The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Mod Thread

If they don't get that thing out soon, they will have to start over with Hammerwind (or whatever is going to be next).

Yeah, similarly to Morrowblivion etc.

I think they should just target a release on the Skyrim engine and then leave Morrowind at that. As much as I love the game, even importing to the latest engine, there are a lot of things that will show the limits of the age, town size, map size etc.

It does look good though, and I didn't see a single Cliff Racer.

tboon wrote:

If they don't get that thing out soon, they will have to start over with Hammerwind (or whatever is going to be next).

O_O... Daggerwind? Yes!

Is that Morrowind in the Daggerfall engine?

Okay, I just finished a super busy work stretch, and have time again for some gaming. One of my goals for the year is to finally play Skyrim to the end.

I'm going start messing around with STEP again. I didn't get far last time, but now I'm MOTIVATED.

Go man go! You certainly won't regret it!

That's so cute. He thinks Skyrim has an end.

Okay, I almost gave up with STEP at the part right after "Install Skyrim", but I stuck with it and have tweaked my .ini and adjusted my graphics card settings. I've also made good progress figuring out Mod Organizer.

I think I'm going to pick and choose the Mods from STEP's suggested pack. I don't think I have the patience to install all of them, and there are a bunch of things in there that I don't care about.

I think the biggest thing I'll get out of this is switching to Mod Organizer instead of Nexus Mod Manager. What's happened in the past is that I get to about Level 20-30, where everything gets much easier, and I get bored. Then I start adding mods that make me want to start over, and eventually I muck things up badly enough that I have to start over. Mod Organizer seems like it will give me better control over mod configurations.

I'm not quite sure how to handle combat difficulty, outside of the difficulty setting adjustments. I might look for a some good combat/magic mods.

EDIT: Any fans of the ACE Combat Skills mod? Basically I'd like to make combat more challenging over the course of the game.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there is a jet fighter mod for Skyrim.

IMAGE(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/K8isdtcBPXI/maxresdefault.jpg)

ACE Combat Skills mod might be pretty out of date (2012?)
I think the 3 popular combat mods are Deadly combat, duel combat, and Ultimate combat.
last time I played I used Deadly as I dont like fights to go on too long.

I also use one of the enemy AI enhancers mods.
Revenge Of the Enemies 2016

Just an update on this...

Amazingly, I've made it further than ever before in Skyrim. I'm currently Level 38 and still having a blast. I attribute this moderate achievement to two things.

1. Mod Organizer
With Nexus Mod Manager, I'd play, add a mod, play some more, add a mod, play some more, start a new game, add a mod, play some more. By the time I got a character to about Level 15 or so, my files would be such a mess of mods that I had no idea what was what. Eventually the game would start crashing and then the save file would go bad and I'd give up. Mod Organizer allows my ADHD attraction with mods to co-exist with Skyrim. The profile system works great for me.

2. Combat Mods: (Combat Evolved, Revenge of the Enemies 2016, High Level Enemies 1.6)
Vanilla Skyrim got so tedious to me after about Level 25 or so, when you basically just kill everything with ease. I tried the ACE Combat mod, but that was even easier. I tried Requiem but got all sorts of performance glitches and found it too tedious. I'm sure the right level of combat challenge is a matter of personal taste and ability, but the combination of Combat Evolved, Revenge of the Enemies and High Level Enemies has given me a good fun/difficulty balance.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

Just an update on this...

Amazingly, I've made it further than ever before in Skyrim. I'm currently Level 38 and still having a blast. I attribute this moderate achievement to two things.

1. Mod Organizer
With Nexus Mod Manager, I'd play, add a mod, play some more, add a mod, play some more, start a new game, add a mod, play some more. By the time I got a character to about Level 15 or so, my files would be such a mess of mods that I had no idea what was what. Eventually the game would start crashing and then the save file would go bad and I'd give up. Mod Organizer allows my ADHD attraction with mods to co-exist with Skyrim. The profile system works great for me.

2. Combat Mods: (Combat Evolved, Revenge of the Enemies 2016, High Level Enemies 1.6)
Vanilla Skyrim got so tedious to me after about Level 25 or so, when you basically just kill everything with ease. I tried the ACE Combat mod, but that was even easier. I tried Requiem but got all sorts of performance glitches and found it too tedious. I'm sure the right level of combat challenge is a matter of personal taste and ability, but the combination of Combat Evolved, Revenge of the Enemies and High Level Enemies has given me a good fun/difficulty balance.

