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About this mod
An immersive vanilla plus balance mod. Rare loot is actually rare, high level enemies only spawn at boss-level spawn points, low level enemies and items can spawn regardless of level, and a ton of other minor balance tweaks. Oblivion, as it was meant to be!
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
- Donations
Ascension Remastered
The Glory of Cyrodiil
Requirements:
None
The Glory of Cyrodiil
Requirements:
None
Introduction
Ascension aims to create the definitive vanilla-plus Oblivion Remastered experience. Loot has been thoroughly overhauled so that rare equipment is actually rare, dungeons feel rewarding, enemies and loot no longer stop spawning at higher levels, underused gameplay aspects are made more worthwhile, and difficulty has been subtly increased overall. The sense of progression you receive from levelling up and journeying through the world of Oblivion should feel much greater with this mod installed.
Please note: this version of Ascension is a port of the original mod for Oblivion. Care has been taken to test the changes with the remaster to ensure that things work as intended. Due to changes in the remaster, some features could not be transferred over. However, as modding develops, I hope to update this mod so that we can have the Oblivion experience we always wanted!
Description
The full list of changes this mod makes are too numerous to mention here, but a definitive list is provided in the Docs section for those who wish to read it. Below is a quick overview of some highlights.
Leveled Lists and Loot
Light armor is made from fur, leather, chainmail, mithril, elven or glass. Mithril, elven and glass are exceedingly rare and are only found in ancient ruins and remote tombs.... Blacksmiths can forge heavy armor from iron, steel, dwarven, orcish, ebony or daedric. Iron and steel plate mail can be found in most any blacksmith's shop. The other materials are rare and armor made from them is only found in ancient treasure hoards hidden deep underground.Manual of Armor
The quote above is taken from an in-game book. Lies! Once you get to a certain level in vanilla Oblivion, almost every wilderness bandit wears Ebony, Elven, Glass, and even Daedric armor.
No more. Ascension overhauls the loot system and changes how items are distributed throughout the game world. The items carried by NPCs and in loot are now capped at a certain level appropriate to the character and location. You won’t see bandits wearing anything above Chainmail armour, and generic loot has also been capped at Mithril and Orcish material. The best loot has been transferred to the boss chests located at the very end of dungeons, and only ancient tombs and ruins have a chance of concealing the highest level Glass, Elven, and Ebony gear. To find Daedric gear, you must travel to the plains of Oblivion itself, or delve deep into the twisted dungeons in the realm of the Mad God.
Furthermore, items will no longer stop spawning when you get to higher levels—iron armour will remain common throughout your adventure, as it should be.
Boss chests also contain various other valuable treasures, ranging from silver clutter to valuable gemstones and jewellery. This acts as the prize for completing a dungeon, and will be the primary source of income for dungeon delvers. Ayleid containers may also contain additional Welkynd Stones, and Varla Stones can even occasionally be found in boss chests. Thieves also have a chance of finding more valuable loot in homes across Cyrodiil.
Creatures and NPCs
The highest rank of Dremora is the Valkynaz, or 'prince'. This warrior duke is a member of the Valkyn, Mehrunes Dagon's personal guard. The Valkynaz are rarely encountered on Tamriel; normally they remain by Mehrunes Dagon's side, or serve as commanders of operations of particular importance or interest to Dagon.Varieties of Daedra
With Ascension, low-level creatures will no longer stop spawning when you get to a certain level. You can now always encounter Zombies, Imps, Scamps, etc regardless of your level. Furthermore, all random spawns points have been capped, so that tough creatures such as Liches, Minotaur Lords, Storm Atronachs, etc will now only spawn at boss-level points, usually at the end of dungeons. Boss chests contain the best loot, but they’re also the best guarded!
To balance this feature, some low level creatures now have a chance of spawning in groups once you reach higher levels. For example, you can now encounter a pack or wolves in the wilderness, or a squad of skeletons in a dungeon.
Gameplay Balancing
Often overlooked by aspiring mages, Alchemy is a time-honored, rewarding discipline that can change the lives of those who master it.Fundaments of Alchemy
A range of other tweaks balance various aspects of the game to make all play-styles feel more natural and worthwhile. These include changes to alchemy, sneak, pick-pocketing, hand-to-hand fighting, barter, persuasion, skill leveling rates, and more. Wherever possible, only minimal behind-the-scenes settings have been altered so that most information pertaining to the vanilla game's item and character stats is largely still correct.
Although slight, these changes can have a large effect on how you play the game. For instance, playing an unarmed monk is now a perfectly valid choice, as hand-to-hand will remain a viable back-up combat skill throughout the game. Other examples include:
- Alchemy is less potent for those not skilled in the craft, and so it is harder to create potions more powerful than those found in loot for most characters.
- Persuasion and barter are much harder unless a character specialises in them—some merchants may not even haggle with novice mercantile characters at all!
- Spellswords may need to trade armour for clothing to maintain high spell effectiveness at low levels, as the effect of this mechanic has been increased.
- Repairing items is less frustrating for low-level characters, as the chance of breaking repair hammers has been decreased. However, the amount of condition restored per hammer strike now scales much more with Armorer skill. This is a worthwhile endeavor, as repairing items at vendors is now more expensive.
- Pickpocketing chances are also more reasonable, and pickpocketing grants more skill experience than in vanilla, making it actually viable.
- ...and much more!
Additionally, item value and rarity has been tweaked to make more sense for the game world. This includes a thorough rebalance of magic item costs so that you can't easily get rich by selling weak enchanted items found in dungeons.
Changes in the Remastered Version
For full clarity, a list of changes between this and the original version of Ascension are provided below.
Spoiler:
Show
- Removed various scripted features that required OBSE, namely:
- > Removed config file.
