Improving Skyrim / Recommended Mods thread (Mostly about Requiem)

[gurugeorge]

What's the reason of people's obsession about Skyrim and modding it? Don't get me wrong, I am not asking it in a condescending way; if you have fun, more power to you. But to me Skyrim was an offensively bad product, so moving on was the best thing I could do. So I'm geniuenly asking, what's it appeal? Did modders found solutions to poor writing, uninteresting exploration, brain dead combat, awful animations, shitty engine etc... ?
(I have never played "Special Edition" by the way; last time I played it was about a decade ago)

Modders have done a hell of a lot with the game, considering its age, they're always stretching the capabilities of the engine, and there's enough variety of modders' tastes out there that it's possible to mod an experience to your liking, whatever that may be. And as Lemming42 said, it's also fun to mod once you get into it - it's even a potential gateway into learning a little bit of scripting and programming, or 3-d modeling, texturing and all that, if it starts to grab you and you start modding yourself.

And for all the bad words one might have about Bethesda, they have created the most easily and comprehensively moddable games out there. So naturally people take advantage of that.

But even at an end-user level, you have to learn to be careful and systematic about things, which is nice. It's a great feeling when you iron out the glitches and get your set of preferred mods working (it's a feeling rather like when you build your own PC and go from, "Why the HELL isn't this hunk of junk working?" to, "Aha, it's working now!")

The downside is that it is quite time-consuming, and in a given "bout" of playing Skyrim (I've had like maybe half a dozen over the years), you might or might not end up actually playing the game for any length of time

Modding is basically a hobby within a hobby.

 

[HereticGuy]

Morrowind had detailed instructions about quest locations & what to do,; so searching for quests gave a nice exploration feeling.

Except when you look under the meaningless text fluff, Morrowind's quests p. much never rise above the level of "go to location [X] and fetch item [Y]/kill NPC [Z]".

The Dark Brotherhood Questline from fucking Oblivion alone is worth ten times more than all the shitty, horribly designed, sad excuses for "Quests" in Morrowind put together.

Can't argue about Morrowind stuff honestly; I haven't replayed in years. But as far as I remember the instructions were adequete for finding your objective. Whereas in Skyrim it is like "kill the bandit in X camp". Okay, where is that camp, can you give me some specific locations dear quest giver? Of course not, we have a GPS system for console players who doesn't like to read!

I have no idea about Dark Brotherhood quest in Oblivion, because I tried to like that piece of shit game for a few days when it released. Then I uninstalled and never played since 2006.

 

[HereticGuy]

though personally I think they did a decent enough job of presenting the country as it was described in the in-game books of the earlier games, and the 200~ year timeskip let them portray the Empire as being in decay and collapse, which acts as a nice contrast to Morrowind's depiction of a rapidly-expanding colonialist Empire imposing itself on a new frontier.

I see. I am not familiar to TES lore other than Morrowind so I couldn't spot these details you mentioned.

but it can still be a compelling experience if you remain open-minded.

Yeah, maybe I can try it again when I have time and accept it for what it is.

And for all the bad words one might have about Bethesda, they have created the most easily and comprehensively moddable games out there.

This is the only reason why I still have some respect to Bethesda. But on the other hand, I hate consumers' "modders gonna fix / complete it" mentality towards half-assed releasing games (and how Bethesda can get away with it since two decades)

 

[Grunker]

Yeah, maybe I can try it again when I have time and accept it for what it is.

Here's what Wildlander does: makes the systems and the core gameplay loop *infinitely* more interesting and actually fun, puzzling and challenging to interact with (play with the survival options).

Here's what Wildlander doesn't do: fix the God-awful quests, dialogue and retarded Bethesda-shit

Here's what Wildlander kindda does: patches the combat (it's still a broken base, but now it has robust and fairly complex systems on top of it + it's actually hard when it needs to be), patches the world (Skyrim's world was not toooooo bad to begin with, and Wildlander makes interacting with it better and spawns flavour everywhere)

If approached correctly, Wildlander (and mods like it) can be a fun challenge that actually takes advantage of the open world and builds it into the gameplay challenge. However, if you expect it to transform Skyrim completely, you'll be disappointed.

 

[Valdetiosi]

Fuck it, I'll give Wildlander a go, I could stomach Oblivion with Maskar's Overhaul cause despite not changing quests, dialogue or bethesda-shit, it did improve on dungeon crawling, level scaling and health bloat.
I'm just extremely pissed off that it's gonna take 3 days to install all mods even with Wabbajack. Seems to be there can't be a good single overhaul mod, it gotta be spread out to hundreds of plugins.

