Improving Skyrim / Recommended Mods thread (Mostly about Requiem)

[Lemming42]

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.

I might check it out but at this point I've suffered through so much Fallout and Elder Scrolls modding over the past decade that I'll gladly sit here clicking download for 12 hours as long as Wabbajack handles absolutely everything else.

^ This is the full extent of the effort I'm willing to put into modding.

 

[coldcrow]

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.

Wildlander is just an easier Requiem, gameplay-wise. Rest of the mods are Gfx, QL, and "immersive" crap like woodchopping or w/e.
Play Serenity, it's the far better big requiem modlist.

 

[Lemming42]

Played like an hour of Wildlander and uninstalled. It looked quite impressive visually (though the character models and textures were really shit) but I didn't like much else. The hunger/thirst/cleanliness system is just irritating - Skyrim is a game that perpetually threatens to become dull and tedious, why would you add a new set of annoying mechanics that virtually ensure people will get sick of the game quicker than ever??? The expanded towns were kind of cool, but then again, all trips to towns in this game are completely perfunctory because you're meant to spend 95% of your time in dungeons, so in practice it's just a bunch of new NPCs and pointless buildings to walk past on your way to the nearest store where you'll dump your whole inventory.

There's an argonian dude in Riverwood now. I went up and really looked at his nostrils, full analysis, incredibly thorough inspection. I guess his nostrils did look a bit more immersive than usual.

The really cool thing I noticed was master-level chests in stores, holding the shop's whole inventory like in Morrowind. Skilled thieves can therefore break in and just take whatever. Should have been in the game from the start.

I dunno what to do now. Don't want to use another Wabbajack modlist because the lack of control over what's going into your game really sucks and you end up with stupid shit like Wildlander's cinematic letterbox zoom conversations, which made me avoid NPCs even more than usual. I guess I'll have to do everything manually. Looking over mastroego's list, looks good. I'm interested in doing a stealth playthrough so if anyone has any stealth mod recs, now's the time.

 

[mastroego]

Played like an hour of Wildlander and uninstalled. It looked quite impressive visually (though the character models and textures were really shit) but I didn't like much else. The hunger/thirst/cleanliness system is just irritating - Skyrim is a game that perpetually threatens to become dull and tedious, why would you add a new set of annoying mechanics that virtually ensure people will get sick of the game quicker than ever??? The expanded towns were kind of cool, but then again, all trips to towns in this game are completely perfunctory because you're meant to spend 95% of your time in dungeons, so in practice it's just a bunch of new NPCs and pointless buildings to walk past on your way to the nearest store where you'll dump your whole inventory.

There's an argonian dude in Riverwood now. I went up and really looked at his nostrils, full analysis, incredibly thorough inspection. I guess his nostrils did look a bit more immersive than usual.

The really cool thing I noticed was master-level chests in stores, holding the shop's whole inventory like in Morrowind. Skilled thieves can therefore break in and just take whatever. Should have been in the game from the start.

I dunno what to do now. Don't want to use another Wabbajack modlist because the lack of control over what's going into your game really sucks and you end up with stupid shit like Wildlander's cinematic letterbox zoom conversations, which made me avoid NPCs even more than usual. I guess I'll have to do everything manually. Looking over mastroego's list, looks good. I'm interested in doing a stealth playthrough so if anyone has any stealth mod recs, now's the time.

The key with the needs/cold mods is to regulate them a bit. You don't want the nuisance indeed, but the feeling that you can't totally ignore weather or food in your travel planning and preparations adds to the game.
At least with the kind of game I tried to set up.
For instance with Frostfall you come to see the cold areas as "high-level" ones, since eventually you'll have more tools to deal with the cold.
But you CAN do a sortie of sorts anytime if you really need it.

