SPERG – Skyrim Perk Enhancements and Rebalanced Gameplay
A minimalist perk overhaul aimed at making leveling more fun and rewarding. Earn basic perks automatically, saving perk points for specializing your character with unique abilities. SPERG also boasts an easy installation, a variety of configuration options, and high mod compatibility.
In vanilla Skyrim, some skills are much harder to level than others, and some perk trees are near completely worthless. SPERG fixes both of those things by adjusting skill leveling rates, adding a number of different sources of skill gain for some of the harder skills to level, and completely overhauling the perk trees. The leveling adjustments reward players for actually going out and playing the game instead of just grinding skills because they don’t go up fast enough any other way, and SPERG’s perks are truly exceptional. Far from being the boring, minimalist perks of the regular game, each perk is meaningful and unique. Many perks could even be made into their own standalone mod. Give SPERG a shot and see why so many people refuse to play without it!
BEFORE YOU INSTALL:
This mod requires SKSE, SkyUI, and the Skyrim -Community- Uncapper. See the installation section for more details.
BEFORE YOU UPGRADE:
Any SPERG version prior to 4.0 must be uninstalled before installing newer versions. Don’t just delete the old version – you must use the included uninstall function or your save file will retain abilities and script fragments that cause unpredictable bugs. See the upgrade section for more details.
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Available Translations:
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If anybody would like to localize this into additional languages, please do! I’d be happy to answer any questions I can.
Skyrim Perk Enhancements and Rebalanced Gameplay
New in version 4.0:
Almost every part of the mod was rewritten and optimized. This is the best version of SPERG yet, by far.
All perk trees completed!
Autoperks have been improved for even more variety.
Better support for the Dawnguard and Dragonborn DLCs.
More sources of skill gain make leveling more natural than ever.
Hardcore mode added for users who prefer a more difficult game.
Why install this mod?
-Import your existing character
While it’s meant for a new character, SPERG will automatically import existing characters when you first load it. Make a backup save to be safe (you should always do this when installing a new mod) and give it a try now, not later.
-More playstyles
Play the character you want without worrying about gimping yourself in combat. Characters like non-destruction mages and dagger rogues are much more viable with this mod.
-Modular design without the installation fuss
SPERG installation doesn’t require choosing between multiple different modules or combinations of plugins – you just install it and play. If you want more customization, the in-game menu has plenty of options. For users who really want to get into the thick of modding, SPERG lets you override any tree you want, and it also supports custom plugins. It’s as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.
-Seamless integration with the original game
Everything this mod adds could easily be a part of the original game if you didn’t know better. Making sure that a first time player would have no idea they’re using a mod was one of my top priorities.
-More variety
Too many characters in vanilla Skyrim end up playing almost exactly alike. Access to more varied perks and abilities gives each character a truly unique feel, making the game more fun on its own and creating more interesting tools for role-playing. Want to play a survivalist hunter who lives in peace with wild animals? Now you can.
-Brings the fun back to leveling
With more perks to look forward to and more unique abilities, you can really feel your character progressing instead of feeling like the only thing that changes is the look of your weapon. The way your character plays will change as he or she grows.
-Meticulously balanced
While there’s always room for improvement, I’ve put a lot of effort into making sure these changes are consistently balanced. The overall power level is slightly higher than in the original Skyrim due to the perks themselves being better, but there shouldn’t be any singularly overpowered perks or skill trees. When needed, I even calculated ability damage based on the game’s internal formulas to make sure it was consistent.
-Skill synergy
The old perk trees only ever gave benefits to their related skill, which made skills feel disconnected and left certain skills without much use. The new perk trees give a lot more benefit to other skills, increasing the complexity of different character builds, and making even the most useless skills more interesting.
-Minimal conflicts
Everything is carefully designed to have as few conflicts with other mods as possible. Even where conflicts arise, fixing them (or at least finding workarounds) should be relatively simple. SPERG is extremely mod friendly.
-Modder’s resource
I’ve included the source code for all of my scripts, with the most generally applicable ones being generously commented. If you see an interesting ability that you want to copy or expand upon, you can find out exactly how it works.
-Less grinding, more playing
With SPERG, you don’t have to worry about things like letting a mudcrab hit you enough so your armor skill keeps up with your other skills. Forget about grinding and just play. SPERG takes care of the rest.
What exactly does it do?
-Smooth scaling
Rather than tying skill improvement to a series of perks that you purchase as your skill increases, SPERG ties it to your skill directly. You no longer have to worry about what perks to take if you want a skill to be effective. Perks add new things, not make existing things better.
-Automatic perks
Similar to how the skill system worked in Oblivion, you earn unique bonus perks at 25, 50, 75, and 100 in each skill. These are great rewards for leveling up skills even if you don’t intend to spend any perk points on them.
