DivineAurora

I'd love to see a mod that does the Laughing Man animated icon (from Ghost in the Shell) facial overlay thing for Cyberpunk 2077, possibly as a replacer for the effect that blurs your face on cameras that you see when you look at your character while hacking cameras, and maybe as a face slot item like glasses and gas masks and such that appears holographically similar to the Scav gang masks as well. For the face slot item, if one is made, maybe it could be found on a netrunner corpse that appears to have died attacking a corp to something that hacking wouldn't have helped with, and include a datapad message thingy that makes it clearly a reference to GitS and perhaps Salinger.

Was looking into adding underwater and jumping combat to my modlist, but I can't find any things that offer it without significant bugs. Character Behaviors Enhanced for instance makes it impossible to cast spells on dragonback and removes some animations in key story moments and removes cross-attack dual wielding attacks in order to add a dual-wielding block. I'd like to see something without bugs or removing existing abilities. There also seem to be a lot of issues with how weapons are drawn underwater or dealing with the transitions between water and out of it in the mods I've managed to find. I'd prefer something much smoother and more intuitive with things working relatively normally. Of course, I don't want to do silly things like let a character use 2 handed weapons or torches underwater, but being able to draw and sheathe one handed weapons and prepare and put away spells normally in one hand while swimming would be something that I think should be much more reasonable. Underwater shouts should be possible, but perhaps only when a character has some form of waterbreathing (via being an Argonian or some form of enchantment, spell, or potion). Jumping shouts should definitely be possible. I suspect that simply editing the Character Behaviors Enhanced mod to patch it might not work for this wishlist and avoiding the bugs and lost features, and someone might have to start a new mod from scratch that works in a different way, but I hope someone takes this up regardless. A minor wishlist aspect for such a mod would be alternate animations for underwater shock/fire/frost effects, causing frost effects to generate more ice while underwater, fire effects to turn into a jet of heat distortions and bubbles as if boiling the water, and I'm not sure about how shock effects should look different, perhaps an extra amount of colored magic glow due to the extra containment needed to keep the spell from going off target and shocking everything around you while underwater?

This is less of a request and more of an idea, partly because I'm not confident about the exact style of how things might be done by a particular mod author fitting how I'd want it, but I thought I'd share the idea anyway. Much of the vanilla equipment looks old and worn, with stains, scratches, dents, rust, etc., even if your character just made it in at a forge or you just bought it from an NPC vendor that presumably makes or gets new things. My idea here is to have two versions of most non-unique items, a 'new' and an 'old' version. Whenever you craft things yourself, you'll always get the new version, and most shops sell the new versions primarily (some might sell a mix of new and old, or only old, depending on the lore of the particular shop). Dungeon loot would generally be 'old' versions. NPCs might carry/wear new or old gear depending on who they are, their relative wealth, faction, and various other lore aspects, for instance, most wealthy NPCs in cities would wear new clothing, but might carry and odd old heirloom item or two, such as a weapon or piece of armor, while most bandits would primarily have 'old' gear. If it's possible, this might also affect the underwear textures of NPCs, with NPCs living in cities and settlements being more likely to have cleaner versions of underwear textures, while people like bandits might be more likely to have more worn versions of such, although I suspect this might not be possible without a lot more work and might involve creating race variants or something. The new versions of things would generally look brand new, metal still shiny and fresh from the forge, no dents, scratches, or rust, cloth closer to it's original dyed colors and lacking in stains and less wrinkled and stuff, and so on. Old versions would have all sorts of signs of wear and tear, stains, rust, dents, scratches, tears, fading dyes, and so on. Some vanilla gear would be more the basis of 'new' versions, while some would be more the basis of 'old' versions, but generally speaking most gear would have two texture versions, one 'new' and one 'old' and possibly slightly different models in some cases. In some cases the vanilla versions would be in-between the two versions, and two entirely new versions would be created, one older looking than the vanilla version, and one newer looking than the vanilla version. This idea isn't involving things actually wearing down over the course of gameplay, or if it does, the wear and tear wouldn't happen to enchanted gear over the course of gameplay, or would happen more slowly to enchanted gear than non-enchanted gear. This system could potentially be made in a way intended to allow patches for newly added gear from other mods to work with this system or help you pick where alternate textures or models you use might apply (if they replace old or new versions of things)? Perhaps for role-play purposes there could be a system to turn 'new' equipment into their 'old' versions (rolling it across rocks and dipping it in mud a bunch? A new spell?) or maybe the reverse (repair/maintenance using smithing skill or a spell?), although I think keeping such systems optional installs might be a good idea.

