Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Improving Skyrim / Recommended Mods thread (Mostly about Requiem)

mastroego

Arcane
Joined
Apr 10, 2013
Messages
10,250
Location
Italy
Depending on your character build, you might also consider:

- Simple Drop Lit Torches SE
- Non Exploitable Crossbow Reload SE
- Borgut1337's Dual Wield Parrying Non-SKSE Random Attacks


The list lacks something about the Civil War. This is simply because I've never played it and wouldn't know what to suggest.

Main list edited with notes.
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,539
Location
Nottingham
I fucking hate Skyrim. I think it's a ridiculously dull piece of trash that has neither the required depth to be entertaining as an RPG, nor the gameplay quality to be entertaining as an action game. For a game supposedly about character choice, sneak-archer is literally the only real fun way to play the game.

Anyway, bitching aside (sorry, got carried away there) I just wondered for curiosities sake if the plethora of mods now available actually make it a decent game yet?

I've not really paid any attention to anything happening with it for years now, and - regardless of all the visual and gimmicky mods which allow you to do mostly one-time things - have the modding community actually managed to salvage some semblance of an RPG from this bag of wank yet?
 

Lambach

Arcane
Joined
Feb 11, 2016
Messages
12,730
Location
Belgrade, Removekebabland
Anyway, bitching aside (sorry, got carried away there) I just wondered for curiosities sake if the plethora of mods now available actually make it a decent game yet?

Yes, Requiem. :smug:

It even heavily nerfs the stealth archer approach by making all of the most powerful enemies immune to Sneak Attacks. Vampires and Dragons are the only exception, but good luck sneaking up on them without all the Perks and a billion points in the Sneak tree.
 

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
Messages
9,430
Location
Grand Chien
I fucking hate Skyrim. I think it's a ridiculously dull piece of trash that has neither the required depth to be entertaining as an RPG, nor the gameplay quality to be entertaining as an action game. For a game supposedly about character choice, sneak-archer is literally the only real fun way to play the game.

Anyway, bitching aside (sorry, got carried away there) I just wondered for curiosities sake if the plethora of mods now available actually make it a decent game yet?

I've not really paid any attention to anything happening with it for years now, and - regardless of all the visual and gimmicky mods which allow you to do mostly one-time things - have the modding community actually managed to salvage some semblance of an RPG from this bag of wank yet?
Short answer: kind of. It depends on your standards/tolerances. The main issue is that no matter how much the gameplay is improved, the writing and quest design doesn't change dramatically - although mods like Better Quest Objectives do help with some of the flaws.

In a year or so Wildlander will be in an extremely good place IMO.
 

Ravielsk

Magister
Joined
Feb 20, 2021
Messages
1,514
Anyway, bitching aside (sorry, got carried away there) I just wondered for curiosities sake if the plethora of mods now available actually make it a decent game yet?
No and there never will be. The Skyrim modding community is too far up its own ass to even recognize what problems the game has. They are obsessed with easy and simultaneously needlessly complicated micro-tweaks that in the grand scheme of things still amount to nothing.

For example, combat. Its bad but not because the bandits are not rolling around enough or because mages are not spamming enough fireballs. Its bad because its all just one template copy pasted a couple thousand times. They all only ever suicidally charge you spamming whatever attack was assigned as their primary with 0 regard for their survival or stats. Its always the same exact encounter with just switched around participants. The end result is a game where the optimal counter to all the zerg rushes is to just never allow the rush to start with stealth archery.
The fix to this would be to make enemies with different behavioral patterns and stats. Like glass-canon mages, or low dps but high health animals and so on. Or a buff to everything else to make them viable to deal with the clone armies.
The fix applied by the community is to cripple stealth archers while providing minimal buffs to everything else.

Or roleplaying. It sucks not because of the writing but because its always railroading you down the dumbest path possible. The fix would be adding extra speech checks to let you skip the dumbest quests stages and/or open new solutions based on your skills. Or you know just making it possible to turn on the faction and just kill all the dumb-asses.
The community fix for this is to add more extensive descriptions to the quest log.
 

