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 Where "just spent 10 hours modding, time to play" becomes "modding itself is the game." Stabbey_the_Clown posted:This is like the Xeno's Paradox of modding. I complete a few steps and suddenly, more steps appear ahead! LAST UPDATED: 08/26/2021  IMPORTANT NOTE: This thread is super out-dated and I have no plans to update it. If you want to make a new thread, sound off! Might be better/more flexible to shift all this to the wiki imo. Welcome to the Skyrim Modding and Troubleshooting Thread. This is the For the most part, I plan to list the best and most comprehensive mods in each category, along with a few of my personal favorites. Now please pay attention to the following IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT  The thread will "soon" (lol) be updated to incorporate Skyrim SE changes and options. Table of Contents and Quick Reference
 ATTENTION! We run a tight ship here. Honest.
  Plugins, ESP or ESM files: A "plugin" is a basic game data definition file. The .esp and .esm file extensions are "Elder Scrolls Plugins" and "Elder Scrolls Masters" respectively, but they function in basically the same way: each file is a plugin containing lists of records of game data that mods modify. Skyrim can only load 255 plugins. BSA file: A "Bethesda Softworks Archive," the archive file format used by Bethesda to load non-game-data assets, including scripts. Technically, you could do without these and just load raw assets, but unless you're using a mod manager that cordons off mod files from Skyrim's data folder, this will make dealing with conflicting assets a thicket of sorrows. (Use a mod manager (i.e., use Mod Organizer).) Merged Patch, Bashed Patch, or Smashed Patch: Not to be confused with Merged Plugin. These are all terms for automatically created patches that solve conflicts between mods in your load order. In this guide, "Merged Patch" is used throughout as a term for this general category of patch. Check out Gyshall's guide to making a Smashed Patch here. Merged Plugin: This refers to the result of either the Merge Plugins Standalone, or the Merge Plugins TES5Edit Script by matorsmash. Basically, it's the rsult of taking several mods' plugins and combining them into one. Not recommended for scripted/quest-heavy mods, but perfect for those "Here's three new swords" mods. Useful for getting around the 255 plugin limit. Not to be confused with Merged Patch. Papyrus: Plugin-less/ESP-less mod: These mods don't have an associated plugin file, usually texture, model, and/or sound replacers. SKSE Plugin: This mod is a DLL - sometimes paired with an ESP - that uses the Skyrim Script Extender to actually alter the games code at runtime. This allows for quite a few benefits over standard mods, but requires a lot more expertise to create than a more typical mod. Gimmick: Either means "reliant on using certain gameplay tricks" or "I am literally too stupid to handle this poo poo" -- depends on the person using the word. SkyProc Patcher: A patch created using a SkyProc Java application, which reads your plugins and creates a customized patch for your game. Note: If you're using Mod Organizer, you'll need to install 32-bit Java, since MO can't interface with 64-bit programs. Vanilla: Depending on context, Skyrim: Legendary Edition without mods, or Skyrim without DLC or mods period. Generally the former. Basically, "only content made by Bethesda" is the usual meaning. Immersive: Used to mean "doesn't seem out of place so it won't break your suspension of disbelief." Now utterly meaningless due to pretentious masturbatory overuse. At best, you can be reasonably sure that the mod will not contain Cloud Strife's buster sword or Sonic the Hedgehog characters if it's called immersive. Lore-Friendly: See Immersive.  where_to_get_mods.txt Steam Workshop: Basically the iTunes of Skyrim Modding. There are a lot of modders who don't like the workshop due to policies and such, and thus don't post mods there. On the other hand, some mods can only be found here. The Nexus: The main source for mods, I'd use the cliched "hive of scum and villainy" Star Wars quote to describe the Nexus, but we have the 'Slab (below) for that. The Nexus has its own mod manager, the creatively titled Nexus Mod Manager, but it's garbage. Luckily, you can set Mod Organizer to handle the "Download with Nexus Mod Manager" links. Gameplay Enhancement Mods for Skyrim (GEMS): I'll talk more about this later, but this is less a site that hosts mods than a directory to a whole loving ton of mods to alter Skyrim's gameplay, all helpfully categorized. Lover's Lab: AKA "Lover Slab" or "the 'Slab." Link intentionally not provided. While the Nexus will let you post your "Well here's a little girl in sexy clothes but it's okay because she's actually a thousand-year-old vampire" mod as long as you maintain plausible deniability, all that goes out the window on the 'Slab. Realistic Horse Vaginas, Immersive Rape, whatever, it's all there and lets hope it drat well stays there. If you ever decide to try your hand at making Skyrim mods, though, brace yourself for the possibility that the answer you seek to some obscure technical issue may end up being here. Pursuit of bizarre video-game-mediated sexual fetishes apparently brings out some real innovation and creativity in people! TES Alliance: Another decent place to get mods. It's got fewer mods, but the atmosphere is definitely friendlier than the Nexus. Some stuff (mostly Trainwiz stuff) is hosted here exclusively. ModDB: Not Skyrim Specific, nor is it nearly as extensive, but some mods that have been removed from the Nexus for drama reasons have ended up here, namely the Populated Skyrim mods. /r/ModPiracy: A place you might be able find mods that are unavailable anywhere else, for whatever reason. Useful for anything that this list can't actually link to.   There are a couple of things that we should go over before we begin:
 Before you begin actually modding, you need to decide on a mod manager to use. I strongly recommend using Mod Organizer over Nexus Mod Manager or Steam Workshop, and Agents has created a handy chart to help you decide:  Not listed here is Wrye Bash, which is a decent enough but very technically intricate mod manager. Not recommended over Mod Organizer, but you'll have to use it to make Bashed Patches, so it's worth knowing about. You could also decide just to install mods manually, and Godspeed with that, you crazy bastard. The remainder of this guide will assume that you chose Mod Organizer, and if you didn't, well, good luck you contrarian rear end in a top hat. Two things of note about Mod Organizer: 1. IF YOU'RE USING MOD ORGANIZER, YOU MUST RUN ALL YOUR MODDING TOOLS THROUGH MOD ORGANIZER OR THEY WON'T SEE YOUR MODS. I said this not long ago, but it bears repeating. 2. Mod Organizer has its own copies of the Skyrim INI files, maintained per profile, so changes made to the game's normal INI files won't affect anything if you run the game through MO. However, ENBoost sometimes seems to expect those INI files to exist, so it's worth running the Skyrim launcher once to generate them. Alright, let's dive right into the categories!  The mods in the Mandatory category, while not actually "mandatory," improve or fix the the game in such a way that they make for a good "minimal/near-vanilla" mod setup. This has been done to spare you the effort of asking for such a thing in the thread. Consider for yourself the scale of what's being "fixed" to see whether it's worth the effort. I've tried to put these in a rough order of descending importance so that items higher up on the list are probably more worth having. Some fix little-enough things that you might skip them to save some time.The Unofficial Legendary Edition Patch (USLEEP): This fixes all those annoying bugs that Bethesda leaves in because they're sloppy. If you're using the free High Resolution DLC, be sure to grab the Unofficial High-Resolution Patch too. There's rumblings that many of the "bug fixes" being made verge on subjective judgment calls about "how the game should be." To which, I think the developers would say, "Noooo!" (To resolve this strange bug in the patch which has not been fixed, consider Shut Up, Mirmulnir.) Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE): Not a mod but a program that "wraps" around Skyrim's executable. If you want to use SKSE, you have to launch Skyrim through it. SKSE adds a bunch of new Papyrus functions which are immensely useful for mod authors, and so many of the best new mods require it. Even if you don't plan on using any SKSE mods (which, lol, what the christ), you should be running with the SKSE Memory Fix for improved stability. Once you install SKSE, open up notepad and copy this into it: code:This fixes a long-standing Bethesda bug with memory allocation and causes Skyrim to be much more stable. Seriously, the folks behind the script extender back-ported this fix to Oblivion and the Fallouts and improved stability in those games too! Crash fixes and Bug fixes: Using the magic of the SKSE, "meh" has fixed a whole bunch of engine-deep issues. It's seriously kind of insane the poo poo he's found. ESP-less SKSE plugins, and you don't need the memory fix above if you use Crash fixes. SkyUI: Vastly improves the original Skyrim interface, which was designed by and for crab people. Also includes the Mod Configuration Menu (MCM) which is required by many mods these days. If you happen to be a crab person, you can use SkyUI Away to restore the original UI while keeping the MCM. If you install SkyUI Away, I will know instantly, and I will shake my head in bemusement wherever I am and whatever I am doing. ENBoost: ENB is a highly popular graphic extender that can make your game look amazing, for various definitions of amazing. I don't know, I don't use it for that because it also absolutely murders your framerate. However, it also implements several speedhacks in regards to how Skyrim handles textures, so if you run the stripped down "ENBoost" settings it actually improves performance and stability. Note that if you're using Windows 10, Microsoft has elected to kill ENBoost's ability to expand the memory available to Skyrim by hard OS-level locking DirectX 9 games to 4 GB. Sorry! Modern Brawl Bugs Patch, and the Brawl Bugs Patch CHEAT Patch: The Modern Brawl Bugs Patch fixes issues with a few scripts that cause them to break brawls. If this doesn't work (which it might not because this problem is seriously hard to nail down and eliminate), the cheat patch lets you use anything in a brawl without making it assault, and I strongly recommend installing one of these, because even if you plan to play every brawl honorably, brawls are incredibly easy to break, and some of them are quest requirements. Look, you've got two choices:
