Blazing Saddles, a comparison of horse mods

[Kursan]

There has been allot of chatter about certain horse mods not working right after the last Skyrim update and much debate about which one is better.

I have used two of the best known ones; Better Horses by LtMattmoo and Convenient Horses by Alek and like to offer a short side by side comparison as well as a trouble shooting guide for "Better Horses" which is a bit dated.

There are quite a few more mods to choose from, some of which tweak only the speed of the vanilla horses or introduce a whistle to call the vanilla horses all of which is great to have as a choice, but these two are by far the most comprehensive ones.

 

Convenient Horses and Better Horses (not to be mistaken for better horses by Degrelecence) share many key features and both have some unique features, and also both lack features I long wished for in a horse mod.

The shared key features are:

1.An easy to use and comprehensive configuration menu for horse stats, such as speed, health, stamina, being essential or not, etc. Convenient horses has slightly more choices also for player interaction.

2.The horse can carry an inventory, Better Horses has a better menu that is divided into categories just as the players, while Convenient horses stuffs everything into one sack; not so convenient.

3.You can call your horse if cowardice is turned on and the horse runs from danger, a feature both mods have. Convenient horses actually offers two methods, a call horn you can buy that sports a very cool cinematic, and a whistle which you have to learn. Better Horses comes with a variety of whistles that depends on distance the horse is from you and the farthest call is a copy of the "Gandalf whistle" that will make your horse warp to you from across Skyrim if necessary and is the equivalent of the call horn from Convenient Horses; however the long distance whistle of Better Horses does not work to call your horse to Solstheim, while the horn from Convenient horses will.

4. You can set horse follow options, with Better Horses by different whistles in game, while Convenient Horses is a menu set up.

Those are the four key features these mods have in common although differently executed.

 

Unique features of Convenient Horses:

1. You can quick dismount with your weapon drawn, no more delay when you want to engage an enemy on foot, to me this is a major point in its favor.

2. You can auto loot a body if you make a kill from horse back without dismounting. Cool but lazy.

3. You can pick herbs and interact with people from horse back. The first I can do without, the second is a very useful feature.

4. If your horse gets killed, you can transfer its inventory to yours, very helpful if it ran off and got killed and you have trouble finding it. I lost some good loot that way with Better Horses unable to find it before the mod removed its corpse.

5. A built in companion riding feature (with a second horse not on the same horse) while Better Horses requires two additional esp's to achieve this. There is also a way to have multiple mounted companions in Convenient Horses with an additional mod.

6. You can choose horse armor for your horse that is eye candy only not actual armor. I guess you can boost your horses health a whole lot to simulate an armored effect.

 

Unique features of Better Horses:

1. Give various comands by whistle in game.

2. Trample at full charge, can be set to work on hostiles only or everybody. (Great way to kill Goats:)

3. Different Horse breeds have different unique qualities, some are faster, some can carry more etc. Very nice touch and more realistic.

You would think that more can go wrong with Convenient Horses because Better Horses is much more basic, but it has not been kept up to date with Skyrim patches and so some people have issues especially since the 1.9 update. Better Horses was one of my first mods ever and I love it dearly, but I started having bugs of dead horses reappearing over and over (while I have a new one) and Inventory or Horses disappearing, so I finally decided to switch horses so to speak.

A feature that neither mod has is the ability to sell your horse if you want a different one; right now you have to kill it or wait for it to get killed neither of which is very appealing. Because of the command structure you can only own one horse at a time and I wish that could be changed or the ability to sell it added.

I found that many people complaint heatedly that they could not uninstall the mod; in fact the author released very apologetically a special uninstaller and still got flack for that. I really hope that he will come back and re-release this mod with updates but for now I stay with Convenient Horses.

I have copied a post from another forum below with the uninstall instructions for Better Horses IF you are having issues, if not fantastic and keep with it.

 

I like to add for those who claim that the Uninstaller does not work that I have successfully uninstalled Better Horses on two separate Skyrim installs with very different load orders and one depending on SKSE and the other one not, and both times the method described below worked and I installed Convenient Horses on both. The SKSE install offers some different features by the way for Convenient Horses.

I am sure I forgot something but I hope this is helpful if you are in the position I mentioned or if you are trying to decide on a horse mod that is right for you.

