Vanilla Plus Balance Difficulty and AI Patch

Vanilla+ Balance, Difficulty, and AI Patch

Load this late, or after whichever mod made your game too difficult and unfun :)

Configuring a Bethesda game to have PERFECT difficulty is a deeply personal process, and I hope this makes it a little easier! This is one difficulty configuration that focuses on restoring a heavily modded Starfield closer to what Vanilla felt like.

One use-case for this mod is that someone downloaded a ton of mods and then finds that they actually are having less fun now. Maybe the aim bot NPCs from the AI overhaul are doing too much. Maybe stealth is broken now.

Maybe the NPCs are now super high level and are bullet sponges.

Maybe you are encountering too many legendary enemies.

You might have known this was going to happen before downloading, but the mod included a ton of features you really wanted. Those features will be safe and untouched, while restoring some settings closer to Vanilla.

Just load this mod after your load order, and it will put things back to a way that hopefully makes you happy, without being required to remove any mods or lose any functionality from larger overhauls you might have installed.

Or, download xEdit and use this as a template for tweaking difficulty yourself. This file includes some of the most impactful difficulty related settings and it should be pretty easy to see what each one does based on the name, and then adjust it accordingly.

Core Changes:

Player gains 20 HP per level, as per Vanilla. This is included just in case a mod you installed nerfed this, and you want your health back.

Enemies gain 5 HP per level (Skyrim default, -15 from Starfield). A leveled enemies mod might have made your whole game too spongy.

Various AI tweaks that, while slightly more challenging than Vanilla, are WAY more reasonable than the settings used in popular AI overhauls, thereby nerfing them - or slightly improving AI over Vanilla if you play with no AI overhauls.

Some slight improvements to space controls and targeting, especially in case a mod you installed nerfed them.

Slight reductions in the # of Legendary Enemy Spawns, in case a mod buffed them, or because they become ultra bullet sponges with the other mods you installed.

Various stealth settings made more reasonable so that stealth is viable even if you have other difficulty mods installed that make it harder. This also ensures you have a chance to overhear NPC ambient dialogue that is sometimes cut when they have insane detection radius.

Aim stability increased when crouched.

Aiming with a controller is slightly easier; restored vanilla aim assist that many mods remove without mentioning.