Basically, there's like 90 encounter zones which were implemented but never properly applied. This thing fixes that, which should have major consequences for EZ-based mods. There's an additional file which makes it so internal EZ are applied to external ones (so no more level 5 bandits in an exterior fort but level 20 inside - the exterior ones will be 20, too :V )
Is this just a thing needed for encounter zone mods? I’m assuming if it was that big of a deal for vanilla it would have been noticed sometime in the last 8 years.
Basically, there's like 90 encounter zones which were implemented but never properly applied. This thing fixes that, which should have major consequences for EZ-based mods. There's an additional file which makes it so internal EZ are applied to external ones (so no more level 5 bandits in an exterior fort but level 20 inside - the exterior ones will be 20, too :V )
Is this just a thing needed for encounter zone mods? I’m assuming if it was that big of a deal for vanilla it would have been noticed sometime in the last 8 years.
I know it is the case for vanilla too, because Fort Greymoor is one I'd noticed before - minimum level for the exterior was 1, minimum level for the interior was 20. There were a couple times I mowed down the outside with a brand new character, went inside and got killed quickly, and that was before I messed with any zone stuff.
Mod author made a reddit thread if you want to Q&A
If it was intentional, it wouldn't have anything to do with encounter zones locking when an area is discovered, because these encounter zones weren't connected to a location at all. This is less of an addition, more of a re-implementation of vanilla content, similar to the way Cutting Room Floor adds missing NPCs etc.
Yes!! This mod does not touch the encounter zone records -- rather, it adds references to CELL records that tell the cells to use specific encounter zones when generating the leveled NPCs. These references are missing in the vanilla game, so even though the "BleakwindBluffZone" encounter zone record exists, it's not linked to the BleakwindBluffExterior cell, and therefore the "BleakwindBluffZone" record sits there doing nothing.
Some of the folks are talking about having this get implemented into CRF or USSEP instead of needing a separate mod.
I can't help but wonder: was this omission accidental, or intentional? If they decided they didn't want these zones around, it would have been much faster and easier to just disconnect them from the world than it would be to delete them (especially if this was being done late in the dev cycle, when you don't want to touch more content than is absolutely necessary).
+1
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I can't help but wonder: was this omission accidental, or intentional? If they decided they didn't want these zones around, it would have been much faster and easier to just disconnect them from the world than it would be to delete them (especially if this was being done late in the dev cycle, when you don't want to touch more content than is absolutely necessary).
Or was it something they planned to include, and just ran out of time to playtest and so just left it out?
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
I can't help but wonder: was this omission accidental, or intentional? If they decided they didn't want these zones around, it would have been much faster and easier to just disconnect them from the world than it would be to delete them (especially if this was being done late in the dev cycle, when you don't want to touch more content than is absolutely necessary).
Or was it something they planned to include, and just ran out of time to playtest and so just left it out?
It could have been that maybe they did intend things to be that way originally but people in playtesting were encounting high level enemies in exteriors earlier than they wanted or something like that. There is no easy way to tell a level 1 bandit from a 30 bandit so maybe people were running into high level mobs and getting smashed and then they figured it was easier to just disconnect most exterior zones than rework the system.
Jealous Deva on
+1
L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
OK, Vortex is terrible.
It was having problems sorting things. By trying to make it easier, it won't allow me to choose how to order things. The most I can do is say to load some things after another, which is proving to be not worth it.
So, away it goes.
Too bad it's so terrible that it has completely infected the entirety of the Skyrim directory. I basically have to download everything again it looks like.
What a piece of shit.
Now I get to reinstall everything all over again from MO2.
I want to be clear that my own intent in compiling / cleaning up @Monger 's list was not so much to have a comprehensive LIST OF THE MODS YOU MUST PLAY, but rather a curated list by the PA community of shit we like. The idea was to strike a happy medium between going on NexusMods and getting totally overhwelmed, and just installing whatever hackjob clickbait website is desperate for ad clicks and thus have just posted a TOP 10 SKYRIM MODZ "article." Basically, strike a nice balance between "No really, this is popular for a reason" and "Fuck you, I really like having LAUNDRY."
Which absolutely means that 1. there's gonna be mods in that list that conflict or are weird and 2. there are absolutely mods in that list that are only there because we're fucking nerds.
Like honest to god I'm thinking of trying to BUILD a mod that removes all potatoes, tomatoes, and corn from the game, because god damn it if you're going to be Gross European Fantasy you didn't have that shit until you got to the AMERICAS!!!!*
* okay, okay, fine; Black Marsh in Elder Scrolls is basically Fantasy Americas, so that's why we have tomato potato corn, we stole if from lizards IM STILL MAD OKAY IM GONNA GLARE AT THE WITCHER 3 FOR HAVING POTATOES FOREVER I DONT CARE HOW MANY BULLSHIT SPACE PORTALS YOU HAVE, AT LEAST ELDER SCROLLS HAS THE DECENCY TO HAVE A MEXICO/SOUTH AMERICA ANALOG
L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
I had three flavors of Skyrim.esm
One is the one I modified because Bethesda can't be assed to clean their shit. One is the dirty backup to the original. I don't know what the other is. It did the same for the other masters too.
To be safe, I nuked my Data directory.
0
L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
edited February 2019
Yeah ignore me I'm being crabby because I didn't want to have to start all over again.
