Improving Skyrim / Recommended Mods thread (Mostly about Requiem)

[racofer]

Oh the joys of console ports.

 

[Nael]

I've been playing around with Requiem and some of the changes seem ok but when I get hit once my vision starts this pulsating blurring effect and it gives me a fucking headache. It doesn't go away even after I heal to full and I don't have any disease that I know of. What's causing this? Is it a bug or a feature?

 

[XenomorphII]

I've been playing around with Requiem and some of the changes seem ok but when I get hit once my vision starts this pulsating blurring effect and it gives me a fucking headache. It doesn't go away even after I heal to full and I don't have any disease that I know of. What's causing this? Is it a bug or a feature?

Sounds like poison from the spiders to me. Though if you aren't showing anything that is weird.

 

[Nael]

I've been playing around with Requiem and some of the changes seem ok but when I get hit once my vision starts this pulsating blurring effect and it gives me a fucking headache. It doesn't go away even after I heal to full and I don't have any disease that I know of. What's causing this? Is it a bug or a feature?

Sounds like poison from the spiders to me. Though if you aren't showing anything that is weird.

It's definitely not spiders. I got hit by an Imperial during the intro and my vision is still pulsating after I get to Whiterun

 

[Turisas]

Maybe you got concussion.



Has anyone played with Hunterborn? It says in the description:

The most significant change Hunterborn makes to the game is taking away the loot window from most wildlife. Instead, you must first choose whether to dress it (clean the carcass and prepare it for processing) where it lies, or pick up the carcass and take it back to your camp / lair / nearest vendor.

Do you get some kind of bonus from doing that or does it just mean that you can move the kills to somewhere more convenient if you want?

 

[Lhynn]

hm, hunterborn is not very good. it adds busy work and little else.

 

[Turisas]

I'm not playing with Requiem this time around, so Hunterborn gives the option to get more stuff out of animals. Getting one lousy piece of meat from a full-grown buck is retarded.

And alchemy ingredients, gots to have those - picking flowers is teh ghey.

 

[Lhynn]

well, creatures yield less ingredients than flowers, its also a 2/3 step thing for the most part. its also script intensive and it doesnt really add much. a couple crafts that wont help you and a new lvling system for your hunter skill that increases yield.
Meat adds a ton of meat, youll run out of weight in no time. and skin pelt usually bugs out, and they can be sold for almost nothing compared to stuff your level. ingredients as i said is decent, but mostly from bears and wolves, and you have to prepare each and every one before harvesting and dispose of each body after to prevent bugs.

 

[Lancehead]

I've been playing around with Requiem and some of the changes seem ok but when I get hit once my vision starts this pulsating blurring effect and it gives me a fucking headache. It doesn't go away even after I heal to full and I don't have any disease that I know of. What's causing this? Is it a bug or a feature?

A disease, probably? Did you check the Active Effects tab?

 

[mastroego]

There isn't exactly high demand but I'll post some more of my "renovated experience" with Skyrim.

Honestly, I thought the game had nothing more for me to offer after countless hours playing it already (and never finishing it!) but I'm having an absolute blast with my new playthrough. I feel like I'm finally playing it like it's meant to be. I realize before I was playing it wrong, or even trying to make it into a "different" game, which doesn't fully work (for instance: using Apocalypse Spell Package, which, while being an awesome and extremely well made mod, still brings you places that were not really meant for the game and the setting. I still have the mod installed since vanilla mages really are underdeveloped, but I'm doing a spells-less playthrough). Also, I was always trying to do too many things at once (admittedly, the game doesn't discourage this). Now I'm playing a straight Fighter/Thief.

