TeofaTsavo

While technically not "mods" I would suggest all of the Unofficial Patches for Skyrim and whatever DLC you have. Be sure you follow the install directions. They address a lot of maddening unresolved bugs Bethesda never fixed. Prior to starting a new game I would install one of the female animation fixes so that Lydia and others don't move like gorillas with a rash. For some reason these fixes have to be installed prior to meeting those NPCs in game. It may not matter to you. I would suggest trying one of the single NPC follower Custom Voiced/Dialog mods. Inigo, Sophia, Arissa as examples. There are more complex custom followers, Vilja, Anna NPCs for example, but perhaps more complex than a first play through needs. I'm sure I left some out. Followers like these are so superior to Vanilla cardboard followers and add a lot to a game without going OP. Convenient Horses are a must for me. So is "When Vampires Attack" or similar. "Spouses Can live Anywhere" is another. I differ from most in that I see no need for MCM or SkyUI so far, for me. Same for the many follower tweak mods like UFO. I use Arissa and Sophia, both separate from the vanilla system, and can hire one Vanilla. 3 followers are plenty, for me. One is honestly enough. Beautify Skyrim. Can't suggest, there are so many, dependent on your taste, not mine. ApacheSkyHair is one that is almost a must because of the number of mods with dependency on it. I use CBBE with bodyslide 2, but there are many bodies. Any mod that washes part of the dirt and wrinkles off Vanilla is good, to me. Beth overdid "gritty" for my taste. I also use a mod called The Hairdresser to spot apply new hair to NPCs rather than an overall replacer. I do not use any ENBs or world/town enhancing texture mods. I'll trade a bit of performance for high rez armor/weapons, not for hi rez grass. I actually use lower rez world textures, as my focus tends to be on my Characters.

The vampire attacks devastated my first play through. The mods to stop this are, to me, essential. Riverwood was a ghost town. They even murdered the dog. Had attacks where I heard the commotion and was still too late. Had a run of masters with a gargoyle and a pair of hounds that made short work of NPCs. i still have a follower mod I never hire, Aetia, since her home point is lounging on the Rverwood traders front porch. I equip her very well and just leave her there, she is essential and functions as a powerful town guard.

It is a testament to your gaming rig that you made it as far as you did in the intro. I was surprised. Mods and Helgen intro just do not get along.

From my experience I would not mod a new game at all until I was out of Helgen. I have a few Level 1 post helgen saves that I use to start new games. My hair mods alone will crash the Helgen char creation.

Oh, thanks for that link. I missed that Mod. I do have the Steam Workshop Mod. The one on Nexus looks good.

My son has been badgering me to do a Thieves Guild playthrough. Keeps telling me how much I have missed. I started a new game to try. Got to Riften and managed the first quest. Then did the second. Petty, ugly stuff, preying on people with little to give. I talked to Mjoll. I listened to what the townsfolk said to me. I thought about it. Bryjolf led me into the cistern, and a few console commands later there was no Thieves guild to worry about. Again. I just can't do it.

I choose Empire because there will be, in my opinion, another war against the Dominion. The fragile breathing space should not have been wasted on a petty civil war, when the Dominion is the true enemy of both factions in that war. I'm sure Dominion strategists were celebrating. Banning Talos worship was forced by the Dominion. Pretty smart move to try and divide and lessen the threat of the Nord Legions. Ulfric is delusional to think his little adventure in "freedom" would survive very long in the face of renewed Dominion aggression, his forces weakened by civil war and deserving no support from the Empire or remaining Legions. The end result would be no Talos worship anyway..loss of lands, life and independence. The end result far worse than the Concordat. I cannot support Ulfric simply because he is a short sighted fool. The damage he caused will possibly give the Dominion the next war. At least he paid with his life for that stupidity.

I always finish Dawnguard first, as I find the Vampire onslaught to be far worse for the population than Dragons. I just finished a playthrough with a char who had done every other questline but didn't do Diplomatic Immunity till level 76. Master difficulty level, Lots of high level dragons about, but not a problem as compared to Dawnguard massecres. I feel that Dawnguard is time sensitive once started, since it appears that Bethesda specifically targeted townspeople to lend a sense of urgency. My very first playthrough I ended up with towns like Riverview and Ivarstead devoid of life, and the majority of Whiterun merchants dead because I started Dawnguard but then wandered off and did the Civil War and other things.

read "The Scourge of the Grey Quarter" . Acceptance is more than "how many". I would point out the Housecarl of Balgruff vs the Housecarl of Ulfric as an example.

