anjenthedog

Whatever floats your boat, LilRedMonster. Different strokes for different objectives, since you just spent two posts speaking to me and denigrating a proven engineering method of reducing degrees of freedom in an effort, not advising the OP. Personally, I haven't seen a collection I'd want to play under, or said another way, I don't want to play *your* game, or Sarah's game, or Roberto's game. I want to create *my* game. I presume, to some degree, that's what the OP wants as well. Even those who create collections have to do some sensible stuff to create the collections. It doesn't just magically happen on its own.

Not sure. someone else will have to explain the technicalities. All I know is what my eyes see. ENB pops in a way I can't achieve using presets (via mods or via fiddling with imaginator settings. As I think I noted when I first replied, no, it's not the same, but utilizing something like imaginator (and/or various shader presets) seems to produce something *closer to photo realistic than when settling for the vanilla handler alone, so, since I don't use ENB, it's my next best bet.

Alchemy sure helps my players, no matter which role I've chosen. So does enchanting. We all wear clothes of one sort or another and we all can stand from buffs and weapon boosts. (admittedly I don't play in pure mage roles, so I'm dismissing their particular issues offhand) I grind the skills in bursts over time to make it a little less painful. I suppose there are ways around that too, if you're not a purist.

Let's put it this way, why install an Ebony Warrior mod when you're nowhere near level 80? It seems a brain dead move to worry about an Ebony Warrior mod when you're nowhere near level 80 and likely won't' be for a long time, especially since he won't appear til you reach level 80, Kapiche?

Imaginator's primary tools (imo) are the color, brightness, contrast controls. oh and saturation. They do what brightness color tone and contrast do in any application (and saturation). they affect the color values, scene brightness, and to some degree sharpness (via contrast) of the field of view. saturation determines the weighting of all color upon your scene. Any others idk off hand. BTW< if you don't understand how color tone works, do some googling on the subject. best I can say is that blue white feels different than a rosey white or yellow white. little shifts in color can change the whole appearance of a scene, but best imo (for learning) to personally experience the shifts by self exploration. (corny but true) If you have it, I'd suggest playing around with those basic tools (contrast, brightness and color tone) to get the feel. you can always reset values. try some of its presets too (there's sub section that has presets). If it makes you feel any better I didn't know how to use it either, when I first started using it. ... Subtle adjustments to avoid the garish look.

obviously, not all mods fall into the category of "easy to test". Many most seem to though. in cases where they're going to be complicated, ime there are usually subtle or even overt notices in the requirements, description, and/or length/complexity of installation steps, as well as finding a lot of "can't get this mod to work" kinds of "user" posts, or even the existence of ancillary, third party patch mods. Not to say I don't get your point. Idk, some mods you have to pay more attention and do more to make sure every nitty gritty is working. Can't help those. But "a lot of mods" becomes maybe a handful or even dozens, but not hundreds. Almost every single instance of major game meltdown for me, (the kind that requires a lot of debugging and effort to put it back to working condition), has started after I was rushing installations without intermediary testing. "ooh, let's install this, looks shiny, ooh install that. Ooh, and they both need dependencies, gotta install those ... hey while I'm at it I'll install this other - unrelated but nifty - one too, and heck all of its addons too... it'll go MUCH faster this way man.... ... ... oh F game is borked". And I even live in a glass house, since I still do it on occasion when I get careless and overconfident, but correct method is still correct method nonetheless. If I were going to use a mod specifically geared towards level 60 and above play, I might consider waiting to install it until I was at least near to my target level. idk, play vanilla or invest some mental elbow grease to tailor your game. I still think that most mod installations require little more than proving the game and a save file (or new game) still correctly loads and there's *some evidence of a mod doing it's thing. It's a pita, yes, since loading games and saves is tedium personified, often taking several minutes each time. I'm not really interested in being an apostle of the Holy Church of Single Mod Installation, but it's principle's efficacy is proven every time I see another thread where someone complains their game is totally fecked, then they panic and totally reinstall the game, of course making the same gd mistakes they made last time and whining about how they're going to rage quit Skyrim unless someone plays the hero and spoon fixes their game waaaaa. (not that I'm suggesting this characterization applies to you at all.. I'm not, but I've seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds over the past 4 years that do) Bottom line, you will almost certainly save time in the long run by at least quickly checking the game in between mod installations, even if it seems like you're not because there's so much thumb twiddling while deployments take place and game loads occur.. BTW, this method predates gaming. in any case good luck. I get your frustrations, just trying to offer some "stoic" advise. Not every installation will allow easy testing to gain confidence it's working properly. c'est la vie

Also, note that one is not limited to a *pair* of source normals maps, nor the direction in which they travel. For instance, you could as well start with a buff physique, then turn it into a fat slob as weight increases, or go from no muscles (0) to muscles (50) then to chubby (100)... Sky's (almost) the limit if you think outside the box AND utilize Shieldmaiden and Bodyslide (and Racemenu) effectively.