Cheers

 

For those who were asking about uninstalling and claim that it is not possible on a saved game, I just did and here is how:

1. Remove all loot from your saddle bags and create a new save.

2. Deactivate Better horses in your load menu (and any related files like horses for followers) and load your last save.

3. Create a new save with Better horses deactivated. At this point if you try to mount your vanilla horse nothing will happen, don't panic.

4. Install the Better horses uninstaller, its two files an esp and a bsa file, make sure they are checked in your load menu and load last save.

5. You should be able to mount your vanilla horse now and all stats returned to vanilla values. Create a new save again. I saved while mounted and rode about a bit, not sure if that makes a difference but I thought I mention it.

6. Disable the uninstaller in your load menu and load your last save, you should still be able to dismount and mount your horse and vanilla values should be restored.

7. Delete all Better horses files from your Data folder including the uninstaller files and any supplemental files for this mod.

This process worked for me on a level 21 char and I have had Better Horses through hundreds of game hours, so it was deep in my game and this worked.

This was one of the first mods I ever used and I think it is brilliant and I hate to get rid of it. It was working fine for me until recently when some of the bugs other people experienced as well popped up; I think they appeared after Dragonborn and Skyrim 1.9 were released, before I had no issues whatever.

After the above uninstall process I also ran my save through the Save cleaner utility just for good measure and installed Convenient Horses now instead.

I think both mods are excellent and have their different strength, but for now I have to pass on Better horses.

Edited April 12, 2013 by Kursan

[Kursan]

Just a quick edit - correction.

Convenient Horses actually does also require a second mod for the companion riding feature to work as is the case with Better Horses.

The difference is that CH can be complimented by one out of at least 3 different follower mods to get this effect and the scripting for this to work is already part of CH.

While with BH you have only one mod for followers to ride (Horses for Followers) and that in turn is dependent on a mod called "Better Follower Improvements" which supplies the scripting for the horse follower option to work. All these files are heavily outdated and cause bugs with the latest version of Skyrim and its DLC's.

 

I am currently testing 2 out of 3 recommended follower mods Ultimate Follower Overhaul or UFO and Extensible Follower Framework or EFF. The third option Amazing Follower Tweaks or AFT did not seem viable for my purposes.

All these mods are also outdated and have not been updated in over a year, except that UFO has recently released patches for the DLC"s with a Dragonborn currently in developememt.

For this and various other reasons I will describe another time I am leaning toward UFO in my testing so far.

[ArtMurder]

Kursan, on 16 Apr 2013 - 10:08, said:

Just a quick edit - correction.

Convenient Horses actually does also require a second mod for the companion riding feature to work as is the case with Better Horses.

The difference is that CH can be complimented by one out of at least 3 different follower mods to get this effect and the scripting for this to work is already part of CH.

While with BH you have only one mod for followers to ride (Horses for Followers) and that in turn is dependent on a mod called "Better Follower Improvements" which supplies the scripting for the horse follower option to work. All these files are heavily outdated and cause bugs with the latest version of Skyrim and its DLC's.

 

I am currently testing 2 out of 3 recommended follower mods Ultimate Follower Overhaul or UFO and Extensible Follower Framework or EFF. The third option Amazing Follower Tweaks or AFT did not seem viable for my purposes.

All these mods are also outdated and have not been updated in over a year, except that UFO has recently released patches for the DLC"s with a Dragonborn currently in developememt.

For this and various other reasons I will describe another time I am leaning toward UFO in my testing so far.

I've tested UFO and AFT MANY times and I can very honestly say UFO is much more outdated and glitchy then AFT, or any other follower mod I can think of for that matter, I have never once had issues with AFT, and UFO basically breaks my game EVERY time I install it. Everything from not letting me have followers at all, to getting my followers stuck in invisible bubbles they can't leave, to making my followers hostile towards EVERY NPC I meet, to dismissing my followers without warning, to making all my followrs stand their and just watch me get killed, and outright ignoring options and settings I select. I have tried UFO 3 different times on 3 totally different installs of skyrim and it's just glitchy and outdated. It also corrupted multiple save games attempting to uninstall it (I think 4 or 5 in total?) (doing it the proper way with the firefly). I tend to use between 150-200 mods at any given time though, but this has NEVER been an issue for AFT

 

AFT is very stable, and effective, even if it lacks some of the 'interesting' (but in my opinion totally useless) features of UFO. I use it now with 188 other mods, and have not had one single glitch or error with it, and it does EVERYTHING I could want it to, I honestly don't see what else someone could want in a follower overhaul, I can have as many followers as I want, I can make anyone a follower, I can set their combat style, and I can pick what gear they use, hell I can even make them pose and dance. I honestly don't see why anyone would pick an outdated barely-working mod over an effective stable one that achieves the same basic thing, even if it has some cool unique features.

