fftfan

Strongly agreed with both ideas. I have tons for both Fallout 4 & SSE, I hesitate a little on adding some more since it'll clutter my Tracking list even more. I think it might be cool to also add some things to the Updates Tab on the top bar, if it's possible: Having it be viewable on a separate page perhaps for when there are many(Though if Tracking center got improvements this might be redundant perhaps)A checkbox on the Updates Tab, whereby it toggles visibility of Updates for other gamesThough HadToRegister's idea of a Search Function would solve both, where we would have options like regular mod searching as well as filtering/sorting/etc.

Awesome and great to know! That was actually something I'd been wondering about since being unable to find Precache Killer for SSE. I do feel bad for the Script Extender mod authors though, that must be a huge pain to have to rebuild them like every month or so. Not my experience at all. Perhaps with the major mods, yes, but the more niche items are hard to find ported. Case in point: Christmas mods. There are 3 pages of Christmas mods for oldrim but if you look at the SSE entries it's almost barren - the most Christmas-y one being one that I recently uploaded. I can't speak for the other unported mods but in this case, most of the authors are despondent and/or have reupload / asset-use unfriendly permissions. That I've really noticed in browsing Skyrim nexus since making my previous post. Many permissions settings shutting down possibilities of SSE ports, I think this is how the defaults are and older Skyrim mods might be from before the current Permissions options were added. I wonder if it might be a good idea to have a "Caretaker" type account where for instance modders that are most likely gone forever, their Oldrim mod could be ported for SSE? Someone who wants the file would have to do the porting themselves but for these "gray area" files the Caretaker would be in charge of the file page. If the author is actually still around and they oppose the availability of the mod for SSE(I've seen a few description/profile that said this) then one message from them means it's removed and not allowed for port. It would be mainly for files from before the built in permission system got implemented and only those that didn't state being against an SSE port on their page or profiles. One big problem is there may be many files from after permission system got added, but the author never changed anything from defaults and maybe never looked at it or even knew it was there. TBH it can be something of an afterthought when publishing a mod I've found. I don't remember what I set on my own mods aside from Commercial Use never allowed. Maybe modder's wills shoukd be added in, with default being something like a time frame of both inactivity and having not responded to PM means community can use it, though the options would allow you to say for this to never happen if preferred.

Interesting, it's like on Fallout 4. Certain mods generally won't work as an ESL. I've found these to usually not work when just manually converted to ESL using the option in the CK: New Settlement locations, Sim Settlements addons(A few author have gotten their own Sim Settlement addons working as ESL like IDEK's Logistics Station, I'm not sure how though), anything script heavy or anything just very complex in general usually seems like it won't work after conversion. I would guess that scripts may need to be done differently to work through an ESL, maybe certain functions they use can't access stuff from records if in they're in the ESL's <FE000000> index? For instance, custom settlements never actually registered after being converted to ESL. My guess is some kind of error happens, causing it to not run. But it must only be some number of functions, not all of them as some simple scripts can sometimes end up working. Bethesda might have made separate variants of functions for Creation Club, & perhaps for those these separate functions must be used over the previous or else it returns an error. I find this stuff interesting as I'd like to be able to narrow it down to some conditionals to determine if a mod can or cannot be made an ESL, aside from the 4096 record limit. I'm working on some Fallout 4 mod stuff right now as I'd like to fix up & update some of my stuff but will probably get into Skyrim right afterwards. I'm getting by okay with only 160 total plugins but I strongly suspect I'll end up having far more for SSE.

In response to post #63591301. Me too! Really hyped for that armory someday. I usually like to give most settlers the Minutemen uniform & backpack from Militarized Minutemen, which is a lot like how I'd imagine a "Settler Uniform/Apparel" system in Sim Settlements to work given that MM has a lot of options for it. So they can have a uniform yet look unique. I tend to use the Engineer options for Settlers assigned to Industrial plots, Officer options for Martial plots, baseline options or plainclothes for the others. If I am doing an Institute playthrough I give settlers Niero's Courser Strigidae & Institute Explorer Suit. I like having 1 settler wearing Mojave Manhunter & Handmaiden. With Handmaiden there's actually a "Ms Mystery" Int Martial plot so it's perfect to set them up as a detective character. For weapons I usually give them Service Rifle, Factor, Cryolance, Ruger Mk V, etc.

