Improving Skyrim / Recommended Mods thread (Mostly about Requiem)

[Commissar Draco]

Check Commissar posts earlier in this thread for list of mods he uses; added some minor Interface tweaks which will however greatly reduce the factor:

This one is good for LARPing the growing beard and dust of the road:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/29624/?

This for making dialogues with Interesting NPCs manageable:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/27371/?

and those two for making all the Bibliophiles happy:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/24359/?

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/35399/?

Found must have Mod for WCDS:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/48295/?tab=1&navtag=/ajax/moddescription/?id=48295&preview=&pUp=1

Spoiler

But even Traditional Marriage is for fags in TES game where Hero is to fullfill the Elder Scroll Prophecy and GTFO not building house, finding Wifu and adopting Kwan 50ties style 2 children and the dog.

Also something for our dear member Lesi/Josh Sawyer and KKKodex Trannies:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/34213/?tab=2&navtag=/ajax/modfiles/?id=34213&pUp=1

Now Wymynz will be not only STRONK! and empowered as men are but:

Spoiler

 

[DraQ]

I think the problem is that vanilla Skyrim was made with Bleak Falls Barrow to be the first dungeon player visits (maybe second if you do the bandit iron ore mine near riverwood), i mean even the quest giver is like "YO SIS SHOW HIM THE WAY". Requiem however ups the dungeon to a higher level since not only you must be able to handle draugir you must be able to handle LOTS of them (i'm looking at you final room) without removing the "hey new guy why don't you go to Bleak Falls Barrow?" dialogue. Personally, i did not have any problems with it since i wanted to postpone main quest for as long as possible so the only thing that gave me trouble was the giant spider (who works like a test - beat him and you can beat the draugir) but i can see other people having problems with it, especially since the enemies at the beginning are ordinary bandits.

Actually it's a bit more complex than that.

Some builds can tackle BFB right away (very carefully and with lots of player skill, but they can), some won't be able to for quite a few levels.
Spider may give problems to builds that can handle the horde of Draugr with ease, but it can be beaten easily with many characters who will just get pincushioned by undead archers.
If anything the bandits outside the entrance are just as much of a test (archers), but they can be sniped whereas draugr can't.

I think the main idea when playing with Requiem is going NOPENOPENOPE when you encounter something you can't handle and developing awareness of your own limitations.
Yes you will die a lot before you learn how to play Requiem, but once you do you can go long way without dying.

The only thing wrong when you GTFO and return later is that grorious script roller coaster is frozen in time.
Wouldn't it be nice if upon returning to BFB after running from spider you'd find a desiccated corpse hanging where Arvel used to (complete with his inventory)?

In other news, does anybody remember when Caius Cosades would give you some gold and tell you "why don't you get some levels and gear before returning back to me". I am trying to imagine how would that resonate with "i must be able to do anything at level 1" crowd.

Jarl Balgruuf the Greater: Hail hero, have you come here to help us?
Dragonborn: Yes i am a warrior of great strength.
Jarl Balgruuf the Greater: STARTING ALGORITHM, CHECKING PC LEVEL... COMPLETE
Jarl Balgruuf the Greater: Haha, you? A lvl 1 milk drinker? Look dude i am a Nord, a fucking VIKING. I walk around the cold naked and wrestle trolls, i drink barrels of mead and throw axes with my dick and even I am afraid of these dragons. There is no way in hell i'm gonna let your lvl 1 ass tackle these things i mean you might even hurt yourself.
Dragonborn: What? How dare you!? I shall strike you with my rusty iron sword!
JBtG: Look how about this, you go pump some iron up to say i don't know lvl 15 and then come back and we will see what you are made of.
"goes to gamefags to complain"

The butthurt would be glorious.

 

[Heresiarch]

So I bought Skyrim because I saw the video below. I took a look at SkyrimNexus and was completely overwhelmed by the shitfucktonlots of mods and I don't know where to start. Now I'm regretting my purchase because I've a feeling it'll be just a huge waste of time (at spending hours messing with mods without actually playing the game).



