Improving Skyrim / Recommended Mods thread (Mostly about Requiem)

[Hirato]

LOOT is good at getting the general order right, and crowdsourcing about issues you may want to address yourself in another tool.
But it's not perfect, and one major weakness is that it doesn't consider the mod order inside Mod Organizer.

For example, let's say you have a bunch of NPC overhauls
so your MO order goes NPC #1, NPC #2, NPC #3, NPC #4, NPC #5, NPC #6,
But loot sorts them as NPC #6, NPC #2, NPC #1, NPC #4, NPC #5, NPC #3,
Now pack 3 and 4 happen to affect the same NPCs, if you're lucky, the affected NPCs will have black faces, if not, then your game will just crash if you encounter one.


I'm happy to suggest LOOT to get your first list up and running.
But beyond that, I'd suggest getting familiar with SSEEdit, and using it to examine the conflicts in your load order, and preferably picking the winner you want.
You can also use it to edit things yourself and resolve the conflicts that way, but treat that as a last resort, or just cleaning up the modder's mistakes (e.g. they edited the rabbit's record and removed its death animation for no good reason)
EDIT: if you intend to personalise and add onto wabbajack modlists, this is also a process you should get familiar with.

 

[Funposter]

i need THIS https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/14509 for special edition.
there's even a similar version https://mods.bethesda.net/en/skyrim/mod-detail/4021657 for xbox, not for the special edition. what. the. actual. fornication. under. consent. of the king.

A lot of mods to fix the factions seem limited to LE because by the time Special Edition released, I think that people had stopped trying. Better to create your own original content or just ignore the faction questlines (which are bad) and focus on the side quests and dungeons with heavy-handed environmental storytelling, which are usually better.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

OK, newbie question, but I don't have an ego when it comes to questions so feel free to assume I'm 5 years old. The load order is last takes priority right? So if I prefer boobs, and I install x3 mods:

1. Small manicured feet.
2. Apple asses.
3. Erika Eleniak Boobs.

Then I'm gonna get the boobs taking priority right?. That's what they're saying here: https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/How_to_handle_load_order
But my vampire mod just kicked the bucket, and I'm trying to find out why. I tried LOOT and it just destroyed my game, so I'm manually adjusting order through the Bethesda launcher. ALthough that seems to ahve a mind of its own and doesn't save the order I put them in...

Generally last takes priority yes but post the mod list, it's hard to tell with made-up examples because there might be something else changing it (for example a patch for "4. Female Argonians have breasts and shitting dick-nipples" to work properly with "5. Immersive Realistic Armors" might revert the changes in the previous mods back to vanilla.)

 

[Chippy]

Ok, I'm done and concede this game's modding is beyond me. I seem to have grasped it years ago and saved the 'Skyrim' folder with working mods for future playthroughs. Then I updated some mods (for features) and it got fucked. Read everything and tried everything. But it's still fucked.

So I nuke from orbit and delete the entire installation directory, and copy > paste my older working folder in and...it's still fucked. Brain. Totally. Blown.

Only option now is to delete everything even remotely related to the game, install on another hard drive, and painfully install each mod in install order and order of organised, listed priority. Which I don't really fancy doing because I remember that shit taking weeks, and the whole draw of this game is it's like drinking a beer instead of an aged wine or a whiskey. It's not meant to be work...

 

[d1r]

Ok, I'm done and concede this game's modding is beyond me. I seem to have grasped it years ago and saved the 'Skyrim' folder with working mods for future playthroughs. Then I updated some mods (for features) and it got fucked. Read everything and tried everything. But it's still fucked.

So I nuke from orbit and delete the entire installation directory, and copy > paste my older working folder in and...it's still fucked. Brain. Totally. Blown.

Only option now is to delete everything even remotely related to the game, install on another hard drive, and painfully install each mod in install order and order of organised, listed priority. Which I don't really fancy doing because I remember that shit taking weeks, and the whole draw of this game is it's like drinking a beer instead of an aged wine or a whiskey. It's not meant to be work...

I feel at home. Reminds me of the good old days of Morrowind modding. Oh ... how time flies....

 

[mastroego]

Ok, I'm done and concede this game's modding is beyond me. I seem to have grasped it years ago and saved the 'Skyrim' folder with working mods for future playthroughs. Then I updated some mods (for features) and it got fucked. Read everything and tried everything. But it's still fucked.