Some more various mods I'd like to see: Winterhold interactive rebuilding questline, related to things like Hearthfire systems and that Creation Club farm you can build. In this questline, you must be the Archmage (having completed the College questline) and be a Thane of Winterhold and not currently part of an opposing faction in a mid-way-through Civil War questline to the current Jarl. You approach whoever the Jarl is and have a new dialogue option that requires a certain high amount of money that you use to convince them that as Thane and Archmage, you want to contribute to the restoration of Winterhold city. Getting a certain amount far in this quest will stop some Winterhold NPCs from badmouthing the college as much or as badly. You pay for restorations to be done, then go to places to hire people to help with them, likely needing to set up a temporary worker's barracks and a stables first, along with filling them with things like furs and food/drink supplies, before you can go call the workers over. Then you can wait a certain amount of time and they'll clear out some of the remaining ruins and clear some snow drifts and level some extra land. You can then hire members of the college and collect supplies to build various lighting and warming stations in preparation for the next stage. These lighting and warming are supposedly to keep snow drifts from coming back and let the workers keep at things longer and compensate for visibility with the dense dark cloud cover the area often has for the workers to see, and it reduces snow in many spots around the city more lastingly. When you return after this is done, not only are these lighting and heating things built, but some damage to the college's bridge has been repaired, and some of these have been installed in the college as well, with college members who did it inspired by your setup and wanting a bit more comfort at the college, and paid for it themselves after they were done with the city. Next you start re-building various basic buildings and key facilities in the Winterhold city, adding more houses, businesses, facilities, and such. One of the constructions is a greenhouse of sorts that is partly magically lit and warmed that can help produce more food year round even when the weather is too harsh for travel to get imported food in order for the hold to support a larger population. The quests are a mixture of recruitment missions, paying lump sums to the Jarl or staff from the college or the foreman in charge of the construction projects, contributing specific supplies to various locations, or building certain things yourself. One of the last things added is a new house for yourself as Thane. Some other things added are magically prepared reinforcements that are meant to stabilize the cliffsides and the bridge to the college and the college outcropping, mostly made of stone and dwemer metal escavated from a small dwarven ruin you have to clear out of hostiles nearby that the college helps 'find' the location of, you have to lead some surveys to Labyrinthian and a few Dwarven sites with college mages to prepare for this construction in terms of research, fighting some enemies during those visits before the visitors start examining things. If you also demonstrate a clear-skies shout several times in a mini side-mission, they'll also add a row of devises to the shores and cliffs around the college and city that should prevent another storm the level of the one that caused the great collapse. A set of stairs and ramps can be added that lead down to newly built docks from both the college and the hold. One of the final constructions is new fortifications around the hold, new walls and such, which, once you complete it, the Jarl will commission a statue of a generic archmage character built in your honor (it looks like a heavily bearded old male nord in archmage robes regardless of your race or gender) to be placed in a new town square in a magically maintained fountain that magic keeps lit and from freezing and helps maintain the pumping and purity of the water. Along the way, various citizens, both old and new, will add various details and extra things as you make certain upgrades they like or they've gotten used to such after another upgrade, and some will give you gifts. The college will also gain some new students and new experts choosing to reside there from various places, some outside of Skyrim, but most new NPCs implied to be from various places of Skyrim, and get expanded to a degree as opinions of it improve due to your work as Archmage to help restore the city. In particular, one of your missions to help improve the college's reputation and help with building everything is to recruit a new expert in enchanting to help out with things from some other region (probably found currently visiting either Solstheim or a major hold), who joins the college to do more than just Sergius can do on his own. You build a rabbit farm for them under the college that also has a building that grows lots of carrots and wheat and cabbage, which is implied to be used to fill small soul gems on the quick, and has re-spawning rabbits (with two in an inaccessible cage visible that you can't kill or reach implied to help restore the population if someone unauthorized uses up too many of them). ----- A general texture replacer that doesn't change colors, dirtiness, species/breed, patterns, etc. but is still higher rez for pretty much everything. Likely made at least partly via newer AI upscaling methods, but some things may need to be modified individually. It'll all still look like regular special edition skyrim, but pretty much every texture would be replaced-improved, almost as if the regular non-modded textures were from a more distant LOD (in fact, possibly this might include moving those to a newly added LOD level as an optional feature, or perhaps adjusting all lods a step back and more distant and using the old textures as the new closest LOD mode?). This would include basically every texture in the game, although it might be split up into separate sections for download ease purposes and to help people who want to use other mods for certain aspects, like character models. Special attention would be paid to some things that either don't have many mods made of them, or don't have many mods made of them that don't change them significantly, like the fur textures of furry animals (who often get color and pattern changes in mods that update their textures to the point they look like a different breed/species than the ones found in unmodded Skyrim). Effort would be made to actually make the furry creatures look furry, and the feathered creatures feathery, etc. with the new higher resolutions, but not change the apparent type of fur or fur color or dirtiness or whatnot. Some clearly bugged or missing textures can simply be fixed in the process as well, but effort should be made to remain as true to non-modded textures as possible, while still up-ressing things enough to look better on higher res monitors and systems that can handle more higher res textures. This would be something of a 'install this first' texture mod that keeps things neutral while others let you build things up to your style. ----- A SMIM like mod, but rather that entirely avoids altering meshes in ways that change the 'style' of objects, for instance, it won't make lanterns have a pointed hood, or add patterns to frying pans, or remove/alter the style of the indent on the bottom of mugs, or add holes with metal designs in the middle of benches. Fix ropes, chains, and overly flat/angular things that clearly aren't supposed to be that flat/angular, but not really alter the style of things as if a different smith/crafter had made them within Skyrim's lore/world side of things, or changing hawk colors, or changing the number of planks that make up a coffin lid or the types of woods and metals on things or the like, only 'fix' type things, rather than 'new style taking advantage of more polygons' type of things. ----- A dragon mod that re-does dragon skeletons, animations, and AI, designed to work well with higher res dragon textures, but perhaps not so well with things that made vast changes to dragon behavior or add more dragons or the like. It doesn't add new dragons or shouts, only changes the movements and some of the melee and AI of existing dragons. It would behave a bit closer to something like a combat overhaul mod. It would generally make dragon movements a bit more coherent and smoother, for instance, while on the ground, it would properly adjust their feet and wings so that they are touching the ground on somewhat uneven ground when they should, and not floating as much or sliding as much unintentionally, make a lot of their movements more sinuous and whole-body rather than stiff, minor improvements to how they move their necks when shouting and how they aim shouts, minor improvements and possible minor expansions to their melee movements on the ground (perhaps more noticeable involvement of tail and wings), fixing up their collision meshes or whatnot so that hits and misses properly register. Adjusting how they land when badly damaged or hit with dragonrend or the like so they don't go seeking out distant locations as often and are more likely to land in a place the player can quickly reach if they were put into that mode from a place close to such and facing an appropriate direction (and being less likely to change direction significantly in order to prepare a landing/crash). Adjusting their ragdolling behavior, crash-landing behavior, and skeleton-mode ragdolling behavior and such to be more realistic. Adding some more advanced AI behavior in particular to the combat behavior of Alduin, Paarthurnax, and Durnehviir, and perhaps to a lesser degree, the legendary dragons. ----- A mod that re-does the skeletons and animations and AI for wolves, dogs, saber cats, bears, horses, mammoths and perhaps some other similar such creatures. Generally making them able to move more like the real animals in question, with much less stiff and segmented movement and limited movement patterns, and does things like make wolves better use wolf-pack tactics, saber-cats use big-cat cat-like stalking and leaping, mammoths work together with each-other and with giants better, getting in each-others' ways less often. Some of this likely might also involve some adjustments to collision for certain creatures, and adjustments to how feet behave with uneven ground and such. ----- A mod that fixes a lot of fake roofs and ceilings and mountaintops and stuff to have proper collision and navigatable areas, and proper transition points into and out of cities when certain areas are passed through/over without needing an open-cities setup (which might break more other mods) that lets you more easily use things like flying and gliding and jumping and climbing and hookshot type mods without falling through pieces of seemingly present terrain or rooftops or mountainsides or the like. ----- A mod that adds old lore books from other Elder Scrolls titles to the loot you can find in Apocrypha. ----- A mod that adds greenhouses to some hearthfire house options and a new house mod or two that allow you to grow plants not native to Skyrim that can't be grown in normal planter spots as long as you have a special gardener hired to care for them and a proper semi-magical greenhouse building created (likely needing some special materials like fire-salts and frost-salts for temperature and humidity control systems and filled soul gems used at certain parts of the process). Would store harvested stuff like the CC farm automatically if you away for a while. ----- A mod that gets at least vanilla hair and maybe some select modded hairs working properly with vanilla hats/hoods/helmets without needing things like modded wig versions of things. Not sure if this is actually possible in the engine. ----- A mod that makes races in general, and especially elves look better, with improvements from ESO and it's cinematics looked at in particular for inspiration to re-work things like how elven ears and faces work, rather than whatever weird, overly defined stuff unmodded Skyrim has going on, applied to both new player heads and NPCs and such for the elves. ----- A mod that lets smaller weight decimals be used/displayed and re-works a lot of the weights of things, although also treats weight as more of an encumbrance value, so large things might have higher than their actual weight, and worn armor would weigh less than carried armor, and includes the use of weight for coins, but perhaps allows you to create an enchanted coin-bag that negates most of the weight of your coins for a single value while you have it equipped (and it doesn't take up a normal slot?).