SkyTweak and Grimy Utilities: I include these because they can both help overcome the bugs that slip through USLEEP, and are very useful mods in their own right. Weapons and Armor Fixes - Remade (WAFr) and Clothing and Clutter Fixes (CCF): Fixes little bugs and inconsistencies. Fuz Ro D-oh - Silent Voice: Saves everyone the time and effort of having to make silent voice files for unvoiced NPCs in mods. SKSE plugin, no ESP. May require some additional steps. No stretching: Fixes some ugly textures to preserve the illusion that you're actually looking at rocks rather than rock-colored sheets being wrapped over featureless geometric shapes. ~muh immersion~ Enchantment Reload Fix: SKSE Plugin, fixes an engine bug related to player-made enchantments and reloading. Wiseman303's Flora Fixes: Fixes the flora respawn bug, and is a better option than the old Flora Respawn Fix. Extended UI: Makes several tweaks to the Skill screen, making it look nicer on high-res displays. MFG Console: Makes the console much more useful, displaying a lot more information when you select objects. Great for tracking down problems. Dragon Stalking Fix: Ever left a building, just minding your own business, only to turn smack dab into 2 tons of dead flying lizard, just sorta draped over the architecture, accusing you with its cold dead eyes? I have and it's loving creepy, and this mod fixes it. Distant Decal Fix: Formerly much more critical, now fixes exactly 20 meshes that the USLEEP team hasn't (yet??). Not available on nexus, the link is to the STEP Wiki entry, with the download listed as "Other." THOSE 20 MESHES BETTER BE loving WORTH IT!!Eyes Glitch Fix: Eyes have a tendency to get very messed up after certain effects, like invisibility, are removed. This prevents that. ESP-less.  The mods in the Quality of Life section are, while not fixing bugs per-se, centered around eliminating the more frustrating elements of vanilla Skyrim, or improving lackluster elements, or otherwise adding neat new features and options to the game that don't quite fit elsewhere. A Quality World Map: Improves the resolution of the ingame map, and has an option for roads to show up on the world map! Bounty Gold: Lets you configure how much gold you get for various radiant quests through the MCM. When Vampires Attack and Run For Your Lives: These two mods cause villagers to run when Vampires and Dragons attack towns, respectively. You can, alternatively, just straight-up disable vampire attacks in towns. Hearthfire attacks disabled: Similar to the above, disables the attacks on your player-built homes in Hearthfire. Better Dialog Controls, Better Message Box Controls and No Poison Dialogs: Improves minor but recurring issues with controlling Skyrim. Quick Loot: Opens a menu when looking at a container that lets you nab stuff from it without opening it, like in Fallout 4. May have some instability issues without Crash fixes or Bug fixes. Better Jumping: Adds sprint-jumping, loving finally. Optionally enables (via ini) other jumping stuff, like double jumps. ESP-less SKSE plugin. Better Stealing: No longer is there a psychic crime imprint on items you steal (marking them as "Stolen") when no one is looking. Reasonably expensive items would logically be missed, so these will still need to be fenced. ESP-less SKSE plugin. Autosave Manager: Bethesda quicksaves have had a history of being corruption-prone. This eliminates that danger, as well as adding completely configurable time- and event- based saving. Skyrim Enhanced Camera: SKSE Plugin, makes it so you have a body and a shadow in first-person, as well as being able to use first person in views where the game normally throws you into third-person. There are other mods that do this, but not as well. Smart Souls: SKSE Plugin, compatible with everything. Makes it so Soul Gems will only fill gems of the appropriate size. RaceMenu: Opens up a lot more options for designing your character, so you can make your ~~perfect waifu~~. Bald Head: Finally, you can be a real bald old man instead of just some shaven-headed poser. Pumping Iron - Dynamic Muscle Growth: Quiet and Silent Dead Thrall Groans and Moans: Makes playing a Necromancer a lot more bearable by shutting your raised creatures the hell up. Uncle Sheogorath: Replaces the BORING loading screen tips with tips from Sheogorath himself! Goon-made. Lore-Based Loading Screens: If you actually want more BORING loading screens, try this out. Pong in Loading Screens: Another loading screen replacer, this one has a fully functional version of pong you play against the computer while loading (no scores, sorry!) and apparently it doesn't slow anything down. Long Lost Smelters of Skyrim: Puts smelters in more locations. There are other mods that do this, but this is the one Agents uses. Immersive Animations: Makes some of the animations in Skyrim look less awkward. Wearable Lanterns: Better than a torch. MCM configurable. Convenient Horses: Makes having and using a horse much more, well... convenient. MCM configurable. Immersive Horses: An alternative to the above that improves the way horses work and adds more options in less dramatic ways. The Paarthurnax Dilemma: Tired of that stupid loving bit with the Blades where Bethesda tried to make you make a "hard choice"? Give Todd Howard the middle finger with this mod. Guard Dialog Overhaul: Bit of a misnomer, as it actually touches a lot of incidental dialog from many NPCs, making the things they say to you and to each-other much more varied and sensible. The Choice is Yours - Fewer Forced Quests - Improved Dialogue Options: Exactly what the name of the mod says, makes it a lot easier to not get stupid quests you don't care about. Timing is Everything - Quest Delay and Timing Control: Lets you control when and how a lot of different quests begin! Hate vampire attacks? Eliminate them here! Think it's stupid Merida would offer Dawnbreaker to a vampire? Look no further! Thieves Guild Requirements - No Auto Quest Start Brynjolf: This mod does something like what "The Choice is Yours" and "Timing is Everything" do, but for some specific aspects of the Thieves Guild. Brynjolf doesn't immediately bother you and won't try to recruit you unless you've actually, you know, stolen stuff before. Adds a few minor options and features to the quest itself, which is nice. Localized Thieves Guild Jobs: This lets you choose where your next thieves guild job will be, rather than having it randomly decided. Alternate Start - Live Another Life ("LAL") or Skyrim Unbound: Two different Alternate Start mods. LAL is a bit more pretentious, but has more options, while Unbound is bare-bones but a bit more configurable. I prefer LAL but have used both. Just use something to skip that loving cart ride. (LAL is quite useful for mod authors because it dumps you in a little cell right away before you select a start, so there's an area to test things out immediately.) Faster Horse Dismounting: Exactly what it says it is, ESP-less. D13 Faster GET UP STAND UP animation: Makes you stand up faster after being ragdolled, ESP-less. Skyrim -Community- Uncapper: Lets you modify far more than just the skill caps, things like rate of skill-gain and how much each skill contributes to levelling up. Even Better Quest Objectives: Removes the reliance on using quest arrows, going back to Morrowind style quest descriptions. Dragon Soul Relinquishment: Lets you trade dragon souls for perk points, faster movement, and more. Better Stealth AI for Followers - No Torch while Sneaking: Just what it says it is. Highly compatible. MoreHUD: Adds more info to the screen when you mouse over objects. Bring Out Your Dead: Gives final resting places to NPCs who didn't otherwise have them so that you can properly pay your respects when a random event kills them and their will tells a courier to send you 200 gold for some reason. Skyrim Project Optimization: Reduces the amount of stuff the game engine loads that you can't see. Does so by adding occlusion walls, so radical changes in architecture from other mods will reduce the amount of stuff the game engine loads that you can see. Time On Loading Screen (KenMOD): A friendly reminder that it's 4 AM, go to bed already! Immersive HUD - iHUD: Sets UI interface items to only show up when needed. Move it Dammit for NPC Companions and Followers: Because of this. Reduced NPC Greetings: Fewer chatty NPCs hollering random crap at you while you strut by on the way to your important dragonguy business. The number of such individuals can be lowered to 0 (by, like, shutting them up, not killing them or anything!). Cutting Room Floor: Restores quite a few quests, conversations, items, and locations Bethesda cut before release. Ragdoll Paralysis: Paralysis no longer locks your whole body up like a statue. Appropriately Attired Jarls: Teaches the Female Vampires Have Fangs: Apparently, until now vampire women in Skyrim have been unable to just bite people like animals?? Bowlegged Jump Animation Fix: Makes jumping look less ridiculous. Consistent Older People: Inflict the burden of entropy on those Skyrim residents who have been keeping their 70-something heads attached to 20-something bodies like blasphemous freaks of goddamn nature.  Major Overhauls touch every aspect of the game, especially the perk trees. There are, as far as I know, five major overhauls to Skyrim: SPERG, Ordinator, Perkus Maximus (PerMa), Skyrim Redone (SkyRe), and Requiem. Two other honorable mentions are also included. SPERG - Skyrim Perk Enhancements and Rebalanced Gameplay: This is the goon-made and goon-favorite Skyrim overhaul. Agents likes to tell people that SPERG is how Vanilla Skyrim should've been. Places a lot more importance on your skill scores, Perk tree interaction, and eliminates "mandatory" perks. SPERG is also incredibly compatible (Agents found only one mod to be utterly incompatible with it: Khal's Spellmaking in Skyrim). Requires SKSE and Elys Community Uncapper. Has an MCM and is very configurable. Warning: The installer is a little messed up, you need to move the file SKSE_Elys_Uncapper.ini from the data\SPERG\SKSE\Plugins folder to data\SKSE\Plugins. You'll also need to make sure you move the Dragonborn and Dawnguard patches out of the Optional folder. Ordinator: This is a perk overhaul by the great EnaiSiaion. Makes some very unique playstyles possible, but has a reputation for being overly-reliant on "gimmicks." Some mad bastard out there made a SPERG/Ordinator combination patch so you can have the best of both worlds!  Perkus Maximus (PerMa) and Skyrim Redone (SkyRe): Two massive overhauls both done by the same crazy person, PerMa is the "Sequel" to SkyRe, incorporating many of its design decisions and discarding others. Both seem to focus more on making perk choices really matter and adding new gameplay options. Both SkyRe and PerMa require using SkyProc patchers. Requiem: ACE Combat Skills: An older skill and perk overhaul. I played with it back in the day and had fun with it, but it's no longer supported and a bit long in the tooth, design-wise. Still, might be worth checking out. EnaiSiaion's mods: He shows up in a few places on this list, but all his various "minor overhaul" mods (listed below), when combined together, make for a fairly "major overhaul" on their own. He has mods for magic, shouts, combat, racial traits, enchantments, and standing stone effects. A lot of them might even be compatible with most major overhauls (maybe??). EnaiStation is working to make sure they're compatible with Skyrim SE from day one.  Unlike major overhauls, Minor Overhauls are generally limited in scope to one segment of Skyrim's gameplay, and are mostly compatible with each other and possibly with major overhauls as well (almost everything is compatible with SPERG!) These have been broken up into categories. Crafting Complete Crafting Overhaul Remade (CCOr): CCOr is a major overhaul of the smithing system, with many integrated options and scriptied compatibility with a lot of mods. Has Jaysus Swords, Bandoliers, Cloaks of Skyrim, and Winter is Coming integrated into it, but you will need the meshes, textures, and sounds from those mods (just deactivate the ESP files from those mods). If you use this with SPERG, deactivate SPERG's salvage system in the MCM. Complete Alchemy and Cooking Overhaul (CACO): By the same modder as CCOr, CACO does for alchemy and cooking what CCOr does for smithing. Not quite as compatible as CCOr. If you use this with iNeed, disable iNeeds salt requirement in its MCM. Requires Wiseman's Flora Fixes. There is a SPERG patch out there for it, and even a SPERG+Ordinator patch for it if you want to get really crazy. Dwemer Certified: Have you ever wanted to craft an army of automaton followers? Of course you have. Magic Apocalypse Spell Package: EnaiSiaion's magnum opus, Apocalypse adds tons of great new spells to Skyrim, and makes non-Destruction mage a viable playstyle. Even if you're not playing a primarily mage character, adds a lot of neat utility spells for Paladin and Assassin types. Wintermyst: Adds dozens of new enchantments to the game. Thunderchild: Revamps shouts. Adds a ton of new shouts appropriate for different play styles, and passive abilities that help remove cooldown, and makes a shout-centric character viable. Forgotten Magic Redone: A spell mod with a different focus than most: rather than adding a bunch a new spells, Forgotten Magic Redone adds a limited number of new spells that can be leveled up and upgraded. Midas Magic: Not up to the quality of Apocalypse Spells, but adds quite a few fun spells with a neat way to acquire, and (amusingly) since this mod originally predated the DLC, some spells that Bethesda later Elemental Destruction Magic: Adds three new elements of magic - Wind, Water, and Earth. Neat idea, not