T3nd0’s Perkus Maximus
Large-scale perk and gameplay overhaul. Hundreds of new perks, spells and pieces of gear with advanced mechanics. Explore Skyrim all over again.
Successor to Skyrim Redone.
Intro
What is Perkus Maximus?
Perkus Maximus (PerMa) is a large scale perk, skill and gameplay overhaul. I implemented new gameplay mechanics, enhanced existing ones, and rebuilt all perk trees from scratch to support the rebuilt mechanics. The result is something that will completely change the way you approach the character building process, and thus the entire game.
When working on PerMa, I used all the experience and feedback I collected during the creation of my other large mod, Skyrim Redone (SkyRe). Today, SkyRe is the most well-known and popular gameplay overhaul for Skyrim, and to be frank, I think PerMa is _a lot_ better in most ways.
If you know SkyRe already and would like a list of the most important differences, go skip to the FAQ section of this page.
If not, keep reading. I will only post very rough goals and a few selected details for what I did which each skill, because the full descriptions just don’t fit in the space I have on this page, but a detailed documentation, including perk tree images and perk descriptions, is available for download from the “Optional Downloads” section of the “Downloads” tab.
Why does this mod need to exist?
Before I go any further, I’ll take some time justifying the existence of this mod. I’ll do so by dissecting two of Skyrim’s existing perk trees, and explaining why I think they are badly designed.
Let’s start with this one: Enchanting
9 different perks, a total of 13 perk points to spent.
If you spend all 13 perk points, 10 of these will do nothing but make your enchantments stronger. which also happens to be the effect you automatically enjoy from leveling the skill.
Two perk points would be used to reduce you soul gem consumption (and are widely considered useless), and the last one is a potential gamebreaker that doubles the worth of the skill with just a single perk point.
Apart from the obvious fact that the perks themselves differ widely in terms of usefulness (Soul Squeezer vs. Extra Effect) and that Enchanting alone can turn you mage into a magewarriorthiefassassinspellbladewhatever, absolutely all of the perks are passive. At 100 Enchanting, you still enchant like you did at skill level 15, all you get is a boost in numbers. Not to mention that maxing the skill is just a huge grind.
All in all, Enchanting has no depth, not a single interesting perk, not a single interactive perk, and still breaks your game balance if you pursue it. Prime example for bad game design in my book.
Now you might say “T3nd0 pls, it’s a crafting tree, these are always boring”, but not only is that wrong, it’s also a fact that the non-crafting trees are just barely better.
Here comes Alteration: Alteration
10 different perks. Five of those reduce spell cost, two increase spell duration (which in turn reduces spell cost, if you think about it), two provide passive protection against magic, and one increases the magnitude of armor spells.
See a pattern here? All passive and not interesting. Not as bad as Enchanting in my opinion, as the Magic Resistance bonus at least has a nice metamagic flavour to it, but still boring. Not a single perk in here will change the way you tackle the game. And the Mage Armor perk (as well as all related spells) is made completely redundant once you reach Master level spells, which is another no-go.
Quality-wise, I think of Alteration as medium tier in Skyrim, while Enchanting is horrible. A few trees have more interesting effects on paper (I think of Speech and, to some extent, Sneak, Lockpicking and Pickpocket here), but unfortunately the most interesting effects are killed by the huge combat-focus in gameplay.
In an RPG, character development is key, and Skyrim’s perk system – which is the core of character development – is superficial at best, plain bad at worst. I think one can do a lot better. That’s why I overhauled it twice.
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Design principles
Here’s what I wanted PerMa to be like.
Perks should affect the way you play the game, and reward you for good gameplay.
Passives have their place, but they either require some form of interactivity to unfold their full value or consume very few perk points.
In general, a wide variety of perks, and no “point sinks”; most perks only have a single rank, only very few have three. No perk has more than three ranks, and quite often, perks gain new effects as you invest more.
No useless perks.
Large selection of perks; perk trees are at least twice as large as what vanilla Skyrim offers, enabling a lot of new builds.
Good mage perks are worthless without good spells, and warrior perks are impossible without good combat mechanics they can build upon.
Gameplay, a strong sense of progression, and immersion are king. Mastering a skill should give access to things that truly make you feel like a master.
