Overwhelmed ny Nexus Mods, willing to learn - seeks guidance

[Heliadhel]

Hi folks,

 

Supershort background:

Bought and played Skyrim on release. Got to lvl 37 before other games lured me away - but i LOVED what I played. Sad i didnt play more to be honest. I can remember the high res texture pack being released - very exciting. So since then I havent played Skyrim at all.

 

So having played for at least 80 hours or something in Vanilla Skyring I got given Dawnguard for Christmas from a friend and i saw some of the amazing things Skyrim mods can do and Im stupidly exited to mod my game. My PC spec is a quad core Interl 2500k overclocked to 4.2 GHz (super stable) and a Nvidia GTX 670 with 2 Gb vid ram. 8Gb system ram. Im running Dell monitors 1920x1200.

 

Given my playing break I am more than happy to abandon my saves and start from a clean install of Skyrim (although given i have no mods i guess it is clean right?). Certainly willing to play 'from beginning' whatever that may be.

 

 

Questions:

1) Given my spec - will the super whizzy mods grind my PC down into a flickering slideshow or am I going to be OK with some care?

 

2) Ive been following the youtube series by Gopher http://www.youtube.com/user/GophersVids?feature=watch Its slow, but steady and Im self helping about NMM, install directories, whats happening behind scenes etc. Do you have any 'must watch' favorites or resources I should visit for learning the ropes?

 

3) Im utterly overwhelmed by the number of mods available. How do you decide which mods to try? Are there 'must have' mods I would be foolish not to even look at? Im a bit odd in so far as I would like to mod the game then play it rather than play a bit mod a bit play more mod more and lose the impact of mods in slow incremental changes.....but that may be a foolhardy approach. Thoughts?

 

 

Things I know I would like to change but not sure of best approach - advice please

 

Skyrim was too easy. I played a sneaky mage / archer. By mid level i was one shotting everything (or so it felt). I want areas where if I go there I will just die as the bad guys are just too tough. I want to NEED to level to go places - how can I make Skyrim more challenging from a combat and danger perspective?

 

Skyrim characters were great - at first - but more variety - better dialogue would immerse me more. Any mods for this? Combat overhauls or difficulty overhauls or something?

 

Dragons were....not scary. After my first they were actually some of the easier fights. THIS SHOULD NOT BE! Help me be scared of Dragons.

 

Ok - ill admit it. Ive seen the sexy mods. Whilst I dont want Penthouse pets walking around Skyrim Im not adverse to some nice looking gals and a main character whos rear end is appealing to view...any suggestion which dont take things over the top? Ive heard of ENBB or something like that.

 

I want to make the world as beautiful as my rig will allow but I still want 40-60 FPS. So basically I want the moon on a stick. Short of that....I can tinker obviously to balance texture overhauls, lighting overhauls etc with FPS but what are the good quality ones? I dont want to install ten mods that changes textures in just one village when there is an overhaul that does the whole game!

 

 

Thats it. So many questions but I thank you all (whomever you may turn out to be) in advance for any help you may throw in the direction of an overwhelmed noob!

 

Cheers

Matt

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Moraelin]

How do you decide which mods you try? Well, you look for what looks/sounds good to you.

 

Tastes are subjective, and one reason there are so many mods is that for each of them someone had an itch that the existing stuff didn't quite scratch. E.g., a reason why I run around with my own katanas is that I didn't quite like the shape of the existing Akaviri Sword. But tastes are subjective, so other people have other ideas. E.g., even more controversially, do we need a Klingon bat'leth in Skyrim? I thought so, and so did a few other people, but to others it's probably one of the worst crimes against lore. ever. Does Skyrim need skimpy chainmail bikinis? A lot of people think HELL YEAH, but some of us prefer elegant, but fully clothed. It's cold out there.

 

What fits YOUR tastes? What fits the game concept YOU want to play? Well, only YOU can know that.

 

Personally I'd just start with the default sorting order, i.e., with the most endorsed first. A lot of people liked those, so probabilities say it's more likely that you'll like them too. Then work your way down the list until you find what you were looking for, or get bored.

