Dkboy24

The CaBal120 texture mods I was referring to are as follows: Solstheim landscape: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50013/? Imperial Forts: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49710/? Farmhouses: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49040/? Caves and Mines: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/39190/? Whiterun: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/38491/? Landscapes: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37865/? Here is the link for SMIM: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8655/? (Install both the main file and the update file) I have never had any issues with SMIM. Only issue I can think of is freezing and stuttering for lower-end rigs because of the high def textures. If you choose the "custom" installation method, you can actually select lower quality textures as one of the options. I would install the normal textures fist and if it causes performance issues I would uninstall and re-install with the lower quality textures. Regarding LOOT, I would highly recommend it. You won't have any many ESP's to sort with only texture mods but still, LOOT is highly recommended for sorting your load order. When you get to where I am with 180+ plugins LOOT becomes essential for a stable game. For starters just run it and it will automatically sort your load order.

Haha! Derp on me for not checking the thread name :P So sorry!

I would recommend this: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/2356/?

Does your game crash right after the Bethesda logo?

For textures, I would grab everything that CaBal120 does (Just search by author on the Nexus). His work is simply amazing! I would also grab SMIM (Static Mesh Improvement Mod) which for me is essential. Both of which are extremely simple to install (Just install with NMM and you're good to go). Also, check out Aron's work as well. I'm using "Vivid Landscapes - Rocking Stones and Mountains Two" which makes rocks looks awesome! My personal favorite for water is Isoku's " Realistic Water Two" which adds beautiful waters and ambient sounds (I'm a huge fan of his other mods as well). For flora, most people are fond of "Skyrim Flora Overhaul" however I personally prefer a combination of "Lush Trees and Grass" and "Unique Grasses and Groundcovers" There is a slight .ini tweak you have to do but it is quite simple and the mods instructions are very easy to follow. There are tons of snow mods out there to choose from. I don't run many snow retextures myself. I just use "SNOW" by Ramccoid along with "No Snow Under the Roof" by Prometheus. I have used "Better Dynamic Snow" in the past and enjoyed that mod as well. For the sky...again tons of options. "Real Clouds" by Soolie gives amazing depth to the clouds. Currently I'm using "Dramatic Clouds" by Anarin and enjoy it. Little to no FPS drop at all. For stars I'm using "Ethereal Cosmos" (The twinkle edition) and for me that is essential. For weather, if you are not planning on using an ENB most everyone uses "Climates of Tamerial" which is an amazing weather mod. If you plan to start using ENB mods you have to make sure they are compatible. I used to use CoT but uninstalled it in favor of Seasons of Skyrim ENB. But I would avoid ENB's for now if you want to keep the install simple and performance high. Lastly for lighting, most folks use either Enhanced Lights and Effects (ELFX) or Realistic Lighting Overhaul (RLO). I personally like ELFX better and works well with CoT. I would install them one at a time and play for an hour or so to test performance. I ran my game with those mods on a moderate GPU and found I still had good FPS. A quick side note: You may encounter two mods trying to change the same textures. If it asks you if you want to overwrite files one mod is trying to change, don't freak out. It is just a matter of choosing which mod you prefer for that particular texture. Install it once with the overwrite, check the texture, then uninstall and reinstall and don't overwrite. That way you can see which texture you prefer. The more texture mods you install the more taxing on your VRAM though. So if you encounter a lot of CTD's I would look at SMME (Skyrim Starup Memory Editor) which is a memory patch for the game and works quite well. Or you can use SKSE 1.7 which has the SMME patch built in. You just need to add some lines in your SKSE .ini (See this video for the difference and how to install: ) Again these are all personal recommendations and I would implore you to try and test out others to make your own judgments. There are lots of talented modders out there and if you ask ten people this questions, you're going to get ten different answers on which mods are the best to use. Again it is all a matter of personal taste to get the type and feel of the game you are trying to capture. I hope this helps!

Let me introduce you to a man named "Gopher." I was new to modding not that long ago and with his help, I was able to learn how to mod. He has an excellent series of tutorial vids that are just amazing. I would watch the entire series!

