New to this

[RedStarr75]

Hello, so Ive played through the vanilla Skyrim a few times and thought I would try something new with moding. Ive started with Xbox PC creation club but Im finding alot of mods I want to try are missing or only available on console. Ive never tried Nexus and looked at some videos online it looks like you really need to know what your doing ? as in there is an order to what you load and you need to pick difference options to get them to work together ? 

So, how new user friendly is nexus modding and how time consuming will learning likely to be please? 

[radiusrsatti]

it all depends on your intent... if you only want to use a few different mods at a time, there's not much that needs to be done beyond getting a mod manager for ease of use... there are a few mods that would be recommended and really should be a part of everyone's order, such as Racemenu, Alternate Start, USSEP, and a few other overhaul mods that correct many of the bugs in base skyrim, getting SKSE so you can also get Engine Fixes SE and other such SKSE goodness... ENB would be a recommendation also, to prettify everything a bit, and also does performance enhancement... keep in mind, the more you add, the more potential there is for conflicts and performance degradation and/or random CTDs (if you leave everything as base and do nothing to maximize the potential, minimize the drawbacks)

with a small load order, mod conflicts should be minimal UNLESS you get 2 mods that do the same things, for instance, using Serana Dialogue Add-On and Serana Dialogue Expansion at the same time... some mods just don't work with others due to record/scripting conflicts

Pick a mod manager, there are several to choose from... Mod Manager 2 is my recommendation, but others prefer Vortex... Nexus Mod Manager is a distant third imo, never liked it

all in all, time consumption will vary based on how detailed you wish to be... at the far end of the spectrum, I've been tinkering since 2017, but I was an idiot then and learned much of nothing... I started putting together my modlist about 2 years ago, went through several rounds of conflict resolution and test plays, then started over about a year ago... massive undertaking this round, but almost done and ready to play... I have 3k mods, 3TB storage, btw, massive undertaking... but that's me

Edited July 19 by radiusrsatti

[scorrp10]

Nexus mod manager (NMM) is no longer really an option.    The 'official' mod manager for Nexus is Vortex, which is what I prefer.   There is a number of guides on setting things up.  But generally it is SKSE first, and then whatever else you need.

[RedStarr75]

Thanks for the replies. I'm not looking at lots of mods, just to get the game looking good and improving the UI, inventory and combat. Something to manage followers and reduce the grind of leveling some of the skills. And something I've not tried yet some of the mods that improve the main towns/cities. I'm running about 12 mods atm from the creation club. 

So, next question please before I give this a go. Am  I best to download Skyrim via steam? Does using a nexus mods manager with steam complicate things? 

I ended up using Xbox PC pass as I was looking for new games to play and saw Skyrim and remembered how much I loved it. Seems to be a bit limited though. 

[Karna5]

I use Nexus Mod Manager Community Edition and love it. It handles 600+ mods at a time per game without issue. I also find it incredibly easy to use and blind friendly as there is little to no need to read menus.

As for RedStarr75's question, I feel your confusion. I stopped playing Skyrim SE in 2018 until a couple of months ago. My main game the last several years has been Fallout 4 (at times around 1000 mods and half a terabyte with NMM without issue), but there are still several mods I consider essential for Fallout 4 which are still not ported to the new patch.

So I decided to return to Skyrim SE (technically Skyrim AE) and realized there are so many branches of mods I couldn't begin to guess what to install. There are:

• skeletons,
• body variations,
• skin types,
• high polygon mods which seemed to be offsite,
• sexlab and ostim standalone as competing animation frameworks,
• FNIS and Nemesis and who knows what else as competing methods to integrate animations,
• the confusing difference between Skyrim SE and Skyrim AE,
• SMP and this and that and so many acronyms that were confusing me and kept burning me because I kept installing the wrong variations (for instance, there's one SMP which you use for Skyrim SE and another for Skyrim AE, and I couldn't find any of that information until after I struggled for weeks and finally spotted a comment on Loverslab mentioning not to use the version I had installed with Skyrim AE which I have)
• Endless list of confusions and back tracks and pitfalls

I did my best to install the game on my own a few months ago, and while it was marginally playable, I was lost and couldn't do what I wanted.

Finally I made a post in the Nexus Mods Supporter Imageshare asking for help, and over the next couple of weeks I got detailed and highly supportive advice, links and suggestions from the incredibly kind community here.

In summary, RedStarr75, asking for help modifying Skyrim SE or Skyrim AE is too big a question and simply too vague.

I suggest you make a list of what exactly you think you would like to do in your game or exactly how you want it to change, and make sure you specify whether you're using Skyrim SE or Skyrim AE, and then try to make as simple as possible a list of very specific questions.

