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[The Elder Scrolls] Stolen? No! This one found this thread by the side of the road.

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Posts

  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    Zilla360 wrote: »
    Only downside to Skyrim VR:
    It's kind of pointless to spend too long customizing your character, since you now never see how you look, it's exclusively locked to the FPPOV, even when you sit down.

    Hmm, I can remember quite a few moments that used to take you out of first person view. I wonder if this means enemies can no longer ragdoll you. Or what happens when you jump off a mountain and normally your body would go tumbling and flipping down? What happens when a giant knocks you into the stratosphere? What if you do this

    well I know what my main focus on my current game is, now.

  • UncleSporkyUncleSporky Registered User regular
    I have a problem, I wanna kill dragons at reasonably low/mid levels, but I'm not strong enough to kill them easily, but if I get strong enough to kill them via alchemy/smithing/enchanting then at that point I'll be much higher level and I'll have missed the low/mid tier dragons! I'm already level 20 and I've barely touched those self buff skills.

    Switch Friend Code: SW - 5443 - 2358 - 9118 || 3DS Friend Code: 0989 - 1731 - 9504 || NNID: unclesporky
  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    I have a problem, I wanna kill dragons at reasonably low/mid levels, but I'm not strong enough to kill them easily, but if I get strong enough to kill them via alchemy/smithing/enchanting then at that point I'll be much higher level and I'll have missed the low/mid tier dragons! I'm already level 20 and I've barely touched those self buff skills.

    Just make a potion that improves alchemy

    then eat that

    then make a new, stronger, alchemy potion

    repeat about 75000 times

    Make a potion that gives you +infinity godstrength for 85 quadrillion seconds.

    Stomp all the dragons at level 20 with your pinky finger, while naked, and drunk. like a proper nord.

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    I have a problem, I wanna kill dragons at reasonably low/mid levels, but I'm not strong enough to kill them easily, but if I get strong enough to kill them via alchemy/smithing/enchanting then at that point I'll be much higher level and I'll have missed the low/mid tier dragons! I'm already level 20 and I've barely touched those self buff skills.

    Destruction magic?

    wbBv3fj.png
  • UncleSporkyUncleSporky Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    I have a problem, I wanna kill dragons at reasonably low/mid levels, but I'm not strong enough to kill them easily, but if I get strong enough to kill them via alchemy/smithing/enchanting then at that point I'll be much higher level and I'll have missed the low/mid tier dragons! I'm already level 20 and I've barely touched those self buff skills.

    Destruction magic?

    I think enemies are past the point where that's effective.

    I guess I could just lower the difficulty. I think step one might be getting the black star, so I can go to some bandit camp, get a grand soul, put the best enchant I can on some gear, repeat...

    Switch Friend Code: SW - 5443 - 2358 - 9118 || 3DS Friend Code: 0989 - 1731 - 9504 || NNID: unclesporky
  • DerrickDerrick Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    I have a problem, I wanna kill dragons at reasonably low/mid levels, but I'm not strong enough to kill them easily, but if I get strong enough to kill them via alchemy/smithing/enchanting then at that point I'll be much higher level and I'll have missed the low/mid tier dragons! I'm already level 20 and I've barely touched those self buff skills.

    Destruction magic?

    I think enemies are past the point where that's effective.

    I guess I could just lower the difficulty. I think step one might be getting the black star, so I can go to some bandit camp, get a grand soul, put the best enchant I can on some gear, repeat...

    What's your alchemy at now? You can poison the dragon with a bow to be weak to their opposite element, chug a potion to buff up your destruction, and destroy them easily. That strategy scales ridiculously well, by the way.

    Steam and CFN: Enexemander
  • UncleSporkyUncleSporky Registered User regular
    I think I figured it out. I'm at 22 now which means Banish starts showing up at vendors, so I can learn that and buy ingots and petty soul gems for pennies and sell the resulting iron dagger of banishing for 2000 golds. Money solves all problems. I can get a nice full set of elven gear and a reasonably enchanted bow this way.

    Switch Friend Code: SW - 5443 - 2358 - 9118 || 3DS Friend Code: 0989 - 1731 - 9504 || NNID: unclesporky
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    I have a problem, I wanna kill dragons at reasonably low/mid levels, but I'm not strong enough to kill them easily, but if I get strong enough to kill them via alchemy/smithing/enchanting then at that point I'll be much higher level and I'll have missed the low/mid tier dragons! I'm already level 20 and I've barely touched those self buff skills.

    Destruction magic?

    I think enemies are past the point where that's effective.

    I guess I could just lower the difficulty. I think step one might be getting the black star, so I can go to some bandit camp, get a grand soul, put the best enchant I can on some gear, repeat...

    I played a pure destruction mage with no enchanting to 40 or so. So it scales just fine (though frankly you gotta be pretty specialized)

    wbBv3fj.png
  • Lucid_SeraphLucid_Seraph TealDeer MarylandRegistered User regular
    hey

    If I want to play Oblivion, what's the definitive suite of Oblivion mods (akin to the Morrowind Overhaul Project)?

    See You Space Cowboy: a ttrpg about sad space bounty hunters
    https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
  • Steel AngelSteel Angel Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    I have a problem, I wanna kill dragons at reasonably low/mid levels, but I'm not strong enough to kill them easily, but if I get strong enough to kill them via alchemy/smithing/enchanting then at that point I'll be much higher level and I'll have missed the low/mid tier dragons! I'm already level 20 and I've barely touched those self buff skills.

    Destruction magic?

    I think enemies are past the point where that's effective.

    I guess I could just lower the difficulty. I think step one might be getting the black star, so I can go to some bandit camp, get a grand soul, put the best enchant I can on some gear, repeat...

    I played a pure destruction mage with no enchanting to 40 or so. So it scales just fine (though frankly you gotta be pretty specialized)

    That was one thing I didn't like about destruction magic in vanilla Skyrim: It really seemed to be balanced around using both hands to cast a spell with the perk that gave bonuses for doing so. Made spellswords, one of the most popular archetypes in the series, really difficult to play.

    Big Dookie wrote: »
    I found that tilting it doesn't work very well, and once I started jerking it, I got much better results.

    Steam Profile
    3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
  • UncleSporkyUncleSporky Registered User regular
    Switch Friend Code: SW - 5443 - 2358 - 9118 || 3DS Friend Code: 0989 - 1731 - 9504 || NNID: unclesporky
  • L Ron HowardL Ron Howard The duck MinnesotaRegistered User regular
    You can never be tooo safe.
    That's what the guard hivemind is for.

  • WotanAnubisWotanAnubis Registered User regular
    For my playthrough of Skyrim on the Switch, I've decided to never use fast travel.

    I've managed to stick with it so far, despite repeated trips to Ivarstead and up to High Hrothgar.

    One nice thing of walking everywhere instead of teleporting all over the place, besides learning the layout of Skyrim and learning to recognize landmarks, is that it puts at least some time and distance between all the draugr tombs, so I get to have a bit of breather once in a while before going to back to slaughtering draugr.

    Also, running into randomly spawned Thalmor who have light-weight Elven gear for me to loot and sell.

  • augustaugust where you come from is gone Registered User regular
  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    For my playthrough of Skyrim on the Switch, I've decided to never use fast travel.

    I've managed to stick with it so far, despite repeated trips to Ivarstead and up to High Hrothgar.

    One nice thing of walking everywhere instead of teleporting all over the place, besides learning the layout of Skyrim and learning to recognize landmarks, is that it puts at least some time and distance between all the draugr tombs, so I get to have a bit of breather once in a while before going to back to slaughtering draugr.

    Also, running into randomly spawned Thalmor who have light-weight Elven gear for me to loot and sell.

    You are just giving them more time to prepare
    8M1cj3Q.jpg

  • PhyphorPhyphor Building Planet Busters Tasting FruitRegistered User regular
    For my playthrough of Skyrim on the Switch, I've decided to never use fast travel.

    I've managed to stick with it so far, despite repeated trips to Ivarstead and up to High Hrothgar.

    One nice thing of walking everywhere instead of teleporting all over the place, besides learning the layout of Skyrim and learning to recognize landmarks, is that it puts at least some time and distance between all the draugr tombs, so I get to have a bit of breather once in a while before going to back to slaughtering draugr.

    Also, running into randomly spawned Thalmor who have light-weight Elven gear for me to loot and sell.

    I play like this, no fast travel but I do make liberal use of the carts. It is an interesting little world if you take the time to walk through it

  • L Ron HowardL Ron Howard The duck MinnesotaRegistered User regular
    Why not horses? Mere mountains become hills, and nothing stands in your way.

  • DelduwathDelduwath Registered User regular
    Why walk when you can ride?

  • TubeTube Registered User admin
    Once you’ve played without fast travel it’s hard to go back

  • Toxic PickleToxic Pickle Thash grape! Registered User regular
    I have played without fast travel and I did enjoy it, but I have done so many aborted play-throughs of Skyrim that I ended up going back to using fast travel, though usually only to return to base after questing.

    I've thought about doing another no-fast travel run, but I think the only way I could stand it is with Convenient Horses, which turns my character's mount into traveling storage among the other improvements it makes.

  • XaquinXaquin Right behind you!Registered User regular
    anyone know if the PC version of the Special Edition removes the random vampire attacks like they did with the Switch version?

  • PhyphorPhyphor Building Planet Busters Tasting FruitRegistered User regular
    Xaquin wrote: »
    anyone know if the PC version of the Special Edition removes the random vampire attacks like they did with the Switch version?

    Nope, random vampire attacks are definitely in the SE. But , I can say with 100% confidence that "there is probably a mod for that"

  • XaquinXaquin Right behind you!Registered User regular
    Phyphor wrote: »
    Xaquin wrote: »
    anyone know if the PC version of the Special Edition removes the random vampire attacks like they did with the Switch version?

    Nope, random vampire attacks are definitely in the SE. But , I can say with 100% confidence that "there is probably a mod for that"

    but using mods turns off achievements though right?

  • BionicPenguinBionicPenguin Registered User regular
    There are mods to turn them back on.

  • XaquinXaquin Right behind you!Registered User regular
    I have to say, the switch pro controller makes picking locks a cinch

    1 lockpick for a master lock with zero perks

  • JaysonFourJaysonFour Classy Monster Kitteh Registered User regular
    So, recently I decided to finally mod my copy of Skyrim, only to find out I had no idea as to what the hell I was actually doing. Asking another forum got me a link to a highly-technical video series that didn't do a whole lot, and asking for help beyond that got me ridiculed by a bunch of silly geese and essentially told to "git gud at modding". So now, I figure it can't hurt to ask this thread for help.

    I've seen people use both Mod Organizer and Nexus Mod Manager- I've tried both, and I have to end up downloading everything manually for MO, but NMM plays nice with the site and I don't have to worry about unpacking zips and all that crap. For someone who had no idea on how to actually do this, well... where do I start?

    steam_sig.png
    I can has cheezburger, yes?
  • Dr. ChaosDr. Chaos Post nuclear nuisance Registered User regular
    edited January 2018
    Nexus Mod Manager is completely fine, thats all I use most of the time. People will recommend others but I find it the most user friendly.

    Use it to download most of your mods unless the description on the mod page on the nexus says you have to install it manually (which will usually explain how to you).

    With Nexus Mod Manager, you just need to find the download part of the page and click the NMM option, it'll automatically load up NMM and download the mod to the manager:

    KVBJ5Xz.png

    And then go into NMM and turn them on by right clicking and choose activate/install once its downloaded to NMM. Theres a few other things to know, try this for now:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QinA4qD6hXM

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVC31Qu048Q

    Dr. Chaos on
    Pokemon GO: 7113 6338 6875/ FF14: Buckle Landrunner /Steam Profile
  • L Ron HowardL Ron Howard The duck MinnesotaRegistered User regular
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    So, recently I decided to finally mod my copy of Skyrim, only to find out I had no idea as to what the hell I was actually doing. Asking another forum got me a link to a highly-technical video series that didn't do a whole lot, and asking for help beyond that got me ridiculed by a bunch of silly geese and essentially told to "git gud at modding". So now, I figure it can't hurt to ask this thread for help.

    I've seen people use both Mod Organizer and Nexus Mod Manager- I've tried both, and I have to end up downloading everything manually for MO, but NMM plays nice with the site and I don't have to worry about unpacking zips and all that crap. For someone who had no idea on how to actually do this, well... where do I start?

    http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Mod_Organizer

  • Dr. ChaosDr. Chaos Post nuclear nuisance Registered User regular
    edited January 2018
    Overall, installing mods isn't anywhere near as complex as you might think it is from the start. Not saying that to be condescending or anything, just to encourage you.

    A lot of it is just downloading a zip folder, opening it up and then dragging/copying and pasting the contents into Skyrim's Data folder and then turning on the mod with a click of your mouse. Most of the time NMM is basically just automating that three step process for you.

    Dr. Chaos on
    Pokemon GO: 7113 6338 6875/ FF14: Buckle Landrunner /Steam Profile
  • JaysonFourJaysonFour Classy Monster Kitteh Registered User regular
    Awesome!

    If I'm modding, is it better to get SKSE off of Steam or is it a better idea to grab it off the website so I can control where it installs to?

    steam_sig.png
    I can has cheezburger, yes?
  • Dr. ChaosDr. Chaos Post nuclear nuisance Registered User regular
    edited January 2018
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    Awesome!

    If I'm modding, is it better to get SKSE off of Steam or is it a better idea to grab it off the website so I can control where it installs to?
    I don't think it matters.

    SKSE should install to the same place whether manually or through steam.

    Might have to load up Skyrim through steam (instead of NMM) if getting it through Valve's service atleast once before it'll actually download/install though.

    Dr. Chaos on
    Pokemon GO: 7113 6338 6875/ FF14: Buckle Landrunner /Steam Profile
  • L Ron HowardL Ron Howard The duck MinnesotaRegistered User regular
    Generally, NMM is a lot simpler to use. MO is for doing things a bit more advanced. If you use NMM, and you need to edit any config files, you kinda have to do it all yourself. Whereas MO will try to do it for you, and make it easier to do it if you want or need to do it yourself. And NMM has a limit to the number of mods.
    Both are fine. When you start running into the limits of what NMM can do, you can delve into the can of worms known as MO.
    And MO has a configuration for entering you Nexus creds to download and install things. You need not do anything manually. It's more helpful if you want to run the 3D NPCs mod, which I think you still have to torrent to get as it's super large

    And make sure to run LOOT!

  • BionicPenguinBionicPenguin Registered User regular
    LOOT being a program that does its best to make sure your mods are in the best order to give you the fewest (ideally no) issues.

  • WhiteZinfandelWhiteZinfandel Your insides Let me show you themRegistered User regular
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    Awesome!

    If I'm modding, is it better to get SKSE off of Steam or is it a better idea to grab it off the website so I can control where it installs to?

    I can't speak for SKSE specifically but the steam workshop does nothing to make mods play nice with each other. Can't recall if they've gotten NMM to the point that it does virtual installs and improves compatibility ala mod organizer, but the very least it has a superior interface, more options than steam, and LOOT built in.

  • Dr. ChaosDr. Chaos Post nuclear nuisance Registered User regular
    edited February 2018
  • Toxic PickleToxic Pickle Thash grape! Registered User regular
    Generally, NMM is a lot simpler to use. MO is for doing things a bit more advanced. If you use NMM, and you need to edit any config files, you kinda have to do it all yourself. Whereas MO will try to do it for you, and make it easier to do it if you want or need to do it yourself. And NMM has a limit to the number of mods.
    Both are fine. When you start running into the limits of what NMM can do, you can delve into the can of worms known as MO.
    And MO has a configuration for entering you Nexus creds to download and install things. You need not do anything manually. It's more helpful if you want to run the 3D NPCs mod, which I think you still have to torrent to get as it's super large

    And make sure to run LOOT!

    NMM is pretty good nowadays as far as installing and managing mods, and allowing me to cleanly uninstall mods when I don't want them anymore without leaving garbage files behind. However, NMM has some pretty glaring problems that frustrate me to no-end.

    The first and most ridiculous issue is that it doesn't always seem to know when a mod has updated. I can't tell you how many times I've told it to check for updates, only for it to not find any. I then go to the Nexus site and find, what to you know? There are tons of mods that need updating. This is especially a problem since often-times mods work together and can conflict if they aren't all at the same version. NMM will see some as needing updates but not others. I've never had this problem with MO.

    The second problem is more fiddly than mod-breaking. In Mod Organizer, when I install a mod it immediately shows me the name it's going to use and allows me to change it if I want. If this mod already exists within MO, it then gives me a prompt to merge the new files or completely replace the old. For me, this is super-important because I often re-name mods to help order them (so all my armor mods are together, quest mods, etc). With NMM, it just installs the mod I download but doesn't activate it. Once I activate it, then it will SOMETIMES see that an identical mod is present and ask me whether I want to upgrade. I have to change the mod once it's already in the list, which means I have to scroll around and find it, and even then NMM will often just install it right on top of the old version with no prompts and without deactivating the previous. Pretty lame.

    MO's main problem is that the guy who made it stopped updating it because he got hired by Nexus to build a replacement for NMM. I've yet to hear anything about said replacement, and MO languishes; I believe someone else has taken up development but it still doesn't work quite perfectly on 64-bit games, so I've stayed away from it for now.

  • DelduwathDelduwath Registered User regular
    [The developer of Mod Organizer] got hired by Nexus to build a replacement for NMM. I've yet to hear anything about said replacement
    Oh, well then, let me tell you about it!

    (But not much, because I haven't had time to really dig into it.)

    It's called Vortex, and it came out in a public alpha about three weeks ago; here is the newspost that describes it (the link to download it is all the way at the bottom). I've only used it to set up modding for Fallout 4, download a bunch of mods, shuffle them around, and launch the game to make sure things worked, so I only have impressions of the basics.

    You can set it to manage a bunch of different games: the usual suspects like the TES games and Bethesda's Fallouts, but also a bunch of other Nexus-supported games (I don't remember how many, but I think it's in the 10-20 range?). Within a game, you can set up multiple profiles, with each profile having different mods and setting options active. If I remember correctly (and don't quote me on this, because I'm at work and can't double-check it), you can associate save games with profiles, as well, for games that allow it.

    The UI makes me think "MO with a hip modern design direction". MO was aggressively bare-bones and function-over-style; Vortex for sure has some effort put into style, but I'm undecided if it works or not. It's functional and things haven't gotten in my way yet, but I definitely see some UI niceties that are not really necessary (the "front page" has panes that show you Nexus news, an "Upgrade to Nexus Premium" button, recommended actions, etc, and all these panes can be moved around. Nice, but super not required, in my opinion), and there are some places where the UI might have made sense to the developer but is a bit of a head-scratcher to the user (in particular, the left-hand-side menu has a column of options of which some apply to Vortex in general, some apply to the currently-selected game, and some apply to the currently-selected profile, but they aren't explicitly marked as such).

    All the major functions of MO seem to be in place, but you do need to get used to the way they're laid out in the new UI. You can download your mods, install them, activate them, merge them, etc. You can tell it the locations of game-related tools - LOOT, F4SE, etc - and set any of those as the "default" launch option (so that when you tell Vortex "Please start Fallout 4", it will instead run the F4SE executable, for example). There's some trickiness associated with mod load order, though. As far as I can tell, there's no manual drag-and-drop reordering; I've seen people online mock the developer for allegedly saying that drag-and-drop is not intuitive, but I haven't found the source comment from the dev, so I don't know if people just misunderstood him. From what I can tell, Vortex really, really wants you to set up load order rules rather than move things around yourself - you can incorporate LOOT to create a load order for you, and you can take any two mods and create a dependency like "A must load before B". I'm a programmer myself, so I'm kinda sympathetic to the remove-the-human-element, automate-all-things approach, and probably have a higher tolerance to it than most normal users, but I think the UI is for sure not there yet. For one thing, the button to create the dependencies is not intuitively obvious. For another, it seems like it limits how you can create dependencies (I remember that I couldn't do one of these scenarios, but I can't remember which: (a) Mod A has a dependency on Mod B and another on Mod C, or (b) Mod A has two different dependencies on Mod B). Lastly, for version number dependencies, it assumes that all mod authors use Semantic Versioning, and can't handle anything else; mod authors absolutely do not all use Semantic Versioning, version numbers can be all over the place, so version number dependencies sometimes literally cannot be made, because it'll be like "1.2f is not a legal version number".

    So, it definitely has some UI hiccups that hopefully will be ironed out; I haven't really run into anything that prevented me from doing what I needed to, although had to work around some dependency issues. It has an "Import from MO" button and an "Import from NMM" button, so it'll probably be trivial to migrate over (I didn't have a modding setup for FO4, so I did everything from scratch). Overall, I'm pretty happy with it, and will for sure use it whenever I have time to get back to FO4 (and will probably migrate my MO setup for Skyrim to it, as well). It's also a work-in-progress, so you may want to hold off from making it your main mod manager for now, especially if you have some complicated or specialized thing you're doing with your mods/load order.

    But, it's out in alpha, and it's free, so if you have the time and inclination, you can give it a go and see what you think. Gopher has a few videos up to cover basic usage, and there are some tooltips in Vortex to explain some of the settings.

  • DelduwathDelduwath Registered User regular
    Oh yeah, one other thing: as I recall, MO has a built-in INI editor and handles INI files the same way it does mods (that is, doesn't actually put them in the folders, but creates links to its own managed versions of INI files). I don't think Vortex does this, or at least not in the same way. I still need to look into this more.

  • Toxic PickleToxic Pickle Thash grape! Registered User regular
    Delduwath wrote: »
    [The developer of Mod Organizer] got hired by Nexus to build a replacement for NMM. I've yet to hear anything about said replacement
    Oh, well then, let me tell you about it!

    <snip>

    Thanks for that update! I'm glad to hear it's coming along, as I had largely forgotten about it until that post above made me realize I just hadn't heard anything in forever. I dread the day I need to convert my mods over to a new manager, but if Vortex works out I'm sure it will be worth the pain.

  • DelduwathDelduwath Registered User regular
    Gopher had a video the other day that was like "Who is Vortex for?", and he said that it's really aimed at folks who use NMM and are maybe light-to-moderate mod-users, and that hardcore mod-users will probably want to stick with Mod Organizer; that Vortex won't be Mod Organizer 3.

    Which seems

    odd.

    I thought the whole point of Vortex was that it would be functionally Mod Organizer: The Next One, but with a UX that made it usable by normal humans (as opposed to people who like to make bashed patches and merge leveled lists as a way to relax and wind down at the end of the day). Now I'm curious what it is about Vortex that I'm missing. My understanding is that it still installs mods the same way as MO: by keeping the mods in their own folders somewhere, and creating hardlinks to those folders in the "Data" directory of your Bethesda game. For me, that's the single most important function, as it means that there is zero risk in dropping in new mods, as you can't ever irrevocably overwrite existing mods. So, I'm not sure what the big difference from MO is. I think it doesn't let you individually control which file from which mod wins conflicts, which is legit but seems very corner-case. Oh, and it also supports a bunch of non-Bethesda games, so I'm not sure how that works; does it have a separate mechanism for modding those games, or does it only support games that have a Bethesdaesque mod philosophy of "drop all your mod files into this folder"?

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