As I said, these are the mods I use strictly for improved challenge:

Spoiler

- ACE (except for the Speech tree, for which I've chosen the one from Treebalance)
- Stealth Skills Rebalanced
- Deadly Combat
- Deadly Dragons
- Dragon Combat Overhaul
- ASIS
- ASIS Encounter Zones
- Immersive Creatures
- High Level Enemies
- Killing Traps
- Morrowloot

Unleveled Skyrim is great. I keep to the streets while traveling, and do only things that's reasonable to think you can do (early quests given by guilds and so on). Still, I've encountered a few rough spots already that required me to do everything I could to prevail (using poisons and potions - which have a delayed effect in my setting - getting the high ground, and so on. Even fleeing as fast as I could with my horse!).
I finally get what an unleveled world really is about: leveling up isn't about getting generically "more power", it allows you to go places you absolutely couldn't before.

This all is only helped by the realism mods I'm using:

Spoiler

- Climates of Tamriel
- Frostfall
- Reduced Carry Weight
- DFB Carry Weight Per Stamina (2 points per level up)
- Realistic Needs and Diseases
- SkyRealism Encumberance
- Realistic Needs and Diseases and SkyRealism Encumberance tweaks (even more logical behaviour)

All in all the feeling of playing a survivor struggling in a harsh world is strong and immersive. Morrowloot also helps a lot here, since high tier materials are truly hard to find.

Only problems I had so far:

• The first dragon. It doesn't make much sense roleplaying-wise to delay this encounter, but it's too tough early on with dragon related mods
• Crashes. Playing actually goes fine generally, but I'm getting a lot of crashes while insta-reloading. Might be the mods, or my machine can't handle the load. I suspect it's a problem with the Vanilla bug where scripts and states are randomly "carried over" after a reload (you know, like when you save while sneaking and hidden but you find everyone is seeing you upon reloading, or when people are saying things they shouldn't). I have the feeling that this bug increases its damaging-potential with many mods installed (and I have about 120...)
• Too many wolves and such. I reduced the spawns from ASIS, but Immersive Creatures adds spawns as well. The feature can disabled but it seems there's not a reasonable middle ground.

I add that I don't use armor and items mod, or texture-heavy mods (except a few very specific items). I think Vanilla stuff looks good enough to play.
All in all, I'm surprised it's going so well. I do acknowledge all the limits of the engine and the game in general. I feel them myself.
But still, Skyrim does something no other game even attempts, and does it on a grand scale. Modders take it to another level, too.
So, when you're in the right mood for it and can stomach the unavoidable frustrations, it can give some really glorious moments.

 

[DraQ]

I've been playing around with Requiem and some of the changes seem ok but when I get hit once my vision starts this pulsating blurring effect and it gives me a fucking headache. It doesn't go away even after I heal to full and I don't have any disease that I know of. What's causing this? Is it a bug or a feature?

It's either a disease/poison/negative magic effect, or low health (then it's accompanied by heartbeat sound).
The latter can have its threshold adjusted even to the point of disabling it completely.

 

[Gord]

Basically, Skyrim was assigning its required memory in 256 MB blocks, which was the root cause for loads of issues. Just by upping it to 512 MB (and there's nothing stopping you from increasing it further, they're still testing it) people have been playing saves that were previously CTD'ing all the time, increased ugrids etc. and still have a completely stable game. It could end up being a real game changer for Skyrim modding (and hopefully other Lolbryo games too). You could have all those 4K texture mods, Open Cities and NPC-adding mods all working together without Skyrim crapping itself.

If I understood it correctly, al it does is upping the size of the memory allocated during the initial loading of the game?
So it will help with any issues that crop up during that initial load, but other limitations (memory use while playing with extensive mods, Papyrus issues) are still pretty much there, aren't they?

 

[Turisas]

If I understood it correctly, al it does is upping the size of the memory allocated during the initial loading of the game?
So it will help with any issues that crop up during that initial load, but other limitations (memory use while playing with extensive mods, Papyrus issues) are still pretty much there, aren't they?

Like I said, people have been reporting that their previously crash-prone modlists are now completely fine, even when stressing the game by running across the map with increased speed, or playing for extended amounts of time. It sounds too good to be true, yet it apparently is. I can't link to the enb forum thread directly because of the idiotic anti-hotlinking measures they have in place, but you can go and see for yourself, it's at Advertise Mods >>> Other.

