Skyrim Mods (ATTN: ZEPHLAR)

[Spectere]

I'm thinking of playing through Skyrim again and am looking to try out some new mods.

Recommendations plz <3

[Zephlar]

Are you playing 32bit or the new SSE version?

[Spectere]

I'm just going to stick with the 32-bit version with ENB. I've grown very attached to Mod Organizer, and the way MO2 beta releases are being handled (exclusively through their Discord channel, which is beyond bloody annoying) make me want to just give SSE a miss until they sort that shit out.

Plus, I imagine it still wins in terms of mod count.

[Zephlar]

I'm just going to stick with the 32-bit version with ENB. I've grown very attached to Mod Organizer, and the way MO2 beta releases are being handled (exclusively through their Discord channel, which is beyond bloody annoying) make me want to just give SSE a miss until they sort that shit out.

Plus, I imagine it still wins in terms of mod count.

Without a doubt wins in terms of Mod Count but if SKSE was completed I would probably play SSE. Progress is still fairly slow moving on getting SKSE completed unfortunately so the ENB's aren't very good.

As far as ENB goes I highly recommend Tetrachromatic. It's beautiful and vibrant without being overly fantasized. Of course you can adjust settings to your liking but overall that's the best one I've used. I use the "Tetrachromatic Vivid Weathers ENB - Ghost" file out of the 3 options.

With that being said, the mod author recommends these (which I use):
Vivid Landscapes - All in One
Candle Glow
Lorkan's Vision V2
Lanterns of Skyrim
Realistic Water Two by Isoku
Dark Dungeons for ENB by Mindflux
Verdant - A Skyrim Grass Plugin
Wonders of Weather
Lightning During Thunderstorms
Skyrim HD Terrain Parallax Tribute

I recommend RaceMenu for character creation.
FNIS is a must have.
Loot is a must have as a side program to ensure everything is ordered correctly.
TES5Edit is a great tool for "cleaning" dirty scripts if your game starts getting too bogged down or crashing. I highly recommend Gopher's instructions on how to use this the correct way.

Top 100 mods should have lots of amazing stuff. Top recommendations I can think of off the top of my head:
CBBE (Avoid going full nude, I regret it because I can't get it to go back)
Get Snowy
Real Ice & Snow
Footprints
The Ningheim Race (Best skin Textures in all of Skyrim. Make sure to grab the requirements except XP32)
Fantasy Forest Overhaul (I prefer the Original Edition File)

Honestly man I could sit here and do this for LITERALLY hours. I have over 300 active mods. I'll export my list when I get home and highlight the best. There are just too many good ones.

I've got a bunch of screenies on my flickr and Steam page over the years.

[Bobbias]

Now that I have a computer capable of ENB stuff I'm gonna have to look into this. What are the tradeoffs between 32bit vs SSE?

[Spectere]

Sweet, thanks for the recommendations! Especially Tetrachromatic--that looks gorgeous.

I've used all of the tools. MO handles running LOOT automatically, which is really handy. I've cleaned dirty packages with TES5Edit before...should still have my scripts for it in place. I don't think you can really have a modded Skyrim install without FNIS nowadays.

I've used CBBE/RaceMenu/BodySlide and all that fun stuff. Kind of ridiculous how much customization that opens up!

I always stick with beast races (I've literally never rolled a non-khajiit/argonian in any TES game), so custom race mods won't really do much for me (probably should have mentioned that!). I typically install CoverKhajiits and blah I forgot which argonian skin replacement I use so that I can make my kitties and scaly things look better. That said, I might snag the Ningheim race since it does seem to add NPCs to the world.

And yeah, I'd definitely be interested in checking out all of the sex mods on your list.

Now that I have a computer capable of ENB stuff I'm gonna have to look into this. What are the tradeoffs between 32bit vs SSE?

32-bit has a much larger mod selection (and mods are more capable as a result of the mod extender, SKSE, being far more mature) at the expense of some stability. SSE looks prettier out of the box and is native 64-bit, but there aren't as many mods and they aren't capable of changing as much.

It seems like most of the people who play modded Skyrim are sticking with 32-bit, at least until SKSE64 becomes fully feature-complete.

[Bobbias]

I guess I'll stick with 32bit then for the time being. It'll be nice to have another game I can play with a controller. With the PC hooked to the TV there's not really anywhere that's ergonomically acceptable to play mouse+kb stuff there, so I've been looking for stuff to play with a controller (using a ps4 controller right now. had some trouble getting some stuff to work with it though.)

[Spectere]

If you don't already have DS4Windows, snag that: http://ds4windows.com/. It'll allow it to function as an Xinput device, remap buttons at will (even to keyboard keys), map things to the trackpad, and even change the color of the light bar (clearly the best feature of the bunch).