Continuing -> Alchemy: Alchemist now a single perk with more of the scaling tied to level in the alchemy skill. You don't only collect one alchemy item from many ingredient sources, different sources give different amounts randomly below a certain number depending on the source, modified Green Thumb ensures you get an extra as long as it doesn't bring you above the max, in some cases, the normal random amount can become 0 gathered, and the modified Green Thumb, perhaps named differently, ensures you gather at least one. A new perk lets you make single-ingredient potions, although they only let you make a potion based on the first effect of an ingredient, similar to Oblivion's mastery perk. A new perk lets you turn food items into alchemy ingredients, these loose their food benefits and have similar alchemy traits to those found in Oblivion for similar food items when possible, with things like restore stamina being a dominant benefit as it is for many food items in Oblivion. A new perk increases the odds of slain enemies having alchemy ingredients on them, like bears having claws or sabre cats eyes. Potions are no longer all the same weight, but have at least 2 different possible weights when found, and you start out making the heavier weight ones, and a new perk lets you create the lighter weight 'concentrated' potions instead. A new perk lets you make the full restoration potions for stamina, health, or magicka. A new perk extends the duration of potions you make with durations. Some of the food items that are turned into ingredients contain the new effects needed to create fortification potions for the new skills, some ingredients might simply be edited for such based on Oblivion versions. Subtle Manipulation: Fused skills of Pickpocket and Lockpicking. Light Fingers is now a single perk and more of the bonus is based on your level in the skill rather than multiple perks. Extra Pockets is re-named Organized Packing. 'Rank' Locks perks are gone, instead being fused into Light fingers as a single perk that makes all locks a hint easier to pick (less for more advanced locks) with a scaling related more to level added that makes up the difference and works for the entire level for lower level locks, but only starts improving for higher level locks once you reach a certain level, for the same effective total bonuses by max level. Golden Touch and Treasure Hunter are removed. Unbreakable is replaced by a perk that increases lockpick durability. A new perk makes it so that some failed pickpocketing attempts aren't ones that get caught, simply make the target suspicious of you and end your current pickpocketing attempt and stagger you and cause you to make some noise that draws nearby attention from others and such. Sneak: Stealth is now a single perk, most of the adjustments are now based on level in the sneak skill, rather than the perk. A new perk lets you treat the armor rating of opponents by half for your melee attacks while hidden from them. Rolling is a dodge variant upgrade from acrobatics now (used partly for avoiding fall damage), but the perk that previously unlocked it with sneak now makes it so that you can dodge while sneaking without it adding to the noise of your movement. A new perk lets lands from jumps be quieter if you dodge at the moment you land (regardless of if you have related rolling acrobatics stuff or not, but if you don't have that, it won't help you with damage avoidance for hitting the timing). A new perk makes it so that your melee attacks deal bonus damage based on a percentage of the opponent's max health if you make a sneaking power attack after remaining still and hidden for at least 6 seconds. Speech: Haggling is now a single perk, more of your bonus is now based off your skill level Speech. Allure is removed, it's bonus is halved and moved over to the general bonus for the skill level like most of Haggling was. A new perk lets you sing at inns (especially if you have an appropriate instrument as well like a lute or drum) after gaining permission from the innkeeper and any already present bards. You'll do a performance and gain an amount of gold in the form of tips from random people in the inn or from the innkeeper, the amount will be semi-random and based on your speech skill level. A new perk 'Heart into Prayer' gives you slightly boosted bonuses from praying at shrines (equal to the old bonuses, which are reduced without this perk) and unlocks disease removal when praying at shrines (which is removed without this perk). A new perk lets you convince a hold guard or soldier for your faction of the civil war (once you've joined it) to follow you briefly and help you in combat if it isn't triggered by a crime during that time. A new perk reduces the cost of getting skill training from NPCs. A new perk lets you sell certain enchanted and/or smithing enhanced weapons and armors to Jarls (different lists of what they'll buy for each Jarl), they have much more gold for this purchase than most merchants, but their gold doesn't re-set as often. Enchanting: Enchanter perk is now a single perk, with more of your bonus now based on your level in Enchanting. Infinite loops have been removed between enchanting and alchemy, restoration no longer getting involved in the mess, and you only really being able to go back and forth between fortify alchemy equipment and fortify enchanting potions to a limited degree, with the max possible based on having all the required perks and skill levels and things like Ahzidal's Genius effect. A new perk lets you create full protection disease protection and poison protection enchantments if you have the base enchantments for them, as long as you are using a grand soul gem. It is now possible to create spellbooks for spells you know using soul gems (higher ranking spells require higher ranking filled soul gems). It is now possible to create spell scrolls for spells you know, the recipe is similar to the spellbook but doesn't require leather or as much paper, and requires one lower rank of soul-gem. A new perk causes you to deal bonus damage with scrolls and staffs that deal damage, the bonus scaling based on your enchanting skill level. Enchantments for the schools of magic can no longer be made that with a full set reduce the costs to 0%, even with maximum looped Ahzidal's Genius alchemy/enchanting, they are adjusted to only reach around 90% cost reduction at that point. Athletics fortification increases run and swim speeds and jump height/distance. Acrobatics fortification reduces fall damage and increases jump height/distance and dodge speed. Various gear pools are adjusted to fit the new stuff existing or changing for other skills. A new perk lets you create an enchanted item 'set bonus' where if you have at least 4 items part of that 'set' you created being worn you get the bonus enchantment effect, similar to Ahzidal's Genius, with a limited set of options for what can be applied to this kind of bonus. Spell Schools in general: The Apprentice, Adept, Expert, Master spell cost reduction perks change how they work, instead of their original version, they don't offer their full benefits right away except for Master, and all the lower ones have their benefits split up between the lowest perk and each of the higher perks. Apprentice gives you 1/8th cost reduction of Apprentice spells, Adept gives you 2/8ths Apprentice and 2/8ths Adept, Expert gives you 3/8ths Expert and all the ones below it. Master finally brings them all to half-cost for that school. Alteration: Magic Resistance is now a single perk scaling partly off of your alteration skill level. Mage Armor is now a single perk scaling partly off of your alteration skill level. A new perk significantly increases the duration of stoneskin type spells. The duration of alteration spells in general with durations is now partly based on your level in alteration, although the scaling isn't that impressive. A new perk makes spells like telekinesis, detect life and detect dead use up less magicka/second. The damage of things thrown with telekinesis is now partly based on your level in alteration skill. Conjuration: The duration of most summons and soul trap effects is now partly based on your level in conjuration. Your level in conjuration now affects what level of daedra/undead can be banished/commanded with appropriate spells to some degree. A new perk improves the power of non-atronach summoned daedra. Summoner is now a single perk that scales partly on your level in conjuration. If it is possible with the game mechanics easily, all summons have a health-adjustment partly scaling based on your conjuration skill level, and possibly a damage one as well. Destruction: 'Augmented' element perks now are single perks partly affected by your level in destruction skill. Your damage with destruction spells now scales somewhat based on your level in the destruction skill. Various levels of destruction spells have their DPS altered so that Master spells do properly have the best DPS with all the various damage alterations and dps adjustments now calculated partly based on destruction skill level. Illusion: The level of targets that can be affected by illusion spells is now partly a calucation based on your level in the illusion skill. If possible with game mechanics, frenzied targets now get a small amount of bonus damage based on your level in the illusion skill. Night Eye is restored as a spell and has a duration partly based on your level in the Illusion skill. Your mind-affecting spells now have a duration partly based on your level in the illusion skill. Enemies now exist that cast calm, fear, and frenzy spells on you, but it just staggers you if you are low enough level to be affected at all and it manages to bypass your magic resistance. Most perks that increase the level of enemies your mind-affecting spells can affect also give you a resistance to mind-affecting spells as if you were higher level. Alternate light generation spells are added to the illusion school, one that makes your body glow, and one that makes your eyes/face glow and one that you can cast on an 'other' that makes their body glow. Restoration: Restoration spells now heal partly based on your level in the restoration skill. Recovery is now a single perk which partly scales based on your skill in restoration school. Damaging restoration spells now have their damage somewhat affected by your skill level in restoration. Levels of undead affected by certain restoration spells now adjusts partly on your level in restoration. There is now some more poison spells available in Solstheim and from Khajit traders and certain Dunmer merchants. A new perk reduces the magicka cost/second of ward spells. The amount of damage wards can absorb is now based partly on your skill level in restoration. Mysticism: Mysticism is leveled partly by the ward spells, detect life/death spells, soul trap spells, the clairvoyance spell, and telekinesis spells. It's reductions in costs affect them as well as their base schools of those spells. Dispel spells are brought back, and are only in Mysticism, and can only be found in dungeon chests, Apocrpha, and certain very old merchants that sell spell tomes, they can cancel active spell effects enemy spellcasters are using or certain spells that are currently affecting you of some types, ending lingering effects, including your own spells, end lower level conjurations like summons or temporary undead or summons early, etc. Your level in mysticism partly affects the damage dealt by the telekinesis spell and the level of things various levels of dispel spells can affect, as well as the amount wards can block (similar to how restoration affects wards). Perks for mysticism include: One that slightly increases magicka recovery rate, one that slightly increases spell resistance, one that slightly increases resistance to fire damage, one that slightly increases resistance to poison and poison damage, one that slightly increases resistance to disease, one that slightly increases resistance to shock damage, one that slightly increases resistance to frost damage, one that slightly improves your magicka recovery rate when not wearing any light or heavy armor and also either naked or wearing robes.