 

[Gord]

Well, it's a Bethesda program after all, unexpected consequences from tweaks are a feature.

 

[NotAGolfer]

But still, Skyrim does something no other game even attempts, and does it on a grand scale. Modders take it to another level, too.
So, when you're in the right mood for it and can stomach the unavoidable frustrations, it can give some really glorious moments.

Never got to that point with mods. I thought Requiem was kinda neat but it still lacked incentives to go places, and that had nothing to do with the mod, but with the unimmersive narrative of the game itself. I guess I stopped playing Vanilla Skyrim when I found out that the forsworn faction was not fleshed out at all and after I saved their leader he just hid in some cave somewhere on the map. Or maybe it was after I found out that items are still mostly randomly distributed and that even the unique ones sucked compared to selfmade stuff. With some of this mods can help (I don't like Morrowloot though, items are at fixed places there, that doesn't suit the way this game is supposed to be played ... I'd love to see some kind of middle ground, with fixed places that have a chance for high end loot and only some items that are always at the same place).
My main problem besides the completely and utterly broken level and item progression (leveling up by creating highest level gear while staying in town wihtout any incentive to go hiking or spelunking) was the narrative.
Why would I join one of the civil war factions if I already know that both of them suck ass? And is there really a mod changing that? Maybe that Civil War Mod by that crazy guy who made Dragon Combat Overhaul?
But why should I bother playtesting mods that force me to play the game for 6 hours or more (all of the more intrusive mods advice a restart) before I even begin to understand what it changes exactly? That's the main problem I have with mods for Bethesda games. Most of them are shit (like with everything manmade, most of it is tasteless or dumb shit) and still get voted up (SkyRe for example). I don't have time to playtest all that stuff to find the hidden gems that actually change the things that really bothered me in the Vanilla game.

 

[Akratus]

I read the thread, and some people were playing with ugridstoload=15 where the only detrimental effects are lower fps (around 20) and stuttering. That's insane.

 

[Turisas]

I read the thread, and some people were playing with ugridstoload=15 where the only detrimental effects are lower fps (around 20) and stuttering. That's insane.

Yeah, some guy had 600 NPC's at once and the game didn't even crash when he killed them all.

Of course, since Skyrim's scripting is such a sorry piece of shit, this probably still won't mean proper M&B sized battles in TES, but it's still a big step ahead.

 

[DeepOcean]

I read the thread, and some people were playing with ugridstoload=15 where the only detrimental effects are lower fps (around 20) and stuttering. That's insane.

Yeah, some guy had 600 NPC's at once and the game didn't even crash when he killed them all.

Of course, since Skyrim's scripting is such a sorry piece of shit, this probably still won't mean proper M&B sized battles in TES, but it's still a big step ahead.

Are you saying to me that a modder on his spare time managed to discover a way to use memory on an efficient fashion and people are adding 600 NPC on the same spot without the game blowing up while the whole team of programmers of Bethesda after 5 years making the game didn't even bothered to fix this shit on PC? Why I'm not surprised?

 

[Turisas]

They obviously don't really care (or maybe some of them do, but aren't given the hours to work on PC-exclusive optimizations). The memory blocks were perfectly ok for consoles (well, only because they had such puny amounts of RAM) - hopefully their next game won't be some cross-gen travesty so this won't be an issue to begin with.


Ah but it's Bethesda, I'm sure they can find a way to muck it all up somehow.

 

[RK47]

Unleveled eh? Does it work with SkyRe? Cause I'm really digging the Destruction Magic Revamp they did.

 

[mastroego]

Never got to that point with mods.
...

I see all your points, but I still find the game to be fun, especially with "modern" mods. I also think mod-hunting is legitimately fun in itself. Of course, does who don't can refer to Recommended mod threads
I posted my suggestions since I think I've found a very good combination, one I'm very happy with and that I consider more or less "final".
Also, no crashes at all in my last session. It's possible my rig can't even handle an open browser while Skyrim runs. This time I closed everything and didn't crash once in 3 hours. So the 120+ mods can run smoothly together.