I loved playing though with Requiem. My favorite parts of it were the hit boxes, static unleveled world, change in perks, and the sense of progression. I've been meaning to check back in with recent mods and updates to the older stuff I was using. I'll look into some of the mods you mentioned and maybe dive in again. Have you used any perk changing mods?

ems777 wrote:

I loved playing though with Requiem. My favorite parts of it were the hit boxes, static unleveled world, change in perks, and the sense of progression. I've been meaning to check back in with recent mods and updates to the older stuff I was using. I'll look into some of the mods you mentioned and maybe dive in again. Have you used any perk changing mods?

There were parts of Requiem I really enjoyed, mainly exactly the things you mentioned. I also liked that potions/alchemy/food felt like they served a useful role in the game. I left Requiem behind—for now anyway—because of the parts I didn't enjoy: lack of a fast travel option, bugs, and some performance issues. For some reason, I'm suffering from macro-stutter on a rig that should chew the game up for breakfast, and the issues were much worse with Requiem. I also don't think I did that great of a job of putting everything together and making sure I had Requiem patches for mods that needed them. When I bailed on my game, there were elk and wolves randomly falling out of the sky, and my follower was wading through earth like it was water. It was messed up.

"Perk changing mods" is on my list of things to explore for another play through. ACE Combat improved the perk system quite a bit I thought, but the combat didn't work for me so I left it behind. I thought Combat Evolved changed the perk system, but I don't think it has. So at the moment I'm pretty sure what I've got is the uninspiring vanilla perk system.

I like the Treebalance - Speech Tree mod in my games; it reinvigorates the otherwise anemic speech tree while leaving the others alone.

For enemy difficulty: Dragon Combat Overhaul is amazing. Fighting dragons should be epic and terrifying, and this mod changes up their tactics, AI, and variety (and sometimes number!) instead of just upping their HP or damage. I'm level fortysomething or so, but even then the two-dragon fight on the lake was ferocious.

Edit: Now that I'm home I see that I use Deadly Dragons in addition to DCO.

And yes, Mod Organizer is practically mandatory at this point. It is so conceptually brilliant that it's a wonder how we lived without it. I used it for some Oblivion notalgia-ing and I am even trying to make it work for Morrowind.

Archangel wrote:

I like the Treebalance - Speech Tree mod in my games; it reinvigorates the otherwise anemic speech tree while leaving the others alone.

Thanks. I started looking for some perks mods for when I start a new game and saw the speech tree mod referenced in a conversation about Perkus Maximus. I'll check it out.

Archangel wrote:

For enemy difficulty: Dragon Combat Overhaul is amazing. Fighting dragons should be epic and terrifying, and this mod changes up their tactics, AI, and variety (and sometimes number!) instead of just upping their HP or damage. I'm level fortysomething or so, but even then the two-dragon fight on the lake was ferocious.

I have Deadly Dragons installed on my current game. It seems to help, but dragons don't necessarily feel that deadly yet. I might check out the one you mention for my next game. Thanks.

I'm also starting to explore some ENBs for my next game. Looking at the moment at RealVision. It's amazing how much they appear to change the game visually.

Whoops. Meant to edit, but quoted instead. Nothing to see here.

My last playthru was with using many mods made by Enai Siaion. As a person he is a bit prickly but the man knows his business when it comes to making great mods.
I used
Ordinator - Perks of Skyrim by Enai Siaion
Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim by Enai Siaion
Imperious - Races of Skyrim by Enai Siaion
Wintermyst - Enchantments of Skyrim by Enai Siaion

He is great at updating,balancing and compatibility.

Plus the Revenge of the enemies and Deadly combat (although combat evolved I think is the new kid on the combat block now i think )

Brownypoints wrote:

My last playthru was with using many mods made by Enai Siaion.

I stumbled onto his Ordinator mod the other day, but didn't realize he had made the other three. I remember reading through the perk list in Ordinator and wondering if it made the game too easy. Some of the perks seemed quite powerful. You were happy with how things turned out in your latest game? I'm especially interested in the Apocalypse mod, because I've been thinking to play again as a mage. The vanilla magic system seems pretty ... vanilla.

Not too easy, Great selection of perks.
I did play on the hardest setting (nightmare?) with Deadly combat and Revenge of the enemies 2016 (that one really bumps up lots of enemy types)

Brownypoints wrote:

Not too easy, Great selection of perks.
I did play on the hardest setting (nightmare?) with Deadly combat and Revenge of the enemies 2016 (that one really bumps up lots of enemy types)

Thanks. I've downloaded all four of them.

I'm up to Level 42 now, enjoying the sights and sounds, slowly making my way through the Civil War quests as an Imperial. I often get distracted though.

I also spent some time today looking for buildable house mods for my next game. I ended up downloading these four:
Breezehome Fully Upgradable
Morskom Estate
Blackthorn: A Buildable Town in the Rift
Silverstead - A Buildable Dwemer Estate

Level 44, done with the Civil War quest line, now making random progress through the main quest line. It was a busy week so I didn't get a chance to play that often.

