Hi guys, i installed skyrim the other day and wanted to get as much bang for my buck, so i decided exploring the wonderful world of modding.
unfortunately/fortunately there are so many mods to choose from i'm literally swamped and can't make up my mind.
i was just looking to get some mods to change a couple things, not major overhauls.
i read some time ago about a mod that disabled the amount of items(removing the weight limit) i can carry but can't remember what it was named =)
also i read about the unofficial patches for skyrim, what's your opinion on those? should i? also do they affect the resource consumption? as i'm using my laptop, and even though it has an i7@2.2ghz, 8gig ram and 2gb for the graphics(nvidia gt540m) i put it on medium settings. (still heats up quite a bit and the sound of the fan makes me think of being on a hovercraft)
aaanyway one last thing do you have any recommendations for easy on the resources mods that make the night sky wonderful?

also do you have any mods that better the performance of the game to recommend?

10 years ago*

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dapper mudcrabs and randysavage dragon

10 years ago
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OOh! I Say!!Brilliant!!brilliant indeed!!=)

10 years ago
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Play for a bit without any mods,then search for what you want to see improved.
For me this is the must list:

All the unofficial patches(saves a lot of trouble.)
SKSE (install a lot of mods require it)
SkyUI (better menus,allows sorting by price/weight ratio,etc.)
iHud (invis hud for more immersion)
Better Dialogue&Message Controls (fixes conflict between mouse/keyboard priority)

You may also want a body replacer to make people look better,a combat overhaul,magic packs,ASIS(makes enemies use content from mods you install),animation replacers,vampire overhauls,follower overhaul,Achieve that(adds in-game achievements),sound overhauls,hair mods,and in general everything you fancy.

Skyrim GEMS has a big list that looks nice for a lot of things you may want.

10 years ago
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+1 I should have added this info to my post below. :)

10 years ago
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Very nice!!thanks!I'm amazed at the amount of mods they have on gems!=O
Thanks again!

10 years ago
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+1 i want to add Guard Dialogue Overhaul, ClimatesOfTamriel, Enhanced light and FX, Sound of skyrim series ,Inconsequential NPC(for immersion) , and some mod like DeadlyDragons,Skyrim Immersive Creatures .....etc a lot

10 years ago
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Mod here, checking in.

10 years ago
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I like this one =D

10 years ago
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Seriously get this mod,he's one of the best.

10 years ago
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I dunno about that

10 years ago
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I don't know this mod cause incompatible a lot, and it not have any patch too

10 years ago
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lmao, welcome!! all type of mods are welcome!!sooo, are you like a genie that makes my skyrim run faster? XD
i hope you add all the features i'm looking for=)

10 years ago
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Your first playthough you shouldn't add anything that adds or modifies the storyline.

But SkyUI is something you should always use. It overhauls the inventory and store menus to make playing on the PC nicer.

10 years ago
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http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/24666/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/25360/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/14308/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/35966/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37994/?

Quick copy paste of some mods i recommended on some other forum. I also recommend a realism mod that will make you suffer from the cold, hunger, lack of rest etc, possibly leading to death via say hypotermia or some sickness. Limit yourself to a given level, so that playing with say 2 companions is still a challenge and you will run for your life when you see a dragon ( being able to kill a dragon kills the game for me ).

The unnoficial patches tend to improve the performance actually. Even some graphical mods can actually give you better performance while offering better graphics.

10 years ago
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love the new home mods, i'll lay off the new area and follower one for now though, i want to finish it first before adding more stuff, i already feel overwhelmed by the amount of stuff to do

10 years ago
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10 years ago
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gotta love the my little pony guard shield retexture! nothing is more fearsome than a pink pony! will take a more in depth look though, thank you very much

10 years ago
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Ok... Hope you read this. This will change your modding world. It takes time... but I recommend the following:

  1. Start watching Gophers Mod Sanctuary series for Skyrim on Youtube.
    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL96C073B0B8BFC01D I cannot recommend Gopher's site highly enough and his videos cover everything (and more) that what you have asked about. He teaches how to mod with Nexus Mod Manager from Nexus Mods.

  2. Though there is nothing wrong with Steams Workshop. I recommend Nexus Mods and learning how to use Nexus Mod Manager NMM.
    http://www.nexusmods.com

  3. Go slow with your modding. If you have never played Skyrim, I recommend a quick play through unmodded. Learn what you don't like before you start modding things. When you do start modding. Only activate 1-3 at a time and use them a few days before adding more. LEARN to use mods smart or you will destroy your Skyrim install and/or your savegames.

  4. Look at nexus mods top files of all time and top 100. That will give you an idea of what is popular, why and what it takes to get them working well (compatibilities).

  5. Game on! Expect Skyrim to stay on your hard drive for years. :)

10 years ago
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great advice, thanks, will definitely have a look at the youtube channel!
and i'm looking forward to all that skyrim can offer me!
Game on!

10 years ago
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I have like ~300 mods installed :D, it made skyrim so much fun.

10 years ago
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glad to know, anyone in particular you would recommend? keeping in mind i don't have a large pixel collider =)(look it up) and i'm looking to enjoy a vanilla-ish play first, just aesthetic mods and ui improvements for now

10 years ago
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This one for performance :D
Night sky :D
Yeah use the unofficial patches, they fix lots of bugs and you may want to try memory leak/crash fixes, can't bother to find them now.

10 years ago
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i just fell in love with that night sky!! Incredible!!
i shall enjoy it even further at night with the curtains closedXD

10 years ago
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I know right :D
It's awesome.
Good luck & enjoy.