I've used it over a wired connection, but it apparently works via Bluetooth as well.

[Zephlar]

Sweet, thanks for the recommendations! Especially Tetrachromatic--that looks gorgeous.

I've used all of the tools. MO handles running LOOT automatically, which is really handy. I've cleaned dirty packages with TES5Edit before...should still have my scripts for it in place. I don't think you can really have a modded Skyrim install without FNIS nowadays.

I've used CBBE/RaceMenu/BodySlide and all that fun stuff. Kind of ridiculous how much customization that opens up!

Yeah so you're already super well versed in modding and the how to. I should have figured lol. I forgot to export my list yesterday I'll try to remember when I get home tonight.

And yeah, I'd definitely be interested in checking out all of the sex mods on your list.

Honestly aside from CBBE I have nothing in that category. My wife is very....sensitive to me looking at anything remotely scandalous. Ever since I started dating her a few years ago I've pretty much emptied my "vault" as it were lol. Sorry man. I do however recommend the Lovers Lab website as they specialize in those kinds of mods.

It seems like most of the people who play modded Skyrim are sticking with 32-bit, at least until SKSE64 becomes fully feature-complete.

For sure. SKSE is the backbone of what makes modding so amazing as it allows for customization of the actual menu's themselves in the game. There is a reason SkyUI is the number 1 downloaded mod of all time. It just makes the skyrim experience 100x better.

I guess I'll stick with 32bit then for the time being. It'll be nice to have another game I can play with a controller. With the PC hooked to the TV there's not really anywhere that's ergonomically acceptable to play mouse+kb stuff there, so I've been looking for stuff to play with a controller (using a ps4 controller right now. had some trouble getting some stuff to work with it though.)

Skyrim recognizes XBOX 360 Controller as a native controller honestly it might be worth just picking up a cheap corded controller or even getting the wireless adapter for PC.

[Spectere]

Honestly aside from CBBE I have nothing in that category. My wife is very....sensitive to me looking at anything remotely scandalous. Ever since I started dating her a few years ago I've pretty much emptied my "vault" as it were lol. Sorry man. I do however recommend the Lovers Lab website as they specialize in those kinds of mods.

Hah, just jokes. I fiddled with that once before and found that most of the "adult" stuff winds up being poorly-written fetish fuel.

For sure. SKSE is the backbone of what makes modding so amazing as it allows for customization of the actual menu's themselves in the game. There is a reason SkyUI is the number 1 downloaded mod of all time. It just makes the skyrim experience 100x better.

SkyUI was my first Skyrim mod and, yeah, it did a lot to make the game actually playable on PC. Funny, I thought Oblivion's default UI was pretty icky (toooo biiiiig), then Skyrim happened. Yeech.

On one hand, at least there are ways of making it better. On the other hand: really, Bethesda?

Skyrim recognizes XBOX 360 Controller as a native controller honestly it might be worth just picking up a cheap corded controller or even getting the wireless adapter for PC.

DS4Windows will make a PS4 controller look like an Xbox 360/Xbox One controller so that shouldn't be necessary. About the only thing that won't be correct are the button prompts (it'll still show ABXY, but the buttons themselves will be in the correct position).

The Xbox One controllers are better, anyway. Can you order a 360 controller that looks like this?



I. THINK. NOT.

[Bobbias]

I have a 360 controller somewhere, and i think i should have the wireless receiver... But I have no idea where that shit is. I've got DS4Windows already, as well as SCP Toolkit. Currently using SCP Toolkit because things got kinda messed up while trying to see if I could somehow get it to work with the Minecraft joypad mod (still haven't figured out why that doesn't work).

I've.... acquired, Skyrim, but nexus mod manager complains about a missing update.esm file... Does this matter, or should I just ignore NMM and use other shit (been a long time since I played skyrim. Last time I did I had a couple simple mods like SkyUI to improve QOL and not much else. Used NMM back then.)

[Spectere]

Sounds like you have the original release. I doubt many mods are going to work properly with that nowadays, especially when you get into ones that require SKSE (which requires a newer version). There's also a number of mods that require the expansions (some still have separate BSAs and scripts for their supported expansions, but I've been seeing that less and less, especially recently). Even the Unofficial Skyrim Patch doesn't support the split patches anymore.

You're definitely going to have to upgrade and will more than likely need the expansions as well.

[Bobbias]

Will do. I'm, legitimately surprised anyone actually cares about the original release version any more.

ps. Why is TES5Edit so fucking SMALL. It doesn't do respect windows scaling, but lowering resolution doesn't really help. I'm using a TV as a monitor right now and it's nearly impossible to use.