I've been thinking about a new perk and skill system, more refined for immersion and elder scrolls historical skill systems. It would bring back the following skill trees: Athletics Acrobatics Mysticism Hand to Hand and it would put Pickpocket and Lockpicking together in a 'Subtle Manipulation' skill Lorewise, Mysticism is still gone as an official school of magic of course, but some older spell tomes and some found in places like Apocrypha would still have older labels, and the mysticism skill tree would still affect spells that were traditionally in it's school or older spells that are sometimes still labeled as such. There'd probably be a lore-book added somewhere to note which spells changed to which schools and talking about the official reasons for the changes, but the College of Winterhold is old enough and many of the lore and spellbooks you have access to is old enough that you should probably be treating Mysticism as still a distinct thing in parts of your training. Notably, many mysticism spells would be affected both by the mysticism skill tree and their new skill trees. On to changes to the various skill trees. Initial note: Damage is no longer as related to repeated points into perks, especially early perks, in skill trees, and has more significant relation to your level in a skill, both for spells and physical combat Archery: More of the general bonus damage is tied to skill level, rather than points in Overdraw. Overdraw still exists, but only with a single point that can be put into it, and it's only something like a 25% bonus (with the remaining 75% put into just gaining levels in the skill. Critical Shot switched to only a perk point, scaling with skill level. Hunter's Discipline is potentially renamed and reflavored and changed a bit, rather than letting you collect more arrows from dead targets, it creates a chance for you to collect additional 'damaged' arrows that would normally have been unusable which can be used as part of the supplies when creating arrows at a forge, also, arrows in general have their recollecting ability changed a bit, they have different durability ratings (with most higher level arrows being more durable), increasing the odds of rather than being totally destroyed, leaving a 'damaged' arrow with this perk, or leaving fully intact arrows to collect normally even without it. Steady hand no longer requires multiple perk points invested, instead, it's time adjustment scales with skill level. Bullseye no longer exists. Something like Ordinator's Crippling shot exists which temporarily slows targets sometimes. A new perk causes you to get a damage bonus if you remain still for six seconds while the bow is drawn and then release an arrow with a bow without moving, you now need stamina to hold a bow drawn regardless of if you have this perk or not. A new perk slightly increases the damage of crossbows and reduces their reload times if you've enhanced them with smithing (adjusting them to yourself), loading crossbows requires stamina regardless of if you have this perk or not. Block: Shield wall turned into a single perk, blocking effectiveness increase more tied to skill level. New perks reduce stamina costs of various aspects of blocking, separate ones for blocking, shield bashing, and power bashing. Normal staggering from shield bashes aren't as sure of a thing, nor are power bashing, but a chance calculated partly based on an opponent's armor value and remaining stamina, and has even more reduced chances on some large opponents like dragons and giants and such, and a new perk increases the odds of this calculation. There is a new perk that gives a chance to stagger non-large type opponents whose power-attacks are blocked. There is a new perk that creates a small chance to disarm an enemy hit with a power bash or whose power attack was blocked, the chance is related to an opponent's stamina. A new perk gives you temporary boost to magic resist when blocking with an enchanted shield or weapon for spells that hit the shield or weapon rather than hit you directly. Heavy Armor: Juggernaut is now a single perk, and armor rating improvements from heavy armor are more related to your level in the skill. Falling damage now is higher the more weight you are carrying and wearing (including weight that is normally negated from things like perks), Cushioned perk isn't enough to negate the increase from the heavy armor weight, only decrease it. Conditioning no longer entirely removes the heavy armor movement penalty, only reduces it. Well-fitted now decreases the chances of you taking a critical hit, as does matching set, along with reduced versions of their normal increases to armor bonus. Reflect blows is gone. A new perk reduces the amount worn pieces of heavy armor applies to your encumbrance (although the weight still applies in some other areas, like the above-noted falling damage calculations), this effect is improved for a matching set, this perk also reduces the penalty of heavy armor to sneaking, and does so better if you have a matching set. A new perk reduces the amount wearing heavy armor increases the stamina cost of sprinting (it still increases the cost of sprinting, just not as much). A new perk causes a full set of enchanted heavy armor to grant a small amount of magic resistance. A new perk reduces fire, frost, and shock damage slightly while wearing a full set of heavy armor. A new perk reduces your damage taken from physical attacks (melee and archery/crossbow, but not magic) when you are below 25% health but above 50% stamina while wearing a full set of heavy armor. A new perk reduces damage taken from 1 handed weapons and ranged weapons when wearing a full set of heavy armor. With a new perk if you are at 80% or better stamina, non-large foes that strike you with a power attack have a small chance of being staggered and possibly also disarmed (related to their remaining stamina) when you are wearing full heavy armor. A new perk prevents weapons hitting you from causing bleeding damage through things like perks with a full set of heavy armor. One-Handed: Armsman is now a single perk, more damage adjustment is tied to skill level. Bladesman, Bonebreaker, and Hack and Slash are all now single perks, with their bonuses affected by your level in the skill, same with dual fury. Attacking while jumping is now possible, and power attacks while jumping works for critical charge. Paralyzing strike is renamed and now has a chance to slow and/or stagger it's targets, based on their remaining stamina, rather than paralyze. A new perk lets power attacks with one-handed weapons have a chance of disarming a target based on their remaining stamina, which still works on blocked attacks if they were blocked with a weapon rather than a shield. A new perk causes unblocked attacks with one-handed weapons to deal a small amount of bonus damage to an enemy's stamina. A new perk lets unblocked attacks with one-handed weapons reduce an opponent's magicka regen temporarily. A new perk increases the speed of attacks with one-handed weapons (for non-dual-wielding purposes) slightly. Two-Handed: Barbarian is now a single perk, more damage adjustment is tied to skill level. Deep Wounds, Limbsplitter, and Skullcrusher are now all now single perks, with bonuses affected by your level in the skill. Jumping works for Great Critical Charge, not just sprinting. Warmaster replaces paralysis with a chance to slow and/or stagger it's targets based on their remaining stamina. A new perk lets two-handed power attacks that aren't blocked have a chance of staggering an opponent based on their remaining stamina (reduced chances for large opponents). A new perk lets power attacks with two-handed weapons (blocked or not) deal a small amount of bonus damage to an opponent's stamina. A new perk lets unblocked power-attacks with a two-handed weapon eliminate an opponent's ability to regen magicka temporarily. A new perk increases the speed of attacks with two-handed weapons slightly (not as much as the similar perk for one-handed weapons normally, but better for power-attack related DPS). Hand-to-Hand: This is an all new skill tree. One of it's perks grants a scaling armor bonus for wearing absolutely no armor, which scales with the level of the skill, and a perk that is on that perk's part of the tree requiring it increases this bonus if you are wearing a full set of enchanted non-armor clothing or completely nude (neither of these are as good as wearing actual full armor sets of light or heavy type for level and perk equivalent stuff, and the full enchanted set bonuses is better than the full naked mode bonus). This skill tree increases the damage of your unarmed attacks by default, and one of it's perks grants a damage bonus similar to the modified Armsman, Barbarian, or Power Draw perks but for unarmed attacks. A new perk grants unarmed attacks a chance to disarm opponents based on their remaining stamina, with chances improving with an unarmed power-attack. A new perk grants unarmed power attacks that aren't blocked the ability to reduce an opponent's magicka regen temporarily. A new perk lets unarmed attacks deal damage to opponents normally only affected by normal attacks (like ghosts, if this isn't implemented, it will be like it was in Oblivion). A new perk lets unarmed attacks that aren't blocked have a chance of causing a stagger to non-large opponents based on an opponent's remaining stamina. A new perk reduces fall damage when not wearing any armor and at less than half your max encumbrance. A new perk allows for kicks as a type of unarmed attack that doesn't use bonuses from things like gauntlets or racial claws, which have a chance to stagger or cause to fall opponents who are hit while power-attacking, but guarantees you fall if you get hit with a power attack while trying to kick and staggers you if you are hit by a normal attack or spell while trying to kick, kicks can be performed while doing a lot of other types of actions. A new perk lets kicks while sprinting or jumping deal bonus damage. Dodging is now a mechanic regardless of if you have certain perks or not, but a new perk improves your dodging speed while completely unarmored and turns it into a combat roll, rather than a simple dodge-step type thing (which is slightly faster and also lets you go under some attacks and stuff). A new perk improves your sprinting speed and reduces it's stamina consumption while completely unarmored. A new perk increases stamina regeneration when not wearing armor. Light Armor: Agile Defender is now a single perk with a smaller bonus and most of the extra armor rating comes from levels in the skill. Unhindered now only decreases the amount of effective weight of light-armor when worn by half, and not for purposes of fall damage. Wind Walker no longer requires you to wear a full set of light armor, and isn't as good as the equivalent perk for being completely unarmored in the hand-to-hand tree, it just requires you to be wearing some light armor and no heavy armor. Deft movement is removed as a perk. A new perk increases your sprinting speed when not wearing any armor heavier than light, not as good as the unarmored equivalent perk from hand-to-hand, but still works with some light armor, as long as no heavy armor is worn. A new perk makes it so that you take reduced damage while dodging or sprinting if wearing a full set of light armor. A new perk grants increased magic resistance if wearing a full set of enchanted light armor. A new perk grants improved resistance to shock, frost, and fire damage (not as good as the equivalent heavy armor perk) while wearing a full set of light armor. Smithing: A new perk allows you to take apart and get some supplies back from various items, like leather strips from leather armor, or ingots from various metal things, you don't get back all the materials used for creation though, or you might get back some things that are effectively 'degraded' or need to be used in groups to make an equivalent ingredient, it doesn't work on enchanted items, but having it allows you to have a chance to get materials for this process from disenchanting, although not as high a chance as using unenchanted items. This process can also remove 'stolen' tags from the resulting materials. Scaling on improvements to refined items are adjusted and capped, with higher caps for certain higher end item types, and caps can't be reached by NPCs, only the player (who must have appropriate perks and skills and have used loops of enchanting potions and alchemy boosting gear and such to prepare effective smithing boosting enchantments and potions to hit some of the highest caps on some of the best gear types). A new perk lets you improve armor and weapons to a reduced degree away from the normal equipment for such (benches and sharpening wheel things). Improvements now degrade over time and use and must be refreshed, but degrade slower for certain materials and enchanted items. Clothing can now be created at new weaving stations. Athletics: Levels in this improve stamina regen somewhat, as well as affect your running and swimming speeds and partially affect jump height/length. The starting perk in this tree improves your stamina regen rate when not doing anything besides standing or walking or sitting. A new perk increases your sprinting speed. A new perk increases your jump height. A new perk lets you make attacks with one-handed weapons or unarmed attacks while underwater. A new perk lets you make attacks with crossbows while underwater. A new perk lets you cast spells while underwater. A new perk lets you perform 'swim-sprints'. A new perk increases your walking speed. A new perk increases your carrying capacity a bit. A new perk reduces the stamina cost of sprinting. A new perk lets you perform a slightly bigger 'power-jump' at the cost of stamina. Acrobatics: Levels in this reduce your fall damage and the amount of height you need to fall in order to take damage at all. Starting perk in this tree improves the height you can fall from safely without taking damage and reduces fall damage as long as you aren't staggered or ragdolling or the like and have remaining stamina, switching your falls to in such a state to a controlled tumble. A perk in this tree improves your dodge speed (either from combat rolls or from regular dodges). A perk in this tree improves your jump height and increases the height you can fall without taking damage by your max jump height. A perk in this tree lets you 'roll with blows' if you dodge while getting hit, reducing their damage slightly. A perk in this tree lets you 'control your grounding status' and reduce shock damage a bit you take while touching the ground (platforms that aren't metal/stone connections to the ground perhaps don't count as touching the ground, depending on implementation difficulty). A perk in this tree reduces the amount of time you spend staggered or ragdolling as long as you have above 50% stamina. This is taking a while, so I'm going to take a break before posting more, but I hope some of the ideas are starting to get across.