While trying to meet these goals, I also made sure to add new content when I felt necessary, to not slow down your game by abusing “bad” scripts, and to preserve modularity and mod compatibility as much as possible.
Requirements
PerMa needs Dawnguard, Dragonborn and SKSE. Most users will also need the JRE (Java Run-Time Environment), version 7 or better. High numbers are good.
NO, there will never be a version that does not need both expansions and SKSE. Don’t ask. I’ll not answer.
The JRE is needed for a Java-based program (Patchus Maximus) that comes with PerMa and that needs to be run on your machine to create large parts of the mod (“the patch”) and do compatibility patching.
The only people that will not need the JRE are those that have a very minimalistic load order that only includes the DLC and PerMa, and use all PerMa modules (including the bundled, absolutely necessary Wintermyst). The “Optional Downloads” section of this page contains a pre-generated patch for such users.
And finally, a new savegame. Do NOT use this on old saves unless you actually bring the knowledge to do it without my help. I’ll ignore any bug reports from people that failed at this step.
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Installation
PerMa consists of a “fake master”, three functional modules – PerMa-Warrior, PerMa-Mage, PerMa-Thief – and the patcher program Patchus Maximus (PaMa). On top, it brings additional optional stuff that I might or might not expand upon in the future. As of now, it comes with “Wintermyst” by Enai Siaion.
1. Use NMM or Wrye Bash, or manual installation if you’re up to it, to install all modules you want. PaMa and the fake master + many resources are not optional.
1.9 (Not needed if you use all three modules)
You’ll need to tell PaMa that you don’t use all modules. Go to
skyrim/Data/SkyProc Patchers/T3nd0_PatchuMaximus/PMxml/GeneralSettings.xml
and check out these lines:
true
true
true
Each line corresponds to one module. For each module you don’t use, replace the “true” by “false”.
2. This is a general starting place for compatibility patches and hotfixes. You’ll at least want to get the bugfix file from the optional downloads, as it is usually faster than PerMa updates. PerMa only sees updates once in a blue moon.
Get what you want/need, then proceed.
3. Go to
skyrim/dData/SkyProc Patchers/T3nd0_PatchuMaximus/
and run the patcher, either by using PatchusMaximus.jar or Debug-moreHeapspace.bat. The latter is recommended, because the patcher does a lot, and demands a lot of heap space.
IMPORTANT: On a minimal load order, the patcher only takes a few (2-3) minutes. On a very large load order, it may just take an hour. It will stick at 100% after importing and tell you what it’s currently working on. Do not panic while it’s doing its thing. It’ll tell you if it crashes.
4. Make sure the patch (PatchusMaximus.esp) loads after any PerMa module, and that the master loads before everything else.
Done!
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Overview
Covers all magic skills and spells.
I didn’t like how vanilla spell Z often turned out to be nothing but a stronger version of vanilla spell Y, and PerMa is quite a bit better at keeping all spells useful by providing distinct functionality for each one.
This concept also transfers to perks a lot more. The simple passive boosts still have their place, but many perks add new functionality, sometimes aiming to eliminate a spell group’s weaknesses.
PerMa brings a lot of new spells and spell archetypes, adding up to roughly 200 spells in total.
In PerMa, spell casting cost will, in general, not scale. There are some exceptions that allow you to lower casting cost, but these are not too common. Most notably…
… the “Novice, Apprentice….” line of perks in every spell school tree will not reduce cost. Instead, these perks grant a random spell when chosen, have passive effects of their own and serve as prerequisites for other perks. To make sure you notice a difference, I altered their name slightly.
… skill level will not lower cost, but boost magnitude/duration instead.
Spell casting cost is reworked with that in mind.
I did this to not lock out higher tier spells completely, should you find one early, and to remedy Skyrim’s spell spam fest.
“Focus” perks
Each spell school contains two “Focus” perks (Enchanting has one)
Focus perks require skill level 95 and the tree’s “Studies: Master XXX” perk to be selectable
Focus perks are mutually exclusive across trees; each character may only choose one, and the selection persists even through respecs.
Exception: Alteration has a special perk called “Architect of Magic”. Selecting this perk raises the maximum number of selectable “Focus” perks by 1.
