Trying to determine best "increased encounters" mods

[miketheratguy]

I've tried Immersive Patrols and I do see the occasional Cloak v Imperial battle, which is great, but not noticing too many encounters. Thank you for the advice though, I might delete my copy and download a fresh install just to see if somehow it makes a difference.

 

I'm looking into Sands of Time now. It seems to provide much more than I want but I'm curious about the customization possibilities.

 

I really wish I knew what happened with Occupy Skyrim, I keep wanting to think that this was the mod that worked for me before. That and More NPCs in the wild, I think (though the latter caused save game bloat from script errors).

[mindw0rk2]

If you want non agressive NPCs walking on roads and stay at taverns, there are alot of mods like this.

Travellers of Skyrim, Interesting NPCs (on of the best Skyrim mods).

Also I recommend checking out ERSO: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/26217//?

It has many modules and some of them add bandits, warewolves, travelling merchants spawns.

[StayFrosty05]

That's exactly why I'm becoming so frustrated with SkyUI. For months I didn't want to download that mod because literally ANY time I looked at the comment section, it was riddled with bug reports. Then finally one day I figured "what the hell, thousands of endorsements must mean something" and tried the mod anyway. I have to admit that I'm surprised at my reaction, but I just plain didn't like it. Maybe the biggest reason for this is the fact that my game is on a laptop connected to a fairly large HD screen, and the font is simply really hard to read.

 

Sands of Time doesn't look to require SkyUI, are these features not available without it? They sound like exactly what I need.

You do need SkyUI for SoT....I held of from SkyUI myself for quite some time before I relented, I very much understand your hesitation, it's very annoying that so many Mods now rely on SkyUI. SoT's Mod Author did hold off from reverting to the SkyUI for some time himself, not wanting to force people to use another Mod to access his, but he eventually had to bow to SoT User pressure, was a landslide....There is a Mod available that gets rid of SkyUI's Inventory Menu and reverts it back to the vanilla style, I don't know the name of it though, I am sorry.

[StayFrosty05]

Sands of Times is abit buggy, but its nice and has customization through spell (or staff).

Also try OBIS with Bandit Raids optional file, Immersive Patrols and High Level Enemies.

Not anymore, runs very smoothly now....I can run my game shamefully.... :blush: ....for up to 8 - 10 hours in one sitting without a single crash, freeze, stutter, etc...with SoT running. There is a catch though, too many heavily scripted Mods running together will crash a game eventually, as do too many Mod introduced Spawns....and so am careful about what I use running beside SoT, keeping other Script Mods and Spawn Mods down to a dull roar, I run Immersive Patrols and Deadly Dragons beside SoT without issue, but probably wouldn't add anymore extra Spawn Mods than those, I am pretty sure I would be asking for trouble then.

[miketheratguy]

I appreciate the advice about non-hostile NPCs. I do in fact use mods that add them. I love the immersion of seeing commoners roaming the landscape.

 

Frosty, thanks a lot for your insight on SkyUI and Sands of Time. You seem to know exactly where I'm coming from. More than just the change itself, I don't like having to use several mods just to accomplish one thing, so it's the principle and practicality that I liked the least. But I did finally decided to buckle down and try both.

 

I have absolutely no idea why SoT is half a gig in size but for the most part it does seem to work alright. In my hour of playtime I didn't get as many encounters as I would have liked, and many of them were animals and so forth, but it's one of the only mods I've tried recently that seems to add encounters properly, at least for me. It did however crash twice in that hour. I'm running Extensible Follower Framework, a script heavy mod, but I'm not yet sure if that has anything to do with it. Still experimenting.

[StayFrosty05]

Mike....did you find the Mod that changes the SkyUI Inventory Menu back to vanilla by any chance? I will be responding to the rest of your comment here on SoT's thread, I have some ideas about your CTD's....I do run a tightly monitored game myself (Logs always running and the Lions share of my Mods very light weight) because to be honest I barely know what I am doing, am very PC illiterate and so I try to follow the KISS rule....Keep It Simple Stupid... :tongue: ...it keeps me afloat and generally running.... :happy: ...until I fall to temptation and try out new heavy script Mods and watch my game gush down the toilet.... :blink: ...it's all a balancing act, but when I get it right the game runs like a dream.

[miketheratguy]

I did, thank you. It's called SkyUI-Away. I'm right in the middle of deciding whether I want SkyUI to grow on me (it's not quite as bad with the large text, though still a bit hard for me to read) or whether I want to be running yet another mod just to restore my menus to default.

 

Wow, restoring Skyrim to its default menu appearance...who would have thought that anyone would even consider such a thing?

 

Anyway thanks, I'll check out the conversation on SoT. I'm still trying to find working alternatives for adding encounters to my game though. In fact I'm becoming a little concerned about it because it seems that several of the ones I've tried over the last day or so aren't really doing much (and some, like Nightmare, are literally doing nothing at all). I'm wondering if somehow I have a conflict in my game that's interfering with encounter mods working the way they should.