I'm wondering if any of this kind of stuff could be modded into Skyrim. Like the dynamic model adjustment to avoid needing LODs and enable super-high complexity models and high resolution textures for people with future SSDs with new controllers inspired by what the PS5 is doing, better behavior of physics for clothing and hair, dynamic contextual animations, proper dynamic global illumination even using portable spell and torch lights and the like. Seems unlikely of course for it to be possible with just mods, but we do unlock additional stuff with things like the script extender, and I'm pretty sure we've already seem some mods that partially do more advanced global illumination stuff. Seeing that scene at the end of the demo going into the horizon made it clear the cool stuff they were doing are possible for an open world game, at least for future hardware, particularly on the SSD end to treat it essentially like extended slightly slower RAM and VRAM in some respects made me think of Skyrim, because my mind tends to go there when it comes to open world games. Honestly, it almost makes me wish Bethesda could hire a dedicated set of team to re-make Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim in Unreal 5 for PS5 and be ready to port it to PC once the relevant new SSD tech is brought over (if I understand things right, some SSDs for PC right now are fast enough, but there are issues with how easily they can interact with the graphics card and CPU and RAM that would require re-worked controllers to do what Unreal Engine 5 is allowing the PS5 to do, which might require some extra chips on the motherboard and part of the SSD, or perhaps just some firmware updates or something). They'd basically re-do the games largely from scratch, just re-making the quests and mechanics and potential for mods in a more modern engine and throwing in stuff like designing for capacity of doing all the types of real time ray tracing, but they'd be re-doing the graphics largely from scratch, or perhaps from higher quality internal models and textures they might retain in some cases that were too good even for the special edition with the hardware they wanted it to work for. Probably have some people doing motion capture and other stuff for new animations and such. We've just seen some pretty big improvements on what graphics can do these days, beyond what is probably easy to do with modding with just updating textures and models. Skyrim seems like a game that could particularly use some of the elements of this sort of thing to defeat some of it's more hilarious aspects, like some of the foot placement of characters on uneven surfaces, or especially horses, or how terrible some of textures look close up or LOD issues with the massive open world, or the terrible hair/fur or issues of how clothing works and lays and how screwed up things like capes and cloaks can get because of that, or how annoying lighting can be, especially with torches and spells. Or how amazing stealth could perhaps become if they worked in elements of how ray tracing works for light and sound bouncing in how NPCs might detect you. Or how much dynamic contextual animations would help with things like clashing weapons, armor, and shields, rather than weapons passing crazily through everything or bouncing in a limited set of very specific ways off shields or other blocks.

