With Equipment Level Requirements (ELR) all equipment (weapons, suits, helmets and packs) displays a new ingame item level ("LVL"), as shown here: 



This new item level mirrors the level required by Bethesda for an item to drop from the regular loot list (or appear in a store based on the vendor lists). The displayed item level for tiered items (calibrated, refined, advanced or superior) is a combination of the base item level + an added tier level (again based on Bethesda's loot tables), depending on the tier itself, as shown here: 

Weapons
Calibrated: +10 levels
Refined: +20 levels
Advanced: +30 levels

Suits, Helmets and Packs
Calibrated: +7 levels
Refined: +14 levels
Advanced: +21 levels
Superior: +28 levels

This is how it looks ingame:

Weapon base levels range from a LVL -4 Kraken to a LVL 45 Varuun Inflictor Rifle (so an Advanced Varuun Inflictor Rifle requires LVL 75).
Armor sets range from LVL 1 (eg Crimson Fleet) to LVL 29 (eg Bountyhunter; so a Superior Bountyhunter piece requires LVL 57). 

If the player character equips a weapon, suit, helmet or pack below her or his own character level, all damage done by the player character is reduced to zero. This is displayed by "--" as entry for damage, as shown here:

The weapon damage shown in inventory may in some instances drop to zero for all weapons once a piece of gear is equipped underleveled. No worries, once unequipping that piece of gear the damage shown returns to normal. Sometimes you have to switch between a few different gear items to fully restore the UI display. This is only a little visual quirk with no effect on your gameplay.

Please note that rarity (rare, epic or legendary) as well as number and quality of mods on weapons/armors are not taken into account. This way you can still have godly rolls and be excited about great loot appearing surprisingly early. But this loot is much less likey to totally invalidate all other gear found for the next 25 levels as it is currently a reality in the unmodded game. 

Also, hhen wearing/using underleveled equipment while flying with your ship, the frame rate can drop down. If you notice such just unequip all underleveled equipment (which you shouldn't ideally be wearing anyway), so that no more "--" entries for weapon damage are seen anywhere. This will instantly restore your frame rate.

The instances where I found high level overpowered gear way too early were many in my playthroughs (eg. many PoI are full of advanced weaponary used as part of the scenery, stores sell mid-level weapons for comparatively tiny amounts of credits right from the start, high level enemies drop the weapons they use regardless of character level...).

How it was done
Equipment Level Requirements (ELR) is a pure .esm mod, made with xEdit. No scripting involved. It extensively (many hundred rows of entries) changes an existing perk on the player actor (playerCommonWeaponModPerk) as well as two files that determine how the weapon/armor name is displayed, namely dn_commonArmor and dn_commonGun. It was intense and time consuming to set it up, but : no pain, no gain :-).

You can use the mod right away, midgame. It cannot hurt to make a manual save beforehand to return to in case of problems anyway (should be good standard practice).

Installation

• With Starfield's June 2024 update (Creations) installation has become much easier (the Plugins Enabler mod and therewith SFSE is no longer needed to install this mod)
• Just download the mod from the files section, unzip it and place the .esm file into your game's data folder 
• Double check ingame in the Creations menu (available from Main Menu), then Load Order submenu, whether the mod's .esm has a checkmark. Ideally move it down the load order, so that it is loaded last (this prevents it from being overwriten by preceding mods)  
  

Credits
Without xEdit and Elminster's work of a genius all this would not be possible, so, many kudos to Elminster and team.
Also, big hug and thanks to Nukem for the - as of June 2024 no more needed, but formerly life saving - PluginText enabler mod.

If you like the mod a tiny bit, I would be really happy about an endorsement for good karma. This makes me cozy warm inside :-) and fuels me for the udpates I will have to undoubtly do as Bethesda rolls out patches and DLC.

If you are just curious about other stuff I am up to, please have a look here:

The whole DOE Series and friends
DOE Resources
DOE Resources at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
DOE Sell Price
DOE Sell Price at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
DOE Starpower
DOE Starpower at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
DOE Loot
DOE Loot at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
DOE Ammo Rarity
DOE Ammo Rarity at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
DOE Ammo Prices
DOE Ammo Prices at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
DOE Skill Progression
DOE Skill Progression at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
DOE Research
DOE Research at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
DOE Less Shortcuts
DOE Less Shortcuts at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
Replicant
Replicant at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
XP Unchained
XP Unchained at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
Sneak Damage Hotfix
Sneak Damage Hotfix at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
Equipment Level Requirements (ELR)
Equipment Level Requirements (ELR) at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
NGXP Plus / NGXP Plus Risk
NGXP Plus at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
Minimum Enemy Level
Minimum Enemy Level at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
Fauna Protection Initiative
Fauna Protection Initiative at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
Spongecop
Spongecop at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
Building Rarity
Building Rarity at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
Minimum System Level
Minimum System Level at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)