Skyrim

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MarkRSi

5,782 posts

217 months

Tuesday 16th September 2014
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SkyUI is probably the most important, much nicer to use than the stock UI IMO.
Go a few hair mods (There must be shampoo in Skyrim somewhere, shirely?) such as 'Skyrim Hair Physics' (Lara Croft/Tomb Raider hair), haven't tried ApachiiSkyHair yet though.
Tried a 'shut the fk up dog mod' but I'm wondering if that (or that my dog simply vanished into thin air) corrupted my save for one of my characters...

I assume the graphical mods require lots of processing power? Stock Skyrim runs well even on my Intel 4000 HD laptop but only with low-ish graphics settings (high textures and long draw distance for NPCs, but everything else low/off).

Squirrelofwoe

3,181 posts

175 months

Tuesday 16th September 2014
quotequote all
MarkRSi said:
SkyUI is probably the most important, much nicer to use than the stock UI IMO.
Go a few hair mods (There must be shampoo in Skyrim somewhere, shirely?) such as 'Skyrim Hair Physics' (Lara Croft/Tomb Raider hair), haven't tried ApachiiSkyHair yet though.
Tried a 'shut the fk up dog mod' but I'm wondering if that (or that my dog simply vanished into thin air) corrupted my save for one of my characters...

I assume the graphical mods require lots of processing power? Stock Skyrim runs well even on my Intel 4000 HD laptop but only with low-ish graphics settings (high textures and long draw distance for NPCs, but everything else low/off).
Good shout, I forgot to mention SkyUI- I could never go back to the original UI now.

I'd be interested to hear what the graphics tweaks does to performance too. I run it with everything maxed out at the mo and my computer doesn't so much as break a sweat, so I figured it must be reasonably old (in the computer sense) tech?

FourWheelDrift

88,337 posts

283 months

Tuesday 16th September 2014
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When I'm back at my PC I'll post more gameplay essentials but off the top of my head that haven't already been mentioned.

Unofficial patches
Cutting room floor
Expanded towns & cities + the mods it has patches for
TES Arena, adds all the missing cities from Arena.
JK's Whiterun, Windhelm & Solitude
WATER
Ewis graphical mods
OBIS Organised Bandits in Skyrim


cianha

2,165 posts

196 months

Tuesday 16th September 2014
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Must give these a go, I've only got SkyUI atm!

130R

6,807 posts

205 months

Tuesday 16th September 2014
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Squirrelofwoe said:
I'd be interested to hear what the graphics tweaks does to performance too.
Big difference for things like the 2K textures. My old graphics cards (GTX 580 SLI) had 1.5GB of memory and I was maxing them out @ 1080p. I did have about 70 mods though ..

FourWheelDrift

88,337 posts

283 months

Tuesday 16th September 2014
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This is useful for understanding Skyrim limits and fixing performance - http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50244/?

PS, other than running out of graphics ram by using too many HD textures, some things will be purple if you do, it's script lag that causes more stutters and problems. So try and not run too many mods that have a lot of scripts. Also installing a mod that uses scripts will mean if you then uninstall it you have to go back to a save before you installed the mod if not your game might ctd when the script data in the save tries to run. Mods not using scripts can be installed and uninstalled without the game crashing.

Edited by FourWheelDrift on Tuesday 16th September 18:51

MarkRSi

5,782 posts

217 months

Tuesday 16th September 2014
quotequote all
Got a few extra mods on the go now;

Immersive Patrols II - found a large battle going on and promptly got killed weeping
Extra Encounters Basic - encounters a Thalmor patrol (or was that just stock Skyrim?) and promptly got killed weeping
Dance of Death - Cool mod smile
Also got Wet & Cold and Guard Dialogue Overhaul as well.

Tried "Better Females" although I'm not sure if Tomb Raider 3 would count as the pinnacle of female skin textures (in fact it looked like they've just removed the textures from the faces?).

Would be interesting trying the Civil War Overhaul mod as well, but alas that requires starting a new game from scratch. Anyone tried this?

Polarbert

17,923 posts

230 months

Wednesday 17th September 2014
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I need to carry on playing this on the Xbox. I've had it for so long and just never seem to get myself involved. And then there is always part of me that wants to sort it out on my 'gaming' laptop, but I don't think it would be able to handle it.

Does anyone know how a Geforce GT740M would fare with this game?