Luckily all these mods can be tuned via MCM.
I use a 50% modifier for Frostfall - but I also have a Nord character, with some innate frost resistance.
Your "nuisance threshold" might be different of course.
If you look at my list be sure to check the updated one in the previous page

 

[Lambach]

Tried playing with some of those popular mods in addition to Requiem, like Frostfall. I felt like most of them just add tedium with no real value. Requiem already prohibits fast travel, so if I have to go back and forth between two places for a quest, I wanna be able to use the shortest route, and if that route happens to go through a lake, the last thing I want is to worry about my character's frozen balls every time. Same for those "realistic needs" types of mods. That stuff worked well in Hardcore New Vegas because the game was designed with that in mind by the development team, it wasn't tacked on later by a lone autismo. Stuff like that can be interesting early game, while you're still a schmuk trying to survive and this adds another layer to that. But when I get to the point where I'm a demigod fucking up Dragons without breaking a sweat, that "remember to eat and sleep" thing just feels ridiculous and is nothing more than boring busywork.

 

[mastroego]

Tried playing with some of those popular mods in addition to Requiem, like Frostfall. I felt like most of them just add tedium with no real value. Requiem already prohibits fast travel, so if I have to go back and forth between two places for a quest, I wanna be able to use the shortest route, and if that route happens to go through a lake, the last thing I want is to worry about my character's frozen balls every time. Same for those "realistic needs" types of mods. That stuff worked well in Hardcore New Vegas because the game was designed with that in mind by the development team, it wasn't tacked on later by a lone autismo. Stuff like that can be interesting early game, while you're still a schmuk trying to survive and this adds another layer to that. But when I get to the point where I'm a demigod fucking up Dragons without breaking a sweat, that "remember to eat and sleep" thing just feels ridiculous and is nothing more than boring busywork.

That's a good point, in fact it's what they're there for basically, for the fist part of the game where you need to survive.
I even allow Fast Travel to be honest, once a path is clear from previous passage and I don't feel like larping the walk again I'll use it.
With needs mods you'll need to tune it again once it gets trivial, with Frostfall in theory you should get more resistant eventually.

But I can certainly understand if you think this is all too much autism.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Requiem like mods are just for autists. There are some good ideas behind them but in general they make huge drop in the gameplay value.

 

[Yosharian]

Requiem like mods are just for autists. There are some good ideas behind them but in general they make huge drop in the gameplay value.

wat

 

[coldcrow]

Played like an hour of Wildlander and uninstalled. It looked quite impressive visually (though the character models and textures were really shit) but I didn't like much else. The hunger/thirst/cleanliness system is just irritating - Skyrim is a game that perpetually threatens to become dull and tedious, why would you add a new set of annoying mechanics that virtually ensure people will get sick of the game quicker than ever??? The expanded towns were kind of cool, but then again, all trips to towns in this game are completely perfunctory because you're meant to spend 95% of your time in dungeons, so in practice it's just a bunch of new NPCs and pointless buildings to walk past on your way to the nearest store where you'll dump your whole inventory.

There's an argonian dude in Riverwood now. I went up and really looked at his nostrils, full analysis, incredibly thorough inspection. I guess his nostrils did look a bit more immersive than usual.

The really cool thing I noticed was master-level chests in stores, holding the shop's whole inventory like in Morrowind. Skilled thieves can therefore break in and just take whatever. Should have been in the game from the start.

I dunno what to do now. Don't want to use another Wabbajack modlist because the lack of control over what's going into your game really sucks and you end up with stupid shit like Wildlander's cinematic letterbox zoom conversations, which made me avoid NPCs even more than usual. I guess I'll have to do everything manually. Looking over mastroego's list, looks good. I'm interested in doing a stealth playthrough so if anyone has any stealth mod recs, now's the time.

As I said, Serenity is the far better list. Just say No after the first sleep in a bed to Sunhelm.

 

[Grunker]

People claiming Requiem is for autists baffle me. There's two options: either they just speak based on their expecations without having ever touched one of the popular lists, or they are actually the kind of new age faggots who can't handle having their free form "gameplay" disturbed by actual choice.

Requiem-lists aren't really very hard or finnicky for the most part

 

[mastroego]

Requiem is great.
I'm having a blast with this new run.

