Memorabilia
Member
Awesome. So glad I found this thread. I'm just getting around to playing Skyrim on console so wont be seriously playing on PC for a while, but I'm going to check out some of the mods asap just for shits and giggles.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Mod Discussion and News [Creation Kit released]
- Thread starter LiquidMetal14
- Start date
Awesome. So glad I found this thread. I'm just getting around to playing Skyrim on console so wont be seriously playing on PC for a while, but I'm going to check out some of the mods asap just for shits and giggles.
NormalFish
Banned
Awesome. So glad I found this thread. I'm just getting around to playing Skyrim on console so wont be seriously playing on PC for a while, but I'm going to check out some of the mods asap just for shits and giggles.
That's an Oblivion mod, FYI.
They will conflict.
Well, they will conflict with any mods that effect visuals an any sort of deep and meaningful way. For example, using Geforce experience is a pretty good way to fuck up your ENB.
Fata1moose
Banned
I always just make a shortcut, the latest version of SKSE will do one for you as well.
Check your drivers.
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
So I've been thinking about finally delving into Skyrim on the PC after 70ish hours on the 360 when it released (I've owned the legendary edition on Steam for a couple years now with a whopping 43 minutes of played time - never had the DLC on Xbox). But I want to mod it of course to have the best experience - without going too crazy. I think that Sulfuras mod that popped up the past week or two triggered this.
DEAR.
LORD.
I don't even know where to start with this stuff.http://skyrimgems.com/ and STEP yeah, I gathered from a previous post here from someone asking a similar question, but just looking at them is overwhelming. And I'm not sure how much my poor 750 Ti can take (probably a decent amount given that the game released in 2011, but still).
And ENB is like a separate graphical overhaul thing? SO MUCH TO FIGURE OUT.
DEAR.
LORD.
I don't even know where to start with this stuff.http://skyrimgems.com/ and STEP yeah, I gathered from a previous post here from someone asking a similar question, but just looking at them is overwhelming. And I'm not sure how much my poor 750 Ti can take (probably a decent amount given that the game released in 2011, but still).
And ENB is like a separate graphical overhaul thing? SO MUCH TO FIGURE OUT.
ENB is a third party graphics overlay, like SweetFX which you can use on just about any DirectX game, but ENB integrates itself much more deeply with the game it's tailored for. It adds things like overhauled shadow and water rendering, better anti-aliasing, godrays and bokeh DoF, etc.
You should consult Gopher's Beginner's Guide to Modding cause the guy is really, really thorough with his explanations.
You should consult Gopher's Beginner's Guide to Modding cause the guy is really, really thorough with his explanations.
NormalFish
Banned
Gotta say I'm not personally a big fan of ENBs. Skyrim especially has so many alternatives that look quite good without the same performance dip. That said, I haven't used an ENB in years so perhaps they're a lot less expensive now.
timetokill
Banned
There's a pretty wide variety, from card-busters to light touches. And you can generally tweak the performance of them pretty easily by turning on/off certain effects like SSAO and such.
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
Started watching that series. Seems really helpful and what I was looking for, thanks.
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
Me right now, even after finishing Gopher's video series:
Doesn't help that I need some sleep. But yeah, trying to get all the downloads for the RealVision ENB sorted out, besides anything else I want which I haven't touched yet. The STEP stuff seems to conflict in some areas, so it gets even more confusing. Lots of initial setup with the Nexus Mod Manager and SKSE too. Will work on it more later today, but I've officially spent more time attempting to mod the game at this point than I have actually logged in the PC version, heh.
Doesn't help that I need some sleep. But yeah, trying to get all the downloads for the RealVision ENB sorted out, besides anything else I want which I haven't touched yet. The STEP stuff seems to conflict in some areas, so it gets even more confusing. Lots of initial setup with the Nexus Mod Manager and SKSE too. Will work on it more later today, but I've officially spent more time attempting to mod the game at this point than I have actually logged in the PC version, heh.
Mithos
Member
If you are just beginning to mod IMHO you should look into Mod Organizer instead (Gopher have videos on it). I found that MO made everything so much easier when you wanted to test a mod and then remove it etc etc.
And yeah 200hrs+ for me on mod/testing before I started playing ;P
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
Cool. Went from loading the game fine at about 40 FPS with most of the "Fixes" section on the STEP guide installed to crash to desktop after tweaking like one thing.