entirely ~lore-friendly~ but cool execution nonetheless. No idea on the inclusion of "Heart" yet. Fire and Ice Overhaul: This mod makes it so things can actually catch fire from fire magic - and dragons breath! You can create ice walls and put out fires with ice magic. Great idea, but really script heavy. Combat Combat mods - Ultimate Combat, Deadly Combat, WildCat, and/or Vigor: There are many to choose from but these four are quite popular and accleimed. That "and/or" indicates that some are compatible with the others. Either of the first two is a decent combat overhaul mod. WildCat is EnaiSiaion's new combat overhaul, but I'm not sure how it compares to the others. Nor do I know much about Vigor but it's possibly worth checking out as an alternative/addition to others. Archery Gameplay Overhaul: A general retooling of Skyrim's entire archery system including reworked animations, ~realism~ tweaks, and new features. VioLens: Revamps the killmoves/killcam, successor to "Dance Of Death." Player Character Aurora - Standing Stones of Skyrim: Makes the powers and bonuses associated with the Standing Stones more varied and interesting. Imperious - Races of Skyrim: Makes the powers and bonuses associated with the different races in Skyrim more varied and interesting. Disparity: As an alternative to the above, Disparity has options for making the various races more distinct and interesting with more of a focus on passive effects than active powers. I always forget the billion little active powers I get here and there, so I prefer it. It also has stuff for starting "character classes" to make your new characters less blank slates. Better Vampires: Makes almost every aspect of vampirism configurable through the MCM, and adds a lot of new features to being a vampire. Sneak through Fort Dawnguard and turn the entire Dawnguard into vampires! Moonlight Tales: Very similar in focus to Better Vampires, but for werewolves. Factions and Followers Enhanced Skyrim Factions - The Companions Guild: This mod overhauls the Companions guild somewhat, restoring some cut content, fixing some bugs, and ensuring that the questline lasts more than two hours. College Days - Winterhold: The same idea as Enhanced Skyrim Factions - The Companions Guild but for - you guessed it! - The College of Winterhold! Extensible Follower Framework: There are quite a few follower overhauls out there, but this is the one Agents recommends, for several reasons:
Survival Skyrim Survival mods: This is the homepage of Chesko's various survival-related mods. Some are WIP, but some are both complete and celebrated. Frostfall is a game-changer. It adds a hypothermia-survival mechanic to the game, and completely changes how you think about going from point A to point B. Best when paired with iNeed or RND, although Chesko is working on his own needs mod. He's also got a camping gear and campground mod, Campfire, as a standalone mod which is required for Frostfall. Realistic Needs and Diseases ("RND") or iNeed: I've used both these mods, and while they're both good, I much prefer iNeed. RND is really detailed oriented and specific, while iNeed is much more my speed. They both work, though. Hunterborn: This mod attempts to revamp the hunting and butchering/harvesting aspect of the game. Not bad, but a very script-heavy mod. One With Nature: Allows you to tweak animal behavior if you don't think all bears and wolves should be fanged kamikazes. Miscellaneous ASIS: A SkyProc Patcher, ASIS allows for increased and random spawns, distributes new spells and perks to NPCs, and gives more potions to NPCs. Use with Agent's Improved ASIS INIs. Automatic Variants: This is a SkyProc patcher that lets there be, you guessed it, variations in the appearance of enemies. A wonderful mod, I highly recommend it! Relationship Dialogue Overhaul: Possible replacement for Follower Commentary Overhaul, a newer approach to managing NPC status/relations with the player and the dialog the game uses. It's gotten some serious praise in this and the old thread. Compatibility might not be there yet. Familiar Faces: This is a very cool mod that lets you import your characters from one playthough as NPCs into another. Requires RaceMenu. 
GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Aug 26, 2021 |
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that's a thing now, kind of: 
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 The old thread's sections on Weapons, Armor, and Other In-Game items have been condensed into one section. It's entitled Loot because, let's face it, that's what it is! The nice thing about these mods is that they are typically pretty easy to merge and save space in your load order. Note: There are several popular mods that could go in this section - Jaysus Swords, Bandoliers, Cloaks of Skyrim, and Winter is Coming - that have been omitted because they've been integrated into Complete Crafting Overhaul Remade, and you really should use that. Immersive Armors: Really, the end-all-be-all of armor mods, almost all the decent armors have made it into this mod. Completely configurable with the MCM. Aetherium Armor and Weapons Compilation: Three words: Dwarven. Power. Armor. Great little mod, uses the Aetherium Forge from the Lost to the Ages quest. (Before you start bitching, yeah it's lore-friendly.) Morrowind Armor - Netch Leather: Very nicely done Netch leather armor. If you use this with Ashlander Apparel's "The Ashy Spellsword" plugin, load The Ashy Spellsword after this mod, as both try to edit Teldryn Sero. Bonemold Expanded: Adds back in a bunch of Bonemold armor types that were in Morrowind, as well as adding in the Gondolier Hat from Morrowind! Sold. Ordinator Armor: Actually a port of an Oblivion armor mod, but still, Ordinator armor rules. Wizard Hats: "Turn Skyrim's boring old mage hoods into something objectively better." -Simsmagic Warmonger Armory: Another decent lore-friendly armor compilation, hasn't been updated in a while but still good. Immersive Weapons: Probably the most popular weapons compilation, though not as good as Immersive Armors. I mention that it's the most popular because it consequently has the most compatibility patches. Weapons of the Third Era: Adds a bunch of Morrowind and Oblivion style weapons. Heavy Armory - New Weapons: Adds a lot of nice new weapons. Lore Weapon Expansion: Adds some new weapons, with a focus on remaining lore friendly. Note: There is quite a bit of overlap among the above four weapons mods. It might be good to pick one and stick with it unless you are into resolving compatibility issues in TES5Edit (which you will be (modding is the game)). Billyroo's swords compilation: A collection of some fine-lookin' swords and other weapons. InsanitySorrow's swords, the Thegn, the Stamford, and the Bastard: The first two are Viking-themed, the last is a bastard sword. What were you expecting? The Loners Sword: Sort of a sword and quest mod, as there's a bit of a process to collecting it. Brigandage: A set of armors for theify-roguish types. It can add its armors to the bandit leveled lists, giving Skyrim's bandits a lot more variety in appearance. Common Clothes: Enhances the look of ordinary plain clothes for ordinary, plain, Talos-fearin' folk. Aesir Armor: Another kind of a quest mod, this armor set boasts of enough flexibility for any playstyle, consisting of 80 objects that can be combined into armor pieces. Craftable Thalmor Equipment - Standalone Version: Adds in "dark" elven equipment used by the Deadly Dragons Armory: Agents says that this is probably the most oldschool mod that he still regularly uses. It adds new weapons, armor, soul gems, and alchemy ingredients. Even though the equipment consists almost entirely of retextures, he still really likes this mod and some of the retextures. Companion to Deadly Dragons (See Friends and Foes below.) Real Bows: Replaces the vanilla bows with ones that are more physically probable and look really sharp, the modder sounds like he might actually be a bowyer. An NPO Module - Crossbows: Adds in new crossbow types for each material. Faction Crossbows: Adds in new crossbow types for various factions in the game, such as the Legion and the Dark Brotherhood. Could be considered a ~lore friendly~ alternative to the above. Chitin Goggles and Dwemer Goggles and Scouter: The first is nice and lore friendly but is mostly cosmetic, the latter actually has some functions. Ignore the message from LOOT to remove Chitin goggles because it's included in Wet and Cold, because Wet and Cold doesn't include craftable ones. Craftable Horse Barding: All the fun of the Horse Armor DLC... ok, not the best description starter. Adds completely decorative horse armor to the crafting recipes and leveled lists. Craftable Hearthfire Planters: Allows you to pursue your dream of turning Skyrim into a giant greenhouse. Requires Chesko's Campfire. Book Covers Skyrim - Lost Library: A companion to Book Covers Skyrim (see the Audiovisual Mods below), Lost Library adds in a large number of lore books from previous games and online sources. Be a Milk Drinker: Adds purchaseable milk and craftable flavoured milk bottles to the game. Good for a survival game or Khajiit. One issue with it is that it adds some milk barrels to vanilla houses which might be out of place if you have any overhauls of those installed. Morrowloot: Hoo-boy, you may notice that the title of this entry isn't a link. That's because there's a number of versions of Morrowloot to choose from. The general idea of Morrowloot is removing the  Need new followers? Need new enemies? Look no further than this, the Friends and Foes section! These mods all add new NPCs and creatures to the game or give new options for dealing with NPCs, be they people to help or people to kill. Inigo: Goon Eric the Mauve says this is "the best custom follower hands down if you're looking for a follower that frequently interacts with you in a way that feels natural. A lot of his comments are genuinely pretty funny, and he slowly opens up to you over time in a way that doesn't feel nearly as hamhanded as Arissa or as sappy as Vilja. He's also built to be sneak friendly... The only downside is if you don't want your follower to actually be an active part of your world, but if that's the case I don't imagine you'd be installing custom follower mods anyway  Or if you don't like cat-men I guess."Hoth: Cool-looking bounty hunter guy, made by the same author as Immersive Armors. Brhuce Hammar - Legacy: TrainWiz's quest-and-follower mod. It uh, might have to be seen to be believed. Interesting NPCs: A mix of some good and some bad things, but overall very ambitious, adding over 250 voiced NPCs and over 50 quests related to them. The B-Team: Fleshes out some of the less well known named NPCs into followers. Sokco's Guild Starter: Allows you to create your own faction and invite NPCs to join it and wreak havoc/do good deeds/more or less gently caress up constantly throughout Skyrim, as you please. My Home Is Your Home: Allows you to assign followers to homes. We have never been closer to turning Skyrim into The Sims: High Fantasy. It's a glorious time to be alive. Extra Encounters Reborn: Adds more stuff to randomly come across in the game. Extended Encounters: Same as the above, but now missing from the usual places. High Level Enemies: Adds new higher level variants of Skyrim's enemy types to keep the difficulty scaling. Skyrim Immersive Creatures: Adds a ton of new creatures to the game, whether they are really "immersive" will have to be a personal judgement call. Skyrim Monster Mod: SkyMoMod is rather outdated, and I only list it for completeness sake and to mention that it doesn't require the DLC. Revenge Of the Enemies: Changes up the enemy AI to have more variety, intelligence, and surprise. Dwarven Mechanical Dragons - Guardians of Kagrenzel Edition: Especially since the latest version of Deadly Dragons removed them, this version of DMD makes them memorable encounters, since they only appear in a few select locations, and are very tough. Dwemer Spectres: This is an updated version of TrainWiz's original mod, and is better than the versions included with Skyrim Immersive Creatures. You can use this with SiC, just disable the SiC Spectres in the MCM. This includes named "Boss Spectres" in certain locations which have neat, unique loot.  