Yeah I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to keep up with Daggerfall.
Functionally, everything is the same so far. It's the same 6 quests disguised by having random parameters, every single dungeon is the same set of samey hallways with samey enemies (even if the game pretzels those hallways into incomprehensibility, they're still the same damn hallways). There's no incentive to just pick a random direction and explore the countryside, because what you're likely to find is a) nothing or b) another procedureally generated cube town full of procedurally generated paper doll NPCs.
Now, with that said, I'm only level 2, and I only just met with the Main Quest Lady who was like "you should talk to the Nobility about what to do about the ghost dude who is haunting Daggerfall City."
Is there at any point stuff that's Really Cool or Wild or Unique or is the game just going to continue to be the same 6 elements just repeated ad nauseum in different combinations?
I'm not even trying to compare this to modern games fyi; my basis for comparison is Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven, which came out only about 2 years after Daggerfall, and like... MMVI had *so many cool things* to find if you just struck off in random ass directions, and so many truly unique or even bizarre setpieces and locations, including some stuff that wasn't there for any reason it was just randomly inexplicable (this random giant dirt spire right near the capital city sticks out in my mind)
Stuff that's generated by a handful of die rolls, real or electronic, is not going to be as interesting as stuff created by humans with an actual story behind it. You might get some interesting combinations and emergent interactions, but that's all.
Yeah I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to keep up with Daggerfall.
Functionally, everything is the same so far. It's the same 6 quests disguised by having random parameters, every single dungeon is the same set of samey hallways with samey enemies (even if the game pretzels those hallways into incomprehensibility, they're still the same damn hallways). There's no incentive to just pick a random direction and explore the countryside, because what you're likely to find is a) nothing or b) another procedureally generated cube town full of procedurally generated paper doll NPCs.
Now, with that said, I'm only level 2, and I only just met with the Main Quest Lady who was like "you should talk to the Nobility about what to do about the ghost dude who is haunting Daggerfall City."
Is there at any point stuff that's Really Cool or Wild or Unique or is the game just going to continue to be the same 6 elements just repeated ad nauseum in different combinations?
I'm not even trying to compare this to modern games fyi; my basis for comparison is Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven, which came out only about 2 years after Daggerfall, and like... MMVI had *so many cool things* to find if you just struck off in random ass directions, and so many truly unique or even bizarre setpieces and locations, including some stuff that wasn't there for any reason it was just randomly inexplicable (this random giant dirt spire right near the capital city sticks out in my mind)
It's worth noting that the more accurate contemporary would be Diablo 1; Daggerfall is a dungeon crawler at heart, and predates Diablo 1 by a few months.
But yeah, the plotting does get somewhat more interesting as you progress through the main quest, but it is primarily a game about delving dungeons, figuring out ways to survive some of the nastier baddies while delving dungeons, and getting interesting stuff that lets you delve dungeons more easily.
EDIT: Just to clarify, when I say "plotting gets more interesting", I mean you have weird political intrigue about a war/assassination, an NPC whose primary form of communication to you is sending a zombie after you with a note sewn into its flesh, dealing with politicos who hate your guts but play nice to your face because you can secure them shit...
But you're level 2. Gotta earn your stripes before Daggerfall starts letting you in on the weird shit.
EDIT EDIT: I'd also say Daggerfall is closer to Xeen than Mandate of Heaven for Might and Magic games. It's a product of its time, that is, early 90s. Besides, if you think Daggerfall has too much dungeon delving, I heartily recommend you go play Arena
Yeah I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to keep up with Daggerfall.
Functionally, everything is the same so far. It's the same 6 quests disguised by having random parameters, every single dungeon is the same set of samey hallways with samey enemies (even if the game pretzels those hallways into incomprehensibility, they're still the same damn hallways). There's no incentive to just pick a random direction and explore the countryside, because what you're likely to find is a) nothing or b) another procedureally generated cube town full of procedurally generated paper doll NPCs.
Now, with that said, I'm only level 2, and I only just met with the Main Quest Lady who was like "you should talk to the Nobility about what to do about the ghost dude who is haunting Daggerfall City."
Is there at any point stuff that's Really Cool or Wild or Unique or is the game just going to continue to be the same 6 elements just repeated ad nauseum in different combinations?
I'm not even trying to compare this to modern games fyi; my basis for comparison is Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven, which came out only about 2 years after Daggerfall, and like... MMVI had *so many cool things* to find if you just struck off in random ass directions, and so many truly unique or even bizarre setpieces and locations, including some stuff that wasn't there for any reason it was just randomly inexplicable (this random giant dirt spire right near the capital city sticks out in my mind)
It's worth noting that the more accurate contemporary would be Diablo 1; Daggerfall is a dungeon crawler at heart, and predates Diablo 1 by a few months.
But yeah, the plotting does get somewhat more interesting as you progress through the main quest, but it is primarily a game about delving dungeons, figuring out ways to survive some of the nastier baddies while delving dungeons, and getting interesting stuff that lets you delve dungeons more easily.
EDIT: Just to clarify, when I say "plotting gets more interesting", I mean you have weird political intrigue about a war/assassination, an NPC whose primary form of communication to you is sending a zombie after you with a note sewn into its flesh, dealing with politicos who hate your guts but play nice to your face because you can secure them shit...
But you're level 2. Gotta earn your stripes before Daggerfall starts letting you in on the weird shit.
EDIT EDIT: I'd also say Daggerfall is closer to Xeen than Mandate of Heaven for Might and Magic games. It's a product of its time, that is, early 90s. Besides, if you think Daggerfall has too much dungeon delving, I heartily recommend you go play Arena
I am not going to go play Arena
Xeen actually feels about right tbh :\a I think I'll try to stick out like... grinding up a few more levels and factions, and then I'm gonna punch the main quest in the face.
Added new distant grass mode. This will allow you to extend grass drawing distance much further than only loaded cells. Read more about it in description of mod.
Added a caching system where once grass is generated it can be saved to a file and later loaded from file instead of having to generate it again. This can help reduce load times or stuttering when entering a cell which you have previously already visited.
Changed default settings to make grass placement more accurate near roads or other objects that go parallel with ground.
Added option for ray casting to ignore some objects. You can use this setting to make the mod ignore roads and the grass will still grow in roads.
The collision layers raycast uses is now configurable, but you probably shouldn't.
The dense mode is now configurable, but you definitely shouldn't.
Fixed bug where if too many of same type of grass was in a single cell it would stop adding more (identified by large squares of missing grass).
Ray cast depth (below grass) is now separately configurable from height.
Added option for configuration file to overwrite some grass INI settings so it's easier to edit all in one place instead of having to know which mod overwrites what INI setting where.
No Grass on Objects got my attention, though I feel like I don't really notice it that often in my (heavily modded) SSE versus original Skyrim.
I wish the black-texture face bug fix had come out back when I still had that issue. I must've killed it for good when I restarted my game (and haven't really changed up my various face-element mods since then).
Yeah I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to keep up with Daggerfall.
Functionally, everything is the same so far. It's the same 6 quests disguised by having random parameters, every single dungeon is the same set of samey hallways with samey enemies (even if the game pretzels those hallways into incomprehensibility, they're still the same damn hallways). There's no incentive to just pick a random direction and explore the countryside, because what you're likely to find is a) nothing or b) another procedureally generated cube town full of procedurally generated paper doll NPCs.
Now, with that said, I'm only level 2, and I only just met with the Main Quest Lady who was like "you should talk to the Nobility about what to do about the ghost dude who is haunting Daggerfall City."
Is there at any point stuff that's Really Cool or Wild or Unique or is the game just going to continue to be the same 6 elements just repeated ad nauseum in different combinations?
I'm not even trying to compare this to modern games fyi; my basis for comparison is Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven, which came out only about 2 years after Daggerfall, and like... MMVI had *so many cool things* to find if you just struck off in random ass directions, and so many truly unique or even bizarre setpieces and locations, including some stuff that wasn't there for any reason it was just randomly inexplicable (this random giant dirt spire right near the capital city sticks out in my mind)
It's worth noting that the more accurate contemporary would be Diablo 1; Daggerfall is a dungeon crawler at heart, and predates Diablo 1 by a few months.
But yeah, the plotting does get somewhat more interesting as you progress through the main quest, but it is primarily a game about delving dungeons, figuring out ways to survive some of the nastier baddies while delving dungeons, and getting interesting stuff that lets you delve dungeons more easily.
EDIT: Just to clarify, when I say "plotting gets more interesting", I mean you have weird political intrigue about a war/assassination, an NPC whose primary form of communication to you is sending a zombie after you with a note sewn into its flesh, dealing with politicos who hate your guts but play nice to your face because you can secure them shit...
But you're level 2. Gotta earn your stripes before Daggerfall starts letting you in on the weird shit.
EDIT EDIT: I'd also say Daggerfall is closer to Xeen than Mandate of Heaven for Might and Magic games. It's a product of its time, that is, early 90s. Besides, if you think Daggerfall has too much dungeon delving, I heartily recommend you go play Arena
I am not going to go play Arena
Xeen actually feels about right tbh :\a I think I'll try to stick out like... grinding up a few more levels and factions, and then I'm gonna punch the main quest in the face.
So I actually played Arena last year, and after playing Daggerfall for a while this year, I actually think Arena is better. Daggerfall adds a lot more complexity, but mostly in ways that don't really matter, or are actively confusing. Arena is more streamlined to focus on dungeon crawling, and the dungeons are much simpler and easier to navigate. Arena has a smaller functional game world, and it's easier to remember certain areas and places. Arena is kind of simple now, but it knew what it was and did it well. I actually beat it, but I don't know if I'm motivated to go back to Daggerfall again, even though I have strong nostalgia for it from back when I was a kid.
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
I was able to find my way out of Arena's first dungeon, and at the time it was the first non-Mario/Kirby game I'd played that came out before I was born. The town immediately after didn't inspire much confidence but y'know it was impressive for the time.
But yeah, compared to what's been said about Daggerfall here my short experience with Arena indicates it's a much more playable game.
Wasn’t there some research that basically said most Arena players never made it out of the first dungeon (this being the time before guides)?
Xeen was one of those games I was really interested in back in the day but being 11 at the time missed out on because I wasn’t old enough to buy it myself and never went back to later. Does it hold up enough to be worth it today?
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MaratastikJust call me Mara, please!Registered Userregular
So I haven't played Skyrim in years but I've had a strong desire to fire it up again. Was pretty heavy into modding, but this was before the Special Edition got released. Which version has the better mod support nowadays? Vanilla or special edition?
So I haven't played Skyrim in years but I've had a strong desire to fire it up again. Was pretty heavy into modding, but this was before the Special Edition got released. Which version has the better mod support nowadays? Vanilla or special edition?
If you're big into screen archery, from a graphical fidelity standpoint, LE is still "better" simply because the shaders are much better understood and there's been a LOT of work in reverse-engineering a lot of the engine to make the graphics do what you want. There's also still technically more mods available for LE than SE.
From a stability/extensibility standpoint, SE is a hell of a lot less crash-prone, has support for ESL which throws wide open the number of mods you can have installed (compatibility patches basically become "free" for the most part), and a lot of newer, larger stuff is starting to be SE-only. If you take some time to learn, anything on LE which you want can be ported to SE, but the opposite isn't always the case.
So generally speaking, I'd say SE is generally the better (albeit not universally better) choice.
So I haven't played Skyrim in years but I've had a strong desire to fire it up again. Was pretty heavy into modding, but this was before the Special Edition got released. Which version has the better mod support nowadays? Vanilla or special edition?
If you're big into screen archery, from a graphical fidelity standpoint, LE is still "better" simply because the shaders are much better understood and there's been a LOT of work in reverse-engineering a lot of the engine to make the graphics do what you want. There's also still technically more mods available for LE than SE.
From a stability/extensibility standpoint, SE is a hell of a lot less crash-prone, has support for ESL which throws wide open the number of mods you can have installed (compatibility patches basically become "free" for the most part), and a lot of newer, larger stuff is starting to be SE-only. If you take some time to learn, anything on LE which you want can be ported to SE, but the opposite isn't always the case.
So generally speaking, I'd say SE is generally the better (albeit not universally better) choice.
Wasn’t there some research that basically said most Arena players never made it out of the first dungeon (this being the time before guides)?
I don't remember this, but I would suspect it was about Daggerfall - I found my way through and out of the Arena opening dungeon without too much issue, but I did have to google How Do You Exit Daggerfall Starter Dungeon because the exit is incredibly hard to miss. I remember the arena opener also had specific areas you could rest and not generate random encounters, while the daggerfall one had no such thing, and also a wider array of dangerous enemies.
So I haven't played Skyrim in years but I've had a strong desire to fire it up again. Was pretty heavy into modding, but this was before the Special Edition got released. Which version has the better mod support nowadays? Vanilla or special edition?
If you're big into screen archery, from a graphical fidelity standpoint, LE is still "better" simply because the shaders are much better understood and there's been a LOT of work in reverse-engineering a lot of the engine to make the graphics do what you want. There's also still technically more mods available for LE than SE.
From a stability/extensibility standpoint, SE is a hell of a lot less crash-prone, has support for ESL which throws wide open the number of mods you can have installed (compatibility patches basically become "free" for the most part), and a lot of newer, larger stuff is starting to be SE-only. If you take some time to learn, anything on LE which you want can be ported to SE, but the opposite isn't always the case.
So generally speaking, I'd say SE is generally the better (albeit not universally better) choice.
Cool...thanks for the info!
No prob. If you go back some pages, I've been posting interesting stuff that's been coming out for the past... Year and a half? And posted to a spreadsheet which is my (slightly out of date) load order. It's a bit of a monstrosity. I think I wrote a primer to some tools at some point, too.
Wasn’t there some research that basically said most Arena players never made it out of the first dungeon (this being the time before guides)?
I know there was an interview that the lead dev on Morrowind died like 13 times trying to get out of the first Arena dungeon; I think it was on the Elder Scrolls site when I went to download it or something.
I should have known a thread for TES would still be in common use years after Skyrim!
I got the hankering for some open world RPGing and started up Skyrim a couple of weeks ago, with a few of the simple mods you can install in-game (the bug fixer one, Campfire/Frostfall, Alternate start, etc.) But after playing for a while (I started two characters and got them both to ~level 20 before settling on one, which is now ~level 35), I saw a bunch of talk about the Legacy of the Dragonborn mod and how it's apparently super great. I read into it a bit and it does seem pretty cool, but now I have several options:
1. File that information away if/when I decide to replay Skyrim yet again in a few years. I am not confident that I'll remember when the time comes.
2. Install LotD and start a third character. Unfortunately that'll mean running through a lot of story quests I've been through twice in recent memory. Also I'm not sure how mods like the ones on Nexus may or may not interfere with ones downloaded in-game, and if I'll need to do something about that. This also poses a significant risk of me getting burned out on Skyrim before I get very far. I'd love to replay Dawnguard/Dragonborn since I only ever played each of them once but, as I've relearned through playing, Dawnguard needs you to be like 2/3 of the way through the main quest to complete. I haven't dug into Dragonborn but I assume it's similar (at the very least, I recall Solstheim being a big difficulty spike so I don't think I'd want to head there until ~level 20).
3. Install LotD and continue with my current character and hope nothing breaks. Same concerns over compatibility with the mods I've already got, and the additional concern that I might break something else by not doing a fresh new game.
From what I've heard, it sounds like the main issue with option 3 is that I might have sold off stuff that can go in the museum. I've been pretty miserly in terms of hoarding everything unique, and I feel I'm unlikely to get 100% completion anyway, so that doesn't bother me much. Are there any other risks with using an old character on LotD? I would backup the save file, naturally, so it would be more of a concern that something would break that I wouldn't discover for 5+ hours in-game.
Dragonborn doesn't have any hard requirements other than Solstheim being a bit more difficult so it's harder for low level. No story tie-in requirements, I don't think, though.
LOTD isn't the most kind mod to mid-save adding, if memory serves. From the FAQ:
New game VS Game in progress
While it is possible to install Legacy to a game in progress, there are too many variables that cannot be modified if a plugin is added after a game has already begun. Plus adding a mod mid game will shift the load order of all plugins that load after it which will cause instability issues. It is always advised to establish a load order, resolve conflicts, test and THEN start a new game and never touch the load order again until you are ready to review your setup and start over again on a new game.
There is also a widespread misconception that making a save right after character creation is the same thing as a "clean save". It is not. As soon as you hit the NEW GAME button, the game starts building data that cannot be updated in your save. If any mod is added after which alters any of those values, they will not be able to do so after having started the game. How far you go in the game and where you have been doesn't matter. New game = baked game; make sure you are finished working on your load order before starting a game and then do not touch it again.
So it's basically a "buyer beware" sort of thing. If the worst you run into is missing items, it's no big deal: console can add them and fix that. I'd be more concerned about quest scripts not triggering, and that sort of stuff. LOTD is great, but kinda needs a list tailored to it in order to get the most out of it.
I went ahead and made the jump to legit modding. It occurred to me while looking up mods that I'd be unlikely to get bored if I made the game sufficiently different. So instead of the ~8 mods I'd found in the pre-approved mods listing in-game, I am now up to ~50 or so, mostly immersive stuff since graphics improvements aren't super important to me and I figured getting just what I've got now would be enough hassle. The list I came up with was heavily influenced by your recommendations on the last page, @Jragghen so thanks for that.
I still need to go through and do the "cleaning" of my plugins before I can play, but I got all the warnings and conflicts sorted out in LOOT (there were only a few, and all pretty minor). With luck, I'll be able to configure all the mod settings and start things fresh this weekend.
I've actually kinda-sorta started working on a guide (in the "this is how mods work under the hood and pitfalls to watch out for" sense, not in the "these are a bunch of mods" sense) in my drafts. Maybe post it up next week? Ish?
If you're looking for a broad, stable build involving LOTD, I highly recommend https://lexyslotd.com/
It's how I got my start in real missing beyond "click install on the steam workshop", and it's a solid modlist. @Elvenshae can attest to it as well, I believe. It's just got a bit of a time commitment to get set up
I found a series of YouTube videos that walked through the process pretty painlessly. The channel is AI Cave IIRC? Shows how to use MO2, LOOT, and (I assume, I haven't watched that part yet) xEdit.
And I don't need a bunch of porny mods in my Skyrim. I think I'm good with what I've got.
Eh, I'd say porny is maybe overstating things - it uses a busty female body, and has armor replacers, etc, that match to it. But yeah, the important part is learning using some of those tools, so you're good
Feeling motivated, writing a "How To" guide for modding. Feel free to link in OP.
How to mod Skyrim
Unlike most guides, this will not be a list of suggestions (although some may get bandied about), but rather a listing of best practices, tools and how to use them, and answers to common questions. It'll be focused more on the whys and hows of how modding works, moreso than then whats of what's out there.
So there's a lot of versions out there. Where to start?
Short answer: Special Edition
Long answer: Generally speaking, folks think of Skyrim as having three versions - Special Edition, VR, and Legendary Edition (also called Oldrim). Legendary Edition is effectively the version made for 360/PS3, while Special Edition is the version made for Xbone/PS4, or rough equivalency thereof. LE uses 32-bit memory addressing, SE uses 64-bit memory addressing. Due to this, most mods are not inter-compatible between the two, but mods can be ported rather easily from LE -> SE. My understanding is that it can sometimes prove more difficult to move in the other direction: I don't know, I've never tried. The SE engine has improvements in some things (water in particular, native support for godrays, etc). Audio is better in LE. SE has the Creation Club built-in paid mods, which also introduces the concept of ESLs which allows for more mods. More on this later. There's a litttle fragmentation in mods in LE due to the DLC being released one at a time (there may be multiple versions of some mods depending on which DLC you're assumed to own), although this is less frequent. Finally, while the base game of SE looks better than LE, the ceiling for the graphical fidelity of LE is higher than SE, mostly due to it being on DirectX 9, whereas SE is on DirectX 11 - modders have more tools available to them with the older direct x shaders, which allowed them to break the graphics engine over their knees. So if you're looking for the absolute best looking version of Skyrim and are willing to put in the work, LE may prove better. However, as SE has matured, most of the modding community seems to have migrated over. VR is its own beast, can frequently support many (but not all) SE mods, but I don't have a VR headset and haven't looked into this at ALL, so I'll be ignoring VR for the remainder of this guide. Finally, the one other area that I understand LE is still superior in is the adult mods region - they tend to be heavily scripted and are not easy to port, so if that's what you're looking for, LE may still be your better bet.
How do I install mods?
Three primary ways to do this:
Download from the Creation Club. This is easy, the game handles it itself so it's completely painless, but it costs money, and they don't cover everything free mods do
Download files and stick them in your game folder. Don't do this. You'll break shit accidentally, probably, and will probably have to wipe everything fixing it
Using a mod manager. Do this. Each one will have a different method of settting things up, but they'll all work in roughly the same way, allowing you to add/remove mods.
What mod manager should I use?
Short answer: Mod Organizer 2
Long answer: There's a lot out there!
Nexus Mod Manager - many of you likely used this in the past. Don't use it. It's simple, intuitive, and will break your shit. It's effectively an interface for sticking files in your game folder. You can easily overwrite files you don't mean to, accidentally delete things which break other mods, and many other things with this mod manager. Seriously, avoid it. It's more trouble than it's worth.
Wrye Bash - an incredibly feature-rich mod manager that I've never actually used as a mod manager. It, like all the ones from this point on (I think) uses a virtual file system, where it stores each mod individually, and "builds" a game folder when you click run, allowing you to install/uninstall/reorder to your heart's content. Wrye Bash also contains a number of other features (automatic ESL tagging, changing masters of plugins - more on these later) and allows you to configure some random thing (like...size of the moons is one of the more random ones). Its interface is a bit intimidating, which is why I've not used it as a mod manager, but it's worth having if only for the Bashed Patch (yet another "more on this later").
Vortex - The replacement for NMM! Both are found on the same page. Vortex, like Wrye Bash and MO2, has a virtual file system which allows you to dynamically build a run directory and install/uninstall mods without worry. It also integrates the concept of LOOT and ordering your plugins, to a degree that almost removes a smidge too much control from the end user. It's useful for folks who only want to dip their toes in, but if you're reading this guide, you likely want a bit more control
Mod Organizer 2 - my mod manager of choice. A little intimidating user-interface wise up front, but once you get past the initial hump it's actually really easy to use. I'll be referring to format stuff with this mod organizer periodically, but most commonly the "left panel" and "right panel" (see the two red boxes below). Left panel is where the mods are installed, right panel is your load order - these do not necessarily need to be the same (in fact, they usually won't!), but being able to keep them separate is a large part of what makes MO2 powerful.
So what is a mod, anyway?
Something you install to change how the game looks or behaves. Generally speaking, they'll fall into three major categories: assets, plugins, and scripts. There's a few other add-ins and tools which will be addressed separately (ENB, tools like DynDOLOD, etc), but at their core, all mods consist of one or more assets, plugins, or scripts.
- Assets - generally speaking, textures or meshes. Meshes are the framework geometry of all objects in the game, textures are what gets applied to those meshes. At their most basic, these will be "replacers" which will overwrite a texture in the game with a higher fidelity one, or overwrite a mesh with a different one (thereby changing the shape of an object, or a character). In addition to this, there may be cases where a mesh overwrites a vanilla one, but then points to a different texture which is made to apply to the new shape: this means the texture doesn't "show" as a conflict, and if you get a different texture to be applied to that mesh, it needs to be a replacer for where the mesh now points to. These, by and large, are highly, highly compatible between LE and SE, and can be installed and uninstalled freely mid-game. The one slight caveat is that some LE meshes don't work well in SE, but there's an automated tool called Cathedral Assets Optimizer which can take care of that for you (it can also compress/encode textures and do other stuff, too, including conversion of some animations). One additional note for this area: assets can come "packaged" or "loose." Loose means they're just that - loose files that you can manually browse. Packaged means that they're compressed in a file called a .bsa (bethesda studios archive, I believe). bsas are read more quickly by the game engine, so for a large number of files they can be convenient, however in the days of SSDs that's less noticeable. When dealing with assets, however, it's important to keep some rules in mind: plugin order (if assets have a corresponding plugin) does not matter. Loose files always win over packed files, and files lower in your load order in the left panel will win if there's a direct conflict. So if you want a specific mesh or texture to "win", make sure it's in the appropriate location. (Mod Organizer 2 has an integrated .bsa extraction tool which can convert .bsas to loose files, CAO can do that and also pack files in to .bsas, and there's a bunch of other random tools that do both of those, or allow you to browse them, or whatever, on Nexus). Animations also would be considered assets, but may require some external tools to be properly integrated.
- Scripts - These come in a couple different formats. So the game itself comes with a TON of scripts (using a language called papyrus), so these can be overwritten as replacers just like meshes and textures. In addition to that, there is another format called SKSE - the Skyrim Script Extender, which is a LOT more robust and is frequently what people are talking about when they say scripts. These scripts inject behavior into the game and allow for some widely variant behavior in the game. They sometimes, but frequently don't, require plugins alongside them. I haven't gotten into writing scripts very much (I have done a little papyrus editing, but that's beyond the scope of this thing), so beyond knowing that SKSE is a thing, clicking through to that website and downloading/reading the readme to install it, and understanding that if you're using SKSE you need to launch the game via the SKSE executable instead of the Skyrim.exe (or via steam or whatever), that should be sufficient.
- Plugins - The heart and soul of modding. Dealing with plugins, and conflicts between them, is what most of modding is. Plugins come in three main types: .esm, .esp, and .esl. (Elder Scrolls Master, Elder Scrolls Plugin, and Elder Scrolls...uh...I think it's Light Master). These used to have a higher degree of differentiation (a plugin could only have .esms as masters, which is no longer the case, etc), but the three types still matter - just keep in mind that .esps can be "flagged" as ESM or ESL (or both) and get treated as such by the engine. (ESPFE is also used interchangably for .esp which has been flagged as ESL).
So all that's well and good, but what the fuck does that even mean? Well, literally everything in the game is defined by these plugins, and there is an engine limitation of 255 of them (kinda, just start with that understanding). Each plugin is assigned a hexidecimel number, starting from 00 and going up to FE - FF is reserved for some things generated in-game. Past that number, literally everything in the game is described by a 6-digit hexidecimal number, so in total everything is represented by an 8-digit hex number. The first two digits are the plugin (in load order), and the remainder describes the object, or reference, or cell, or NPC, or spell, or dialogue topic, or...you get the idea. So this leads to a couple reserved items: 00 is Skyrim.esm, 01 is Update.esm (for updates pushed by the game), 02 is Dawnguard.esm, 03 is Hearthfire.esm, and 04 is Dragonborn.esm. In addition to this, the introduction of ESL makes FE a reserved load order number, using up a total of 6 of those 255, so really you only get 249 plugins.
So what's the important differences between plugin types? ESM (and ESP flagged as ESM) always load first - they can be re-ordered relative to one another, but all ESM (and flagged ESM) will ALWAYS come before any ESP. Now on the topic of ESL - ESL are all kinda special because they're "small". The six-digit reference number in FE is further subdivided into two 3-digit numbers. So it becomes FE XXX YYY, where XXX is the load order number of the ESL, and YYY are the references inside that ESL. This means you can (theoretically, not actually) have 4096 ESL, and each one can contain 2048 new references (they start at 800 instead of 000 for some reason, I'm not entirely sure why). .esl files provided from the Creation Club will ALWAYS be FE000, FE001, etc - otherwise, .esl can be placed interchangably inside the ESMs, and ESPFE can be placed literally anywhere in your load order. This load order is the order that they appear in the right panel in the above.
Which sure, that's great, but what does that mean? Like, everything is represented by a plugin, but what happens if multiple mods want to edit the same reference in different ways? Well, the simple rule is: last plugin wins (there's a few exceptions to this rule, but honestly, it's shit that's getting into a deeper dive than most people care to, so we're going to completely ignore that). Sticking this in spoilers because it's a large image, but it will illustrate the point.
This is Nettlebane in my load order. The first column is Skyrim.esm: it creates the reference to Nettlebane. It's a weapon, it's got a specific model, it gives it some keywords, an impact set, how much it's worth, the weight and damage it does, etc. The second column is Audio Overhaul - it takes that reference, adds a new keyword (Ebony), changes its impact set and its swing sound. The next column is the Legacy of the Dragonborn patch for AOS, which carries forward all the changes from AOS, but also changes the model to be a unique model from LOTD. The next one? WACCF - Weapons, Armor, Clothing, and Clutter fixes. It REVERTS the LOTD changes, the AOS impact data changes, and then changes the item's value, weight, and damage. Then there's a LOTD patch with WACCF, and a WACCF patch with AOS - but note that none of them have ALL the changes, only individual ones (these are all meaningless unto themselves, but in some cases they're the "last" one for some items, so I keep them). Then we add ANOTHER variable: Zim's Immersive Artifacts. It adds a special enchantment to Nettlebane, ridiculously cranks up the value (because Zim), changes the weight and damage. Then there's an LOTD patch for it. Finally, at the end, we have my Bashed and Smashed patches, which effectively automate combining a bunch of different mods (this Smashed entry may have been manually tweaked by me to have smaller value, FWIW).
The game engine? Doesn't give a shit about all that. When it reads the reference for how to handle Nettlebane, all it gets is that last column: the Smashed Patch 3.esp reference. Last plugin wins.
Which brings us to the most useful tool in the modding arsenal (in my humble opinion): xEdit (link actually goes to SSEEdit, x is a wildcard - so there's a TES5Edit, a FO4Edit, etc). It's what allows us to view plugins in our load order and find conflicts like the above. It's invaluable for debugging conflicts between specific mods, and potentially resolving them yourself, or knowing to look for other patches. It can also be used to flag plugins as ESLs, and (for smaller ones), actually can compact the FormIDs for small enough mods (basically, if you have 2048 or fewer new refids in a plugin), re-number all the form ids to fit in that 800-FFF range, thereby allowing you to flag it as an ESL. Note: there's some things (dialogue, some scripts, facegen) which require a little extra work or can prevent you from doing so, so buyer beware. ESLify is a useful guide for helping to learn when you can do this. Additionally, keep in mind that any patches you download will be for versions which are assumed to not be compacted: attempting to use one of those patches with a compacted master will result in unknown outcomes, up to and including crashing your game or breaking your save.
So how do we resolve load order issues? Well, for starters, you want LOOT, the Load Order Optimization Tool. It's a database that keeps track of incompatibilities between mods and attempts to optimize your load order. It will handle a LARGE majority of incompatibilities if you're not comfortable enough to suss them out yourself - it's a great tool for novice-to-intermediate, and a good reference in advanced levels. Just boot it up with your load order enabled, have it sort, and it'll automatically re-arrange your load order in the right panel, without touching the left panel. Once you start making your own patches and ESMifying things, its usefulness wanes, however.
As for ESMifying itself, why would a user want to flag a plugin as an ESM? Well, engine reasons, mostly. The engine has a reference cap of 1048576 temporary references which can be loaded, and ESMs deallocate them from memory in a way which ESPs do not. So for plugins which have a large number of references, flagging them as ESM can greatly reduce the number of references you have active in your load order. Details on this can be found in this reddit thread. It's worth noting that this script version is probably the one you want instead of the one linked there, as there's an additional thing where unique NPCs which spawn indoors in some of the mods via temporary references would not have loaded and started their AI (so if you do a city mod, it might seem empty until you start breaking into houses). However, as noted, keep in mind: once you start ESMifying things, LOOT order could fly out the window, so you need to take care of that yourself.
There's not really a better place to put this, but xEdit also has a functionality called "quick auto clean." Sometimes a plugin will have the same record value as a master - these records can usually be removed as duplicates, which can resolve conflicts with other mods without needing to worry about conflict resolution. So if you see people talking about "dirty" mods or "cleaning" mods, this is what they're referring to.
So anyway, xEdit allows you to see the conflicts, but what about those Bashed Patch and Smashed Patch things? So in Bethesda gamnes there are these things called "leveled lists." They determine what enemies drop and wear, what items are found in vendors, what items are found in chests, etc. Now, let's say you add multiple weapon mods, all of which allow for NPCs to use their weapons. From the plugin logic we saw above: last mod wins. At its most basic, what a Bashed Patch will do is combine level lists, allowing ALL of those mods to be actively found in the world. It's great! It does other stuff too, but that's the long and short of it. There's tons of guides out there dedicated just to Bashed Patches (and this is something youtube might be worth hitting up for), but here's a quick STEP wiki page on it. Smashed Patches take this to the next level, effectively. Mator Smash is a tool that generates these patches and can work on all record types. There's some severe limitations right now (mostly around the number of masters a patch can have - Mator Smash currently is still restricted by the 255 plugin limit. It's successor is being worked on). This can, theoretically, supplant all CR patches you may have. It's a really useful tool, but with the advent of ESLs, it makes it difficult to use so it's kinda falling out of favor. The technical FIRST successor to Mator Smash is zEdit, also by Mator, which allows for mods to create automated patch generators for their mods. Experience, for example, is one that I like, and there's a zEdit patcher which allows for the mod to generate proper XP values for killing enemy types added by other mods. It, however, is also limited to 255 plugins - there's an entire ecosystem of workarounds out there if you search for them, but this is getting into higher-order stuff, so I'll leave that to you to search for if you so feel like it. zEdit ALSO contains zMerge, which is a tool which allows you to merge plugins (and works better than xEdit's Merge Plugins function) to combine multiple .esps into a single one. It's worth being aware of, but also is no longer strictly necessary in the world of ESL flagging.
So that's all well and good, but I want to have the most stable thing possible. What should I do?
Don't install a lot of mods.
Nah, but really, there's a methodology out there which is for this purpose. It's a bit tedious, but it'll help you fully understand everything under the hood, and you can be confident in the end product. It's called The Method. It utilizes a feature that xEdit has called "modgroups", allowing you to "group" mods together for conflict resolution, to keep track of things, as you add mods one by one.
Finally, all the above conflict resolution is great, but it does LITERALLY NOTHING for objects clipping through one anotther because two mods placed new items in the same place. I already wrote a giant fucking guide about how to MAKE patches for those things - you don't have to make them, but the process will also allow you to detect them.
What other tools are out there that I should be aware of?
- The most obvious one is the Creation Kit. (Don't use it without Creation Kit Fixes). It's a wonderful tool, but mostly you'll want it for converting mods from LE to SE. If going in that direction, and the mod is just a plugin, frequently all that's necessary to convert it is to load the mod in the Creation Kit and hit save. That's LITERALLY it. It takes a form 43 plugin and saves it as form 44. Voila. Internal structure now matches SE.
- BethINI (pronounced bethany, I think). It's an INI configurator to help manage a bunch of settings that can be tweaked in your Skyrim.ini. It's probably the easiest way to get additional fidelity out of your game.
- xLODGEN is a tool for all Bethesda games which generates LOD (think things you see in the distance) meshes and textures. This, and the next tool, will take some time to run (on older machines multiple hours, depending on how much you've got installed), but it'll SERIOUSLY reduce your pop-in. The link also includes an .esm which contains terrain to see in the distance outside of Skyrim. You'll want to hit up some youtube tutorials about this and the next one.
- DynDOLOD - Dynamic Distant Objects LOD. This adds LOD to objects and trees added in your game. It's...magic. It really is. Like, this video is 5 years old and the tool's only improved since then, but the difference is SO stark:
- ENB and Reshade manager. Getting into a bit more graphical fidelity stuff here. Reshade is a lighter-weight post-processing thing that is executed by your GPU to...well, reshade the colors. There's a ton of presets out there. ENB is a more GPU intensive thing which does the above and more - you can use one, the other, or both. The manager allows you to swap settings pretty easily so you can try multiples out. Note: ENB will MURDER your frame rate on older hardware (and even on some newer stuff), but it's where you get a LOT of the graphical improvements - reflection in water, parallax, color shifting depending on the weather, light intensity shifting based off time of day, adding additional lights and shadow-casting beyond what the engine even allows. It's really crazy what they've been able to manage with this stuff.
- Nemesis is the new animation tool of choice, with FNIS being the older one. I think Nemesis supports everything FNIS did (but open source) except some animal animations. This tool is necessary for some mods (and those mods will tell you, although they may say they require FNIS) to generate custom animations. You'll get a plugin for it, Nemesis will run, and your game will support the animations which the mod adds. There's tons of documentation and it's largely self-explanatory.
Okay, so I think I've got a handle on that, but I'm looking into mods now, and there's so many to choose from! I'm overwhelmed!
This is going to be the most subjective thing here, and I'm actually going to recommend the exact opposite of what I tend to do: don't try to make the "perfect" mod list you can use multiple times, but think about what style you want to play and try to make a list crafted more in that direction. Like, if you have a character you don't want to be a vampire, doing a vampire overhaul doesn't feel necessary. On the other hand, if you DO want to, they're looking into. Don't weigh yourself down with quest mods you'll never do - they can be hell for compatibility, and if you aren't going to actually DO the quest, that's a ton of effort you might not want to take. LOTD is a common example here which I've mentioned in the past: it's a GREAT mod if you like collecting unique items, but if you're going to include the museum, you'll want to fill it, and it'll dictate a lot of your mod list. Make those decisions early.
So how to approach the problem? Break it into categories - gameplay items (leveling and perk trees, magic systems, etc). UI (menus, HUD, dialogue), new places/quests, revamp of existing areas (seriously, pick a city mod series and stick with it. Don't be me), Environment stuff (landscape, mountains, weather). Added items/armor/weapons. Magic system. Major retexture overhauls, minor stuff for on top of that. Economy. Animations and NPCs. Audio.
Within these categories, look for ones which suit you, and stick with them IN THOSE CATEGORIES. So you effectively create mini-lists of wants within those areas, then start working on getting those areas to play together. KISS - it's possible to combine a bunch of NPC overhauls together, but it takes some effort and time - try to create as few overlaps as you can.
Ultimately, you'll boot the game, play for a few hours, get through Bleak Falls Barrow, and realize that the game in your mind was more interesting than the game itself, and you found five new things you want to try so you go back to modding and modding becomes the game itself.
Link added to OP! And actually, while I'm thinking about it, I'm going to actually start writing an OP that includes more game information & other stuff like I keep meaning to, but don't, because my brain is like that.
OH. A thing I forgot about while doing this possible OP update, which I will link below...
@Commander Zoom , turns out that Morrowblivion, a project for porting Morrowind to the Oblivion engine, is actually a finished project. https://morroblivion.com/ So if you wanted it to look less like ass and play more like Oblivion, maybe give that a shot?
Ha! Well, thanks for the nod, and I'll probably check that out, but I did eventually play all the way through Morrowind (and Tribunal, but not Bloodmoon). As I hinted in the previous post, I modded out or learned to tolerate the jank.
Still want all cliff racers to die in a fire, though. (I hear they might have, by Skyrim times?)
Ha! Well, thanks for the nod, and I'll probably check that out, but I did eventually play all the way through Morrowind (and Tribunal, but not Bloodmoon). As I hinted in the previous post, I modded out or learned to tolerate the jank.
Still want all cliff racers to die in a fire, though. (I hear they might have, by Skyrim times?)
Level 30, decent way through multiple quest-lines, and still surprisingly stable. Only bugs of note I've run into so far:
Mod-added option for one of the intimidation quests for the TG didn't appear. Fixed it with the console
Stones of Barenziah quest markers didn't appear, was due to a messed up smashed patch. Fixed in plugin, then in console
I somehow got the Windhelm TG quest without having done any radiants there (or, for that matter, enough radiants to even get a single one of those, but whatever :V )
The Malakath daedric quest worked fine, but only some of the NPCs are using their new dialogue right now. Like, about half of the orcs acknowledge the new chief....but not the new chief. Not entirely sure what's up with this one, hoping it'll shake out.
Vigilant Tolan is alive and back in Fort Dawnguard. ZERO idea how the fuck that happened :P
Forsworn Conspiracy bugged itself, but that happens basically 100% of the time, even in vanilla, so...whatever.
Other than that? My uGrids option keeps making dragons spawn too far away from me so I'm actually low on dragon souls because I can't aggro them in time, but otherwise I haven't run into any real problems.
L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
I love how the dragons spawn. Maybe fight you for 10 minutes, and then proceed on a genocidal rampage against mudcrabs and skeevers throughout the rest of Skyrim.
And you end up chasing them throughout everything, aggroing every bandit and giant and everything to try to catch up to the dragon that got bored with you.
Not sure if it's mod behavior or something I forgot from vanilla, but horses feel like such a liability. Every 30 seconds I ride down the road, I get an encounter with a bear, or a pack of wolves, or a pack of bears, and they're always fast enough to catch my horse AND even when I dismount they seem to prefer beating on the horse to attacking me. It's very frustrating, since I prefer the immersion aspect of traveling on foot rather than fast travel (towards the lategame, I fast travel a lot more, but mostly because quests stop caring about making things proximate pretty quickly).
Horses have never been good in Skyrim. They don't go any faster than just running, so their only use is climbing steep inclines, which you can do with jumping, anyway.
Horse at a sprint should outrun everything. Especially if it’s one that has the HP to take a hit you should not have any issues
I don't know what to tell you. When the horse is at a gallop, it's basically exactly as fast as a running wolf. And since the gallop lasts all of 10 seconds before needing to be recharged, it's not a reliable means of escape.
Posts
Functionally, everything is the same so far. It's the same 6 quests disguised by having random parameters, every single dungeon is the same set of samey hallways with samey enemies (even if the game pretzels those hallways into incomprehensibility, they're still the same damn hallways). There's no incentive to just pick a random direction and explore the countryside, because what you're likely to find is a) nothing or b) another procedureally generated cube town full of procedurally generated paper doll NPCs.
Now, with that said, I'm only level 2, and I only just met with the Main Quest Lady who was like "you should talk to the Nobility about what to do about the ghost dude who is haunting Daggerfall City."
Is there at any point stuff that's Really Cool or Wild or Unique or is the game just going to continue to be the same 6 elements just repeated ad nauseum in different combinations?
I'm not even trying to compare this to modern games fyi; my basis for comparison is Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven, which came out only about 2 years after Daggerfall, and like... MMVI had *so many cool things* to find if you just struck off in random ass directions, and so many truly unique or even bizarre setpieces and locations, including some stuff that wasn't there for any reason it was just randomly inexplicable (this random giant dirt spire right near the capital city sticks out in my mind)
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
It's worth noting that the more accurate contemporary would be Diablo 1; Daggerfall is a dungeon crawler at heart, and predates Diablo 1 by a few months.
But yeah, the plotting does get somewhat more interesting as you progress through the main quest, but it is primarily a game about delving dungeons, figuring out ways to survive some of the nastier baddies while delving dungeons, and getting interesting stuff that lets you delve dungeons more easily.
EDIT: Just to clarify, when I say "plotting gets more interesting", I mean you have weird political intrigue about a war/assassination, an NPC whose primary form of communication to you is sending a zombie after you with a note sewn into its flesh, dealing with politicos who hate your guts but play nice to your face because you can secure them shit...
But you're level 2. Gotta earn your stripes before Daggerfall starts letting you in on the weird shit.
EDIT EDIT: I'd also say Daggerfall is closer to Xeen than Mandate of Heaven for Might and Magic games. It's a product of its time, that is, early 90s. Besides, if you think Daggerfall has too much dungeon delving, I heartily recommend you go play Arena
I am not going to go play Arena
Xeen actually feels about right tbh :\a I think I'll try to stick out like... grinding up a few more levels and factions, and then I'm gonna punch the main quest in the face.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
If uh, that helps explain anything about why I love Daggerfall so much.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/42161 - No Grass in Objects just got a v2 upgrade that works better and also make grass draw ignore ugrids so it appears in the distance anyway.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/42441 - Parapets fixed the black face bug. Like "if it runs into a problem it'll generate the facegen data at runtime" literally. Some testing from a discord:
Deleted head parts? No problem, here's vanilla. Facegen missing? No problem, make it from whatever's winning your load order.
And neither one of the above two even uses a fucking plugin.
I wish the black-texture face bug fix had come out back when I still had that issue. I must've killed it for good when I restarted my game (and haven't really changed up my various face-element mods since then).
So I actually played Arena last year, and after playing Daggerfall for a while this year, I actually think Arena is better. Daggerfall adds a lot more complexity, but mostly in ways that don't really matter, or are actively confusing. Arena is more streamlined to focus on dungeon crawling, and the dungeons are much simpler and easier to navigate. Arena has a smaller functional game world, and it's easier to remember certain areas and places. Arena is kind of simple now, but it knew what it was and did it well. I actually beat it, but I don't know if I'm motivated to go back to Daggerfall again, even though I have strong nostalgia for it from back when I was a kid.
But yeah, compared to what's been said about Daggerfall here my short experience with Arena indicates it's a much more playable game.
Xeen was one of those games I was really interested in back in the day but being 11 at the time missed out on because I wasn’t old enough to buy it myself and never went back to later. Does it hold up enough to be worth it today?
If you're big into screen archery, from a graphical fidelity standpoint, LE is still "better" simply because the shaders are much better understood and there's been a LOT of work in reverse-engineering a lot of the engine to make the graphics do what you want. There's also still technically more mods available for LE than SE.
From a stability/extensibility standpoint, SE is a hell of a lot less crash-prone, has support for ESL which throws wide open the number of mods you can have installed (compatibility patches basically become "free" for the most part), and a lot of newer, larger stuff is starting to be SE-only. If you take some time to learn, anything on LE which you want can be ported to SE, but the opposite isn't always the case.
So generally speaking, I'd say SE is generally the better (albeit not universally better) choice.
Cool...thanks for the info!
I don't remember this, but I would suspect it was about Daggerfall - I found my way through and out of the Arena opening dungeon without too much issue, but I did have to google How Do You Exit Daggerfall Starter Dungeon because the exit is incredibly hard to miss. I remember the arena opener also had specific areas you could rest and not generate random encounters, while the daggerfall one had no such thing, and also a wider array of dangerous enemies.
No prob. If you go back some pages, I've been posting interesting stuff that's been coming out for the past... Year and a half? And posted to a spreadsheet which is my (slightly out of date) load order. It's a bit of a monstrosity. I think I wrote a primer to some tools at some point, too.
If you're looking for the quick solution, wabbajack is apparently nice: https://www.wabbajack.org/
And if you've got any other questions, feel free to ask or PM me.
I know there was an interview that the lead dev on Morrowind died like 13 times trying to get out of the first Arena dungeon; I think it was on the Elder Scrolls site when I went to download it or something.
I got the hankering for some open world RPGing and started up Skyrim a couple of weeks ago, with a few of the simple mods you can install in-game (the bug fixer one, Campfire/Frostfall, Alternate start, etc.) But after playing for a while (I started two characters and got them both to ~level 20 before settling on one, which is now ~level 35), I saw a bunch of talk about the Legacy of the Dragonborn mod and how it's apparently super great. I read into it a bit and it does seem pretty cool, but now I have several options:
1. File that information away if/when I decide to replay Skyrim yet again in a few years. I am not confident that I'll remember when the time comes.
2. Install LotD and start a third character. Unfortunately that'll mean running through a lot of story quests I've been through twice in recent memory. Also I'm not sure how mods like the ones on Nexus may or may not interfere with ones downloaded in-game, and if I'll need to do something about that. This also poses a significant risk of me getting burned out on Skyrim before I get very far. I'd love to replay Dawnguard/Dragonborn since I only ever played each of them once but, as I've relearned through playing, Dawnguard needs you to be like 2/3 of the way through the main quest to complete. I haven't dug into Dragonborn but I assume it's similar (at the very least, I recall Solstheim being a big difficulty spike so I don't think I'd want to head there until ~level 20).
3. Install LotD and continue with my current character and hope nothing breaks. Same concerns over compatibility with the mods I've already got, and the additional concern that I might break something else by not doing a fresh new game.
From what I've heard, it sounds like the main issue with option 3 is that I might have sold off stuff that can go in the museum. I've been pretty miserly in terms of hoarding everything unique, and I feel I'm unlikely to get 100% completion anyway, so that doesn't bother me much. Are there any other risks with using an old character on LotD? I would backup the save file, naturally, so it would be more of a concern that something would break that I wouldn't discover for 5+ hours in-game.
LOTD isn't the most kind mod to mid-save adding, if memory serves. From the FAQ:
So it's basically a "buyer beware" sort of thing. If the worst you run into is missing items, it's no big deal: console can add them and fix that. I'd be more concerned about quest scripts not triggering, and that sort of stuff. LOTD is great, but kinda needs a list tailored to it in order to get the most out of it.
I still need to go through and do the "cleaning" of my plugins before I can play, but I got all the warnings and conflicts sorted out in LOOT (there were only a few, and all pretty minor). With luck, I'll be able to configure all the mod settings and start things fresh this weekend.
If you're looking for a broad, stable build involving LOTD, I highly recommend https://lexyslotd.com/
It's how I got my start in real missing beyond "click install on the steam workshop", and it's a solid modlist. @Elvenshae can attest to it as well, I believe. It's just got a bit of a time commitment to get set up
Also, a lot of porny mods in Lexy's list.
But it looks and plays really, really well when it's all done, and the modding Discord for it is insanely helpful!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
And I don't need a bunch of porny mods in my Skyrim. I think I'm good with what I've got.
How to mod Skyrim
Unlike most guides, this will not be a list of suggestions (although some may get bandied about), but rather a listing of best practices, tools and how to use them, and answers to common questions. It'll be focused more on the whys and hows of how modding works, moreso than then whats of what's out there.
So there's a lot of versions out there. Where to start?
Short answer: Special Edition
Long answer: Generally speaking, folks think of Skyrim as having three versions - Special Edition, VR, and Legendary Edition (also called Oldrim). Legendary Edition is effectively the version made for 360/PS3, while Special Edition is the version made for Xbone/PS4, or rough equivalency thereof. LE uses 32-bit memory addressing, SE uses 64-bit memory addressing. Due to this, most mods are not inter-compatible between the two, but mods can be ported rather easily from LE -> SE. My understanding is that it can sometimes prove more difficult to move in the other direction: I don't know, I've never tried. The SE engine has improvements in some things (water in particular, native support for godrays, etc). Audio is better in LE. SE has the Creation Club built-in paid mods, which also introduces the concept of ESLs which allows for more mods. More on this later. There's a litttle fragmentation in mods in LE due to the DLC being released one at a time (there may be multiple versions of some mods depending on which DLC you're assumed to own), although this is less frequent. Finally, while the base game of SE looks better than LE, the ceiling for the graphical fidelity of LE is higher than SE, mostly due to it being on DirectX 9, whereas SE is on DirectX 11 - modders have more tools available to them with the older direct x shaders, which allowed them to break the graphics engine over their knees. So if you're looking for the absolute best looking version of Skyrim and are willing to put in the work, LE may prove better. However, as SE has matured, most of the modding community seems to have migrated over. VR is its own beast, can frequently support many (but not all) SE mods, but I don't have a VR headset and haven't looked into this at ALL, so I'll be ignoring VR for the remainder of this guide. Finally, the one other area that I understand LE is still superior in is the adult mods region - they tend to be heavily scripted and are not easy to port, so if that's what you're looking for, LE may still be your better bet.
How do I install mods?
Three primary ways to do this:
What mod manager should I use?
Short answer: Mod Organizer 2
Long answer: There's a lot out there!
So what is a mod, anyway?
Something you install to change how the game looks or behaves. Generally speaking, they'll fall into three major categories: assets, plugins, and scripts. There's a few other add-ins and tools which will be addressed separately (ENB, tools like DynDOLOD, etc), but at their core, all mods consist of one or more assets, plugins, or scripts.
- Assets - generally speaking, textures or meshes. Meshes are the framework geometry of all objects in the game, textures are what gets applied to those meshes. At their most basic, these will be "replacers" which will overwrite a texture in the game with a higher fidelity one, or overwrite a mesh with a different one (thereby changing the shape of an object, or a character). In addition to this, there may be cases where a mesh overwrites a vanilla one, but then points to a different texture which is made to apply to the new shape: this means the texture doesn't "show" as a conflict, and if you get a different texture to be applied to that mesh, it needs to be a replacer for where the mesh now points to. These, by and large, are highly, highly compatible between LE and SE, and can be installed and uninstalled freely mid-game. The one slight caveat is that some LE meshes don't work well in SE, but there's an automated tool called Cathedral Assets Optimizer which can take care of that for you (it can also compress/encode textures and do other stuff, too, including conversion of some animations). One additional note for this area: assets can come "packaged" or "loose." Loose means they're just that - loose files that you can manually browse. Packaged means that they're compressed in a file called a .bsa (bethesda studios archive, I believe). bsas are read more quickly by the game engine, so for a large number of files they can be convenient, however in the days of SSDs that's less noticeable. When dealing with assets, however, it's important to keep some rules in mind: plugin order (if assets have a corresponding plugin) does not matter. Loose files always win over packed files, and files lower in your load order in the left panel will win if there's a direct conflict. So if you want a specific mesh or texture to "win", make sure it's in the appropriate location. (Mod Organizer 2 has an integrated .bsa extraction tool which can convert .bsas to loose files, CAO can do that and also pack files in to .bsas, and there's a bunch of other random tools that do both of those, or allow you to browse them, or whatever, on Nexus). Animations also would be considered assets, but may require some external tools to be properly integrated.
- Scripts - These come in a couple different formats. So the game itself comes with a TON of scripts (using a language called papyrus), so these can be overwritten as replacers just like meshes and textures. In addition to that, there is another format called SKSE - the Skyrim Script Extender, which is a LOT more robust and is frequently what people are talking about when they say scripts. These scripts inject behavior into the game and allow for some widely variant behavior in the game. They sometimes, but frequently don't, require plugins alongside them. I haven't gotten into writing scripts very much (I have done a little papyrus editing, but that's beyond the scope of this thing), so beyond knowing that SKSE is a thing, clicking through to that website and downloading/reading the readme to install it, and understanding that if you're using SKSE you need to launch the game via the SKSE executable instead of the Skyrim.exe (or via steam or whatever), that should be sufficient.
- Plugins - The heart and soul of modding. Dealing with plugins, and conflicts between them, is what most of modding is. Plugins come in three main types: .esm, .esp, and .esl. (Elder Scrolls Master, Elder Scrolls Plugin, and Elder Scrolls...uh...I think it's Light Master). These used to have a higher degree of differentiation (a plugin could only have .esms as masters, which is no longer the case, etc), but the three types still matter - just keep in mind that .esps can be "flagged" as ESM or ESL (or both) and get treated as such by the engine. (ESPFE is also used interchangably for .esp which has been flagged as ESL).
So all that's well and good, but what the fuck does that even mean? Well, literally everything in the game is defined by these plugins, and there is an engine limitation of 255 of them (kinda, just start with that understanding). Each plugin is assigned a hexidecimel number, starting from 00 and going up to FE - FF is reserved for some things generated in-game. Past that number, literally everything in the game is described by a 6-digit hexidecimal number, so in total everything is represented by an 8-digit hex number. The first two digits are the plugin (in load order), and the remainder describes the object, or reference, or cell, or NPC, or spell, or dialogue topic, or...you get the idea. So this leads to a couple reserved items: 00 is Skyrim.esm, 01 is Update.esm (for updates pushed by the game), 02 is Dawnguard.esm, 03 is Hearthfire.esm, and 04 is Dragonborn.esm. In addition to this, the introduction of ESL makes FE a reserved load order number, using up a total of 6 of those 255, so really you only get 249 plugins.
So what's the important differences between plugin types? ESM (and ESP flagged as ESM) always load first - they can be re-ordered relative to one another, but all ESM (and flagged ESM) will ALWAYS come before any ESP. Now on the topic of ESL - ESL are all kinda special because they're "small". The six-digit reference number in FE is further subdivided into two 3-digit numbers. So it becomes FE XXX YYY, where XXX is the load order number of the ESL, and YYY are the references inside that ESL. This means you can (theoretically, not actually) have 4096 ESL, and each one can contain 2048 new references (they start at 800 instead of 000 for some reason, I'm not entirely sure why). .esl files provided from the Creation Club will ALWAYS be FE000, FE001, etc - otherwise, .esl can be placed interchangably inside the ESMs, and ESPFE can be placed literally anywhere in your load order. This load order is the order that they appear in the right panel in the above.
Which sure, that's great, but what does that mean? Like, everything is represented by a plugin, but what happens if multiple mods want to edit the same reference in different ways? Well, the simple rule is: last plugin wins (there's a few exceptions to this rule, but honestly, it's shit that's getting into a deeper dive than most people care to, so we're going to completely ignore that). Sticking this in spoilers because it's a large image, but it will illustrate the point.
This is Nettlebane in my load order. The first column is Skyrim.esm: it creates the reference to Nettlebane. It's a weapon, it's got a specific model, it gives it some keywords, an impact set, how much it's worth, the weight and damage it does, etc. The second column is Audio Overhaul - it takes that reference, adds a new keyword (Ebony), changes its impact set and its swing sound. The next column is the Legacy of the Dragonborn patch for AOS, which carries forward all the changes from AOS, but also changes the model to be a unique model from LOTD. The next one? WACCF - Weapons, Armor, Clothing, and Clutter fixes. It REVERTS the LOTD changes, the AOS impact data changes, and then changes the item's value, weight, and damage. Then there's a LOTD patch with WACCF, and a WACCF patch with AOS - but note that none of them have ALL the changes, only individual ones (these are all meaningless unto themselves, but in some cases they're the "last" one for some items, so I keep them). Then we add ANOTHER variable: Zim's Immersive Artifacts. It adds a special enchantment to Nettlebane, ridiculously cranks up the value (because Zim), changes the weight and damage. Then there's an LOTD patch for it. Finally, at the end, we have my Bashed and Smashed patches, which effectively automate combining a bunch of different mods (this Smashed entry may have been manually tweaked by me to have smaller value, FWIW).
The game engine? Doesn't give a shit about all that. When it reads the reference for how to handle Nettlebane, all it gets is that last column: the Smashed Patch 3.esp reference. Last plugin wins.
Which brings us to the most useful tool in the modding arsenal (in my humble opinion): xEdit (link actually goes to SSEEdit, x is a wildcard - so there's a TES5Edit, a FO4Edit, etc). It's what allows us to view plugins in our load order and find conflicts like the above. It's invaluable for debugging conflicts between specific mods, and potentially resolving them yourself, or knowing to look for other patches. It can also be used to flag plugins as ESLs, and (for smaller ones), actually can compact the FormIDs for small enough mods (basically, if you have 2048 or fewer new refids in a plugin), re-number all the form ids to fit in that 800-FFF range, thereby allowing you to flag it as an ESL. Note: there's some things (dialogue, some scripts, facegen) which require a little extra work or can prevent you from doing so, so buyer beware. ESLify is a useful guide for helping to learn when you can do this. Additionally, keep in mind that any patches you download will be for versions which are assumed to not be compacted: attempting to use one of those patches with a compacted master will result in unknown outcomes, up to and including crashing your game or breaking your save.
So how do we resolve load order issues? Well, for starters, you want LOOT, the Load Order Optimization Tool. It's a database that keeps track of incompatibilities between mods and attempts to optimize your load order. It will handle a LARGE majority of incompatibilities if you're not comfortable enough to suss them out yourself - it's a great tool for novice-to-intermediate, and a good reference in advanced levels. Just boot it up with your load order enabled, have it sort, and it'll automatically re-arrange your load order in the right panel, without touching the left panel. Once you start making your own patches and ESMifying things, its usefulness wanes, however.
As for ESMifying itself, why would a user want to flag a plugin as an ESM? Well, engine reasons, mostly. The engine has a reference cap of 1048576 temporary references which can be loaded, and ESMs deallocate them from memory in a way which ESPs do not. So for plugins which have a large number of references, flagging them as ESM can greatly reduce the number of references you have active in your load order. Details on this can be found in this reddit thread. It's worth noting that this script version is probably the one you want instead of the one linked there, as there's an additional thing where unique NPCs which spawn indoors in some of the mods via temporary references would not have loaded and started their AI (so if you do a city mod, it might seem empty until you start breaking into houses). However, as noted, keep in mind: once you start ESMifying things, LOOT order could fly out the window, so you need to take care of that yourself.
There's not really a better place to put this, but xEdit also has a functionality called "quick auto clean." Sometimes a plugin will have the same record value as a master - these records can usually be removed as duplicates, which can resolve conflicts with other mods without needing to worry about conflict resolution. So if you see people talking about "dirty" mods or "cleaning" mods, this is what they're referring to.
So anyway, xEdit allows you to see the conflicts, but what about those Bashed Patch and Smashed Patch things? So in Bethesda gamnes there are these things called "leveled lists." They determine what enemies drop and wear, what items are found in vendors, what items are found in chests, etc. Now, let's say you add multiple weapon mods, all of which allow for NPCs to use their weapons. From the plugin logic we saw above: last mod wins. At its most basic, what a Bashed Patch will do is combine level lists, allowing ALL of those mods to be actively found in the world. It's great! It does other stuff too, but that's the long and short of it. There's tons of guides out there dedicated just to Bashed Patches (and this is something youtube might be worth hitting up for), but here's a quick STEP wiki page on it. Smashed Patches take this to the next level, effectively. Mator Smash is a tool that generates these patches and can work on all record types. There's some severe limitations right now (mostly around the number of masters a patch can have - Mator Smash currently is still restricted by the 255 plugin limit. It's successor is being worked on). This can, theoretically, supplant all CR patches you may have. It's a really useful tool, but with the advent of ESLs, it makes it difficult to use so it's kinda falling out of favor. The technical FIRST successor to Mator Smash is zEdit, also by Mator, which allows for mods to create automated patch generators for their mods. Experience, for example, is one that I like, and there's a zEdit patcher which allows for the mod to generate proper XP values for killing enemy types added by other mods. It, however, is also limited to 255 plugins - there's an entire ecosystem of workarounds out there if you search for them, but this is getting into higher-order stuff, so I'll leave that to you to search for if you so feel like it. zEdit ALSO contains zMerge, which is a tool which allows you to merge plugins (and works better than xEdit's Merge Plugins function) to combine multiple .esps into a single one. It's worth being aware of, but also is no longer strictly necessary in the world of ESL flagging.
So that's all well and good, but I want to have the most stable thing possible. What should I do?
Don't install a lot of mods.
Nah, but really, there's a methodology out there which is for this purpose. It's a bit tedious, but it'll help you fully understand everything under the hood, and you can be confident in the end product. It's called The Method. It utilizes a feature that xEdit has called "modgroups", allowing you to "group" mods together for conflict resolution, to keep track of things, as you add mods one by one.
Finally, all the above conflict resolution is great, but it does LITERALLY NOTHING for objects clipping through one anotther because two mods placed new items in the same place. I already wrote a giant fucking guide about how to MAKE patches for those things - you don't have to make them, but the process will also allow you to detect them.
What other tools are out there that I should be aware of?
- The most obvious one is the Creation Kit. (Don't use it without Creation Kit Fixes). It's a wonderful tool, but mostly you'll want it for converting mods from LE to SE. If going in that direction, and the mod is just a plugin, frequently all that's necessary to convert it is to load the mod in the Creation Kit and hit save. That's LITERALLY it. It takes a form 43 plugin and saves it as form 44. Voila. Internal structure now matches SE.
- BethINI (pronounced bethany, I think). It's an INI configurator to help manage a bunch of settings that can be tweaked in your Skyrim.ini. It's probably the easiest way to get additional fidelity out of your game.
- xLODGEN is a tool for all Bethesda games which generates LOD (think things you see in the distance) meshes and textures. This, and the next tool, will take some time to run (on older machines multiple hours, depending on how much you've got installed), but it'll SERIOUSLY reduce your pop-in. The link also includes an .esm which contains terrain to see in the distance outside of Skyrim. You'll want to hit up some youtube tutorials about this and the next one.
- DynDOLOD - Dynamic Distant Objects LOD. This adds LOD to objects and trees added in your game. It's...magic. It really is. Like, this video is 5 years old and the tool's only improved since then, but the difference is SO stark:
- ENB and Reshade manager. Getting into a bit more graphical fidelity stuff here. Reshade is a lighter-weight post-processing thing that is executed by your GPU to...well, reshade the colors. There's a ton of presets out there. ENB is a more GPU intensive thing which does the above and more - you can use one, the other, or both. The manager allows you to swap settings pretty easily so you can try multiples out. Note: ENB will MURDER your frame rate on older hardware (and even on some newer stuff), but it's where you get a LOT of the graphical improvements - reflection in water, parallax, color shifting depending on the weather, light intensity shifting based off time of day, adding additional lights and shadow-casting beyond what the engine even allows. It's really crazy what they've been able to manage with this stuff.
- Nemesis is the new animation tool of choice, with FNIS being the older one. I think Nemesis supports everything FNIS did (but open source) except some animal animations. This tool is necessary for some mods (and those mods will tell you, although they may say they require FNIS) to generate custom animations. You'll get a plugin for it, Nemesis will run, and your game will support the animations which the mod adds. There's tons of documentation and it's largely self-explanatory.
Okay, so I think I've got a handle on that, but I'm looking into mods now, and there's so many to choose from! I'm overwhelmed!
This is going to be the most subjective thing here, and I'm actually going to recommend the exact opposite of what I tend to do: don't try to make the "perfect" mod list you can use multiple times, but think about what style you want to play and try to make a list crafted more in that direction. Like, if you have a character you don't want to be a vampire, doing a vampire overhaul doesn't feel necessary. On the other hand, if you DO want to, they're looking into. Don't weigh yourself down with quest mods you'll never do - they can be hell for compatibility, and if you aren't going to actually DO the quest, that's a ton of effort you might not want to take. LOTD is a common example here which I've mentioned in the past: it's a GREAT mod if you like collecting unique items, but if you're going to include the museum, you'll want to fill it, and it'll dictate a lot of your mod list. Make those decisions early.
So how to approach the problem? Break it into categories - gameplay items (leveling and perk trees, magic systems, etc). UI (menus, HUD, dialogue), new places/quests, revamp of existing areas (seriously, pick a city mod series and stick with it. Don't be me), Environment stuff (landscape, mountains, weather). Added items/armor/weapons. Magic system. Major retexture overhauls, minor stuff for on top of that. Economy. Animations and NPCs. Audio.
Within these categories, look for ones which suit you, and stick with them IN THOSE CATEGORIES. So you effectively create mini-lists of wants within those areas, then start working on getting those areas to play together. KISS - it's possible to combine a bunch of NPC overhauls together, but it takes some effort and time - try to create as few overlaps as you can.
Ultimately, you'll boot the game, play for a few hours, get through Bleak Falls Barrow, and realize that the game in your mind was more interesting than the game itself, and you found five new things you want to try so you go back to modding and modding becomes the game itself.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
@Commander Zoom , turns out that Morrowblivion, a project for porting Morrowind to the Oblivion engine, is actually a finished project. https://morroblivion.com/ So if you wanted it to look less like ass and play more like Oblivion, maybe give that a shot?
Anyway draft of new OP, lmk if there's anything I need to add/change: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YPHVz_KgqHVz2AYm60OhNkvOULyhsq32bnoismSYgwc/edit?usp=sharing
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Still want all cliff racers to die in a fire, though. (I hear they might have, by Skyrim times?)
Let me introduce you to Saint Jiub, Eradicator of the Winged Menace, Savior of Morrowind
So, didn't die in a fire, exactly.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/12680
Other than that? My uGrids option keeps making dragons spawn too far away from me so I'm actually low on dragon souls because I can't aggro them in time, but otherwise I haven't run into any real problems.
And you end up chasing them throughout everything, aggroing every bandit and giant and everything to try to catch up to the dragon that got bored with you.
I never ride horses in Skyrim because I like interacting with the world more than getting to a place quickly.
They even suck with mods like Convenient Horses.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
I don't know what to tell you. When the horse is at a gallop, it's basically exactly as fast as a running wolf. And since the gallop lasts all of 10 seconds before needing to be recharged, it's not a reliable means of escape.