Focus perks may grant passive boosts, spells, abilities, and any combination. None of them grant only passive boosts.
Spells granted by “Focus” perks are strong, but are a lot more expensive to cast than regular master level spells, and they may carry downsides.
Alteration
New archetypes: Teleportation, kinetics and weapon enhancements, and various new spells for utility.
Metamagic perks: Cast spells with health instead of Magicka, cast spells as you swing your weapon, and reap benefits for all schools of magic.
Create a fake sun in the air and let enemies gravitate right in, sharpen your weapon with a spell, multiply projectile spells…
Conjuration
New archetypes: Unbound Daedra summoning, “delayed disease reanimation”, reanimation power boosters.
Harvest the bones and guts of fallen enemies, turn them into skeletons and craft an army of undead followers.
Kill an enemy with a slow disease and teach him your spells as he rises again, duplicate corpses of powerful foes, and open an uncontrollable Oblivion gate for a steady stream of visitors…
Destruction
New archtetypes: Mixed elemental spells and one-time-use, self-triggering buffs.
Invest in perks to add new effects to spells – let fire detonate any target it kills, let frost pierce through resistance with physical damage, and let shock punish heavily armored enemies.
Trap targets in a shock cage while roasting them, cast a cloak that retaliates with lightning bolts at range, use a certain spell who empowers you as if it were a piece of gear…
Illusion
Choose the path of the direct manipulator or the phantom summoner… or both. As soon as you have enemies under your influence, combo with special spells to increase the havoc.
Phantoms are back from SkyRe with all new mechanics, completely decoupled from regular summons. Summon them right next to enemies and force enemies into combat, causing negative effects as they get taken out.
Charm people to make them fight for, either temporary or as follower, extract information about your targets, and force them into suicide…
Restoration
Plagues, curses, auras, and much more.
Unlike vanilla, PerMa’s Restoration is about direct life manipulation in general. Don’t expect the direct killing power Destruction has, but do expect spells that bring down hurt in various ways. And also expect more elaborate ways to protect you from harm.
Kill an enemy with poison damage and watch as spiders spawn from its corpse, support summons and followers with beneficial auras, and use special wards to mirror spells and send unaware attackers flying…
Enchanting
Boring, huh? All perks here boost the enchantment strength by a bit, but only one perk has no proper primary effect.
Craft scrolls and staves for all spells from mods you have installed, and unlock special boni for staff usage.
Animate your weapons to fight for you as invincible allies, tie magic to arrows you fire, and unlock extremely powerful enchantments that demand dragon souls to keep running…
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Overview
Covers all warrior skills and combat mechanics.
Skyrim combat is very simplistic, even though most of the game seems to revolve around it. The following tweaks have been made to add some depth and tactic. All changes apply to both the player and all NPCs.
In general: Weapons hurt more, and armor blocks more of that hurt. Not gonna get into details here, but it’s all configurable with the patcher of you don’t like it.
Weapons not only carry a specific type and their type’s stats, they also are divided in the “classes” blade, blunt and piercing. Most perks work based off weapon class, not type. A weapon may belong to multiple classes. The following venn diagram shows default weapon class assignments. Note that this is actually configurable with Patchus Maximus, should you disagree.
Weapon types convey additional stats – bleed, debuff and stagger rank. Bleed rank determines bleeding damage on unblocked hits, debuff rank determines an armor and resistance debuff on unblocked hits, and stagger rank determines how often unblocked hits stagger the target. The following table shows the default ranks per type. Again, this is configurable in Patchus Maximus.
Worn armor affects spell casting cost, movement and attack speed, in a way that relates to its type. Heavy gauntlets hurt movement speed more than light gauntlets, and a heavy cuirass hurts most
Wearing armor levels the related skill.
Block just in time to perform a “timed block” and stagger the attacker
Tempering and melting stuff down levels Smithing.
Critical hit damage scales with skills and any other damage boosting effect. All weapons have an innate chance to cause critical hits.
Even without perks, bear traps may be collected and dropped again to use them. Perks make trap handling better.
“Mastery” perks
Each Warrior perk tree has exactly one, and most of them are high level.
Mutually exclusive. Each character may select only one, and the choice persists through respecs.
They either bring abilities or, in the case of Smithing, very fancy new recipes.