Like honest to god I'm thinking of trying to BUILD a mod that removes all potatoes, tomatoes, and corn from the game, because god damn it if you're going to be Gross European Fantasy you didn't have that shit until you got to the AMERICAS!!!!*
* okay, okay, fine; Black Marsh in Elder Scrolls is basically Fantasy Americas, so that's why we have tomato potato corn, we stole if from lizards IM STILL MAD OKAY IM GONNA GLARE AT THE WITCHER 3 FOR HAVING POTATOES FOREVER I DONT CARE HOW MANY BULLSHIT SPACE PORTALS YOU HAVE, AT LEAST ELDER SCROLLS HAS THE DECENCY TO HAVE A MEXICO/SOUTH AMERICA ANALOG
This is much more reasonable than my mod idea!
end the mage's guild quest where, instead of the ancano or whatever his name is dying, once he gets below a certain health level, you're pulled into the Eye of Magnus and it's 70 years in the past. Two Thalmor are attacking the current archmage (hearing something about wearing the empire's mage corps) or about to start, using the same sort of barrier you just saw. the Thalmor pulled through with you calls on them to attack you, and you need to kill them. As the change happens, "ghosts" of them split out and continue playing out what originally happened. You win the battle, but watch the rest of the scene unable to interact, and see the archmage shout at the barrier, which reverbs/interacts and you see the earthquake animation. Then you're pulled back to the present, along with the previous archmage as a ghost person for a bit. He talks some, but takes you out to the archmage's roof to show you...winterhold not destroyed.
But everyone's memories are still that it was destroyed. But not. Basically, you cause a dragon break. Previous archmage is pulled back, the rest of the thing plays out as previous, but then first time you interact with anyone in town or in the college, they have that "grip head and shake" animation where they question what's going on before having their normal prompts. Have a full town (larger keep because it used to be the capital), a smith, an actual harbor, other stores, new NPCs, a stable, the whole nine yards. Also, a new lower level to the college and some new students (maybe add an alchemy professor?). Maybe even have some token comment where having mages who could Shout made the war go slightly differently so the white-gold concordat makes it so worship isn't illegal but that Thalmor are allowed to hunt them in the Empire or something? Haven't fully thought that one through.
Also, while we're at it, make it so you have to like....best each one of the teachers in their given school of magic to become archmage because seriously.
...I have never made any mod before, so the above definitely isn't happening. Fun to think about, though!
I had three flavors of Skyrim.esm
One is the one I modified because Bethesda can't be assed to clean their shit. One is the dirty backup to the original. I don't know what the other is. It did the same for the other masters too.
To be safe, I nuked my Data directory.
I linked something a few pages ago, but I think I know what it is.
Vortex doesn't technically pollute the data directory, it just kinda makes it look that way? So the data is written to your disk, but the directory just has a pointer reference to that location. So when Vortex installs something, it puts a pointer in the mods folder, and a pointer in the data folder, both pointing to the same location - it's not "in" the data directory, but there's a reference pointer to the same location in both places. So it was actually only two esms physically on your hard drive, but there references to those two locations.
I had three flavors of Skyrim.esm
One is the one I modified because Bethesda can't be assed to clean their shit. One is the dirty backup to the original. I don't know what the other is. It did the same for the other masters too.
To be safe, I nuked my Data directory.
I linked something a few pages ago, but I think I know what it is.
Vortex doesn't technically pollute the data directory, it just kinda makes it look that way? So the data is written to your disk, but the directory just has a pointer reference to that location. So when Vortex installs something, it puts a pointer in the mods folder, and a pointer in the data folder, both pointing to the same location - it's not "in" the data directory, but there's a reference pointer to the same location in both places. So it was actually only two esms physically on your hard drive, but there references to those two locations.
Before I nuked it, I checked where Vortex installed the mods. I didn't see any master files there.
I expected two, but had three. It was weird.
Oh well. I'm getting MO to work, and all is well in the world again.
Has anyone ever had any npc navigation issues with jk skyrim? I have had a few in riverwood where it seems like my follower wants to run half way across town instead of walking across a newly placed bridge over the creek.
I dont really have anything else that edits riverwood that I know of. If this is a common issue i may just switch to dawn of skyrim and etac.
Edit: Eh fuck it, Dawn of Skyrim and ETAC both feel like they are shoving in too much to the city spaces to me. May just go vanilla.
Random observations from some mods that I first experienced/interacted today:
Winterhold Expanded Ruins I'm really liking for the aesthetics, but the underground stuff feels out of place. It also appears to conflict with NSUTR to where I've got some floating snow which looks amusing.
Immersive College of Winterhold is really good so far, regardless of use of "immersive". Haven't gotten to it's quest stuff, but I love the new look, the classes, etc. Only hiccup is that I can't seem to get Rumarin's "take him to the arcanium" thing to trigger.
Telengard is really nice to have for a frostfall run and makes the prison bring fuck-off in the middle of nowhere less stupid. Works well with Oblivion Artifact Pack, I didn't even realize the well was from another mod. Works less well with Mirai, which places a large stronghold close enough to it that it feels silly.
I keep finding things related to The Brotherhood of Old that look neat. I really should finish the DB questline so I can dig into this.
And a random amusement observation: judging from Auri's flavor conversation, Deepholme from LOTD is labeled as being in Solitude. Whoops :v
Has anyone ever had any npc navigation issues with jk skyrim? I have had a few in riverwood where it seems like my follower wants to run half way across town instead of walking across a newly placed bridge over the creek.
I dont really have anything else that edits riverwood that I know of. If this is a common issue i may just switch to dawn of skyrim and etac.
Edit: Eh fuck it, Dawn of Skyrim and ETAC both feel like they are shoving in too much to the city spaces to me. May just go vanilla.
