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"Requiem is a project with the goal of turning Skyrim into a better roleplaying experience by making game more immersive, semi-realistic and coherent, with the tend to find a compromiss between old school mechanics and more modern approaches."
The Requiem Dungeon Masters, official mod's description on the Skyrim Nexus

Requiem - The Roleplaying Overhaul is a mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, developped by the modding team The Requiem Dungeon Masters, and which first version was released in 2012.

Requiem is a complete overhaul of Skyrim gameplay which changes a lot of gameplay features, but the mod most notable features are the complete removal of Level Scaling, and a reworked skills-perks system in which skill level alone is worthless without perks, which results in a much harder game where you must actually invest in skill trees to be competent.

Requiem requires all three DLCs, though Requiem stats and gameplay modifications haven't been ported to Dragonborn content. The mod can be found here.


Requiem - The Roleplaying Overhaul Provides Examples Of:

  • Absurdly High Level Cap: Requiem keeps the Skyrim levelling system but reworks the legendary skills features (the perks points are reimbursed, but the skill remains at level 100), which means Requiem has a hard level cap of 81. Albeit lower than the theorically infinite level cap of unmodded Skyrimnote , that's still a very high cap, since raising every single skill to 100 is very long.
  • Annoying Arrows: Averted. Requiem drastically increases ranged weapons damage, and hostile archers are the bane of low level player characters: a heavy armor warrior may survive being hit by two or three arrows, but unlucky light armor fighters, rogues, and especially mages in robes may be killed at full health by the impact of a single arrow.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • Vampire night attacks in towns are disabled by default. Considering how much more powerful vampires are compaired to their Vanilla counterpart, this would prevent them to slaughter whole cities.
    • The level cap to start Dawnguard questline and much daedric quests has been increased to respectively 30 and 20, which is rather merciful considering their difficulty.
    • Good thing the range in which giants and mammoths turn hostile has been drastically decreased, because their strength and health has been drasticall increased as well.
    • Most skills are almost useless without buying some of the related perks. You start the game with three free perk points, which allows you to suck a bit less than you normally would during very early game.
  • Armor and Magic Don't Mix: Downplayed. Armor weight increases the Magicka cost of spellcasting, which turns low level mages into Squishy Wizards because you can't afford this penalty due to your low starting magicka. At higher level, the overall relative reduced encumberance of your gear and perks which reduce the weight-magicka cost make armored spellcasting builds actually viable.
  • The Atoner: A number of actions (having a current bounty, having your total lifetime bounty higher than 3,000 Septims, committing a murder, stealing 10 times, joining the Thieves Guild or the Dark Brotherhood) result in the Divine Shrines stopping to cure diseases and grant their blessing. The Restoration perk Painful Regrets allows you to regain ability to cure diseases from shrines in exchanges of suffering from a series of permanent debuffs (notably, spellcasting consumes more magicka, skills progress slower, and bartering is less efficient), but that requires to truly atone from your past sins (20 thefts, 3 murders, or 6,000 lifetime bounties will make Painful Regrets stop working, or render it unavailable if you didn't have it already), and paying your current bounty is a prerequisite, not to mention it requires to spend a perk point.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Skooma buffs several combat skills for two minutes, but debuffs stamina and magicka afterwards for a dozen of minutes, and its trippy Interface Screw makes fighting while high almost impossible.
  • Booze-Based Buff: Alcohol buffs max health for a dozen of minutes, but decreases stamina and magicka regen, and inflicts a blurred vision effect.
  • Breakable Weapons: Bows and crossbows are sometimes destroyed if equipped by a NPC at the moment they are hit.
  • Cycle of Hurting: The big Frostbite spiders have an attack that paralyses you. Once it happens, you're already dead (unless you have summons or followers), because they'll use it a lot, and its cooldown is shorter than the paralysis duration.
  • Drugs Are Bad: Alcohol have a noticeable debuff in magicka and stamina regen, not to mention the Interface Screw, while skooma's own debuffs and severe interface screw make it not worth the hassle. Attempting to mix alcohol and skooma results in a fatal overdose.
  • Early Game Hell: Due to Level Scaling removal, most of the animals or mooks you can encounter are stronger than a low level Dragonborn; note that the first dungeon you have to visit is no longer a Noob Cave. The encumberance capacity has been drastically reduced, while gold, arrows, and lockpicks are no longer weightless. Also, the efficiency of skills have been greatly reduced if you don't buy perks, which means you'll initially suck at, well, everything until you gain a few levels and some perk points. On the other hand, the complete removal of level scaling means the game because gradually easier the longer you play and gain levels.
  • Forced Level-Grinding: No Level Scaling, a significant rework of the gameplay, and many of the overhauled gameplay features make the player character initially weaker than in Vanilla. The combination of those two changes makes wandering Skyrim far more dangerous upon low levels. Bleak Falls Barrow, which is one of the dungeons encountered very early in the main quest, has been made to be far more difficult.