Light Weaponry (was One-Handed)
Use Longswords, Shortswords, Katanas, Tantos, Hatchets, Hammers, Mauls and more to bash heads in and slice enemies up.
Turn the tide of battle by utilizing well-timed attacks, and gain advantages from good positioning.
Enter a battle frenzy by landing multiple hits in quick succession, or strike anyone without protective headgear down.
Heavy Weaponry (was Two-Handed)
Use power attacks to shatter shields and execute weakened enemies right away.
Pierce all forms of defense and attack your foe’s maximum health directly.
Slow time during forward power attacks to snipe with full precision, and scar enemies for everyone to exploit their weakness.
Ranged Weaponry (was Marksman)
Invest in Shortbows to stay agile, reward flanking and short-range attacks.
Specialize in Longbows to make every hit count – the most difficult shots are the deadliest.
Master crossbows to enhance them with additional functionality at the forge. Make them silent, allow them to pierce past shields, or optimize them for minimum weight and raw damage.
Heavy Armor
Become a walking wall as you deflect regular attacks, reduce incoming power attacks to regular attacks, and even punish your enemy for direct hits.
Use the armor’s weight to boost attack power, balance, and to ram nearby beings.
Watch as your training lightens the burden. Grow stronger as the number of people you fight increases, and partially overcome the speed and spellcasting malus untrained warriors suffer from.
Block
Improve your timed blocking by making it easier to pull off, and by adding additional benefits to it.
Learn to use the shield as a safe harbor to rest behind, and as a wall that punishes attackers.
Turn shields into defensive weapons by enhancing the effects of bashing and power-bashing.
Smithing
Follow the light or heavy material paths to specialize as a blacksmith.
Reforge all gear to enhance their stats beyond simple tempering. Master smithing to create devastating weapons and impenetrable armor that can not be enchanted anymore.
Apply smithing knowledge to create Dwemer autmatoi, traps, or jewelry, and melt down gear you don’t need to recover resources.
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Overview
Covers all thief skill tree and stealth mechanics. Main aim here was to add a smoother curve on sneak damage and enable certain mechanics.
Sneak damage scales with skill, and the scaling speed depends on the weapon type.
Spells can sneak attack, though remember that they make sound. As a beginner, only silent spells work well.
Shouting levels Speechcraft, and shout strength/duration scales with Speechcraft skill.
Gold and lockpicks have weight.
Potions work over time and do not stack with itself.
Sneak attacks are weaker on enemies that wear armor protecting vital parts, and undead have even higher sneak attack resistance.
“Prodigy” perks
Each Thief perk tree has exactly one, and all of them are very low level. They can be chosen shortly after starting the game, and only connect to the tree’s root.
Mutually exclusive. Each character may select only one, and the choice persists through respecs.
A “Prodigy” perk is essentially a perk shortcut. Investing in it instantly unlocks two other perks from that tree (that are of considerably higher skill level).
If at least one of the perks unlocked by a “Prodigy” perk was already chosen via normal means, the “Prodgy” perk may not be chosen anymore.
Sneak
Choose perks that help you beyond simple sneak boosts – for example, reduce enemy view cones, and specifically move better in light or burdened.
Thanks to Sneak Tools integration, craft arrows that modify light sources or spawn ropes, knock enemies out and drag their bodies around.
Unlock secondary effects such as slowed time and paralysis for sneak attacks with certain weapon types – and spells.
Light Armor
No longer “lighter heavy armor” – settle for a mixture of protection and speed, and feel the difference from start to finish.
Get rewarded for staying on your toes in combat. Reduce negative secondary effects from weapon attacks and enjoy additional protection against repeated hits.
When the time is right, abandon all armor to get additional offensive benefits.
Speechcraft (was Speech)
Enjoy all vanilla functionality in a streamlined manner, and more.
Pay for generic hirelings that accompany you when needed, and turn NPCs that like you into followers.
Empower shouts with speechcraft, and level speechcraft using shouts.
Dexterity (was Pickpocket)
Carries all benefits from vanilla’s Pickpocket and Lockpicking trees.
Craft gadgets to reverse-pickpocket into enemy inventories to decide the battle before it even started, and reduce the weight of items every thief should have with him.
