phantompally76

I have referenced GamerPoets' Skyrim ini tweaks video time and time again whenever I've had to reinstall the game, or when mods default or delete the ini files.

Irrelevant. The vast majority of mod users download SkyUI for the simple fact that so many authors have made it a requirement for their own mods (which was true long before MCM), not because they prefer its buggy, unstable menu over that of vanilla.

Any chance you're running recording software and that button is the "start recording" hotkey? If it were a hotkey for screenshots, it would probably tell you on screen (at least through Steam) and you'd hear a camera shutter noise, so you can probably rule that out. If you somehow remapped your quicksave key from F5 to numpad7, that could also cause a freeze and drop in framerate when you press it, but again, you would probably notice "Quicksaving..." in the upper left corner of the screen. Otherwise, the only other thing besides an ENB toggle it could be is another program performing some action that's throttling resources when you press that key.

And that reason has nothing to do with it being any better of a UI than vanilla, but rather because of the MCM menu that so many mods require.

You're right, that truly is a simple question, with a simple answer. Female follower mods are the closest 80% of male gamers will ever get to an actual relationship with a female. That's why.

A few days ago, I unwisely downloaded a mod from this site that was supposed to temporarily revert your Skyrim install to a vanilla state. Insead, it deleted all my mods, as well as tons of vanilla files, so I had to do a full uninstall/reinstall. Not very keen on spending weeks or months rebuilding my mod stack (especially with the tangible possibility of a return of paid mods looming on the horizon), I decided instead to do a vanilla playthrough. I'm enjoying a steady 60+ fps, and haven't crashed once. I've spent over 3 years entrenched in the modding hobby, and I had forgotten that 1). mods trash performance, even on high-end machines, 2). mods cause a massive amount of instability, stuttering and CTDs, be it through heavy scripting or heavy GRAM, and 3). mods break the game, and either make it way too easy or way too hard. We justify these things by trying to pretend that Skyrim is completely unplayable without mods, and that's simply untrue. If it were, then it wouldn't have won so many Game-of-the-Year awards in 2011, before mods for Skyrim even existed. So I think I'm going to give mods a rest for a while. I'm enjoying this 100% mod-free playthrough more than any I've done in years, and I'm enjoying the lack of CTDs, stuttering, and low FPS endemic to player mods. I'm not sure why I'm even typing this...it just seemed appropriate for the thread. I don't want to seem ungrateful; I still dig mods, and I still appreciate their existence, along with all the time and passion put into them by their authors....but I'm also tired of troubleshooting issues caused by the very presence of mods 100% of the time.

Most of the prominent mod authors are currently devoting 95% of their energies into modding for Skyrim SE. Some have abandoned the Legendary Edition altogether, or are otherwise not putting as much time and attention into development/updates into the classic versions of their mods (please note, this isn't true for 100% of mod authors, nor am I trying to imply so. But it cannot be denied that the latest releases of a lot of popular mods for LE are plagued with a lot more bugs than normal). That said, they're well within their rights to focus on whichever version they choose, and most of them feel like SE has a lot more potential than the version of the game we all originally signed up for. I'm sure trying to juggle updates and development for two different versions of the game is well-tedious. Some authors are, in fact, near their wits' end, particularly with the Special Edition's Creation Kit, which is causing a ton more headaches than the LE's Creation Kit at this time. Meanwhile, the majority of mod users are either 1). still playing and loading mods for Legendary Edition while waiting for SKSE and a modern version of SkyUI with MCM menus to exist for the Special Edition so that more LE mods can be ported over and function properly, or 2). unable to play Skyrim SE because of hardware issues resulting in incredibly poor framerates even with all the ini file and video card tweaks in the world, along with 5x more CTDs than the LE, which is implicitly not supposed to happen, and so will be sticking with Skyrim LE, come Hell or high water (for full disclosure, I fall into this category). The big argument for Skyrim SE is that it offers better stability and enhanced capabilities for better mods than the Legendary Edition. I haven't come across any mods that live up to that hype yet, but it's still early days. All I know is that I wish Bethesda had never developed or released a Special Edition of the game. Other than marginally better looking grass and sickly yellow dust everywhere, I haven't found anything "special" about it. But that's just my opinion based off personal experience. Others act like they've just discovered water, so YMMV. Either way, I do feel like the modding community is approaching a crisis as a result of the SE. Many of us will either be left behind, or (as it stands now) discouraged from continuing to be a part of a community that will no longer support the version of the game that put it on the map. TL:DR: It depends on whether you care more about the tried-and-true or the latest-and-greatest. Although "greatest" will be subjective. Also, it's worth comparing the user reviews for both versions of the game on Steam, and note the near 20% difference in positive reviews.

Just don't be surprised if/when you still see that crap even with stringent filters set up. Lots of miscategorized waifu out there.

Your humbleness is both respected and appreciated. I wish more authors had your perspective.

"It is a lonely life, the way of the necromancer...". Merlin The Magician, Excalibur (1981) :)

When your character approaches Pelagia farm for the first time, there's a battle between some of the Companions and a giant. Aela the Huntress usually fires arrows towards Whitrun during that fight, and if you don't get too close, the battle goes on in perpetuity. I have tried more than once to take one of her arrows to the knee down by the river, but I have never been successful.

There is definitely a concerted effort to elevate the SE over LE by Bethesda, mod authors, and this website, obfuscated by the notion that we will always have a choice between the two. But ultimately, authors (especially the hostile ones who despise providing support for even one platform, let alone two) will abandon the LE altogether as time goes by, citing constraints of a 32-bit engine or bemoaning how they don't have time to make mods for two different versions of the game for no monetary compensation. Some of the better ones will continue to release for both platforms, but that will eventually be the exception rather than the norm. Personally, I find no redeeming qualities in the SE. It runs like crap on each of my computers (one of which is only a year old), I have found it to be 10x more unstable than LE, which negates its only advertised advantage, and I feel that its entire purpose was and is to divide the modding community, which it has successfully achieved. Skyrim LE is what I signed up for. I've been happy with it for five years, and that has not changed just because Bethesda rereleased the same product with marginally better grass and a bunch of yellow crap in the air. But it's up to the individual to decide. SE is free for PC users who own LE. The real choice is whether you buy into the hype and drink the Kool-Aid that claims that SE is vastly superior to LE, because that is demonstrably not true.

The Elder Scrolls VI - Yonkers

Consoling quest completions CAN break your game. But on the other hand, so can 99% of the mods on this site. Sometimes, you're left with no other recourse other than to console, especially when completing an objective doesn't register as completed by the engine, and when no amount of reloading saves will solve the issue. In your case, you can avoid that quest entirely only by choosing a side in the war and by taking Whiterun before you get to that point in the main questline. Anyway, the whole point of that quest is to illustrate how just because a jarl is a jerk doesn't necessarily mean that he/she is not the best choice for the job, and that just because a jarl is benevolent doesn't necessarily mean that he/she is suited for the task (others will probably try to argue this point, but in the end the choices don't matter all that much....all the jarls are superfluous to the Dragonborn). At any rate, there's nothing stopping you from advising that the jarls all remain the same. You'll just have to take note of who the jarls of each hold are, and afaik there is some randomness involved in which ones will be addressed in the discussion.

I don't know of a mod that does that, but using the console should do that for you. help "histskin" player.addspell xxxxxxx (whatever the spell ID number is) If there are multiple versions of histskin in the database, might have to look it up on UESP Wiki in order to get the correct ID number for the correct version.