[StayFrosty05]

Mike...check the SkyUI Menu in it's MCM Menu screen in game...I am too flat out with other things happening at the moment to go in game, but if I remember correctly SkyUI's Inventory 'Font' size may be customizable in game....my apologies, I had forgotten about that, sorry... :unsure: ...Yep, a lot of people feel the SkyUI Inventory system is a whole lot better than the vanilla and they can be rather vocal about it.... :tongue: ...but we all have our personal preferences.

 

It is very odd that you are having difficulties with all the Encounter Mods....I just thought of a question....these Encounter Mods you have been trying out, are you starting new games to do so or trying them out all in the same game?....Scripted Mods bake in scripts due to how Bethesda designed Skyrim (poor design)....Baked in Scripts do very nasty things to a game as the game continues to look for the Mod content that's no longer there, causes all kinds of nastiness.

[miketheratguy]

I did set the SkyUI font to be as large as it's letting me make it, but it's still a bit small on my monitor. It's not TOO bad, I'm kind of getting used to it, just still not totally committed to it.

 

You ask a good question but no, I'm not trying the mods on the same save. By that I mean I'm not trying each of these mods on a completely new game (given the Helgen intro that would take forever) BUT I'm also not trying a mod, saving it, then deleting it and trying another on that save. Basically I have a "test" save that I made for the game- it's a save I made with no mods active and saved right after the Helgen tutorial. I always use it to test a new mod I'm not sure about- I'll putz around with that character for a while and see how the mod holds up, but I won't save.

 

In fact earlier today while waiting for comments in Sands of Time I tried another mod, DFB Random Encounters. It was one of the few mods that kind of worked the other day- by that I mean it was sort of iffy as far as altering and executing a bat file which DID increase spawns but not really by much, at least not during my tests. But then I saw that there was an update that utilizes MCM. I figured that since I have it now, I might as well try that update. Not only was the menu very elegant and easier to figure out, I seem to be getting results- I'm able to tweak my encounters specifically to the enemy type that I like, and through some fiddling I seem to be able to increase the numbers to what I like too. So far I'm encountering what I want in the numbers that I want, and no crashes yet (fingers crossed).

 

I'm now trying to see if there's a simple "more spawn points" mod that I can use in concert with it to see how that would work. If a mod JUST increases the amount of places where enemies can spawn (without affecting what enemies spawn there or how many, since the current mod already takes care of that) then I may actually have everything that I was looking for.

 

All the same, I'm now very intrigued by SoT's extra options such as dungeon encounters and so forth.

Edited August 6, 2013 by miketheratguy

[StayFrosty05]

I am very glad you were already onto that issue about Script mods.... :happy: ...would be a pretty brutal bit of news if it was for a loved current game and you had to trash it.... :ohdear:

 

Many people wouldn't agree with me, but I do still think a game needs a good clean up once in a while, I will never be entirely convinced that a simple change in game clears scripts....Had a bit of confirmation on that suspicion of mine also, I used a Script Mod that effects Dragon behavior, found it way to buggy and got rid of it and started a new game, I noted Alduin was behaving a lot more aggressively in Helgen though despite the fact that I had deleted all the saves from the previous game and had gone back to my own clean save Helgen start (bound prisoner)...my game couldn't get cleaner or so I thought, but Alduin's behavior was a dead give away that this Mod was still in effect....I tested it a few more times with the same results. I ended up discovering if I start a new game or use a 'clean save' to start a new game the best way to clear any rogue scripts is to....Start a new Game beginning with the Cart Ride through to hands being unbound...end the Game there and leave that game in my Save File and start a new game from scratch again....Long, slow and tedious I know... :wallbash: ...but it certainly does appear to clear everything out for me and gives me a clear trouble free run. Once in a while...rarely....I also clear my PC of all Modded Skyrim altogether if the game is not behaving completely up to par, but I have good reason to believe it has saved me a lot of heart ache in the past....Had a series of games that no matter what I did all the Chickens in every game were all dead and a number of other issues...turned out it had been the Skytest Animal Mod, I had deleted it, but no matter what I did the same issues kept repeating...ended up having to completely remove Skyrim from my PC altogether...EVERY single trace of it....and re-install to remove the problem....Scripts can be an enormous headache... :wallbash:

 

I am glad DFB is working out for you.... :happy: ....as you keep searching around for more spawn points, etc...just keep treading carefully and you should be fine.... :happy: ...If you choose to try SoT again in conjunction with DFB, it will be a balancing act but should be do-able....I would advise disabling SoT's exterior random encounters to do so though. What ever you choose I will be hoping all the best for your game... :happy:

Edited August 6, 2013 by StayFrosty05