This probably has the best chance of finding help. It's what I did, and it helped me a lot.

 

 

 

[RedStarr75]

Ok so I will be playing Skyrim AE and will be trying to keep things fairly simple. 

My next modded play through I would like to start as a vampire as I've not tried this yet. My family got infected and hunted down by the dawnguard. Only I survived and filled with anger I want to destroy them. 

So these are the things I'd like to mod,

Combat 

Armour and weapons 

Body visuals 

UI

Inventory 

Vampire overhaul 

Graphics and items 

Weather 

Water 

Towns and villages 

Npc AI 

Followers 

Player house 

And, maybe not popular to some cheat room. 

 

I have made a list on the tracked function I just now need to work out if they will work together and what else they all need. 

 

My play through on Xbox pc is playable but I'm just so frustrated that some mods are not available and I could make things better. 

Edited July 21 by RedStarr75

[Karna5]

Hi, RedStarr. Most of those things on your list I don't mod in my game so can't make suggestions. I do play as a vampire, but I don't use vampire overhauls because I use the CBBE 3BA body (with 4k BnP skin texture on female character). I also use Race Menu with XP32 Skeleton, though that's a given as it's a requirement for 3BA and Racemenu.

I do have adult mods installed which means the Ostim Standalone suite of mods I use have many additional methods to drink blood, but as you're not likely to take that route it's not relevant to you.

I do use "Devour - Vampire Feeding Animation for Ostim," though as it's adult as I said it's not relevant to you.

I also use Vampire Feed Proxy, but it's linked to the animations.

Several years ago I used Better Vampire Lord Transition, but I don't use that now as it does not support 3BA bodies.

I do also use SKSE and RaceMenu and a few mods related to SKSE.

As I use 3BA and its requirements, and as I have Skyrim AE (not SE), the SMP version I use is:

FSMP - Faster HDT-SMP at Skyrim Special Edition Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)

Don't use the other version of SMP as it makes SMP not work at all on an AE installation.

FYI, I tried True Storms, and while I love that mod in Fallout 4, I hated it in Skyrim SE. The rain is incredibly fake and opaque in Skyrim.

I like Darker Nights a lot, however (maximum dark setting).

I also installed Darker Dungeons, but I can't really tell whether it actually makes my dungeons darker. I keep it anyway as there are a few dark spots (not many).

I plan to eventually do terrain and plant overhauls, but I'm not there yet as the last couple of months I've been  tweaking animations and the like basic physis.

I use Nemesis rather than FNIS for animation integration.

And I use Dynamic Random Female Non-Combat Animations as a cool weapon out idle out of combat.

I use KS Hairdos (both the normal version and the SMP version), and I like those. Together they add around 1000+ hair styles.

I also use Acheron death alternative together with ODefeat (requires Ostim, not Sexlab), and I like it as it lets me play at much higher difficulty and allows sublethal combat loss rather than having to save and start over. For instance, if you lose a fight and are not using adult animations, you'll spawn somewhere safe rather than actually die.

I tried the Prison Alternatives for a while, and they were cool, but they mostly need Sexlabs which I switched away from when I went to Ostim, so Prison Alternatives are pretty fun. Even without it, I like getting captured by guards, sent to prison and having to escape and get my gear back (doesn't require special mods, though Acheron can help make sure the guards don't kill you but just send you to jail).

Oh yeah, there are also various Photo Mode mods that people use. The one that seemed the easiest to install and use for me is the one actually called Photo Mode, but many I know here at nexus use other variations instead.

Whatever you install, though, make sure to read and reread and triple read all the requirements for each mod. There are a lot of dependencies to get a good and stable build.

Finally, don't install more than one or two mods at a time. I mean it. Don't do more. Whenever I install a bunch, even a dozen, I always end up having to uninstall all of them and reinstalling one at a time to figure out which is crashing me or incompatible.

Install one or two, and then go in game and test it thoroughly before installing more. And have fun!

 

[Karna5]

Post Script: If you play female character, and if you take CBBE 3BA body with FSMP and CBPC (collision), there's a very confusing installation process asking what type of physics you want. I couldn't find any descriptions of them so did several variations myself to test them out. What I found is that if you select SMP as the physics, you get very little motion, and if you pick CBPC as the physics, you get a lot of motion. I didn't care for the SMP version (I like SMP for collision and the like but not for physics), so I took the all CBPC installation option.

I have films that show it, but they're on Nexus Supporter section, and I'm pretty sure I'd get in trouble if I link them here even though they have no nudity. Sorry I can't give examples here, but I just wanted to explain what I found are the differences when you install 3BA (if you install it).

P.S. Also with regard to SMP, while I dislike it for breast physics, I love it for skirt physics, earrings, hair and other cool things.