Amazing interview! Love to hear from a true modding Hero! I was about to be done with Fallout 4, used to never use settlement mode(except for putting 50 turrets) and ended up staying with it because of Sim Settlements. It's made me feel as though it's worth it to try to put in the effort to slowly learn to create mod content.

I'm very interested in this as well. I do so manually for adding some outfits on Fallout 4 but usually just only do those without any armor workbench customization or none that matters to me. I simply made a blank plugin then setup new armor & armor addon records to point to the armor's models that I wanted, to keep vanilla friendly stats I just duplicate from a suitable base vanilla object. But this doesn't automatically retain the customizations. For mods such as Endor's Custom Combat Armor that depend heavily on customization I simply don't do it through my own plugin and just use their ESP. Merging would be the way around this, I think to retain the customization, any dynamic script setups the author may have done like seen with CROSS outfits where a lot happens "behind the scenes" to tweak outfits. Niero's Mojave Manhunter coat modifies itself based on if you have the chest piece on or not to avoid any possible clipping, among other things & Institute Explorer Suit/Courser Strigidae seem to do similar things. I have to imagine that similar likely happens on Skyrim, given that there is not the same kind of armor modifications here. I think there is just improving armor/weapon to boost stats, you can't really pick 10 options in 10 categories. Script on equip with a menu (like how IEX has it to allow changing suit style whenever) would be one way to have similar functionality on Skyrim. My impression is that merging is a pretty crucial skill in Skyrim modding, unlike on Fallout 4 where I've gotten by without doing merges(though I've had to pass on some weapon mods that edit cells/leveled list/etc and keep it to only a few of them). With Skyrim SE I've actually never used the CK for it or original Skyrim so I'd be pretty interested to hear about how it works here. I've only used Oblivion Construction Set & Fallout 4 CK. Haven't fully gotten into SSE yet but will do so when needing a break from Fallout 4, which might be after some projects. At least I do feel that by waiting some more that SSE will be even better, Luxor is showing some really awesome stuff on Image Share. I think he might retexture the whole game, for both SSE & Fallout 4! Plus there is a lot to learn, even as someone coming from other Bethesda games. I feel like it's going to be really important to get very comfortable with SSE Edit, and then either Mod Organizer 2 or Vortex. For a general starting point this seems to be basically S.T.E.P. for SSE: Tech's Skyrim Special Edition Guidev2 Baseline knowledge/skillset for SSE seems to be as follows: Reading the guide in its entirety Choosing MO2 or Vortex, both have some video guides out there like Gopher's for Vortex and I think I've seen some for MO2. I'm not sure which way I'll go, I planned on MO2 since that's what the guide uses but have started to see some of the known people around Nexus recommending Vortex so it does seem like it might not be "early days" for it anymore. Creation Kit(64 Bit) Basics, from just knowing about how Skyrim handles things up to Merging Plugins Base game balance seemed really poor from what I recall, so I think the Bashed Patch & Leveled Lists will be a lot more important

I think it'd be cool. Something good to maybe use DP on.

Always great to read from another modding hero! Very interesting points to be found here about learning texturing. I think I have gotten a better understanding of texture maps over the years though what's been missing seems to be having one of those graphic tablets. I considered Photoshop to be a nightmare of a program for creation of brand new textures(the editing stuff can be cool) but it now seems likely that it assumes you're on a tablet.

I suggest to check through the spoiler tags in the first post, I've tried to summarize suggestions from the topic as well as some I found that are really good but not in the top files. That's a great point, though I definitely have heard of it in the past I had forgotten about it. Though I haven't gotten around to checking all categories thoroughly. It is no doubt in top files but probably worth mentioning anyways, along with The Forgotten City.

