Improving Skyrim / Recommended Mods thread (Mostly about Requiem)

[Yosharian]

Trying Requiem and while it is not too bad some of the mechanisms are very tedious and annoying. There is a fine line between making a game immersive and irritating, and they definitely crossed over to the irritating line on some mechanics.

Such as?

Not saying that Requiem is perfect, because it has a lot of unnecessary cruft, but tedious and annoying?

For starters:
Insanely low selling prices mixed with weight limits mixed with fast travel disabled makes making money a hilariously grindy process if you need to buy literally anything because of the extreme purchasing costs.

It is the exact opposite of immersive.

You are using a carriage mod, right? If you use a good carriage mod you can get to any hold and many of the smaller towns. It does cost money, but it's often worth it to gain access to new areas, quests, vendors, and so on.

Alchemy is still an insanely good money-maker in Requiem, and it makes you gain levels fast, which is a GOOD thing in Requiem, unlike Vanilla where gaining levels makes your enemies stronger.

Low selling prices are rough, but keep at it. It's still worth selling things because your Speech will raise, which again gives you levels and increase future selling prices.

Overall I'd say Requiem is definitely grindy at the start, but take it easy and try to appreciate the early game for what it is; spend some time being a weak kitten and struggling against the game so that when you do get more powerful, you'll really appreciate it.

Vanilla Skyrim makes you a superheroic, medieval chad renaissance man from level 1. Req makes you work at it a bit to achieve that.

 

[Mech]

Trying Requiem and while it is not too bad some of the mechanisms are very tedious and annoying. There is a fine line between making a game immersive and irritating, and they definitely crossed over to the irritating line on some mechanics.

Such as?

Not saying that Requiem is perfect, because it has a lot of unnecessary cruft, but tedious and annoying?

For starters:
Insanely low selling prices mixed with weight limits mixed with fast travel disabled makes making money a hilariously grindy process if you need to buy literally anything because of the extreme purchasing costs.

It is the exact opposite of immersive.

You are using a carriage mod, right? If you use a good carriage mod you can get to any hold and many of the smaller towns. It does cost money, but it's often worth it to gain access to new areas, quests, vendors, and so on.

Alchemy is still an insanely good money-maker in Requiem, and it makes you gain levels fast, which is a GOOD thing in Requiem, unlike Vanilla where gaining levels makes your enemies stronger.

Low selling prices are rough, but keep at it. It's still worth selling things because your Speech will raise, which again gives you levels and increase future selling prices.

Overall I'd say Requiem is definitely grindy at the start, but take it easy and try to appreciate the early game for what it is; spend some time being a weak kitten and struggling against the game so that when you do get more powerful, you'll really appreciate it.

Vanilla Skyrim makes you a superheroic, medieval chad renaissance man from level 1. Req makes you work at it a bit to achieve that.

Totally agree with this. It is a good thing my warrior invested in Alchemy, otherwise he would be completely fucked right now in multiple departments.

Perhaps such problems are inevitable if you want to avoid problems in the mid/end game. *shrug*

 

[Santander02]

I refused to start over from lvl 33 on 1.9 just to play 2.0 before finishing my current char, am I mising much?

 

[DraQ]

I refused to start over from lvl 33 on 1.9 just to play 2.0 before finishing my current char, am I mising much?

Dunno, everyone is still playing 1.9.4.1.

Overall I'd say Requiem is definitely grindy at the start, but take it easy and try to appreciate the early game for what it is; spend some time being a weak kitten and struggling against the game so that when you do get more powerful, you'll really appreciate it.

Vanilla Skyrim makes you a superheroic, medieval chad renaissance man from level 1. Req makes you work at it a bit to achieve that.

Personally I like the murderhobo phase the most - it really has you working for every little success, gives you stuff to look forward to, and doesn't have end game problems like being unwilling to take any gear loss because it's all artifacts.