Got a long way to go before I actually get this working >.<
Done enough for today, I'll twiddle around the next few and see what I can fix.
Already decided I'm passing on the Complete Crafting Overhaul for now since apparently you need to bash patch that with Clothing and Clutter Fixes and I think that's beyond me right now.
Got a long way to go before I actually get this working >.<
Done enough for today, I'll twiddle around the next few and see what I can fix.
Already decided I'm passing on the Complete Crafting Overhaul for now since apparently you need to bash patch that with Clothing and Clutter Fixes and I think that's beyond me right now.
NormalFish
Banned
In my experience, most CTDs are a load order issue. run LOOT. if that doesn't solve it, check some readmes and try to organize things a bit further.
Falcs
Banned
+1!
I definitely recommend using Mod Organizer. My last playthrough of Skyrim about 2 years ago I used the Nexus Mod Manager and it was pretty good, but I just decided a few weeks ago to have another play through of Skyrim and this time around I've been using MO. It's so much better.
I followed this guide - http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/56894/?
and I've been able to play around with other mods that I didn't really dare to last time or couldn't really get to work without Crashes, like custom animations and shit.
Definitely try Mod Organizer.
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
Decided I'd mucked around too much and got over my head too quickly that it was best to start with a fresh install. Takes less than an hour for me to download from Steam again so it's not a huge deal. This time I'm gonna play it safe and actually back up the vanilla install though - like an idiot I didn't do that before.
Also gonna go with Mod Organizer I think over Nexus Mod Manager. It seems to have a greater capability to solve compatibility issues. My problem now is I don't know if there's a good way to transfer all the files I've already downloaded from my NMM directory to the MO one. It's about 180 mods and 11GB large. Though the nuclear option of redownloading them all into MO and purging the NMM folder when I'm done isn't terrible if it's the easiest way.
NormalFish
Banned
it's pretty simple to revert to a clean install. use the guide in the post above yours.
timetokill
Banned
Go nuclear. It will save your sanity in the long run.
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
This has already become more complicated than I anticipated. And this is after the initial failure to anticipate how difficult it could be.
Had to move my whole Steam install out of x86 Program Files to avoid other issues with Mod Organizer and permissions, etc. Though I suppose it's good practice. But it's adding extra step/time/potential for errors to the process.
Validating every install is taking too long however, so I'm only going to immediately do the ones for installed games I currently play, and try to remember to validate others later.
BETTER BE WORTH IT IN THE END!
Had to move my whole Steam install out of x86 Program Files to avoid other issues with Mod Organizer and permissions, etc. Though I suppose it's good practice. But it's adding extra step/time/potential for errors to the process.
Validating every install is taking too long however, so I'm only going to immediately do the ones for installed games I currently play, and try to remember to validate others later.
BETTER BE WORTH IT IN THE END!
If done correctly, it will
My Skyrim modding took two full months (nearly every evening 4-5 hours) until I finally reached a state I said I'm satisfied...
... played around with the new versions of the Elder Blood ENB a few days ago, here some outcomes...
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
Okay, question since I'm getting conflicting information:
I'm mostly following the STEP guide and have Mod Organizer and SKSE installed, cleaned the base .esm files with TES5Edit, and done .ini tweaks. Everything is stable at this point. I have a clean save right after the Helgen intro to work with.
However, I'm confused about ENB. The STEP guide wants you to install ENBoost and change certain .ini preferences to go along with that next (after installing the Stable uGridsToLoad mod). However, I want to install the full ENB with the RealVision preferences (eventually) and the RealVision page on Nexus tells you (or at least appears to) to install the graphic mods first.
So I'm not sure what exactly to do. There's a warning on the STEP detailed page that says:
HALP!
I'm mostly following the STEP guide and have Mod Organizer and SKSE installed, cleaned the base .esm files with TES5Edit, and done .ini tweaks. Everything is stable at this point. I have a clean save right after the Helgen intro to work with.
However, I'm confused about ENB. The STEP guide wants you to install ENBoost and change certain .ini preferences to go along with that next (after installing the Stable uGridsToLoad mod). However, I want to install the full ENB with the RealVision preferences (eventually) and the RealVision page on Nexus tells you (or at least appears to) to install the graphic mods first.