Sure you have to be in sync with the approach.
With Requiem you will be a hobo-regular dude up until the whereabouts of level 20.
Therefore, you shouldn't even think about challenging the beasts of myth for quite a long while.
You will mostly be involved in "human" affairs and quests - stuff that regular folks can handle.
Of course, when you approach that 20-something threshold, you'll be closer to an exceptional fellow than a regular one. Able even to deal with relative ease even with a number of "human" enemies at the same time. And the odd troll and the like.

But by that time, you will also be able to dabble into some of the mythical stuff, clear some ancient tomb and the like or perhaps even have the occasional business involving daedra.
If all goes well you'll come out of such endevours with even improved expertise and some interesting artifacts that'll help you make the jump into the "hero" tier.
Eventually indeed, you'll be a hero of renown that'll be fit for the happenings the main quest will throw at you - at least the initial ones.
From there you'll be on the long path to actual legendary status.

I'm close to that point now. Level 23 though probably, I realize, I had still underestimated the strenght of even regular dragons. I can kill one solo only at the cost of burning through an entire stock of potions AND poisons.
I have very little armor penetration so my weapons can't basically hurt them yet, without poisons.
And I think I'll wait to acquire a bit more resistances first, somehow.
Still, good stuff.

EDIT: I'm about to attempt the Destroy the Dark Brotherhood quest.
Had I started with the orphanage early, it wouldn't surely have been possible, this has to be said.
Killing Astrid in the shack is no trivial task for a 20 level character, she is a master assassin after all, so it makes sense. Still, ouch. I almost had to go back to a much earlier save....

 

[Yosharian]

Destroy the Dark Brotherhood is not really rewarding compared to doing the DB questline. It is fun for role-playing though. I'd do it once but not more than that, the rewards from the DB quests are just too good. And it's a fun questline.

 

[BruceVC]

Requiem is great.
I'm having a blast with this new run.

Sure you have to be in sync with the approach.
With Requiem you will be a hobo-regular dude up until the whereabouts of level 20.
Therefore, you shouldn't even think about challenging the beasts of myth for quite a long while.
You will mostly be involved in "human" affairs and quests - stuff that regular folks can handle.
Of course, when you approach that 20-something threshold, you'll be closer to an exceptional fellow than a regular one. Able even to deal with relative ease even with a number of "human" enemies at the same time. And the odd troll and the like.

But by that time, you will also be able to dabble into some of the mythical stuff, clear some ancient tomb and the like or perhaps even have the occasional business involving daedra.
If all goes well you'll come out of such endevours with even improved expertise and some interesting artifacts that'll help you make the jump into the "hero" tier.
Eventually indeed, you'll be a hero of renown that'll be fit for the happenings the main quest will throw at you - at least the initial ones.
From there you'll be on the long path to actual legendary status.

I'm close to that point now. Level 23 though probably, I realize, I had still underestimated the strenght of even regular dragons. I can kill one solo only at the cost of burning through an entire stock of potions AND poisons.
I have very little armor penetration so my weapons can't basically hurt them yet, without poisons.
And I think I'll wait to acquire a bit more resistances first, somehow.
Still, good stuff.

EDIT: I'm about to attempt the Destroy the Dark Brotherhood quest.
Had I started with the orphanage early, it wouldn't surely have been possible, this has to be said.
Killing Astrid in the shack is no trivial task for a 20 level character, she is a master assassin after all, so it makes sense. Still, ouch. I almost had to go back to a much earlier save....

I must say you have convinced me about the value of Requiem and the other mods you selected. Once I have completed Oblivion and Im ready for Skyrim SE Anniversary I will let get your advice again

I appreciate the fact your knowledge is based on real understanding and hands on experience with seeing what mods work and how they influence the overall game

 

[mastroego]

Destroy the Dark Brotherhood is not really rewarding compared to doing the DB questline. It is fun for role-playing though. I'd do it once but not more than that, the rewards from the DB quests are just too good. And it's a fun questline.

