Vanilla Plus Balance Difficulty and AI Patch

#Vanilla+ Balance, Difficulty, and AI Patch

Load this late, or after whichever mod made your game too difficult and unfun :)

Configuring a Bethesda game to have PERFECT difficulty is a deeply personal process, and I hope this makes it a little easier! This is one difficulty configuration that focuses on restoring a heavily modded Starfield closer to what Vanilla felt like.

One use-case for this mod is that someone downloaded a ton of mods and then finds that they actually are having less fun now. Maybe the aim bot NPCs from the AI overhaul are doing too much. Maybe stealth is broken now.

Maybe the NPCs are now super high level and are bullet sponges.

Maybe you are encountering too many legendary enemies.

You might have known this was going to happen before downloading, but the mod included a ton of features you really wanted. Those features will be safe and untouched, while restoring some settings closer to Vanilla. If it was my mod, Immersive Leveled Enemies, sorry! Creations users seem to have a lot less firepower at their disposal than I expected.

Just load this mod after your load order, and it will put things back to a way that hopefully makes you happy, without being required to remove any mods or lose any functionality from larger overhauls you might have installed.

Or, download xEdit and use this as a template for tweaking difficulty yourself. This file includes some of the most impactful difficulty related settings and it should be pretty easy to see what each one does based on the name, and then adjust it accordingly.

#Core Changes: Player gains 20 HP per level, as per Vanilla. This is included just in case a mod you installed nerfed this, and you want your health back.

Enemies gain 5 HP per level (Skyrim default, -15 from Starfield). A leveled enemies mod might have made your whole game too spongy.

Various AI tweaks that, while slightly more challenging than Vanilla, are WAY more reasonable than the settings used in popular AI overhauls, thereby nerfing them - or slightly improving AI over Vanilla if you play with no AI overhauls.

Some slight improvements to space controls and targeting, especially in case a mod you installed nerfed them.

Slight reductions in the # of Legendary Enemy Spawns, in case a mod buffed them, or because they become ultra bullet sponges with the other mods you installed.

Various stealth settings made more reasonable so that stealth is viable even if you have other difficulty mods installed that make it harder. This also ensures you have a chance to overhear NPC ambient dialogue that is sometimes cut when they have insane detection radius.

Aim stability increased when crouched.

Aiming with a controller is slightly easier; restored vanilla aim assist that many mods remove without mentioning.

#Niche Changes:

Terrormorph Mind Control Duration against player nerfed from 180 seconds to 60 seconds, in case you are using mods that give Terrormorphs mind control.

Two damage modifiers (CCT_creature and CCT_Terrormorph) reverted to Vanilla in case a mod you installed made aliens too difficult. Note that this doesn't erase ALL alien difficulty increases, just one method of increasing them.

The Narion system has reduced Space Encounters and the vanilla level cap of 10. That way, you don't get annihilated by enemies during the tutorial mission. Other mods that add new or increase the difficulty of space encounters might get you killed as soon as you take off with Vasco.

Legendary Starborn chance set to 50%. Vanilla is 0%, but most fun enemy mods increase this very high, so if you are playing with other mods, this is probably a nerf.

Legendary chance slightly reduced for most enemies, as Legendary Enemies + Level scaling can result in VERY high HP enemies.

Very Hard Actor Level Multiplier reduced from 1.25x to 1.15x, to subtly reduce bullet sponges, especially if another mod had increased this. All other leveled actor multipliers set to Vanilla. This will not override leveled enemy mods; it will work in conjunction with them.

Alien AI Improvements: gives alien creatures an increased chance to graze and exhibit other peaceful behaviors rather than just being murder bots. This is a non-nerfing way to balance out stronger aliens.

#Small Tweaks Bundled Just Because You Probably Want them:

Gain XP as long as you deal .001 damage to an enemy.

Annihilator rounds don't damage companions or allies.

You will not get lung damage while wearing a full spacesuit.

Well-rested perk lasts 4x longer to help you recover from the insane difficulty you were recently the victim of. =)

Increased chance to randomly damage enemy ship's engine (enables more boarding encounters).

#Installation/Compatibility: Should work with everything.

#We all play with different load orders and difficulty is incredibly challenging to balance for everyone.

#This will mostly be needed by players who are close to Vanilla power levels themselves, but who installed mods that buffed enemy NPCs.

#Load Order: This contains only purposeful overwrites, so load it late.

You could also try to figure out which features you want and don't and then load it before or after other mods accordingly. If you load this early, most of its changes will be overwritten, but probably not all.

#Compatibility: Everything.

#Suggested: A Color Filter remover. Royal Weathers Immersive Leveled Enemies Bedlam Starfield HD Overhaul

#Known Issues: This is a patch to balance out the difficulty of your load order; not really a full mod by itself, but if you like the features or gameplay changes, go for it.

#Support: Vanilla Plus Balance Difficulty and AI Patch Page on Nexus https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/10794

But if, for some reason, you think this is giving you problems, better to just disable it. This mod's only job is to make your life easier.

#How do I know it is working? This might be a hard one. It might take waiting for a cell to respawn for enemy HP to change. it might also take leveling up for your HP to change.

#Permissions: Closed. Reach out and ask if you have a genuine use.

I will be doing an Xbox playthrough and thoroughly testing my mods. Other Royal Mods will move slowly to Creations as I have time to carefully test them. For PC users, I encourage you to check them out on Nexus. I am a teacher and writer living in a one-bedroom apartment with my wife and cats, and working hard on this in my spare time.

This is posted because Creations users have fewer options, and so it will serve as an all-in-one difficulty reducer for any mod list or load order, or as a way to bring down the difficulty of my Royal Mods as I post them.

Any support appreciated. I do not use Creations myself, so all the time and effort I put into this platform is purely to make Starfield more enjoyable to others.

https://ko-fi.com/jaedl