Requiem – Classic Alchemy Overhaul (R-CAO)
Rebalances Requiem alchemy ingredients, alchemy effects, crafted potion prices, and alchemy perks. This is done so that alchemy no longer breaks the game economy while attempting to follow in Xarrian’s narrative footsteps.
Requiem – Classic Alchemy Overhaul (R-CAO) , formerly known as Requiem – Alchemy Rebalance, modifies Requiem – The Oldschool Roleplaying Overhaul ingredient strength, alchemy effects, crafted potion prices, and alchemy perk effects. Alchemy crafting no longer breaks the game economy, and the grindiness of the alchemy experience is reduced in a balanced way.
Compatible with all versions of Requiem from 1.51 to 3.x.
Below is an in depth look at R-CAO:
Includes Dragon Hearts, Dragon Blood, and Powders of Chaurus Chitin, Dragon Bone, Troll Skull, and Horker Tusk from Azirok’s excellent Requiem – Hard Times mod. Use the included patch when playing with “Requiem – Hard Times” and R-CAO in the same load order.
Actual extracts are now needed for gaining transformational Alchemy perks -such as Night Vision or Fortified Muscles- and are craftable at cookpots. A PC has access to a given body altering Alchemy perk when ingesting it’s correlating extract, as long as the other standard perk conditions are met and the extract effect is active. Beware ingesting extracts in unsafe locations, as they overwhelm the PC while preparing their body to transform.
Removes Skooma’s random number generated instant death and turns it into a rare survivable overdose scenario, which can also now be totally avoided if a PC has a high enough Poison Resistance. Khajiit never overdose. Possessing the Sanguine Rose makes Skooma ingestion much safer and less depleting. Skooma’s description is more concise, and the visual effects last as long as all buff/debuff effects are still present.
Xarrian’s classic Ably Striking (Fortify Unarmed) alchemy effect is returned to Requiem crafting and expanded to more ingredients (replacing some Damage Magicka/Stamina Regen occurrences).
Oil of Fire, Ice, Storms, and Silver are brought back into play from Requiem 1.51 and fine tuned. The PC again has access to a wider range of destructive alchemy that can be used at racks to coat arrows/bolts to convert them to their elemental destructive versions (and steel arrows/bolts into silver).
Human Flesh and Hearts are fine tuned to be less OP, as they are regularly found on human and Mer dead bodies in Requiem 1.51.
Vendor/NPC potion prices are rebalanced to match the values of PC crafted potions from R-AR to maintain in-game consistency. This lowers the prices of some found or bought potions, while raising others, though many are approximately the same as what they were in base Requiem. Some vendor/NPC poisons, including Affliction, Exhaustion, Fear, Fury, Spellbane, and Spellfade, have their strengths raised minorly to moderately -with corresponding price rebalancing- so that they are more compelling to actually be used by a PC. Vendor/NPC Ably Conjuring/Deceiving/Destroying/Restoring/Transmuting potions have been capped at 25% spell cost reduction so alchemy combined with magic use isn’t quite as effortlessly overpowering.
Harvested quantities of most ingredients are the same as classic Requiem, with minor reductions to the upper harvest range for ingredients like spider eggs, snowberries, mountain flowers, and some others.
Many ingredient base gold prices are the same as classic Requiem, although some have minor -and in a few cases moderate- increases. This encourages a PC to sell found ingredients for some minor gold in early game, and increases the expense of buying some ingredients from alchemists.
Effeteness, Enervation, Damage Magicka Regen, Damage Stamina Regen, Spellfade, and Spellfreeze potions are all rebalanced to be both reasonably priced for crafting and actually useful, with greater usefulness from rarer ingredients. They will now all cause non-trivial amounts of damage to an opponent NPC’s Stamina/Regen or Magicka/Regen, so a PC has a greater incentive to actually use them.
Many rare and difficult to acquire ingredients have identical crafting strengths to classic Requiem for their respective four potion crafting effects, although several common ingredients have some of their four potion effect strengths lowered. For example, snowberries are just as strong as classic Requiem for crafting Icebane potions (nod to Frostfall), but the rest of snowberry alchemy crafting effects are weaker. This makes it so an alchemist can’t easily create expensive combination Icebane/Flamebane/Frostbane/Spiritedness potions.
Having varying potion durations for the same alchemy effect in classic Requiem heavily messes with the ability to price them effectively, as in-game potion gold values are based on a formula of ([Base Alchemy Effect value] x Magnitude x Duration). Crafted potions with longer durations are either worth excessive amounts of gold compared to shorter duration potions with reasonably balanced crafting gold values, or shorter duration potions end up being worth nearly nothing if higher duration potions have well balanced crafting gold values. Furthermore, many vendor/NPC potions vary wildly in duration from crafted potions in base Requiem, which also makes reasonable proportional pricing nearly impossible. This is fixed for all potion types.
Damage Stamina/Magicka Regen, Frenzy, Regeneration, Rigidity, Spiritedness, Spellshield, Ice/Flame/Shockbane, and several other potion recipes -or combinations of them- will no longer break the game economy. An alchemist PC won’t create significant wealth without seeking out hard to acquire or rare ingredients, or having high alchemy skill and several crafting perks. Healing, Magicka, and Stamina (HMS) potions, as well as some others, have had their crafting gold values raised to more closely reflect the base gold values that merchants sell their equivalent potions for, and now grant more alchemy experience.
Poisons that damage Health or Stamina, as well as Tardiness, Paralysis, Fear, and Frenzy Poisons, will not effect any being that is not mortal. This makes Powders of Void, Ice and Flames meaningful, as well as Oils to convert arrows and bolts for elemental destructive power.
Alchemy merchants -and several others- will now usually sell a moderate quantity of lower tier HMS potions. This is achieved by significantly lowering the chances that HMS potions wouldn’t spawn at all in base Requiem. No longer will Arcadia -and several others- taunt you by refusing to sell you Healing potions while prominently displaying them around their shops.
The stat benefits of Fortified Muscles & Alchemist Intellect are rebalanced to be less OP than base Requiem.
The Fortified Muscles Stamina regeneration buff has been moved to the Regeneration perks, encouraging a PC to be more drawn to invest perk points there.
Several of Xarrian’s classic perk records are added back to the Alchemy tree, including fine tunings of Improved Elixirs, Improved Poisons, Immunization, and Regeneration.
The Alchemy Skill Tree experience gain rate is doubled when taking the second Alchemical Lore perk, and tripled when taking the third. This works in concert with rebalancing economy breaking gold recipe values, as well as removing easy access in early game to expensive combinations of alchemy recipes. A crafted 50 gold potion with R-CAO can give up to the equivalent experience of a crafted 150 gold potion in base Requiem.
Grain mills can be used to produce alchemical ingredients.
All ingredients added by Hearthfire and Dragonborn DLCs are integrated and rebalanced in R-CAO.
This patch combines well with Requiem – Minor Arcana Reborn.
Load Requiem – Classic Alchemy Overhaul.esp after Requiem.esp (and before Requiem for the Indifferent.esp if it exists in your load order).
If using Requiem – Immersive Divine Blessings (R-IDB): load Requiem – Classic Alchemy Overhaul.esp before R-IDB in your load order to get the most out of both mods.
Click here to see other Requiem improvement patches I’ve made or curate.
Thanks to Xarrian for Requiem, Ogerboss and the Requiem team for their continued development, as well as zer0morph and Applesaucez for their creative ingenuity in inspiring this patch.
Thanks to Azirok for permission to include their excellent Requiem improvement mod assets in R-CAO.