[cloudmage]

first off, you want to download the latest unofficial patches

then BOSS (this will help you with your load order)

 

next is Tes5Edit (in case you come across mods that has unintentional "dirty" edits and for cleaning bethesda's dirty master files)

 

and finally SKSE (Skyrim Script Extender)

 

for graphics and game immersion, I recommend the following:

 

-SkyUI

 

-Immersive Hud (iHUD)

 

-Realistic Lighting Overhaul

 

-Climates Of Tamriel

 

-RealVision ENB (this will have a big FPS drop)

[chanchan05]

For your questions:

 

1. Given your spec, yes you can. Your computer is way more powerful than mine (4 year old laptop, 1st gen i5 460M 2.6Ghz, 6GB RAM and Radeon HD Mobility 5470), and yet I'm running 200mods and is running very stable.

 

2. IMO Gopher is best for beginners since he explains everything.

 

3. You decide on mods based on what you want to change in your game. I for one stick to lore friendlier mods. It's best actually if you spent upwards of 100hrs in the game questing and exploring the vanilla world so you have an idea of what's bad and what you want to retain.

 

THINGS YOU LIKE TO CHANGE

 

1. We play the same build I think: Witch Hunter (Oblivion Class). Basically an archer with destruction, a bit of conjuration and restoration and sneak and illusion with either light armor or alteration.

 

Two choices here. SkyRe and Requiem. Requiem de-levels the world, which means there are areas which are impossible for you to complete at lower levels, but easy on higher levels. Like older RPGs. That's the basic description, but it changes a whole lot more and makes the game harder. SkyRe on the other hand is a perk overhaul at it's core. It gives you a huge tool box and thus makes you specialize a bit. Then it has several add-on modules to make the enemies more powerful and intelligent and so forth. Gopher made a review of it if you would want to watch. Brodual has a review for both Requiem and SkyRe, and he's a very good reviewer too. Personally I went SkyRe for various reasons. Some prefer Requiem though. However both mods increase the difficulty of the game very much. Requiem however feels more rewarding since as you gain experience, the game gets easier, and more punishing because a experience and perks become so important that if you wrongly spent one, it could mean life and death. SkyRe is quite different though, especially if built correctly. It tries to keep certain areas inaccessible by putting a minimum level on the area (essentially a de-level), but these areas also scale with you. For example, an area flagged as level 20 can be impossible for a level 10, but the difficulty of the area for a level 20 and a level 30 is similar because the area levels up to a certain point.

 

Anyway, you should watch videos and read the mod guides for better explanation. Also, these two overhauls are quite extensive, meaning you build your other mods to complement them. However from your comment "need to level up to get to places", Requiem seems more appropriate for you.

 

2. The above two mods I mentioned are combat and enemy AI overhauls. You can add additional NPCs to make the game feel more alive, like Inconsequential NPCs, Immersive NPCs, Populated Towns, etc. There are many choices. Just make sure to check for compatibility. Some of the most recommended being Interesting NPCs and Immersive Patrols.

 

3. Scary Dragons - Deadly Dragons + Dragon Combat Overhaul. Basically, It takes me an 30min-1hr real life for a level 50 character to kill a non-named dragon

 

4. I am not using ENB but I have a fairly good looking game for my computer. A couple of friends can't even believe how I tweaked my game to look that good on a low end hardware. LOL. It's possible. And even when I get a new rig, I'd rather not get an ENB. You'll take an FPS hit from that, and a considerable one (up to a 30FPS hit on higher end ENBs).