After watching lots of Shadiversity things, like: I really would like to see a mod or mod set (for each city and major castle at the very least, preferably also a mod for various towers and abandoned castles and the like scattered throughout Skyrim in the long run). Except for fixing some terrain to comply with the laws of physics like a certain arch, since I'm generally assuming Skyrim's terrain isn't all that magical (some exceptions might be allowed like for Dwemer Ruins or Winterhold where the magic is more strongly implied), I'd prefer to minimize changes to the terrain in favor of changes to city designs to take into account the terrain, possibly shifting the cities a little or making a little space in the terrain by shifting some nearby mountains a tad or something, but for the most part, focusing on changing the buildings instead of the terrain, except where the locals might actually be able to change the terrain themselves by quarrying it away or digging or the like. But generally, I'd like cities and castles and such to have proper practical designs for realistic cities and castles and such, with proper fortifications, actual paths for the guards and such to patrol them and stand watch and such (and altered NPC pathing to take advantage of this, possibly including increases in the number of generic guard NPCs to take advantage of the special edition's increased ability to handle more NPCs at once due to the engine improvements). Designs that might as well have been done by Shadiversity, or at least would get his seal of approval, and include needed things like windows, lighting bits, sewage and trash routes, etc. beyond just the fortification elements if possible. Also fixing up some traits of the vanilla homes including DLC like hearthfire and dragonborn for practical elements like kitchens and making sure basements and indoor smithing areas have places for the smoke from fires can go and feasible ventilation and lighting setups. This might require some tweaks to some key civil war storyline bits as well, since improved fortification designs might make some missions need various little changes to the routes you can follow and that the NPCs follow and where blocked off bits and rubble might be found, and various other NPC pathing issues, but I think it would be worth it, and make the cities and castles and such far more immersive and lived-in-feeling.

I'm looking for a mod that improves the vanilla textures and models of the vegetation, all the plants and trees, especially any harvest-able ones (including the 'harvested' versions of models), possibly making things react better to physics and wind for some items, but does not add any extra vegetation or made any of it look like different species from vanilla. I couldn't find one easily searching. Most things seem to add more grasses and trees and such and often changes the species or adds new species (especially for non-harvest-able grasses). I want things to look less flat and be higher res, look closer to something out of a more modern game, but still the same species and exposure traits to the vanilla versions, rather than something that looks like it has less/healthier weather exposure. Part of the reason I want this is I like doing alchemy stuff, and would prefer to not constantly be looking at terrible looking flowers and shrubs and such, but also don't want to have the climate changed from the vanilla flavor feel and look like a different place instead of a more modern engine and textures capabilities. Mushrooms and the like too, if possible. It's okay to leave buildings and wooden objects that aren't things like stumps alone, or the mushroom buildings or the like alone, since that is more easily covered by other existing mods. If the models and textures already exist, I wouldn't mind if there was just a tweaked version of a mod that already exists just getting rid of things that cause it to add more plants or whatnot. If what I'm asking for already exists, I'd love the link.

I've tried searching for it, and something proper that fits what I want doesn't seem to exist, or for some aspects is split up into little parts and not all of them are set up as replacers so much as extras. What I'd like is to have a replacer set for armor, for clothing (and other wearables), and for weapons (and other carryables). This replacer would include stuff for appropriate body and skeleton type mods, although it might be nice to also have something for the default bodies in case someone wants to install it on it's own. The main focus would be on realistic shapes and designs to things, and high res. Stuff that actually looks like it would be worn in the far north, doesn't look like it needs magic to stay on and together, but is still made from the original types of materials and carries with it some of the original design aspects, not any of the weird impractical spikes or boob armor or anything like that, but some of the things like the general coloration and tone, approximate matches of material types (in higher res), symbology, color schemes, etc. Weapons would look like they were actually designed like real world weapons of their type (sword, axe, hammer, two handed/one handed, bow, etc.), just out of fantasy materials with some more minor or practical variations of their design traits carried over from the original stuff, and have proper shapes and thickness such, with collision and damage area fields and reach altered to match changes in appearance. They'd be sized appropriately to standard characters for what real world weapons of that type would be like, not giant impractical things that would weigh too much to swing around. They'd have recognizable similarities to the original weapons, but be fully practical and high res. Think something like LeanWolf's Better Shaped weapons, but with more of a ground-up re-design and focus on higher res textures as well, and not keeping the spiky daedric nonsense, even the toned down version LeanWolf went for, until it reaches a practical level that a real world weapon might have, not causing harm to the wielder or getting caught on everything making it harder to use. Other held items would have similar atlerations and resolution upgrades, although since many of them are already practical for their purposes you wouldn't have to worry as much about that, things that do need practicality taken into account like picks and such would still need such as a worry. For armor, clothing, and gear, again, high resolution, made of the same materials as they originally were, but more practical and realistic designs. Not making the women flat in basically re-worked versions of the male armors like Practical Female Armors mod, but fully detailed work with high res textures and practical designs for light and heavy armor types, if in some cases with fantasy materials, and not looking like the women were made flatter than their normal designs, bound somewhat at most. Things that can actually be worn and not cause movement trouble or catch weapons in bad ways like boob-plate would, and fitted to the appropriate body types. Preferably, these designs would also take into account variations for the beast races and elf-ears when it comes to helmets, gauntlets/gloves, boots, and potential tail areas and have adjustments for the appropriate races to prevent clipping and such, and the helmets and hats and any such things would be designed not to cause too much trouble with hair mods. The designs for armor would actually look like things that you could wear if they were made out of real world materials and practically use for their purpose as armor such that real world armor smiths may have actually or could have theoretically designed such things and they'd have become appropriately popular, including things like proper designs for under-material bits like gambesons and other bits of padding and protection that might be needed, and that there are ways to actually take the armor on and off without magic with appropriate sections and ties, buttons, belts, and straps and such. Similar traits would be done for clothing. And the outfits in general would look like something people would feasibly wear in the climates of skyrim, properly covering most of the body parts they are meant to, even if they aren't all thick everywhere. The designs would be based on the original items outside of practicality aspects, no new symbols or decals or patterns, and not excess amounts of new materials or materials introduced that would belong only to more expensive higher end types, and be recognizably inspired by the original designs and meant to be their more realistic, higher resolution replacements. Note that I'm not saying the daedric armor and weapons should have no spikes, but any spikes they wind up with shouldn't be too large, and shouldn't be likely to catch on things and cause trouble that way except in intended aspects that are combat practical for catching enemy weapons that some real world designs might use spikes for, and they can have 'spiky' looking detail work done instead to retain the original artistic traits, with triangular curving angled point lines made of different materials like those red bits in the original version or simple layers of flat materials. Helmets and such with horns removed might instead have horn-like etchings and bulges, maybe even made of actual horn materials but not sticking out fully, to retain similar motifs to their original form, but not have easy handholds for enemies to break your neck with. Elven might not have as many pointy edges to poke and get caught on stuff, but would still have the layers and feathery designs. Glass might not have as much hard corners or those boot wings, but might retain similar design motifs inspired by that and flattened boot wing designs against the sides with similar design motifs but without the getting in the way of movements and catching on enemy weapons and such issues, and would look a bit more like it's an actual light armor design, rather than a heavy armor design that is only light due to fantasy materials, being designed to allow for more flexibility and quieter movements than most heavier armors, but still inspired by it's vanilla design traits because it's still the same world. I don't want to change things too much that don't need to be changed for practical reasons, like I remember a bow set that did make more practical bows, but went with entirely different designs with the vanilla materials instead of the closest practical versions to the vanilla designs, even though real world, practical bow designs existed that were much closer to many of the vanilla versions they were replacing. Of course, I'd be fine with such a mod set bringing in already made designs that fit these standards if the original mod authors and artists involves are fine with being included in the compilation and properly credited. I just want my characters to be able to use vanilla gear without looking silly or low res or changing their body proportions or various other issues like that, and not look out of place for a modded, high resolution skyrim with more realistic stuff in other respects. If something like this already exists, I'd love a link, if not, I really hope some modders and artists and such get around to it soon, or someone tracks it all down and makes a proper compilation for what stuff does exist and finds help or finishes the missing parts. This should probably be slit up into two mods, one for the things like weapons and staffs that are carried, and one for the worn stuff like clothing and armor and accessories, but it should include ALL the vanilla items, at the very least with better textures for the ones that are already practical in design and shape and size compared to the character.

