a rule of thumb wine and meat based meals increase Health, alcoholics and fish based meals increase Magicka [hey they contain phosphorus after all!] and vegetables based meals increase Stamina. Gameplay-wise the system works by a simple association of ideas: you see meat, you think Health. You see fish, you think Magicka. You see an apple, you think Stamina.

OPEN ENCOUNTER ZONES

Think you can enter a cave, awake a snow bear and just run like hell? Think twice. Enemies will now follow you everywhere, in some cases if you make a Draugr angry enough he'll chase you to the death outside his barrow! Be more careful next time you want to loot a cave.

ALTERED STATS AND NAMES

Everything [and I mean everything] is altered in a way or another. All potions have been renamed with meaningful names so that you know their magnitudes with a blink of an eye -- the 6 magnitudes are now added as 6 different suffixes: Weak, Average, Strong, Great, Extreme and Ultimate. All items have been reweighted and all weapons damages and armor ratings have been altered to match their material inherent power.

IMPROVED COMBAT AI

Enemies are now smarter. They'll dodge and block your attacks more often, be more aggressive when you give them openings and know whether it's time to flee or time to continue fighting. More than 100 AI stats have been altered to improve the combat system.

IMPROVED WEAKNESSES AND RESISTANCES

All enemies have their weaknesses and resistances. I won't spoil anything here, you'll have to find out which weapons and spells work best by yourself using some logic. While nothing prevents you from using always the same weapon against all enemies, if you really want to survive you'll have to use the right weapon for the right enemy.