Some solid gold information, thanks so much! It'll help us be better able to get into the game, which is great since Skyrim seems to remain quite active to this day so it alongside Fallout 4 can be reliable go-to games or mainstays for years to come. (Note: Edited quote contents to correct T4GTR34UM3R's username in order to give it correct spelling for general ease of searching. And hyperlinks for easier access) I just edited the opening post to contain useful information from the topic! Will try to include hyperlink to everything mentioned, as I get around to looking at them.

That's a good point, also I just noticed that they do separate by game on Tracking List. Was a bit concerned if it might throw everything together which would quickly get messy.

All true though I have not previously installed Skyrim on this PC. On my previous PC I haven't played since 2012, I was well below minimum specs so I beat the MQ/guilds and left. And when I used Skyrim Nexus I don't know if tracking list was around. Or perhaps I just simply was unaware of it and never made use of it? I started extensively using my Tracking List for Fallout 4. Top Files is the first go to resource for essentials. However there are a lot gems that fly under the radar. I've noticed this from daily visits on Fallout 4 Nexus, there is a lot of stuff that I love but won't ever be Top Files. Maybe their file is only several months old? Even if such a file might be better than an equivalent in Top Files, it won't surpass it in the rankings due to many of the Top Files being well into the thousands or even tens of thousands of endorsements. For instance in Fallout 4, there's stuff in the Top Files that may have been surpassed or maybe in the future could be surpassed but will always remain on top due to being available since November 2015 with the launch rush. I think it's useful to point out nice but missable files that aren't in the Top Files. If I get a lot of fantastic missables brought up, I could edit the OP to include a list like below: Quick list of finds brought up so far, that may not be found in Top Files: Nordic Ruins textures Rustic Daedra Death Hound & Gargoyles Rustic Mountains Draugr Fanmade and NORDIC Exploration and Combat Music RimStats Acquisitive Soulgems Multithreaded Windhelm HD Retexture. 4K option Profiles containing many good mods, 55 textures mods Gamwich's profile, containing 19 SSE texture mods Kajuan's profile, containing 11 texture mods mahty's profile, containing 10 dwarven tech mods Luxor's profile, containing 25 texture mods With textures for instance, everybody upgrades their hardware over time so better textures will tend to get made in later years. Some of the popular texture mods for SSE may get redone at a later time in 4K when the existing popular version may be 2K

I think it's definitely worth giving Vortex a good look now, I'm starting to see positive comments about Vortex noticeably more often. At least I haven't done much yet on MO2 so at least switching should be easy if I do decide I prefer Vortex.