Belated, but for the towns, some smaller ones to consider are Arthmoor's or The Great Cities ones. Arthmoor's are mostly unintrusive, but there's no AIO. The Great Cities I haven't used, I've heard people love the look but they're not all populated with NPCs so they can feel empty.
Has anyone ever had any npc navigation issues with jk skyrim? I have had a few in riverwood where it seems like my follower wants to run half way across town instead of walking across a newly placed bridge over the creek.
I dont really have anything else that edits riverwood that I know of. If this is a common issue i may just switch to dawn of skyrim and etac.
Edit: Eh fuck it, Dawn of Skyrim and ETAC both feel like they are shoving in too much to the city spaces to me. May just go vanilla.
Belated, but for the towns, some smaller ones to consider are Arthmoor's or The Great Cities ones. Arthmoor's are mostly unintrusive, but there's no AIO. The Great Cities I haven't used, I've heard people love the look but they're not all populated with NPCs so they can feel empty.
I ended up getting all of arthmoors (except falkreath because I didn’t know if it would conflict with falkreath hauntings), they seem pretty low key but solid.
The oblivion gates in cities, starshards, and dolmen gates seem pretty cool for flavor too. It seems like bethesda always forgets to include callbacks like that.
Jealous Deva on
+1
MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
The idea was to strike a happy medium between going on NexusMods and getting totally overhwelmed, and just installing whatever hackjob clickbait website is desperate for ad clicks and thus have just posted a TOP 10 SKYRIM MODZ "article." Basically, strike a nice balance between "No really, this is popular for a reason" and "Fuck you, I really like having LAUNDRY."
Hell yeah, laundry!
Also, technically those are listicles.
I have nothing else to contribute to the thread at this time.
SSE list thing has had all prior links converted, removed, or comments re: conversion (a lot of the texture ones should work fine with the nif optimizer) added. I'll go back and finish putting in recommendations later. Anyone else, feel free to add your own
Has anyone ever had any npc navigation issues with jk skyrim? I have had a few in riverwood where it seems like my follower wants to run half way across town instead of walking across a newly placed bridge over the creek.
I dont really have anything else that edits riverwood that I know of. If this is a common issue i may just switch to dawn of skyrim and etac.
Edit: Eh fuck it, Dawn of Skyrim and ETAC both feel like they are shoving in too much to the city spaces to me. May just go vanilla.
Belated, but for the towns, some smaller ones to consider are Arthmoor's or The Great Cities ones. Arthmoor's are mostly unintrusive, but there's no AIO. The Great Cities I haven't used, I've heard people love the look but they're not all populated with NPCs so they can feel empty.
/doodles around on Arthmoor's page and ---
holy shit it's the Paarthunax Dilemma guy
Man I do NOT have time to try another Skyrim playthrough, not after I had to completely nuke my last one (much bigger computer problem; had to pick and choose what to save, work stuff took priority)
but yeah these are great. Love the silly little things like Skyshards & Gates.
So I would like to throw in a plug for Opusglass' creature mods, as I've used them for a while. They all seem pretty high quality. Going to just throw up his profile rather than link everything individually.
There's basically 3 categories of mods he does: Diversity mods, solstheim creature mods, and misc skyrim creatures.
For Diversity, there's Diverse dragons and diverse werewolves, that do pretty much what they say on the tin. Diverse werewolves adds a bunch of werewolf skins so you won't be fighting a werewolf clone, there's also a mod linked to add more werewolves to skyrim (I don't really use it as I'm fine with werewolves and werebears just being restricted to their own little corner of skyrim, but if you want some more werewolf events, wild werewolves, city attacks, etc, it's there.). Diverse dragons adds a collection of handmade dragon types so you don't run into the same three vanilla dragons over and over. Splendor does the same thing but with mesh edits of the original dragons, think of it like Heavy Armory for dragons. Both work well together.
For solestheim creature mods, the idea is that there were a lot of monsters in bloodmoon that just got genericized because they had skyrim variants already, and it's bringing those unique monsters back.
First is a texture eye fix for the creation club nix hound, which does what it says on the tin. The nix hound is one of the better CC items, so if you don't mind paying the money this will make it look a bit better.
Second is Graal trolls, replacing the trolls on solstheim with a unique, tusked model. For some reason my bashed patch keeps adding the vanilla trolls back to the leveled lists, so I just let them all coexist.
Kaarstag reborn does something similar for the king of the frost giants in sostheim, giving him a new unique texture.
Cannibal draugh redoes the draugh in solstheim only, giving them a meaner, more bloodthirsty look to match the lore from Bloodmoon. Skyrim draugh remain the same, so it differentiates solstheim a bit from the main game, a good thing IMHO.
Blood horkers does for horkers what cannibal draugh does, for horkers.
Moving on to random skyrim creatures, Wendigos and Howlers add some new daedric creatures (I think they may be sourced from witcher 3). Think deermen and goatmen.
Bogmorts add some mudmen monsters to the swamps. They seem based on the ash monsters of solstheim, but with mud.
The Falkreath Hauntings adds some ghostly quests and encounters around the Falkreath area to liven(deaden?) that area up a bit.
+2
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I feel like I've really fucked things up doing all my mods through the steam launcher.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
So been playing a bit of a new run since everyone has been talking about this, and I really want to make a wildlife mod because I feel like the game almost does a good job but doesn’t quite get there and most mods don’t really hit the spot either (I feel like animallica in particular diversifys a bit too much and loses some consistency).