Squirrelofwoe

3,181 posts

175 months

Wednesday 17th September 2014
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MarkRSi said:
Extra Encounters Basic - encounters a Thalmor patrol (or was that just stock Skyrim?) and promptly got killed weeping
I've got the Extra Encounters mod and have ran into Thalmor patrols several times- often escorting a prisoner. I enjoy giving the prisoner any spare weapons/armour I'm carrying, then untying him... He still gets killed fairly quickly but it's fun to watch a guy who was wearing nothing but rags suddenly be equipped with high-level armour & a glass warhammer then go to town on his captors hehe

Then when it's over (everybody is dead) you pick all the gear back up (plus whatever the Thalmor were carrying) and go about your day! Works with the Imperial & Stormcloak prisoner escort patrols too.

MarkRSi

5,782 posts

217 months

Wednesday 17th September 2014
quotequote all
Polarbert said:
I need to carry on playing this on the Xbox. I've had it for so long and just never seem to get myself involved. And then there is always part of me that wants to sort it out on my 'gaming' laptop, but I don't think it would be able to handle it.

Does anyone know how a Geforce GT740M would fare with this game?
This might be relevant - and IMO it plays well on a Intel 4000 HD as it is once the graphics settings have been tweaked.

http://www.geforce.co.uk/hardware/notebook-gpus/ge...


FourWheelDrift

88,337 posts

283 months

Wednesday 17th September 2014
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What I have installed that all works together and fixes problems or adds better content. I will spoiler it as it's long, as long as the spoiler tags are working, they have been broken recently.

All mods are from the Skyrim Nexus except the populated Skyrim and Enhanced AI which are from here - http://erkeilmods.altervista.org/skyrim/welcome/


ENB - Project ENB

A Matter of Time - Time & date display on screen
A Quality World Map
Amazing Follower Tweaks
Animated Clutter
Ars Metallica Smithing overhaul
Artificial Intelligence limit increaser (now if there are more that 10 NPCs around the 11th and upwards don't stand around doing nothing)
AOF Farmhouses
Atlas Map Markers
Aurora Village
Balance Magic
Better Dialogue controls
Better Dynamic Snow
Better Shaped Weapons
Better Vampires
Bloodthirst - vampire NPCs can feed
Book Covers
Brawl Bug patch
Clanking armour
Climates of Tamriel + weather patches
Convenient Horse Herding (move your acquired horse to a fixed location so they don't follow you)
Convenient Horses (better saddles for all horses)
Creepy Zombies
Crossbows revamped
Customisable Camera (change the off centre 3rd person view + more)
Cutting Room Floor - adding back all missing Bethesda content they removed but kept in the exe so that the PS3 and Xbox wouldn't grind to a halt)
Faster get up & stand up animation
Dawnguard Vampire face fix
Dawnguard Wolf howl fix
Deadly Combat
Deadlt Spell impacts
Death Alternative - Captured
Death Alternative - Your money or your life
Designs of the Nords
dire HD High Hrothgar
DVA Dynamic Vampire appearance
Ebonvale
Enemy AI Overhaul
Enhanced Blood textures
Enhanced distant terrain
Enhanced Lights & FX + SMIM meshes
Enhanced Noble furniture
Equipping Overhaul
EWIs candle flame
Expanded Snow Systems (climates of tamriel version)
Expanded Towns & Cities + patches
Expanded Winterhold Destruction Ruins
Extended Encounters
Falskaar + CoT patch - very big mod quest & new land
Fast travel timescale fix
Fires hurt
Follower Commentary overhaul
Followers can relax
Footprints
Fores New Idles in Skyrim - FNIS - needed for some new animations
Forgotten Magic redone
FSS Better Bards - no long pauses between the lines when they sing
Fuz Ro D'Oh - silent voice, if you have new quest mods that don't "yet" have bespoke voices this adds temporary subtitles even if you have subtitles off.
General Stores
Get Snowy
Glowing Ore Veins
Green grass for ENB
Guard Dialogue Overhaul
Hale - horse retexure
Hassildor - player home for Vampires
High Hrothgar overhaul
Hold Border Banners
Holmwood - player home for a Vampire Hunter
HOPv - Horses on Patrol
Immersive Armours
Immersive Fallen Trees
Immersive NPC in the dark (they use lanterns or torches)
Immersive Patrols
Immersive Roads
Immersive Sounds - compendium
Immersive Weapons
Improved Closed faced helmets
Inconsequential NPCs
Inns & Taverns (adds travelling inns around Skyrim, useful if you run Frostfall and need shelter)
Interesting NPCs
JaySuS Swords
JK's Solitude
JKs Whiterun
JKs Windhelm
Lanterns of Skyrim (light the roads at jucntions/sign posts and bridges)
Legendary Cities - Tes Arena - Skyrim Frontier Fortress - Adds towns missing that were in Skyrim in the first Elder Scrolls game Arena.
Lore Weapon expansion
Lush tress and grass
Markarth Reach Environment upgrade
Morning Fogs - fog over water in some locations between 4-7am
Multiple Floor sandboxing - NPCs now go anywhere
My home is your home
ndh's animation overhaul - running & walking
New animation for magic casting
No snow under the roof
No spinning death animation
OBIS - Organised Bandits in Skyrim
People are Strangers - everyone you meet is unknown until you talk to them or hear their name mentioned by someone else.
Player Headtracking
Point the way - better and more signs
Populated Cities towns and villages
Populated dungeons caves and ruins
Populated forts towers places
Populated lands roads paths
Populated Skyrim Civil war
Populated prison cells
Project Parallax roads & bridges
Proper Length Arrows
Providence - a settlement near Ivarstead
Quieter Bears
Racemenu + options - better in-game "showracemenu" changing of appearance
RAIN
Real Ice
Real Shelter
Real Snow
Realistic Boat bobbing
Realistic Ragdolls and force
Realistic smoke and embers
Realistic sun & sunglare (CoT)
Realistic Wolf Howls
Rivserstone Fort - immersive player home
Roadsigns redone
Ruins Clutter improved
Run for your lives - NPCs in villages now run for cover during a Dragon attack
Rustic Windows
Sabrecat animation fix
Showracemenu precache killer - goes with racemenu above
Skyfalls & Skymills
Skyrim better roads
Skyrim Bigger trees
Skyrim Coin replacer redux
Skyrim HD 2k textures - I use the Lite versions)
Skyrim Immersive Creatures
Skyrim Project Optimisation
Skyrim Realistic Texture overhaul - Dragonborn
SkyUI
Smaller Ice spike and Ice spear
Smoking Torches everlasting with dynamic shadows option
SNOW - better wind blown snow effects
Spouses can live anywhere
Stable uGrids to load
Stars
Static Mesh Improvement mod
Supreme Storms
The Paarthurnax Dilemma - adds options to complete Blades without having to follow only one option. You will know if you've done it.
TK Children - adds some variety to the creepy village of the dammed vanilla children.
Torch of Everlasting - if you use an ENB with very dark nights this is useful, better than the default short torch time.
Trees HD Skyrim variation
True Medieval Tavern Music
Ultimate HD Fire effects
Unique Border Gates - adds guarded gates to the roads at the limits of the Skyrim map.
Unique Uniques - makes unique weapons actually look different
Unofficial Dawnguard Patch
Unofficial Dragonborn Patch
Unofficial Hearthfire patch
Unofficial Skyrim patch
Vivid landscapes - birthsigns, upgrade to birthstones
Vivid Landscapes - Rocking stones and mountains two
W.A.T.E.R
W.A.T.E.R. - bigger waves
Waterplants retexture
Webs Extended
West & Cold
Wet & Cold Ashes
Wet & Cold Holidays - NPCs celebrate various seasonal holidays
When Vampire attack - npcs take cover if not fighting
Winter is Coming - player and NPC cloaks
Wyrmstooth - big mod quest & new land


