GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Installed a couple more QoL mods, mostly around magika and health regen (very small amounts, but better than nothing), and movement speed. I know why Morrowind had slow movement speed but I just can't handle it in 2022.
Honestly, I don't find paid modding inherently bad either, for those who want to.
The main issues with it were a) they were applying it to a game that already had only free modding, thereby breaking the existing ecosystem, b) there were no controls in place which allowed someone to take someone else's stuff and release it as a paid mod (or also take a paid mod and immediately offer it as free), and c) the cuts were obnoxious - it was what....80% Bethesda, 20% mod creator? Something like that?
But dead serious - if they'd left Skyrim alone and rolled out the exact same system with Fallout 4, there'd have been complaints, but a HELL of a lot less because point a wouldn't be happening.
Yeah, the core issue with their paid mod system wasn't money going to mod-makers, it was Bethesda just needing to stick its corporate dick in the situation and make sure it was getting money from what was literally other peoples' work. And not just some money, but most of the money. It was just such blatantly bald-faced ripoff greed.
So I just reinstalled Skyrim SE on my XBO; last time I played an ES game on console, mods weren't a thing - now I'm on the precipice of a rabbit hole I'm not sure I want to jump down, but a big part of my brain is saying "Sure you do. DO IT!"
So... "essential" Skyrim mods on an Xbox for a vanilla+ type experience? I'm looking for graphical improvements (This is an OG XBO, so ixnay on the 4k texture packs, etc), maybe some increased immersion, upgraded cities/towns/interiors. A shortlist I'm working on now looks something like:
Improved Shadows and Volumetric Lighting
Water - something like Water and Terrain Enhancement Redux
Cities - JK's Skyrim - or alternative/others?
I don't know much about AI/NPC mods - I don't want to break any key quests/events/items. I also want to keep the vanilla character/skill/level system; for now, at least until I finish a playthrough.
I'm also torn on the unofficial patches, from what I've read.
Installed a couple more QoL mods, mostly around magika and health regen (very small amounts, but better than nothing), and movement speed. I know why Morrowind had slow movement speed but I just can't handle it in 2022.
I would advise maybe being prepared to uninstall that move speed mod. Morrowind doesn't necessarily have slow move speed it has move speed that depends on your speed statistic. At 100 speed, move speed is good to great. And 100 is not the speed cap.
So I just reinstalled Skyrim SE on my XBO; last time I played an ES game on console, mods weren't a thing - now I'm on the precipice of a rabbit hole I'm not sure I want to jump down, but a big part of my brain is saying "Sure you do. DO IT!"
So... "essential" Skyrim mods on an Xbox for a vanilla+ type experience? I'm looking for graphical improvements (This is an OG XBO, so ixnay on the 4k texture packs, etc), maybe some increased immersion, upgraded cities/towns/interiors. A shortlist I'm working on now looks something like:
Improved Shadows and Volumetric Lighting
Water - something like Water and Terrain Enhancement Redux
Cities - JK's Skyrim - or alternative/others?
I don't know much about AI/NPC mods - I don't want to break any key quests/events/items. I also want to keep the vanilla character/skill/level system; for now, at least until I finish a playthrough.
I'm also torn on the unofficial patches, from what I've read.
So I'm not super familiar of what is/isn't available on Xbox, but the most active Xbox specific place I've seen is the tales from Tamriel discord: https://discord.gg/V4SGWZ3
They're probably your best bet on putting together something coherent.
BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
edited January 2022
I've been running the entire the Anniversary Edition mod wad on my latest character on PS5 and it has a nice balance of fun new uniques and quests, along with some minor UI tweaks, definite improvement in all weapon and armor textures, weather is more dynamic in terms of particle effects and physics on snow and running water and the load times are incredibly sexy.
All this good shit and Trophies/cheevos are still attainable. Though throwing some additional tweaks and packages on top will require some experimentation with load orders and there's just enough different under the hood (I'm assuming mainly due to subtle differences in when stuff is pushed and popped off the memory stack at the compiler/assembly level) that PC load orders and workarounds don't always play nice.
Most fun I've had thus far was using a blood dragon's skull as a snowboard that I was able to ride off a cliff on the northwest side of the Shrine of Azura and finish about 10 steps from the outskirts of Winterhold, leaving a clearly visible path in the snow on the mountain side, like I was Shaun White on skooma.