Custom build is always the way to go. I strongly second the Samsung EVO SSD. I view it as absolutely mandatory for Bethesda games as otherwise on an HDD you will most likely have a huge portion of time in game just be loading screens, potentially up to 50% of the time after you mod the game. With Load Accelerator & the SSD I usually get under 10 second load screens on Fallout 4 with a very heavy load order and more than 80GB of packed mesh/texture files being loaded. GPU: I would say 1060 6GB is a pretty decent general sweet spot, so with the new Nvidia Turing based RTX 2000 series you may be able to use a GPU like RTX 2050 or RTX 2060 depending on how those GPUs are configured in terms of the VRAM. I would say that 4GB VRAM is a baseline level in order to have pretty good freedom to mod the game, without having to choose the lower end option on modpages or pass outright on some mods solely due to performance. For 1080p resolution the GTX 1050 Ti does okay as long as you're careful/thoughtful about what you install & GTX 1060 6GB does pretty good while allowing you to mod a bit more. I don't recommend the 1060 3GB or the 1050 2GB, some users had reported texture issues that had turned out to be due to VRAM running out making the game use lower quality LOD style textures(Really bad looking). RTX 2080 & 2080 Ti release on September 20th & it sounds like the other cards may be a bit later, likely in October or November. So you can either choose to wait and get one of the new ones or if you can't wait get a Pascal GTX like the 1060 6GB or 1050 Ti 4GB. I think some AMDs can do okay like RX 580 8GB. A key point to really be sure of things is to view many reviews and save images of the benchmarks into a folder. I did this and spent time viewing a large quantity of them to get a good sense of relatively where each GPU falls and what I can generally be able to expect for them. Same for CPUs though I didn't do this for them as I simply just went i7 for best performance with stuff like 3D applications, I only determined that I would benefit from hyperthreading but probably did not need overclocking. CPU: If you go Intel it should be i5 or i7. i7-8700k for best, i5-8600k or i5-8600. If you wait there's the 9000 series Intels on the way but it's uncertain when they'll launch. I am not knowledgeable on AMD side of things but I have heard a lot of good things about Ryzen. Ryzen 7 2700X / 2700 seem very good and it does sound like at the mid tier levels they may be superior to Intel. RAM: Standard recommendation is 16GB and my testing suggests to me this is true. RAM Speed doesn't hugely matter although Ryzen is said to scale with RAM speeds and benefit from the faster RAM. Very low speed can cause stutters but if you get anything DDR4 it will be fast enough that this shouldn't happen, it mostly would only happen on low end DDR3. It's mainly a matter of simply having enough RAM so that the PC won't need to also use the very slow Page File for memory when running games. So you've already bought it? Definitely can be upgraded but some things to keep in mind are the Power Supply to make sure upgrades don't surpass what the PSU can safely output and motherboard for compatibility, if you upgrade CPU it must be an Intel Coffee Lake 8000 series otherwise you will also need to buy a compatible motherboard. Case size might be a factor, if that's a small form factor(I have full ATX but I can't remember mine's exact measurements) as high end GPUs like 1080, 1080 Ti or Titan can be big. Case size can be a hassle if it is the very small form factor Micro ITX which are like console sized. I clicked "View Models" and only one came up, maybe the others are sold out or something? The one build is 1050 Ti 4GB, i5-8400 2.8 Ghz, 8.0GB DDR4 UDIMM 2666MHz. I was going to say this would be a minimally adequate build but I can strongly say from personal experience that 8GB of system RAM is wholly inadequate at least when I played Fallout 4. I had one module be dead and the shipping would be unreasonably expensive to RMA the RAM(Plus on the off chance that the replacer was also dead, I would have to pay shipping again) so I purchased an identical model of 2x8GB RAM to make my system 24GB. You will experience more performance issues & general stability issues with only 8GB system RAM as the game handles it very poorly when RAM is running out. I may have been able to semi get away with it for some time because I have GTX 1080 8GB and on Fallout 4 the BA2 archive format will mainly utilize VRAM which would have helped mitigate RAM issues on my game. Other new titles like Tomb Raider need 10-12 GB of RAM so I would also say that an 8GB system would generally limit your options. I personally found 8GB to work somewhat okay but only if I had the game relatively unmodded. If you can't upgrade to 16GB RAM, I strongly suggest Witcher 3 as they've done a phenomenal job of optimizing the game. Even when I still had 8GB, I experienced no issues when playing Witcher 3. They've done well enough with it to the point that perhaps Dante76737 can run it on 1080p high settings(No HairWorks). At least Medium should be totally doable with steady 60fps. 1080p Ultra including HairWorks shows up as 40FPS, I usually aim for 60fps but losing HairWorks should get you most of the way there.

Good to know thanks. I had thought about browsing Oldrim Nexus to find additional things that haven't been converted(For instance there's a "Blackreach Overhaul" on there that hasn't been ported to SSE) but now I know better. Definitely going to stay away from doing that, at least until I become more knowledgeable.

Great point, yeah those who I had previously heard from about the loose file being superior performance vs BSAs are also mainly Fallout 4 players. Could absolutely be down to placebo effect given that Fallout 4's BA2 format can improves performance significantly compared to tons of loose files in Textures & Meshes. Interesting, so the ones that aren't loaded don't affect performance? Doesn't notably waste resources for PC to parse through the archives and the game does have smart way of excluding the unneeded/redundant ones from having to be loaded in RAM/VRAM? Have you found the impact on startup load times to be potentially significant, perhaps if I eventually end up with a large SSE game install(My FO4 is over 100GB, after cleaning out some stuff)? I am on an 850 EVO 500GB SSD which is mainly for Windows, Fallout 4, SSE and some active use odds n ends. I've been thinking about ESL conversions mostly but that is a good point. Definitely going to be something that's really important to get into and figure out. I haven't gotten into playing the game yet and only browsed SSE for like 5 hours but I probably have 100+ plugins downloaded and set in a folder for downloaded SSE mods though I intend to try to do fully proper MO2 style setup. It's fast becoming apparent that about 250 will be insufficient in the long term. Thanks a lot! This stuff is pretty important to know