 

My starting recommendations would be (MUST HAVES)

 

1. SKSE - needed for mods

2. Unofficial Patches

3. Immersive Hud

4. Enhanced Lights and FX (Not compatible with the above mentioned Realistic Lighting Overhaul, but IMO this is better. See Gopher's review)

5. Climates of Tamriel

6. Tamriel Reloaded - one of the tricks to get a good looking game without performance hit. The textures aren't exactly lore friendly (looks more Central European than Scandinavian environment), it allows you to have parallax without using an ENB

7. ENBoost - basically you get an ENB but do not use the graphics boost, but use the speedpatch hack.

8. Audio Overhaul for Skyrim - makes the game sound better. Gopher's choice too. (Yes I love Gopher. LOL)

9. Frostfall - weather like snow, blizzards, etc has an effect on your character. You can freeze to death if you get caught too long in a blizzard

10. Realistic Needs and Diseases - Eating, sleeping, drinking or not doing so has consequences

11. Convenient Horses - The best horse mod ever. Look at Gopher's and Brodual's reviews.

12. Immersive College of Winterhold

13. Outlaw666's Sniper Bows - there's no combined pack yet, but he says he's working on it. Excellent for archers who want to play with no crosshairs like I do.

14. Harvest Overhaul

15. Grass on Steroids

16. Immersive Patrols

17. Acquisitive Soulgems - no more grand gems wasted on petty souls

18. Immersive Soulgems

19. Locational Damage - headshots finally mean something!

20. Realistic Room Rental (Perseid's Inns and Taverns)

21. When Vampires Attack and Run for Your Lives - Makes town people hide indoors when dragons or vampires attack cities and villages

22. SkyTEST - Realistic Animals and Predators

23. Subliminal Traps

 

For performance enhancement but still have the game looking good:

1. Enhanced Distant Terrain

2. Enhanced Distant Terrain 2

3. Skyrim performance plus

4. Skyrim project optimization

5. ENBoost or Hialgoboost or be like me and run them both LOL.

[Jeir]

1. Your computer's a lot better than mine, but you should know that every computer is different; I can play with really resource-demanding mods like SMIM, Project ENB etc. and have a stable game, while someone else with identical specs to mine would struggle to use the same mods. I don't know why. XD Even on the same computer things happen differently - before, using the same mods I do now (in fact, I have even more resource demanding mods now), my game stuttered and was very unstable. So, test things out and work out exactly what your computer can handle.

 

2. Not a fan of videos as I can read a lot faster than it would take to watch a video, so prefer written tutorials or simply working things out myself or reading the forums. Helps that I've been using mods for over a decade, across more than a dozen games, I suppose. Gopher's vids are apparently good for newbies, so stick with them.

 

3. There are numerous questions/sections here, will will split them into a/b/c etc.

A) I decide what mods I want by first working out what I want to change/add/whatever, and then by browsing mods (usually by most endorsements or hotfiles etc.) and seeing what interests me. Sometimes through random browsing I find mods that do things I never thought about before.

B) Necessary mods:

- Unofficial Skyrim Patch.

- Unofficial Dawnguard Patch.

- Unofficial Hearthfires Patch.

- Unofficial Dragonborn Patch.

- SkyUI.

- When Vampires Attack.

- Run For Your Lives.

- Even Better Quest Objectives.

- Guard Dialogue Overhaul.

- Paarthurnax Dilemma.

 

Necessary utilities:

- BOSS.

- Wrye Bash.

- SKSE.

- TES5Edit.

- ShowRaceMenu PreCache Killer.

 

C) SkyRe or Requiem could be what you're after for combat/difficulty.

D) Can't think of any mods that improve vanilla NPC dialogue. You could try Interesting NPCs, which adds new unique characters to the world. Never tried it, though.

E) Dragon Combat Overhaul is my mod of choice for dragons. You could try this one for the extra terror added. ;)

F) Character mods:

Female: CBBE Slim or Slim-based BodySlide body. Default textures, or default with SG Female face textures.

Male: Better Males, Sundracon meshes. Subtle Male Skeleton. Smooth Males. Fine Male Face Textures.

Both: Natural Eyes. Apachii SkyHair. SLF Hairs. Ethereal Elven Overhaul. Enhanced Character Edit. CoverKhajiits.

Kids: XVision Children.