Ulfric embraces diversity much like Daniel F Malan did.

Question on the poll. Are the NPCs you speak of essential or protected? More dialog for dead NPCs would be wasted effort. Players seem to have a tendency to kill anything killable.

Do you have access to an internet cafe or wifi? If you can connect (with your laptop) to steam away from school you could register and verify your copy, then set to offline mode. IMO Auto Update from Steam Workshop for those mods is not a good feature, as I want control over what mod updates are applied to my saves. I always unsubscribe from any Steam Workshop mod. I would guess that far over 90% of my hours played have been with Steam set to offline.

The horses spawned scaled. No shrinking or growing. Immersive in that a massive armored Ogre had a massive horse to carry it, and smaller Dwarven or halflings had ponies. shrug. Even in Skyrim Horses would have diverse sizes. Nevermind.

One thing that Everquest 2 did was to scale mounts to player size. This gave many, many different sized horses in game. Don't know if that is possible in this game, but even minor differences in player size (Breton vs Nord as example) would be visible as small differences in Horse size. IMO this would add tons to immersion, particularly some of the smaller follower mods basically being mounted on ponies. My 2 cents.

I agree with JohnJarvis. Reviews are just subjective opinion and carry the baggage of the reviewers own bias, taste and gameplay style. Game companies can shove MMOs at Zeropunctuation forever and a "good" review isn't gonna happen, for example. I recently watched a Top Ten Followers review that listed Dovabear as the top follower of all time. Uh.. OK. But.. for the reviewer, it is, and for the mod maker some gratitude for the work they did. Valid opinion. Reward for creating is intrinsic. Do your best work, know it is your best work, and be happy with your internal review. People who agree with you will come along.

Mods give me the tools to change the visual things that drive me bonkers in MMOs. So tired of armor and gear that looks like 6th grade notebook cover doodles. Mods allow so much more diversity and lend a little truth to the hackneyed MMO dev lie of "Play your way". Small mods like "The Parthinax Dilemna" solve glaring issues some of us have with the story.. without the forum drama and fan "go play wow" response of daring to dislike an MMO story wreck. Without mods this would have been a very short term game for me. With mods it has become a refuge from the LCD pandering and entitlement that has become entrenched in online MMOs. I appreciate the work of mod authors so much.

Thank you. The ini. setting was extremely helpful

Hi. I've tried several differently worded searches for this kind of mod with no luck. I would like to drastically reduce both the sound and graphic effects of magic use. Particularly the loud and overly large effects of spells like ice spikes. Its all so overdone. Is there such a mod? Sorry if this is posted in the wrong place.

Convenient Horses is a must have mod in my game. Good advice.

I don't know if you can do this, but horses in Everquest 2 will bend their necks and do a turn on the hind quarters (as well as back and turning while backing. Perhaps investigate what they did?

I just started Skyrim in Feb. I've played MMOs only since 2003, SWG, EQ2, AOC, GW. etc. Tired of the homogenization and LCD pandering to a single demographic. I think my GW2 experience killed MMOs for me. If you don't enjoy a certain aspect of an MMO and mention it...there will be no shortage of people telling you not to let the door hit you on the way out. Here.. if something bugs you, there is probably a mod for it. From huge gameplay changes to small cosmetics. I love it. The other day I was hating on the horrible yellow default for scaled armor... and sure enough, looked, and there was a mod for that. The other aspect is limitations. Want more hairstyles in a MMO? You will get 50 excuses why they can't, and a week later they will add a couple in the Cash Store. Here, modders, on thier own, provide more, more variety, more niche tastes, more options. There can never be too many options. I'm very happy my son convinced me to try this. I was on the verge of just giving up on Gaming.

Good luck! Thanks, and I'll think of you as my little Breton picks off baddies with her musket. :).

When this happened to me I disabled the unofficial patches, loaded an earlier save, and finished with no problems. good luck.

Did you absorb the soul. There was a conflict with the Unoffical Patches that broke soul absorbs, and affected this quest. Google Dragon Rising.

The npc dialog does not seem to go away on cure, nor does the "days spent as werewolf" counter in game info.