Formerly "marth Requiem Overhaul" — renamed as the mod broadens beyond Requiem-based lists. File names, FormIDs, and saves are unchanged.
A load-order mod that rebalances late-game power scaling (Skyrim SE 1.6.1170, currently built for Requiem-based lists and developed against LoreRim). Early and mid game are untouched — every feature gates on endgame investment, so the player and their followers can keep ascending while enemies keep their lethality. Where progression normally flatlines is where it surges back.
Built entirely on Linux with no Creation Kit and no xEdit: the plugin is generated byte-by-byte from Python, the Papyrus compiles under Proton/Wine, and the SKSE plugin builds on GitHub Actions.
- Elemental absorb — elemental resistances scale past 100%; above 100%, that element's incoming damage is absorbed as health (full absorb at a configurable resistance, overheal spilling into stamina/magicka). Computed per hit from the real post-skill/perk magnitude by the SKSE plugin.
- Physical damage reduction past the armor cap — DR scales beyond the engine's armor-rating cap, gated and ceilinged by your armor mastery. 99% DR demands best-in-list gear and full mastery; the target is calibrated to the load order's actual best heavy set. Computed per hit.
- 14-skill Mastery system (via Custom Skills Framework) — each skill unlocks at base 100 and trains through real use on a steeply rising cost curve extended past the cap. Weapon and armor XP are credited per hit by the SKSE plugin, damage-scaled and normalized to your own typical blow — so the pace is invariant to your build and load order, one- and two-handed train at parity, and magic trains by magicka actually spent. Level-ups show the real vanilla skill-up banner with the chime and an animated progress bar. Bonuses at cap: weapon +50% damage, armor +300 rating, magic +50 effective skill, crafting +25%, a Speech barter ladder, and raised Smithing temper caps.
- MCM — a Progress page with every mastery's level and percent-to-next, feature toggles, tuning sliders (mastery cap, per-group XP speed, DR/absorb targets), and a live status panel showing your real DR% and per-element absorb.
Doesn't this ruin Requiem's balance? It doesn't touch early or mid game, and it changes nothing about enemies — their stats, encounter design, and lethality are all intact. Every MRO feature sits past the point where a vanilla-Requiem character has already hit the skill, armor, and resistance ceilings and stopped progressing. It extends the top of the curve; it doesn't reshape the rest of it.
Isn't it too easy to become overpowered? Getting there is a long, earned road. A mastery skill only begins at base 100, and then trains through real use on a cost curve that rises steeply past the cap, so each mastery level costs progressively more. Weapon XP only counts hits on living, hostile targets and is normalized to your own typical blow, so weak-mob farming earns no faster than real fighting. The headline ceilings raise the bar further: 99% physical DR needs best-in-list gear and full armor mastery, and elemental absorb only begins once you've stacked a resistance past 100%, itself a deliberate build. There is no quick path to the top. I doubt most people will even get close at recomended settings.
Can I turn it down, or off? Yes. Every feature toggles independently in the MCM, and the numbers are sliders — mastery cap, global and per-skill XP speed, and the DR and absorb targets among them. If a feature isn't to your taste, switch it off; if only the pacing is, tune it.
Is it symmetric? The power you gain is proportional to the investment you put into a character you've already built. Enemies keep their Requiem stats; nothing about them is weakened. This is continued progression for the player, not a difficulty reduction.
Install the flat package with your mod manager, letting MRO.esp load late.
It is ESL-flagged. There is no FOMOD — every choice is a runtime MCM toggle.
The bundled MRO.dll is required — mastery XP is credited natively per
hit. Hook behaviour is controlled by SKSE/Plugins/MRO.ini; the hooks
self-verify the game binary and stand down safely if it differs (see
MRO.log).
The rebalanced Experience.ini (for the Experience mod) ships as a separate
optional download so a plain install never overwrites your XP settings.
Upgrades are save-safe within a major line: settings persist and the scripts migrate themselves in place on load.
MRO is pre-1.0 and under active development. Current directions:
- Mastery capstones (the 1.0 gate) — milestone unlocks at high mastery that you actually feel: each magic school's master (two-handed) spells become castable one-handed at 50, then dual-castable at 100.
- Sharper DR inputs (also gating 1.0) — the past-cap DR ladder will read worn armor, perks, and permanent effects while excluding actively cast spells like wards and flesh spells.
- Proper status info for DR and absorb (also gating 1.0) — the in-game magic/status pages presenting your real past-cap DR and per-element absorb clearly, not just the MCM panel.
- Broaden beyond Requiem. Detect the load order's balance style and auto-tune growth rates and targets so MRO fits more setups, not just Requiem/LoreRim — the direction behind the new name.
- Load-order-aware calibration. A regenerator pass that reads your actual load order — including the Experience mod's settings and your spells' real magicka costs — to bake list-appropriate defaults, so the numbers suit whatever you play rather than one reference list.
- Refinements. An optional toggle for how magic resistance interacts with elemental resistance, and skill books granting partial mastery levels.
MRO_GenerateESP.py generates MRO.esp + SEQ (never hand-edited)
Source/Scripts/ Papyrus sources (+ compile-only stubs)
native/ CommonLibSSE-NG SKSE plugin (CI-built)
MRO-nofomod/ the flat install package (name is historical)
Optional/ Experience.ini — packaged as a separate optional zip
tools/ compile.sh / dump_record.py / audit_esp.py
docs/ START AT docs/INDEX.md
releases/vX.Y.Z/ immutable release archive (never deleted)
docs/INDEX.md is the entry point. The docs are written so any capable
person or model can continue development from them alone: the project
playbook, a binary-format guide (every record recipe verified against vanilla
bytes), a symptom-to-fix debugging cookbook, test procedures, and the native
plan with per-hook open-source references.
SKSE64, Address Library for SKSE Plugins, SkyUI 5.2+, Custom Skills
Framework, and powerofthree's Papyrus Extender. Currently balanced for and
tested against Requiem-based lists (LoreRim, Skyrim SE 1.6.1170); other
setups are the roadmap's broadening work. The bundled MRO.dll is part of
the mod itself and required.
MRO contains only original work — a Python-generated plugin and an SKSE DLL. It redistributes no assets from Requiem or any other mod; those remain separate requirements you install yourself.
- marth — design, direction, and all in-game testing.
- Claude (Anthropic) — implementation pair: plugin generator, Papyrus, the SKSE plugin, tooling, and documentation.
- Reference implementations this project studied (no assets reused): CommonLibSSE-NG, ArmorRatingRescaledRemake, Resistances Rescaled, Custom Skills Framework, and powerofthree's Papyrus Extender.
Personal project, under active development and not currently distributed.