New to Modding in General!

[PsylentFox]

Hello everyone! I am looking to start modding Skyrim for the very first time, and seeing as this will be my first time playing Skyrim on the PC it will be very interesting to check out the difference between Vanilla Xbox 360 skyrim and this modded experience. These are my specs for my computer, and I know that the Skyrim launcher has already put everything to Ultra settings. As for my system this is what I'm working with:

 

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 @3.4 Ghz

GPU: AMD Radeon 7870 2GB GDDR5, Core @ 975 MHz, Memory @ 1500 MHz

Ram: 16GB

OS: Windows 7 Home 64-bit

 

Some of you might look at this and say "Wow! This was fairly good... 4 years ago." To that I say you would be right, because this was a budget build for me when I was in college. I pretty much have everything running at stock clocks, especially the CPU because I only have the stock heat sink fan, and the GPU I boost from time to time, especially since I play Star Craft II and when it gets to late game things want to slow down... but I don't let them! Overall I think even by todays standards this build I have is fairly good, as I can run Tomb Raider at the highest settings averaging 50 FPS now that I had it optimized. I have my eyes on about 30 mods, mostly texture updates (Skyrim HD - 2K Textures, SkyUI, Smile in HD, Enhanced Blood Textures), Model updates (CBBE, Feminine Argonian/Khajiit, More Freckles, Dimonized UNP Female Body), and some weapon and armor mods (Immersive Weapons, Immersive Armor), with various miscellaneous other mods (HD Maps with Roads, Natrual Realism) to fill in some space.

 

The above are just a few of the ones that I would like to download and use, but there are *so* many mods to sift through that its probably going to take a while for me to get through them all. But now that we have that out of the way, lets focus on getting a few questions asked.

 

- About how many mods do you think I could run with my current set-up without sacrificing performance? I'm looking for Lore friendly mods, and nothing that will break the game.

 

- Do mods like CBBE and Dimonized's UNP Female Body complement each other? Do they overwrite each other? Do they cancel each other out? This same question goes for Natural Realism ENB and lets say the Skyrim HD - 2K Textures. Do they cause any conflict or do they work together?

 

- From what I understand and see everything looks like it has to be manually downloaded and copy/pasted into the game patcher. Is this true?

 

- I see a number of mods use the LOOT system. I take it that would be a good download to grab?

 

- And what mods do you recommend that are immersive and lore friendly?

 

 

As for me, I'm a college graduate and an officer in the US Army Reserves. I'm 24 and I currently work as a Security Contractor for G4S Secure Solutions assisting with the inprocessing and detainment of prisoners for the El Paso Police Department. I'm currently working on getting a parts list for my Dream Machine with custom Water Cooling. Hell, I might even post my dream build in a separate post to get thoughts and opinions. For now I'm going to go get some food, so I hope that when I come back I'll have some awesome feedback from you guys!

 

~PsylentFox

 

[terrystrickl]

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  Mods are made by the general public or a developer and can be entirely new games in themselves, but mods are not stand-alone software and require the user ...

  
  
  
  
  
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[sevra3]

Well welcome to modding!

 

- About how many mods do you think I could run with my current set-up without sacrificing performance? I'm looking for Lore friendly mods, and nothing that will break the game.

 

That is going to completely depend on the mods you download.

Just remember if a CTD (Crash to Desktop) happens it's not always because your pc can't handle it.

 

- Do mods like CBBE and Dimonized's UNP Female Body complement each other?

 

No, pick one.

 

-Natural realism ENB and Skyrim 2k textures

 

Those should play nice. Most popular mods will tell you what they are not compatible with.

 

- From what I understand and see everything looks like it has to be manually downloaded and copy/pasted into the game patcher. Is this true?

 

I'm going to take an estimate and say 90% of the mods on this site can be directly installed with "Nexus mod manager" You will see a button that says "Download (NMM)" if you have nexus mod manager it takes care of the rest.

 

- I see a number of mods use the LOOT system. I take it that would be a good download to grab?

 

I don't know anything about LOOT except its good reviews. I'm pretty sure you have to pick between NMM and that though.

 

- And what mods do you recommend that are immersive and lore friendly?

 

Immersive Armors

Immersive Weapons

Frostfall (That can be challenging)

 

The best thing to do would be to kind of click through all the categories and sort by "Most Endorsed," Then you can just take a look and see what the top files are and if they interest you.

 

 

Good luck!

 

 

Edit: one more thing. ALWAYS read the requirements for mods. Alot of them use things like "Sky UI" and "SKSE". I cannot tell you how many times I have had to download 3 mods to use the one mod I actually wanted.

Edited April 7, 2015 by sevra3

[Daedthr]

There are a few "mods" that I HIGHLY recommend you download. I say mods but to me really only SkyUI is one, I consider the others requirements or fixes.

 

SKSE - It goes without saying that extending Papyrus' functionality is always something desirable, but it's also worth noting that most extensive mods make use of it, and that there are in fact many mods that make use of SKSE but do not explicitly mention it. Don't blame the authors, SKSE is something most modders have and expect users to have.

 

SkyUI - Excellent mod. Overhauls the Skyrim Menu's and adds MCM (Mod Configuration Menu), that many mods make use of for the purpose of customisation.

 

Unofficial Patches - Fixes a huge number of bug in the vanilla game and DLCs, also mods that many authors expect their users to have.

[LynxMcPaws]

There are a few "mods" that I HIGHLY recommend you download. I say mods but to me really only SkyUI is one, I consider the others requirements or fixes.

 

SKSE - It goes without saying that extending Papyrus' functionality is always something desirable, but it's also worth noting that most extensive mods make use of it, and that there are in fact many mods that make use of SKSE but do not explicitly mention it. Don't blame the authors, SKSE is something most modders have and expect users to have.

 

SkyUI - Excellent mod. Overhauls the Skyrim Menu's and adds MCM (Mod Configuration Menu), that many mods make use of for the purpose of customisation.

 

Unofficial Patches - Fixes a huge number of bug in the vanilla game and DLCs, also mods that many authors expect their users to have.

I completely agree SKSE & SkyUI are the number one choices of starting your modded experience. And that Unofficial Patches will make your game bug free!