 

[Ravielsk]

Seems to be there can't be a good single overhaul mod, it gotta be spread out to hundreds of plugins.

Blame the primadona modders who cannot stomach the idea of having their work used by anyone besides them and the sites that enable them. In the oblivion days a lot of mods were just cobbled together compilations of many other mods because nobody asked nor demanded a permission to use another man's mod for his own(with maybe the exception of custom made assets). Today you cannot even copy paste a generic script without someone throwing a hissy fit over "stealing".

 

[Yosharian]

Fuck it, I'll give Wildlander a go, I could stomach Oblivion with Maskar's Overhaul cause despite not changing quests, dialogue or bethesda-shit, it did improve on dungeon crawling, level scaling and health bloat.
I'm just extremely pissed off that it's gonna take 3 days to install all mods even with Wabbajack. Seems to be there can't be a good single overhaul mod, it gotta be spread out to hundreds of plugins.

Have you played Enderal yet?

 

[Valdetiosi]

Have you played Enderal yet?

I did, didn't like it.
Hopped back to Nehrim instead.

 

[Yosharian]

Fair enough. I was going to recommend The Path but I guess if you didn't like Enderal you probably wouldn't like Enderal with knobs on.

 

[Valdetiosi]

So I tried out Wildlander after spending entire night just having those mods installed, I start the game and I'm greeted to character creation. All good so far.
Then when I'm actually in game the framerate drastically drops to 30. I'm wondering why, The game specs do recommend GPU that is prolly more powerful than what I currently have (GTX 1060), but CPU is equal if not more powerful, and just to be extra safe, I did put graphic settings from ultra to medium. Would it kill to have advanced settings for every possible graphical feature?

I start from Dawnstar and make my journey to Windward Ruins, 2 skeevers inside. While I do like the field dressing mechanic, it is kind of silly that time passed about 12 hours when I skinned both rats, and my character announces she's already cold, tired and thirsty. No worries, it seemed the game is lenient enough to start you with food already, unlike many other games that just have you to instantly work up money to get your pirmary needs filled.
Then I just walk down a road trying to head towards Whiterun and not even spitting distance away from Dawnstar there's a Frost Troll. Something that swipes me off in 5 hits, propably 1 if I wouldn't be wearing heavy armor. Sure, that's not a problem, what is a problem is every damage I deal gets healed instantly back since the regeneration is buffed. Had to take him back to town so guards could kill him, but it took cost of 3 guards and 1 civilian.

My issue is not with how Frost Troll was made, cause its clearly meant as enemy for higher level you shouldn't tackle with. What I have issue with is with the enemy spawning method that mod author decided or not decided to change, cause I remember simiiliar stuff like this happening in Requiem. I'm all for no level scaling, but you have to account with that how to design enemy placement and spawning.
That's what I liked about Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul, the difficulty of encounters was depending how far away you were from civilization. New Vegas also got it straight, the only enemies you had to worry about sticking at roads were if some raider happened to have grenade launcher spawned with them. You leave bullshit enemies like this out of the road.

I know I just started, but I'm already uninstalling this. I can tolerate poor performance or grinding up on low enemies until being capable of tackling high level enemies, but not both at the same time.

EDIT: I also forgot to mention but I improved my smithing skills by picking up flowers. I don't know if this is intentional or not.

 

[Yosharian]

1) You should lower your shaders with such a weak card (game launcher). 30 FPS is to be expected if you run the game at Ultra on a potato video card.
2) You chose a challenging alternate start location, so you should set your expectations accordingly.
3) Passage of time while skinning is certainly a mechanic people would have differing opinions about, but just to make some observations - a skeever is a medium sized rodent, not really a rat, and you begin the game with almost no skinning skill. 12 hours is certainly a long time, but with zero skill, it's not entirely unrealistic. Wildlander is a survival modlist - you should not expect to be a professional hunter from level 1. Furthermore, if the time taken to do this truly bothers you that much then you can change it in the in-game menus.
4) Yes, Frost Trolls exist on the roads and they represent an extreme challenge. Is Skyrim meant to be a safe place to live? Does the presence of a road mean no dangerous enemies are to be expected? Wouldn't it make sense for an apex predator to roam a road since prey often travels on it? Your whining makes little sense, frankly. You seem upset because you got filtered by mid-game enemy at level 1.

Overall I would say that Wildlander doesn't appear to be the modlist for you, so you probably made the right choice.

 

[Valdetiosi]

1) You should lower your shaders with such a weak card (game launcher). 30 FPS is to be expected if you run the game at Ultra on a potato video card.