-New perk trees
It goes without saying that perk trees are completely redone in this mod. Nothing was removed (just made automatic or combined with other perks), but well over a hundred completely unique perks have been added.
-Fully Configurable
Don’t like an item in this list? Don’t worry, it can be turned off. You’ll never have to worry about a feature you don’t like being bundled with features you do.
-Improves Skill Rates
Through the Skyrim -Community- Uncapper, this mod tweaks the leveling rates of each skill (but only slightly). The aim was to reduce grinding and balance the rate at which all skills increase, but to do so without changing the feel of the original game. While the values I’ve suggested are well balanced, you’re free to change them or turn this feature off entirely.
-Alternate Skill Gain
SPERG adds several alternate sources of skill gain to make leveling feel more natural. For example, your Speech skill goes up when you use shouts in combat, and your amror skill goes up when you wear it while running around. Play the game, not the skill system.
-Equipment Salvaging
Loot and steal to your heart’s content, breaking down all kinds of items into raw components that you can use to improve your Smithing. This is a great addition if you have problems finding enough raw material to level the skill, or even if you just like stealing everything that isn’t nailed down.
-Quest rewards
As another fix to skill rates, this mod grants a free, semi-random skill gain every time you complete a quest. This is another aspect of SPERG that encourages you to just play the game instead of grind, and it also helps soften the disappointment when a quest reward is totally useless to you.
-Perk reset
You can completely reset your perks whenever you want. By default, this applies a temporary penalty to health, magicka, and stamina to make sure it doesn’t feel like cheating, but if you feel like I do that this should have been included from the beginning, you can turn the penalty off entirely. You can even turn it off after it’s been applied and it will retroactively disappear!
-Minimalist unarmed support
Unarmed combat is made completely viable with little other changes to it. There are no monk style semi-magical abilities so as not to conflict with the existing flavor in Skyrim. Instead, unarmed characters take on the role of a bar-brawling scoundrel, which is much more fitting (especially for Nords!).
-Better spell scaling
All spells now scale directly with skill level. Destruction spells deal more damage, Illusion spells affect higher level targets, Restoration spells heal (or damage) more, and both Illusion and Conjuration spells last longer. At 100 skill, spells are twice as effective.
-Better staves
Playing a pure mage can be rough at low levels, but now staves can really help out. While staves were already powerful, using them came at the expense of leveling your own magic skills. Now, using a staff levels your magic skills like it always should have. To add to the fun, you can even learn spells from staves of all kinds, including unique staves like Wabbajack and Skull of Corruption.
Requirements
Skyrim version 1.9+ required.
Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) – Required for many functions used in SPERG, and it’s also a requirement for the following two mods. Everyone who uses mods should already have this installed.
SkyUI 3+ – Required for the in-game config menu. Alternate config methods are not supported.
Skyrim -Community- Uncapper – Despite the name, SPERG doesn’t actually uncap your skills using this mod. Instead, it limits your perk gain to one every two levels. SPERG perks are very potent, so gaining one perk per level is quite overpowered. Of course, you can tweak the uncapper configuration any way you want. Double your perk gain, reduce it further, uncap your skills (or don’t). It’s up to you.
Recommended Mods
Faster Mining – Why should mining take 10 seconds? It shouldn’t.
SkyTweak – A myriad of useful configuration options, all accessed through the in-game menu.
SPERG Mods
Unofficial SPERG Patches – Several useful patches to fix conflicts with popular mods.
EFF 4.0 Patch – Updated to work for EFF 4.0+
SPERG Weapon Styles – Modifies the one-handed tree to enhance multiple different combat styles.
Bound Armory – Bound weapon improvements with a patch for SPERG compatibility.
Installation Instructions
Install the above requirements.
Install using NMM/ModOrganizer, or unzip everything into your Data directory.
When installing manually, copy any optional patches along with the SKSE folder to your Data directory.
Activate any new plugin files and play!
Upgrade Instructions
Users upgrading from any SPERG version earlier than 4.0 will need to uninstall the old version first. This is a one-time issue that I would prefer to avoid, but because SPERG has been packaged as an .esm to make community patches easier, Skyrim recognizes it as a different mod. Make sure you follow these instructions to uninstall cleanly so you can have a smooth upgrade and enjoy all the new features without any issues.
Use the in-game menu to uninstall. If you don’t have a menu, type “set SPEUninstall to 1” in the console, save your game, then load your game.
Repeat this for every character who was using the mod.
Uninstall SPERG through your mod program of choice, or delete the plugin and .bsa files from your Data directory manually.
Install SPERG through your mod program of choice, or extract the archive into your Data directory manually.
If installing manually, copy the uncapper .ini settings and any applicable DLC patches from the SPERG directory to your Data directory.
Rebuild any patches created by other mods. Patches that still reference the old (deleted) version will crash the game due to a missing master error.
Activate any new plugins in your Data directory and load your game. Either start a new character or wait a moment for it to re-import your old one.