So I'm not sure what exactly to do. There's a warning on the STEP detailed page that says:
But since I want full ENB anyway, I don't know if partially configuring it like that will be detrimental or a pain to change late on.
HALP!
GiantBombGamer
Member
Just sold my old rig and in the process of building a new one....doubt my 6 year old laptop I'm fussing around with in the mean time, with an Nvidia GT335m could handle any graphics mods haha.
I installed the ENB follwing these steps:
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50214/?
I'd say ignore this part of the ENB Guide...
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
What I ended up doing was installing the ENBoost settings for now while I work and test all the various mods I'm installing. I'll go back and follow the instructions to enable the full RealVision ENB once I've got everything else sorted. Hopefully it doesn't break that way.
Already had to deal with installing FNIS "early" to get XP32 Maxiumum Skeleton to function since it's dependent on FNIS. The STEP guide however lists FNIS near the bottom of the install order when XPMS is near the top. It may work of you install FNIS later, but I'm not sure.
And Dual Sheathe Redux is in a similar boat, except that I figured out that you pretty much have to install it last for it to work properly.
Which is kind of annoying since I already noticed an issue with just FNIS and XPMS where the left hand dagger has no sheathe animation, and the right hand sheath clips armor. DSR from what I understand fixes this.
One other silly thing is that the first person sheathe animation appears to not be affected (at least without DSR), so the player character puts the dagger on the left (wrong) side compared to the 3rd person back right position.
I might be missing something but yeah, that's a small sampling of the confusing issues that have melted my brain so far. Will update as I go along - it'll certainly take long enough. And documenting any issues I have may help someone else out in the future, so there's that.
I would probably not bother messing around with ugridstoload yet if I were you. Raising the value comes with a bunch of caveats no matter if you have the stable mod installed, like events out in the world starting without you really being around (like the companions fighting the giant outside Whiterun) because they are triggered by the non-distant cell being loaded. High ugrids are pretty much only meant for fancy screenshot sessions as far as I'm concerned.
I would recommend reading through this page no matter if you're going to use the mod in question or not. It helps you get some insight and a feel for how mods affect eachother and the stability of the game. Like, stacking a bunch of mods that work by running scripts every few seconds is probably not such a good idea. You'll need to pick and choose wisely on that front. Graphical mods are also part of the equation here. When you have a lot of heavy gameplay mods running I would probably abide by the principle of using 1K resolution textures for exterior locations. Interiors aren't as resource consuming so you have more headroom to go nuts there.
I would recommend reading through this page no matter if you're going to use the mod in question or not. It helps you get some insight and a feel for how mods affect eachother and the stability of the game. Like, stacking a bunch of mods that work by running scripts every few seconds is probably not such a good idea. You'll need to pick and choose wisely on that front. Graphical mods are also part of the equation here. When you have a lot of heavy gameplay mods running I would probably abide by the principle of using 1K resolution textures for exterior locations. Interiors aren't as resource consuming so you have more headroom to go nuts there.
timetokill
Banned
Ugh... my game seems to be running fine EXCEPT inside Dragonsreach, where it starts chopping like crazy. Weird that it would be an interior that starts killing it. I'm not sure what's causing it, but turning off some texture mods hasn't helped, oddly enough.
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
Thanks for the advice. Still basically following the STEP guide. About to get to graphics/texture changes though and I might have to diverge here a bit to get the RealVision recommended ones.
As of now, I have what seems to be a fairly stable base. Still runs at 60 FPS or close to it with minor dips. Encountered a few minor problems, but solved them. For the moment I reverted my ugridstoload back to default, but I'll see about tweaking it later after everything else is running. I had it bumped up to 7 instead of the base 5 and it helped with pop-in a LOT, though one of the upcoming mods in the step list is supposed to help with that as well.
As of now, I have what seems to be a fairly stable base. Still runs at 60 FPS or close to it with minor dips. Encountered a few minor problems, but solved them. For the moment I reverted my ugridstoload back to default, but I'll see about tweaking it later after everything else is running. I had it bumped up to 7 instead of the base 5 and it helped with pop-in a LOT, though one of the upcoming mods in the step list is supposed to help with that as well.
SirMossyBloke
Member
I've just started playing around with this and I'm completely overwhelmed. I installed about 7 mods using the nexus mod manager and because I download SkyUI I used SKSE to load it in. When I got to active mods in the options menu though only two are actually loaded, the rest aren't showing up at all. I used LOOT as suggested but it hasn't helped at all.
