For how many hours have you played Skyrim? With how many mods?

[gabrielrock19]

Hey! Here I am again. I'd like to hear something from fellow players of the community. For how many hours have you played skyrim special edition with a single character? How many mods are you currently running? And is your game stable?

I'm eager to know the answers. Please start posting below.

[greyday01]

About 560 mods, a lot of those are simple texture replacers though. For hours, countless. I bought the game when first released.

[scorrp10]

Lets see....   350 hours of original Skyrim, 1575 hours of SSE, 75 hours of Skyrim VR.   Though a lot of that time spent not actually playing but working on, tinkering with and testing mods.    About 350 mods in current install, but the number varied.

[gabrielrock19]

20 minutes ago, scorrp10 said:

Lets see....   350 hours of original Skyrim, 1575 hours of SSE, 75 hours of Skyrim VR.   Though a lot of that time spent not actually playing but working on, tinkering with and testing mods.    About 350 mods in current install, but the number varied.

How long is the play time of your current install?

[melvinius]

Okay, let's see.  I've been playing my current character, Jonas Melvinius, for a couple years and he's at 357 hours right now.  Steam says 395 hours for Oldrim, but that's probably not correct as I generally just bypass Steam once I start modding a game.  Steam says 541 hours for Skyrim SE, 41 hours for Skyrim VR.  And I started playing Skyrim on the XBox 360... no clue how many hours on that platform but a lot.

I estimate that I have 4,000 mods... very stable build.  I can generally play a full session of 4 hours without a crash.

• 255 actual plugin mods.
• 271 light plugin mods.
• 139 SKSE mods... just in my main Data folder, not counting the couple dozen MO2 folders that are specifically categorized.
• Innumerable pluginless mesh, texture, shader, animation, and other replacer mods.  Pretty much everything is retextured in my build.
• Fully functional Mantella/xVASynth setup.
• Fully functional Dragonborn Speaks Naturally setup, configured to interface with Mantella for hands free conversations with NPCs.
• My Skyrim SE build takes up 300 Gb including xVASynth voices.
• FNIS, DAR/OAR.  Yeah, I know, a bit dated but it all works well with all the fixes and patches out there.
• Both HDT and CBP physics working.  Cloaks, hair, clothes, etc.  Can't remember if I have physics for signs set up in this build or not.  I'll have to check.
• This was specifically a content/gameplay oriented build.  Legacy of the Dragonborn, Wyrmstooth, Falskaar, Darkend, Summerset, Bruma, Reach, Second Great War, Chanterelle, VIGILANT, UNSLAAD, GLENMORIL, Sea of Ghosts, The Forgotten City, Gray Cowl of Nocturnal, Moonpath, 3DNPC, Anna's NPCs, Midwood Isle, Isles of Teia...  I've got so many mods installed that when I run across stuff in the world I often have no clue what mod it's even from.

My advice if you want to mod your Bethsoft games?

• Use Mod Organizer 2, portable install.  One separate install per game.  Nexus' offering of mod managers is garbage, always has been, always will be.
• Put together your build, and test it thoroughly before committing to a playthrough.  Make sure your core mods work solidly.  Then only ADD mods, don't remove them if they're saved into your save file.
• You can actually remove some mods mid-playthrough but only if you use tricks, like substituting and swapping plugin file names.
• Preserve your load order as much as possible.  Move too much stuff around and you'll break things.
• Try to keep maybe 40 save files in your Saves folder at a time.  Either back them up elsewhere or delete old ones as you go. Having a ton of saves slows the game startup.
• Understand that the Skyrim engine reads data from the save files on game load, if their mod dependencies are vastly different than your actually installed mods, that can potentially crash your game before the main menu.
• There are certain script heavy mods that are just problematic.  Wet and Cold and Wearable Lanterns have contributed so much instability to my Skyrim builds over the last decade or so.  There are other mods that do all the same things these ones do, so I haven't used them in years... and it's been several years since I've lost a character to corrupt save game issues and late game persistent crashing.  It just doesn't happen to me because I'm careful about what I install.

[melvinius]

Also:

• I don't ever use save cleaners or anything that tampers with save files.
• I've never - since Morrowind - used Wrye Bash/Mash.  Anyone who tells you it's essential is just wrong.  Admittedly I don't use a lot of mods that change leveled lists with straight edits.

[weiht68]

I  don't remember before AE but at all are 5974h and -important- 2 minutes. With my maincharakter around 3000h as mage,warrior, monk and necromancer. Loot says 250 plugins and 975 light. The game is stable with some fps fall when i use Sands of Time mod Spartan preset and 3 waves with 35 npc under the apocalypse setting. I use Pandora after i was going over to Nemesis and FNIS based mods without any problem (except longer loading time with 44000+ anim). I was trying my best to come to an limit with the game but not reached now.

[MarvMartian]

On 11/23/2024 at 4:55 PM, gabrielrock19 said:

Hey! Here I am again. I'd like to hear something from fellow players of the community. For how many hours have you played skyrim special edition with a single character? How many mods are you currently running? And is your game stable?

I'm eager to know the answers. Please start posting below.