The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Mod Thread

I think NMM also does some rudimentary sorting for you, but not to the extent that BOSS does.

The control aspect is probably needed with a lot of mods once you get into once that can conflict, or you want a certain version without autoupdating 'for your convenience'. There's also the factor that more complex mods do need certain instructions followed for upgrading or uninstalling. It would be interesting if NMM improved on the notification that an update is available (right now it only allows one version per mod, which can flag up some mods with multiple parts to them, some optional, or where there can be different parts at different versions), a 'download all new versions' button, or implement scripting as well as they can to facilitate upgrades.

It does handle 'what mod owns what file' really well though.

I guess it's all just different amounts away from handling the process 100% manually.

I use Mod Organizer. I like how it allows for multiple mod versions, it sandboxes mods so you can install/uninstall easily and that it interfaces with Nexus. It does the normal load ordering management as well (of course).

Since I use parts of mods for a couple of things, it doesn't like that so much but not much it can do about that. Also, it needs to be running when you start up Skyrim so if you are tight on memory it probably won't work for you. All in all though I appreciate the extra levels of protection and usability it affords over NMM.

TheWanderer wrote:

Cripes. Well... Clear as mud then.

Pick one source as your primary, either Skyrim Nexus or Steam Workshop, and only pull from the other source if the primary doesn't have it. I think it's easier to find and browse new mods on Steam Workshop and that Steam Workshop is more convenient, but Skyrim Nexus has a larger selection and is preferable if you'll be installing large texture replacements, weather and lighting changes, etc. If every Steam Workshop developer also had their stuff on the Nexus the choice would be easy, but as it is...

By the way, Steam Workshop allows you to modify mod load order as well. There's a "data files" button in the launcher screen, which is also what downloads mod updates from Steam Workshop.

Alright, SkyUI is nice but without SKSE I can't drop anything. Buttons show up as question marks. I'll have to give that a go.

Edit: Can't seem to find my Skyrim Data Scripts folder to put these .pex files.

Edit 2: Just made a folder and it worked! Now to drop things.

For anyone who's had trouble unlocking the Windhelm basement and couldn't use the bypass option because the spare bedroom never got furnished, there's apparently a fix. It seems to be a bug related to the order in which you buy furnishings and clean up the blood in the house.

Try opening the command console and typing these commands:
df495.disable
df496.enable
df497.enable

The housecarl's bedroom should now be furnished and the secret latch to unlock the basement should be in there.

OK, I'm thinking of starting a new character, probably an Argonian or Altmer. Someone set me up with a good list of realism mods for this outlander to face, and any suggested lore-friendly story mods that would make sense.

Wordy here's my current mod list, covers just about everything while keeping most of the game systems vanilla. (only combat is improved by this set).

-Climates of Tamriel (Project Reality)
-Duel Combat Realism
- Heavy Armory
-Burn and Freeze effects
- Better Torches (improves torches, magelight, and candle spells so they have a wider radius. Ideal for the darker dungeons that Project Reality provides)
- SkyUI
-Dance of Death
-Enhanced Blood effects/textures
-Locational Damage (allows hit-specific damage for humanoids)

All installed/ordered by Nexus Mod Manager

If you have Dragonborn or Dawnguard stay away from Crimson tide. Although it is the superior blood mod there's a bug in it that WILL crash your game over time. The developer on it seems to have given up getting it compatible with newer versions.

I've just beaten the main storyline and have started my way into Dragonborn, however I really want to give Skyrim Redone a try as the complete perk overhaul may change the game enough to warrant a new character. Anyone have any experience with this?

wordsmythe wrote:

OK, I'm thinking of starting a new character, probably an Argonian or Altmer. Someone set me up with a good list of realism mods for this outlander to face, and any suggested lore-friendly story mods that would make sense.

I am doing a play-through using (amongst a lot of others, some noted by Stylez)

Realistic Needs and Diseases: adds stages of hunger, thirst, lack of sleep, and inebriation. It is highly customized so you can be as hardcore or not as you want. Also adds a few other goodies.

Frostfall: adds hypothermia, cold water survival, and craftable camping equipment. This one is also customizable so you control the effects to get what you want out of it.