G) Mesh/texture replacers/'Skyrim Prettification' Mods:

Flora Overhaul. WATER. Skyrim 2K. SMIM. Tamriel Reloaded. Trees for Solitude. Trees for Whiterun. Book Covers. Improved Clothing. Book of Silence. HAR. HSR. Enhanced Night. Jewels of the Nord.

H) Not asked for, but posting anyway as they're all good:

Sound overhauls: Sounds of Skyrim: Wilds, Dungeons, Civilisation.

Lighting overhauls: Climates of Tamriel. Project ENB.

Performance helpers: Project Optimisation. Grass on Steroids

Quest mods: Falskaar, Wyrmstooth, Helgen Reborn, Much Ado About Snow Elves, Golden Egg Treasure Hunt.

House mods/locations: Nchuzzrezar. Skyrim Sewers.

Immersion helpers/misc mods: Convenient Horses. Amazing Follower Tweaks. Harvest Overhaul. Moonlight Tales. Auto Unequip Ammo. Shooting Stars. Rainbows. Unlimited Bookshelves.

[Heliadhel]

Folks,

 

My heartfelt thanks for the replies. Ive now started some focused reading. Some of the responses were at the level of detail I was really hoping for and i thank you for taking the time to do so. Im certain topics like this happen on a regular basis and I cannot tell you how helpful those combined replies will be to me in determining what i "MUST DO" from "NEED" and "NICE TO HAVE"

 

Im encouraged folks are running 200+ mods on Laptops. Im running BattleField 4 in pretty much highest res and getting very smooth gameplay so perhaps my PC wont collapse under the strain of mods. But your replies did generate a few more questions:

 

1) What is Wyre Bash? Going to the Nexux page it does not really tell you what its actually for? Is this a mod? They seem to need help writing it and that worries me a bit. Do I need to use this? and if so under what circumstances?

 

2) What is an ENB? Someone mentioned they have a huge FPS hit - is this a concern for my rig or does it nail everyones PC into a slideshow? I note some people seem to avoid ENB's and just achieve the same goal other ways. If so - why do people use ENB's?

 

3) No-one answered my question about a clean Skyrim install. Should I bother or just start modding my current skyrim install and do a new start?

 

Many thanks

 

Matt

 

 

[simtam]

ad 3). Latest Skyrim patch version number is 1.9, I think, and this is something Steam will download automatically, unless you switched off auto-updates. But also notice, that there were three DLCs released (Hearthfire = HF, Dawnguard = DG, Dragonborn = DB). Some mods require (some of) these, which exactly you'll find in mod descriptions. So to avoid hassle it might be good to grab the Legendary edition, which is like "game of the year" edition, that is, all-inclusive. And you might want to do a backup of your copy of game, just in case, it's more convenient than re-downloading the game from Steam servers, so you'll have better ground if it comes to troubleshooting.

 

ad 2). A graphic filter. Actually, a family of graphic filters. Gets you effects you might have seen in other games. Examples: make the colors warmer - small FPS decrease, blur distant areas with camera auto-focus - moderate FPS decrease.

 

ad 1) Wrye Bash is a tool, not a mod. Even if you are only going to apply mods with other mod manager, like NMM, you still might want Wrye for its unique abilities, e.g. creating "bashed patch" mod.

Edited December 31, 2013 by simtam

[chanchan05]

1.) WyreBash is a tool most often used for making bashed patches. This lets you run more plugins.

 

2.) ENB essentially makes the game look ridiculously better to the point of realism. You can check out Gooher's playlist on ENB reviews. It's only a concern if you want to consistently have 60fps framerate. If you're ok in the 40s,it shouldn't be a problem. Plus consoles like the Xbox maxes at 30fps. If going down to that is ok for you in exchange on a really good looking game, go for it.

 

3.) Starting from scratch is very dependent upon the mod. For example, overhauls like SkyRe is best started from a new game. Others require it like Civil War Overhaul, while others only have an effect on new characters, like Live Another Life and Character Creation Overhaul. Some mods that simply add content like armor and weapon mods, or quest mods like Wyrmstooth and Moonpath to Elsweyr are ok to install mid game.