 

My opinion is so strong on this, because I use ASIS, SkyRe, WTF, and several other mods that make my game VERY unpredictable and challenging. My survival hinges on my followers, how I set up my team, if I just run head first into a dungeon solo I WILL die, if my follower stand 10 feet behind me and doesn't jump in on the fight, I WILL die, if my follower chases off after one Restless Draugr and goes completely out of site while I'm left fighting a whole room fool of them I WILL die. If my healer doesn't heal me, if my tank doesn't protect me, if my mage doesn't stay back and buff and debuff everyone, EVERYONE WILL DIE. and UFO is just not reliable enough for this kind of complex team building. I stopped using UFO for the last time when m,y entire team of 3 followers all stopped EVERYTHING at the exact same time and just stood their or ran away while I got ripped apart by a band of angry forsworn. Seeing my large war-hammer wielding redguard tank run away like a little girl from 2 chicks in skimpy clothing, only to me mutilated by those same two chicks seconds later, was just my final straw. =P Nothing like that ever happens with AFT. The worst that ever happens with AFT is my mage who has a LOT of spells sometimes casts the wrong one on the wrong person, (casts healing on enemy for example) it's dumb, but not game breaking, and I just fix this by only teaching healing spells to my healer.

 

AFT DOES need an updated, an MCM menu would be nice, also the ability to more intelligently assign spells.

 

I also use Convenient horses, though the fact that I almost NEVER uses horses in any TES game means I can't really say much at all about this. It works with AFT to the best of my knowledge.

 

i have never tried EFF though. I've actually never even heard of it.

[Dhegonus]

funny. UFO is a godsend for my game.. never had an issue with it and it does exactly what it says it does, no glitches no nothing..heh

[ArtMurder]

funny. UFO is a godsend for my game.. never had an issue with it and it does exactly what it says it does, no glitches no nothing..heh

Hmm, really?

 

In concept it seems amazing to me, but despite installing it three different times on three different installs (I use SIS and have about 8 I swap between) it just never seems to work right.

 

I know I installed it right. About the only mod in common with them are the three unofficial patches, the three official DLC, SkyUI, iHUD, Skyrim Redone, and RaceMenu. Could any of them be conflicting with it?

 

Also, what version of skyrim do you use and how many mods do you use with UFO? I've been told it was outdated and doesn't work with the most up to date skyrim, so I assumed the many glitches I encountered where caused by this.

[Dhegonus]

i use the current patch, but i only use about 15-20 mods topsthe only sort of AI tweaking mods i use are SIS and UFO.. everything else is armour/weapons and climates of tamriel etc..

[Kursan]

Hey guys, thanks for the great input. As I described in my first post I am just now in the process of testing mods because I just recently changed horse mods. So I have not played around long enough to encounter major glitches with either UFO or EFF. All I can say is that I do like Convenient Horses over Better Horses so far and probably stay with it.

The only reason I was looking for a follower mod in the first place is to have the interactive options with my followers, like deciding what their outfit is, no invisible armor and weapons, and the option to have them ride with me. My play style is such that 90% of the time I solo and when I do want company I can't imagine even wanting more than two, so that whole group go to war thing is not what I need such a mod for.

The 3 mods we have discussed so far are all listed on the Convenient horses main page as recommended follower mods to work for the follower riding ability; the author of CH recommends them in this order: EFF, UFO, AFT.

I read the posts (not all of them) on all three of these mods and all of them have a mixed review with many people reporting exactly the kind of bugs that you were describing, and others that have no issues.

After what you wrote I am willing to give AFT also a try, like I said I am actually looking for something pretty basic that works reliably most of the time, but all of them are outdated now, the only saving grace of UFO seems to be that it comes with recently published patches for the DLC's.

I believe that most if not all glitches with these type of mods that use allot of scripting stem from interaction with other script heavy mods, so the more you have the higher the chances of weird stuff happening.

I run two installs of Skyrim, both patched to the latest 1.9 version, one is dependent on SKSE and has 110 mods installed. The other has around 70 mods, but no SKSE. If anyone is interested I can post my load orders if that is of any use, I do run several script intensive mods in both installs and so far have managed to have them play nicely together for the most part.

By the way what does SIS stand for?