Noob at modding can someone help me with a list of mods?

[atbravesmlb]

Hey guys, i just bought skyrim for the first time! ive never really modded games but i saw what this game can look like after mods. so i want to be able to have my game look similar to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCupJTFm3-4. i dont know if there are any other threads like this if there is sorry. i have a high power machine amd 8350 and 7950 so i think i should be able to handle the game with a 60 fps with a lot of mods like that video. please help! ive also tried to install mods but i cant every find any to look like that and 2k textures crashes for me..

[ArtMurder]

It takes months of tweaking to get skyrim to look 'amazing' there is no short list of mods you can download and pop out picturesque scenery. Also, no matter how much of a beast your computer is, skyrim has a 'ceiling' and most of the time when people show off graphics they only do so a few minutes at a time with as much as possible turned off in the game so it doesn't hit the ceiling. Actually PLAYING the game with ultra realistic mods installed is next to impossible, unless you don't mind CTDs every 20 minutes.

 

Anyways, one of the main mods that make skyrim look really 'wow' in videos and screenshots is ENBs, I personally hate ENBs because none of them work 100%. Every single one of them is going to have somewhere where it looks horrible, and somewhere where it looks AMAZING. For actually playing the game, this is a bad direction to go in. If you just want to make insane screenshots and have pretty characters who never actually go and do anything, then by all means strap yourself into the best ENB you can find!

 

My personal suggestion is to start with a SweetFX mod. These work like ENBs, but much, much less finicky and resource demanding. I have a link to my SweetFX mod in my sig if you want to get a quick feel for what they can look like, but I personally suggest downloading "Ultimate Lighting Overhaul" as that user knows what they are doing, and I'm a newbie to sweetfx mods! Also, it has 500 more endorsements then mine...

 

Secondly, I suggest Climates of Tamriel, this is one of the best lighting mods, and works with any SweetFX mod, (though clashes horribly with some ENBs) Do not use with any other lighting mod that is NOT SweetFX based! Most of these also edit weather, and will cause real issues with CoT!

 

Thirdly, download '2k textures' 'Book of silence' 'WATER' 'Lush Grass' and 'Lush Trees' + Skyrim Flora Overhaul (I believe SFO needs a patch for the lush mods, but I use them together and it's beautiful) Also 'Skyrim Ultra HD Texture Pack' looks pretty amazing, but might over wright some of the mods I just listed.

 

Fourthly, I suggest installing some sort of star/galaxy replacer. I like mine best, but the top file ones are very good. Just seatch "star" and "Galaxy" and pick whichever one for each you like best.

 

Lastly, install 'no more blocky faces' + whatever face mod and/or body mod you like. UNPBBP is my personal favorite female body mod, and SoS is my personal favorite male body mod, but not everyone wants mods like that. "better females" is also good if you don't want to replace the body altogether. You should really think and be sure what you want before installing these, as you can only use one for each gender!

Edited July 17, 2013 by ArtMurder

[prod80]

Most important thing up there:

 

Thirdly, download '2k textures'

 

If you want to play the game, my advise; stay away from Ultra high resolution textures like 4K or 8K even. Firstly figure out what gameplay overhauls you wanna play with... things that change game mechanics, perk systems, etc... like Skyrim Redone... install all those things first and make sure they are stable and working properly by playing the game. You do this because it's generally easy to install texture packs, but it's much more tricky to troubleshoot game changers when you also run on the limits of the game engine due to texture packs.

 

When you have the mods you wanna play with for the game itself, only then are you ready to start changing textures. And each time you add a texture replacers you have to go in the game and check if it works, check if it's stable (use Skyrim Performance Monitor to see resource usage) before you start adding more textures.

 

When you have both Gameplay and texture mods installed, only then you should start thinking about ENB and/or SweetFX or more advanced skyrim ini tweaks (please do never increase uGridsToLoad values when you are modding...). But as said those cost a lot of performance.... a heavy tweaked SweetFX eats away 10-15% FPS, ENB may eat away up to 60% FPS, you can combine them both to look even better but you may guess the performance hit :P

 

2K is more than enough to get a mega good looking Skyrim experience.