Places to keep your poo poo while you're out killing folks to make their poo poo your poo poo, Player Homes can be a lot more than just buildings. Some include one or more quests. Elianora is a mod author with a variety of player home mods. The Haven From The Cold And Dark: As the title suggests, a home with a lush green environment, which is located on an island far from Skyrim to preserve ~thy immersion~ It's set in its own little worldspace and has a few other locations to check out. Haafinheim: This mod was an entrant, and first place winner, in the Reddit house mod contest. Includes a quest to take possession of the house and explain its current state before you fix it up. Clockwork: By goon Antistar, it's more than just a house mod. It includes a quest to claim the place, side quests, and two dungeons. Rave reviews in the old thread. Fyr Manor and Agent's Fyr Manor Fixes: TrainWiz crazy clockwork city house, what Agents likes about this house is that while it's a fully featured house, you can't use all the features until you find the modules to unlock them, which are all hidden over Skyrim and Solstheim. Agents fixes makes several of the features work as advertised. Rayek's End Revisited (Mazz's End): Remake of a popular house mod by a Goon. Your Market Stall: Not so much a house, lets you craft a portable market stall that you can set up anywhere and place items for sale, and you sit at the chair to open shop. Good for moving stolen goods and of course ~immersion~ Hearthfire Multiple Adoptions: While not a house in and of itself, this lets you adopt up to six children and move your family to mod houses which support it, which is a lot of them. Jaxsonz Positioner: Also not a house in and of itself, this mod lets you reposition, remove, and add stuff to the game world and is useful for playing dollhouse with your player homes.  These are mods that add new Quests, but also new lands and locations. For more of this type of thing, see the above section. World-Eater Beater: This mod overhauls the final battle with Alduin to be an epic, five-stage affair. A TrainWiz creation, with all that entails. Moon and Star: Agents said this was good but short. To be honest, I have it on my list because I like the weird Dunmer refugee town it puts floating on rafts out in a lake. Maybe I will even do the quest someday when I actually play Skyr- ahahahaha.  Aurora Village: Adds a little town to the lake by Falkreath. A neat little uncomplicated addition. Works well with the above with a patch. Falskaar, by Alexander J. Velicky: Alexander J. Velicky's mod, Falskaar by Alexander J. Velicky, is a pretty massive mod. In Falskaar by Alexander J. Velicky, Alexander J. Velicky has added a massive new island, and Falskaar by Alexander J. Velicky apparently took Alexander J. Velicky 18 months of solo work to complete, and apparently got Alexander J. Velicky hired at Bungie. Falskaar by Alexander J. Velicky is a very technically adept mod, but with all due respect to Alexander J. Velicky, Agents found Falskaar by Alexander J. Velicky to be rather boring, to the point that he has started it several times but has yet to finish it. (Alexander J. Velicky) OK, dropping kayfabe, this is a technically impressive mod that's actually kinda dull but has a lot of hype backing it uAlexander J. VelickyAlexander J. VelickyAlexander J. VelickyAlexander J. VelickyAlexander J. Velicky Wyrmstooth: A new-lands DLC-sized mod, the author has disappeared himself and all his works from the Internet so you'll have to find this on your own. Dwemertech and Spectraverse: I wasn't sure whether to put these in Quests or in Magic mods, because they're both. Dwemertech focuses on spells that use Dwemer technology to function, and Spectraverse has two sets of spells: Light and Dark. Both are lore friendly and have quests to gain new spells and abilities. Agents loves these mods. There are also non-quest version that just add the spells if you're a total loving choade. Aethernautics- A Space Travel Mod: This is TrainWiz's first Skyrim mod, and while it's kind of rough around the edges, it makes up for it by being awesome. Explore an abandoned dwemer launch facility and spaceship, then launch it and make it your home. Call down orbital strikes. Explore an abandoned Reman-Era moon colony. Yes, this is lore friendly. The Lost Wonders of Mzark: Explore an ancient Dwemer weapons factory and shut it down before it threatens all of Skyrim. Konahriks Accoutrements: Adds a new dungeon and quest, and adds wearable sets of Dragon Priest equipment that compliment the enchantments of the Masks. Moonpath to Elsweyr: One of the first major Skyrim quest mods, it's not bad. It's got decent voice acting and nicely designed locations. The flow reminds me more of a BioWare game, with a central hub area and sub-areas reached by fast travel, rather than the Bethesda open-world style. Integrated into Legacy of the Dragonborn. Spellmaking in Skyrim - The Last Altar: Actually a very nice quest attached to this mod, which extends the College of Winterhold questline, but the Spellmaking doesn't work with SPERG. At all, because this mod uses certain spells as markers for "player knows this effect for spellmaking" and SPERG adds new versions of every spell, so you can get to the spellmaking altar and climactic battle of the mod and be unable to make any spells. Author promised a compatibility patches years ago and then disappeared from the internet forever. The Wheels of Lull: This is TrainWiz's Skyrim Magnum Opus - A huge mod with some amazing locations and voice work. Explore mountain abbeys overtaken by a mad Thalmor mage, the bottom of the ocean, areas of the clockwork city from Morrowind, and the foundations of reality itself. Meet Brhuce Hammar's dad. A few rough edges, but an amazing mod. This mod also is a sequel to every other Elder Scrolls mod Trainwiz has done, from Sotha Sil Expanded, to Brhuce Hammar Legacy.  Okay, the section all you folks have been waiting for, how to make your game look purdy! Audiovisual mods change the look and feel of Skyrim in sometimes subtle and sometimes drastic ways. To start off, I'm just going to include a link to the old thread's post on modding visuals, since a lot of it is relevant. Skyrim Mod Combiner: The SMC is a tool that lets you select and mix and match a whole bunch of visual mods and combine them in ways that produce an aesthetically pleasing whole. This will require you to go to mod pages and download stuff manually, but once you do, it blends all the files together into a new customized mod. Time consuming, maybe worth it. Noble Skyrim HD: Quoting goon Siets: "Noble Skyrim replaces basically 97% of what is in the game with gorgeous, aesthetically-unified textures. Check out its Mod Features section. No more faffing about with 'rocking stones' this and 'aMidianBorn caves' that and however many other texture files you used to need to download." Almost certainly a hell of a lot more convenient than the SMC but if everything's not to your taste, you're SOL. Bethesda High-Res DLC Optimized: The HRDLC is poorly optimized. Have this load after the HRDLC and the Unofficial HR DLC patch. Imaginator and Dynavision: These two lightweight mods let you tinker with the appearance of Skyrim in an ENB-ish way with an absolutely tiny performance hit, since they use Skyrim's engine features rather than being lovely bolt-on code. Imaginator handles things like Saturation, Bloom, and contrast while Dynavision is all about Depth of Field. Static Mesh Improvement Mod: This mod improves the appearance of tons of little and not-so-little objects in the world. Xenius Character Enhancement: Basically a "vanilla, but better" approach to making NPCs look better in Skyrim, just upgrades a bunch of character textures and models without requiring compatibility patches and such. Textures such as Skin and Eyes are upgraded without everyone looking like anime supermodels. We apologize to anyone who was hoping to get advice on how to make everyone look like anime supermodels. (Has vanished from the Nexus, so you must look ~elsewhere~) aMidianBorn Book of Silence: Perhaps the "definitive" nicer-looking-stuff-in-Skyrim mod, along with CaBaL120's other mods. Seriously, this poo poo's pretty. There's also a version for Immersive Armors. Bethesda Performance Textures - Armor - Clothes - Weapons, Bethesda Performance Textures - Animals and Creatures, and other mods by the same author: Even though it technically shouldn't be happening, aMidianBorn causes an unacceptable framerate loss on my lovely PC. These mods makes things prettier than the base game and don't have the hit. They're at least a worthy alternative, imo. Improved Closefaced Helmets: Makes closed helms fit beast races better, and lets you actually see peoples' eyes in the eyeholes. Requires a good amount of compatibility patching. Elaborate Textiles and Ashland Apparel: Elaborite Textiles makes the vanilla clothes in Skyrim look much more interesting and varied, while Ashland apparel really makes the clothing and armor added by Dragonborn look sharp as hell. Practical Female Armors: Look, this might be a personal thing, but I think armor designed around emphasizing tits is dumb. as. ffffuuuucck. Don't agree? Don't use this mod! There is an "expansion" mod for this that's compatible with Immersive Armors, but you need both. Also there's a Book of Silence Patch. EASIER LOCKPICKING - Without Cheating - Nordic Retexture: Called "easier" solely because this adds scratches to the sides of keyholes on the lockpicking screen, giving a better visual reference for where you picks broke. Dragon Glyphs HD - Fixed: Makes Draconic Runes look much less pixelated everywhere. Book Covers Skyrim: Gives every book in Skyrim an individualized cover with the title and everything. Integrated into Legacy of the Dragonborn, so if you're using that you don't need this. Enchanted Arsenal: Provides a ton of cool graphical effects for enchanted weapons. Realistic Water Two: What I use to make water effects look good. Other options are W.A.T.E.R. (which is no longer up on Nexus) and Pure Waters. ramccoid has mods for lots and lots of graphics replacers for little things you might otherwise not think about : droplets, mist, oil slicks, etc. Enhanced Lights and FX: There are many lighting mods, but this is the one I use for interiors. The way it works is mostly by removing a ton of ambient lighting and adding new light sources (I think?). Personally I just think this makes interiors look better, more natural, and dungeons scary af. Another option is Realistic Lighting Overhaul. Purity or Climates of Tamriel: These both fall under the heading of "weather mods," which are not audiovisual in the way others on this list are, but are pretty much about changing the audiovisual experience of the game. The former is simpler, and therefore easier to set up, because it revamps the weather that exists in the game CoT adds new weather systems, and so has the potential for more interesting effects but requires a lot more care to implement in terms of compatibility. True Storms: This little mod aims to make the rainstorms that roll through Skyrim into impressive and ominous events. Primarily it's a fix/improvement on the vanilla thunder sound effects. The mod page has videos of how this plays out in game, and it's pretty bombastic. Audio Overhaul for Skyrim: Alters the volume and reverb of the in-game sounds in a way that's difficult to describe but very satisfying in action. Immersive Sounds - Compendium: If nothing else, it adds a lot more variety to the available sounds in game. Personalized Music: Just what it says. This mod takes quite a bit of setup, but once it's done it's nice to have your own soundtrack for the game (Rammstein makes excellent combat music!) Warning: Don't use the optional College of Winterhold plugin, because it causes crashes on saving when in the area of Winterhold. Better Animal Footsteps: Generally lowers or raises the volume of animal footsteps to be less jarring or more jarring, as needed. Dragons Shout with Voice: Supposedly, dragon's breath in Skyrim is a matter of words of power creating effects, which is why "shouting" works the way it does. Now, actual dragons' breath attacks will sound like the "deadly verbal debate" they're supposed to. HDT Equipment and Capes with HDT physics: I think these are still a little too experimental, but they still look all kinds of impressive in action: equipment will jostle around on your character's body as you move using the in-game physics engine. And now for a word on actually using ENB as a graphics enhancement system, as intended: Siets posted:
An Advanced Tweaking Guide can be found under "Super Technical Nerd poo poo."  The ~*~cRaY cRaY~*~ mods may or may not be lore-friendly or even good ideas, but are, uh, interesting if nothing else. Enderal - The Shards of Order: Kind of its own category in a way, this is a total conversion mod that is a sequel to Nehrim: At Fate's Edge, an Oblivion TC mod. A major investment but Nehrim supposedly owned hard so probably worth your attention. There is a list of Enderal-compatible mods. Legacy of the Dragonborn: Listed here because it's such a stupidly huge thing (seriously, it's a 2.5 GB download ). At its heart, it's a building to display the various cool poo poo you pick up on your adventures, acting as a museum. It's fallen prone to some major feature creep. Agents says that just having it installed at all can be a performance hit. Use your best judgment!Social NPCs: This is a cool idea for a mod that's a little crazy in its origin story: it's the author's master's thesis (in computer science or game design maybe, not sure). The thesis was research on simulating NPC relationships with a social interaction AI to "automatically create interesting stories that players want to interact with." This is inspiring. Someday I'm going to earn my PhD in Skyrim (and I'll still spend more time modding than playing it).  This is a list of modders who make a lot of various Good (or at least Interesting) poo poo. trainwiz: Mentioned a few times elsewhere but he's got so much stuff it's worth putting him here. Would be in the Cray Cray Modz section except that all the batshit is actually 100% lore friendly (usually??) because Elder Scrolls lore is seriously loving nonsense bonkers. He's got quest and follower mods that uh, kinda push the boundaries, but not in some edgelord or creepshow way, you know what this is a bad description, bailing out now. Due to modder drama, he's been banned from the Nexus but has let other people upload his stuff for him. So, you won't necessarily be able to find all his mods on his profile. mahty: Has a list of mods adding some dwarf-magitech-type stuff. m150: A variety of strange follower mods, and more.  Perhaps consider ignoring the hype and taking a pass on these ones. No links provided because I'm lazy and the whole point is to not use these, so just google it!!! In fairness, not everyone agrees that all of these are irredeemable trash (some folks stick up for Dragon Combat Overhaul, for example), so remember that ultimately it's up to you to try things out and see what you like when it comes to subjective judgment calls about what's fun or not. Organized Bandits in Skyrim: An initially cool idea to create unique themed "gangs" of bandits, it's become bloated with barely relevant feature creep. Civil War Overhaul: This mod is a grand idea, but is insanely script-heavy and prone to bugs. Dragon Combat Overhaul: This mod goes far too far in the direction of "Dragons are unkillable murderbeasts." Sometimes they are just baffling and waste your time with weird or "gently caress you" behavior. Stable uGrids to Load: Found to have a memory leak. Duel Combat Realism: Just read this review to understand. Armonizer and Weaponizer: These two mods have a lot of issues (e.g., Weaponizer adding weapons to enemies that can't use them which makes the enemies do nothing, Armonizer having several armors that have no female model and so give female characters mantorso) and haven't been updated in years. Midas Magic Evolved: Absolutely garbage mod, horrible typo-ridden trash. Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul: A cautionary take by forums poster Whizbang: "It runs like poo poo, it's poorly constructed because he just made like a million actor nodes everywhere and so it conflicts with everything, and the author is a weird spergy Frenchman who won't work with anyone in the greater mod community to try to make his mod better or more compatible." Further: "In continuing 'the author of Immersive Citizens is a crazy person' news, he forced the author of ETAC to remove their compatibility patch because he thinks it's stealing his work. Please don't use Immersive Citizens." GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Jun 4, 2017 |
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 The first section was a list of recommended mods to get you started. This next section is about modding as a practice and community, other resources, technical info, tips and tricks. You may scoff at the idea of caring about this. You're probably thinking, "I'll just download the unofficial patches and some new armors or some poo poo, I don't need this nerd info." See you in 10 hours, friend. When you get back, consider getting involved the awesome GOON PROJECTS I'll talk about near the end!  These are a few names that might pop up from time to time, and so you might want to know: Arthmoor: The lead modder on the Unofficial Patches, and the creator of several other fairly good mods. That being said, he's also a complete toolbox and the physical embodiment of  . Avoid interaction with him if you can, but don't avoid using his mods because of it; mods are not some sort of rear end in a top hat prayer wheel, he doesn't get more powerful the more people who use them.EnaiSiaion: The author of Apocalypse Spells and numerous other magic-related mods. Highly imaginative and skilled, but a bit of a drama queen and a total perfectionist. TrainWiz: A modder who is crazy, awesome, and crazy awesome. His mods tend to explore be Dwemer and Morrowind centric, and to explore the more  areas of the lore. They include a mod where you fight giant monsters by piloting a giant steam centurion in a quest called Pacific Skyrim (Brhuce Hammar: Legacy), a mod that adds an explorable railroad system that connects all the Dwemer Ruins (Blackreach Railroad), and a mod that adds a Dwemer spaceship you can use as a player home (Aethernautics.) If none of that sounds exciting to you,  . That being said, his reach sometimes escapes his grasp, and his mods are known for having some rough edges. Due to modder drama, he's been banned from the Nexus but has let other people upload his stuff for him. So, you won't necessarily be able to find all his mods on his profile.kryptopyr: Author of quite a few great mods, like CACO and CCOr. Boris Vorontsov: Author of the ENB series graphical enhancer. I'll just quote goon Coughing Hobo, who summed Boris up best when he said: Coughing Hobo posted:He exemplifies Russia's institutionalized racism and bigotry every time he talks about something other than ENB, and oftentimes when also talking about ENB. Chesko: Maker of Frostfall and other "survival" type mods. Generally a chill dude with a polished approach. Has a site with extensive info on his mods, Skyrim Survival. matorsmash: Doesn't make mods so much as modding utilities: the plugin merging script/app, "Mator Smash" for smashed patches, some TES5Edit scripts. Good stuff. Apollodown: Maker of the very popular Dragon Combat Overhaul and Civil War Overhaul mods. Has a unique writing style. EggOver1979: Seriously? Total rear end in a top hat. LittleRaskols: Another shithead. If you see this name attached to a mod, just turn around and walk away. Known Goon Modders: Agents are GO!, Hothtrooper, Nerd of Prey, LtSmash, Mazz, Terzaerian, Seorin (ret.). Let me know if you want on (or off) this list.  The following programs range from helpful to necessary for modding. Remember: IF YOU'RE USING MOD ORGANIZER, YOU MUST RUN ALL YOUR MODDING TOOLS THROUGH MOD ORGANIZER OR THEY WON'T SEE YOUR MODS. Exceptions are explicitly noted. TES5Edit: A tool that allows you to examine and modify the records of a number of loaded plugins and also make patches from plugin records. If you know what you're doing, and use the right scripts, you can do a fair amount of sophisticated modding. If you don't, you could gently caress things up horribly. Back up your plugins when it asks if you want to! The Creation Kit: The official mod design software. Available as a tool in Steam. Unless you're planning on making mods, you probably won't need this. Some compatibility issues (navmeshes) can only be resolved here, though. LOOT: The Load Order Optimization Tool. Successor to the similar BOSS, this attempts to reorder your plugins in a way that maximizes compatibility. It's not perfect, and the better you get at modding the more likely you will be to want to sort out load order yourself, but it's a start. Modwat.ch: A tool that constructs a load order summary for you and posts it on the web. Useful if, for some reason, you wanted to show a bunch of people your load order, perhaps to assist with troubleshooting. Merge Plugins: Stand-alone utility to manage the merger of plugins to reduce load order. Used to be a TES5Edit Script. Mator Smash: Stand-alone utility to make Smashed Patches. Used to be a TES5Edit Script. Still in testing and somewhat difficult to use, but check it out! Goon Gyshall wrote up a guide to making a Smashed Patch here. Mod Picker: A work-in-progress project to demystify the process of selecting the mods that suit your needs and resolve compatibility issues by drawing on the community's collective experience. Theoretically allows for user feedback and review of mods, but due to Mod Checker: Work-in-progress online tool/info directory by goon Roadie. This is a lookup-table for compatibility issues between mods. "Check" it out! (Note: Not really a "tool," not run through MO.)FileAccess Interface for Skyrim Script (FISS): Not quite a mod in the usual sense, this is a tool that allows mods to read and write settings to files. Mods with MCMs that use this allow you to save settings between save games which is just awesome. Not needed for mods that don't use it. (Note: Not really a "tool," used by mods that need it, not "run" through MO.) JContainers: Like FISS, this is a tool that extends the capabilities of mods to allow them to save data, but also adds new data structures. You only need it if you use a mod that needs it (like Familiar Faces). (Note: Not really a "tool," used by mods that need it, not "run" through MO.)  The Skyrim Total Enhancement Project (STEP) STEP is... a lot of things. The project starts from the assumption that Skyrim is essentially a console game that needs a good amount of modding support to bring it to a baseline of where a PC game "should" be. Whether you agree with this or not, the results of their efforts are worth looking into. At its core is a regularly updated and refined recommended mod list and guide, which is worth checking out and following at least up until the graphics mods, after which it gets more subjective and limited by hardware. The list does not include any major gameplay alterations since its goal is to "bring Skyrim up" to a certain baseline of quality. It's a foundation to build on. I'm a bit of a STEP fanboy. In the old thread, I can't count the number of times I've linked to one of their guides when someone had a technical issue. Do you want to know how to:
Gameplay Enhancement Mods for Skyrim (GEMS) The GEMS list is an index of tons and tons miscellaneous gameplay mods. I don't think they have all been vetted for quality in the same way as the mods on STEP's list, but there's a huge variety of possible mods to try. The best part about this is that it's well organized. If you're looking for a mod that does a certain kind of thing, GEMS probably has a category for it. You could do a lot worse than browsing it for mods to try. Grimy's Mod Critiques Sadly abandoned now, but worth going through for the entertainment value alone of his takedown of the overrated DUEL Combat Realism mod. His approach also takes a lot of the mystery out of modding.  BroDual This duo of brothers (yes, that is why the name) consistently and regularly puts out overviews of new mods. They have a truly massive number of review videos for which they have helpfully categorized playlists. Gopher Gopher hasn't done a lot of Skyrim mod updates recently, but he has a similar (thought much shorter) catalog of reviews to BroDual. More importantly, he has a number of very useful video guides: for beginners, on using MO, and various tweaks and fixes. Some don't like him because he can be pretty long winded, but he generally knows what he's talking about or at least listens to people who do. Novajam Updates somewhat infrequently, but his honest mod reviews are worth the wait.  Here's where the audience participation begins! So, the Mod Picker thing got me to thinking. If even the most well-thought-out and useful community projects outside the Nexus for sharing information about mods can be undermined by pissbaby primadonna mod authors, what can we do about it? Well, the obvious answer was to start our own mod info sharing site, with blackjack, hookers, etc., but most importantly, with the ability to be honest protected. I started one site and got control over an existing but abandoned one. Check them out and get involved! TES Goons Wiki This is an old site that's been just a bit neglected. I asked the original site runner for admin access and so now we can start sprucing it up. Since I went starry-eyed fanboy for STEP elsewhere in this post, I should clarify what sets this wiki apart. First, STEP doesn't really "editorialize" as much as I'd like to encourage for this resource (it doesn't really talk much about why it recommends the mods it does, or why it removes them outside of technical details or being superseded). Second, STEP's mods are about STEP's mission, meaning that anything that doesn't further its goal of "completing" a baseline Skyrim isn't on there (such as major gameplay overhauls). If you want to get involved (please do!), there should be a big honking "Join" button on the page, but also make a post in the thread so I know who you are. Immersive Lore-Friendly Mods of Skyrim: HD Ultimate Edition This is a modest little blog that I have big plans for. The aim is to be an honest review site. I'll start posting on it soon with more details now that I can  There are some hard limits on what modding can accomplish, enforced by technical limitations of the game engine itself. There are also end-runs around these limits. This section is going to be just a bit on the crunchy side, but it's good to know to understand why certain things are needed or recommended. Maximum Number of Plugins Skyrim can only load 255 plugins, the ESP and ESM files that most basic mods use to store their info. Why? Well, to understand this, we need to understand a little about how Skyrim identifies records in plugins. A record is basically a data object that describes a thing in the game. Each record has an ID number formatted like this: YYZZZZZZ The first two, "YY," are set by the load order of the plugin, and the last six, "ZZZZZZ," are the number of the record within the plugin. For example, skyrim.esm will always be at load order 00, and update.esm at 01, as these are the basic requirements for Skyrim as a game. This means that a record in the former with the ID 00000111 will not conflict with one in the latter with an ID of 01000111, even though they have the same plugin-internal ID number (000111). These numbers are in hexadecimal, which means that each number is in base-16 as opposed to base-10 (i.e., decimal), which people most commonly use for math. In base-10, the maximum value of one "digit" starting at 0 is 9, so a base-10/decimal number goes from 0-9, meaning that a decimal "digit" has a maximum of 10 values. A base-16/hexadecimal number goes from 0-15 (with letters A-F representing the numbers from 10-15) so a hexadecimal digit can have 16 values. So what does all this dumb math for geeks have to do with your cool kid video game modding hobby? Well, if the first two numbers establish the plugin's load order, it means that the maximum number of plugins you can have in your load order is FF, or 16^2, or 256, although the engine uses FF for dynamically generated objects. Thus, there are only 255 slots in your load order, meaning you can only load 255 plugin files, and of those, about 6 are going to be taken up by the Bethesda ESMs for the main game and DLC. For reference, this list has around 200 mods on it as of this writing. Not all of them have plugins and some are mutually exclusive, but others require a bunch of patches to work right with other mods, each of which is its own plugin. How do we get around this? Well, remember the other part of the ID, the "ZZZZZZ" part? These are also hexadecimal numbers. They also set a maximum, the highest number of records a plugin can contain, which is FFFFFF, or 16^6, or 16,777,216. Most mods simply do not use anywhere near sixteen goddamn million records. This is a lot of "wasted space." Hence, merging plugins so that all their records are shared in one plugin circumvents the limit by moving mod info from the limited load order slots to the much more plentiful record slots. Another way to get around it is to use Mod Organizer. There are a number of mods that have plugins that only exist to load BSA content. MO can load the BSAs without the plugin, and allows you to disable them from your load order, freeing up precious space. RAM Usage Skyrim, as an application running on your computer, can only use 3.1 GB of RAM. No matter how much RAM your system has, once Skyrim tries to use more than 3.1 GB, it either starts trying to offload it to the swap file on your hard drive (which is really drat slow), or crashes (which it might do if it runs out of swap space to use). This was likely the reason for a number of game crashes that were mysterious until this was figured out. Worse, for some reason, any data stored in VRAM has to be mirrored in RAM. So your hot as poo poo graphics card may have like 16 GB of VRAM (which, if you're reading this in 2020 or some poo poo, might seem pathetically small, also gently caress off on your hoverboard rear end in a top hat), but Skyrim can't use more than 3.1 GB of it. This is because it's a 32-bit program, and as such can only address 4 GB of memory, of which it must reserve about 0.9 GB for its most critical data. So running all your 8k immersive beard and high quality rock textures at once is like trying to cram Fort Knox into a jewelry box. Getting around this is why ENBoost is important. One of the things it does is create a bunch of dummy processes to take excess data off of skyrim.exe's hands once it starts approaching the 3.1 GB limit. Shuffling data around like this might slow things down some, but not as badly as using swap and it beats crashing. Note that if you're using Windows 10, Microsoft has elected to kill ENBoost's ability to expand the memory available to Skyrim by hard OS-level locking DirectX 9 games to 4 GB. Sorry! Brawl Bugs The Skyrim brawling "system" is intended to force you to engage in a bout of non-lethal fisticuffs. It enforces this by ending the brawl if you use weapons or magic with your opponent becoming so pissed off by your poor sportsmanship that they try to murder the gently caress out of you. The problem is that the way the game implements this is very... aggressive. It basically checks to see if you cause any kind of magic effect on yourself or your opponent. Even if it doesn't do anything. Why is this a problem? A bunch of mods work by using dummy magic effects on actors (including the player or NPCs). These are non-harmful and mostly for keeping some other effect working properly, and often don't do anything unless a condition is met (because the game needs to regularly keep track of whether to use the effect), but will count as "cheating." There is probably more to this than just that, which is why so many attempts to fix brawls straight up don't work. Mod authors have to be aware of this issue and careful to try to correct for it, and even then it's a gamble. It's better to just install the cheat patch and move on with your life. This does not oblige you to cheat, of course, it just makes the game not care if you do. You're on the honor system now! No bringing warhammers and death magic to a fist fight! Non-Conflicting Overrides This is the kind of conflict that merged patches try to fix. They aren't real conflicts in the sense that they represent changes that could happily coexist in game, but the structure of plugin files is such that any change to any value in a single game record will be overwritten by any later change to that record. Say you have two mods that change, idk, Ulfric. One of them changes his hairstyle, the other changes his equipment. These changes don't really conflict with each other because Ulfric could easily rock a giant afro while toting around Cloud Strife's buster sword, but due to the structure of plugin files, only the last loaded mod will have its change in the game: either the new hair or the new sword, but not both. Creating a merged patch (above) would fix this by having its copy of Ulfric's record with both changes. One of the most important real reasons to use a patch to fix these is because multiple mods may change the various lists Skyrim draws from to generate items, but only one version of each of these lists can exist in game. This and other such resolutions require some flavor of merged patch. A stock-standard Merged Patch requires using TES5Edit and tries to resolve them, but is not that great at it. At best it's a base for further manual conflict resolution which is a loving blast let me tell you. A Bashed Patch requires using Wrye Bash and was, in Oblivion and Fallout 3, a very capable tool for resolving these issues, but never developed that well for Skyrim. It's mostly good for merging changes to leveled lists, but a merged patch also does this. A Smashed Patch is a new kind of patch made by matorsmash that tries to supersede both. So far the tool is pretty impressively powerful, but tricky to use (although instructions and a basic guide exist). If you're not going to make a Bashed or Smashed Patch, you can use TES5Edit to make your own Merged Patch. Here is Agent's 7-step guide, reproduced with PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR and FULL RESPECT TO HIS ARTISTIC VISION: quote:
If you do want to make a Smashed patch, here's a cool guide: Gyshall posted:1) Fire up Mator Smash, select your TES5 profile Skyrim Special Edition If you haven't heard, Bethesda will be releasing a "Special Edition" remake (of sorts) of Skyrim, which is basically a port of the game into the Fallout 4 version of the Gamebryo engine (i.e., the basic game engine from which Bethesda adapted their own engines for their games). PC gamers who own all the DLC will supposedly be able to get it for free. It will also be a 64-bit application, which will open up the RAM cap (above) and could enable a bunch of other technical enhancements. At the very least, it looks really goddamn pretty. It will also apparently have an integrated mod sharing and download system in Bethesda.net which, critically, will feature a 5-star rating system.  Now the ignorant plebs and haters can tear down the Mod Authors' hard work and creative genius for lulz as is their wont, thanks Bethe$$$$da!! So what does this mean for modding? Goon Raygereio had this to say: Raygereio posted:We don't really have any details yet. But it looks like it will essentially be Skyrim's assets, updated/remade and placed in FO4's iteration of the Creation Engine. The Myth of the "Clean Save" Skyrim modding requires a heavy up-front time investment due to the fact that it is not safe to remove mods in the middle of a playthrough. On the other hand, the opening sequence of the game is long and annoying. If you think about it, you can see the problem for trying to test out mods. Once upon a time, in the dark days when there were no alternate start mods, many modding guides recommended making a "clean save" from which to start every modded game. The idea was to play through the Helgen intro and then save your game, find the file, name it in such a way as you know which one it is (e.g., "CleanSave.ess"), back it up just in case, and then load this every time you started a new game. From there you could use mods and console commands to tweak character appearance as needed. You could install mods and try them out in Your Clean Save without going through the intro, hooray! What's wrong with this?
