Several changes will be made to the gameplay elements of Skyrim when the mods featured in this guide has been installed. They are well integrated into the game, but old players might be confused when some aspects of the game behaves differently to what they are used to.
Skills are leveled up in the same manner as in vanilla Skyrim, you level up skills by using them repeatedly. In vanilla Skyrim you gain experience to level up your characters main level by leveling up skills. To level up your character using this build, you will need to earn experience mainly by completing quests and by discovering new places. This is made possible by the mod Experience. An optional patch tweaks skills leveling and character leveling speed to be 50% slower than before to make sure that you’ll be able to experience all new quests, both small or dlc-sized, before maxing out your characters level.
Class Overhaull Re-Imagined introduces a class system that will present classes and specializations to the player when certain conditions are met.
The guide uses a suite of mods by SimonMagus616 that enhances and tweaks every aspect of character building like vampire and werewolf gameplay, perks, standing stones, magic, combat and races. The whole suit of mods has a vanilla plus feel, like a better vanilla experience.
The encounter zones in Skyrim now has a minimum level set thanks to another mod by SimonMagus616, Arena. Enemies in most areas in vanilla Skyrim matches the player level up to a certain level. Arena removes the upper limit to make sure that enemies keeps up with the player level to ensure that the game will provide a challange at higher player levels. Arena also sets a minimum level to areas (or encounter zones) based on the enemy types that spawns in the area. It uses the following formula:
Level 05: Bandits
Level 10: Draugr, Animals, Spriggans
Level 15: Mages, Forsworn
Level 20: Falmer, Dwarves
Level 25: Vampires, Giants, Dragon Lairs
Level 30: Dragon Priest Dungeons, Daedra
To make sure that side quests doesn’t send you to too dangerous areas, the guide uses the mod Radiant Requirements. Radiant Requirements removes the more dangerous quest locations from lower level player characters available radiant quests.
Several mods adds armors, weapons and clothes to the game. These are all tweaked and patched for balance and consistency. The mod More Craftable Equipment adds looms to the game at which you can craft clothes using the new ingredient thread. Threads are crafted at this newly introduced loom. The mod Cloaks of Skyrim adds cloaks and capes as well as a spinning wheel where these cloaks and capes are crafted. The guide tweaks the spinning wheel to only be able to craft threads. All cloaks and capes are tweaked to be crafted using the loom from More Craftable Equipment and has their crafting recipes tweaked to use the new ingredient thread. Even more cloaks are added by the mod Winter is coming. These cloaks are crafted at the tanning rack since they are crafted from pelts.