 

Expand spoiler at the bottom for some 2K textures :P These are with both ENB + SweetFX enabled and full out. It took me about 4-5 months to get here. There's no list of mods to pick which are going to be stable together on 100% of the systems (though there are some lists)... so you're going to hit a few walls on your journey. Always read the full mod description and scroll through the comments on the mod page to scan for problems. Don't install outdated/unsupported/troublesome mods unless you know what you are doing (which will be much further down the road). Do not uninstall/reinstall mods on an active save game unless you follow the exact right procedure as on the mod page - but even then - uninstalling mods on an active save is asking for trouble. The best way to uninstall is to return to a save game which does not know that uninstalled mod. You can do this easiest by making a named save before you install a mod using the console command: save "before installing <mod name here>" But of course you will lose game time by doing that. You can also risk it and continue but that might only cause you to eventually waste more time because you have to go further back in your progress when the game eventually breaks.

 

Skyrim Engine limits based on 64bit OS and some info's which might be useful, from my experience or from general knowledge;

• Max memory allowed by application/Windows: 4GB, but;
• Max memory the Skyrim engine can handle: 3.1GB - you will CTD when you reach that limit, even if just for a split second.
• DirectX 9 which is used by Skyrim copies VRAM into RAM (excluding things that are done in the hardware and take up space, like Anti-Aliasing), this is counted towards the limit - so installing texture packs which are too heavy will crash your game, no doubt. First signs are generally a load screen that hangs in an eternal loop (given you followed up on what I said above to start adding textures only when your game is stable with everything else)
• There's no way to guarantee that even 2K textures will be stable on your system... It depends on a lot of things (besides your system resources)... example; You have a mod that replaces various city objects by 2K textures which works fine, now you install a city mod that adds 5000 additional objects into a city (they exist, don't worry :P). You can see the problem here.
• A single 4K texture will take up to ~40MB VRAM (and RAM as a result) when it comes with a normal map (~20MB without). Adding a lot of 4K textures will be very heavy. First start with 2K and when you're satisfied you may start looking how much room you have left in your resources and what you'd like to add (I had room left and made my Pine and Aspen trees 4K for example).
• 4K is not 2x bigger than 2K, it's 4x bigger. (many mod pages say it's "2x bigger" while it's not - 2048x2048 fits 4 times in 4096x4096)
• Skyrim's vanilla textures are 256x256 or 512x512, with the Skyrim Hi-Res DLC they are 1K and your textures alone will already eat away 1GB of VRAM in general gaming like this.
• Optimizing textures may help, but only when it adds mipmaps or compresses them. Resizing is generally a bad idea because of the loss of quality and its lack to control what to resize and what not unless you pick the textures manually to resize (eg. you don't want your dragon textures reduced and end up with a dragon from super Mario counting 5 pixels). You're better off just downloading a lower res replacer unless there is really no option.

 

My system;

Core i5 2500K @ 4.7Ghz

Asus GTX680/4GB @ 1.3Ghz Core (volt tweaked) / 6.8Ghz Mem

8GB @ 1600Mhz

Normal HDD, no SSD.

Win7 64bit

FPS inside: 60

FPS outside: 40-45, sometimes dipping into the mid 30-s

So you get an idea about just how heavy it is to run with all visual candy turned on... of course this is an extreme example.

 

 

 

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/6440158-1373915967.jpg

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/6440158-1368998157.jpg

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/6440158-1373671498.jpg

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/6440158-1373320238.jpg

 

 

[mindw0rk2]

Read everything here:

http://wiki.step-project.com/User:Neovalen/Skyrim_Revisited

 

Follow instructions. Pretty darn good guide. But I agree with prod80, dont rush for high res textures, especially if you going to install many mods

[ArtMurder]

I personally NEVER use anything bigger then 2k unless I know for a fact it's something that will only be displayed once on screen at a time. (for example, masser) 4k textures actually look WORSE then 2k textures a good deal of the time, because they get squished down to fit more. (unless it's something that is displayed giant, like the stars or galaxy)

 

I personally ALWAYS install all lighting and texture mods FIRST, then install all complex mods, the order of this really doesn't matter AT ALL, and only comes down to preference! ^_^ but I always back up my skyrim install before installing any complex mods.

 

I would personally suggest installing a SweetFX first, with the high res DLC, on ultra settings. This alone can be very visually pleasing and still keep you from CTDing or dropping below 55~60 FPS. From here, if you see something that looks bland or low res, look it up and spice it up! in the end, only you can decide what is best for you! ^_^