Unleveled eh? Does it work with SkyRe? Cause I'm really digging the Destruction Magic Revamp they did.

As I understand SkyRe does its own leveling, which only sets minimum levels for each area: that is, enemies will always scale up to you.
ASIS - Encounter Zones sets level ranges for each zone, instead.
Now, I still can find higher level versions of petty monsters, but that should only happen in remote, dangerous areas. I shouldn't get "super-wolves" on the main streets, as I'd get with Vanilla and even SkyRe (AFAIK).
I prefer this system immensely, since at later levels I will be able to dispose of petty wolves and such with a Fear Shout or whatever: this means all the effects that are level-capped get to be useful, finally! (normally when you get something like a Fear or Disarm Shout you won't get much use out of it, since the enemies scale with you and end up being completely resistant to the effect).

 

[RK47]

It's not about the SkyRe scaling.
I want to play the unarmed monk builds with its perk trees.
How do you make that work together?
I really hate the vanilla perk tree, they're bland and uninteresting.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I've been playing around with Requiem and some of the changes seem ok but when I get hit once my vision starts this pulsating blurring effect and it gives me a fucking headache. It doesn't go away even after I heal to full and I don't have any disease that I know of. What's causing this? Is it a bug or a feature?

Sounds like poison from the spiders to me. Though if you aren't showing anything that is weird.

It's definitely not spiders. I got hit by an Imperial during the intro and my vision is still pulsating after I get to Whiterun

Then it's obviously a bug (why you walked all the way to Whiterun instead of reloading is beyond me). This post suggests the imperial dude had a poisoned weapon.

Try this.

[Imagespace]
bDoDepthOfField=1
iRadialBlurLevel=2

so that both of them are set to 0
this should disable all blur in the game

If you like the blur (!), you could try to re-enable it and see if the annoying permanent effect goes away.

 

[DeepOcean]

I decided to try Requiem again, after the first time where I played for the first time but got distracted with other games, my experience:
I don't think archers are that terrible as some people are claiming, your shield can absorve almost all damage of arrows, just advance and when the archer is about to fire just raise the shield. When you get at melee distance, if he doesn't change to a melee weapon, bye bye bow. Even if you don't use a shield, with heavy armor, archers only do dangerous damage at close distance, you can always side walk and make really hard for them to shoot you when you are in a open space. When being attacked by a lot of them, it's best to keep distance and hide behind the shield/dodge until they waste their arrows.

They can be really dangerous to mages but there are spells that can help you with that and with you using no armor you are going to move really fast, making easier to dodge their arrows, it's just a question of being careful. I can easily predict that when I have access to Fus Roh Dah, archers are going to be even more of a piece of cake.

Mages are DEADLY, don't even dream fighting them without a way to hit them at long distance (archery isn't that good against them as they aren't going to stay on the same place and arrows have a pretty limited range and shitty accuracy in comparison to spells) or having BIG resistances to magic/elements (no, 50% won't be enough. Without resistance to magic, vampires are going to drain you dry if you get closer to them.)

I really liked how Requiem makes you an incompetent loser at the beginning and you have to fight a lot to get what you get by default in Vanilla.The only thing I didn't liked all that much is that Requiem buffed quest related companions like Farkas to ludicrous levels, I completed Dustman Cairn with level 4 and it was just an exercise of watching Farkas kicking asses. I really found hilarious how the companions celebrated me as a worthy warrior when the only thing I done was to hide behind my shield and wait for Farkas to rescue me when I wasn't thrown around like a Table Tennis ball by the Draugrs shouts, really courageous feats. Are the companions you can hire this way as well? I didn't managed to get 5000 gold to hire one yet.

 

[Lancehead]

The Companions stuff is problematic. The game treats their content as low to mid level but we're talking about lycanthropes here. So I imagine the mod decided to balance them with lycanthropy in mind rather than when you can do their content. This means that since you can become a werewolf pretty early, the huge benefits you get make the game a lot easier.