If you can't use ENB, perhaps a combo of Imaginator (or similar mod) adjustments might help. ENB seems to be the way to get truly photo realistic gaming (far as I can tell, can't run on my system, graphics card isn't up to it and tbh, I'm not either... seems like too much work for this retired, somewhat burnt out brain), but you can get ~reasonable output using shader sets and tweaking.

test as you go. IMO one shouldn't be flood installing anyway. It's a recipe for disaster, collections or no collections. one by one, with a brief in-game test before moving on. If you have a listing of known "good boys" (infrastructure mods like UIExtensions, Better Dialog Controls or texture sets, for instance, bulk install isn't so bad, but many mods just require a lot of massaging due to subtle contentions that often go un-mentioned befor ehand and are only revealed in the multitude of "it don't work" threads that result.

One idea would be liberally applied enchantments. I often apply heavy buffs to my light armor elements to compensate for their heavy-armor shortcomings. thought: I suppose a purist might snort "cheater" ,but whatever. At the end of the day, he who survives is the winner. Isn't that one of martial culture's most important things beyond face?

Ok, I have a few solutions for you. 1) install proteus (not the only way but it makes it easy) 2) boost your magic, stamina, and health to a level that exceeds your game level 3) re-define your armor/clothing ratings to be more effective (higher ratings) 4) enchant the F out of everything. Also... 5) consider using TIM generally, and TGM for really dicey situations. (shh... no one needs to know) 6) avoid unnecessary dangers at lower levels 7) practice your potion making skills and get the skill level mazxed as soon as possible, then create boatload of health potions and poison potions (and whatever else. hope you get my point). 8 ) git yersef one of those 'bags of carrying' or jewelry that ignores the laws of physics so you can carry boatloads of potions food etc. 9) don't install monster mods that produce world shattering opponents, and or use their MCMs to limit the levels of spawned creatures

Consider making your own set of weighted normal maps. At present, a mod like Shieldmaidens Muscle Slider CBBE will provide at least 10 slots for weight change and normal swapping. I realize the mod linked above is a bit out of date, considering the newer body models, but I suspect there's probably a newer variant more suitable to 3BA if you look around. I use CBBE-3BBB amazing body and shield maidens, along with a set of custom normal maps I created by blending a few normal maps from various body texture mods, in steps, instead of the "stock" maps it came with, and it works for me Blend is in Paint dot net using layers, with a primary layer set for 100% opacity, and a second layer that's progressively taken from 0 opacity to 100% opacity in steps (effectively blending from a low tone, soft body to a muscly body)...but you can go any way you like when you create your own. of course, within the limits of your body mesh, but whatever... to produce the maps, I set the secondary layer opacity, then merge, save as (ex: femalebody_2_msn.dds), undo the merge, adjust to add some more opacity, merge save_as again, with name stepped up another digit (ex: femalebody_3_msn.dds) , then again then again ... till the secondary layer has reached 100% opacity, effectively overriding the first layer once merged. (You can also utilize copy-merged, and paste into a new workspace then save, but I avoid that because I want to 100% assuredly maintain the automatic file type associations of the original dds file and am too lazy and or ignorant to "Know" which types to choose on my own) Presuming you're using shieldmaiden's, then all you have to do is a copy paste into the /textures/actors/character/female folder, over-writing the original set of muscle normal maps (archive them prior, just for posterity's sake if nothing else). I can't speak to any other programs...erm mods that offer such muscle vs weight stuff Of course, you want to ensure that the source maps for your custom blend are at the same resolution and ideally at the same resolution as your present normals map (and no mixing between body type families (UNP/CBBE/ETC?) normals either... same family)

There's one option when dealing with enemies that many players overlook. Run away from opponents who can kick your ... into pancake batter. Just run away till you've leveled enough and/or (I suppose mages don't usually armor much) added armoring (clothing and or enchantments, potions, or other buffs) strong enough to fight them. (or just to catch your figurative breath so you can come back at them for another attack as soon as you gobble those sweet rolls or cast heals or whatever) To save face, which seems to be the fundamental philosphy governing the logic of martial culture, call it retreat. Or maybe get some followers to help, and then you can act as defacto "battle manager" (archer or battle mage) instead of up-close defacto melee tank.

My two cents... I'd suggest sticking with the low poly presets for now, till you find and install HPH. The silver lining is that even with a lower poly head, there are quite a few nice ones. You just have to hunt in the mod categories subset of nexus (and elsewhere) to find them. Use them as templates for the player and adjust according to taste (hair, eye color, etc etc boob size or shape, the preset's assigned weapon sizes and spatial orientation, etc etc, blah blah blah) (resave as a custom preset or variant of the original preset) there are also higher poly low poly head models available on nexus afaik. kinda intermediate. better than vanilla but not hph. Again hunt in nexus mod categories. Sorry can't offer better. Personally speaking, but only personally speaking, I found declared HPH racemenu presets to be unusable without HPH installed. In addition, some/many presets seem to require custom heads, (some custom races for instance), above and beyond HPH or no HPH, so long term, that has to be dealt with too, if you end up downloading an affected preset.