LOOT is completely over my head so I'm not sure if I'll ever understand what any of it means. I followed the instructions on every single mod page about which mods to install first and last, but nothing.
Any idea how to progress further to give me an idea where to look?
Edit: I think I have it. Seems I was getting confused with the mod list in game being the list of active mods, when its only a list of mods I can change in game. They all are working.
LOOT is completely over my head so I'm not sure if I'll ever understand what any of it means. I followed the instructions on every single mod page about which mods to install first and last, but nothing.
Any idea how to progress further to give me an idea where to look?
Edit: I think I have it. Seems I was getting confused with the mod list in game being the list of active mods, when its only a list of mods I can change in game. They all are working.
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
Well so far I've pretty much managed to successfully reduce my FPS from vanilla's fairly stable ~60 to ~35-40 with dips, LOL. And I'm not even done yet. I'm scared to think what will happen when I enable certain other things.
Protip for people using grass mods: Grass on Steroids is way more performance friendly than Verdant, though the latter might look slightly better. Tested them both. Verdant was like a 10 FPS drop over base/nothing, while Grass on Steroids is only a 0-5 FPS loss.
Annoying thing right now is the STEP website is down, so I have to rely on a cached version. But the website looks broken in cached mode. Had a perfectly fine load of the page before, but it got reloaded by mistake so I can't see stuff as well now.
Also, I don't know if a mod is causing it (maybe Realistic Water 2), but in certain areas of the river shore (at least near the beginning of the game), the water meeting the land is very triangular. But it might like that in the base game.
Protip for people using grass mods: Grass on Steroids is way more performance friendly than Verdant, though the latter might look slightly better. Tested them both. Verdant was like a 10 FPS drop over base/nothing, while Grass on Steroids is only a 0-5 FPS loss.
Annoying thing right now is the STEP website is down, so I have to rely on a cached version. But the website looks broken in cached mode. Had a perfectly fine load of the page before, but it got reloaded by mistake so I can't see stuff as well now.
Also, I don't know if a mod is causing it (maybe Realistic Water 2), but in certain areas of the river shore (at least near the beginning of the game), the water meeting the land is very triangular. But it might like that in the base game.
Falcs
Banned
If done correctly, it will
My Skyrim modding took two full months (nearly every evening 4-5 hours) until I finally reached a state I said I'm satisfied...
... played around with the new versions of the Elder Blood ENB a few days ago, here some outcomes...
Man, that looks so nice.
Do you mind sharing your specs?
SirMossyBloke
Member
Is there a good mod for simply increasing the resolution or graphics for the weapons you hold? I have the HD textures from Bethesda and I have SIMM but niehter of them improve the original weapon textures.
Dubbedinenglish
Banned
Depends what you want. Personally I'm a big fan of this texture pack with all the work to the weapons and armor to make them look amazing. Otherwise you do need to look at different mods for different weapons.
SirMossyBloke
Member
Thanks man I'll try that.
May I ask what differentiates this from Nexus Mods+Loot? I'm new to all this and have no idea.
One other question for anyone. I installed Climates of Tamriel and it works great, however when I also run Climates of Tamriel patch the games crashes. Am I meant to use one or the other?
Karak
Member
Sure.
MO basically allows for your mods to never touch the files of the game itself, basically faking Skyrim into thinking they do exist together but they don't. Most fans of Skyrim have had at least one mod mess-up where an entire reinstall was needed and the way MO works that isn't needed. MO also allows for instant switch profiles so you can easily and instantly switch between different types of games depending on your profiles live mods.
That peace of mind goes an incredible way there are also many other pluses to it that I can't remember(I have been out of Skyrim for a year) but every mod manager should do stuff like MO does.
FYI before anyone gets all freaked out I am not saying Nexus won't work. Its just that its technically a good deal behind MO.
SirMossyBloke
Member
Thanks. I'd rather not have to reinstall, and as i'm new to this chances are i'm going to come to a point where I screw things up. I'll do some research on MO then switch.
Thanks
I posted a list of the mods a few weeks ago here:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=150779003&highlight=#post150779003
They're almost the same nowadays, updated a few, installed maybe 5-10 additionally, but basically, that's it. The main mod that was added was JKs cities overhaul...