Advanced ENB Tweaking No, wait. That's not nearly gaudy enough... Siets posted:
 This OP is meant to be kind of a living document. As long as I'm participating in the thread, I'll keep it updated as things develop. Some of the categories are a bit threadbare because Agents and I don't know enough about what's available. Please do make suggestions! Thanks in post-vance (the first post got pretty long...) to Agents are Go. Like 60% of this is his work from before he became unable to continue. I offered to take over but I want to give credit where it's due. At points, statements of opinion from him will be noted as "Agents prefers..." etc. where it was originally "I prefer..." In other places, where I am in a position to concur with him, I've left it first-person. Huge thanks as well to Mega64 for the banners. "To all the haters who said this day would never come, loving. SUCK. IIIIIIITTTT." -GunnerJ, 2016, this post GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Aug 3, 2017 |
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Aug 21, 2016 22:53
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Huge thanks to Mega64 for the banners (which should be up soonish (probably (not really (eta: actually now))))! GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Aug 22, 2016 |
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Aug 21, 2016 22:56
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And so a new thread dawns on the forums.
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Aug 21, 2016 22:58
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i love to poop and pee in skyrim with immersive toilet mods
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Aug 21, 2016 23:01
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:i love to poop and pee in skyrim with immersive toilet mods same
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Aug 21, 2016 23:02
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[posted this in the old thread like a dummie because I didn't realize it wasn't just updating the OP there] I'm totally new to this whole Skyrim modding thing. Haven't even played the base game for years. I'd like to be able to wander around, get lost in the woods, explore neat poo poo, etc. I don't care about the big quests, I don't care about crafting (hated the grind of it), would like to avoid the temptation of fast travel type stuff, etc. I'm not looking for super realism or hardcore mode, I just want to chill and feel like I'm really exploring an open world. I noticed there are no weather mods on the list. Sounds like it's just an oversight? I've seen things online about sweet fog and storms, super dark spoopy nights, etc. Also snazzy skies and stars and such. Sounds kinda neat--are there any that are goon-approved? Does this list seem to cover my goals?
Hopefully the whole SKSE and Mod Manager installation and use thing will be self-explanatory?
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Aug 22, 2016 01:15
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Last thread, but I wanted to say thanks for clearing up my issues with Brawls still bugging out despite Brawl Bugs Patch, and the SPERG Brawl mode toggle.ThaumPenguin posted:Try the Modern Brawl Bug Fix by EnaiSiaion, it might help. Swapped the brawl fix mods, and the next attempt at a brawl worked out just fine.
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Aug 22, 2016 01:17
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Reposting here since I just missed the new thread, but: Don't forget the Book of Silence Patch for Practical Female Armor. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/72349/
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Aug 22, 2016 01:20
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Step 2: Put every mod in the OP into one single .exe.
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Aug 22, 2016 01:21
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porn mods won't work in the hd rerelease unless you recompile them stick this at the top of the OP, thanks
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Aug 22, 2016 01:25
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Liquid Penguins posted:porn mods won't work in the hd rerelease unless you recompile them uhhh why would you say that??? Wouldn't it be funny if I really asked that and was serious hehe that would be funny right? Like if I actually wanted a real detailed answer on why 'nude' mods wouldn't work in the new re-release of Skyrim and someone told me how to fix this issue? You know as a joke?
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Aug 22, 2016 01:31
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Hm, idk. Sounds like a legit issue. incogneato, I added a few weathery things to the AV section, basically one of Purity or Climates of Tamriel, and also True Storms. Your list looks good for your purposes imo but I'll see if I can think of anything else. GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Aug 22, 2016 |
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Aug 22, 2016 01:34
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KakerMix posted:uhhh why would you say that??? I could have just said all mods but I know what you sickos are up to
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Aug 22, 2016 01:49
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GunnerJ posted:incogneato, I added a few weathery things to the AV section, basically one of Purity or Climates of Tamriel, and also True Storms. Your list looks good for your purposes imo but I'll see if I can think of anything else. Awesome, thanks!
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Aug 22, 2016 05:58
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So I'm re-sorting stuff, installing everything via Mod Organizer rather than mix workshop and Organizer. (New game a given just in case, but I wasn't very far in anyways ) So far, the main snag seems to be it wants to claim I'm "missing masters" for the three Highres texture packs, if I install the unofficial high res patch. Everything I can dig up, says "Did you make sure you have the DLC?", which I do, even redownloaded then verified. I've hit the sort button to run loot, my load order after that seems to line up with the "make your load order look like this". Basically I've done all the "Did you do the obvious thing?" I can locate with google. If I checkbox the texture packs on the plugins list, the red ! goes away from the Unofficial patch on that list, at least. But I still have the "There are potential problems with your setup" indicator. It's just that clicking that doesn't pop up any boxes in this situation. Stuff that could deal in textures that I know of are- The unofficial legendary edition patch Weapons and armor fixes remade Armored Circlets by Quickfox (The ones namedropped by the complete crafting overhaul). Is it just the organizer being finicky over the High res files? Or what? I feel silly considering this is a common thing, but what fixes I locate are things that I already have done. Unrelated: That Wiseman303's Flora patch likes to say it needs to be updated to 2.1 from 2.0. Though that seems to be some kind of installer quirk as the file downloaded is labeled for 2.1, and the mod author has commented "If the file says 2.1, then it's fine". So I just hit the ignore update button on that. EDIT: The magic of posting on the internet! 1st Organizer restart: Still has the lingering ! 2nd restart: Still has the lingering ! *posts about it* 3rd Organizer restart: Oh look, NOW it thinks everything is fine 
Section Z fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Aug 22, 2016 |
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Aug 22, 2016 08:09
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Section Z posted:So I'm re-sorting stuff, installing everything via Mod Organizer rather than mix workshop and Organizer. (New game a given just in case, but I wasn't very far in anyways You don't need any of the esp's for the High Res DLC or the unofficial High Res DLC Patches. Just make sure theyre in the correct order on the right hand pane and make sure MO is handling BSAs. EDIT: Okay Gunner here's some poo poo for you: Alright, Gunner, here's a few things. Firstly, it might be a nice idea if you put this right under the "Last Updated" blurb: If you want to talk about Enderal troubleshooting here, feel free, but you might be better served in the dedicated Enderal thread. If you're looking for Morrowind modding advice, check the Morrowind thread, and Oblivion modding we've combined into the general Elder Scrolls discussion thread. Also, you might want to make the Awful/Awesome mod thread a link in the relevant rules section. Alright, down to fuckin' business. Im not gonna bother to do fancy url tagging and poo poo because sitting, as said, is a bitch for me. (In case anyone cares, I play Skyrim with a controller, lying down.) Graphical Mods: Bethesda High-Res DLC Optimized http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9080/ The HRDLC is poorly optimized. Have this load after the HRDLC and the Unofficial HR DLC patch. Imaginator http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/13049/ and Dynavision http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12525/ These two lightweight mods let you tinker with the appearance of Skyrim in an ENB-ish way with an absolutely tiny performance hit, since they use Skyrim's engine features rather than being lovely bolt-on code. Imaginator handles things like Saturation, Bloom, and contrast while Dynavision is all about Depth of Field. Xenius Character Enhancement http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/2356 Basically a "vanilla, but better" approach to making NPCs look better in Skyrim, just upgrades a bunch of character textures and models without requiring compatibility patches and such. Textures such as Skin and Eyes are upgraded without everyone looking like anime supermodels. D13 Faster GET UP STAND UP animation vanilla friendly http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/17491 Makes you stand up faster after getting ragdolled. Book Covers Skyrim http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/35399 Gives every book in Skyrim an individualized cover with the title and everything. Integrated into Legacy of the Dragonborn, so if you're using that you don't need this. Elaborate Textiles http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19826 and Ashland Apparel http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32151 Elaborite Textiles makes the vanilla clothes in Skyrim look much more interesting and varied, while Ashland apparel really makes the clothing and armor added by Dragonborn look sharp as hell. Dragon Glyphs HD - Fixed http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27095 Makes Draconic Runes look much less pixelated everywhere. Improved Closefaced Helmets http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/15927 Makes closed helms fit beast races better, and lets you actually see peoples eyes in the eyeholes. NPCs: Dwarven Mechanical Dragons - Guardians of Kagrenzel Edition http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/38633 Especially since the latest version of Deadly Dragons removed them, this version of DMD makes them memorable encounters, since they only appear in a few select locations, and are very tough. Dwemer Spectres http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/63022 This is an updated version of TrainWiz's original mod, and is better than the versions included with Skyrim Immersive Creatures. You can use this with SiC, just disable the SiC Spectres in the MCM. This includes named "Boss Spectres" in certain locations which have neat, unique loot. Skyrim Monster Mod http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/35631 SkyMoMod is rather outdated, and I only list it for completeness sake and to mention that it doesn't require the DLC. House Mods: Hearthfire Multiple Adoptions: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29249/ While not a house in and of itself, this lets you adopt up to six children and move your family to mod houses which support it, which is a lot of them. Jaxsonz Positioner http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/52583 Also not a house in and of itself, this mod lets you reposition, remove, and add stuff to the game world and is useful for playing dollhouse with your player homes. Fyr Manor http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50115 and Agent's Fyr Manor Fixes http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/75101 TrainWiz crazy clockwork city house, what Agents likes about this house is that while it's a fully featured house, you can't use all the features until you find the modules to unlock them, which are all hidden over Skyrim and Solstheim. Agents fixes makes several of the features work as advertised. Rayek's End Revisited (Mazz's End) http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/71081 Remake of a popular house mod by a Goon. Quest Mods: Dwemertech http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/56037 and Spectraverse http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/53780 I wasn't sure whether to put these is Quests or in Magic mods, because they're both. Dwemertech focuses on spells that use Dwemer technology to function, and Spectraverse has two sets of spells: Light and Dark. Both are lore friendly and have quests to gain new spells and abilities. Agents loves these mods. There are also non-quest version that just add the spells if you're a total loving choade. Aethernautics- A Space Travel Mod: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/41754 This is TrainWiz first Skyrim mod, and while it's kind of rough around the edges, it makes up for it by being awesome. Explore an abandoned dwemer launch facility and spaceship, then launch it and make it your home. Call down orbital strikes. Explore an abandoned Reman-Era moon colony. Yes, this is lore friendly. The Lost Wonders of Mzark http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/36317 Explore an ancient Dwemer weapons factory and shut it down before it threatens all of Skyrim. Konahriks Accoutrements http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32458 Adds a new dungeon and quest, and adds wearable sets of Dragon Priest equipment that compliment the enchantments of the Masks. Moonpath to Elsweyr http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9782 One of the first major Skyrim quest mods, it's not bad. It's got decent voice acting and nicely designed locations. The flow reminds me more of a BioWare game, with a central hub area and sub-areas reached by fast travel, rather than the Bethesda open-world style. Integrated into Legacy of the Dragonborn. Spellmaking in Skyrim - The Last Altar http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/479982 Actually a very nice quest attached to this mod, which extends the College of Winterhold questline, but the Spellmaking doesn't work with SPERG. At all, because this mod uses certain spells as markers for "player knows this effect for spellmaking" and SPERG adds new versions of every spell, so you can get to the spellmaking altar and climactic battle of the mod and be unable to make any spells. Author promised a compatibility patches years ago and then disappeared from the internet forever. The Wheels of Lull http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/58672 This is TrainWiz's Skyrim Magnum Opus - A huge mod with some amazing locations and voice work. Explore mountain abbeys overtaken by a mad Thalmor mage, the bottom of the ocean, areas of the clockwork city from Morrowind, and the foundations of reality itself. Meet Brhuce Hammar's dad. A few rough edges, but an amazing mod. This mod also is a sequel to every other Elder Scrolls mod Trainwiz has done, from Sotha Sil Expanded, to Brhuce Hammar Legacy. Also, a few things you might want to add, Gunner: WildCat is EnaiSiaion's combat overhaul, you might want to add it next to deadly combat and ultimate combat. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/76529 The Brawl Bugs Cheat patch is based directly on the scripts for the original brawl bugs patch, I have absolutely no idea if you can mix it with the modern brawl bugs patch. I'd recccomend seperating them out. TrainWiz was banned from the nexus for a while (for a really loving stupid reason) and so some of his mods were uploaded by different folks, so you can't necessarily find them on his files page of his Nexus profile. All of EnaiSiaion's mods are made to work together, so if you installed them all you'd have a pretty decent start on a universal modpack. Agents are GO! fucked around with this message at 10:22 on Aug 22, 2016 |
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Aug 22, 2016 08:57
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Agents are GO! posted:Alright, down to fuckin' business. Im not gonna bother to do fancy url tagging and poo poo because sitting, as said, is a bitch for me. (In case anyone cares, I play Skyrim with a controller, lying down.) That's fine, I do up all this stuff in the reply form for another forum because SA's posting interface is like from 1997 or some poo poo.