[aozgolo]

I pretty much started modding by basically throwing tons of mods through NMM into my game and hoping for the best... it was after much frustration and annoyance later trying to keep my game from crashing constantly that I finally sat down and learned the value of these utilities in making your game run smooth. I'll try to elaborate on what other's said and explain what each utility does:

 

NMM: Nexus Mod Manager is the best way to install mods I've found, because it makes clean-up very easy. It keeps track of the precise directories and items of each mod and allows you to easily install or remove the mods without worrying about leaving something behind (I had this happen a lot in Oblivion where left over LOD files made half-floating castle walls in the distance from mods that were no longer there)

 

BOSS: this program uses a masterlist compiled from tons of users to determine the most logical load order for mods, this takes the guess work out of figuring out if you need to load x mod before y mod before z mod, it does it automatically. BOSS will also give you warning messages if you are running a mod with dirty edits, running a mod that has a compatibility patch available or is otherwise out of date, and suggesting bashtags to use. (I'll go over this in a second.)

 

Dirty Edits are basically when a mod makes a change to a game value then resets it to the original value instead of undoing it... it may seem silly but these minor dirty edits can cause other mods, specifically ones that change certain game values from functioning properly. So we clean the mod by using TESVEdit. Before you do this though you should read a guide or watch a video on how to clean mods, and more importantly read the mod description thoroughly because in some cases the mod makes dirty edits INTENTIONALLY and thus shouldn't be cleaned.

 

Wrye Bash: this utility will let you combine levelled lists as well as minor mods together. Levelled lists are usually spawn tables for random enemies/wildlife & loot tables attached to containers, NPCs (including all enemies), and shopkeepers that determines what they have based off the player's level. If multiple mods affect the same levelled list, then only the mod loaded in the order LAST will impact it, so let's say you have 2 mods that add armor sets to the same shopkeeper, only one will work, unless you make a "Bashed Patch". Basically you just use Wrye Bash to scan all your mods, and it will combine levelled lists together into a new ESP called a "Bashed Patch" which will allow everything to work together.

 

These program utilities all have other more advanced features, but the features I mentioned will be the main ones you should have to worry about.

 

It can be very frustrating to try and figure all this out, but once you get the hang of it, you spend less than 5 minutes from the time you install your mod to ready to play because you know what to do and you won't have the most common issues associated with running large numbers of mods like CTDs.

[Moraelin]

Well, I have my doubts that some of the overused features in ENB presets have ANYTHING to do with realism.

 

E.g., lens flares are physically impossible without a camera with more than one lens. When I play in 1st person and imagine I'm seeing through my character's eyes, not only a healthy eye shouldn't see lens flares, but there's no kind of eye damage that would cause one to see lens flares either. It's physically impossible without an eye that actually has at least two lenses behind each other.

 

I.e., if anyone actually thinks that that's making the game realistic -- i.e., that's how they'd actually see the world there -- please do contact the UN and the press, because you're an alien, and it would be nice to end the controversy about the existence of you folks. There are people ridiculed and ostracized for saying they saw one of your kind, you know? ;)

 

E.g., depth of field or using heavy fog to achieve the same effect. The healthy human eye in its relaxed state focuses at infinity. I mean look at the moon. That's 200,000 miles away, and if you don't have myopia, you can see it clearly. It's greater than any distance in any Elder Scrolls game ever. Even Arena, which could boast a surface of 80,000,000 square km, didn't actually have a distance comparable to the moon. Even the diagonal of the map wasn't that long.

 

So, yeah, if there is ANY distance beyond which you can't see clearly, you have myopia by definition. ENB presets which try hard to simulate that are only making it "realistic" if your goal is to realistically see the game like someone with eye problems.

 

If you ever wanted to see the world like someone who in more modern times would need -2 dioptries glasses, but unfortunately could get none in those medieval times, yeah, most ENB presets totally give you a realistic simulation of that :p