The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Mod Thread

It's funny, I had no idea that NPCs DIDN'T have access to the same stuff I did. Wacky, that.

It's something you don't notice until you run ASIS. There's a startling amount of stuff the NPCs can't use, or won't do. Just perks and potions alone would make normal enemies harder, but the updated AI is a lot smarter. They use interrupt abilities, such as shield bash, a lot. I mean a LOT. You can't just wind up a power attack and expect to have it land, you'll get interrupted 99% of the time.

If I had to point to one thing that ups the difficulty the most, it'd be crossbows. A level 1 bandit with a crossbow is a very serious threat, and a lot of them spawn with crossbows. Generally speaking, if I don't get the jump on a group of bandits and stealth-kill at least one of them then I'm almost certainly dead. I'm planning to grab defensive spells ASAP and try to get a ton of Stealth perks so I can at least approach enemies without dying instantly.

I'm running Duel V7 and High Level Enemies. My usual response to a group of enemies at this point is to run away quickly. They have no problem ganging up and flanking.

Glad you got your brightness levels figured out!

Sounds like Duel does a lot of the same changes ASIS does, only focused specifically on combat. I like the sound of it, but I think it'd be redundant for me since my combat is already just as deadly. The only reason my response is not to run away is because I'm stubborn.

Guys, not enough talk of Q's Windhelm Basement or Q's Mannequins & More.

Seriously, best basement/mannequin mods available.

I am looking at starting up a pure mage playthrough of Skyrim. I have heard that vanilla spells and magic are either lackluster or unbalanced. Do you have any recommendations for mods that fix or overhaul the magic system to make it playable as a pure destruction mage?

On skyrim nexus I have in the past used Magic Empowered, Better Magic and Balanced Magic. Although different they all do roughly the same thing - make magic evolve as you get stronger and level up.
I would look at which one is the the most up to date and still gets the authors input/patches etc

I dont use any of them now because im a complete REQUIEM fanatic
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/192...?
that also improves magic but does an awful lot more they you might not want

With the purchase of a new video card, going through the STEP install process today.

Boy there are alot of mods here.

The full process will take you the better part of 2 days to finish. I strongly suggest you follow their backup instructions too, unless if you want to find yourself starting over when you're at the second to last step (this happened to me). Here is what I did, and it worked out perfectly:

1 - Use NMM and BOSS. STEP recommends Mod Organizer but I found it much worse than NMM.
2 - Download all mods ahead of time. Most of the mods include comparison screenshots and performance cost, so it's pretty easy to determine what you want and download it all ahead of time. Just queue them up and leave it for a day.
3 - Create a backup of your entire Skyrim directory at each Stop & Test phase in STEP. Optionally create a backup of your vanilla directory unless if you can download it again quickly. It's better to be able to go back one step than to have to start over.
4 - Do select and run an ENB preset. These make a HUGE visual difference, and the ones STEP recommends are all solid choices.

Good luck!

Good tips, I got through everything up to where the graphics mods started, have the first set downloading now.

Will go make a back up now.

Also already started using Mod Organizer, so I guess that is what I am going with since STEP recommended not using NMM.

WINDHELM BASEMENT

Quintin_Stone wrote:

WINDHELM BASEMENT

Good mod. The guy who made it is an ass though.

Coldstream wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

WINDHELM BASEMENT

Good mod. The guy who made it is an ass though.

So true.

Kamakazi010654 wrote:

Good tips, I got through everything up to where the graphics mods started, have the first set downloading now.

Will go make a back up now.

Also already started using Mod Organizer, so I guess that is what I am going with since STEP recommended not using NMM.

My main complaint about Mod Organizer is that the UI needs a lot of polish, and it needs to keep better records of your actions. For example, there's no easy way to find out what mod merges you've performed, which is important to determine what you need to do for mod uninstallation. I also think the STEP reason for not recommending NMM doesn't make any sense. If the defacto response to something going wrong is "re-install vanilla and try again", which STEP even says itself, then why does it matter that NMM doesn't do a perfect job of cleaning up after uninstalling mods? Incidentally, Mod Organizer also doesn't do a good cleanup job.

If you've already started with Mod Organizer then I'm curious how it works out for you. I had it actually cause problems, where when I merged two mods and then did a test run stuff completely broke. Doing the same install order with NMM things worked perfectly.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

WINDHELM BASEMENT

Don't trust those mannequins. They might try to kill you.

Katy wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

WINDHELM BASEMENT

Don't trust those mannequins. They might try to kill you.

Only if you're a blonde chav. That is, if you're playing the game right.

I just finished the whole STEP recommended mods using Mod Organizer, and didn't really have much trouble.

The biggest thing I hit was not noticing the small line about "install the two patches" for "Weapons and Armor Fix", which patch over 3 mods you wind up installing many STEPs later.

Got all the way to Whiterun and then some of the Companions had glowy purple Skyforged weapons o.0

I like that MO keeps the vanilla install directory clean, and only merges in the mods at run-time. I've basically only got BOSS and SKSE installed into my Steam directory, and all the other mods are installed under MO's directory.