Not that the late game where you can, for example, casually toss a charging giant aside with TK or one shot a dragon with Lighting Cascade as a wizard, or just reap wave after wave of enemies like harvester does wheat as a warrior is unrewarding, but at this point most of the previously interesting challenges don't even register as speed bumps (of course if you get careless you still die, but at this point you're well conditioned not to be).

 

[DraQ]

The economy is definitely harsher but what types of things are you having to buy?

Horses, houses and spell tomes.

(Also plane carriage tickets and sometimes groceries.)

 

[Zanzoken]

I had another fun fight today. 2 on 1 vs a couple of bandits -- one sword and board, one greatsword, both heavy armor. It went down inside Halted Stream camp -- the one near Whiterun with all the iron ore veins and the mammoth corpse -- and the tricky thing is that the dungeon is quite narrow. You don't have a lot of room to kite around, especially when outnumbered.

The bandits were pretty tough and could drop me in 3 or 4 clean hits, even doing some damage through my blocks. I started out trying to take the 2H guy down quick to even the odds, but soon realized I wasn't going to overpower them. I decided to slow it down and just focus on distance, blocking, and countering with one precise shot at a time. And I won that way without even losing much health.

It's cool the extent to which the mod rewards a tactical approach. After dying in the beginning I legit thought I couldn't beat those guys and would have to come back later. But the real issue is I was just playing like a popamoler.

Anyway I'm level 10 now so thinking about giving Bleak Falls Barrow another go. I am also looking forward to the first dragon fight so I can die horribly finally get a place to cook and store food.

 

[mastroego]

Might still be early unless you're properly equipped.
Again, people do it even at level 2, but you see what I mean.

 

[Zanzoken]

Made it through BFB this time. I was able to cheese the last room a bit and aggro the draugr in small groups, no more than 3 or 4 at a time. I know that's abusing the AI but undead are supposed to be dumb, right?

The dragon was just as expected. I would've had absolutely zero chance of killing it on my own but Irileth is a bad ass. Gonna be good to have my own spot now.

Also I didn't realize that becoming a werewolf gives you +100 to health and stamina. No wonder things have been going smoother lately.

 

[mastroego]

I felt the same about Draugr, yep it's fine to cheese them imho.
About the first dragon, consider that he arrives already wounded, too. Honestly triggering dragons too early might be a problem, you'll have to be careful.

 

[DraQ]

I had another fun fight today. 2 on 1 vs a couple of bandits -- one sword and board, one greatsword, both heavy armor. It went down inside Halted Stream camp -- the one near Whiterun with all the iron ore veins and the mammoth corpse -- and the tricky thing is that the dungeon is quite narrow. You don't have a lot of room to kite around, especially when outnumbered.

The bandits were pretty tough and could drop me in 3 or 4 clean hits, even doing some damage through my blocks. I started out trying to take the 2H guy down quick to even the odds, but soon realized I wasn't going to overpower them. I decided to slow it down and just focus on distance, blocking, and countering with one precise shot at a time. And I won that way without even losing much health.

It's cool the extent to which the mod rewards a tactical approach. After dying in the beginning I legit thought I couldn't beat those guys and would have to come back later. But the real issue is I was just playing like a popamoler.

Anyway I'm level 10 now so thinking about giving Bleak Falls Barrow another go. I am also looking forward to the first dragon fight so I can die horribly finally get a place to cook and store food.

And this is how you git gud.

Halted stream is relatively tough for beginners (both players and characters). It is relatively confined and there are a lot of enemies, including a higher level bandit boss. OTOH if you manage to be stealthy, you can ignite spilled oil, turning the entire lower level into a lake of fire, which will burn the bandits until they evacuate, maybe even kill a few weaker ones.

 

[Zanzoken]

About the first dragon, consider that he arrives already wounded, too. Honestly triggering dragons too early might be a problem, you'll have to be careful.

On my first try Irileth got him down to pretty low health but then went down and I had no way to heal her. I thought I might be able to finish him off but there was no chance. My hits barely even scratched him while one direct hit from a fireball, bite, or tail = game over.

So yeah, my plan for the foreseeable future is that if I see a dragon and I am running the fuck away. And I have a policy of maintaining a save in-town prior to venturing out, so if I can't get away, I will reload.