A few things.. 1. Do you run 4GB Fallout? http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/55061/ If not, that mod is essential for all the mods you have. There is an amazing tutorial by our dear friend Gopher here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plWow9dGI70&list=PL0E5E8CA384409B11 In fact if you have not seen it, I highly recommend watching his entire modding FNV series. Whether you're a vet or new modder it will help immensely. 2. I just recently tried LOOT which is the newest of the two for sorting your load order and so far my game has been very stable. I recommend trying it out here: http://loot.github.io

I've been using Seasons of Skyrim True HDR ENB http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23812/ because I like the vibrant day time and rich, powerful colors. However I'm encountering a similar issue as you. I also use ELFX with the enhancer version installed and my dungeons are perfect! And by perfect I mean dark as &@$*! Which is what I want for a dungeon... no torch or night vision = swinging my weapon into blackness hoping I hit something. However I find Inn's and my hearthfire home very dark. Too dark in my opinion considering the huge fire in the center of the inn. If I uncheck the ELFX enhancer esp, it will lighten things up, but also lightens dungeons to the point where I don't need a torch. So I feel like I have to go either very light interiors and very dark interiors. I have been looking for a solution for lighter inns/ player home, but still keep my dark dungeons. Very curious to know what other users will recommend to you!

@Marth77 Another thing that makes SkyRe essential for me is how hard the combat is. I use both SkyRe and the enemy AI overhaul mod together to make my combat extremely tough and unforgiving with mistakes. If I miss a block, or miss a chance to bash a power attack, I get punished for it. It makes combat feel alive, real, engaging, and most of all fun! I don't like to crank up the vanilla difficulty as all it does is stack TONS of extra hit points onto enemies and for me, that feels very unrealistic. When a shirtless bandit comes at me with over a dozen arrows sticking out of his face and chest and one shots me.. that kills my immersion (granted he could be jacked up on skooma...but still).

I'm a huge fan of SkyRe. For me, it is essential. There is no way I can go back to vanilla game play now. The value this mod adds for me makes it worth having to deal with the pain of getting SkyRe reprocer patches for all my weapon/ armor mods. I use all SkyRe modules as well. What I find necessary for me are the perk changes. It gives so much more depth to building your character and allows for more diverse types of character builds. I'm a HUGE fan of hunting in the game as I love the forested scenic and I love playing ranger type characters. The Wayfarer tree is just perfect for this (I use all the camping, hunting, and realism mods I can get my hands on). I LOVE the changes in the speech tree which make my Dragonborn shouts feel way more powerful. I love that pickpocket and lock picking are the same tree now and it feels very natural. My thief characters can focus their perks on other cool stuff now. The enemy AI and combat modules of the mod are outstanding. I love the fact that stamina actually means something vs. vanilla and when I run out of stamina I'm at a huge disadvantage. When I go back to vanilla, which I've done once for comparison a long time ago, I just felt there was so much lacking. I first started playing Skyrim on my Xbox before I upgraded my PC so I clocked hundreds of hours of vanilla game play and it became very boring after a while. Overhaul mods like SkyRe and the other overhauls I run (Civil war, Dragon combat, etc) not only give more life to the game, but extend it's viability as a game I actively play for years now.

When you click on the .esp it should also tell you the author of the mod as well. You can search Nexus by author and see what files they have done. That might help you find the source of this rogue esp.

Dang! I wish there was something I can offer up besides my enthusiasm to help with your project. Sadly I know f*** all about textures and anything related. I did post this thread on my Facebook to see if any of my friends have any skills that could be useful. I also sent this to my buddy who does voice acting to see if he's interested. I for one love this idea. I was a huge WoW fan "back in the day" and even worked for Blizz for a spell. I love the idea of seeing Elwynn forest in Skyrim with Goldshire and of course Stormwind! Or the farms of Westfall! Good luck you guys!

Have you uninstalled any mods that contain scripts? In my experience when I'm plagued by CTD's that is normally the cause and I've learned throughout my modding time the best practice is really to keep your mod list as is during a play through.