I did say I put graphics from ultra to medium.

2) You chose a challenging alternate start location, so you should set your expectations accordingly.

The fuck? I expected that I wouldn't get bodied nearby a town, is that too much to ask? Do people love the system like Fallout 3 where Deathclaws can spawn right outside gates of Megaton?

3) Passage of time while skinning is certainly a mechanic people would have differing opinions about, but just to make some observations - a skeever is a medium sized rodent, not really a rat, and you begin the game with almost no skinning skill. 12 hours is certainly a long time, but with zero skill, it's not entirely unrealistic. Wildlander is a survival modlist - you should not expect to be a professional hunter from level 1. Furthermore, if the time taken to do this truly bothers you that much then you can change it in the in-game menus.

Oh, it's survival modlist, well I that should have alarmed bells already. And I did turn it off upon realizing you can still change in game options.

4) Yes, Frost Trolls exist on the roads and they represent an extreme challenge. Is Skyrim meant to be a safe place to live? Does the presence of a road mean no dangerous enemies are to be expected? Wouldn't it make sense for an apex predator to roam a road since prey often travels on it? Your whining makes little sense, frankly. You seem upset because you got filtered by mid-game enemy at level 1.

I start a game on Morrowind, even with alternate start, every town's surroundings doesn't contain a wildlife that you need to draw town guards to help you deal with so you can advance around the region.
Even games with harsh worlds don't throw you at wolves at the very moment you start off the game.

 

[mastroego]

2) You chose a challenging alternate start location, so you should set your expectations accordingly.

The fuck? I expected that I wouldn't get bodied nearby a town, is that too much to ask? Do people love the system like Fallout 3 where Deathclaws can spawn right outside gates of Megaton?

Remember that distances are "compressed" in the game.
Also not all cities are located in similarly dangerous places.
At low levels you should avoid travelling even to remote towns ALONE. You might probably pay for passage on carriages though (I'm talking Requiem, upon which the modlist is based I think).
Central Skyrim is pretty safe though if you stay on the roads.

3) Passage of time while skinning is certainly a mechanic people would have differing opinions about, but just to make some observations - a skeever is a medium sized rodent, not really a rat, and you begin the game with almost no skinning skill. 12 hours is certainly a long time, but with zero skill, it's not entirely unrealistic. Wildlander is a survival modlist - you should not expect to be a professional hunter from level 1. Furthermore, if the time taken to do this truly bothers you that much then you can change it in the in-game menus.

Oh, it's survival modlist, well I that should have alarmed bells already. And I did turn it off upon realizing you can still change in game options.

This is why I think it's advisable to build *your own* mod list.
Sure it's more time consuming (not even that much probably) but the results WILL be better, if you don't overdo it.
I managed to build a list I'm absolutely happy about, and it runs like not even regular Skyrim ever ran before despite the added stuff, on this freakin' exact same PC.

I start a game on Morrowind, even with alternate start, every town's surroundings doesn't contain a wildlife that you need to draw town guards to help you deal with so you can advance around the region.
Even games with harsh worlds don't throw you at wolves at the very moment you start off the game.

Well Skyrim/Requiem is a bit different. Think cold areas as regions still partly untamed by man.
The "towns" are more like outposts of civilizations there. People travel in groups.
I use cold/weather mods too so I don't usually travel to extremely cold areas until I have acquired some tools and capabilities anyway.
All in all the issue kinda of takes care of itself, in a way.
Not to mention, if you spot a troll or such, you often have ways to run/hide. It is just assumed you are at least aware the outside can always be dangerous to some degree.

 

[Valdetiosi]

if you spot a troll or such, you often have ways to run/hide

Amusingly that is a rumor/advice that is given randomly by NPCs. I suppose because of Skyrim I can't just fortify speed and nope away from dangers, but detection system being as it is, the optimal way is to have something to break eye contact between enemy.

 

[Yosharian]

You see a frost troll capering just outside a town and you think 'wait why didn't the designers of the modlist/game fix it so that you can travel safely just outside of towns? this is really badly designed'

You don't think from a role-playing perspective, such as 'oh shit, a FROST TROLL has started camping outside of the town. i should avoid that bastard completely. how interesting that a very dangerous creature is threatening this town, i will come back here later to slay it'

Instead you think that the designers have failed somehow in their creation of a dangerous, inhospitable land where only the toughest survive, and even then it's not guaranteed.

Like, I just don't understand how you see the placement of the frost troll as a negative. You are even moaning that it has powerful regeneration, which is one of the unique aspects of trolls and one of the things that makes them so interesting as a foe. You would prefer that its regeneration be so weak as to be irrelevant?

