Difficulty Mod Recommendations?

[FrozenWolf150]

I'm about ready to start a new character, and I'm looking for mods that increase the difficulty of the game without breaking it. The thing is that I've already beaten the vanilla game on Legendary several times, and have since installed a bunch of immersion and gameplay enhancement mods that make the game even easier. I'm talking "kill dragons in a matter of seconds" easy-- I could do that before legit in the unmodded game by maxing out crafting and buffing before every battle, but now it happens all the time.

The mods I have so far that increase difficulty include:

Combat Evolved
Duel - Combat Realism
High Level Enemies
Dragon Combat Overhaul
Deadly Dragons

And the realism mods:

Frostfall + Campfire
Realistic Needs and Diseases 2.0

So I'm back to the question I posted about Morrowind 3 years ago. What can I add to make Skyrim more challenging?

[CBR JGWRR]

Reverse engineer those to make it better really...

[FrozenWolf150]

Reverse engineer those to make it better really...

Could you please clarify what you mean by that? I'm not sure what you're saying.


I looked up some other difficulty enhancers and found Revenge of the Enemies, so now I'm using that as well.

[VirtualWeasel]

The mod Requiem makes Skyrim harder than if Dark Souls had a baby with Dwarf Fortress.

[CBR JGWRR]

Reverse engineer those to make it better really...

Could you please clarify what you mean by that? I'm not sure what you're saying.

Figure out what you like about the mods you use already, look at how they achieved that, alter what they did to suit your liking.

[FrozenWolf150]

The mod Requiem makes Skyrim harder than if Dark Souls had a baby with Dwarf Fortress.

Looks interesting, but it would require me to uninstall a lot of the mods I have, get several compatibility patches, and start a new game from scratch. I'll have to think about it.

ETA: I've done some searching on Nexus and have found that while some of the mods I'm using do have existing compatibility patches, these others will have to go, since I don't know how to make my own custom patches:

Bloodmoon Rising - Alters the werewolf perk tree, which conflicts with the changes in Requiem.
Combat Evolved - Technically compatible, but the features conflict, so it has to be placed before Requiem. Even then, only 1/3 of the features will show up.
Duel Combat Realism - Requiem has a lot of the same functionality, so this would be redundant.
Revenge of the Enemies - All of its features clash with Requiem.


The following mods, I have no idea if they're compatible because I haven't found any information:

More Plants and Recipes - I'm only using the plants feature, not the recipes, so I'm hoping this doesn't glitch up.
Spell Crafting - This has become my new favorite mod because it's something I felt should have been in the vanilla game. The author has no plans for a compatibility patch, so there's no way to get the new effects added by Requiem, although the spell crafting only applies to the vanilla effects so those should still work.

[FrozenWolf150]

Been playing through and enjoying Requiem. I don't think it's fair to call it a hardcore difficulty mod though, as there are features that make things easier for balance purposes. Enemies are unleveled, meaning that bandits will always be cannon fodder and make for easy pickings. Weapons and spells do a lot more damage than before, which means that if you get the drop on enemies, you will likely win. Spells and Shouts scale up as your character becomes more experienced. Homes are cheaper and Hearthfire plots are much cheaper. Mounted combat is more powerful. High level perks for every skill are way more powerful. Master level spells are absolutely devastating.

It has a steep learning curve, sure, but once you know where everything is and get the basic mechanics down, it's a lot of fun.