I would love to see:
1. Wild horses/ponies/mustangs. Especially around whiterun as that is exactly the kind of area that would have a wild horse population in real life. They should behave pretty much exactly like the deer and elk, graze, wander and run from any real threat. The CC content adds wild horses but only adds like 8 in the whole world as hidden player mounts, there need to also be non-ridable grazing versions, as pretty much anywhere in the world where domestic horses are in wide use a feral population picks up pretty quickly.
Otherwise between goats elk and (rein)deer skyrim actually has this niche pretty well covered. A lot of mods add like fifty deer species and it really isn’t necessary for as small an area as skyrim.
2. Feral chickens and dogs -in temperate areas. These are pretty lived in areas, occasionally it would be nice to see a chicken or dog mixed in among the rabbits and foxes in warm areas. Once you get above the permanent snow line they probably couldn’t survive without human help though. I feel like there should also be a small omnivore/insectovore critter, I beleive one mod had a racoon which would fit nicely in the temperate areas.
3.higher level versions of wolves, bears,and sabre cats - just for gameplay purposes. The small predator large predator large omnivore dynamic is great as far as realism but you blow past all of them being relevant by level 25 or so which is not that high. As far as new predator species go as with the deer a lot of mods go crazy on this, I could see possibly a cougar/lynx fitting in for the area around the reach or a short faced bear for the plains areas, but thats about it, wolves, bears, and big cats cover all the bases pretty well.
4. Large non-deer herbivores - this is the biggest sticking point for me. There’s a whole ecological niche just totally missing. In real life these kinds of cold steppe and forest areas had wild cattle/bison/buffalo. The in game cows reskinned and scaled up would make a great wild grazer for the plains and forest areas. Wild cattle were around in the middle ages in Europe and didn’t go extinct until the early modern age, so it would be appropriate thematically. I beleive a mod also had a wooly rhino that would fit into the area around skyrim. Also it’s weird there are boars on solstheim but not around the reach or rift.
Maybe I should ask some skin/model artists for permission and make a wildlife mod when I get time, I have done creature edits/additions before, it’s not too hard to add a creature and put it on the leveled list.
Like using steam workshop? Yeah, that's what I used on original Skyrim for the longest time. It works great until it doesn't *shrug* it's fine until you start messing around with bigger stuff that will conflict.
So been playing a bit of a new run since everyone has been talking about this, and I really want to make a wildlife mod because I feel like the game almost does a good job but doesn’t quite get there and most mods don’t really hit the spot either (I feel like animallica in particular diversifys a bit too much and loses some consistency).
I would love to see:
1. Wild horses/ponies/mustangs. Especially around whiterun as that is exactly the kind of area that would have a wild horse population in real life. They should behave pretty much exactly like the deer and elk, graze, wander and run from any real threat. The CC content adds wild horses but only adds like 8 in the whole world as hidden player mounts, there need to also be non-ridable grazing versions, as pretty much anywhere in the world where domestic horses are in wide use a feral population picks up pretty quickly.
Otherwise between goats elk and (rein)deer skyrim actually has this niche pretty well covered. A lot of mods add like fifty deer species and it really isn’t necessary for as small an area as skyrim.
2. Feral chickens and dogs -in temperate areas. These are pretty lived in areas, occasionally it would be nice to see a chicken or dog mixed in among the rabbits and foxes in warm areas. Once you get above the permanent snow line they probably couldn’t survive without human help though. I feel like there should also be a small omnivore/insectovore critter, I beleive one mod had a racoon which would fit nicely in the temperate areas.
3.higher level versions of wolves, bears,and sabre cats - just for gameplay purposes. The small predator large predator large omnivore dynamic is great as far as realism but you blow past all of them being relevant by level 25 or so which is not that high. As far as new predator species go as with the deer a lot of mods go crazy on this, I could see possibly a cougar/lynx fitting in for the area around the reach or a short faced bear for the plains areas, but thats about it, wolves, bears, and big cats cover all the bases pretty well.
4. Large non-deer herbivores - this is the biggest sticking point for me. There’s a whole ecological niche just totally missing. In real life these kinds of cold steppe and forest areas had wild cattle/bison/buffalo. The in game cows reskinned and scaled up would make a great wild grazer for the plains and forest areas. Wild cattle were around in the middle ages in Europe and didn’t go extinct until the early modern age, so it would be appropriate thematically. I beleive a mod also had a wooly rhino that would fit into the area around skyrim. Also it’s weird there are boars on solstheim but not around the reach or rift.
Maybe I should ask some skin/model artists for permission and make a wildlife mod when I get time, I have done creature edits/additions before, it’s not too hard to add a creature and put it on the leveled list.
Best I can find real quick:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1104 - 100% can confirm this adds higher level versions of animals, as well as some child ones, etc. I'm pretty sure this is where the feral dogs I run into are from too, but I'm not 100% sure. I'll check console next time I see some.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/12680 - Actually, dogs might be from here. This adds a toooooooon of new things roaming around, but mostly are just "alternative" types to things you'll see elsewhere in the game (skeleton mages, new types of automata, etc). Just click through the images to get an idea
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17466 - looks like an alternative to the first one above, also I think adds the feral chickens? Has kid versions of a lot of the animals, too. This looks like it does a lot, but I'm not 100% sure of what everything is.
Some of the recent PREQUEL strips have interesting (IMO) thoughts on the possible long-term side-effects of walking around with heavy-duty Charm spells and/or gear. Including the implications of what lots of "Fortify Personality" might do to the personality being fortified. (No spoilers for the comic itself.)
First of all, consider the normal psychological effects of being surrounded by people who agree with you all the time. But it's more insidious than that.