A few follower mods I currently have installed, all standalone with custom voices, stories and quest.
Arissa - Wandering Rogue
Rigmor of Bruma
Sofia
Vilja in Skyrim



spoiler doesn't seem to be working here, again. Sorry.

Ps. Cutting room floor, Inns and Taverns and TES Arena do have a couple of location conflicts (not CTD) Cutting room floor adds Bethesda's Heljarchen, TES Arena adds it as well, so use the TES Arena Modular and not activate Heljarchen. Inns & Taverns puts a inn right outside Vernim Wood but there's a wooden structure blocking the entrance to the stables, opening the console clicking on the wooden structure and typing disable removes it.

Edited by FourWheelDrift on Wednesday 17th September 12:09

Squirrelofwoe

3,181 posts

175 months

Wednesday 17th September 2014
quotequote all
That's quite a list! thumbup

I'm planning on starting a new game using the Skyrim Unbound mod but was toying with the idea of also using the expanded towns & cities mod- is this as much of a system hog as a lot of the comments on the mod pages suggest?

I'm running a 3.2ghz 6-core processor with 8gb RAM and an Ati 6970 graphics card. It runs vanilla with a few mods and everything set to ultra with no issues whatsoever, but I've seen loads of people saying that the expanded towns and cities mod absolutely hammers the fps.

FourWheelDrift

88,337 posts

283 months

Wednesday 17th September 2014
quotequote all
Squirrelofwoe said:
but I've seen loads of people saying that the expanded towns and cities mod absolutely hammers the fps.
Doesn't for me. They must have ancient PCs and I have HD textures and many more NPCs milling about on top of it all.

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Be - 3.4Ghz
8GB ram
Nvidia GTX680 2GB OC

also I never used to use depth of field in game, but I wouldn't play Skyrim or any of the Fallout Games without it now as it helps to keep the minimal detailed far distance blurry and less obvious. DoF from the Project ENB mod as it has a very quick re-focus.