This would be a huge undertaking for modders. I'd kinda like to see a mod for it though. Basically, an expansion to the game where you must: To start with, you have to be a Nord, Imperial or Breton, this quest-line is only for those races, and it's perhaps designed to be easier for Nords. This is because needed preliminary step don't really make sense for the other races. Win an original quest-line where you start your own separate faction in the civil war quest line, which only can start after the main-quest line mission to investigate the Thalmor Embassy and you've read their dossier on Ulfric. The quest-line would involve contacting an NPC who is a priest/priestess of Talos about Ulfric and showing them the document, as well as you already being known to be the dragonborn, and demonstrating for them both a shout and taking them with you to slay a dragon. After which, it would have something similar to the 'Become the High King of Skyrim' mod, where you do basically that. You'll have to find people who want to join up with your faction to become new Jarls, or convince Jarls to your side. Some would be convinced by the Thalmor dossiers to join you instead of Ulfric, leaving the stormcloaks for that, and some of the Nord pride types who are with the Empire might be convinced by your dragonborn status, especially if you've already defeated Alduin and didn't screw them over in some way during the truce treaty run by the Graybeards. Some friendlier Jarls more hesitant about the sides of the civil war might even be convinced merely by you having already become a Thane. Jarl's you can't convince to your side have to have their cities conquered, and you'll need to build up forces for that. Either way, you'll have to build up forces to conquer Solitude and Windhelm. Some of the elites you can recruit include NPCs that are potentially recruit-able to the blades, and all the blades if you join their faction properly (you monster!), while there are various methods to get mundane forces, including from the Jarl's you convince to your side or conquer other cities and forts and stuff for. After becoming high king, you need to meet with representatives from Hammerfell to join you at the very least, probably needing to do some related quests to earn their favor or something. You'll also need to do preparatory work to remove Thalmor agents from Skyrim, and speak to some anti-Thalmor high-elves with connections back to Summerset who you'll need to interrogate and possibly use magic on while doing so or something to ensure they are telling the truth. You may also be able to speak with the Empire towards the idea of being allies for this, despite having expelled them from Skyrim, but I think you wouldn't be able to succeed, but that trying would improve the morale of your forces who were previously Empire types. You might also be able to recruit Morrowind forces if you've done a lot of the helping people quests on Solstheim and removed the Thalmor presence there without giving them Sthalrim (spelling?) and both got the house there and became a member of the house of the wizard dude and restored the mine and such, and defeated Miirak and cleansed all the stones, etc. so Solstheim is doing well and there are good reports of you back in Morrowind. Before you go to the next step, you have to have won the Dawnguard questline in favor of the Dawnguard against the vampires, Skyrim can't be being plagued by the vampire menace to have enough military power to win, and you have to have defeated Alduin, in order to reduce the dragon menace, and defeated Miirak to reduce the cultist assassins being sent at you interfering with things. You also can't be into the College of Winterhold quest-line far enough to have uncovered the Eye of Magnus but not also completed the questline and become Archmage. Basically, Skyrim has to be relatively free of major troubles. Next comes reinforcing Skyrim and building up your forces. You'll have to fend off Thalmor and Alameri attacks during this time, both in Skyrim, and if you earned Morrowind as an ally, to Solthiem, and undergo various quests to improve the defenses and re-build major holds and keeps, as well as recruit mages to set up magical defenses (being archmage and doing the stuff on Solthiem with that wizard guy to become a member of his house and such will really help here), since the elves have a lot of mages. Some questlines would involve getting people to make proper gear for your troops, up to, and including options for elite troops getting better than steel armors of certain types that make sense to mass produce and aren't elven in style, and having at least low level enchantments on mid-to-high level troops' gear, particularly including ones that protect against magic or help fight magic using enemies, such as Resist Magic, Resist elemental (all/any of the 3), absorb magicka, magicka damage, banish, and shock or chaos damage. Then comes the invasion of Summerset. There'll be parts where you have to have specific shouts be used, or at least shouts used at all to overcome certain stuff. Designs for it all might be drawn from Online materials, but basically you have to invade and conquer Summerset, slaughter as many Thalmor as you can, and install an anti-Thalmor group of high elves as the new rulers. If you mess up some earlier quests, you might put the wrong group in charge who are secretly Thalmor supporters or have the same goals as them, and have to re-conquer some stuff after your agents discover their activities, possibly even committing genocide. You'd need to be relatively high level to succeed, and probably have really good defenses against magic attacks, as the enemies on the isles would include a lot of high level mages. If you've become the Archmage of Winterhold, you might be able to get some small help from the Psijic order, who, while they don't want to mess with politics and such that much, have reasons to be opposed to the Thalmor being in charge, although they'll be keeping that help secret. In order to hold territories, you'll need to have upgrades your troops well and preferably have Morrowind on your side, as well as have recruited the right group of High Elves who are opposed to the Thalmor, and help them expel Thalmor and other spies and infiltrators and such at various stages. Once you've completed everything, if you've really gotten rid of the Thalmor, the other provinces swear allegiance to you after a while, and you become Emperor, and while Thalmor attacks still turn up occasionally, including their assassins against you, those attacks are much weaker than before and have lower end gear and such, as they no longer have the resources they once did. Someone non-Thalmor would take the place at a certain point of the Thalmor in the College of Winterhold and for that questline, perhaps one of the already present college mages would go mad with power who doesn't otherwise have very much stuff, or someone sent up from Morrowind, or simply a new character in the college, or someone who is a Thalmor but is pretending to not be, that is pretty much only if you haven't done the college questline yet, getting the college to a certain point locks you out of major progress in this mod's quests until it's completed. Also, at some points, if you haven't destroyed the dark brotherhood or completed their questline, you'll get assassins related to them sent after you. Also, if you've purged the wolf from yourself and other members of the Companions who were willing to do so, and have finished the companions questline and such, you can potentially recruit the Companions as major troops for the conquering of Summerset. If they still have the wolf, but you've otherwise completed the questline, they'll only help with the defenses back in Skyrim, because they are afraid they'll be discovered as werewolves if working on the front-lines in foreign lands with large numbers of your troops and such, which would affect morale. Having Wuuthrad (spelling?) in certain quests on Summerset will also help morale modifiers, both worsening enemy morale and improving that of your own side.