For whatever reason, I couldn't get Nexus and MO to work well together, and be able to use the Use Manager links on Nexus. I just wound up downloading everything manually - but it did take the better part of 2 days to get everything downloaded and installed into MO.

The other cool thing about MO is that you can create a mod at various stages of the STEP process, when you have things stable, tested somewhat, and verify that the mods you installed will not kill your framerate. Need a lot of disk space to do this though but, forgetting to do something or having a bad mod (which STEP mostly does away with but still...) just means rolling back to a previous "mod" with all your stuff already set up (minus what you have done since then of course). STEP is long and tedious enough to set up that having the ability to roll back is a great safety net. Plus once you have STEP set up and a mod made of it, you can experiment a little always knowing you can go back to vanilla STEP if something goes awry.

Not sure if NMM can do this, it has been a while since I used it.

I just picked up the game during the Steam sale and swore I wouldn't start modding it until I had time to play it. But, alas, my will is weak and spent a few hours this weekend installing about two dozen mods from the list maverickz linked to in the Steam sale thread.

I've been using Mod Organizer as well, and find it pretty intuitive. Some of the stuff is a bit arcane at the moment (e.g., dirty edits), but it certainly helps having BOSS to manage load order.

For now, I've mostly limited myself to interface and graphics mods, with just a few gameplay ones mixed in for good measure. Everything seems to be working as expected, but I guess I won't know for sure until I get further into the game itself.

<Must finish GTA5 first, must finish GTA5 first.>

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/C2Ovgpy.png)

Every time this thread is resurrected I get the urge to spend days modding up Skyrim and start playing, only to stop after spending not much more time playing than I did modding in the first place.

Every. Time.

Thank you, one and all, for this holiday's recreation. Like the pile wasn't high enough already.

McIrishJihad wrote:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/C2Ovgpy.png)

Oh god yes, dunno how I'd live without these two.

Moggy wrote:

Every time this thread is resurrected I get the urge to spend days modding up Skyrim and start playing, only to stop after spending not much more time playing than I did modding in the first place.

Every. Time.

Thank you, one and all, for this holiday's recreation. Like the pile wasn't high enough already.

I know what you mean. But this time is different, I will play through again.

Maybe.

tboon wrote:

The other cool thing about MO is that you can create a mod at various stages of the STEP process, when you have things stable, tested somewhat, and verify that the mods you installed will not kill your framerate. Need a lot of disk space to do this though but, forgetting to do something or having a bad mod (which STEP mostly does away with but still...) just means rolling back to a previous "mod" with all your stuff already set up (minus what you have done since then of course). STEP is long and tedious enough to set up that having the ability to roll back is a great safety net. Plus once you have STEP set up and a mod made of it, you can experiment a little always knowing you can go back to vanilla STEP if something goes awry.

Not sure if NMM can do this, it has been a while since I used it.

NMM can't do this as far as I know. I wish that Mod Organizer had worked for me, because it's features like these that I want to take advantage of, but it didn't. At least you can still do this sort of thing manually, just backing up your Skyrim directory after STEP is done, assuming you have the space.

Looks like the Skywind mod is coming along quite well.

omnipherous wrote:

Looks like the Skywind mod is coming along quite well.

That piano solo at the end....

Yeah, I'd love to know where the music from that came from.

Edit: Found it

whine

All the great stories in the other Skyrim thread got me wanting to play this again. So I started setting up a STEP install.

I hate Nexus.

I love what they do; having one go-to place for almost everything is great.

Unfortunately, it seems like it is run on a bunch of RaspberryPis. Just so so slow and so so many errors trying to get things. I spent all day yesterday, off and on, trying to get the mods needed for STEP. And stopped about half-way through because I could not take another 5 minute load of the download list or another error fetching a file. Or more maintenance. Maybe it was because it was a Sunday. But it was painful.

All this is after ponying up for a premium membership because, without that, it is almost unusable beyond fetching a mod or two.

I know this is a #firstworldproblem but it seems like they could do a better job, especially since it looks like they expanded the number of games they are acting as mod repository for.

/whine

tboon wrote:

whine

All the great stories in the other Skyrim thread got me wanting to play this again. So I started setting up a STEP install.

I hate Nexus.

I love what they do; having one go-to place for almost everything is great.

Unfortunately, it seems like it is run on a bunch of RaspberryPis. Just so so slow and so so many errors trying to get things. I spent all day yesterday, off and on, trying to get the mods needed for STEP. And stopped about half-way through because I could not take another 5 minute load of the download list or another error fetching a file. Or more maintenance. Maybe it was because it was a Sunday. But it was painful.

All this is after ponying up for a premium membership because, without that, it is almost unusable beyond fetching a mod or two.

I know this is a #firstworldproblem but it seems like they could do a better job, especially since it looks like they expanded the number of games they are acting as mod repository for.

/whine

I found that the slowness really depended on which mirror you used, I had great luck with everything in the Western united states but it would take FOREVER to get anything off of any o the Eastern servers.