Squirrelofwoe

3,181 posts

175 months

Wednesday 17th September 2014
quotequote all
Cool I might try that then. I've also got to try the 2k textures mod as I've not actually done that yet. Might try that first and see how it all runs before trying the expanded towns & cities.

Squirrelofwoe

3,181 posts

175 months

Thursday 18th September 2014
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I started a new game last night running the Skyrim Unbound mod.

http://www.pcgamer.com/uk/2013/10/27/mod-of-the-we...

With the starting location set to random my game started with me stuck in a jail cell in Solitude with nothing but a single lockpick! Getting out of the cell was ok, but with 3 patrolling guards and no weapons lying around (and being level 1) getting anything else done was near enough impossible.

I considered re-starting to begin somewhere more friendly, but figured I'd have a go at just making a run for it... This was surprisingly effective, and before long I had made it out of the front gates of Solitude with a shred of health remaining- but still with no weapons/equipment. After wandering down the hill for a while I stumbled across a Stormcloack camp, so I figured my best shout at picking up some early equipment was to lure some of the Solitude guards down to these guys.

I had 3 of the guards chasing me down the hill when I ran into another Imperial patrol escorting a prisoner- so I untied the prisoner (turning all of those Imperials hostile too) and legged it down to the Stormcloack camp. I then sat back and watched as the 6 Imperials slugged it out with the 8 or so Stormcloaks. In the end the area was littered with bodies and just 3 Stormcloaks remained- but one of those was a Quartermaster with over a 1,100 gold, so I did what any self-respecting entrepreneur would do- looted all of the bodies (including her previous comrades) and sold the lot to her for a tidy sum, saving the best equipment for myself of course.

So within about 30 mins I had gone from a penny-less incarcerated felon, to a reasonably well equipped (for level-2) trouble maker, kitted out with a combination of Stormcloak & Imperial gear- and with a desire to wipe out the cocky Imperials (with a sizable bounty already)... hehe

I've got all the Dragonborn stuff disabled for the moment (but you can re-activated it at any point), and it's been rather refreshing starting a new game under completely different conditions. I'd completely ignored the whole civil-war side the first time I played it, not really having any motivation for one side or the other, but starting like this (albeit completely random chance) gives you a different perspective on things.

So yeah, loving that particular mod so far. I'm also running the SPERG mod for the updated skill & perk system which removes a lot of the grinding aspect for leveling up skills, and allows you to spend more of your perk points on the more interesting ones.

I did also try the 2K HD textures but didn't notice enough of a difference (except right up close) for it to bother me. The Organised Bandits in Skyrim is also fantastic- cheers for the heads up on that one! I'm only an hour in to this game and I've already been spectator to some pretty large battles.

Has anyone else seen the little scripted event whereby after a Stormcloack/Imperial battle 2 of the victors start arguing over equipment on the dead bodies and then start fighting each other?! I'd never seen this before but it happened twice yesterday and it was pretty damn funny to watch.

FourWheelDrift

88,337 posts

283 months

Thursday 18th September 2014
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There is a faction mod as well, can't remember the name, if you dress as Stormcloak Imperials attack you and vice versa. Other faction relations/hatred work as well, bandits, High Elf, Forsworn etc.

MarkRSi

5,782 posts

217 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
MarkRSi said:
Would be interesting trying the Civil War Overhaul mod as well, but alas that requires starting a new game from scratch. Anyone tried this?
Well, I just did and now I'm stuck where I have to assassinate a Mr Frorkmar Banner-Torn, which I've done but the mission doesn't update. Bah. irked

cianha

2,165 posts

196 months

Thursday 25th September 2014
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Gave Unbound a go last night. Was dropped in a Stormcloak camp, and tried to make it to Windhelm to join the Rebellion. With a random smattering of not very useful spells (Fury/Courage/Lesser Ward) I decided that stealth should be my friend. After an hour I'd only managed to get across Valtheim bridge, I never thought those bandit chiefs could hit so hard!

Mannginger

9,015 posts

256 months

Thursday 25th September 2014
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I spent most of this morning sorting our SKSE, LOOT and mod manager to get back into this. I'm having an issue which was related to my screen refresh rate (144hz) causing a load of graphical glitches which I think I've mainly resolved by restricting the refresh rate on the GFX card but I'm still getting wired knocking noises inside buildings which seem to be related as well.

I' also started a new run using the unbound mod as mentioned above, sounds cool so looking forward to going for it later this evening!

Jasandjules

69,787 posts

228 months

Thursday 25th September 2014
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Anyone know when Skyrim II will be out on the PS4?!!?!?