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Aug 22, 2016 14:59
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"I breathe now, in royalty, and reshape this thread which is mine. I do this for you, Goon Legions, for I love you." -AssMan
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Aug 22, 2016 16:11
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Davoren posted:"I breathe now, in royalty, and reshape this thread which is mine. I do this for you, Goon Legions, for I love you." -AssMan Mod thread title change please.
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Aug 22, 2016 16:18
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Thought I'd might repost these comments from the old thread:ThaumPenguin posted:I don't know about Immersive Weapons, but there are some other good sword mods out there that add high-tier weapons. ThaumPenguin posted:I agree completely. For me, wearing finery while traversing Skyrim just doesn't feel right.
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Aug 22, 2016 16:19
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The link for 'Bald Head' in the op is pointing to 'Quick Loot'. Just a heads up. 
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Aug 22, 2016 17:01
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Davoren posted:The link for 'Bald Head' in the op is pointing to 'Quick Loot'. Just a heads up. Thanks 
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Aug 22, 2016 17:14
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GunnerJ posted:Thanks That might have been my fault, I was the one who suggested them in the old thread, after all. e: Nope, it was linked properly there. Sorry, dude. ThaumPenguin fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Aug 22, 2016 |
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Aug 22, 2016 17:22
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I also want to put in another plug for Relationship Dialogue Overhaul. Simply incredible, while simultaneously managing to be subtle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzWZKutgCck I was able to install it mid-playthrough along with its USLEEP patch without any issues. The mod instantly enhanced immersion in all aspects by doing just what its description promises. Your waifu actually treats you like a significant other if they are also a combat follower with you, and he/she doesn't keep repeating the same three or four idle chit-chat lines constantly. Likewise, other NPCs aren't repetitive to the point of being annoying either and there's lots of new lore-friendly dialogue added to them. Perhaps the coolest feature however is the fact that NPCs now respect whether you are shunned or welcomed based on your faction/political affiliation. As a stormcloak, imperial-leaning townsfolk in the western reaches would grumble when talking to me, toss casual insults, and eventually even start ignoring me altogether, while stormcloak sympathizers were always hospitable and warm to me during conversation. Really amped up the immersion of the civil war and overall setting for me.
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Aug 22, 2016 17:43
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Im going to give that a shot next playthrough but my god man what has this modder done to their NPCs:  Edit: and a serif font. Double
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Aug 22, 2016 18:03
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Of course the day I think yeah sure I could replay Skyrim Nexus is busy making GBS threads itself. Good OP though.
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Aug 22, 2016 18:20
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Agents are GO! posted:Edit: and a serif font. Double old fonts = serifs serifs = immersive realistic immersive HD 4k serif fonts, hot files on Nexus a day after uploading search your feelings, Agents, you know it to be true Orv posted:Of course the day I think yeah sure I could replay Skyrim Nexus is busy making GBS threads itself. Good OP though. it does that fairly regularly but at least these days I just try again 15 minutes later and it's okay. Nowhere near the bad old days of Nexus being down 6 days out of 7, credit where it's due!
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Aug 22, 2016 18:31
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If you're not using the Planeswalker font, I feel bad for you, son. Also my preferred weather/ENB mod of choice: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/75346/
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Aug 22, 2016 18:47
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It'd probably be good to have an ENB section but I just don't know poo poo about them because I don't use them.
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Aug 22, 2016 18:58
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Here's a couple of mods I like. Real Bows replaces the vanilla bows with ones that are more physically probable and look really sharp, the modder sounds like he might actually be a bowyer. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/64440/ Be a Milk Drinker adds purchaseable milk and craftable flavoured milk bottles to the game. Good for a survival game or Khajiit. Only problem I've found so far is it adds some milk barrels to vanilla houses which might be out of place if you have any overhauls of those installed, I've had to do markfordelete a couple of times. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/17836 Your Market Stall lets you craft a portable market stall that you can set up anywhere and place items for sale, and you sit at the chair to open shop. Good for moving stolen goods, and ~immersion~ and it works a lot better than I was honestly expecting. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/35305/ Pong in Loading Screens is another loading screen replacer, this one has a fully functional version of pong you play against the computer while loading, no scores, but impressively, as far as I can tell it doesn't slow anything down. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65227/
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Aug 22, 2016 19:07
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Agents are GO! posted:Im going to give that a shot next playthrough but my god man what has this modder done to their NPCs: What? I can't see anything because of the immersive DOF. Why do so many people turn Skyrim into a myopia simulator?
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Aug 22, 2016 19:12
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Same reason there are one batrillion ENB presets fondling themselves as "cinematic" when they just make everything dull and lovely.
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Aug 22, 2016 19:20
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One site I like to glance at from time to time is Dragonporn, which is a Japanese mod roundup site as opposed to what it sounds like.
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Aug 22, 2016 19:22
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Lizard Wizard posted:One site I like to glance at from time to time is Dragonporn, which is a Japanese mod roundup site as opposed to what it sounds like. Whatever you say, Lizard Wizard.
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Aug 22, 2016 19:34
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FYI: I tried Notice Board and was unable to keep it because the scripting cause massive lag when you got near an inn. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/70588/ This might be because some "adventurers" were reading the notices constantly, and generally making GBS threads up the entrance to an Inn. Additionally, I am running Interesting NPCs and Inconsequential NPCs (which work really well together to make places almost crowded) and so there could be some conflict. There was a mod that made Orcs look a little lees tooth-some. I think their teeth look unusable. Does anyone know what it is? EDIT: nice OP by the way.
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Aug 22, 2016 19:42
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It's been a few years but the masochist in me wants to play and mod this up again. Is texture pack combiner redundant now? I want to replace every single texture in the game with 2-4k textures because even the texture pack dlc ones suck. Is there an easy one stop shop to replace every single texture in the game. Seriously, it's really annoying to spend the time downloading all these great looking texture packs, then you walk past a wooden beam that looks like it belongs on an NES game and you can't figure out which mod would fix it. About the ram issue - I could swear I had a plugin that allowed the game to use as up to 8gb of ram (not enb). Did I imagine this? Also LOD mods. I was always pretty underwhelmed with what they did. Sure it was better but Skyrim LOD still sucked. Has there been any progress on that front? Funky See Funky Do fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Aug 22, 2016 |
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Aug 22, 2016 20:04
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gasman posted:What? I can't see anything because of the immersive DOF. eye-murder DOF can be useful if your intent is to post a neato screenshot that gets lots of thumbs-up on Nexus, or more specifically to focus your attention on whatever's in the foreground which is usually a waifu. The key thing to remember is you can also toggle it off. I really doubt the majority of the DOF-death screens you see are what people play with. It takes like five seconds to toggle it on for a screenshot and then off again. think of it this way: it's a lot easier to just blur the gently caress out of the background than to try and find UHD 8K woodgrain textures like the guy who posted above me. e: ok I'm sure some people play with it on but they're dumb
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Aug 22, 2016 20:15
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GunnerJ posted:It'd probably be good to have an ENB section but I just don't know poo poo about them because I don't use them. I'm actually working on an ENB post right now. While I've only used a few, I've gotten pretty good at the whole process of installing/uninstalling/manipulating ENBs and have a nice bank of links to reference when getting into the nitty gritty. Going to do a mini-writeup on performance in Skyrim too, since I did so much troubleshooting on that and actually managed to get some results. Funky See Funky Do posted:It's been a few years but the masochist in me wants to play and mod this up again. Is texture pack combiner redundant now? I want to replace every single texture in the game with 2-4k textures because even the texture pack dlc ones suck. Is there an easy one stop shop to replace every single texture in the game. Seriously, it's really annoying to spend the time downloading all these great looking texture packs, then you walk past a wooden beam that looks like it belongs on an NES game and you can't figure out which mod would fix it. Short answer: No. Long answer: You can get really, really close to a one-stop-shop. First get the bog standard Bethesda Official High-Resolution texture pack and place at the top of your load order, then follow it up with the Noble Skyrim HD texture pack. Noble Skyrim replaces basically 97% of what is in the game with gorgeous, aesthetically-unified textures. Check out its Mod Features section. No more faffing about with "rocking stones" this and "aMidianBorn caves" that and however many other texture files you used to need to download. Siets fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Aug 22, 2016 |
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Aug 22, 2016 20:21
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