Dark nights - bright fires. I keep failing to tweak my settings to achieve the look.

[cowgirl1776]

I seem to have quite a lot of trouble perfecting my lighting and have never been good at modding Skyrim. I am trying to go for an nighttime aesthetic that yields warm and bright fires, but near pitch-black nights that would mandate either using a torch to see or stopping for the night and waiting the rise of the sun. For years I felt that ELFX - Hardcore did this for me, but I recently was informed that it was incompatible with most ENBs and was the source of a few problems I was experiencing. I have tried many ENBs looking to recapture the darkness of the night and the comfort of warm fires to light the camp, but while they are all beautiful, I have not quite found one that does this. Nights tend to be far too bright for me.

 

I have tried to tweak the ENB settings, but do not seem to know what I am doing. Turning Brightness Night down certainly made my nights dark, but it also dimmed every source of light. To counter this, I increased [Environment] DirectLightingIntensity, but oddly it had no impact on the visuals - even if I turned it up to something incredibly high. After a few questions, someone recommended that I change the same setting under weathers - which did indeed work, but doing so did not just adjust the fires, but the whole scene. I am at the end of my sanity - clearly I do not know what I am doing when it comes to lighting. Would anyone happen to know what might be causing my issues with [Environment] DirectLightingIntensity not altering the lights, or could explain what I might be doing wrong, or even recommend an ENB that does what I am trying to go for?

 

I have also been told that it may be related to the weather mod I am using, NLVA + Vivid Weathers. I have not explored that possibility yet.

 

Sorry for the mess of a post.