Here are some screens, same config, different ENB (Grim & Somber):
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=153539765&highlight=#post153539765
I *LOVE* the look&feel of those ENBs...
Mithos
Member
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
So I was having issues at right around 160 mods installed with infinite loading screen/crash to desktop.
Turns out I didn't have the SKSE memory patch installed. *womp womp* There's a separate mod that seems to fix this issue called Safety Load, but the easiest thing to do seems to be just enabling the memory patch. There's a new video on how to do so HERE. Only 3 days old, so it's definitely up to date. Don't know how I missed that step before though...
Otherwise things are looking okay. STEP website is back up.
But man is it a fucking job to get this working. Any less a technical person in their right mind would pay good money for a heavily modded Skyrim install that worked properly to avoid hassle and sheer time investment. Probably put in at least 20 hours over the past few days and there's still more to go. Like, this is the stuff of nightmares for people afraid of PC gaming/tinkering.
Turns out I didn't have the SKSE memory patch installed. *womp womp* There's a separate mod that seems to fix this issue called Safety Load, but the easiest thing to do seems to be just enabling the memory patch. There's a new video on how to do so HERE. Only 3 days old, so it's definitely up to date. Don't know how I missed that step before though...
Otherwise things are looking okay. STEP website is back up.
But man is it a fucking job to get this working. Any less a technical person in their right mind would pay good money for a heavily modded Skyrim install that worked properly to avoid hassle and sheer time investment. Probably put in at least 20 hours over the past few days and there's still more to go. Like, this is the stuff of nightmares for people afraid of PC gaming/tinkering.
Safety load is awesome though.
____
So I spent some time updating mods and drivers over the weekend, resulting in a couple mods that don't work and a bunch more that do really well. Overall it was a positive experience, except for one thing. I made Saadia a follower using AFT, everything was going super well, better than I expected when I paired her with followerloot and she started carving her own personality through the stuff she began to wear. Then, somewhere, some how, her head disappeared. Entirely. Remove all her gear, head still gone. No idea what's causing it; I thought it might have been invisible helms acting up, but no, no one else has this issue. So I'm probably going to roll with it. I gave her an enchanted silver tribal mask and she wears it like a boss. I'll just chalk it up to Breylin getting angry/jealous and her casting a spell to make her head disappear, or Saadia is a Dullahan now.
Or something.
NormalFish
Banned
I had bugs like this a few times with skyrim. Mods all installed, play for a while, suddenly things start vanishing. uninstall mods, make new save files, whatever, but whatever disappeared doesn't come back until I fresh install. Weird as hell.
Always got more problems with safety load than it solved.
Game randomly crashed when opening the world map, and I finally identified Safety Load to be the cause for this issue...
Just wanted to add this as a small note that this mod *could* (highly depends, I suppose) cause trouble.
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
Wonders of Weather was released literally today. Replaces the Splash of Rain, Rainbows, and Shooting Star mods by combining them into one. Was trying to install Splash of Rain and it directed me to this new page.
Pretty cool - got the rainbows and rain splashes to work. Didn't test/look for the shooting stars. I have it load right after my Climates of Tamriel setup.
Otherwise things going fairly smoothly, though the last stretch I envision will be a bit more complex and may take awhile, even though I have the bulk of the work done otherwise in terms of sheer numbers of mods. I still kind of want to get Complete Crafting Overhaul in, but it seems to be fairly troublesome since it appears it'll require a bashed patch. Figuring out the proper install order for the few mods I want that go beyond the STEP instructions (e.g. Bandolier, Cloaks of Skyrim, Winter is Coming Cloaks, etc.) is what I expect to take time.
Pretty cool - got the rainbows and rain splashes to work. Didn't test/look for the shooting stars. I have it load right after my Climates of Tamriel setup.
Otherwise things going fairly smoothly, though the last stretch I envision will be a bit more complex and may take awhile, even though I have the bulk of the work done otherwise in terms of sheer numbers of mods. I still kind of want to get Complete Crafting Overhaul in, but it seems to be fairly troublesome since it appears it'll require a bashed patch. Figuring out the proper install order for the few mods I want that go beyond the STEP instructions (e.g. Bandolier, Cloaks of Skyrim, Winter is Coming Cloaks, etc.) is what I expect to take time.