That's excellent news!! I'm always happy to hear of an issue like this getting fix and perhaps this thread may serve to help others who have had the same issue as you. Cheers!

Indeed!! I stopped adopting kids just because after a while they become a nuisance and get boring. It's like "yeah, I know I'm home. Here is some junk I found. No I can't play with you right now I'm busy crafting." It would be really cool to have a little apprentice you can shape!

aww man...what a frustrating thing to happen. I'm all out of ideas myself :( Hopefully someone smarter than I will be able to jump in here! If you manage to fix it, make sure you post your results here for others who may have a similar issue.

Hmmm, that's an odd one. Were you outside when you died? I'm wondering if altering your uGrids has something to do with it and your comp crashing when trying to load the area you died in? With a 4gb card you should be fine but I've heard of some instability with uGrids before (I've never altered mine so I'm not 100% sure, this is just what I've read). Have you tried starting a brand new character? Can you get into the game that way? That might help narrow down if it's your game that's crapping out on you or that particular save.

Thanks Myztikrice! Have you used it yourself? I understand food is based off volume rather than light,medium,filling like RN&D has. How does that work in iNeeds?

Can you get into the game at all? What happens if you start a new game? Was your game stable at one point and then it stopped working upon loading? Something like this happened to me once and it was because I had uninstalled a mod and forgot I had an item created by that mod in my inventory. When I tried to load my character it CTD. I reinstalled the mod, got rid of the item, uninstalled the mod and then it worked. You have a ton of mods so I'm sure you are but I'll ask anyway, are you using BOSS to sort your load order?

Okay so I have been keeping my eye on isoku's new iNeed's mod and it looks pretty awesome! I have no doubt in isoku's incredible modding expertise so I'm not worried about a buggy mod, but I would really like to get some comparisons out there from people who have used both. Currently I have so many other mods with patches for RN&D that I don't want to unwind all of that just for testing purposes. Some of my favorite features from RN&D is food spoilage and the eating/drinking animation which I don't see on iNeeds. Without food spoilage it does not give me quite the urgency to acquire food and I have a tendency to fill my bags with bread loaves and be set for a week. With food spoilage, I've found myself opening up my bag to eat only to find rotten meat, stale bread, and spoiled soup. I've had to scramble to hunt some local prey so I can have a meal and not go hungry. Besides those two features, can anyone tell me what iNeeds has that RN&D does not? I see iNeeds comes with widgets, but I play with almost a zero HUD so they would be turned off in my case. Anything else?

This is a cool idea. I especially like the idea of being able to train your child to fight. It would be awesome to equip a wooden sword and "training" shield with your child so you can practice with them or teach them magic or how to shoot/ hunt. It would be even cooler if they grew up and you got to take them out on the field as a companion, but sadly there are no teenage models to use in order for that to make sense. Or even just being able to give the child chores while you are away on campaign. It makes sense for a child of that age to have a number of responsibilities around the homestead such as; planting / harvesting crops, collecting herbs from nearby, hunting game for food (this can tie into the fighting training mentioned above) looking for alchemic ingredients or even crafting basic things at a forge. This way, after a certain time has elapse when you come home you may find a "child's chest" which will contain items he/ she has collected. This can include meat, leather, herbs, food, etc)

Yeah exactly. And I think just about everyone who would be interested in such a mod would be running all sorts of needs mods and such. It even applied to crafting items from Frostfall as well. The idea was there.. but the execution not so much. I think my idea outlined above would be doable. Look at the Hunterborn mod for example. It pretty much works the exact same way where you kill an animal, activate its carcass and select what you want to do (butcher meat, skin pelt, etc). Each action takes a certain amount of time and it is based on your skinning level. The better hunter you are, the least amount of time it takes you to butcher and skin an animal. Now take that same method and apply it to say blacksmithing. When you craft an item, it applies my formula above, the screen goes black for a second and you come back with the time lapse complete and your item crafted. Maybe playing a blacksmith hammer sound over the black screen to give the impression you've been at the forge all day? I wish I had a little experience in the CK but sadly I don't. I tried watching some tutorial videos and while they give me a good idea, I would not even know where to get the formulas to write the scripts in the first place. Plus me creating a scripted mod makes me super nervous as I wouldn't want to harm anyones game with my lack of experience.