I guess I'll start with some good sexybody and sexywalk mods...

 

[RK47]

I installed Dawnguard.
Guard said something about Dawnguard fort near Riften.
Traveled there, decided I wanted to fence some goods and train marksmanship.
Headed in town, combat theme played.
I wondered, wtf is happening...
Never mind, head down to sewers to guild hideout.
Everyone went into combat mode instantly.
I was perplexed, and was sorta hyped too.
Maybe there's a vampire spawn in town they wanted to kill?
Whatever, I followed them to the guild's exit through the cemetery.

The combat theme kept playing as I waited patiently for them to make their way out, I charged out into town, but no vampires were there... and I realized they made a beeline to the gates..
A vampire attack in broad daylight outside Riften!? Intriguing! Come Brothers! To Arms!
I reached the gate and witnessed the courage and valor of the thieves guild as they killed two wolves who made the mistake of chasing their leader before returning to the hideout.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Right now I'm having fun with SkyRe in spite of how easy it is. It's still decently hardcore, but the level scaling is pretty evident.

Isn't that just what you wanted earlier?

Close to it, yes. Going from Requiem's insta-kills to SkrRe where you start with 15 in everything, kill anything with one crossbow sneak attack at level 1, and level once every 10 minutes was a bit jarring though. I'm a little more used to it now. It is fairly well balanced. I really liked the spell improvements and price increases in Requiem, but SkyRe just feels a lot better balanced in general and works with the games design rather than trying to ignore it as Requiem does. Also, I haven't noticed any insane hp bloat so far - though that may be because I'm so low level...(?) Then again, dragons are weak bitches. But I am going to seek out a dragon mod to fix that...

 

[DraQ]

Fewer, more challenging, more unique enemies are better than having to slog a horde of generic ones.

Actually, a horde of enemies is still a form of challenge and different challenge than a single powerful one.

A character may be able to easily tackle a horde, but fall to the boss or other way around. Diversity is good.

E.g., you might find yourself having to take breaks from your vital and urgent quest to save whatever from whatever so that you can level up and score some better gear.

That's a problem ,but it's already a problem with vanilla where you can abandon or disregard quests which will then continue to hang in a timeless vacuum.

Morrowind was much better in that regard as it purposefully avoided urgency or dynamic situations in its quest design. So was Deggerfall with its quest timer.

edit: This is another must, if you don't like ugly characters: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/12951/?

Actually I find Skyrim's characters' faces perfectly adequate.

I was thinking, but no amount of thinking is going to help you when you walk into a room, the door locks behind you and suddenly 2 priests and a shadow dragon crawl up your asshole - mage's guild quest.

Then again, this very quest is stuffed chock full of warnings made by the Devs themselves. It's a quest which got a party of young, overconfident, but still obviously talented wizards killed off faster than the cast of an average slasher flick.

Now consider that mages in Requiem are walking reality raping engines - are you sure you want to go in?

Besides that, even the mod maker knew the player would die a lot - there is even a part of the mod that shortens the death cam to a fraction of a second by default.

I'd say it was done to make the death unhelpful in tackling encounters to make the player die *less*.

As for lockpicking tree Requiem made it useful by preventing lockpicking without skill and perks. Of course it was worthless in vanilla where you could open anything with anyone.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The deathcam time is shortened because the author likes it better that way. There's not much purpose in looking at your own corpse ragdolling down some hill, tbh.

 

[Heresiarch]

Apparently I'm having the "WHICH IS BETTER AND WHY??" problem even with choosing a body mod to use (NSFW):

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/12175-vanila-vs-unp-vs-cbbe-vs-unpb/

There's also the problem that I've seen tons of nice looking faces and there are indeed several "best face mods" out there to choose, but however hard I try I never get those kawaii look right. It's always "wow it looks SEXY from this angle" but if the lighting or the POV changed she'll look so meh...it's like real life really...

 

[DraQ]

The deathcam time is shortened because the author likes it better that way. There's not much purpose in looking at your own corpse ragdolling down some hill, tbh.

