Playing Lorerim, and it's pretty much what it looks like on the tin. Probably the most polished all around version of a gigalist. Nothing feels super out of place (except for my point 2 below), impressively small amount of visual glitches and glitches in general (well, for a gigalist, you'll obviously still run into tons of jank). I like that in contrast to Wildlander much more effort has been put into changing the core gamplay aspects from Skyrim crap as much as possible. It's still Skyrim, but it's the best combat experience I've had in it.
Oddly despite a vastly bigger community, I generally had the feeling of receiving much less help on their Discord, though because the list is so polished, I also needed it less often.
What I like:
The combat, the quest mod implementation and the graphics my 3080 can pull of on this list (I can play the Ultra setting in 1440p just fine which is kind of impressive).
What I really don't like:
1) It's not survival-focused at all, and I find Skyrim needs a big survival-focus to be enjoyable in any way since the content is so shallow. You kind of need the world to be against you to make it be meaningful in this game, and Lorerim just has the most barebones system: you take damage in freezing water, hunger limits your stamina a little bit, lack of sleep magicka and *harsh* cold limit max HP for a while. It feels very polished but you also don't get that feeling of a harsh world like you do with Wildlander or other lists. Biggest letdown for me this, YMMV.
2) Despite being called Lorerim, half of the women are ugly supermodels (meaning they're sculpted to look generically pretty but their face textures are so smooth they jump as video game dolls) - even random ass peasants. I really, really hate this. Honestly even vanilla textures are preferable to generic super model syndrome for everyone, it pulls you completely out of the world.
EDIT: The guy making Lorerim has put up a poll about his next modlist (2.3 will be the last version of Lorerim) and right now a survival modlist is leading, so maybe that'll be the Lorerim Survival Version for me.
I am interested in this type of comparison between Lorerim and Wildlander because I havent played Skyrim yet but I have watched lots of videos
My understanding is both use Requiem as a foundation and that includes several survival mods so what survival mods does Wildlander have that Lorerim doesn't?
I do want to play a more survival game so that matters for me. How would you compare the survival difference between Lorerim and Wildlander, examples would be appreciated
Requiem is the base for most lists, and I wouldn't ever recommend a non-Requiem list. Requiem is just that much better than anything else, really.
It's difficult to summarize the differences with so many mods, but in terms of just Survival, Wildlander for example includes Frostfall, which essentially means you HAVE to seek shelter (can use your own tent that you carry) in snowstorms etc. Crafting becomes a much more vital part of the early game and every beginner should take the first crafting perk as their first perk because it gives you access to so much useful stuff. There's more diseases, status effects are more difficult to manage etc. Health don't regenerate so you need to make healing poultices that slowly heal you (so you drink those before you wait or sleep).
The difference summarized is this:
1) If I'm cold in Lorerim I go "hm, there goes 10 max HP for a while."
2) If I'm cold in Wildlander I got "Oh fuck, gotta get to shelter real fast." If I'm cold and wet, I go "Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck."
But you pay a heavy toll to get those features. Wildlander is closer to vanilla in its combat, for example, and Lorerim just generally has way more cool stuff in it. Graphically it is also superior, probably one of the lists that get you the most bang for your hardware buck. I don't know if there's a more polished version of a survival list out there.