So I nuke from orbit and delete the entire installation directory, and copy > paste my older working folder in and...it's still fucked. Brain. Totally. Blown.

Only option now is to delete everything even remotely related to the game, install on another hard drive, and painfully install each mod in install order and order of organised, listed priority. Which I don't really fancy doing because I remember that shit taking weeks, and the whole draw of this game is it's like drinking a beer instead of an aged wine or a whiskey. It's not meant to be work...

My friend, I can only suggest again to try my modlist.
I know - because I've been there - that one is constantly tempted to do "more" and keep tinkering with mods, but the trick is doing the opposite: build a reasonable list and stick to it.
We're far enough into Skyrim's post-release life that we can do it for real.

Changing the mods setup constantly has, among the rest, the unintended effect of killing the sense of progress of any ongoing game you may have.

 

[flyingjohn]

I don't even bother unless there is a good list on wabbajack or i just use a good overhaul mod and a unofficial patch.
The chance of something breaking when you have 50+ mods is a nightmare and not worth the hassle.

 

[Ravielsk]

Honestly the main source of frustration when it comes to skyrim modding is its lack of feedback. There is no crashlog or error message so when the CTDs it could be for any number of reasons most of which are usually trivial to fix. Like at one point my game kept crashing because a quest mod was trying to spawn its custom courier and the regular courier on the same spot. The solution was not in the load order but simply in fast traveling to a city and waiting for an hour so both couriers could spawn sequentially. Other times it was the nexus mod manager somehow corrupting the .bsa file so I had to manually move it myself. My favorite though is when the game crashes because of a singular missing texture for a random background prop and is fixed by simply reinstalling the responsible mod.

Easy to fix stuff that takes less than a minute to address if the game bothered to throw out a error instead of suiciding.

 

[Chippy]

^Just from a amateur point of view, but I spent over 10mins looking for a credible source to explain load order priority. All Bethesda had to do was explain it clearly in the load menu.

Yet over a decade later, autists are still arguing over whether it's top down, or last first. Or load first, last priority.

...It's last loaded, bottom of list takes priority. As explained on this thread. With attention being paid to mods that were uninstalled as they might have shared files with other mods. But as I found, uninstalling those effected mods or even doing the below procedure doesn't matter.

 

[unseeingeye]

I recently did a two weeks long obsessive mod loadout for Skyrim AE. About 240 plugins, 202X downscaled as a base with a billion other texture replacers for shit like Imperial cages and iron doors, Smooth Cam, True Directional Movement, all kinds of mechanical changes and stuff like Precision and a few other combat-oriented mods like Deflection, reminded myself how to use tools like SSEEdit and ran the auto-patch script that one dude made to take care of the multiple NPC overhauls and replacers I slowly combed through in order to have what face from what mod loaded in the correct order without the dark face bug, relearned all of the xLODGen, TextGen, and DynDOLOD tools, etc. Got the most glorious, gorgeous, actually fun to play version of Skyrim I could manage and cautiously tested everything for compatibility, patched and cleaned wherever necessary, and wrapped it all up with a Wrye Bash patch. It looks and plays in third person like a modern Ubisoft or Rockstar game; getting a custom preset saved for Smooth Cam (the several I tried from others just felt off) where I have the perfect amount of zoom out on movement at a gradual pace that accomdates for the full rotation offered by True Directional Movement took like, embarrassingly long. After thoroughly testing for about 25 hours and not experiencing a single crash or problem, I finally started a proper new game and "rolled" (lol) a Nord character. Got through the tutorial and down to Riverwood and already quit and moved on to Daggerfall. Lol this game. After all that effort I will definitely go back to retry it but fuck I knew I shouldn't have looked at Daggerfall Unity latest version; the slightest reminder of how much better the older games are ruins it for me.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

damn, i forgot how boring main quests were. worst is mages', with the unskippable, ssssslllllllooooooooowwwww talking helios-wannabe. and all are pretty much "because you are the one". i want a kenshi experience, i want to be a nobody doing menial tasks, barely scraping by.
also difficultu with omega is too uneven. i grew enough to oneshot rabble and i can kill dragons if i have somewhere to hide (i can also pillar-dance anyone, giants too with a decent pillar), but as soon as i get into the wrong fort i'm gangbanged by a gang of bangers who love to shower under my fireballs.
level locked stores are the biggest suck, i thought omega fixed this, instead even with a skill at 100 (thanks, muffle) i can't buy better spells because i'm still low level.