Because the magic has a tendency to leak. It affects you too, a little: it makes you positively disposed to the person in the mirror. And per the "fortified" comment above, whoever and whatever you were before, the magic makes you More You.
Your inhibitions, your self-censor, the little voice that normally says "Maybe we shouldn't", gets quieter and quieter until you can't hear it over the sound of how awesome you are.
There's nothing stopping you from doing whatever you want. Every half-baked idea you have is fantastic, because you had it, and everyone agrees with you.
In the end, you become someone who is never checked, never doubted, never questioned... including by themselves.
(That this is a recipe for disaster is immediately obvious to anyone not under the effects of said magic.)
Commander Zoom on
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
+3
L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
Oh hey! I just converted my first mod from Oldrim to new Specialrim!
You just have to extra everything, convert the ESM to ESP, open in Creation Kit, Save, Rezip and there you go.
Unless you have texture files. Then you have to run some other program.
And if it has a Proccer. Then you have to reprogram everything it looks like.
But otherwise!
Oh hey! I just converted my first mod from Oldrim to new Specialrim!
You just have to extra everything, convert the ESM to ESP, open in Creation Kit, Save, Rezip and there you go.
Unless you have texture files. Then you have to run some other program.
And if it has a Proccer. Then you have to reprogram everything it looks like.
But otherwise!
Yeah - a lot of them are super easy. If it's an esp that'll work, it's literally just open in CK -> save, and you're good. Textures actually are fine (I think it's .tga files that aren't used anymore and can be deleted?) it's meshes that you need to run through the nif optimizer - the SSE guide has links.
I think it's animations and scripts where things get really hinky.
Some of the recent PREQUEL strips have interesting (IMO) thoughts on the possible long-term side-effects of walking around with heavy-duty Charm spells and/or gear. Including the implications of what lots of "Fortify Personality" might do to the personality being fortified. (No spoilers for the comic itself.)
First of all, consider the normal psychological effects of being surrounded by people who agree with you all the time. But it's more insidious than that.
Because the magic has a tendency to leak. It affects you too, a little: it makes you positively disposed to the person in the mirror. And per the "fortified" comment above, whoever and whatever you were before, the magic makes you More You.
Your inhibitions, your self-censor, the little voice that normally says "Maybe we shouldn't", gets quieter and quieter until you can't hear it over the sound of how awesome you are.
There's nothing stopping you from doing whatever you want. Every half-baked idea you have is fantastic, because you had it, and everyone agrees with you.
In the end, you become someone who is never checked, never doubted, never questioned... including by themselves.
(That this is a recipe for disaster is immediately obvious to anyone not under the effects of said magic.)
Huh new Prequel strips? I thought that comic died years ago, cool!
Some of the recent PREQUEL strips have interesting (IMO) thoughts on the possible long-term side-effects of walking around with heavy-duty Charm spells and/or gear. Including the implications of what lots of "Fortify Personality" might do to the personality being fortified. (No spoilers for the comic itself.)
First of all, consider the normal psychological effects of being surrounded by people who agree with you all the time. But it's more insidious than that.
Because the magic has a tendency to leak. It affects you too, a little: it makes you positively disposed to the person in the mirror. And per the "fortified" comment above, whoever and whatever you were before, the magic makes you More You.
Your inhibitions, your self-censor, the little voice that normally says "Maybe we shouldn't", gets quieter and quieter until you can't hear it over the sound of how awesome you are.
There's nothing stopping you from doing whatever you want. Every half-baked idea you have is fantastic, because you had it, and everyone agrees with you.
In the end, you become someone who is never checked, never doubted, never questioned... including by themselves.
(That this is a recipe for disaster is immediately obvious to anyone not under the effects of said magic.)
... so basically, narcissistic personality disorder?
Has anyone ever had any npc navigation issues with jk skyrim? I have had a few in riverwood where it seems like my follower wants to run half way across town instead of walking across a newly placed bridge over the creek.
I dont really have anything else that edits riverwood that I know of. If this is a common issue i may just switch to dawn of skyrim and etac.
Edit: Eh fuck it, Dawn of Skyrim and ETAC both feel like they are shoving in too much to the city spaces to me. May just go vanilla.
Belated, but for the towns, some smaller ones to consider are Arthmoor's or The Great Cities ones. Arthmoor's are mostly unintrusive, but there's no AIO. The Great Cities I haven't used, I've heard people love the look but they're not all populated with NPCs so they can feel empty.
/doodles around on Arthmoor's page and ---
holy shit it's the Paarthunax Dilemma guy
Man I do NOT have time to try another Skyrim playthrough, not after I had to completely nuke my last one (much bigger computer problem; had to pick and choose what to save, work stuff took priority)
but yeah these are great. Love the silly little things like Skyshards & Gates.
As brilliant a modder as he is, the dude has been unhinged in conversation for a very long time, and people finally had enough. It's been a long time coming.
I posted here about some drama last year when he tried to ban Skyrim VR players from using the previous release of the unofficial bugfix patch (core of many mods), even though it was explicitly allowed by his own license. He called VR players spoiled, entitled brats and demanded $10,000 for VR equipment if they wanted to use his patch. He removed USSEP from the Nexus for a while, citing "piracy" of his mod.
And before and after that, for years he's been hostile, patronizing, and stubborn in any discussion that questions any decision he's ever made. There was "gategate" that added huge ugly Oblivion gates to every Skyrim city in the Open Cities mod, because...they would've been there due to lore/headcanon somehow, and he threw a fit when players wrote little mods to remove them. There have been multiple drawn out arguments over decisions made in the unofficial patch that seemed more like content modifications than bugfixes.