Some nice Nordic Ruins textures showed up today on Hot Files, I noticed that the author also has a pretty nice ENB. I think I likely will use PhotoRealistic Tamriel should my PC's performance allow for it but Rudy ENB SE is a serious candidate for general play if PRT turns out to be too heavy for normal gameplay, both ENBs also are excellent IMO for if you prefer Oblivion's general look in terms of lighting/mood/colors over Skyrim's. Perfect for me because I have never liked the default lighting/mood for original Skyrim. Stumbled on mahty's stuff when searching for "dwarven" trying to find HD dwarven ruins textures. Really cool Dwarven Beam Blades, it's gotten 300 endorsements so likely won't be found in Top Files. I instantly love it though and definitely going to use it. The looks of his stuff will also get a big boost by installing HD textures for Dwarven Armor/Weapons and maybe Dwarven Ruins if he utilized parts from them. I notice underappreciated files from time to time and one thing I will do when I got Skyrim SE set up in a good way like my Fallout 4 will be to go submit some screenshots for them, featuring ideally every texture having been replaced or at least every one that matters with 4K maxed & PRT ENB paired with ReShade. Mahty's screenshots for instance look like they may be taken in Oldrim & with stock textures. Some great info already. This helps make the game feel more exciting. It's a big help for me and I bet also if others also had played The Witcher 3 on the PC. Honestly TW3 spoiled me in terms of graphics quality. I'll post a few I've more easily tracked down already, but one thing I don't yet know about in the CK is how to check textures for heightmap, though I think I may have identified them from searching the texture archives. From memory I recall that Markarth/Dwarven Ruins/Mountains are major in Blackreach, luckily Luxor has just uploaded a big 1.2GB Markarth HD. Some others I've found from checking CK & the texture archives are these texture folders: Reason why Blackreach comes to mind is when I played the game(For only 80 hours due to terrible performance due to being below the stated Minimum Specs) in 2012 the first mod idea that came to mind for me is making dungeons in Blackreach/or based on Blackreach. I am very nostalgic for some classic endgame dungeons from Final Fantasy Tactics & Tactics Ogre, made by the same director. FFT has Midlight's Deep & TO has Palace of the Dead. I would like to attempt these in the CK as my first try at a Skyrim mod sometime(Though things on the go with Fallout 4 modding). My bad I thought I replied yesterday to this post. Am doing bunch of Fallout 4 stuff, probably forgot to hit Add Reply before restarting PC. Although just as well, I was having issues with it stubbornly opening Oldrim CK now I've gotten it solved today. It looks epic going by the screenshots. Author did a very good job! Excellent! I just found Rustic Daedra, that looks spectacular. Gamwich has covered a ton of stuff, Death Hound & Gargoyles are really excellent as those were ones that very noticeably looked bad in the base Oldrim! He also has Rustic Mountains, which might cover some more of Blackreach's textures. Kajuan sounds awesome, I'll go check him out too! Draugr looks very impressive Fanmade and NORDIC Exploration and Combat Music:Cool, music is always a welcome additions! And I've been surprised many times by modders making some pretty good music. There are some I've found over the years where they possibly could have since gone pro IMO. RimStats is fantastic. Always nice to have convenience! Acquisitive Soulgems Multithreaded: This seems like an awesome addition. IMO it's like how it should have worked in the first place. Always great when modders have fixed "Derp!" moments. The others seem pretty interesting, I'll give them a look in some more detail one by one.