I wanted to resurrect this post because I came here seeking the same request. While the reading takes time mod has been very well done by Akezhar (one of my staples... It is simple and perfect for my time lapse needs when reading), we are in dire need of a good crafting takes time mod. I know there is one out there.. but it has a # of issues that break immersion for me. The current mod assigns a random time lapse to crafting anything (this includes cooking) from 1-6 hours. So you could craft a suit of armor in an 1 while it takes you 6 to boil some water. Seeing as how anyone interested in this mod will also be running other realism mods, that doesn't quite work for me. I would love to see a mod that adds a time lapse to crafting which will improve as you increase your skill in that profession. For black smithing I was thinking something along the lines of: (All time lapse based off a lvl 1-9 blacksmith) Items classified as Heavy Armor take 8 hours of game time to craft (You'll be at the forge for an entire workday to craft one good piece!) Items classified as Heavy Weapons (all two handed weapons) take 6 hours of game time to craft Items classified as Light Armor take 6 hours of game time to craft Items classified as Light Weapons (all single handed weapons) take 4 hours of game time to craft Items classified as bows/ crossbows take 3 hours of game time to craft Items classified as arrows / bolts take 1 hour of game time to craft All cloth items (clothing / robes) takes 1 hour of game time to craft All tanning rack items take 1 hour Tempering armor takes 2 hours per piece Using the grinding stone takes 2 hours per weapon I thought of assigning a variable based on cost, but I couldn't think of a formula that would fit with varying costs that made sense. Also, armor/ weapons added by other mods might have very low or very high values assigned to them since the mod author creates those. I figured with my system outlined above it will streamline the process and make it easy to integrate any weapon / armor mod you've installed. I figured the level system can be created along with the current rank system for spells and locks. So you have: Novice blacksmith from lvl 10-26 Apprentice blacksmith from lvl 26-50 Adept blacksmith from lvl 51-75 Expert blacksmith from lvl 76-99 Master blacksmith from lvl 100+ Each level increase will give you a 10% reduction in crafting time. So a suit of heavy armor which would take a lvl 1-9 blacksmith to craft would be 8 hours. 7.2 hours for Novice, 6.4 hours for Apprentice, 5.6 hours for Adept, 4.8 hours for an Expert, and finally 4 hours for a master. (10, 20, 30, 40 & 50% deducted from the original 8 hours for each calculation) This way, it gives the feeling that even an expert blacksmith is still going to take some time to fashion some nice armor. But his years of experience at the forge allows him to craft it faster than say his apprentice who still fumbles the hammer. The same idea can be added to cooking, alchemy, enchanting... What do you guys think? Is this doable?

You might want to give this mod a go. It basically makes night time pitch black. It is one of my favorites because it makes having a light source on you when traveling at night essential. Some of the northern areas are slightly brighter due to the snow and on nights when the moon is full it is also slightly brighter. But for the most part.. prepare to be bumping into all sorts of things if you're caught outside without a light. I really love how I can see just the basic shapes of the mountain line with the cascade of stars illuminating the sky. I also love how when I'm approaching a town at night, you can see the distant lights of windows of each house which really adds to my immersion and quite frankly, makes any town extra warm and inviting to a wary traveler. There is zero impact on performance with this mod (at least for me) so you should not see any FPS loss. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49472/?

So are you having general game instability? Or do you think it's still related to Alternate Start? You may try uninstalling it to see if that mod is conflicting with something else, or you may want to try and work backwards uninstalling the last mod (one at a time) you installed to see where the conflicts are happening. Are you running any stability tools such as ENBoost? These tools will help with the stability of heavily modded games. If you are not having any specific mod conflicts, I would highly recommend following this guide to the letter. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50244/?