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
Messages
9,430
Location
Grand Chien
Anyway, bitching aside (sorry, got carried away there) I just wondered for curiosities sake if the plethora of mods now available actually make it a decent game yet?
No and there never will be. The Skyrim modding community is too far up its own ass to even recognize what problems the game has. They are obsessed with easy and simultaneously needlessly complicated micro-tweaks that in the grand scheme of things still amount to nothing.

For example, combat. Its bad but not because the bandits are not rolling around enough or because mages are not spamming enough fireballs. Its bad because its all just one template copy pasted a couple thousand times. They all only ever suicidally charge you spamming whatever attack was assigned as their primary with 0 regard for their survival or stats. Its always the same exact encounter with just switched around participants. The end result is a game where the optimal counter to all the zerg rushes is to just never allow the rush to start with stealth archery.
The fix to this would be to make enemies with different behavioral patterns and stats. Like glass-canon mages, or low dps but high health animals and so on. Or a buff to everything else to make them viable to deal with the clone armies.
The fix applied by the community is to cripple stealth archers while providing minimal buffs to everything else.
Well this person has clearly never played modern Requiem
 

mastroego

Arcane
Joined
Apr 10, 2013
Messages
10,250
Location
Italy
There's been time enough to recognize Skyrim's flaws.
It's a given that it'll never allow deep interactions with NPCs, many of whom even share the same freakin' voices (especially without mod additions).
And all that.

I just think a lot of people are dismissing its strenghts, especially (for my tastes) with a full Requiem set-up.
I'm going through it now and I can say there's no gaming equivalent to the slow but satisfying crawl from the clutches of utter helplessness to high adventure and glory you can have with Requiem.
 

volklore

Arcane
Joined
Jun 19, 2018
Messages
1,639
I fucking hate Skyrim. I think it's a ridiculously dull piece of trash that has neither the required depth to be entertaining as an RPG, nor the gameplay quality to be entertaining as an action game. For a game supposedly about character choice, sneak-archer is literally the only real fun way to play the game.

Anyway, bitching aside (sorry, got carried away there) I just wondered for curiosities sake if the plethora of mods now available actually make it a decent game yet?

I've not really paid any attention to anything happening with it for years now, and - regardless of all the visual and gimmicky mods which allow you to do mostly one-time things - have the modding community actually managed to salvage some semblance of an RPG from this bag of wank yet?
I think requiem is a small miracle tbh, and I was of the opinion that Skyrim could not be fixed for the longest time, because the first requiem version were a bit rough around the edges and had many issues. Current requiem is not perfect by any means, but it's fun. The threshold progression they decided to go for works quite well for this game, and every 'class' or character build will have distinct strengths and weaknesses and will be able to tackle certain content at different stages of the build. Really makes your character build at the center of the game while also debloating/desponging the combat.
Plus a nice active community of modders spawned around requiem and a few light tweaks and overhaul mods helped my biggest grievance with skyrim which is the leveling system. As much as I like 'learn by using' conceptually, it becomes a nightmare with crafting skills, some of which requiem made kinda crucial to some builds. For this, you now have options (experience + SSL, essentially new vegas system you gain xp through different activity and you spread skill points on level up, or 3Tweaks which awards skill points as potions in chests and quests rewards). I finally finished the main quest with my requiem + 3tweaks setup last summer as an illusion-specialized mage and it was a blast. Felt good because that's the character I played on my first vanilla playthrough and I remember Illusion was a horribly broken bore of a magic school.
And now you have wabbajack with good requiem lists available for download in one click. And they are all decent in their own way. Right now there are 3 on there, Wildlander has mostly vanilla requiem+ survival, Serenity has experience leveling and a bunch of quest mods, and additions to requiem (new perks and spells), and Arkay's Commandment is a requiem+3Tweaks list focused on gameplay modifications for Ironman players (the Dead is Dead feature can be disabled).
 