I'll take your word for it, I've never played it as I don't like the idea of becoming an Assassin.
Actually I hear it's one of the more accessible big quests, as far as Requiem goes. It's just that if you want to go against the guild, you'll have to face the boss at the beginning, so there, it's going to be tough.

EDIT: forgot to mention, I'm playing with Destroy the Dark Brotherhood Enhanced which allows to start the whole thing without a murder, and then makes most of the items elsewhere if you go the "destroy" path.
I still never seen the items before so I don't what would be missing otherwise.

I must say you have convinced me about the value of Requiem and the other mods you selected. Once I have completed Oblivion and Im ready for Skyrim SE Anniversary I will let get your advice again
I appreciate the fact your knowledge is based on real understanding and hands on experience with seeing what mods work and how they influence the overall game

Anytime pal
And perhaps one day I might be able to return to my Oblivion game, too :D

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Destroy the Dark Brotherhood is not really rewarding compared to doing the DB questline

Easy way of feeding the Ebony Blade though.

I'm close to that point now. Level 23 though probably, I realize, I had still underestimated the strenght of even regular dragons. I can kill one solo only at the cost of burning through an entire stock of potions AND poisons.
I have very little armor penetration so my weapons can't basically hurt them yet, without poisons.

Or you could take them on horseback, Mount and Blade style.

 

[BruceVC]

Destroy the Dark Brotherhood is not really rewarding compared to doing the DB questline. It is fun for role-playing though. I'd do it once but not more than that, the rewards from the DB quests are just too good. And it's a fun questline.

I'll take your word for it, I've never played it as I don't like the idea of becoming an Assassin.
Actually I hear it's one of the more accessible big quests, as far as Requiem goes. It's just that if you want to go against the guild, you'll have to face the boss at the beginning, so there, it's going to be tough.

EDIT: forgot to mention, I'm playing with Destroy the Dark Brotherhood Enhanced which allows to start the whole thing without a murder, and then makes most of the items elsewhere if you go the "destroy" path.
I still never seen the items before so I don't what would be missing otherwise.

I must say you have convinced me about the value of Requiem and the other mods you selected. Once I have completed Oblivion and Im ready for Skyrim SE Anniversary I will let get your advice again
I appreciate the fact your knowledge is based on real understanding and hands on experience with seeing what mods work and how they influence the overall game

Anytime pal
And perhaps one day I might be able to return to my Oblivion game, too :D

Masie what mod manager do you use and if you dont use Nexus Mod Manager, like I do, why dont you use it ? I am relatively " new " to using mods ( only started 4 years ago ) and Nexus just seemed the most convenient

Also what mod manager do other members use?

 

[mastroego]

I use Mod Organizer 2.
I believe it's more or less the standard nowadays.

 

[Yosharian]

Destroy the Dark Brotherhood is not really rewarding compared to doing the DB questline. It is fun for role-playing though. I'd do it once but not more than that, the rewards from the DB quests are just too good. And it's a fun questline.

I'll take your word for it, I've never played it as I don't like the idea of becoming an Assassin.
Actually I hear it's one of the more accessible big quests, as far as Requiem goes. It's just that if you want to go against the guild, you'll have to face the boss at the beginning, so there, it's going to be tough.

EDIT: forgot to mention, I'm playing with Destroy the Dark Brotherhood Enhanced which allows to start the whole thing without a murder, and then makes most of the items elsewhere if you go the "destroy" path.
I still never seen the items before so I don't what would be missing otherwise.

I must say you have convinced me about the value of Requiem and the other mods you selected. Once I have completed Oblivion and Im ready for Skyrim SE Anniversary I will let get your advice again
I appreciate the fact your knowledge is based on real understanding and hands on experience with seeing what mods work and how they influence the overall game

Anytime pal
And perhaps one day I might be able to return to my Oblivion game, too :D

Masie what mod manager do you use and if you dont use Nexus Mod Manager, like I do, why dont you use it ? I am relatively " new " to using mods ( only started 4 years ago ) and Nexus just seemed the most convenient

Also what mod manager do other members use?