- > Removed scripted item rarity changes.
- > Removed loot condition and enchantment charge randomisation.
- > Removed removed scripted potion value overhaul.
- > Removed fixed crafted potion weight.
- > Removed creature weapon and power attack damage fixes.
- > Removed less spongy creatures (not required in the Remaster anyway).
- > Removed more enemy poisons.
- > Removed additional fatigue regeneration.
- > Removed Morrowind-style health regeneration (sort of superseded in the Remaster).
- > Removed leveled lock cap.
- Removed changes to player health as the remaster already has a new retroactive health formula. Also removed changes to the Endurance attribute description. For those that are interested, the new formula is: health = (2 * STR + 4 * END + 0.3 * END * (LVL - 1)) / 3
- Removed changes to magicka regeneration and spell magicka cost, as these are handled differently in the Remaster.
- Removed all changes to fatigue, as the Remaster handles this differently too.
- Removed changes to sneak detection as this is already covered by the Remaster.
- Removed changes to sneak damage multipliers, as this feature does not work in the Remaster.
- Removed changes to Restoration skill leveling, as the remaster scales spell experience based on magicka cost.
- Removed all new weapon, armour, and creature displays placed around the world.
- Removed the addition of helmets to Skeletons.
- Removed newly added Rusty Iron Boots from the tutorial dungeon.
- Removed all newly added loading screens.
- Removed Ayleid Coins.
- Removed Gold clutter.
- Removed Rusty Iron Longsword from the tutorial dungeon (reverted to the original Iron Longsword).
- Removed Rusty Iron Warhammer from the tutorial dungeon (reverted to the original Iron Warhammer).
- Replaced the Steel Shortsword carried by Captain Renault with a Rusty Iron Shortsword (implementation changed from original).
- Replaced an instance of low-chance Alyeid coins with gems.
- Replaced gold clutter in the newly added treasure list with gems and made silver more common to balance.
- Slightly increased the amount of 'Relic' loot (good weapon and armour) in Oblivion gate boss chests from a max of 2 to 3.
- Re-enabled the use of Charm and Fortify Skill spells for spellmaking (the original mods disabled these due to numerous exploits but people didn't like it).
- Removed the newly added Damage Personality (Novice) and Drain Strength (Journeyman) spells, which were added to fill gaps in enemy destruction spell pools.
- Removed changes to the Sneak skill description that reflected the increased damage multiplier for each perk. This is due to the way the Remaster handles strings.
- Removed changes to how armour affects movements speed, as this appears to be slightly different in the Remaster.
- Removed changes to Mudcrab speed as this is already covered by the Remaster.
- Removed changes to the Ayleid Well and Undead abilities spells, as these were only made due to the magicka regeneration changes in the original Ascension.
- Removed the changes to Night Eye brightness, as the Remaster's diverse graphics settings make the effect of this difficult to predict.
- Slightly increased the value of player-made potions compare to the original Ascension (still less than vanilla to preserve the game's economy).
- Removed changes to the value of items required to be fenced for Independent Thievery, as this would require editing strings and result in the dreaded [NL].
- Decreased the magicka cost of Cure Poison spells to one-third of vanilla.
- Decreased the magicka cost of Cure Disease spells by more than half. This is primarily to make the potions less expensive so that they can't be sold for large profit.
- Removed the addition of weight to keys and lockpicks.
- Removed changes to area of effect spell magicka cost.
Recommended Mods
Installation
- Download the main file from this mod page.
- Navigate to your Steam\SteamApps\common folder.
- Add the .esp files from the download to the \Oblivion Remastered\OblivionRemastered\Content\Dev\ObvData\Data folder.
- Open the plugins.txt file in the \Oblivion Remastered\OblivionRemastered\Content\Dev\ObvData\Data\ folder.
- At the bottom of the file, add the line Ascension.esp and Ascension - Rarer Loot.esp to the end.
- Make sure that Ascension.esp is loaded first!
The Rarer Loot plugin is recommended and increases the rarity of some items to help with gameplay balancing. The affected items are ingredients, potions, scrolls, lockpicks, repair hammers, and common enchanted jewelery. However, you can choose not to use this part of the mod if you would prefer not to.
The recommended load order for the main mod with the recommended mods is:
- Ascension.esp
- Ascension - Rarer Loot.esp
- Balanced NPC Level Cap.esp
- Balanced Unleveled Rewards.esp
- Ascension - Balanced NPC Level Cap Patch.esp
- Ascension - Balanced Unleveled Rewards Patch.esp
- Clutter and Crop Ownership.esp
Optional Files
- Ascension Lite - Contains modular plugins for just the loot and creature distribution changes mentioned in the main description. The changes included in the loot and creature plugins are noted by the [LL] and [LC] tags, respectively, in the complete readme. Note: the Loot module requires the Balanced NPC Level Cap below if using that mod. The patch for Balanced Unleveled Rewards is NOT required.
- Ascension Patches - Contains patches for Balanced NPC Level Cap and Balanced Unleveled Rewards.
- Slower Leveling - A range of plugins to decrease skill leveling rate by different amounts. This is because a lot of people find leveling to be too quick in the Remaster. There are separate plugins for major and minor skill rates, so just pick the rates that you prefer. Note: the leveling rate of minor skills has been dramatically increased in the remaster. In the original game, minor skills required 67% more experience to increase than major skills. In the remaster, they only require 17% more experience. One of the plugins decreases the minor skill leveling rate by 43% to make it match the original game.
- Vanilla Plugins - Revert certain changes to vanilla settings.
You can install all of these mods on an existing save - you do NOT need to start a new game.
Uninstallation
Reverse the above steps.
My Mods
I spend a lot of time creating and supporting my mods, so any donations are gratefully received.