JK's Villages vs ETAC / TPoS?

[lazloarcadia]

So I'm at a toss up. I'm about to kick off a new play through of Skyrim in order to kill some time (and allow mods to update) before attempting a run through on SSE. I've looked over several city over haul mods and so far here is the short list I've come up with:

 

JK's Skyrim (collective and individual cities / towns)

Expanded Towns and Cities (ETaC)

The People of Skyrim (TPoS)

 

NOTE: I've avoided the temptation of individually picking and choosing between different City overhauls do to simplicity and uniformity of compatibility. Besides, JK's are amazing enough that I simply stopped looking when I found them anyway. As such I already know I'll be using JK's for the main cities if nothing else (unless I run across a smoking gun of why I should not).

 

I know that ETAC has been around longer, and appears to be more compatible because of that fact (ref: Real Shelter, Lanterns of Skyrim, etc). On the other hand, I've looked at the video's for JK's and OMG they look great (and he with working on making his mods compatible with Immersive Citizens). TPoS also looks great, and I hear it was built with compatibility with ETaC in mind.

 

I guess the question i'm asking is if anyone has really played with mixing and matching the 3 mods and what their thoughts were on the best mix. JK's + ETaC / TPoS? Just JK's? Just ETaC & TPoS?

 

Before anyone asks, no, I'm not suggesting some form of crazy "uber compatibility patch".

 

[thestigma]

Regarding compatibility I think it is worth keeping in mind that ETAC primarily changes smaller settlements and villages. JK does a lot of work on the larger cities that ETAC does not touch at all - and thus if you only select those JK that ETAC does not touch then it should be fine and you can get the best of both worlds if you just spend a feew minutes making sure you don't overlap locations. I think my initial plan so far is to use ETAC as my base - and then see what relevant part of JK I can add without hurting performance too much or running into spesific compatability issues with other essential mods. But I've only begun investigating so I don't know if this is the best plan or not :smile:

 

I am in the same situation of choosing. I know I want to subtly expand a little to make cities feel a little more lively, but I haven't tested nearly enough yet. What I have seen of ETAC so far was pleasant though. It definitely feels like it just adds to the vanilla rather than totally overhauling stuff and it all feels natural. Riverwood now feels like a small village rather than a tiny outpost. A few more houses, a few more generic (but named) NPCs that mill about with clear roles but no dialogue or anything like that (basically they are there for background and ambience mostly) and a new herbalist shop. Nice and natural additions, but not going overboard and Riverwood still feels like Riverwood.

 

What you should be aware of (and I think will affect my choice to a large degree) is performance degredation. All these mods that end up expanding cities will slow you down in areas that were already slow - and as far as I can tell JKs mods are very heavy. Very detailed, but slow... There is a performance version too though. ETAC seems overall less drastic. For me I can stand dropping down to 30-40 in a city with fighting not being an issue for the most part, but anything much lower would annoy me too much. JK full seems out of the question for me, but JK lite (and there is even a superlite) does seem like a plausible tradeoff since they are functionally the same but just reduce the number of clutter objects that end up completely killing your framerate.

 

I would very much like to hear some opinions from people who have actually played with both for an extended amount of time.

-Stigma

 

EDIT: This might help a little - a fairly thorough rundown and comparison of these mods:

Edited November 28, 2016 by thestigma

[snelss0]

Just keep in mind that when installing these mods, there are a lot of compatibility notes in their "forum" tab to read about. NPC overhaul, textures, and other things can cause potential issues. Do your homework on each one of them as some additional information might be missed if you just read the front pages.

[thestigma]

Just keep in mind that when installing these mods, there are a lot of compatibility notes in their "forum" tab to read about. NPC overhaul, textures, and other things can cause potential issues. Do your homework on each one of them as some additional information might be missed if you just read the front pages.

 

Absolutely. Any large overhaul that does many things in the same mod you need to be especially attentive to compatability details.

That's why I generally for these sorts of overhauls favor mods that are popular, have been around for a bit, and is still being updated in recent times (anything with updates in 2016 or late 2015 is typically a good sign).

When they are still being maintained you are much less likely to run into unexpected compatability issues (given that you read the compatability notes)

 

That's why ETAC is quite appealing. It is still active and being updated, and has a really good reputation for compatability options.

 

At least with villages/cities mods you do have some manual control just from the mods all being restricted to distinct areas. As long as you don't run more than one overhaul mod pr area you shouldn't run into too massive issues.

Still - stuff can crop up in unexpected places. ETAC has an issue with ELFX since it overhauls the inns interiors for example - leading to a messup if you use both - but you can just use the no-inns version of ETAC to remain compatible. Hopefully a full compatibility patch for that is in the works because the new inns are far more interresting than the almost-clones inns of vanilla :)

 

-Stigma

[panurgy]

I've used ETaC (full version, all options) for years. I reinstalled Skyrim about 3 months ago, and it's been locked in to my mod list.

 

Some of the optional extras, like the additions outside Whiterun, have a pretty hefty performance hit for me, about 10+ FPS. I also get short pauses if Immersive Patrols kicks off a battle when I enter an ETaC area, but to me that's not a big deal. ETaC + the new Claralux brings my system to it's knees in two areas: Dragonbridge (ETaC optional) and Morthal. Also, ETaC adds rats to Morthal, and this can affect performance, though by itself it's been fine for me. Never noticed any slowdown with Lanterns of Skyrim, though there are a few incompatibilities (floating lanterns) that have never been fixed.

 

I'm not currently using Dawn of Skyrim, but it's never made a significant impact on framerates. JK's Skyrim adds a lot of clutter, and many people report performance issues. I uninstalled it a while back because of this, but I've been meaning to give it another shot.

 

Here's an interesting link to a reddit discussion about the best mods for holds. There are also a fair number of JK vs Dawn vs whatever discussions if you search.