Use the all-new Katars, Claws and Knuckles to steal gear mid-combat.
Wayfarer (was Lockpicking)
Select so-called “Lore” perks that represent knowledge about Skyrim’s inhabitants, and that have no function by themselves.
Then use secondary perks that draw their power from “Lore” perks and grow stronger as you unlock them – befriend creatures you know, summon animal followers you know, or just fight what you know better.
Use perks to skin animals and work leather better, to improve outdoor movement, or to melt with your surroundings.
Alchemy
Apply various poisons and explosions to the traps and missiles you either find in the world or craft with perks from other trees; Alchemy has heavy crafting synergy with other trees and modules. Perks not only grant recipes, but also make existing recipes better.
Create venomous phials you can use to poison your armor, retaliating when attacked at close range.
Boost potions and poisons in multiple ways, and learn to mix them in the field with an alembic you can carry around.
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Patchus Maximus
Stuff about the patcher you MUST know
– Running the patcher is a MUST this time. It does more than the ReProccer did for SkyRe. PerMa was made with SkyProc in mind. If you don’t run the patcher, A LOT of things will not work.
– If you notice some “strange” values on weapons, armor, potions, whatever, first read up on the relevant parts from the XML and verify whether they really are strange – unless it’s obvious (like a mod-added iron weapon dealing only a quarter of the damage a vanilla weapon does)
– Still strange? Contact Raulfin at the PCaPP Nexus page. He’s the XML and patching master
Full Functionality
This is a list of everything the patcher does.
Modify armor stats
Create armor variants needed for perks (‘Armorer’, ‘Gatherer’)
Reclassify armor (‘heavy gauntlets’ etc)
Modifiy weapon stats
Create weapon variants needed for perks (‘Aspiring Engineer’, ‘Weaponsmith’ …)
Reclassify weapons, both class (blunt/blade/piercing) and type (nodachi, claw …)
Makes NPCs use ammunition with ranged weapons
Creates enchanted variants of armor and weapons, including new enchantments and new gear, and…
… distributes it to leveled lists
Create crafting and tempering recipes for all variants of everything
Create meltdown recipes for everything
Alter existing tempering recipes to play by PerMa rules
Distribute all mod-added weapons across leveled lists
Modify projectile stats
Create projectile variants for perks (‘Advanced Missilecraft’ etc)
Create recipes for all new projectiles
Create a scroll for every spell learned by a book
Create a staff for every spell learned by a book
Create recipes for all the scrolls and staves created
Add all mod-added spell books to relevant leveled lists
Remove spell school assignments from Alchemy and Enchanting effects (exploit fix)
Remove spell school assignments from constant abiities (exploit fix)
Remove generic starting spells from the player
Make alchemy effects work over time
Tweak ingredient stats
Tweak existing potion stats
Add a lot of essential abilities and perks to the player, NPCs and races
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Bug Fixing/Reporting
Perkus Maximus
At first, you need to make sure that any bug you report is actually related to PerMa. To do so, try to reproduce it with only PerMa, the patch, and the DLC enabled.
If it can’t be reproduced, enable other mods one after another to find the conflict, and report it on PerMa’s conflict subforum on the nexus.
If it can be reproduced, report it with a detailed descrption of what happens to PerMa’s bug reporting subforum on the nexus.
Patchus Maximus
Error: “Null pointer exception”
How to fix:
Multiple possible reasons.
– If you run the 32 bit version of the bat file with or without Mod Organizer, 64-bit Java has to be uninstalled for it to work
– Run the patcher on a minimal load order (only official esms + Wintermyst) and verify it works. Add mods one by one, and run it again after each addition. repeat this until you get the error.
Congratulations, you found a “bad mod”! Report it on the Incompatible mods list. Go to Skyrim/Data/SkyProc Patchers/T3nd0_PatchusMaximus/Files, open blocklist.txt, and add the mod you just confirmed guilty,
Error: “Java ran out of heap space”
How to fix: Run the patcher via the “Debug – moreHeapspace.bat” file (same directory as patcher). note that mod organizer probably can’t run it, as the file assigns more RAM than a 32 bit executable can use. So you’d have to tell MO to increase heap space by a smaller amount than the bat file, which is yours to figure out.