Looking for a mod that places bonzai trees (as decoration) here and there in skyrim homes, businesses, etc

There's no law that says you have to use 3rd person, or sin in doing so, far as I know (or visa versa). Play as you like to play.

I use both 3rd person and 1st person depending. 3rd person obviously allows me an almost omniscient view of the surroundings, and to be perfectly frank, since many of my player characters are female, like the one that defines my avatar, and I'm a relatively housebound male in real life who sees very few feminine women in real life anymore, I enjoy watching the sway as a virtual follower. I use 1st person when in sneak mode, in confined spaces, or just for a different perspective

Well there's the rub. The only linkage I have into Racemenu for NPCs (via some mod that added the ability) only affects their body and scale values. Head edits aren't available. Not exactly sure why. So, you'd likely have to use CK, SEEdit, ?maybe nifskope?, or some other third party editor for NPC edits. ... Then why did I answer in the first place? Because I'm a forgetful dufus and "NPC" didn't register in my brain. My apologies

Afaik there's a setting in Racemenu's face section for eye width (also may be one for pupil placement although I can't recall) Idk why some eyes come off that way, (although I've seen plenty in showcase snapshots and videos, and while fiddling around with faces in Racemenu on occasion), but maybe those specific eyes or sequence of eyes include placement boundaries that are designed for a specific race or eye shape.

Good lord man. Install mods one at a time and check thoroughly for issues before installing the next. You should know that by now! That way, If a conflict erupts (which unfortunately is far from uncommon), you can just uninstall the last install, then either use a save made prior to the installation or clean up as necessary using fallrim and a save made after the offending mod is uninstalled. ( usually test by the first method as it takes less effort) Then you can figure out what broke and if possible, fix it, or if not, choose one or the other (if the conflict is simply between a pair, which is also a common theme) How do I test? I read the mod description, watch showcase videos, and then I see if it produces what it claims to, on my machine, without compromising the integrity of my midgame install, its in game MCM is sensible and efficacious, installs without necessarily extraordinary efforts on my part in terms of installation and configuration vs "mod substance" (I'll go farther for a new-land or framework, than for a new shrub, follower, or character preset). if it fails on any of those counts, it gets bumped out of the load. That's my default grunt pose. Were I testing an application (or game, or whatever) for a customer in a professional setting, I'd do what they asked me to do, and maybe exceed what they asked me to do., Been a long time since I was in that role though and doubtful if I'd ever subject myself to that sort of environment again. I both envy and pity YT showcasers. Their skills are generally way above mine, at least in terms of video editing and presentation, (envy) and yet they spend inordinate amounts of time simply to make mods look as good as they can look (pity)

If only I was granted access without having to go through that banal vampire track. Hain't been there since 2021, and good riddance to whatshername. Almost accidentally woke her a few months ago when I was directed to her crypt site by a side quest. So maybe someone could start there. Abolish the "you gotta endure Serana" thing. PS> no, I'm serious. I know she wanks many teenaged yankers, but she and the entire questline (sans crossbows, boomy darts, and forgotten vale) bore me to tears. Hmmm never considered it before, but I wonder if I can kill her along with the rest of her trash clan. Never liked vampires, the fantasy kind or the real kind of soul sucking humans they're based on. Meh no matter. I still enjoy wandering the countryside.

I'm not sure why, but some items aren't transferrable to NPCs. I noticed that with the aphrodisiac potions (from other mod or another). They can only be shared with a small select group of NPCs, specifically, potion sellers, Kajit (sp) merchants, and a few others who I can't think of right now I've also noticed it when giving items as part of the lower's lab ritual of relationships. Many items one might be able to hand over via normal follower inventory *share* relations (eg. AFT's "I need to trade some items with you" dialog) are not available for gifting. I think there are other instances too, just can't think of them right now. In other words, I believe it's by design.

Different variants of the bodies have different number of nodes and sometimes differently names nodes. So some bodies respond, some don't.

AT a guess, you installed a mod that by default sets its hotkey to the tab key. For me that results in several possibilities. 1) shared - It opens both menus/content (both processes assigned to the tab key are still triggered by using the hotkey) 2) exclusive - It "steals" the original tab assignment 3) confused - sometimes it opens one, sometimes it opens the other I've experienced all of them from various new hotkey assignments (ie new mods added), including the tab key and many others Check your MCM's, and Skyrim config (settings) for hotkey assignment duplications.

Try swapping weapons sets and then back to the original set. (swap to something else, dual swords or dual axes, equip (ie not just carry), unequip, then swap back to the dual daggers). That seems to fix it for me when it happens in most cases.