This is something of a roleplay mod idea. Basically, for characters with high levels of enchanting and smithing, I think it would be cool if you could gift powerful armor and weapons to some NPCs, particularly most of the Jarls and some higher up NPCs of some factions. They'd only accept and equip it if it is something they have the right skills for or is similar but superior to what they use already, and they don't have some specific special item or heirloom for that slot. Noncombat types would generally only accept enchanted jewelry, clothing, and maybe something like a dagger, mage types would usually only accept enchanted clothing/robes rather than armor. The item generally would have to be refined to a high level, possess a high base armor rating if it's armor, or damage rating if it's a weapon (or at least usually higher than what they already use) and have a better enchantment than what they already use (if any). Some would only accept certain types based on their pride and heritage and the like, or which place they are in charge of, and generally their personality, so for instance, characters who are more superstitious probably won't accept daedric items, and Nords generally won't accept elven, orcish, dwarven or glass items. Towards the endgame, you could have most or all of the Jarls and leaders of various groups wearing your creations. It would also let you sometimes sell these sorts of items, but probably only if the hold is doing well and you are Thane or something similar, and you have high ranks and perhaps certain perks in Speech tree. You'd get the full value for the item, rather than the normal gold limits from NPCs. You'd only get to gift one item of each type/slot to any individual NPC of this sort, so even if you create a better item later, you can't give the same NPC another thing of that type. You could even have this backfire on you to a degree, if, say, you gifted items to someone you later fight in the Civil War quest-line or something. You might get an increase in guard compliments related to your enchanting and smithing skills upon doing stuff like this, and maybe some other dialogue tweaks. Because of potential issues of dialogue lines to existing characters, it might require the creation of new NPCs who are in charge of the weapons and armor of major characters you are gifting things to, like someone who helps them into their armor, and holds onto their weapons for them while they are holding court, if lines can't be assembled by mixing up existing audio and dialogue.

I'd like a mod that upgrades the models and textures of the animals, as well as their animations (and perhaps adds some more without changing their behavior, leaving that to other mods). The one's I've seen so far usually don't upgrade the models at all, and often change the style of textures so that the animal looks like it might be a different breed or species than the ones native to vanilla skyrim. I'd like one that keeps the general color schemes and patterns of the vanilla ones, making sure the animals look similar to vanilla, but makes them look like more modern game style animals, rather than last generation console critters, and makes them move more realistically. Higher resolution textures, better models, better meshes (?), more complex skeletons, better animations that more closely match the movements of real world creatures, making the fur look more like fur and less like a plastic shape around the animal with spiky bumps or a liney texture, etc. This is only to replace the vanilla animals, no adding new animals, no changing their general behavior, no changing coloration, they should generally look like they are the same breed/species as the vanilla special edition versions. This would include creatures like foxes, wolves, dogs, horses, deer, mammoths, bears, rabbits, hawks, chickens, frostbite spiders, horkers, etc. It could, of course, serve as a basis for other mods that add new animals, change or add to animal behaviors, add more animal animations (thanks to the improved skeletons and models), and so on. Generally the mods I've seen don't seem to do much with the animal models, and they prefer to change the textures and add more types of animals or change the types already there, rather than stick close to the vanilla styles of creatures, and many of them don't change the base vanilla ones directly, leaving them in place. I'd like cows that look like they are alive, and bears that look like they aren't low-res, simple model plastic monsters. Some care should be given to performance of course, Skyrim's engine and many people's games can't handle trying to make them look like animals from Far Cry Primal or Witcher 3 as far as I know, but I'm pretty sure they can get a good bit closer to that level, and farther from the level of things that wouldn't look out of place in Neverwinter Nights 2 or No Man's Sky.

I'd kinda like a mod that improves the models (meshes?) and textures of all the vanilla flora, but doesn't really change their style or add new types. So no adding different color leaf versions, or extra plants, or making trees bigger. Just better models and textures for the new vanilla special edition flora. Specifically, I'd like to have it make a lot of the flora look less plastic-like and fake or in the case of some of the flowers, like flat things made of paper when close up. They probably need to be lower res with simpler models at a distance for performance reasons, but when you are practically on top of them, a lot of them look super derpy and fake. Any changes to close-up versions may require changes to distance versions as well to make sure they match up close enough as you approach them. If there is a real world equivalent plant that looks similar enough, I'd like the updated models and textures to be based on it, such as the lavender. I just want a replacer with better versions of the vanilla flora, not something that moves flora around, adds more, changes it or anything like that. I think some of the flora also lacks cast shadows, and so if some of them can be made properly solid without affecting performance too much, that would be nice too. I'm counting mushrooms as flora for the sake of this, even if I suspect that fungi don't technically count, along with ground textures that are clearly made of plants (some of which look too flat, but all the texture replacers I've seen change the style and placement of things too much). This kind of stuff bugs me partially because I tend to go crazy collecting alchemy ingredients, so I'm always looking at the flowers and mushrooms and stuff up close, but I don't want something too different from vanilla for aesthetic-only reasons, which has held me back from some flora mods.

I just saw the youtube videos: I'd love to see a mod that fixes up the designs of the castles and city walls and stuff in Skyrim, at least for the main cities (you can ignore various bandit forts and stuff for the most part, although I have seen some that fix up bandit forts already, like that one in the pass over the river on your way between Whiterun and heading around the Throat of the World to meet the graybeards the first time. I'm not sure if some already exist, would not be surprised with some of the city mods out there, although I'm not sure how well they take into account things mentioned in the videos, so if good ones exist, I'd love to get linked to them instead. For Solitude, you'd probably need to fix that 'bridge' thingy into a proper archway that supports itself as mentioned, as well as fix the various gates and walls, and you might want to move some of the mountain away from that one side, and perhaps create better defenses on that side, since it would be one of the few vulnerable to bombardment weather the mountain is there or not, unless you make things drop off instead or something, but I think just creating a more leveled out area for a while between it and the mountain might be best. For Whiterun, similarly you'd mainly need to fix the walls and gates so they can be guarded properly and shot down from and such, and probably add some potential for siege weaponry to set up to defend everything. He doesn't seem to have a video yet for other cities, but I assume anyone able to create mods for the first two would be able to figure things out for the other ones that at least have walls. Not going to fuss too much about the Mage's College, since I suspect it was built by someone who isn't an expert on construction, and instead by some powerful mage or group of mages, and is probably largely supported by magic to help explain why it didn't fall away like the rest of Winterhold, so it doesn't quite need to be logical castle-wise. Labarythinian (spelling?) has the same sort of thing going, just more blatantly having been created by a mage. Having Whiterun, Solitude, and Windhelm improved in this sort of way would go a long way to help explain the lack of progress in the civil war no matter how long the dragonborn takes to join up. Such a mod would probably need adjustments to guard AI in order to take advantage of the new defense designs, and probably some mods to AI behavior in the civil war questline, and possibly for difficulty reasons, some adjustments to how the civil war quest-line plays out when assaulting cities for various reasons, in order to either bypass normal defenses, or cheat with being a dragonborn (possibly scripting in being able to destroy gatehouses with Fus Ro Dah or something, or if it requires open cities aspects as well, and you've completed the dragonborn DLC far enough to bend-will of dragons, to be able to bypass defenses by riding in on a dragon (at least if you can get it to land properly)). With the special edition's more powerful engine, it also might enable any improved defenses to have more guards manning them without affecting frame rates and such as much. I suspect one of the hardest parts to script for such a mod would be the AI to get guards to utilize arrow slits and such properly, and all the work needed to fix pathing options for NPCs on the modified walls and towers and such, given how stupid NPCs will behave in some house-mods that don't take that into account.