  • Game Mod: Requiem modifies so much features that it's incompatible with most Skyrim mods, though there's special submods to modifie Requiem further or add compatibility with other mods. There's also an unofficial port of Requiem to the world and story of the Dragonborn DLC.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration: Skooma now has very bad effects, instead of being a powerful wine variant with an exotic name and no obvious drawback ingame despite the presence of miserable NPCs addicted to the drug. Also, most non-Khajit trader merchants now refuse to buy what the game's lore considers as an illegal drug.
  • Guide Dang It!: The mod and the online manual don't explain the required character level to trigger the start of Dawnguard main quest and the Daedric quests have been raised, which can make new Requiem players to think they encountered a bug when, for instance, Durak doesn't spawn once you visit a town for the first time after hitting level 10.
  • Interface Screw:
    • Alcohol results in blurred vision for a dozen of (real time) minutes. Wearing the Charmed Necklace prevents to suffer from such visual impairment.
    • Skooma's visual is a trippy double vision with very saturated colors (mostly yellow-tinted), which is barely more pratical than being blind.
    • The witbane disease results in a blurred double vision. The status effect describes its symptoms as weariness and terrible headache.
    • Frostbite spiders' venom results in a green-tinted double vision.
  • Level Scaling: Averted. Removing it is one of the mod's main features, which results in a much harder early game, and an actual power progression. For instance, Bleak Falls Barrow is intended for player characters around level 15.
  • Mighty Glacier: Downplayed. Since walking speed is tied with inventory's encumberance and armor's weight, a heavy armor's clad Dragonborn is initially much more resilient than a Light Armor fighter or a mage in unarmored robes, but also much slower; note walking speed is also marginally related to maximum health, so being tougher actually makes you walk faster. You'll eventually get better as you get perks to reduce armor's hindrance and increase carry weight capacity.
  • Nerf: Many Vanilla features are harder to use or less efficient.
    • You start much weaker than a Vanilla Dragonborn, attributes are increased by 5 instead of 10 at level up, and carry weight capacity is severely decreased.
    • Self-brewed potions, equipment tempering, and enchanted gear provide reduced buffs compaired to Vanilla.
    • Faendal still provides Marksmanship trainingnote  but is no longer available as a follower, probably to prevent the players to use the exploit which allows to take back training money from follower's inventory.
    • The Transmute spell no longer exists, removing an easy way to grind Smithing and hoard tons of gold.
    • Depending on lock's level, Lockpicking level, and related perks, some locks can be impossible to pick, and the first Lockpicking perk is required to be able to attempt picking Novice locks at all. Also, the skill only progress when successfully picking a lock, not when a lockpick breaks.
  • Nintendo Hard: Removal of Level Scaling makes exploration at low levels extremely dangerous since most enemies will initially out-level you. Combat is now more difficult since regular running now consumes stamina and if your stamina is depleted during a fight, it can lead to you getting disarmed along with being weaker and slower. Certain enemies around the world are now deadlier than they were in vanilla: Archers can now easily kill an unsuspecting player. Trolls and Dragon Priests have greatly increased health regen, which can make them unwinnable unless you can exploit their weaknesses or have enough DPS. The player no longer has passive health regeneration, so they need to either invest in restoration or carry a lot of healing poultices or potions. Also, gold and arrows now have a weight.
  • Silver Has Mystic Powers: Skeletons, draugr, vampires, and werewolves are much tougher than in Vanilla, but receive much more damage from silver weapons.
  • Skill Scores and Perks: While Requiem is functionally identical to Vanilla Skyrim in this aspect, skills are now almost worthless without their perks: without perks, it's completely impossible to pick locks, pick pockets, craft items, armor majorly hinders movement, every spell costs lot of magicka... Also, every perk three has been completely overhauled.
  • Squishy Wizard: Enforced in early game. Due to armor's weight raising spell's magicka cost, low level spellcaster gameplay is only viable with unarmored clothes, at the time the Dragonborn is the weakest.
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Murder people, steal, and rank a high bounty if you want, but it will eventually results in the Divine refusing to grant you their blessing. If you did enough evil deeds to be cursed by the Divines, you can take a perk which allows you to benefit from the shrines' cure disease effect again (only the cure disease, as regular blessings are lost forever) in exchange of severe permanent debuffs, and it also requires to stop being a villain (the Divines won't accept your penance if you have a current bounty, and it also has a maximum cap in number of stolen items or murders to work).
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: The big Frostbite spider in Bleak Falls Barrow is this for melee-oriented builds, thanks to its melee-range paralysis attack which has a cooldown shorter than the paralysis' duration.
  • Wallet of Holding: Averted. Instead of being weightless, gold now has a weight, and 100 septims weight 0.25. The mod also raises the price-to-weight ratio of gems and jewelry and make them accepted by most of the merchants, which turns them into a practical alternative currency for barter.

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