Last edited:

Ravielsk

Magister
Joined
Feb 20, 2021
Messages
1,514
I just think a lot of people are dismissing its strenghts, especially (for my tastes) with a full Requiem set-up.
The things is that those "strengths" are just baseline feature of the RPG genre that are very much present in hundreds of other RPGs without mods and attached to measurably better... well pretty much everything.
 

mastroego

Arcane
Joined
Apr 10, 2013
Messages
10,250
Location
Italy
Well my point was precisely that there's no gaming equivalent to that kind of experience, at least to my knowledge, so I just disagree.
And even if there was, if I have fun with Requiem, why not play it?
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
To me, the strengths of Skyrim is that for all its flaws, it is one of the few open world AAA that still had a traditional structure of quests and tried to look like a RPG, sure, it is a very, very watered down RPG specially for codexian incline standards but it might be sad saying this, a normie looks to Skyrim with nostalgia because he is comparing it to garbage like the trash Ubisoft and CDPR makes that is now the standard for open world "RPG". Make no mistake, Requiem doesnt turn Skyrim into a good RPG, it turns it into a playable RPG but from a normie perspective when you are used to play those Ass Creed "RPGs" like Ass Creed Odyssey and Witcher 3, Skyrim looks like a good game.
 
Joined
May 2, 2012
Messages
399
Scratch the previous Streamlined Skyrim endorsement. Was running 2 handed weapons and didn't realise that were serious slow motion bugs with the 1 handed animation sets. AoE too easily exploitable with 2 handers as well.
 

mastroego

Arcane
Joined
Apr 10, 2013
Messages
10,250
Location
Italy
A report on my experience with Requiem 5 and my modlist.
So far so good.
In fact, probably better.

I'm playing with a "cleric" build.
Light Armor, Restoration, Conjuration, and Alteration. One will be the major "sphere", the other two will be minor.
Crossbow + One Handed (haven't decided if I'll specialize in maces or swords yet. Using swords ATM though, so..)

The mods I selected are all meant to be in sync with the Requiem theme, that is, things have to make sense and feel organic rather than be gamey or "balanced".
The Sunhelm Needs mod is lightweight but, unlike other similar mods, it makes starvation and dehydration potentially lethal.
The College revisions feel great.
You actually have to be a bit proficient in magic before gaining entrance, and since not even Sarthaal is a walk in the park, when you finally start the questline the "free XPs" you can get throughout the revised College won't feel cheesy, but rather something you earned.
In fact, it's good to finally get to learn something from a freakin' school!

As expected the first levels are a bit of a crawl.
Having a follower though (Inigo) made it easier this time.
In fact, it's another thing that fits the Requiem theme quite well. The world is dangerous, and the resourceless hobo you are at the beginning would surely want to find someone to travel with for increased security.
All in all, it makes the initial phase of Requiem less of a slog and your progress more believable (if only for the fewer reloads!), while not allowing you to face foes clearly beyond your power, since they'll still disable your follower in a moment and then come after you.
I might decide to continue solo later too, we'll see.

I had to tinker a bit with the load order to get the children faces right, but the modlist seem to work as intended.
Only problem I wasn't able to solve: I'm unable to fill bottles in rivers for some reason, the ability doesn't work. I don't even know which mod theoretically handles this part. There are other ways to get drinks but it'd be nice to finally get this solved too.
All in all it's great fun anyway. I'm level 16 ATM, I'll be activating dragons shortly.
 

Lemming42

Arcane
Joined
Nov 4, 2012
Messages
6,043
Location
The Satellite Of Love
Installing Wildlander. Fuck me what a chore to set this up. Wabbajack is helping, but only in the same sense that a Hello Kitty sticking plaster "helps" someone who's been disemboweled. The amount of work I'm having to do clikcing "DOWNLOAD" a thousand times is actually unreal, even a Victorian workhouse child would agree that I've got it way worse than them.