 

[mastroego]

^Just from a amateur point of view, but I spent over 10mins looking for a credible source to explain load order priority. All Bethesda had to do was explain it clearly in the load menu.

Yet over a decade later, autists are still arguing over whether it's top down, or last first. Or load first, last priority.

...It's last loaded, bottom of list takes priority. As explained on this thread. With attention being paid to mods that were uninstalled as they might have shared files with other mods. But as I found, uninstalling those effected mods or even doing the below procedure doesn't matter.

Keep in mind that install order is not the same as loading order. You can load a mod later (therefore getting higher priority) despite some of its files being overwritten by another mod that gets installed after it.
Unless I'm mistaken, but I think I'm not.
It can be a bit confusing, but with MOO2 it all happens in virtual space at every launch, so things can be adjusted with no problem.

I recently did a two weeks long obsessive mod loadout for Skyrim AE. About 240 plugins, 202X downscaled as a base with a billion other texture replacers for shit like Imperial cages and iron doors, Smooth Cam, True Directional Movement, all kinds of mechanical changes and stuff like Precision and a few other combat-oriented mods like Deflection, reminded myself how to use tools like SSEEdit and ran the auto-patch script that one dude made to take care of the multiple NPC overhauls and replacers I slowly combed through in order to have what face from what mod loaded in the correct order without the dark face bug, relearned all of the xLODGen, TextGen, and DynDOLOD tools, etc. Got the most glorious, gorgeous, actually fun to play version of Skyrim I could manage and cautiously tested everything for compatibility, patched and cleaned wherever necessary, and wrapped it all up with a Wrye Bash patch. It looks and plays in third person like a modern Ubisoft or Rockstar game; getting a custom preset saved for Smooth Cam (the several I tried from others just felt off) where I have the perfect amount of zoom out on movement at a gradual pace that accomdates for the full rotation offered by True Directional Movement took like, embarrassingly long. After thoroughly testing for about 25 hours and not experiencing a single crash or problem, I finally started a proper new game and "rolled" (lol) a Nord character. Got through the tutorial and down to Riverwood and already quit and moved on to Daggerfall. Lol this game. After all that effort I will definitely go back to retry it but fuck I knew I shouldn't have looked at Daggerfall Unity latest version; the slightest reminder of how much better the older games are ruins it for me.

Again, something I experienced myself (I now have 200 great mods, super! Erm, now what?)

That's why I overturned the whole thing, and started selecting mods only around Requiem.
Requiem implements an environment where you can actually find the motivation to play, other mods are just refinements and if they look like they might betray the core philosophy, they get discarded.

I know, broken record and all that.
I'm just trying to give good advice, so sue me

 

[unseeingeye]

Again, something I experienced myself (I now have 200 great mods, super! Erm, now what?)

That's why I overturned the whole thing, and started selecting mods only around Requiem.
Requiem implements an environment where you can actually find the motivation to play, other mods are just refinements and if they look like they might betray the core philosophy, they get discarded.

I know, broken record and all that.
I'm just trying to give good advice, so sue me

I haven't tried Requiem, and have only skimmed the past few pages in this thread so I at least appreciate the recommendation, thank you.

One of the best features of MO2 is that you can technically run multiple instances of the same game, so I will definitely be keeping the instance I have now after how much effort I poured into getting it all patched up and sorted appropriately, but perhaps I'll prepare a second instance for Requiem and see what it is like. I do the same thing with Morrowind, where I have a vanilla install for when I'm in the mood to play it as it was originally intended, a heavily modded profile on MO2 that includes Skyrim: Home of the Nords and Tamriel Rebuilt with texture replacers for every single object in the game and all sorts of MWSE plugins, a second profile for a vanilla + sort of thing, and then a separate install for OpenMW which I mainly only use to prepare a modlist to then setup on my phone. But I haven't looked into the Requiem mod in years so I don't even remember exactly what is involved but if its a cure for the tedium of replaying the same old BS then I'll definitely try it out. I pretty much have to ignore the main quest, the Companions and the College to really enjoy Skyrim, and with Alternate Start and the like I just enjoy camping and hunting, wandering around and visiting places to read the in-game books, etc.

 

[mastroego]

Well the game feels a lot different with Requiem, but quests don't change.
So I can't say if that would be enough for you.
One thing's for sure, with that mod you won't be able to delve into the main quest at low levels.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

One thing's for sure, with that mod you won't be able to delve into the main quest at low levels.

