Should I uninstall the HD DLC?

[MoreSly]

Two pronged question: Should I uninstall the HD DLC mid-playthrough? Should I remove the HD DLC for future playthroughs?

 

I'm always seeing modders bemoan the HD DLC, but I never see much explanation. From what I gather, it makes load times slower and adds 50GB (not a problem for me) for little to no gain. Is there another reason? Or is it just about tolerating load times? I imagine there's no scripting involved, so though the official answer is never remove anything from your load order mid-playthrough, would it be worth trying?

I haven't done a lot of texture mods in the past, but will in my next playthrough, so I imagine I'll disable the plugin there, but I figured I'd tack that question on here too.

[Guest deleted34304850]

you can get much much much better textures on nexusmods that are better optimized and look spectacular.

or you can install the hd dlc - it will work. it will slow your game to a crawl but it will work.

[StormWolf01]

So, first. The HD DLC is utter trash. Ask yourself, why is it the ONLY DLC that is FREE?

They'd probly get sued, if they charged for it.

 

Honestly, the only thing that it does is replace vanilla graphics. It doesn't add new ones, it doesn't add new worldspaces, change workbench functions, or anything that might be loaded up into your savegame. So yeah, it's safe to uninstall it mid-save.

 

However. With texture mods. Just uninstalling the .esp for the mod most likely will not remove the effects of the the mod. You will also have to go into your data folder, or your mod installer's data folder, and manually delete the textures (usually a .ba2 file tho they could be loose textures) that was installed along with the mod.

 

Along the lines of the advice that 1ae was giving. Not necessarily just for you, MoreSly, but also for others reading the post. There are also "Upgraded" texture packs here on the nexus, that aren't upgraded into HD, but are much better Optimized for pc gaming use, than the vanilla textures are. So if you want to go HD, there's options here, most definitely.

Or for those who are just looking for better performance, the modding community has offered those up, as well.

[MoreSly]

Thanks for the feedback folks!

 

I'm gathering that uninstalling the HD pack probably won't hurt my save, so I'll try to do that slowly. I'll see if I can replace the esp with a dummy file in my load order and reinstall without the texture pack.

[edgeburner]

Yeah, texture files aren't baked into your saved games. Just browse the "Models and Textures" tab. also, try and stick to textures that are developed in the "BA2" format. They'll load faster and you can adjust them in your load order so your favorites load where you want them to. Stay away from "loose" formatted textures, they'll overwrite everything that is not packed as "loose". Unless, or course, you want them to take priority . Again, texture files aren't baked into your saves. Play around with them (in your load order if you are running BA 2's ) and decide which order you like best. Oh, Be careful of mods that break "precombines".

[LarannKiar]

If you don't see any visual difference, you can uninstall it. :smile:

 

If you see the difference, you shouldn't uninstall it.

 

As others said, it's safe to uninstall. The other DLCs are not..

Edited August 3, 2022 by LarannKiar

[fraquar]

TBH, this is literally covered in step 1 of any respectable modding guide - do NOT install the HD DLC.

 

To be frank, the only people who should have downloaded and installed the HD DLC are people that played the game 6 years ago - who didn't know better until they knew. Guilty as charged, but fortunately people with modding talents far better than anything I'll ever aspire to sussed that out pretty quick. HD DLC is a train wreck.....

Edited August 7, 2022 by fraquar

[Eman17j]

It wont hurt your save but you will get the black face bug. The HD dlc increased the facial texture resolution so the faces in the game where generated from that resolution and if you reduce the resolution of that texture by using the vanilla textures that will cause the black face bug. You could get a mod with the same resolution as the HD dlc textures and that would fix the black face bug or start a new game.

 

For future play through I wouldn't use the HD dlc because it decreases your FPS for not much gain in quality at least it did for me which is why I stopped using it when it first came out.