Yes, I am using Mod Organizer(Though I only installed ~10 mods so far, just stuff like USSEP, ECE, other bug fixes). I am an SSE noob, bought SSE on August 8th but it's really evident to me that Skyrim will demand that I install far more mods than I needed to with Fallout 4. Due to my previously bad specs I also largely never got into the original Skyrim, so I am pretty out of the loop with Skyrim modding practices. I'm currently at about 200 plugins on Fallout 4 and very happy, meanwhile I have heard on discords people say they use 1000+ plugins plus have heard of other guys using 1200+ plugins for SSE. I previously found MO2 a little intimidating as someone used to using NMM but I am convinced it'll be necessary for SSE. I anticipate a lot of time of just installing & testing mods before really getting into playing SSE. In Fallout 4 the BA2 archive format allows for better loading of textures, it allows for leveraging VRAM to improve performance. I selected GTX 1080 in part because VRAM is very important to Fallout 4 performance. As the engine is really old, this is one means they used to allow for Fallout 4 to go further passed the original intentions for the engine. Anecdotes have suggested that the previous BSA format from Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim/Special Edition actually has the opposite effect, where loading textures from them apparently may worsen performance relative to loose files only. That's gonna be really helpful for selecting textures. Going to be strange TBH to use loose files when I am used to packing them all up always being the best route. True on both of these.

I'm going with Mod Organizer 2. I expect that I'll get a very complicated install going, so I think MO2 will be well suited for that.

That'd be great thanks! Well the first thing would be enhancing Blackreach. As a newcomer I'm not familiar with which exact textures need to be replaced. I didn't find higher res textures by searching for "blackreach" on SSE nexus. I did find one on Oldrim nexus but it is pretty hard to tell, I think it may be outdated like similar to stock SSE's textures(Could be using 512 sized textures for all I know). I also don't know if Oldrim textures actually still apply for SSE or if details "under the hood" have been changed, game to game there usually are some changes to how the games handle texture files. Aside from that, probably dungeons/maybe creatures? I remember some being pretty cool in design but hamstrung by really bad vanilla textures on oldrim. I've downloaded top files stuff so some of this may already be covered without me knowing about it. Maybe I'll have to go on a hunt ingame for vanilla "I can't believe that got greenlit" texturing doozies? I also made a topic asking about BSAs in regards to optimization. Since you've got most of your Skyrim retextured, I wonder if you used similar measures to my mostly retextured Fallout 4 like packing everything up into customized Skyrim - Textures.BSAs. My PC(GTX 1080) should be fine but I do wonder if engine limitations could possibly strike(Though I assume SSE with the move to 64bit is meant to combat that)

So I've become a big fan of using the BA2 format for significant performance benefits on Fallout 4, specifically the better performance you can attain by packing up loose files into BA2s rather than just simply having a huge quantity of loose files loaded from Data/Textures/. I've recently bought Skyrim Special Edition. I vaguely recalled testing BSA format way back for Oblivion and finding it didn't appear to benefit performance(Though I was on very low end & no SSD) at least not to any noticeable extent, though I was doing so with the basically hopeless intention of trying help my system be able to use ENB in general gameplay at a reasonable FPS. I've recently read a very informative comment on a Fallout 4 texture pack stating that packing textures BA2 would only, or at least mainly would offer the potential performance benefits when a specific compression type is used for the texture files. So as a result of learning this info, this leads me to ask if there are any similar rules for BSA archives in Skyrim in order to enhance performance? I think the biggest thing for me with SSE modding at least when starting out fresh & aside from Bug Fixes is going to be using texture replacers for everything I can find, the 4K option whenever it exists. So far I've downloaded over 20GB of mods, mostly of texture packs. So as a newcomer I am particularly wondering if I can gain performance benefits in order to allow for even more potential modding through any similar methods as when we use Archive2 on Fallout 4 to pack up textures & other loose files into a - Main.ba2 & a - Textures.ba2. I'm still mostly playing Fallout but have a few random ideas for stuff to try out when I get more into Skyrim. It's going to be a pretty gradual process getting everything sorted out, testing it to ensure a well functioning load order, readjusting things before I jump in on a playthrough. I have heard of people running 1200 plugins on Skyrim(through ESL conversions or I assume merging), so evidently people mod their Skyrim installs much more thoroughly than their Fallout 4 installs. Texture enhancements will be the first thing since I don't yet have to worry about load order yet for them even if I were to use 100 or more texture packs, only need to determine priority for any overlapping textures. One concern performance wise: Is that it seemed to me that most particularly for Skyrim itself seemingly out of any game, ENB is able to have the most profound effects in terms of improving visuals. I saw pretty dramatic enhancement when I experimented with them around 2012, and I think that's when ENB itself may have been pretty new. So I'm planning to get really into ENB on my SSE install, I'll likely use PRT - Photorealistic Tamriel as that seems to possibly be the current ENB preset king. Honestly this mod page is one of the things that gets me a bit excited for getting into Skyrim, since the images show that people have had great success getting Skyrim to look good. Can I use a similar method as BiRaitBec Modlist (for Fallout 4) by unpacking the SSE texture archives, creating a fully customized Textures folder configuration and then finally packing it all into newly re-created Skyrim - Textures.BSAs? Will these measures perhaps be unnecessary for Skyrim Special Edition on a GTX 1080, i7 7700, 24GB, SSD, etc? Though even if it is, this could still be potentially helpful to know for playing on a low end PC.