And again, I must emphasise that Dawnstar is a very challenging start location compared to, say, Whiterun. Wildlander gives you the option of starting anywhere but that doesn't mean the entire Skyrim map should be fixed to have the same difficulty as Whiterun. That would be so fucking boring.

 

[Yosharian]

If you can get hold of a horse, you can get past tough monsters like trolls by just running past them. And there are places where you can steal horses, or at least there were last time I played Requiem. Also: you can just pay for a carriage in order to travel safely around Skyrim. You know, like a normal person would who isn't yet a skilled adventurer.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Morrowind had detailed instructions about quest locations & what to do,;

lol
lmao

they began providing quest markers because their directions sucked

Go ahead, read the directions and see how long it takes you to find the location:

It's not just something that happens a few times, and you frequently get directions that are flat out wrong:


quest markers exist because their designers couldn't give directions worth shit, not because of players

 

[BruceVC]

You see a frost troll capering just outside a town and you think 'wait why didn't the designers of the modlist/game fix it so that you can travel safely just outside of towns? this is really badly designed'

You don't think from a role-playing perspective, such as 'oh shit, a FROST TROLL has started camping outside of the town. i should avoid that bastard completely. how interesting that a very dangerous creature is threatening this town, i will come back here later to slay it'

Instead you think that the designers have failed somehow in their creation of a dangerous, inhospitable land where only the toughest survive, and even then it's not guaranteed.

Like, I just don't understand how you see the placement of the frost troll as a negative. You are even moaning that it has powerful regeneration, which is one of the unique aspects of trolls and one of the things that makes them so interesting as a foe. You would prefer that its regeneration be so weak as to be irrelevant?

And again, I must emphasise that Dawnstar is a very challenging start location compared to, say, Whiterun. Wildlander gives you the option of starting anywhere but that doesn't mean the entire Skyrim map should be fixed to have the same difficulty as Whiterun. That would be so fucking boring.

I like the idea of dangerous creatures that can kill you easily in the beginning, thats a positive for modded ES games

I learn to run away or avoid those areas. How would you summarize the differences between Requiem and Wildlander and do they both work in AE edition?

 

[Yosharian]

The Wildlander wiki does a much better job of summarising the modlist than I could:

https://github.com/Wildlander-mod/Support/wiki/The-Mods

But I'll try to summarise-the-summary a bit here...

Basically Wildlander adds:

1) Requiem in a tweaked format that includes Minor Arcana and Dragonborn patch
2) Alternate start support (skips initial tutorial section of Skyrim)
3) A tweaked character creation system which allows for more diverse options
4) Vastly improved combat using Wildcat and Mortal Enemies as well as many other mods
5) Survival mods so that you must eat, drink, sleep and manage your temperature to survive
6) New hunting mechanics from the Hunterborn mod
7) A modified crafting system using CCOR which was very time-consuming to set up
8) A completely new UI using a variety of UI mods and including a custom-built sneak meter
9) A dynamic economy and a variety of 'jobs' to perform in the game world
10) Realistic penalties for committing crimes, i.e. the gods stop you from receiving their blessings
11) More realistic factions, such as the College and the Thieves' Guild having actual requirements to join
12) Spell Research and new spell visuals - SR gives you many new ways to improve your spell-casting
13) Disabled fast-travel and thus the motivation to travel via carriages/ferries, and new horse features
14) A comprehensive suite of follower mods making them less shit (no Inigo yet, though Lucien is coming soon)
15) Population mods making Skyrim's world less barren from a people perspective
16) Player housing expansions
17) Quest improvements ranging from small to quite big
18) Immersive nights, conversations, names and other features
19) A variety of miscellaneous mods such as GIST
20) FINALLY, a much improved camera and much better third-person camera support (I play 1st-person myself but there you go)

Damn, it's a lot.

 

[Yosharian]

I am waiting on an answer regarding the AE question as I'm not sure about that and the Discord is pretty dead at this time of day

Edit: hm so I don't think Wildlander works with AE currently

 

[Grunker]

You can also further mod Wildlander yourself fairly safely - but ask on the Wildlander disc about your desired mod first. They're very helpful

 

[gurugeorge]

The Wildlander wiki does a much better job of summarising the modlist than I could:

https://github.com/Wildlander-mod/Support/wiki/The-Mods

But I'll try to summarise-the-summary a bit here...