The most recent event that was the straw that broke the camel's back was when someone brought up a common complaint of the unofficial patch, that its modification to dragon appearance tables changed how frequently you would fight frost dragons.
The tables in the base game as you level:
Dragon (breathes fire or frost)
Blood Dragon (breathes fire or frost)
Frost Dragon (breathes frost only)
Elder Dragon (breathes fire orfrost)
With unofficial patch:
Dragon (breathes fire or frost)
Blood Dragon (breathes fire or frost)
50% Frost Dragon (breathes frost) 50% Elder Dragon (breathes fire)
Elder Dragon (breathes fire or frost)
In other words it was a "bug" that you didn't encounter half frost half fire breath at a certain level, but in fixing the "bug" now encountering frost dragons becomes rare and elder dragons become more frequent. It's completely subjective as to which one is more wrong/unintended.
Arthmoor says this was never brought up to him previously, which was definitely wrong because I had read about it several times myself. The guy links him the exact post where they had discussed it, and he says as far as he was concerned they never had the conversation because the guy was engaging in sockpuppetry. Resulting in a drawn out back-and-forth over the exact definition of sockpuppetry, and eventually Arthmoor's ban.
I guess all this is to say that if you enjoy anything he has ever created, I would consider making a backup somewhere because he's very volatile and I wouldn't be surprised if he burned everything down someday.
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Don't worry, there are lots of dong related mods available so you can go nuts.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Is this just a thing needed for encounter zone mods? I’m assuming if it was that big of a deal for vanilla it would have been noticed sometime in the last 8 years.
I know it is the case for vanilla too, because Fort Greymoor is one I'd noticed before - minimum level for the exterior was 1, minimum level for the interior was 20. There were a couple times I mowed down the outside with a brand new character, went inside and got killed quickly, and that was before I messed with any zone stuff.
Mod author made a reddit thread if you want to Q&A
https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/at0a69/sse_missing_encounter_zones_fixed_adds_proper/
Pertinent quote to this:
Some of the folks are talking about having this get implemented into CRF or USSEP instead of needing a separate mod.
Or was it something they planned to include, and just ran out of time to playtest and so just left it out?
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
It could have been that maybe they did intend things to be that way originally but people in playtesting were encounting high level enemies in exteriors earlier than they wanted or something like that. There is no easy way to tell a level 1 bandit from a 30 bandit so maybe people were running into high level mobs and getting smashed and then they figured it was easier to just disconnect most exterior zones than rework the system.
It was having problems sorting things. By trying to make it easier, it won't allow me to choose how to order things. The most I can do is say to load some things after another, which is proving to be not worth it.
So, away it goes.
Too bad it's so terrible that it has completely infected the entirety of the Skyrim directory. I basically have to download everything again it looks like.
What a piece of shit.
Now I get to reinstall everything all over again from MO2.
I just hate having to launch from inside mo2 to get the mods to show up. I like my steam shortcut.
I want to be clear that my own intent in compiling / cleaning up @Monger 's list was not so much to have a comprehensive LIST OF THE MODS YOU MUST PLAY, but rather a curated list by the PA community of shit we like. The idea was to strike a happy medium between going on NexusMods and getting totally overhwelmed, and just installing whatever hackjob clickbait website is desperate for ad clicks and thus have just posted a TOP 10 SKYRIM MODZ "article." Basically, strike a nice balance between "No really, this is popular for a reason" and "Fuck you, I really like having LAUNDRY."
Which absolutely means that 1. there's gonna be mods in that list that conflict or are weird and 2. there are absolutely mods in that list that are only there because we're fucking nerds.
Like honest to god I'm thinking of trying to BUILD a mod that removes all potatoes, tomatoes, and corn from the game, because god damn it if you're going to be Gross European Fantasy you didn't have that shit until you got to the AMERICAS!!!!*
* okay, okay, fine; Black Marsh in Elder Scrolls is basically Fantasy Americas, so that's why we have tomato potato corn, we stole if from lizards IM STILL MAD OKAY IM GONNA GLARE AT THE WITCHER 3 FOR HAVING POTATOES FOREVER I DONT CARE HOW MANY BULLSHIT SPACE PORTALS YOU HAVE, AT LEAST ELDER SCROLLS HAS THE DECENCY TO HAVE A MEXICO/SOUTH AMERICA ANALOG
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
One is the one I modified because Bethesda can't be assed to clean their shit. One is the dirty backup to the original. I don't know what the other is. It did the same for the other masters too.
To be safe, I nuked my Data directory.
This is much more reasonable than my mod idea!
But everyone's memories are still that it was destroyed. But not. Basically, you cause a dragon break. Previous archmage is pulled back, the rest of the thing plays out as previous, but then first time you interact with anyone in town or in the college, they have that "grip head and shake" animation where they question what's going on before having their normal prompts. Have a full town (larger keep because it used to be the capital), a smith, an actual harbor, other stores, new NPCs, a stable, the whole nine yards. Also, a new lower level to the college and some new students (maybe add an alchemy professor?). Maybe even have some token comment where having mages who could Shout made the war go slightly differently so the white-gold concordat makes it so worship isn't illegal but that Thalmor are allowed to hunt them in the Empire or something? Haven't fully thought that one through.
Also, while we're at it, make it so you have to like....best each one of the teachers in their given school of magic to become archmage because seriously.
...I have never made any mod before, so the above definitely isn't happening. Fun to think about, though!
I linked something a few pages ago, but I think I know what it is.