I am at a weird stage in leveling right now where 1H, Heavy Armor, and Block are all mid-30s and I can't take any new perks in those trees until I hit 50. So I decided to take up Smithing. From what I've read online you can craft some pretty solid gear in Requiem, and Nords start with +10 in that skill anyway. So my next task is to power level -- apparently once you get to 50 in Smithing it's basically cruise control from there, since that is where you unlock jewelry and the skill levels based on the gold value of the items you craft.

I am considering taking up Marksmanship too to help diversify my attack a little bit, especially against dragons. But don't want to spread my build too thin.

 

[mastroego]

Yeah 50 is a threshold for a lot of things.
By design, as I understand.
Requiem places A LOT of importance on Perks, and so it restricts access to the medium/upper perk tier to characters who actually are skilled in the relevant abilities.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

After trying to install mods for an entire day and ending up just deleting everything: Skyrim mods are a fucking nightmare. Dozens of guides on how to mod Skyrim because autists keep remaking the same mods over and over. Incompatibilities everywhere. CTDs are the norm.

Modding FNV is so much fucking easier than Skyrim. Essentially everything has 1 accepted mod and there's generally large compatibility between all the major mods. Skyrim shiteaters just fuck everything up because they think nobody is going to use any mod but theirs.


This is the typical mod author for Skyrim:

Nothing is compatible with ICAIO. Shurah's behaviour guaranteed that. (I am biased. Shurah threatened to sue me for asking for a patch, then later threatened to fly to Canada to have a swing at assaulting me.)

...

My old Nexus account had everything attached to it. You could contact my email, or FB, and Shurah did. He used that to spread (expletive - deleted) all over my work's FB account, and threatened to board an international flight for the sake of committing assault. Then he went on a multi-day rant that he kept deleting about all the work he did for the Skyrim community, how all the code he worked on was his intellectual property, and the modding community were ungrateful thieves.

I had to get help from the Nexus staff to change account information (I'm a premium user, so credit information was tied into it) and had to deal with HR at work to explain why some random foreigner was freaking out on their social media site about a video game.

That's not "stressed out", that's flat out unhinged. I have no idea how he's not banned

Even the mods for this game are fucked.

 

[RNGsus]

The fans of this series have done themselves no favors, but they're largely superfluous anyway. Bethesda don't make the bulk of their sales from returning customers, but from new ones. They listen to Todd, KNOW WHAT THAT IS, and fill comments sections with wish lists of shit.

 

[Zanzoken]

Modders lol.

rusty_shackleford if you are just looking for Requiem and some other non-popamole stuff here are the current mods I am using. Using version 1.9 of Requiem and no compatibility issues so far.

Spoiler

Gameplay
- Requiem
- Frostfall
- Campfire
- iNeed

Content
- Immersive Patrols
- Better Fast Travel (Carriages and Ships)

Presentation
- SkyUI
- A Quality World Map
- Immersive HUD
- Less Intrusive HUD II
- Enhanced Night Skyrim

There is also a patch mod for Requiem that can accommodate more stuff. Or Ultimate Skyrim if you want to go wild.

 

[Yosharian]

I'm not sure you can paint the entire modding community with such a large brush based on that one account, but I'd agree that it's full of drama.

But, you have to keep in mind that Beth created a lot of problems when they divided the community over paid mods.

 

[Hirato]

A lot of people also went completely mental with Trump's election, like that guy who made Civil War Overhaul.

 

[RNGsus]

A lot of people also went completely mental with Trump's election, like that guy who made Civil War Overhaul.

Oh, that dumb cunt made the worst fucking nexus page I'd ever seen. He spent more time on that shit than his mod, not surprised he was insane.

Classic example of a modder bitching about Bugthesda not respecting lore or finishing their game, then instead of panning it investing millions of hours in their communiry and tools. What a tool.

 

[DraQ]

Guy's mods were pretty great, though, including some I'd consider nigh essential - like DCO - and now you won't be able to get them through legit channels.
He also fought on the right side of that paid mods shitstorm.

