by ProbablyManuel
Hi Requiem enthusiasts,
It has taken a bit longer than I anticipated when revealing the Roadmap to Requiem 6.0.0, but the release is ready just in time for the new year.
Requiem 6.0.0 introduces official Dragonborn DLC integration and an overhaul of races, artifacts, and food. Alongside these major updates, you’ll find numerous tweaks, improvements, and fixes to enhance the overall experience. For the full list of changes, please refer to the changelog.
Dragonborn
The Dragonborn DLC is now fully integrated based on Fozar’s Dragonborn Patch. This patch has been a staple in many players’ load orders for years and is widely regarded as the go-to solution for Dragonborn integration. It has even been adopted as a dependency by several mod authors in the community. Rather than starting from scratch, I opted to use Fozar’s excellent work as a base. Many thanks to Fozar and his team for their incredible efforts!
During the integration process, I tweaked some details where I felt it better fit the vision of Requiem. These adjustments primarily focus on presenting Solstheim as an ashen wasteland open to exploration by brave adventurers, rather than strictly as an endgame area for defeating Miraak. However, the overall scope of these changes is limited, and players who are already familiar with the patch can expect a similar experience, in particular with regard to the Dragonborn questline. Players who have never used the patch before should brace themselves for a questline that is more difficult than both the main quest and Dawnguard.
On the technical side, I had to make more sweeping changes because developing a plugin that is meant to override another is different from implementing the same changes directly in the master plugin. Additionally, the patch had not been updated for three years, necessitating updates to ensure full compatibility with the latest version of Requiem. As a result, it might take time for third-party mods that depended on the patch to update to Requiem 6.0.0, so please be patient as your favorite mods are updated.
Races
Racial daily powers have been a hotly discussed topic since Requiem’s inception. Many of these powers function as “I win” buttons. Limiting their use to once per day is not a meaningful restriction, as players can simply “wait” for an in-game day to pass. Additionally, daily powers disrupt the natural difficulty curve, even for players who follow the daily limit, by enabling them to defeat bosses or other high-level opponents who would otherwise be far beyond their capabilities.
When I originally announced Requiem 6.0.0, I planned to rework daily powers into lesser powers that consumed a fixed fraction of health, magicka, or stamina and scaled their effects accordingly. NPCs would have occasionally used these powers in appropriate situations as well. However, after further playtesting and community feedback, I concluded that Requiem would be better off by keeping it simple and removing racial active powers entirely. Now, races feature only passive abilities that reflect their cultural, physical, and hereditary traits.
Another long-standing issue with playable races has been the lack of official documentation for their stats and abilities. This forced players to choose their race blindly or rely on unofficial, potentially outdated sources. To address this, official documentation is now available online on GitHub and offline within the release archive. This documentation is generated directly from the game files using a script, ensuring it remains up to date with any future tweaks to races.
Finally, the changes to the Green Pact deserve mention too. Bosmer are no longer obligated to perform ritualistic cannibalism but choose whether to worship Y’ffre or the Nine Divines. Following the Green Pact unlocks Y’ffre’s blessing but also requires upholding an archaic tradition. Cannibalizing a corpse is considered a crime if witnessed by a citizen of Skyrim, and maintaining Y’ffre’s blessing demands strict adherence to her commandments: consuming only meat and refraining from taking the shape of beasts.
Artifacts
Anything resembling a unique item or reward is overhauled with two primary goals.
Firstly, to enhance the uniqueness and power of many overlooked artifacts. This includes both artifacts untouched by Requiem (such as the Saarthal Amulet) and artifacts that are underwhelming by the time they are acquired (such as Auriel’s Bow). Enchantments are redesigned to align closely with the artifacts’ lore. For example, the Gauldur Amulet, which is described as the source of its namesake Archmage’s power, now enhances spellcasting instead of increasing the three attributes and providing powerful secondary protections. Similarly, Daedric artifacts typically feature enchantments tied to their respective Prince’s sphere of influence. Furthermore, most unique items have a unique model to give them a stronger identity using assets from ArteFakes, Royal Armory - New Artifacts, Sun Rune, and Vastly More Unique Visage of Mzund.
Secondly, to rebalance a few overpowered artifacts that overshadow others (such as the Skull of Corruption), especially since they are relatively easy to obtain and demand little commitment. To preserve the status of items considered extremely powerful in the lore, a scaling factor is introduced to some of them. This approach is inspired by quests like The Whispering Door, where the Ebony Blade regains its lost power through acts that spread Mephala’s influence. A similar narrative underpins quests like Pieces of the Past, The Cursed Tribe, and The House of Horrors, where the Daedric artifact exists in a weakened or corrupted state and must be restored by the champion of the Daedric Prince. To ensure narrative consistency, Daedric artifacts that are purely transactional rewards (such as Spellbreaker) don’t have a scaling factor.
Food
Food is another longstanding point of discussion which was exacerbated after the tweaks made in Requiem 2.0.
- Food provides too many different stackable effects.
- Shortened durations don’t reduce the power of the long-lasting effects but increase the tedium of food.
- The effect of food is often arbitrary and not based on the type of nutrition. Some examples:
- Beef stew uniquely and inexplicably increases health by 50 and carry weight by 25.
- Apple Cabbage Stew restores stamina over time because it has stew in its name. No other vegetable has such an effect.
- Different breads have different effects solely because they’re different items.
- Food is generally too expensive to buy and the good items are very selectively available. For example, beef stew is only available near Whiterun even though cows are found all over Skyrim.
To address these issues, food is simplified to provide only four long-lasting effects depending on its nutrition: carry weight, disease resistance, restore magicka, and restore stamina. The magnitude is fixed for each effect so that there are no useless items. Rarer and more expensive food has increased duration and sometimes multiple effects, e.g., beef stew provides the effect of both meat and vegetables and lasts 1 hour (twice the current duration). Innkeepers offer a greater variety of food so that each nutrition is available everywhere and buying prices are always set to the base price.
What happens next?
With the ever-increasing popularity of curated mod lists via Vortex Collections and Wabbajack, and the trend of building increasingly large load orders in Skyrim Special Edition, the masterlist size limit preventing the Reqtificator from functioning on massive load orders is becoming one of the most significant limitations in the Requiem community. Therefore, the next milestone will focus on addressing this engine limit.
Before tackling this, however, my immediate priority will be ensuring a smooth transition of the ecosystem to Requiem 6.0.0 and resolving any existing bugs or feedback related to the new release.
Happy New Year!