Mod Organizer 2 is the gold standard for mod managers

 

[Yosharian]

NMM is pretty poor by comparison and should only be used if you are installing a very small number of mods.

MO2 is harder to learn but is much more advanced. If you are not an experienced modder I would highly recommend looking at Wabbajack as a solution for playing highly customized Skyrim modlists

 

[Hirato]

Masie what mod manager do you use and if you dont use Nexus Mod Manager, like I do, why dont you use it ? I am relatively " new " to using mods ( only started 4 years ago ) and Nexus just seemed the most convenient

Good lord, at least upgrade to Vortex: https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/1

 

[BruceVC]

Masie what mod manager do you use and if you dont use Nexus Mod Manager, like I do, why dont you use it ? I am relatively " new " to using mods ( only started 4 years ago ) and Nexus just seemed the most convenient

Good lord, at least upgrade to Vortex: https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/1

Sorry I meant Vortex, Im using Vortex....I dont NMM is even supported anymore?

 

[BruceVC]

I wanted to share my Oblivion mod experience using Vortex, I am use to Vortex but I will use Mod Organizer for Skyrim SE

So I installed about 180 mods and spent about 20 hours selecting them and then doing some rule and load order troubleshooting until Vortex reported everything was stable

But I couldn't load Oblivion from Steam, I then spent more or less another 8 hours troubleshooting this problem and even reinstalled Oblivion twice and deleted the Oblivion.ini several times. But I then realized the problem is clearly with the mods even though Vortex says everything is fine

So all I did is go to the Data Files section in the startup of Oblivion and just started unticking 3 mods at a time to see which mod was causing the issue and I found it, the unofficial patch for knights of nine. Once I unticked that its working fine and Im good to go

 

[Yosharian]

I wanted to share my Oblivion mod experience using Vortex, I am use to Vortex but I will use Mod Organizer for Skyrim SE

So I installed about 180 mods and spent about 20 hours selecting them and then doing some rule and load order troubleshooting until Vortex reported everything was stable

But I couldn't load Oblivion from Steam, I then spent more or less another 8 hours troubleshooting this problem and even reinstalled Oblivion twice and deleted the Oblivion.ini several times. But I then realized the problem is clearly with the mods even though Vortex says everything is fine

So all I did is go to the Data Files section in the startup of Oblivion and just started unticking 3 mods at a time to see which mod was causing the issue and I found it, the unofficial patch for knights of nine. Once I unticked that its working fine and Im good to go

Enjoy playing for 5 hours then watching your savegame succumb to crashes/bugs/instability

Also why the fuck are you playing Oblivion

 

[mastroego]

So all I did is go to the Data Files section in the startup of Oblivion and just started unticking 3 mods at a time to see which mod was causing the issue and I found it, the unofficial patch for knights of nine. Once I unticked that its working fine and Im good to go

Tip: next time untick one half of them and keep the other half active. So you ID which half of the modlist contains the troublesome one.
Then you proceed dividing that group into two halves.
It's a standard search algorithm, you'll get there much faster (luck aside)

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I wanted to share my Oblivion mod experience using Vortex, I am use to Vortex but I will use Mod Organizer for Skyrim SE

So I installed about 180 mods and spent about 20 hours selecting them and then doing some rule and load order troubleshooting until Vortex reported everything was stable

But I couldn't load Oblivion from Steam, I then spent more or less another 8 hours troubleshooting this problem and even reinstalled Oblivion twice and deleted the Oblivion.ini several times. But I then realized the problem is clearly with the mods even though Vortex says everything is fine

So all I did is go to the Data Files section in the startup of Oblivion and just started unticking 3 mods at a time to see which mod was causing the issue and I found it, the unofficial patch for knights of nine. Once I unticked that its working fine and Im good to go

Vortex was trying to save you but I guess even it had its limits.