Vortex doesn't technically pollute the data directory, it just kinda makes it look that way? So the data is written to your disk, but the directory just has a pointer reference to that location. So when Vortex installs something, it puts a pointer in the mods folder, and a pointer in the data folder, both pointing to the same location - it's not "in" the data directory, but there's a reference pointer to the same location in both places. So it was actually only two esms physically on your hard drive, but there references to those two locations.
Before I nuked it, I checked where Vortex installed the mods. I didn't see any master files there.
I expected two, but had three. It was weird.
Oh well. I'm getting MO to work, and all is well in the world again.
I dont really have anything else that edits riverwood that I know of. If this is a common issue i may just switch to dawn of skyrim and etac.
Edit: Eh fuck it, Dawn of Skyrim and ETAC both feel like they are shoving in too much to the city spaces to me. May just go vanilla.
Immersive College of Winterhold is really good so far, regardless of use of "immersive". Haven't gotten to it's quest stuff, but I love the new look, the classes, etc. Only hiccup is that I can't seem to get Rumarin's "take him to the arcanium" thing to trigger.
Telengard is really nice to have for a frostfall run and makes the prison bring fuck-off in the middle of nowhere less stupid. Works well with Oblivion Artifact Pack, I didn't even realize the well was from another mod. Works less well with Mirai, which places a large stronghold close enough to it that it feels silly.
I keep finding things related to The Brotherhood of Old that look neat. I really should finish the DB questline so I can dig into this.
And a random amusement observation: judging from Auri's flavor conversation, Deepholme from LOTD is labeled as being in Solitude. Whoops :v
Belated, but for the towns, some smaller ones to consider are Arthmoor's or The Great Cities ones. Arthmoor's are mostly unintrusive, but there's no AIO. The Great Cities I haven't used, I've heard people love the look but they're not all populated with NPCs so they can feel empty.
I ended up getting all of arthmoors (except falkreath because I didn’t know if it would conflict with falkreath hauntings), they seem pretty low key but solid.
The oblivion gates in cities, starshards, and dolmen gates seem pretty cool for flavor too. It seems like bethesda always forgets to include callbacks like that.
Also, technically those are listicles.
I have nothing else to contribute to the thread at this time.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
/doodles around on Arthmoor's page and ---
holy shit it's the Paarthunax Dilemma guy
Man I do NOT have time to try another Skyrim playthrough, not after I had to completely nuke my last one (much bigger computer problem; had to pick and choose what to save, work stuff took priority)
but yeah these are great. Love the silly little things like Skyshards & Gates.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/users/6123863?tab=user+files&BH=0
There's basically 3 categories of mods he does: Diversity mods, solstheim creature mods, and misc skyrim creatures.
For Diversity, there's Diverse dragons and diverse werewolves, that do pretty much what they say on the tin. Diverse werewolves adds a bunch of werewolf skins so you won't be fighting a werewolf clone, there's also a mod linked to add more werewolves to skyrim (I don't really use it as I'm fine with werewolves and werebears just being restricted to their own little corner of skyrim, but if you want some more werewolf events, wild werewolves, city attacks, etc, it's there.). Diverse dragons adds a collection of handmade dragon types so you don't run into the same three vanilla dragons over and over. Splendor does the same thing but with mesh edits of the original dragons, think of it like Heavy Armory for dragons. Both work well together.
For solestheim creature mods, the idea is that there were a lot of monsters in bloodmoon that just got genericized because they had skyrim variants already, and it's bringing those unique monsters back.
First is a texture eye fix for the creation club nix hound, which does what it says on the tin. The nix hound is one of the better CC items, so if you don't mind paying the money this will make it look a bit better.
Second is Graal trolls, replacing the trolls on solstheim with a unique, tusked model. For some reason my bashed patch keeps adding the vanilla trolls back to the leveled lists, so I just let them all coexist.
Kaarstag reborn does something similar for the king of the frost giants in sostheim, giving him a new unique texture.
Cannibal draugh redoes the draugh in solstheim only, giving them a meaner, more bloodthirsty look to match the lore from Bloodmoon. Skyrim draugh remain the same, so it differentiates solstheim a bit from the main game, a good thing IMHO.
Blood horkers does for horkers what cannibal draugh does, for horkers.
Moving on to random skyrim creatures, Wendigos and Howlers add some new daedric creatures (I think they may be sourced from witcher 3). Think deermen and goatmen.
Bogmorts add some mudmen monsters to the swamps. They seem based on the ash monsters of solstheim, but with mud.
The Falkreath Hauntings adds some ghostly quests and encounters around the Falkreath area to liven(deaden?) that area up a bit.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
I would love to see:
1. Wild horses/ponies/mustangs. Especially around whiterun as that is exactly the kind of area that would have a wild horse population in real life. They should behave pretty much exactly like the deer and elk, graze, wander and run from any real threat. The CC content adds wild horses but only adds like 8 in the whole world as hidden player mounts, there need to also be non-ridable grazing versions, as pretty much anywhere in the world where domestic horses are in wide use a feral population picks up pretty quickly.
Otherwise between goats elk and (rein)deer skyrim actually has this niche pretty well covered. A lot of mods add like fifty deer species and it really isn’t necessary for as small an area as skyrim.
2. Feral chickens and dogs -in temperate areas. These are pretty lived in areas, occasionally it would be nice to see a chicken or dog mixed in among the rabbits and foxes in warm areas. Once you get above the permanent snow line they probably couldn’t survive without human help though. I feel like there should also be a small omnivore/insectovore critter, I beleive one mod had a racoon which would fit nicely in the temperate areas.