Basically Wildlander adds:

1) Requiem in a tweaked format that includes Minor Arcana and Dragonborn patch
2) Alternate start support (skips initial tutorial section of Skyrim)
3) A tweaked character creation system which allows for more diverse options
4) Vastly improved combat using Wildcat and Mortal Enemies as well as many other mods
5) Survival mods so that you must eat, drink, sleep and manage your temperature to survive
6) New hunting mechanics from the Hunterborn mod
7) A modified crafting system using CCOR which was very time-consuming to set up
8) A completely new UI using a variety of UI mods and including a custom-built sneak meter
9) A dynamic economy and a variety of 'jobs' to perform in the game world
10) Realistic penalties for committing crimes, i.e. the gods stop you from receiving their blessings
11) More realistic factions, such as the College and the Thieves' Guild having actual requirements to join
12) Spell Research and new spell visuals - SR gives you many new ways to improve your spell-casting
13) Disabled fast-travel and thus the motivation to travel via carriages/ferries, and new horse features
14) A comprehensive suite of follower mods making them less shit (no Inigo yet, though Lucien is coming soon)
15) Population mods making Skyrim's world less barren from a people perspective
16) Player housing expansions
17) Quest improvements ranging from small to quite big
18) Immersive nights, conversations, names and other features
19) A variety of miscellaneous mods such as GIST
20) FINALLY, a much improved camera and much better third-person camera support (I play 1st-person myself but there you go)

Damn, it's a lot.

It does sound great, and a lot of those mods I use myself. But with Skyrim, you always bump up against the problem that it's far too cramped a world for it to be the expansive survival sim/open world game people want it to be (judging by the mods they make for it). You eventually end up just playing Skyrim as Skryim. I always feel that to make this kind of modding meaningful, you'd have to equidistantly "stretch out" the world of Skyrim, put more distance between everything, so you weren't coming across a POI every 5 seconds.

 

[Yosharian]

Yeah that's probably true

 

[Grunker]

The Wildlander wiki does a much better job of summarising the modlist than I could:

https://github.com/Wildlander-mod/Support/wiki/The-Mods

But I'll try to summarise-the-summary a bit here...

Basically Wildlander adds:

1) Requiem in a tweaked format that includes Minor Arcana and Dragonborn patch
2) Alternate start support (skips initial tutorial section of Skyrim)
3) A tweaked character creation system which allows for more diverse options
4) Vastly improved combat using Wildcat and Mortal Enemies as well as many other mods
5) Survival mods so that you must eat, drink, sleep and manage your temperature to survive
6) New hunting mechanics from the Hunterborn mod
7) A modified crafting system using CCOR which was very time-consuming to set up
8) A completely new UI using a variety of UI mods and including a custom-built sneak meter
9) A dynamic economy and a variety of 'jobs' to perform in the game world
10) Realistic penalties for committing crimes, i.e. the gods stop you from receiving their blessings
11) More realistic factions, such as the College and the Thieves' Guild having actual requirements to join
12) Spell Research and new spell visuals - SR gives you many new ways to improve your spell-casting
13) Disabled fast-travel and thus the motivation to travel via carriages/ferries, and new horse features
14) A comprehensive suite of follower mods making them less shit (no Inigo yet, though Lucien is coming soon)
15) Population mods making Skyrim's world less barren from a people perspective
16) Player housing expansions
17) Quest improvements ranging from small to quite big
18) Immersive nights, conversations, names and other features
19) A variety of miscellaneous mods such as GIST
20) FINALLY, a much improved camera and much better third-person camera support (I play 1st-person myself but there you go)

Damn, it's a lot.

It does sound great, and a lot of those mods I use myself. But with Skyrim, you always bump up against the problem that it's far too cramped a world for it to be the expansive survival sim/open world game people want it to be (judging by the mods they make for it). You eventually end up just playing Skyrim as Skryim. I always feel that to make this kind of modding meaningful, you'd have to equidistantly "stretch out" the world of Skyrim, put more distance between everything, so you weren't coming across a POI every 5 seconds.

I've played Wildlander (well, Ultimate Skyrim) quite a bit, and I think the survival mechanics work completely. The relatively short distances feel longer because of them. And by the time you can ignore them, you've earned the right to (whether through magic, vampirification or whatever) and the short distances are less of a problem.

 

[Valdetiosi]

You are even moaning that it has powerful regeneration, which is one of the unique aspects of trolls and one of the things that makes them so interesting as a foe. You would prefer that its regeneration be so weak as to be irrelevant?

My issue is not with how Frost Troll was made, cause its clearly meant as enemy for higher level you shouldn't tackle with. What I have issue with is with the enemy spawning method that mod author decided or not decided to change,