BlackDragon480 on
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
+6
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Installed a couple more QoL mods, mostly around magika and health regen (very small amounts, but better than nothing), and movement speed. I know why Morrowind had slow movement speed but I just can't handle it in 2022.
I would advise maybe being prepared to uninstall that move speed mod. Morrowind doesn't necessarily have slow move speed it has move speed that depends on your speed statistic. At 100 speed, move speed is good to great. And 100 is not the speed cap.
I'm aware. I've already dropped it down a level as my Athletics and Speed have gone up. I just didn't want to deal with the snail pace movement of early Morrowind.
So I just reinstalled Skyrim SE on my XBO; last time I played an ES game on console, mods weren't a thing - now I'm on the precipice of a rabbit hole I'm not sure I want to jump down, but a big part of my brain is saying "Sure you do. DO IT!"
So... "essential" Skyrim mods on an Xbox for a vanilla+ type experience? I'm looking for graphical improvements (This is an OG XBO, so ixnay on the 4k texture packs, etc), maybe some increased immersion, upgraded cities/towns/interiors. A shortlist I'm working on now looks something like:
Improved Shadows and Volumetric Lighting
Water - something like Water and Terrain Enhancement Redux
Cities - JK's Skyrim - or alternative/others?
I don't know much about AI/NPC mods - I don't want to break any key quests/events/items. I also want to keep the vanilla character/skill/level system; for now, at least until I finish a playthrough.
I'm also torn on the unofficial patches, from what I've read.
As someone who has been playing SE on the XBox myself, I'll grab my mod list for you later, but it's basically just graphical stuff. I've stayed away from most game play related items, even new cities and land masses, because I think they mess with the vanilla experience sometimes. There are two exceptions: I do use the unofficial patches, as they fix a ton of stuff, and I do use the "paarthurnax dilemma" fix which you should probably not use on a new play through since you won't even know what that is as a new player
I managed to put together an initial modlist pretty quickly, surprisingly.
Right now I'm running:
- Immersive Sounds Compendium
- Skylands AIO
- Mythical Ages
- Immersive Citizens
- Beauty and the Beasts
- JKs Skyrim AIO
- Improved Shadows and Volumetric Lighting
- Realistic Water Two
I have a couple more I want to add, like a grass mod and a weapon/armor texture pack, but these essentially give me a prettier and better sounding vanilla Skyrim.
After I play with that for a while, I'll probably experiment with bigger gameplay and mechanical changes like Ordinator, Apocalypse, Imperious, Wildcat, etc.
So I've been messing around with town mods a bit and basically just been touristing around with an alternate start mod. As a note I tend to avoid modding the main cities and Riverwood because they are so familliar and I like vanilla. I also tend to avoid settlement mods that add towns with just generic dialogue that aren't connected to anything. Some neat stuff :
Kynesgrove:
This is what got me started playing around with things again, wanting to try out the combination patch of Expanded Towns and Cities and Great Village of Kynesgrove Janquel posted (had to change the masters though because I use modular ETAC). This is pretty awesome. The original vanilla Kynesgrove was pretty lame, the NPCs being just in a mine with nothing really there but one guys house and an inn but with a vanilla quest involving it and a lot of backgroud talk with NPCs referring to things that just didn't exist. Great Village of Kynesgrove added all the stuff the NPCs talk about but IMHO just really didn't go far enough because you still have a lot of homeless NPCs. Adding Jennabee's ETAC buildings makes it feel like what it should have been for vanilla. Also Great Village of Mixwater mill is a must for a nearby community with the same architecture.
Darkwater Crossing: Another town that is mentioned a lot in lore and quests that is just terribly anemic in Vanilla. Expanded towns and cities makes it into a real town which is really great.
Rorikstead: Another town I really like Expanded towns and cities for, it makes it into a lot more bustling farm comminity and adds nearby services for a player using the shoal's farm as a home.
Soljunds Sinkhole/ Old Hroldan: So the patch on the patches page for Great Villages of Old Hroldan and Settlements Expanded (which I run along with the recommended Arthmoor towns of Soljunds sinkhole and whistling mine) actually ends up with a really nice town. The Great villages architecture actually fits in pretty good with the town buldings added by the other mods, so it looks like one overseer/manager/mayor's house and some worker houses. The effect actually leads to a pretty cool town.
Edit:
Also I have to say I love this patch for COTN and great cities winterhold:
The combination of the castle built into the mountain and the great cities ruined stone city revamp go well together and really give the city a nice ruined capital look.
COTN Falkreath with great cities and patch and COTN morthal both look great so the only major city I can’t really decide on is dawnstar. I don’t care as much for great cities dawnstar, ETAC seems a bit too big and crowded, so right now I am just using COTN + Arthmoors +patch.
Edit 2: In addition to the above I’m basically using all the great villages/towns stuff at this point (along with rodryks dragonbridge +arthmoors patch and quaint raven rock)
The great town of Shors stone always annoyed me a bit with how there was a castle of random companions that didn’t so anything,I found this mod:
So I saw the next gen patches dropped.
So I reinstalled, updated, launched!
...and can't get past the title screen.
Googling around shows its an issue that is apparently impacting a lot of folks, has something to do with the stupid online news check buy anniversary edition thing as putting your console in offline mode apparently removes the stutter, and has been impacting folks since DECEMBER with no fix yet. Its been literally unplayable for months.
I mean, Bethesda is going to Bethesda. But this is nuts.
Have more or less a functional mod list--at least, in the sense that I can even boot into the Prisoner Cart up to Helgen and the physics don't completely freak the fuck out. Quite a few of the mods do need to be disabled for that initial section though. I was also able to make the shift to Nemesis (it wasn't a painful as I thought, though I'm not certain I can get things like FNIS up and working for it--anyone already gotten that working?).
I was pretty sad to see that .NET Framework is pretty much dead, and all the associated mods with it (like Immersive First Person). Not the end of the world, but it's always a bummer to lose something.
I still need to decide which city overhauls I'll be using too (especially since the first time you visit a town, you're probably too late). JK has been on a roll lately, I wonder if I might just give up Great Cities and commit fully to JK's overhauls. It'd certainly fix a lot of incompatiblities.
Nemesis is a replacement for FNIS, and should support everything FNIS did except animal animations.
I was thinking of something completely different--specifically, Dynamic Animation Replacer (which upon checking doesn't actually need FNIS!).
I've gotten it to work with PCEA. It's really just so many years with FNIS, I forget what actually needed it and what doesn't.
EDIT: Also running into a few FNIS-specific animation packs that require the FNIS.esp, or something else, making them issues. Well, you win some you lose some.
Have more or less a functional mod list--at least, in the sense that I can even boot into the Prisoner Cart up to Helgen and the physics don't completely freak the fuck out. Quite a few of the mods do need to be disabled for that initial section though. I was also able to make the shift to Nemesis (it wasn't a painful as I thought, though I'm not certain I can get things like FNIS up and working for it--anyone already gotten that working?).
I was pretty sad to see that .NET Framework is pretty much dead, and all the associated mods with it (like Immersive First Person). Not the end of the world, but it's always a bummer to lose something.
I still need to decide which city overhauls I'll be using too (especially since the first time you visit a town, you're probably too late). JK has been on a roll lately, I wonder if I might just give up Great Cities and commit fully to JK's overhauls. It'd certainly fix a lot of incompatiblities.
Get the live another life mod and scout any town mods you use prior to starting a main playthrough. Tastes differ, and I did a lot of switching out before settling on what I thought looked best. I just made a seperate instance in MO with just town mods, my texture replacements (especially if you are using something like noble), and alternate start and patches for it. Whenever you add a town mod, just start up a character in it or nearby and look around to make sure its what you want and everything works.
One weird thing, I feel like the kynesgrove patch between great village of kynesgrove and ETAC on the great village of kynesgrove patch page is by far the best rendition of kynesgrove (though I also use cutting room floor and its patch with them which seems to work fine) but if you use it with ETAC standalone (which you probably should) you will have to switch the patch master from ETAC complete to ETAC kynesgrove in ssedit.
Everything else is good though, and its probably the besf way to go if you want a kynesgrove with an actual grove and also enough houses to cover everyone who works in town
I've been using an Alternate Start mod just to calibrate everything (to confirm I can load up into Racemenu and nothing crashes, etc.), though on the whole that's a good idea before worrying about DynaLOD.
I was pretty sad to see that .NET Framework is pretty much dead.
Would you mind expanding on this a bit? What do you mean by "dead" in this context?
On a Discord channel they frequent, the creator (who also made a few of the most popular mods that use .NET Framework, understandably), more casually noted they didn't plan to update it. As oppose to the quiet speculation on the actual thread on Nexus.
So yes, it seems to mean dead, barring someone adopting it.
Hey folks, me again, to toot my own horn again because I've now entered the realm of "forcing the game to do things it absolutely should not."
First up, if you recall my explaining that temporary reference vs persistentent reference thing and how you absolutely should not install things mid-game because of that?
I uh....well, I guess I fixed it? https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/63701 - scans your load order via script, finds all persistent references which your load order has moved via a secondary mod, then the next time you boot the game will shift all them to where they're supposed to be. It's bad practice, but if you're breaking shit anyway....you're welcome?
xEdit script that scrapes your load order, finds every weapon or armor which doesn't have a Legacy of the Dragonborn display, and then makes a display. Full support for all the fun stuff (auto sorting, checklist, curator's companion), as well as ability to toggle mannequin types, rotate mannequins and objects, the whole nine yards. It's....utterly ridiculous.
(I also made a thing that lets you change your start date, and another patch collection, but those aren't nearly as interesting - the start date one is literally just holidays with all the holiday stuff stripped out, with permission :P )
So I was considering running through skyrim again and was wondering a bit about some mods.
Has anyone tried High Level Enemies Redux? I was thinking of trying that along with the author’s creation club armor integration and crossbow integration mods. Last time I played I did feel like enemies got a bit too tissue papery after a while.
Also I used simonmagus’s vanilla plus mods last time but I see enaisalon actually has a vanilla plus set now too, was wondering if anyone had a preference.
Finally, I was thinking of running the seasons mod, I was wondering what the best setup for that might be. I was looking at seasons+turn of seasons+obsidian weathers+improved survival, and was wondering if anyone had run those and had any feedback. Especially with building mods like great towns and villages and cities of the north, do they all work ok together?
Yeah, I played it a bunch last year, you can probably go back a few pages and find my posts. It works really well, it gives a bunch of quality of life upgrades over base Daggerfall, as well as fixing a bunch of bugs and giving mod support. If you want to try it out I'd say go for it. The GOG version looks like it includes a bunch of good mods as well.
Yeah, I played it a bunch last year, you can probably go back a few pages and find my posts. It works really well, it gives a bunch of quality of life upgrades over base Daggerfall, as well as fixing a bunch of bugs and giving mod support. If you want to try it out I'd say go for it. The GOG version looks like it includes a bunch of good mods as well.
It is very good if you like Daggerfall and Daggerfall is the game you want to play.
Yeah, I played it a bunch last year, you can probably go back a few pages and find my posts. It works really well, it gives a bunch of quality of life upgrades over base Daggerfall, as well as fixing a bunch of bugs and giving mod support. If you want to try it out I'd say go for it. The GOG version looks like it includes a bunch of good mods as well.
It is very good if you like Daggerfall and Daggerfall is the game you want to play.
Best review I've read so far.
I downloaded it and will strongly consider installing it.
+1
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
I find Daggerfall to be fun, a product of its age to be sure but one that I like spending time in here and there.
For the record I never played the game until last summer, so I didn't have any rose tinted glasses going in.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
So I was considering running through skyrim again and was wondering a bit about some mods.
Has anyone tried High Level Enemies Redux? I was thinking of trying that along with the author’s creation club armor integration and crossbow integration mods. Last time I played I did feel like enemies got a bit too tissue papery after a while.
Also I used simonmagus’s vanilla plus mods last time but I see enaisalon actually has a vanilla plus set now too, was wondering if anyone had a preference.
Finally, I was thinking of running the seasons mod, I was wondering what the best setup for that might be. I was looking at seasons+turn of seasons+obsidian weathers+improved survival, and was wondering if anyone had run those and had any feedback. Especially with building mods like great towns and villages and cities of the north, do they all work ok together?
Sorry, I'm like....over a year out of date with installing stuff.
I'm actually on a formal break to try to get up to date on my shit. This in turn has turned into a full-scale rework of my testing list, which has also lead me to be completely burnt out and not feeling like working on anything in particular, so who knows when the bug will bite me again
(In related news, I also discovered that there's a cap on the number of tracked mods Nexus will display).
In the meantime, because I wanted to make sure to have a place to route people for Hall of Insanity if they had questions so they wouldn't bug the LOTD team (thankfully has not been a problem), I did make a public-facing discord server if anyone wants to swing by and be one of the multitudes not saying anything, but you can probably shout out random questions into the void and run into someone who might have tried them out: https://discord.gg/xyycC4UW5Z
Once the improved Custom Camera mod is updated for AE (as a replacement for the sorely missed Immersive First Person) and DYNOLOD 3 leaves Alpha, I'll hopefully be jumping back in for a completely new Skyrim character (after having done 90% of the work over December vacation).
Still need to settle on City/Town overhauls and possibly a terrain replacer though.
Once the improved Custom Camera mod is updated for AE (as a replacement for the sorely missed Immersive First Person) and DYNOLOD 3 leaves Alpha, I'll hopefully be jumping back in for a completely new Skyrim character (after having done 90% of the work over December vacation).
Still need to settle on City/Town overhauls and possibly a terrain replacer though.
Yeah, these were my remaining fallouts from AE DLLs:
no grass in objects is the only real hard loss (although fast travel when indoors sure was convenient), and as you can see most of them already have other options available now. Some of the others I wasn't sure I even wanted to keep, for that matter.
Once the improved Custom Camera mod is updated for AE (as a replacement for the sorely missed Immersive First Person) and DYNOLOD 3 leaves Alpha, I'll hopefully be jumping back in for a completely new Skyrim character (after having done 90% of the work over December vacation).
Still need to settle on City/Town overhauls and possibly a terrain replacer though.
I actually had a city/town setup I like but it looks like ETAC is hidden now. I may just play elden ring until that comes back at least.
Although all I really use is kynesgrove and darkwater crossing (with the great villiages patches) those two towns feel very empty without.
I know a lot of people don’t like mismatched houses but I actually like darkwater crossing with the etac patch or soljunds sinkhole with the arthmoor and great villiage, the mixed housing styles make them look a bit like real towns instead of planned neighborhoods.
Edit: looks like .7 is available at afkmods, hmm.
I’m tempted to run my full town setup with the seasons setup I mentioned just to see how it does. Maybe just tourist around, fast-forward through the seasons and take some pictures rather than doing a full playthrough.
I still honestly never quite found a capital city mod I liked better than the defaults though.
Yeah, I played it a bunch last year, you can probably go back a few pages and find my posts. It works really well, it gives a bunch of quality of life upgrades over base Daggerfall, as well as fixing a bunch of bugs and giving mod support. If you want to try it out I'd say go for it. The GOG version looks like it includes a bunch of good mods as well.
GoG version is a mod pack curated by GamerZakh, a pretty great retro game/strategy game youtuber.
it's pretty amazing for Daggerfall newbies.
Hey, @Jragghen --what's your current preferred grass mod?
(I'm taking a risk, in some circles this is like asking someone "What's your religion?" )
I've decided that, while I wait for Improved Camera to leave its alpha and get updated for SKSE, I'm going to actually sort out my landscape stuff (and then take a crack at DynDOLOD, except that will probably have to wait until I pick my city overhaul options). I still like how Skyland - A Landscape Texture Overhaul looks, and more relevantly, it's still being updated, which you can't say about a lot of the other popular lanscape overhauls. I like the sort of "cool, cold" feel of the color choice. I might combine that with Enhanced Vanilla Trees, except I'm on the fence for that (really, I didn't care for the game's original trees, it's just that Simply Bigger Trees has been in stasis since 2016, though it might still be the "best" option.
But I never really replaced the grass, at least not consciously. I can see why so many modders swear by their grass mods, though, a good implementation does wonders (I wonder what it'll mean for even an RTX 3080 TI at 2160p, but hey, that's what it's there for).
Posts
Yeah, the core issue with their paid mod system wasn't money going to mod-makers, it was Bethesda just needing to stick its corporate dick in the situation and make sure it was getting money from what was literally other peoples' work. And not just some money, but most of the money. It was just such blatantly bald-faced ripoff greed.
Its like all the sudden Bethesda just learned how to do compelling outdoor landscapes between 2006 and 2007.
So... "essential" Skyrim mods on an Xbox for a vanilla+ type experience? I'm looking for graphical improvements (This is an OG XBO, so ixnay on the 4k texture packs, etc), maybe some increased immersion, upgraded cities/towns/interiors. A shortlist I'm working on now looks something like:
- Improved Shadows and Volumetric Lighting
- Water - something like Water and Terrain Enhancement Redux
- Cities - JK's Skyrim - or alternative/others?
I don't know much about AI/NPC mods - I don't want to break any key quests/events/items. I also want to keep the vanilla character/skill/level system; for now, at least until I finish a playthrough.I'm also torn on the unofficial patches, from what I've read.
I would advise maybe being prepared to uninstall that move speed mod. Morrowind doesn't necessarily have slow move speed it has move speed that depends on your speed statistic. At 100 speed, move speed is good to great. And 100 is not the speed cap.
So I'm not super familiar of what is/isn't available on Xbox, but the most active Xbox specific place I've seen is the tales from Tamriel discord: https://discord.gg/V4SGWZ3
They're probably your best bet on putting together something coherent.
All this good shit and Trophies/cheevos are still attainable. Though throwing some additional tweaks and packages on top will require some experimentation with load orders and there's just enough different under the hood (I'm assuming mainly due to subtle differences in when stuff is pushed and popped off the memory stack at the compiler/assembly level) that PC load orders and workarounds don't always play nice.
Most fun I've had thus far was using a blood dragon's skull as a snowboard that I was able to ride off a cliff on the northwest side of the Shrine of Azura and finish about 10 steps from the outskirts of Winterhold, leaving a clearly visible path in the snow on the mountain side, like I was Shaun White on skooma.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
I'm aware. I've already dropped it down a level as my Athletics and Speed have gone up. I just didn't want to deal with the snail pace movement of early Morrowind.
As someone who has been playing SE on the XBox myself, I'll grab my mod list for you later, but it's basically just graphical stuff. I've stayed away from most game play related items, even new cities and land masses, because I think they mess with the vanilla experience sometimes. There are two exceptions: I do use the unofficial patches, as they fix a ton of stuff, and I do use the "paarthurnax dilemma" fix which you should probably not use on a new play through since you won't even know what that is as a new player
Right now I'm running:
- Immersive Sounds Compendium
- Skylands AIO
- Mythical Ages
- Immersive Citizens
- Beauty and the Beasts
- JKs Skyrim AIO
- Improved Shadows and Volumetric Lighting
- Realistic Water Two
I have a couple more I want to add, like a grass mod and a weapon/armor texture pack, but these essentially give me a prettier and better sounding vanilla Skyrim.
After I play with that for a while, I'll probably experiment with bigger gameplay and mechanical changes like Ordinator, Apocalypse, Imperious, Wildcat, etc.
Kynesgrove:
This is what got me started playing around with things again, wanting to try out the combination patch of Expanded Towns and Cities and Great Village of Kynesgrove Janquel posted (had to change the masters though because I use modular ETAC). This is pretty awesome. The original vanilla Kynesgrove was pretty lame, the NPCs being just in a mine with nothing really there but one guys house and an inn but with a vanilla quest involving it and a lot of backgroud talk with NPCs referring to things that just didn't exist. Great Village of Kynesgrove added all the stuff the NPCs talk about but IMHO just really didn't go far enough because you still have a lot of homeless NPCs. Adding Jennabee's ETAC buildings makes it feel like what it should have been for vanilla. Also Great Village of Mixwater mill is a must for a nearby community with the same architecture.
Darkwater Crossing: Another town that is mentioned a lot in lore and quests that is just terribly anemic in Vanilla. Expanded towns and cities makes it into a real town which is really great.
Rorikstead: Another town I really like Expanded towns and cities for, it makes it into a lot more bustling farm comminity and adds nearby services for a player using the shoal's farm as a home.
Soljunds Sinkhole/ Old Hroldan: So the patch on the patches page for Great Villages of Old Hroldan and Settlements Expanded (which I run along with the recommended Arthmoor towns of Soljunds sinkhole and whistling mine) actually ends up with a really nice town. The Great villages architecture actually fits in pretty good with the town buldings added by the other mods, so it looks like one overseer/manager/mayor's house and some worker houses. The effect actually leads to a pretty cool town.
Edit:
Also I have to say I love this patch for COTN and great cities winterhold:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/54097
The combination of the castle built into the mountain and the great cities ruined stone city revamp go well together and really give the city a nice ruined capital look.
COTN Falkreath with great cities and patch and COTN morthal both look great so the only major city I can’t really decide on is dawnstar. I don’t care as much for great cities dawnstar, ETAC seems a bit too big and crowded, so right now I am just using COTN + Arthmoors +patch.
Edit 2: In addition to the above I’m basically using all the great villages/towns stuff at this point (along with rodryks dragonbridge +arthmoors patch and quaint raven rock)
The great town of Shors stone always annoyed me a bit with how there was a castle of random companions that didn’t so anything,I found this mod:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/45543?tab=description
Which turns the area into an abandoned castle (that can be used as a rest area / home if you want.
So I reinstalled, updated, launched!
...and can't get past the title screen.
Googling around shows its an issue that is apparently impacting a lot of folks, has something to do with the stupid online news check buy anniversary edition thing as putting your console in offline mode apparently removes the stutter, and has been impacting folks since DECEMBER with no fix yet. Its been literally unplayable for months.
I mean, Bethesda is going to Bethesda. But this is nuts.
I was pretty sad to see that .NET Framework is pretty much dead, and all the associated mods with it (like Immersive First Person). Not the end of the world, but it's always a bummer to lose something.
I still need to decide which city overhauls I'll be using too (especially since the first time you visit a town, you're probably too late). JK has been on a roll lately, I wonder if I might just give up Great Cities and commit fully to JK's overhauls. It'd certainly fix a lot of incompatiblities.
I was thinking of something completely different--specifically, Dynamic Animation Replacer (which upon checking doesn't actually need FNIS!).
I've gotten it to work with PCEA. It's really just so many years with FNIS, I forget what actually needed it and what doesn't.
EDIT: Also running into a few FNIS-specific animation packs that require the FNIS.esp, or something else, making them issues. Well, you win some you lose some.
It needs to be remade from scratch effectively to work with AE.
Get the live another life mod and scout any town mods you use prior to starting a main playthrough. Tastes differ, and I did a lot of switching out before settling on what I thought looked best. I just made a seperate instance in MO with just town mods, my texture replacements (especially if you are using something like noble), and alternate start and patches for it. Whenever you add a town mod, just start up a character in it or nearby and look around to make sure its what you want and everything works.
One weird thing, I feel like the kynesgrove patch between great village of kynesgrove and ETAC on the great village of kynesgrove patch page is by far the best rendition of kynesgrove (though I also use cutting room floor and its patch with them which seems to work fine) but if you use it with ETAC standalone (which you probably should) you will have to switch the patch master from ETAC complete to ETAC kynesgrove in ssedit.
Everything else is good though, and its probably the besf way to go if you want a kynesgrove with an actual grove and also enough houses to cover everyone who works in town
On a Discord channel they frequent, the creator (who also made a few of the most popular mods that use .NET Framework, understandably), more casually noted they didn't plan to update it. As oppose to the quiet speculation on the actual thread on Nexus.
So yes, it seems to mean dead, barring someone adopting it.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/63108
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/62861
SKSE plugin that swaps textures in Skyrim based off time of year. Seasonal changes have come to Skyrim.
First up, if you recall my explaining that temporary reference vs persistentent reference thing and how you absolutely should not install things mid-game because of that?
I uh....well, I guess I fixed it? https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/63701 - scans your load order via script, finds all persistent references which your load order has moved via a secondary mod, then the next time you boot the game will shift all them to where they're supposed to be. It's bad practice, but if you're breaking shit anyway....you're welcome?
And then when making that thing, I learned enough to be truly dangerous, so tonight I released this monstrosity, the Hall of Insanity: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/65201
xEdit script that scrapes your load order, finds every weapon or armor which doesn't have a Legacy of the Dragonborn display, and then makes a display. Full support for all the fun stuff (auto sorting, checklist, curator's companion), as well as ability to toggle mannequin types, rotate mannequins and objects, the whole nine yards. It's....utterly ridiculous.
(I also made a thing that lets you change your start date, and another patch collection, but those aren't nearly as interesting - the start date one is literally just holidays with all the holiday stuff stripped out, with permission :P )
https://www.gog.com/game/daggerfall_unity_gog_cut
Has anyone tried High Level Enemies Redux? I was thinking of trying that along with the author’s creation club armor integration and crossbow integration mods. Last time I played I did feel like enemies got a bit too tissue papery after a while.
Also I used simonmagus’s vanilla plus mods last time but I see enaisalon actually has a vanilla plus set now too, was wondering if anyone had a preference.
Finally, I was thinking of running the seasons mod, I was wondering what the best setup for that might be. I was looking at seasons+turn of seasons+obsidian weathers+improved survival, and was wondering if anyone had run those and had any feedback. Especially with building mods like great towns and villages and cities of the north, do they all work ok together?
Yeah, I played it a bunch last year, you can probably go back a few pages and find my posts. It works really well, it gives a bunch of quality of life upgrades over base Daggerfall, as well as fixing a bunch of bugs and giving mod support. If you want to try it out I'd say go for it. The GOG version looks like it includes a bunch of good mods as well.
It is very good if you like Daggerfall and Daggerfall is the game you want to play.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Best review I've read so far.
I downloaded it and will strongly consider installing it.
For the record I never played the game until last summer, so I didn't have any rose tinted glasses going in.
Sorry, I'm like....over a year out of date with installing stuff.
I'm actually on a formal break to try to get up to date on my shit. This in turn has turned into a full-scale rework of my testing list, which has also lead me to be completely burnt out and not feeling like working on anything in particular, so who knows when the bug will bite me again
(In related news, I also discovered that there's a cap on the number of tracked mods Nexus will display).
In the meantime, because I wanted to make sure to have a place to route people for Hall of Insanity if they had questions so they wouldn't bug the LOTD team (thankfully has not been a problem), I did make a public-facing discord server if anyone wants to swing by and be one of the multitudes not saying anything, but you can probably shout out random questions into the void and run into someone who might have tried them out: https://discord.gg/xyycC4UW5Z
Still need to settle on City/Town overhauls and possibly a terrain replacer though.
Yeah, these were my remaining fallouts from AE DLLs:
Removed because AE:
SKSE64 Havok fix - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/18160 - should not be needed with display tweaks
.NET Script Framework: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/21294 - doesn't work, will never work.
Animation Limit Crash Fix - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/31146 SSE Engine Fixes should work
Crafting Skill Leveling Overhaul - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/21727
Difficulty balance: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/35767
Disable Follower Collision: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/35925 (I'm Walkin Here works instead?)
Dynamic Equipment Manager: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/34407 (multiple options available of late)
Enchantment reload fix: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/21055 (scrambled bugs takes care of it)
Fast Travel When Indoors: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/26536
HDT-SMP: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/30872 (ae version exists, is apparently faster hdt-smp)
Minimap: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/49490 (not updated, not sure I want tbh)
No grass in objects: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/42161
Sales Overflow Solved: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/41625
Skyrim Skill Uncapper: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/8889 (use https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/46536 with it I think)
sse fixes: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/10547 (not needed anymore?)
Stay at the system page: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19832 (AE: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/67883)
Ultimate combat: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17196
no grass in objects is the only real hard loss (although fast travel when indoors sure was convenient), and as you can see most of them already have other options available now. Some of the others I wasn't sure I even wanted to keep, for that matter.
I actually had a city/town setup I like but it looks like ETAC is hidden now. I may just play elden ring until that comes back at least.
Although all I really use is kynesgrove and darkwater crossing (with the great villiages patches) those two towns feel very empty without.
I know a lot of people don’t like mismatched houses but I actually like darkwater crossing with the etac patch or soljunds sinkhole with the arthmoor and great villiage, the mixed housing styles make them look a bit like real towns instead of planned neighborhoods.
Edit: looks like .7 is available at afkmods, hmm.
I’m tempted to run my full town setup with the seasons setup I mentioned just to see how it does. Maybe just tourist around, fast-forward through the seasons and take some pictures rather than doing a full playthrough.
I still honestly never quite found a capital city mod I liked better than the defaults though.
GoG version is a mod pack curated by GamerZakh, a pretty great retro game/strategy game youtuber.
it's pretty amazing for Daggerfall newbies.
(I'm taking a risk, in some circles this is like asking someone "What's your religion?"
I've decided that, while I wait for Improved Camera to leave its alpha and get updated for SKSE, I'm going to actually sort out my landscape stuff (and then take a crack at DynDOLOD, except that will probably have to wait until I pick my city overhaul options). I still like how Skyland - A Landscape Texture Overhaul looks, and more relevantly, it's still being updated, which you can't say about a lot of the other popular lanscape overhauls. I like the sort of "cool, cold" feel of the color choice. I might combine that with Enhanced Vanilla Trees, except I'm on the fence for that (really, I didn't care for the game's original trees, it's just that Simply Bigger Trees has been in stasis since 2016, though it might still be the "best" option.
But I never really replaced the grass, at least not consciously. I can see why so many modders swear by their grass mods, though, a good implementation does wonders (I wonder what it'll mean for even an RTX 3080 TI at 2160p, but hey, that's what it's there for).
Steam: MightyPotatoKing