EDIT: Got infinite loading problem. Installed all mods before starting skyrim at all, so no idea which one might be causing problems... First time trying to start a character I told the new beginnings mod to pick a random start, and just got a black screen when i went to the bed. Second time I loaded the autosave and got a proper loading screen when I selected a different start, but it just sat there loading forever.

EDIT2: Got one of the new life starts to work after removing a ton of mods. Started having issues after I reinstalled Apocalypse, so maybe it's got something to do with that mod, but I need to do more testing to be sure, which is really frustrating.

Here's my mod load order list (with everything enabled) in case this gives you any clues:

  0  0     Skyrim.esm
  1  1     Update.esm
  2  2     Dawnguard.esm
  3  3     HearthFires.esm
  4  4     Dragonborn.esm
  5  5     RaceCompatibility.esm
  6  6     HighResTexturePack01.esp
  7  7     HighResTexturePack02.esp
  8  8     HighResTexturePack03.esp
  9  9     Unofficial High Resolution Patch.esp
 10  a     Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp
 11  b     Unofficial Dawnguard Patch.esp
 12  c     Unofficial Hearthfire Patch.esp
 13  d     Unofficial Dragonborn Patch.esp
 14  e     Dark_Eden_Forests.esp
 15  f     Verdant - A Skyrim Grass Plugin.esp
 16 10     RealisticWaterTwo.esp
 17 11     Further Dark Dungeons for ENB.esp
 18 12     Hothtrooper44_ArmorCompilation.esp
 19 13     SMIM-Merged-All.esp
 20 14     RealisticWaterTwo - Legendary.esp
 21 15     Cloaks.esp
 22 16     FNIS.esp
 23 17     RealisticWaterTwo - Dragonborn.esp
 24 18     RealisticWaterTwo - Dawnguard.esp
 25 19     mintylightningmod.esp
 26 1a     dD - Realistic Ragdoll Force - Realistic.esp
 27 1b     BarenziahQuestMarkers.esp
 28 1c     Brows.esp
 29 1d     getSnowy.esp
 30 1e     WondersofWeather.esp
 31 1f     Apocalypse - The Spell Package.esp
 32 20     Brawl Bugs CE.esp
 33 21     RaceCompatibilityUSKPOverride.esp
 34 22     The Ningheim.esp
 35 23     RaceMenu.esp
 36 24     RaceMenuPlugin.esp
 37 25     SkyUI.esp
 38 26     Footprints.esp
 39 27     Immersive Weapons.esp
 40 28     Hothtrooper44_Armor_Ecksstra.esp
 41 29     Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp

[Spectere]

TES5Edit seems to have a manifest indicating that it has hi-DPI support, but it clearly doesn't. You can override this behavior by using a compatibility flag:



Similarly, if an application supports UI scaling but doesn't have a manifest or isn't new enough to have one, you can select "application" from that dropdown and it'll disable DWM scaling. I'm not sure what "System (Enhanced)" does other than make some controls look odd (the checkboxes in TES5Edit are a good example).

As far as the mod list goes, one issue that I see is that the unofficial patches should be placed immediately after the expansion that they effect, like so:

Code: [Select]

Skyrim.esm
Update.esm
Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp
Dawnguard.esm
Unofficial Dawnguard Patch.esp
HearthFires.esm
Unofficial Hearthfire Patch.esp
Dragonborn.esm
Unofficial Dragonborn Patch.esp
HighResTexturePack01.esp
HighResTexturePack02.esp
HighResTexturePack03.esp
Unofficial High Resolution Patch.esp
RaceCompatibility.esm

I've seen guides that recommend RaceCompatibility be higher in the list, but I'm a bit leery on doing that given the scope of the unofficial Skyrim patch sets. Give the order that I listed a shot first. Another thing to try is placing mods that require RaceCompatibility after RaceCompatibilityUSKPOverride.esp. If they aren't placed after that, weird things might happen.

At some point you may run into mods that require the Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch. Since you can't use that along with the old Unofficial Skyrim Patches, you'll have to swap the masters on anything requiring the older patches. Fortunately, there's a handy TES5Edit script that does that: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/71316/?

[Bobbias]

RaceCompatibility is considered a master file, so neither NMM nor Wrye Bash seem to want to let me move normal mods above it (and this includes moving each unofficial patch directly after their DLC esm). Seems like they want all master files to load before anything else. Maybe I could set master file status on all the unofficial patches, but I don't know enough about how all this works to know if that's a good idea or not.

EDIT: Made them masters and adjusted load order. Still getting black screen when trying to sleep in the bed during the new life intro. Fuck this is getting annoying.