3.higher level versions of wolves, bears,and sabre cats - just for gameplay purposes. The small predator large predator large omnivore dynamic is great as far as realism but you blow past all of them being relevant by level 25 or so which is not that high. As far as new predator species go as with the deer a lot of mods go crazy on this, I could see possibly a cougar/lynx fitting in for the area around the reach or a short faced bear for the plains areas, but thats about it, wolves, bears, and big cats cover all the bases pretty well.
4. Large non-deer herbivores - this is the biggest sticking point for me. There’s a whole ecological niche just totally missing. In real life these kinds of cold steppe and forest areas had wild cattle/bison/buffalo. The in game cows reskinned and scaled up would make a great wild grazer for the plains and forest areas. Wild cattle were around in the middle ages in Europe and didn’t go extinct until the early modern age, so it would be appropriate thematically. I beleive a mod also had a wooly rhino that would fit into the area around skyrim. Also it’s weird there are boars on solstheim but not around the reach or rift.
Maybe I should ask some skin/model artists for permission and make a wildlife mod when I get time, I have done creature edits/additions before, it’s not too hard to add a creature and put it on the leveled list.
The only winning move is not to play.
Best I can find real quick:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1104 - 100% can confirm this adds higher level versions of animals, as well as some child ones, etc. I'm pretty sure this is where the feral dogs I run into are from too, but I'm not 100% sure. I'll check console next time I see some.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/12680 - Actually, dogs might be from here. This adds a toooooooon of new things roaming around, but mostly are just "alternative" types to things you'll see elsewhere in the game (skeleton mages, new types of automata, etc). Just click through the images to get an idea
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17466 - looks like an alternative to the first one above, also I think adds the feral chickens? Has kid versions of a lot of the animals, too. This looks like it does a lot, but I'm not 100% sure of what everything is.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/14686 - adds squirrels
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/151 - wild horse herds (four of 'em)
No luck on the large herbivores stuff - mostly just things added to farms.
Why? Why are you doing this to me?
Because the magic has a tendency to leak. It affects you too, a little: it makes you positively disposed to the person in the mirror. And per the "fortified" comment above, whoever and whatever you were before, the magic makes you More You.
Your inhibitions, your self-censor, the little voice that normally says "Maybe we shouldn't", gets quieter and quieter until you can't hear it over the sound of how awesome you are.
There's nothing stopping you from doing whatever you want. Every half-baked idea you have is fantastic, because you had it, and everyone agrees with you.
In the end, you become someone who is never checked, never doubted, never questioned... including by themselves.
(That this is a recipe for disaster is immediately obvious to anyone not under the effects of said magic.)
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
You just have to extra everything, convert the ESM to ESP, open in Creation Kit, Save, Rezip and there you go.
Unless you have texture files. Then you have to run some other program.
And if it has a Proccer. Then you have to reprogram everything it looks like.
But otherwise!
Yeah - a lot of them are super easy. If it's an esp that'll work, it's literally just open in CK -> save, and you're good. Textures actually are fine (I think it's .tga files that aren't used anymore and can be deleted?) it's meshes that you need to run through the nif optimizer - the SSE guide has links.
I think it's animations and scripts where things get really hinky.
Huh new Prequel strips? I thought that comic died years ago, cool!
... so basically, narcissistic personality disorder?
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Speaking of Arthmoor.
He was recently banned from the main Skyrim modding subreddit.
As brilliant a modder as he is, the dude has been unhinged in conversation for a very long time, and people finally had enough. It's been a long time coming.
I posted here about some drama last year when he tried to ban Skyrim VR players from using the previous release of the unofficial bugfix patch (core of many mods), even though it was explicitly allowed by his own license. He called VR players spoiled, entitled brats and demanded $10,000 for VR equipment if they wanted to use his patch. He removed USSEP from the Nexus for a while, citing "piracy" of his mod.
And before and after that, for years he's been hostile, patronizing, and stubborn in any discussion that questions any decision he's ever made. There was "gategate" that added huge ugly Oblivion gates to every Skyrim city in the Open Cities mod, because...they would've been there due to lore/headcanon somehow, and he threw a fit when players wrote little mods to remove them. There have been multiple drawn out arguments over decisions made in the unofficial patch that seemed more like content modifications than bugfixes.
The most recent event that was the straw that broke the camel's back was when someone brought up a common complaint of the unofficial patch, that its modification to dragon appearance tables changed how frequently you would fight frost dragons.
The tables in the base game as you level:
Dragon (breathes fire or frost)
Blood Dragon (breathes fire or frost)
Frost Dragon (breathes frost only)
Elder Dragon (breathes fire orfrost)
With unofficial patch:
Dragon (breathes fire or frost)
Blood Dragon (breathes fire or frost)
50% Frost Dragon (breathes frost) 50% Elder Dragon (breathes fire)
Elder Dragon (breathes fire or frost)
In other words it was a "bug" that you didn't encounter half frost half fire breath at a certain level, but in fixing the "bug" now encountering frost dragons becomes rare and elder dragons become more frequent. It's completely subjective as to which one is more wrong/unintended.
Arthmoor says this was never brought up to him previously, which was definitely wrong because I had read about it several times myself. The guy links him the exact post where they had discussed it, and he says as far as he was concerned they never had the conversation because the guy was engaging in sockpuppetry. Resulting in a drawn out back-and-forth over the exact definition of sockpuppetry, and eventually Arthmoor's ban.
I guess all this is to say that if you enjoy anything he has ever created, I would consider making a backup somewhere because he's very volatile and I wouldn't be surprised if he burned everything down someday.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/39870