Adding these to my game has made things a lot more strategic. You cannot just head out in a direction like you can in vanilla. You have to think about things like: a) how long it will take to get where you want to go, b) what's the weather going to be like along the way, c) what is the best route to take, d) do I have enough food and water? Stuff like that. They require you to plan a lot more. really adds to the immersion.

tboon wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

OK, I'm thinking of starting a new character, probably an Argonian or Altmer. Someone set me up with a good list of realism mods for this outlander to face, and any suggested lore-friendly story mods that would make sense.

I am doing a play-through using (amongst a lot of others, some noted by Stylez)

Realistic Needs and Diseases: adds stages of hunger, thirst, lack of sleep, and inebriation. It is highly customized so you can be as hardcore or not as you want. Also adds a few other goodies.

Frostfall: adds hypothermia, cold water survival, and craftable camping equipment. This one is also customizable so you control the effects to get what you want out of it.

Adding these to my game has made things a lot more strategic. You cannot just head out in a direction like you can in vanilla. You have to think about things like: a) how long it will take to get where you want to go, b) what's the weather going to be like along the way, c) what is the best route to take, d) do I have enough food and water? Stuff like that. They require you to plan a lot more. really adds to the immersion.

I've though about doing that myself and while the difficulty appeals to me I feel like I spend way too much time in menus playing skyrim as is. Does it feel like you spend more time preparing for treks rather than trekking?

Stylez wrote:
tboon wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

OK, I'm thinking of starting a new character, probably an Argonian or Altmer. Someone set me up with a good list of realism mods for this outlander to face, and any suggested lore-friendly story mods that would make sense.

I am doing a play-through using (amongst a lot of others, some noted by Stylez)

Realistic Needs and Diseases: adds stages of hunger, thirst, lack of sleep, and inebriation. It is highly customized so you can be as hardcore or not as you want. Also adds a few other goodies.

Frostfall: adds hypothermia, cold water survival, and craftable camping equipment. This one is also customizable so you control the effects to get what you want out of it.

Adding these to my game has made things a lot more strategic. You cannot just head out in a direction like you can in vanilla. You have to think about things like: a) how long it will take to get where you want to go, b) what's the weather going to be like along the way, c) what is the best route to take, d) do I have enough food and water? Stuff like that. They require you to plan a lot more. really adds to the immersion.

I've though about doing that myself and while the difficulty appeals to me I feel like I spend way too much time in menus playing skyrim as is. Does it feel like you spend more time preparing for treks rather than trekking?

Getting set up takes some time, but you are not in menus. I spent the first two weeks of in-game time in my current play-through preparing. So hunting (for both food and furs and leather), doing some crafting (to make tents, waterskins, sleeping rolls), and some odd quests for money (staying and eating in inns is not cheap). So not exactly sitting around. But not just running directly to High Hrothgaar either (which is actually a difficult journey, as it should be, using these mods).

Plus if you find you are spending more time than you want messing around with this stuff, you can make adjustments. For instance when I started using Realistic Needs, it felt like I had to eat all the time, to an annoying degree. So, I turned it down. Now I need to eat 2 full meals per day, which is the effect I was after.

Oh and one thing I should have mentioned: Realistic Needs and Diseases really makes having a disease have much more of a consequence. In vanilla, diseases are nuisances at worst. With RN&D, they are something that you really want to avoid if you can and take care of if you do contract a disease. They won't kill you (I think) but they do bring some nasty malus effects.

tboon wrote:
Stylez wrote:
tboon wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

OK, I'm thinking of starting a new character, probably an Argonian or Altmer. Someone set me up with a good list of realism mods for this outlander to face, and any suggested lore-friendly story mods that would make sense.

I am doing a play-through using (amongst a lot of others, some noted by Stylez)

Realistic Needs and Diseases: adds stages of hunger, thirst, lack of sleep, and inebriation. It is highly customized so you can be as hardcore or not as you want. Also adds a few other goodies.

Frostfall: adds hypothermia, cold water survival, and craftable camping equipment. This one is also customizable so you control the effects to get what you want out of it.

