Talvieno wrote:Anyone looking for modding a beautiful Skyrim experience might want to check out this awesome page. She has some of the most amazing pictures of it that I've seen.

Cool link

I've been mucking about with all sorts of mods from body to ENB mainly experimenting to get a great looking toon which I have and making my Skyrim look a bit stunning with ENB and HD mods,also use SKSE for many mods and the UI and trying to get most of the FINIS mods to work,that bugger screwed up my first ENB build which looked rather fabulous if I say so myself.

Will post a few pics at some point maybe even change Vic's mind on modding Skyrim,as in my eyes that is what gives Skyrim it's endless playability and with Skywind the Morrowind remake in the Skyrim engine in development I can see no end to the amazing stuff the community can come up with.

darker70 wrote:Will post a few pics at some point maybe even change Vic's mind on modding

Hey, I've never said I'm against modding. It's just taken me a while to get around to incorporating any in Skyrim. Today I spent way too many hours adding only the best and most stable mods. Lots of them!

The Nexus was on fire.

I was so pleased with the results I've decided to play through the game again from the beginning. A new game in a new country with many new faces, well it feels like that.

Mind you, it's taking some getting used to. I keep forgetting how pathetic my character is now and have to spend a lot of time running away. And that silly hat they gave me to wear is embarrassing. It's got to go!

Oh, and all those beautifully coiffured hairstyles. The hair salons must be making a small fortune.

Haha Victor, welcome to the dark side!

Lum wrote:Haha Victor, welcome to the dark side!

What really amazed me was I didn't get a single conflict, Lum. I guess it sometimes pays off to arrive late to the party.

Yes, same for me. I was very happy to read "automatic order" and "to reduce crashing" and the such overall, as modding normally brings a lot of bugs with it. The managers help a lot with that and the results are fabulous! Galaxy sized kudos for all those good modders out there!!

Victor Tombs wrote:Hey, I've never said I'm against modding. It's just taken me a while to get around to incorporating any in Skyrim. Today I spent way too many hours adding only the best and most stable mods. Lots of them!

The Nexus was on fire.

I was so pleased with the results I've decided to play through the game again from the beginning.

And in starting over you may have done a very wise thing.
I have read some time ago (two years or so, now) that one should pay special attention to the mods one elects to play Skyrim with.
I do not have the technical background to re-tell the very convincing explanation I did read, but in essence Skyrim's mod-layer is intimately different from Oblivion's and Fallout 3's, even though Skyrim's engine is yet another evolution of the GameBryo.

With Oblivion and Fallout you could swap mods in and out without repercussions. At most you had to stop a questscript and make what is widely known as a 'clean save'. Sounds familiar?

This practice is no longer possible with Skyrim. Because there is no such thing as a clean save anymore. Once a mod is 'in' you should stick with it and keep it in. Should you deactivate a mod along the road bad things would happen to your game, because there is no way to completely remove a mod data from the save data. Some things (some 'references') always remain behind and the game would still try to use them.
(sorry, my explanation is lacking. As I said, I do not have the technical background. Hopefully an expert skyrim modder will see this and provide the details)

The recommendation was to stick to a set of mods you like and never change it. You can *add* new mods, but once you play with them you can not go back by simply removing them.
The best course of action would be to keep a new mod in observation until you are sure you want to have it forever.
So before adding a new mod you are not sure of, save your game and consider that savegame as a Restore Point to go back to if you dislike the new mod you are testing.
That would be the only way to keep your savegame 'clean' with Skyrim.

This practice also reduces (if not negates) the chance that the weird stuff will occur in your game. Talking of things like mammoths falling to their death, NPCs spinning like a chopper's tail rotor, horses walking up to and greeting you with the voice of an NPC that should be there but is nowhere, NPCs motionlessly sliding backwards, creatures meteoring down the sky as if re-entered from high orbit... *those* weird things.

Victor Tombs wrote:

Lum wrote:Haha Victor, welcome to the dark side!

What really amazed me was I didn't get a single conflict, Lum. I guess it sometimes pays off to arrive late to the party.

Great stuff and a bloody miracle your build does not crash after every mod.

I just discovered Mod organiser it's bloody awesome creates a profile or profiles from Skyrim and you can chop and change and it will not effect Skyrim just the profile even the ini is specific to the created profile,it creates a virtual directory really damn clever stuff so I can create a ENB build,or for instance more separate builds entirely say a UNP body toon even on another HD.

fox wrote:[stuff about moddability]

from what you describe, the engine version of skyrim seems to be a step backwards in terms of and moddability... management seems to have striked again...

Thank you, fox. All words of wisdom (and caution) gratefully received.

darker70 wrote:Great stuff and a bloody miracle your build does not crash after every mod.

I just discovered Mod organiser it's bloody awesome creates a profile or profiles from Skyrim and you can chop and change and it will not effect Skyrim just the profile even the ini is specific to the created profile,it creates a virtual directory really damn clever stuff so I can create a ENB build,or for instance more separate builds entirely say a UNP body toon even on another HD.

I've taken a look at Mod Organizer, darker, thanks for making me aware of this tool. As you say, " clever stuff".

I found the videos on RealVision ENB and being rather keen on eye candy decided to give it a try. WOW!

I've been busily downloading every high texture mod I can find which will give me that more realistic experience. I'm blown away by how good Skyrim is looking now. I've added about 100+ mods and still keep finding more that appeal to my "eye candy" brain. I've now started looking for mods that add new areas to explore so I can see the mod count will continue to rise.

I could end up like you, darker, spending all my time searching for perfect Nexus mods and having very little time left to actually play the game.

I decided to stop at +65 to be able to play the damned game. It looks good enough for me, I have a lot of new places to go and with a few utility mods to make the experience better. Now I'm at level 40 with mi Imperial Lord-of-the-Mace badass and intent to play with him through "the end" (yes, I know...).

When and if I feel exhausted with this run, I'll try to dope the game a little further and start out another location with another type of character. Maybe give the realistic survival experience (hunger, illness, cold and wet effects and so on) a go. Or try a mage, since my Imperial Behemoth build uses no magic.

Ah, so many possibilities!

i stopped playing skyrim after ~460 hours and will return when i buy a new pc with a better graphic card.

I think that is a good decision HappyGhecko. With a better computer you'll be able to see Skyrim at its best!

If your PC is on the lower end of the scale the important "eye candy" visual mods are best avoided. There's nothing worse than playing the game with a low frame rate, HappyGhecko. You may be able to get the game looking gorgeous but it all falls apart as a game when you start moving. I've been there with my business laptop. It's not much fun.

Am I the only one who's perfectly happy to get 15 fps? I installed ENBSeries for my copy and messed with it, even though it dropped the framerate a bit. I just turn it off while I'm underground.