Adipose

Animal Tweaks is an interesting mod. It toughens the various fauna and makes the novice level much more interesting...at least as far as player survival is concerned. Various critters are more dangerous, particularly at the lower levels. Followers become extremely handy, particularly when it comes to distracting critters. Having said all that, I feel a very slight need to warn you about Mudcrabs. I thought about leaving them as a nasty surprise for those of you that run the mod then my better nature overrode that thought. The mod has turned them into tanks, so, unless you're really cheating, be prepared to run if you try to take them out. In cases where my followers, often four, attack them, I've either lost all four or had them taken out for the duration of the fight. Bear in mind, that's with some really, really overpowered katanas in hand. Recently, just for yuks, I jumped the mudcrab at the little creek by the bridge on the Whiterun side of Riverwood. My souped up Katana bounced after having inflicted minimal damage, and I took off at a dead run. Crabby pursued me all the way through Riverwood and out onto the main Helgen road. I finally eluded him by jumping into the river and swimming back to Riverwood. I'm surprised the I didn't become fish food, though he managed to one shot me for half my life force. During the pursuit, the good citizens of Riverwood ran from tanky so there was no help to be had there. I thought about seeking refuge in Alvor's house just to see if the crab would pursue me. Next time I will...though if he does, he may wipe out Alvor and his whole family. Still, good entertainment in an otherwise boring novice level game.

Thanks for the input.

For me, namtar55's Borgakh and Ugor are the two best in any iteration of Orc female followers. They're closely followed by Glash. Those three completely satisfy any need I have for Orc followers. Their looks fit my view of what a tough, tribal Orc ought to look like...in either LE or SE AE Further, Rocl's "older Delphine" is the best iteration of that character in the game...either version. Absolutely suits me to a "T". Also, Niborino9409's middle aged Lydia is the most realistic on Se.

Got rid of a couple mods. Survival Mode works fine now. Absolutely, positively, boring, but it works. AE still won't let the difficulty level go to legendary. Forced to play on Novice. I could run Novice with steel fists and a wolf conjuration. Well, that's not entirely true. I've installed a few mods that will hand you an unpredictable whammy via bosses and some situations...particularly if you've made your followers more vulnerable. Still, in the final analysis, Survival Mode is a huge disappointment...as is AE. Wonder if Bethesda has dumbed it down in order to appeal to more little folks? Think I'll go to the latest Witcher. I could go back to Skyrim LE, but somehow the game's been damaged. It's far more prone to blinking out when stressed the lest little bit. Of Course, that may be my CPU or some other hardware problem. I could always run my version of F4...without any hint of survival mode. Problem with that is the war in Ukraine and the somewhat more real possibility of a nuke holocaust. I don't even want to dwell on that one bit. Fantasy is ever so much more detached from any hint of reality.

Is it possible to install Requiem in the AE?

Made mistake. Downloaded AESE. Several old standby mods don't work now. Frex, Schlongs doesn't work now. Questionable whether creator will update it on LL. I don't spend a lot of time doing the horizontal mambo with bitmaps but it's nice for characters to look like real nekked people. Frustrating. Have updated those that I could find but papyrus giving me trouble...along with a few others that are needed. AFSE won't run. Have uninstalled and falling back to Le. That runs just fine, the way I want it to run...most of the time. Thirty-four gets jammed up on occasion. Oh well, there's always F4. That runs just fine out of the box and I'm content with it for the most part. Far less buggy than Skyrim.

Skyrim LE Four dead word walls now. Annoying. Tried to max out "Ice Form". Two dead. Frustrating.

Interesting dungeon. Kinda tedious. Bit disappointing. Couldn't find all three of the "opague vessels". Quite possibly a screw up on my part. Lots of heavy spells being thrown around. Quite possible hit one and sent it flying to who knows where. Be nice if there was a map that had "X" marking the location of all three vessels. Level 65. Lots of high level Draugher. Good for filling Grand gems. Second word wall fatally bugged. Wouldn't light up. Chest had a handful of gold. Don't really need any at this point. I'm stinking rich. Did manage to lower the retractable spikes in front of the second word wall. Did so by jumping on top of the pedestal in front. Found that solution by checking on-line. Hey, I gave it my best shot. Spent at least fifteen minutes hunting for a chained ring, handle, etc. Finally gave up and did a small cheat. Would've been nice if I could've helped the Spectre take down the boss at the end. Oh well, so it goes. That's three wordwalls now that wouldn't light up. Now that's just not acceptable.

I really liked Jackerman's set of Thane mods. Since they needed to have high poly heads, I looked up the "Vector Plexus" site and attempted to join. Fortunately my Firefox Security IMMEDIATELY warned me off. Basic thrust of the warning was that VP was a nest of hackers and I shouldn't go there. Having been hacked a few times, I took the warning seriously and dispensed with any plans to use hp heads. Too bad really. Jackerman's work is top of the line.

There is a mod that includes a comprehensive spell that can be cast to force followers to quit fighting. I've forgotten what the mod is named. Does anyone know the name? Inside Lakeview Manor my resident followers are fixated on attacking a mannequin in the armory and it's becoming a bit of a problem.

I use "Adventurer's Tent". I also use "Mannequins Behave", which is a very good mod. I also had "Immersive Animations" installed. Mannequins in the tent did not behave, even though the mannequin mod is rock solid. On a hunch I disabled "Immersive Animations". Mannequins now behave. Go figure. KISS is a universal principle.

Okay, here's the situation. I've got conflicts among my mods. First off, how do I open "xedit"? Second, barring the build of a very expensive, state of the art PC, what not quite top of the line components should I put in? Right now, I've got trouble with mods that make a lot of changes. Frex, I installed a 2k mod that enhanced detail in Skyrim in-general. That caused unpredictable CTDs, particularly in Whiterun...which tends to be buggy anyway. Is it possible to build a PC that will be able to cope with just about any mod that FNIS can install?

I've a rather large number of complex mods installed. Frequently I'll have a CTD occurring during the performance of an action that's been performed many, many times before with no problem. Lately, I've had two CTDs when simply adding items to a chest. I just don't get it. Anyone got any suggestions? I wonder if it's simply a matter of going back and uninstalling some demanding mods that I can probably do without.

Did that. Made no noticeable difference. Mod still very tricky to accommodate. Simply not worth the hassel...at least to me.

Many thanks for the input. I'll take a close look at all the mods you've linked. Again, thanks.