Adding these to my game has made things a lot more strategic. You cannot just head out in a direction like you can in vanilla. You have to think about things like: a) how long it will take to get where you want to go, b) what's the weather going to be like along the way, c) what is the best route to take, d) do I have enough food and water? Stuff like that. They require you to plan a lot more. really adds to the immersion.

I've though about doing that myself and while the difficulty appeals to me I feel like I spend way too much time in menus playing skyrim as is. Does it feel like you spend more time preparing for treks rather than trekking?

Getting set up takes some time, but you are not in menus. I spent the first two weeks of in-game time in my current play-through preparing. So hunting (for both food and furs and leather), doing some crafting (to make tents, waterskins, sleeping rolls), and some odd quests for money (staying and eating in inns is not cheap). So not exactly sitting around. But not just running directly to High Hrothgaar either (which is actually a difficult journey, as it should be, using these mods).

Plus if you find you are spending more time than you want messing around with this stuff, you can make adjustments. For instance when I started using Realistic Needs, it felt like I had to eat all the time, to an annoying degree. So, I turned it down. Now I need to eat 2 full meals per day, which is the effect I was after.

Oh and one thing I should have mentioned: Realistic Needs and Diseases really makes having a disease have much more of a consequence. In vanilla, diseases are nuisances at worst. With RN&D, they are something that you really want to avoid if you can and take care of if you do contract a disease. They won't kill you (I think) but they do bring some nasty malus effects.

It seems there's a whole perk package in Skyrim reborn for realistic needs too... Curses I thought I was done with Skyrim!

wordsmythe wrote:

OK, I'm thinking of starting a new character, probably an Argonian or Altmer. Someone set me up with a good list of realism mods for this outlander to face, and any suggested lore-friendly story mods that would make sense.

I've used 'Imp's more complex needs' and was happy with it - though I had to tweak the timescale until it felt like I was eating at the right frequency. Climates of Tamriel is great too - it can definitely enhance both immersion and difficulty. I had a Frostfall-type mod too (can't remember which) and found that it made you plan a lot more before travelling, especially with the enhanced weather mods (and the enhanced darkness of Climate of Tamriel) installed at the same time. I would, without fail, develop hypothermia just when a bear was charging at me.

If I was doing it all again, I'd also try to find a mod that adds better descriptions of quest locations to your journal along with a mod that only shows the quest markers on demand.

Wrong thread.

Realistic needs? Curses. Off to install that.

Ive been rolling with REQUIEM,
its a pretty big overhaul, a lot harder than vanilla. I cant compare it to Skyrim redone as I havent tried that yet but whenever I have seen them compared (by people who have played both) Requiem gets the nod. I like to judge Nexus mods based on endorsements as a percentage of DL and how often the mod authors respond in the comments and in both this regards Requiem is great - just above 10% endorsement rate, for the Nexus thats a bloody knock out.
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/19281
Its bloody brilliant but the mod authors says it better than me

"Requiem is not intended as a modification that makes the game an absolute hardcore experience (which seems to be a common misconception), though increasing the difficulty to a much higher degree (in comparison to the original game) is part of it's goal to make the world feel more believable and immersive. Likewise, the project is not intended to be a modification that's suited for the average player - it's a personal project that's mainly meant to be shared with like-minded individuals who enjoy an immersive roleplaying experience. We are trying to create something unique - something we do not do for the sake of popularity, fame or whatever, but for the joy that we find in working and altering an existing piece of art and constantly improving what we made (so far) with the help of the great community that has formed around the project and helped us in so many ways to make progresses we did not even consider possible (kudos to all of you for your constant feedback, criticism, suggestions, bugreports, resources and comments! We really appreciate the effort!
While a lot of our inspiration comes from older titles like previous Elder Scrolls Titles (mainly Morrowind, Daggerfall and Arena), Gothic, Deus Ex, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment and similar ones, we do try to find a compromiss between traditional roleplaying elements and more modern approaches, though the focus clearly lies on the former."

got a few writes up in the press too

http://kotaku.com/5965301/this-insan...

Don't forget that Requiem makes it so dungeons/camps/whatever do not respawn at all.