I'm pretty sure I recall him stating explicitly to have shortened the death cam duration to prevent player from learning what hit him by using base trial and error.

 

[DraQ]

 

[Heresiarch]

Oh come on, don't tell me you mod Skyrim for plots and gameplay and mechanism and other useless boring shit

 

[Lancehead]

The deathcam time is shortened because the author likes it better that way. There's not much purpose in looking at your own corpse ragdolling down some hill, tbh.

I'm pretty sure I recall him stating explicitly to have shortened the death cam duration to prevent player from learning what hit him by using base trial and error.

Yeah, from the manual:

The duration of the deathcam is reduced to almost zero to prevent you from learning the position of the foe that killed you.

 

[Newfag-er]

Apparently I'm having the "WHICH IS BETTER AND WHY??" problem even with choosing a body mod to use (NSFW):

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/12175-vanila-vs-unp-vs-cbbe-vs-unpb/

There's also the problem that I've seen tons of nice looking faces and there are indeed several "best face mods" out there to choose, but however hard I try I never get those kawaii look right. It's always "wow it looks SEXY from this angle" but if the lighting or the POV changed she'll look so meh...it's like real life really...

Daggerfall has a quest timer? DAGGERFALL HAS A QUEST TIMER?

IF i could mod Oblivion to change the plot, I would, and I will.

But you can't

 

[Don Peste]

I'm using SPERG, but I find it makes the game too easy, it's like I've got unlimited mana, so I can just spam fire to everything.
Do you know how to tweak it, or what other mods use? I'm reading THE WHOLE THREAD, but I'm still in 2012. I almost cried when I saw MHC name.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

For quick tweaks, SkyTweak lets you tweak most things - though it sounds like SPERG is pretty unbalanced if you have unlimited mana. I am liking SkyRe. Requiem is the other fav, but it beat the crap out of me.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Actually I find Skyrim's characters' faces perfectly adequate.

In game, maybe. There are no Oblivion freaks at least. In character creation, I always found myself struggling to get them to look decent - depending on race. The mod provides a ton of additional options that make it easy to get them right every time, regardless of what you want.

I was thinking, but no amount of thinking is going to help you when you walk into a room, the door locks behind you and suddenly 2 priests and a shadow dragon crawl up your asshole - mage's guild quest.

Then again, this very quest is stuffed chock full of warnings made by the Devs themselves. It's a quest which got a party of young, overconfident, but still obviously talented wizards killed off faster than the cast of an average slasher flick.

Massive exaggeration. They only lost one guy after that room and the player is only told this AFTER the difficult battle. Before it is foreshadowed a little, but not explained as his whole party got wiped out or anything.

Now consider that mages in Requiem are walking reality raping engines - are you sure you want to go in?

In Skyrim, and in modern TES in general, mages can be idiots, weak, strong - anything, so not much help there. They were also young. It's a retarded game, written by retards for retards. Try not to read too much into the plot.

As for lockpicking tree Requiem made it useful by preventing lockpicking without skill and perks. Of course it was worthless in vanilla where you could open anything with anyone.

It's useful, but still boring. I hate that stupid minigame and the entire tree seems like a waste for one stupid skill.

 

[The Vanished One]

I got Skyrim during the sale and I want to start with requiem right away, with immersive patrols, armors and compatibility patches, and a bunch of other stuff. Two compatibility questions (paging DraQ who seems to be the resident requiem expert):

- Can I use enhanced blood textures with it? If so, should I load it before or after? Some scripts get overwritten, and my searches tell me that removing scripts or changing the load order breaks savegames, so I have to get it right the first time.
- Does requiem pose a hazard to bystander NPCs? Wouldn't want them to be all dead by midgame; should I protect them with everyone is essential (protects unique NPCs)?

Edit:

Also, would adding locational damage make it all too unbalanced? What about ASIS?