Shame he did pretty much the same thing payfucks were (rightly) accused of doing - took his toys breaking everyone else's stuff.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm not sure you can paint the entire modding community with such a large brush based on that one account, but I'd agree that it's full of drama.

But, you have to keep in mind that Beth created a lot of problems when they divided the community over paid mods.

anyone who releases their mod under any license other than GPL(or similar copyleft licenses) is a fucking douchebag

You're not making entire games, it's a single mod for a game. Get over yourselves.

 

[RNGsus]

Guy's mods were pretty great, though, including some I'd consider nigh essential - like DCO - and now you won't be able to get them through legit channels.
He also fought on the right side of that paid mods shitstorm.

Shame he did pretty much the same thing payfucks were (rightly) accused of doing - took his toys breaking everyone else's stuff.

I'm biased off the dial, all I can remember were his dick-wagging tirades and horrendous nexus page. I had to scroll through half a dozen memes and pick out information where I could, because he couldn't fotmat for shit. I ignored his stuff, I do not like mod hunting.

 

[Zanzoken]

anyone who releases their mod under any license other than GPL(or similar copyleft licenses) is a fucking douchebag

You're not making entire games, it's a single mod for a game. Get over yourselves.

What if Skyrim is the mod and the mods are entire game

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Someone once said that Appolo's reasoning for going balls deep with the memes was that he got fed up with the "what is winrar" people ignoring instructions, so he wrote the pages in a way that you wouldn't touch his mods until you knew some basic troubleshooting yourself.

After trying to install mods for an entire day and ending up just deleting everything: Skyrim mods are a fucking nightmare. Dozens of guides on how to mod Skyrim because autists keep remaking the same mods over and over. Incompatibilities everywhere. CTDs are the norm.

Install one mod for each aspect of the game and it'll most likely work fine, you only need complex guides if you're trying something like making 3 combat mods play nice together.

NV's approach is easier but has the disadvantage of less options if you don't like the main mod's way of doing things.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

After trying to install mods for an entire day and ending up just deleting everything: Skyrim mods are a fucking nightmare. Dozens of guides on how to mod Skyrim because autists keep remaking the same mods over and over. Incompatibilities everywhere. CTDs are the norm.

Modding FNV is so much fucking easier than Skyrim. Essentially everything has 1 accepted mod and there's generally large compatibility between all the major mods. Skyrim shiteaters just fuck everything up because they think nobody is going to use any mod but theirs.


This is the typical mod author for Skyrim:

Nothing is compatible with ICAIO. Shurah's behaviour guaranteed that. (I am biased. Shurah threatened to sue me for asking for a patch, then later threatened to fly to Canada to have a swing at assaulting me.)

...

My old Nexus account had everything attached to it. You could contact my email, or FB, and Shurah did. He used that to spread (expletive - deleted) all over my work's FB account, and threatened to board an international flight for the sake of committing assault. Then he went on a multi-day rant that he kept deleting about all the work he did for the Skyrim community, how all the code he worked on was his intellectual property, and the modding community were ungrateful thieves.

I had to get help from the Nexus staff to change account information (I'm a premium user, so credit information was tied into it) and had to deal with HR at work to explain why some random foreigner was freaking out on their social media site about a video game.

That's not "stressed out", that's flat out unhinged. I have no idea how he's not banned

Even the mods for this game are fucked.

Use Mod Organiser. It uses virtual folders that are separate from the game so you can uninstall and re-install easily. preventing huge compatibility issues and fuckery. Also it has built in support for LOOT so it automatically puts the load order of everything properly. Plus you have customisable mod profiles if you want a certain set of mods to be active. You can then tie that into save games that only show up for that profile. It also works for New Vegas. All of Beth's games from Oblivion onwards. Makes managing huge modlists a breeze.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Get a mod to turn the graphics into a 2D hand-drawn world, another for fast travel and skip the empty wilderness and a last one to turn the battle system into a turn based system and you got yourself a good game.