Although on the whole I've been happy with the combat set up I've got working now, I've noticed a trend lately where I run into some absolutely brutal fights, especially when going against casters. There have been two or three fights this week where I'll run into an opponent who one shots me with spells to kill me. I think the main culprit might be High Level Enemies 1.6. About half the time I can win by good use of shouts/weapon enchantments/cover, but several times I just abandon the fight.

Yes, isn't that amazing? It got mod of the month recently, seems well deserved.

In other news, amazingly, I finished the main game of Skyrim this weekend! That's the first Bethesda game I've finished, ever.

The combination of Combat Evolved/High Level Enemies/Revenge of the Enemies ended up working fine, although spots in the last quest were challenging. I was reading a few forums that recommended leaving off Revenge of the Enemies and just using a Combat Evolved/High Level Enemies combination, which I might try next game.

I'll probably play a bit more with this character to get a few more achievements, but then I'm going to slowly start on a second character, maybe a mage or a tank.

I did have one question that I was wondering about. I'd like to switch to RealVision ENB, but I don't want it to potentially mess up current game. Does switching ENB configurations create potential issues for various mods, or are ENBs and mods essentially two different things? (I'm not sure I'm even asking this correct, but I hope it makes sense.)

I could be wrong, so I'd wait for someone else with more of a clue, but I was under the impression the ENB is essentially post-processing, so whatever mods you are running underneath shouldn't matter a damn - that's why you don't have to have a million compatibility patches to make ENB work with complex mods.

omni wrote:

I could be wrong, so I'd wait for someone else with more of a clue, but I was under the impression the ENB is essentially post-processing, so whatever mods you are running underneath shouldn't matter a damn - that's why you don't have to have a million compatibility patches to make ENB work with complex mods.

Thanks, that's kind of what I was thinking as well. I'm sure I could screw up the ENB settings and make things not work, but I'll assume that I can't break my mods with ENB settings.

On another note, I was floored to see that Steam has me logging 307 hours on Skyrim. I'm sure some of that is wrong, maybe, I hope? But pretty much every year I'd spend a month or two following the same pattern of playing, restarting, adding mods, etc., until I totally messed things up. Glad to finally make it to the end.

Two questions

1. Can I mod the game if I buy it on Steam? It is as cheap and it would be easier with this old of a game not to have to use physical media but I want to install mods - at least graphical ones.

2. Rather than read all 66 pages is there a good list of mods I should install if I want the normal game but with the nicest graphical tweaks?

farley3k wrote:

1. Can I mod the game if I buy it on Steam? It is as cheap and it would be easier with this old of a game not to have to use physical media but I want to install mods - at least graphical ones.

Yes. Super easy. I can't say enough about investing the time to learn Mod Organizer as well:

farley3k wrote:

2. Rather than read all 66 pages is there a good list of mods I should install if I want the normal game but with the nicest graphical tweaks?

Probably? I think many people will point you to the STEP guide for getting the best visuals. I found that super intimidating and tedious when I first started messing around with it. Even after understanding it better, it's still felt like a lot of work to get everything all buffed up. If I just wanted something quick so I could play fast, I might be tempted to just download the hi-res graphics packs and tweak things gradually from there.

I would at least read through the STEP guide, the first parts at least - don't need to read through all the mods in the list (unless you want to of course!). It's a good tutorial on how to set things up to mod with these least potential for problems. Note that you don't need to install everything in STEP if you don't want to, but of the things you do decide to install, you should install them in STEP order so as to lower the chances for things to conflict in less-than-desirable ways. That's the whole idea behind STEP: mods loaded in a particular order tested by the STEP community will (usually) "just work". Installing mods willy-nilly *may* work or may not. Why take the chance?

I'd recommend at least installing the core mods in the "Fixes" through "Dead Body Collisions", all the core mods in "Interface", and all the core mods in "Landscape & Environment". But you can cherry pick what you want from those lists.

Also, not a mod but getting a good ENB preset is highly recommended for making the game look as good as possible.

Lastly, listen to GodzillaBlitz and use ModOrganizer - it makes experimenting much less painful and finding problems like mod incompatibilities much easier than the other mod managers for a relatively small cost in learning the tool.

Edited to add some more opinions

Yeah, I created a STEP Core Profile in Mod Organizer that has everything in the STEP guide that I liked.

When I want to try new mods, I clone that core profile and add onto the clone.

The profile feature of MO is what puts it above everything else and the fact the mods aren't installed in your data folder.

The only real problem I don't like about it is it can't handle dll plugins. So I have to create different folders for the dll plugins and just rename the folders when I want to use the plugins. This is just a minor problem since most of the time I can use the same dll plugins for any profile.