Chose Wildlander because a) no way in hell am I modding this shit myself manually and b) the guide doc made it sound cool, but I have to say I'm perturbed that I've been sitting here for 20 mins downloading shit and so far it's been REALISTIC FENCES and BETTER ARGONIAN NOSTRILS. The gameplay mods are yet to emerge, but hey, at least I'll have great looking Argonian nostrils.
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
Patron
Joined
Sep 25, 2012
Messages
28,242
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Installing Wildlander. Fuck me what a chore to set this up. Wabbajack is helping, but only in the same sense that a Hello Kitty sticking plaster "helps" someone who's been disemboweled. The amount of work I'm having to do clikcing "DOWNLOAD" a thousand times is actually unreal, even a Victorian workhouse child would agree that I've got it way worse than them.

Chose Wildlander because a) no way in hell am I modding this shit myself manually and b) the guide doc made it sound cool, but I have to say I'm perturbed that I've been sitting here for 20 mins downloading shit and so far it's been REALISTIC FENCES and BETTER ARGONIAN NOSTRILS. The gameplay mods are yet to emerge, but hey, at least I'll have great looking Argonian nostrils.
Uh, pretty sure Argonians breathe through the gills.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
REALISTIC FENCES and BETTER ARGONIAN NOSTRILS. The gameplay mods are yet to emerge, but hey, at least I'll have great looking Argonian nostrils.
Yeah, there are alot of little autistic mods like that but it still worthy the pain, the game get really, really pretty at 4k and the end result looks like a new game on some areas but keeping close to the nordic wasteland theme of vanilla, I liked his changes in game, if I was to change all that shit mod by mod, I would waste an entire month at it.

The only big problem I got is the insane amount of space the thing requires, eventually I had to uninstall it or I wouldnt have space in drive for anything and replaying Skyrim isnt exactly a top priority.
 

Ravielsk

Magister
Joined
Feb 20, 2021
Messages
1,514
but hey, at least I'll have great looking Argonian nostrils.
I never understood this absolute level of autism Skyrim moders have with tweaking every single minor graphical detail to a point of utter insanity but then turn around and go "yeah but new quest are no go cus of voice acting".
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
but hey, at least I'll have great looking Argonian nostrils.
I never understood this absolute level of autism Skyrim moders have with tweaking every single minor graphical detail to a point of utter insanity but then turn around and go "yeah but new quest are no go cus of voice acting".
There is a reason for that, an autist is very useful to tweak things into oblivion as he doesnt get bored by spending time tweaking things to the most detail, yes, you get retarded shit like argonian nostrils but you want some dude that doesnt collapse out of boredom while playtesting his gameplay changes so they dont suck, so you need to tolerate some autist side effects.

However, you should keep an autist as far away as possible from quest dialog because he needs to learn first how humans talk before he start writing, problem is that most autists assume they know how human beings behave and talk with hilarious results.
 

Ramnozack

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Jan 29, 2017
Messages
876
Autist modlists aren't so bad if you stop being poor and buy a 1 month nexus premium sub and have wabbajack download everything automatically, or you could risk using that auto-wabbajack program which supposedly automates the downloading process without a premium sub. If this shit wasn't automated, no way in hell would I even try to install these modlists.
 

mastroego

Arcane
Joined
Apr 10, 2013
Messages
10,250
Location
Italy
Chose Wildlander because a) no way in hell am I modding this shit myself manually and b) the guide doc made it sound cool, but I have to say I'm perturbed that I've been sitting here for 20 mins downloading shit and so far it's been REALISTIC FENCES and BETTER ARGONIAN NOSTRILS. The gameplay mods are yet to emerge, but hey, at least I'll have great looking Argonian nostrils.

That's why yours truly tried to come up with an essential list with hints. ;)
If you follow that it'll still be a chore, no doubt, but the research part is basically done already and I'm not sure it'll be THAT much more trouble, at the end of the day, than using those modpacks.

Consider also that all the useless shit you get with those packs will have to be loaded every single fucking time you start the game too.
 

Lemming42

Arcane
Joined
Nov 4, 2012
Messages
6,043
Location
The Satellite Of Love
1muJi3k.png


WILDLANDER: ROLEPLAYING EVOLVED!!!
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom