Improving Skyrim / Recommended Mods thread (Mostly about Requiem)

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

guise, please vote for best skyrim mod out of these 3.

 

[Tomatohead]

Yeah I guess it matters if you are immersed in vanilla Skyrim you are also immersed with modded one. But if not, it doesn't really matter to try to fix it with mods because it wont happen.

 

[DraQ]

guise, please vote for best skyrim mod out of these 3.

You're simply modding it wrong, observe:

Install. Fucking. Requiem.

 

[M. AQVILA]

Skyrim is broken garbage. News at 11.

Still better than Pillars of Eternity.

 

[Plisken]

yet another example of modders knowing better than those bethesda hacks, give this guy the job in the industry he deserves!:

how the fuck is this an improvement? The first looks like what it is supposed to be. The second has some kind of fungus rot infested god knows what where the thatch should be and the wood looks nothing like the actual fucking trees surrounding the area where they wouldve got the wood from. Great color palette too, dark brown on dark brown, on dark brown.

 

[Butter]

The slats arguably look better. The roof looks terrible.

 

[Mexi]

Yeah, I never use texture patches. Either I can't tell the difference or they just do stupid shit.

 

[Plisken]

playing again with the latest YASH and its still fucking good. better even. Theres now a guide for converting requiem to SE so this thread can go back on that track i guess, but if anyone is like me and really hates dealing with autistic shit, YASH is super ez to install and is very much a requiem alternative. Actually I'm convinced its probably the most unsung overhaul out there, doing in one mod with one click install what takes other "overhauls" 10 mods and a gazillion patches to achieve.

I dropped frostfall and the camping shit this time, because I realized A) frostfall is a broken piece of shit on SE currently B) its actually gay and not really that challenging since you're never really far from some kind of settlement or respite from the elements. Its weird to LARP that you're in a survival situation because you fell in the cold water..... 200 yards from riverwood's cosy inn C) camping gear type mods while it seems like a nice addition at first is actually one of those things you realize cheaps you out of having to pay for the ingame inns or finding shelter somewhere to sleep. Even with economy reworks, this game does not anymore reasons for you to be not spending money. I didn't miss these mods, at all.

about the only thing i regret going this far in without is some kind of death/saving mod. YASH, requiem et al definitely make the gameplay more challenging, but what they all fail to do is force you to really appraise situations before you go in. thats because if you die you just reload the autosave and try again. I saw this which looks perfect: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13264 but unless theres a way to disable manual saving (i.e a ironman mode) its just pointless because im the kind of faggot who will be tempted to load a save if what i lose is especially valuable. I also dont think mods like Dead is Dead is a solution because the time investment in dull early game in an overhaul like YASH is way too long to be doing a true ironman run.

edit: just found the solution https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19399 . Alas im too far in to bail and start again.

 

[Yosharian]

What mod is that texture from?

 

[Yosharian]

Yeah, I never use texture patches. Either I can't tell the difference or they just do stupid shit.

Spoiler

I mean, you might not care about it, but even a monkey can tell the difference here

 

[Plisken]

What mod is that texture from?

vivid landscapes

Spoiler

I mean, you might not care about it, but even a monkey can tell the difference here

Thats the second time you've done this. We're talking about texture packs, TEXTURE PACKS. SMIM isnt just a texture pack, hence STATIC MESH IMPROVEMENT MOD.

 

[Yosharian]

What mod is that texture from?

vivid landscapes

Spoiler

I mean, you might not care about it, but even a monkey can tell the difference here

Thats the second time you've done this. We're talking about texture packs, TEXTURE PACKS. SMIM isnt just a texture pack, hence STATIC MESH IMPROVEMENT MOD.

Stop being so pedantic, you can clearly see that there is texture work there as well as mesh improvements.

 

[Yosharian]

To be clear, I think you're right that a lot of these texture packs are actually ass. I just think 'LOL VANILLA IZ BEST' is taking it too far, there are a lot of vanilla textures that are awful.

 

[Funposter]

iirc that example is actually using the vanilla texture, but in the original game, it was not UV mapped correctly. There are many examples of this.

Upon googling, yes:

The problem here is that the textures on their own are fine, but they are stretched over objects incorrectly. There's a UV-tweak mod that deals with some of these, although sometimes it can be up to personal preference.

 

[Wunderbar]

guise, please vote for best skyrim mod out of these 3.

warpig

 

[Plisken]

combat mods are another weird one to me. I dont think they do what they think they do. People seem really attached to certain combat mods, which as far as i can tell do little other than change the AI styles (e.g aggressive, cowardly, defensive etc) and/or give them abilities like shield bashing and using potions, weaknesses and resistances etc.

Thats all fine, YASH has all that too as well as needed fixes like the same changes the popular mortal enemies mod make, but the way people talk about combat mods as if it fundamentally changes the combat... man i just dont see it, or maybe im not aware of the right combination of mods but i doubt it. Stuff like TK dodge seems stupidly OP and yet omnipresent in peoples mod lists. Ive seen some more recent attempts to make a dark souls clone, replete with floating healthbars and 3rd person and I'm just shrugging thinking why wouldnt you just go play dark souls at that point.

Most of these mods, including requiem and YASH, make combat more deadly and make using potions and poisons important, but I dont feel it makes combat fundamentally different. At the end of the day if youve got a warrior type character you run in and smash the cunt(s) in the face as fast as you can, and if youve got an archer or gay nerd you backpedal and fire away. Id love to be proven wrong, but I think I'm right on this one, skyrim's combat is essentially morrowind still but with a false veneer of action game presentation.

 

[Yosharian]

Most of these mods, including requiem and YASH, make combat more deadly and make using potions and poisons important, but I dont feel it makes combat fundamentally different. At the end of the day if youve got a warrior type character you run in and smash the cunt(s) in the face as fast as you can, and if youve got an archer or gay nerd you backpedal and fire away. Id love to be proven wrong, but I think I'm right on this one, skyrim's combat is essentially morrowind still but with a false veneer of action game presentation.

If you use Requiem with Mortal Enemies, it actually is a completely different game, combat-wise. Requiem makes combat deadly, and Mortal Enemies adds an extra layer of skill-based movement that was missing in Skyrim.

What ME does is it:

Changes rotational acceleration rates of ALL enemy creatures so they cant track
the PC like an aimbot anymore as well as changes their melee cones to be smaller and have less range,

You don't actually need a 'dodge' mod, simply moving out of the way of enemies' attacks is quite sufficient. It makes for an extremely tense early game, because you just can't get hit due to Requiem's crazy damage, but you can actually skillfully dodge enemy attacks now using this mod.

It actually creates a Light/Heavy split - with Heavy it's quite difficult to move out of the way of incoming attacks, but it can still be done, and you can take the odd arrow. With Light, you have really good dodging ability, but you better not get hit by that arrow, or you're fucked.

It ain't Dark Souls, but it's pretty damn good.

 

[Funposter]

Stuff like TK dodge seems stupidly OP and yet omnipresent in peoples mod lists

Try TK Dodge along with Ultimate Combat 3.0 since they were developed by the same person.

 

[Plisken]

Most of these mods, including requiem and YASH, make combat more deadly and make using potions and poisons important, but I dont feel it makes combat fundamentally different. At the end of the day if youve got a warrior type character you run in and smash the cunt(s) in the face as fast as you can, and if youve got an archer or gay nerd you backpedal and fire away. Id love to be proven wrong, but I think I'm right on this one, skyrim's combat is essentially morrowind still but with a false veneer of action game presentation.

If you use Requiem with Mortal Enemies, it actually is a completely different game, combat-wise. Requiem makes combat deadly, and Mortal Enemies adds an extra layer of skill-based movement that was missing in Skyrim.

What ME does is it:

Changes rotational acceleration rates of ALL enemy creatures so they cant track
the PC like an aimbot anymore as well as changes their melee cones to be smaller and have less range,

You don't actually need a 'dodge' mod, simply moving out of the way of enemies' attacks is quite sufficient. It makes for an extremely tense early game, because you just can't get hit due to Requiem's crazy damage, but you can actually skillfully dodge enemy attacks now using this mod.

It actually creates a Light/Heavy split - with Heavy it's quite difficult to move out of the way of incoming attacks, but it can still be done, and you can take the odd arrow. With Light, you have really good dodging ability, but you better not get hit by that arrow, or you're fucked.

It ain't Dark Souls, but it's pretty damn good.

that actually sounds identical to YASH, albeit i have trouble being able to reliably sidestep normal attacks (patks can see coming from a mile away of course) once theyve closed distance. That could just because I'm wearing heavy armor and physically too slow to create enough space.

 

[DraQ]

Does YASH still have this retarded "hurr, you can't swing a mace properly because it's made of STEEL, grind moar and swing an IRON one meanwhile" thing going on?
Just curious.

 

[Plisken]

Does YASH still have this retarded "hurr, you can't swing a mace properly because it's made of STEEL, grind moar and swing an IRON one meanwhile" thing going on?
Just curious.

yes. You can still swing anything, but it wont be more effective than what you're currently trained for.

 

[Falksi]

I've never really got into mods, but I have to wonder if after 7 yeras they've actually released any gameplay/quest mods which make Skyrim a game worth playing?

 

[Plisken]

I've never really got into mods, but I have to wonder if after 7 yeras they've actually released any gameplay/quest mods which make Skyrim a game worth playing?

Define worth playing. Remember we're on the codex where if the game is lackluster its the worst. piece. of. shit. ever. Skyrim was fun enough when it was released, its just incredibly dumb and dull after the initial novelty wears off.

Theres gameplay mods that change it significantly enough that it actually feels like a serious rpg, but the underlying framework of quest design, world design and reactivity, characterization etc is all going to remain hopelessly retarded and bland. Disclaimer: I've never checked any specifically QUEST mods or new areas and shit because i operate from the assumption that as bad as skyrim's writing is, its still probably better than anything a redditor comes up with.

To me stuff like YASH or Requiem makes skyrim worth playing. Others prefer a different approach that keeps the "GTA with swords" (Funposter good description) approach intact while spicing the difficulty or combat aspects up enough to make it interesting instead of an adolescent power fantasy.

Disclaimer though: I haven't burned myself out on vanilla skyrim. I played it briefly when it first released, didn't touch it again for years. So a lot of the world is still novel enough that I'm not bored to death the way people whove been exposed to it for 7 years have. I know that feeling with the STALKER series, no amount of modders gonna mod changes the fact you've seen cordon 5000 times and explored every nook and cranny.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

yet another example of modders knowing better than those bethesda hacks, give this guy the job in the industry he deserves!:

how the fuck is this an improvement? The first looks like what it is supposed to be. The second has some kind of fungus rot infested god knows what where the thatch should be and the wood looks nothing like the actual fucking trees surrounding the area where they wouldve got the wood from. Great color palette too, dark brown on dark brown, on dark brown.

Clearly you need to download the 4k tree textures as well for maximum immersion. It shouldn't even have to be said at this point.

 

[Curratum]

The only thing that makes Skyrim worth playing is called Enderal and it's releasing in a few weeks, as a free mod with its own Steam page, with a new expansion to the mod included on release.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/933480/Enderal/