Error: “Array index out of bounds exception”
How to fix: I’ve only ever seen this error if the xml files the patcher uses reference an enchantment that is not present in your load order. Shouldn’t happen anymore though, so report to me, and we’ll figure it out.
Error: Using Mod Organizer, “Failed to create Virtual Machine”
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FAQ (official)
Q: So yeah, what does PerMa have that SkyRe didn’t?
A: Better perk trees, more modularity, fluffy perk descriptions, and less total game coverage. PerMa is not a difficulty mod,, not a race mod and not a standing stones mod.
Q: Which SkyRe modules can, theoretically, work with PerMa?
A: Everything but SkyRe-Main and, if using PerMa-Warrior, Skyre-Combat.
Q: What is, as of version 1.1, not finished?
A: A few assets, mainly textures, are still missing. Balance changes will probably take a while.
Q: Load order pls
A:
The fake master: As early as possible.
The patch: As late as possible.
The small modules: In between; laster is usually better, unless you want to override certain features. But that is for you to figure out.
Wintermyst: Before PerkusMaximus_Mage.esp
Q: Will you do a version that doesn’t need DLC?
A: No.
Q: I have Wintermyst already. Should I run your patcher and the Wintermyst patcher?
A: Nope, just Patchus Maximus. The Wintermyst patcher is a cropped-down PaMa, carrying only enchantment distribution functionality.
Q: Do I need a new game for this?
A: Yes. It’s theoretically possible to use old saves, but I don’t encourage this, and won’t help you doing it.
Q: The perk descriptions are fluff, and I don’t know what they do. Halp pls
A: Read the documentation. It’s unfluffed.
Q: Recommend me some mods pls
A:
– mysticentity’s MFVM
–> This is basically a must-have to make my Speechcraft tree work better
– Whatever strikes your fancy with difficulty mods
— My own SkyRe’s EnemyAI, Encounter Zones and Enemy Scaling modules
— OBIS and OBIS Redone
— ASIS
— Revenge of the Enemies
— Combat Evolved
— WTF
— Deadly Dragons
— Epic Gameplay Overhaul’s Dragon Combat Overhaul, Civil War Overhaul, and whatever else you fancy.
– How about some Enai love? These have PerMa patches already.
Apocalypse – Magic of Skyrim
Thunderchild – Epic Shouts and Immersion
Imperious – Races of Skyrim
– Whatever you want, really. Just be wary of perk mods.
FAQ (inofficial)
Q: Explain your religous affinity.
A: I believe in the Holy Trinity. Goku is the saviour who sacrificed his life for mankind, returned from the dead to save manking again, and yet displayed forgiveness towards his enemies. Shrek is the embodiment of love and life. And the Helix Fossil is the divine spokesperson, always lending an open ear if you have questions.
Q: What is the final fight in Naruto?
A: Sharingan/Rinnegan Sasuke vs. Sage-of-the-Six-Paths Naruto. Both get their arms ripped off at the end of their fight. Naruto then talks Sasuke out of his rage, he becomes seventh Hokage, NaruHina and SasuSaku are canon.
Q: Hey :3
A: Sorry Q-Girl, not in the mood for jokes about man-woman relationship of any kind right now.
Q: Oh, u got hurt? :3 Come talk 2 me bby, I listen XD
A: No you don’t. You’re an imaginary character made for the sole purpose of entertaining the people that managed to read this far.
Q: … 🙁
Q: Name a few decent bands/ music artists, and give me a song I should check out for each.
A: Celldweller (The Last Firstborn), Slipknot (Vermilion), Katatonia (Wait Outside), Blue Stahli (ULTRAnumb), Sybreed (Challenger), Tesseract (Nocturne), Pendulum (Self vs. Self), Jay Ray (The Great Art of Living)
Q: Name the bestest painter that ever existed
A: Zdzislav Beksinski, hands down.
Q: I am drunk, male, 35, and those ladies from across the table seem to fancy me. What do?
A: Make sure they are actually ladies, then present your pegina.
Q: I want to marry you. Are you single?
A: Yes I am. Are you a guy that redtexts to appear female?
Q: Goddamnit
Q: Will there ever be morningstars in PerMa?
A: If I find the time, yes.