Some great examples I've just found, from checking Luxor's profile after downloading his Fallout 4 stuff is he's got some seriously awesome SSE texture replacers. They're all pretty new like June 2018 or so, so likely to be missed if people only look in Top Files. Seems to be a good strategy to check profile page for top Fallout 4 texture artists. These definitely classify as "can't play without" IMO as one thing I really remembered was some really bad vanilla textures. I think I've found replacer sets for a lot of the cities. Only really need one for Windhelm I think, Windhelm stood out negatively for me in unmodded Oldrim and IIRC I betrayed Stormcloaks to side with Imperial Legion as a result. Textures made the Stormcloaks lose a supporter! Maybe Blackreach since that was my favorite location back when I played. EDIT: Another modder to the rescue! Windhelm HD Retexture! 4K option! Maybe I will side Stormcloak sometime. Somehow this got missed too, when I'd searched through Models & Textures Top Files(Second set I looked at, after Bug Fixes of course). Skyrim 2017 Textures. Absolutely essential IMO. Already got both mods. But yeah they're pretty great. It's exciting that there is so much on SSE nexus. I had a lot of gripes with Skyrim, when I played 99% vanilla. Skyrim probably gets the most mods because the base game was possibly the most in need of sweeping changes and huge content additions. Fallout 4 was only very lacking in the settlement building area, vanilla building is extremely poor compared to what a modded Fallout 4 with Sim Settlements, Snappy can do. And from trying out the CK more nowadays, there is a lot of stuff for static pieces that are only usable in the CK and not the in game building interface.

You're exactly right! I've been around quite a while and while Top Files will cover a big share of what's there for must haves, there are always newer files or maybe stuff with a difficult installation that aren't going to get as much endorsements and will fly well under the radar. Only the people who have been visting daily on SSE Nexus will know about them. Also another topic I've heard a little about is Oldrim stuff that potentially can work on SSE but that may be a bit advanced given I am inexperienced with Skyrim modding. Good to see it still recommended, I heard of it but given how much time has passed I felt unsure to just follow it in case it became outdated. I will check out Omega and T'Skyrim True Skyrim!

About mesh replacers I cannot really say about that. I do remember hearing about that kind of stuff so I always deliberately avoid them. Example: I heard about Commonwealth Conifers, heard it can result in breaking precombineds so I stay far away from it. I might very well be wrong but I feel it's better to be safe than turning my game into a Powerpoint slide. I'm a settlements fanatic so breaking precombineds is a no-go for me. I suggest this mod list guide, it has personally helped me get some good performance even downtown with many texture replacers. Fallout 4 Mod List and Load Order Guide (BiRaitBec Modlist) https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/23556 Side Note: The NMC Texture Bundle you mentioned looks pretty interesting!

This is pretty cool! I would be getting Dragon Quest XI with it