Damn... I imagine Requiem isn't available in Workshop, is it? How hard is the install? Compatility with other mods?

I use the nexus mod manager so its uber easy. But manually i think its just a drag and drop into the data files, easypeasy.
Compatibility - obviously compatible with any kind of lighting,weather, graphics,re-texture,face,body etc mod (ie climates of tamariel, RLO,Better females, UNP) Frostfall is ok, i think realistic needs and diseases has a requiem patch, as does Dragon combat overhaul.
Compatible with all weapon and armor mods, the attack/Ap values will be adjusted by requiem if they are loaded before requiem. BUT if the weapon is overpowered/monetary value too high then they will affect the balance progression of Requiem - but the would do that in the vanilla game as well. requiem adds items to leveled lists so if you also want mods like Immersive Armors on random npc you need to do that whole bashed tag stuff, I havent done that myself.
Might conflict with combat overhaul mods and mods that add monsters- their is a mod compatibility section at the bottom of the Requiem readme

I'm really enjoying my Skyre playthrough, although I'm somewhat disappointed that Ebony gear comes so early. I'm only level 14 and I've already got an ebony Longbow, ebony longsword, and gauntlets. Frostfall doesn't really make it much more challenging but does make you think about distance between towns and taking a minute to warm up next to a fire. I really like the perk changes, especially to Speechcraft (Shouts improved by speechcraft) and archery (longbows and shortbows are different and have interesting associated perks).

It's different enough that it forces you to consider your playstyle carefully, which is good when you've already experienced most of the content anyhow.

Downloading the old Requiem file, pre-Dawnguard because I don't have that expansion. Anyone using that mod still running that? It hasn't been supported since November... :/

Tagged for future reference/my future incompetence.

Requiem sounds good, but it's incredibly frustrating. I can't even get through the intro without having to game the system because one hit is killing me. Use block? Sure, but I'm trying to ROLE PLAY a thief. Sheesh. Do I have to have heavy armor for the intro? Seems that way.

Bows are a lot cooler though, but NPCs are taking me down left and right.

Seriously, might be a tad bit unbalanced here at the beginning (ie. least fun part of the game).

davet010 wrote:

Tagged for future reference/my future incompetence.

Don't bother, everyone just posts mod requests/suggestions in the main Skyrim thread.

Is anyone hear good at explaining how to make a bashed patch with wrye bash but use NMM for installing mods ? Ive had fun with Requiem and thought I would try out either Skyrim Redone or some mix of ERSO/SPERG/Ace. But i want Immersive Armors/weapons in the leveled loot/merchant lists rather than just in the smith crafting menus. I want to play without doing any smithing/alchemy/enchanting.

I tried to find a few wyre bash help videos but its a bit beyond me im afraid, Has anyone here delved into this ?

has anyone tried ERSO?
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/26217
and SPERG?
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/24445

I like the sound of Duel Combat but Patricks combat looks interesting too, I like combat to be slower, more tactical

LTTP, but just finally got my gaming PC up and running.

Sounds like people prefer using Nexus over Steam Workshop?

McIrishJihad wrote:

LTTP, but just finally got my gaming PC up and running.

Sounds like people prefer using Nexus over Steam Workshop?

Generally, yes. You can use both, but pretty much anything on the Steam Workshop is also on Nexus, and the Nexus version is more likely to be the most up-to-date version. I still have about 30 mods through the workshop due to not wanting to take the time to go find them on the Nexus.

Yeah, I have both but Nexus has more of the mods and better collections imho.

I had done the full STEP install last fall, which took hours of downloads, installs, and configurations. Then I disabled Skyrim from auto-updating so that it wouldn't break it.

Unfortunately, Steam then decided sometime since the last time I played that it had to do some "reconfigure the files to be more efficient" business, which utterly hosed the game. Dammit Steam, you're usually so much less frustrating!

So back at ground zero and debating whether I want to spend all that time to re-download/configure/install to the current version of STEP.

Depending on what mods STEP uses, you might be able to lighten the workload. Stuff that just enhances the graphics of what's already there, overriding textures/models/sounds should just be fine, things that change scripts or interact more deeply with the gameplay should be where you look first to get compatible.