Depends on how quickly you get a horse and a companion I think.

 

[mastroego]

Still.
Most of the main quest can't realistically be done at low levels, imho.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Oh yeah, absolutely. Bleak fall barrows alone will be a hell of a speedbump.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i'm dissatisfied with the omega experience, with the mobs being so uneven in strength and the game still fundamentally being level scaled. the most retarded system ever. i'm already gated by the money asked and the time spent to raise a skill, if i'm a 100 in some magic branch i'm god and i deserve to learn its spells. if i'm strong enough to rip umbra a new one i deserve his equipment and his sword, and in fact morrowind rewarded me. instead, the whole world revolves around me and patiently waits, in order to never make me feel powerful. miss me with this beta soyboy cuck shit.

anyhow, because of this i had a serious look at wildlanders. i thought it was some sort of gigantic monolithical overhaul, instead it's just a modlist with more than 500 items, if one of them misfires everything gets fucked. you too. and among these 500, there's no "live another life" which is basically the alpha and omega of building everything and anything in skyrim. but there's tons of useless graphical stuff which is extremely useful to slow the whole game down without any real improvement.
on top of this, only way to download it is through some shitty program which works like shit, as remarked by several faqs. it has the habit of hanging up, down or even sideways, it stays still, it does nothing, it stops doing whatever it was doing and won't tell you.

 

[mastroego]

Yeah I know, if only there was an user around these parts who could advise you guys that small, quality Requiem handpicked modlist is the best way to go.

Incidentally, I successfully ported the entire modded installation again, this time to a new PC with a new OS.
It was slightly trickier, since I installed Win 10 in Italian this time, so I had to rename a few paths in the inis. But it worked.
Having a decent GPU, now, I might even try and add some ENBs, after all....

EDIT: I just remembered you were the one whose Requiem installation wasn't working for some reason.

 

[Funposter]

Oh yeah, absolutely. Bleak fall barrows alone will be a hell of a speedbump.

It's a big problem with any mod (Requiem or otherwise) that changes Nordic tombs to be universally dangerous. The design of the world ends up being at odds with the design of the questlines. This doesn't just affect the Main Quest - the first quests of The Companions and The College of Winterhold involve Nordic ruins, too. It ends up cutting you off from content that isn't a big enough prize to really justify it.

 

[Crispy]

Yeah I know, if only there was an user around these parts who could advise you guys that small, quality Requiem handpicked modlist is the best way to go.

If only there were a much more comprehensive, much better-looking, polished, extensively tested and curated monster mod list that was completely automated, had its own website, its own support staff, and is completely free...

 

[Crispy]

It ends up cutting you off from content that isn't a big enough prize to really justify it.

I disagree with this. It only took me until about level 10 or so to start diving in (carefully) to some of the places new users were warned about and to be able to clear them out relatively easily. The College stuff, so far, has been just about perfect for me at level 21, hardly an advanced character by Wildlander/Requiem standards. The "prizes" for completing these objectives have been advances in my personal power and, of course, the much-needed financial gains of the loot found.

Sure, during some of these forays, I've run into -- quite unexpectedly -- some monstrosities that quickly destroyed me, my companion, and every other living thing around, but believe it or not that was a pleasant surprise and served as a stark reminder not to take the game for granted and to remain on my toes at all times.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Oh yeah, absolutely. Bleak fall barrows alone will be a hell of a speedbump.

It's a big problem with any mod (Requiem or otherwise) that changes Nordic tombs to be universally dangerous. The design of the world ends up being at odds with the design of the questlines. This doesn't just affect the Main Quest - the first quests of The Companions and The College of Winterhold involve Nordic ruins, too. It ends up cutting you off from content that isn't a big enough prize to really justify it.

It's still doable if you play it smart. I think I cleared bleak falls while my character was still in single digit levels.

 

[mastroego]

Yeah I know, if only there was an user around these parts who could advise you guys that small, quality Requiem handpicked modlist is the best way to go.

If only there were a much more comprehensive, much better-looking, polished, extensively tested and curated monster mod list that was completely automated, had its own website, its own support staff, and is completely free...

If it's your cup of tea that's cool, but many even here were doubtful about 70+ GB megamods that do who knows what.
I'm willing to bet there are several things that feel out of place within the game.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Yeah I know, if only there was an user around these parts who could advise you guys that small, quality Requiem handpicked modlist is the best way to go.

wildlanders *IS* a "requiem handpicked modlist".