 

[Gord]

Can't say much about the blood mod, never used it.
Generally Requiem has to be put as low as possible in your LO, only a few mods should load after it (check the Requiem page for that).
In my experience so far, Requiem does not reduce the survivability of NPCs. In some cases it might actually enhance it, since the random vampire attacks from Dawnguard are disabled. You can also try "Run for your lives", which makes NPCs seek shelter during Dragon attacks.

Locational damage is, as I understand it, a bit limited by Skyrim's scripting engine, which seems to be a bit too slow for something like that to fully work.
ASIS will probably not be fully compatible, but I don't really know.

 

[DraQ]

It's useful, but still boring. I hate that stupid minigame and the entire tree seems like a waste for one stupid skill.

Well, if you didn't have skill you'd definitely need that minigame.
Minigame would also be useful if it didn't pause the fucking time.

Anyway, do you remember Oblivion lockpicking? At least the Skyrim version isn't tedious so if a mod makes it not override the skill it's no longer something that would detract from my enjoyment.

 

[DraQ]

- Can I use enhanced blood textures with it? If so, should I load it before or after? Some scripts get overwritten, and my searches tell me that removing scripts or changing the load order breaks savegames, so I have to get it right the first time.

I don't know about EBT, but I do use Crimson Tide and haven't encountered any problems.
I load it after Requiem, but I don't think it overwrote anything.

- Does requiem pose a hazard to bystander NPCs?

Yes and no.
On one hand, everything is more lethal with Requiem, and IIRC it overrides essential tags with its own version of protected, but on the other it disables vampire attacks, tweaks AI and gives dragons fear aura sending NPCs running away, meaning they are better protected from themselves, so overall it should enchance NPC survivability.

Wouldn't want them to be all dead by midgame; should I protect them with everyone is essential (protects unique NPCs)?

You generally don't want any mods messing with essential tags with Requiem.

Also, would adding locational damage make it all too unbalanced? What about ASIS?

Locational damage is symmetric and tweakable (which means you can adjust ranged and melee multipliers for Requiem), so it won't be a balance problem, but it effectively feeds all the attacks through the script engine which is rather slow even in vanilla game not encumbered by script intensive mods.

 

[The Vanished One]

Thanks, will go with CT and drop the rest.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Got EB with Requiem and it works fine so far; for removing the lock picking mini game try the Lock Overhaul and for female bodies the 7 base. Seen Jingle play-though using Skyre and to be honest I am not impressed; on the one hand athletics is back and some new perks are fine on the other game is too easy after playing Requiem, Crossbows work like semiautomatic riffles not to mention installation is 10 times more complicated; If only Author of Requiem would not put his own ideas contrary to TES settings like those arbitrary shrines blessing requirements or DnD style no casting in plate it would be perfect mod. Had to use console during Potema quest as game crashed every time bitch died; Spell braker + fortify Health II medallion + Dawnbreaker is bane of undead; Nine divines bless PC.

 

[DraQ]

DnD style no casting in plate

You can cast in plate, just not right away and it needs perk investment.

Spell braker + fortify Health II medallion + Dawnbreaker is bane of undead; Nine divines bless PC.

But Spellbreaker and Dawnbreaker are Daedric.

BTW: if you have Morrowloot you can pick up Chrysamere in Potema quest.

 

[Heresiarch]

I finally got the characters (female mostly) look nice without turning the game into another Final Fantasy.

I'm looking at all the overhauls and combat tweaks. Once again I don't know which ones to use. Skyre? Requiem? Duel? Deadly Combat? Vanilla with sexmods? FYI back in Oblivion I preferred Francesco's mod to OOO.

Now I wish I've put more attention to draq's skyrim posts especially those related to Requiem so I can have a better knowledge about them. Instead the only skyrim posts I brofistted were rk74's sex posts.

 

[Lancehead]

So anyone has any speculation as to the background of the Ebony Warrior? I just killed him but I feel bloody cheap for doing it with a backstab. Also, he was the only npc I've found in Requiem where the maximum pickpocketing chance was 30%; it's 100% for everyone else.