10 years ago
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Take note that if you're getting 60FPS already in most areas (that includes Whiterun), having HiAlgo is detrimental to your performance, as it will need to downscale/upscale pixels in real time. That takes away some FPS as well, unless you permanently run it on being downscaled.

10 years ago
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Most important tools (must install):

Mod Organizer - Nexus Mod Manager is too slow and doesn't come with profiles (where you can mix and match Skyrim ini files/mods/saves according to profiles). It also uses VFS so that you don't need to mess up your Skyrim Data directory. Let me know if you need help in understanding what's going on. This STEP tutorial on enabling third party programs on Mod Organizer is good.

TES5Edit - Cleans the original Skyrim files to avoid conflicts (yes the original Skyrim files have conflicts themselves). Use this video guide
.

BOSS - BOSS sorts your mods list so that all of them will work together. Sorting is important in Skyrim because some mods might overwrite each other, hence they maintained a repository of sorted lists for most Skyrim mods to make sure the items overwritten are correctly done.

SKSE - SKSE is required for some mods for advanced scripting support. It also comes with a memory heap allocator that fixes crash to desktop (CTD) when your Skyrim memory exceeds it's allocated value. Get the latest beta (1.7) as only the latest beta has the memory heap allocator.

ENBoost - ENB is a graphical modification plugin that separates the video memory allocation from Skyrim memory allocation pool. It also comes with post-processing to make your Skyrim look different/better if your graphics card can handle it. ENBoost is a guide/mod of ENB to only enable the performance boost, but disable the post-processing to make your Skyrim CTD less.

SkyUI - SkyUI modifies your in game menus comprehensively. Once you see it, you'll never turn back to using your normal in game menus. i.e. Inventory sorting, favourites etc.

StableUGridstoLoad - Fixes Skyrim's UGridsToLoad to load the correct UGrids (less memory used overall)

Unofficial Skyrim patches

1
2
3
4
5

*These will fix game breaking bugs as well as improve performance

10 years ago
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Performance:

Skyrim Project Optimization - Optimizes Skyrim. Nuff said.

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Optimizes lighting. You might need Wearable Lanterns to compensate for the lighting loss.

Guides:

STEP - You don't need to follow every step of what the wiki says or install every mod it asks you to do. Just read most of the beginning to know what's going on in the Skyrim modding scene.

ENB modding guide - This is one of the best guides I've came across. Be sure to read it thoroughly to get the most of what you need in modding Skyrim.

Speed and Stability Guide - Another guide here. Be sure to take it with a pinch of salt.

*Note that some guides will provide .ini files for you to use. Don't copy it completely. Instead, get a Diff program like Beyond Compare or Winmerge(Free) to compare what they've added and Google those lines to know what they are doing.

Necessary mods:

Alternate Start - It's a mod that skips the Helgen start scenes/battle. Useful if you don't want to repeatedly play it. It gets boring.

Ultimate Combat - Skyrim combat becomes more tactical. Without this, every battle will be power attack/slashx3/power attack/slashx3. There is also Duel - Combat Realism (it's a bit crashy for me though)

Vilja - Get this if you want a companion that comes with a full backstory, quests, reliable in combat, dialogues that are equally great and one of the best companion mods I have come across. Skyrim without Vilja is like playing Skyrim at 75%.

Helgen Reborn - Very interesting quests that you can undertake to rebuild Helgen. Adds an extra 10% to your Skyrim experience. Most recommended!

Interesting NPCs - Without this mod, most of your other companions will just be cut & dry mercenaries. Some of the backstories are pretty deep as well. (and it adds a whole damn amount of NPCs here).

Ace Combat Skills - This is a revamp of Skyrim's perk and some amount of combat. It really enhances Skyrim playthrough as vanilla Skyrim's perk/combat is dull. i.e. Heavy Armor is just the same with Light Armor. Doesn't provide any benefits from one to another. With this mod, all of your weapons are different that can cater to the playstyle that you want. Another mod similar to this is SkyRe or Requiem (but it breaks compatibility for a lot of mods and is a pain to install)

Civil War Overhaul - If you've encountered the game's Civil War, you'll feel that it's mostly boring skirmishes going around Skyrim. With this mod, all of your battles are important. You can conquer cities and reinforce them. This mod is a must have.

Amazing Follower Tweaks - This mod is definitely one of the most useful ones as it allows you to tweak your followers combat style/inventory/behaviour. Without it, your follower is just another NPC that can carry items.

Proper Aiming - The arrows aren't properly aligned if you don't install this mod.

Convenient Horses - With this mod, handling your horses won't be a chore.

Frostfall - Adds hypothermia and survival to your experience. Only if you want immersiveness. As for me, it's pretty script heavy and has the potential to CTD.

10 years ago
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Awesome! Excellent advice!
+9001 for the great help!

10 years ago
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No problem. Let me know if you need any help in unraveling the stuff I just explained. ;)

10 years ago
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great collection, but i want to add this http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9080/? Bethesda Hi-Res DLC Optimized it help the texture of the game look splendid but without the cost of vannila hi-res texture dlc

10 years ago
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These are great, I have used em since the optimizer came out. Lets my ole gtx 295 handle it quite nicely.

there is also Skyrim Mods Complex Optimizer which lets you losslessly compress all of your Skyrim mods textures, meshes, and BSA's so that they take up less disk space, loading times are quicker, increased fps, and they use less vram.

10 years ago
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DDSOpt is compressing it. You can use the STEP guide to know more about it. Linky

10 years ago
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If i am reading this correctly that sounds like a pain in the butt compared to the one click required for SMCO. manually extracting all the files from a bsa would take forever if you used that for mods (i just skimmed this so if i'm wrong whoops) Also it didn't look like you can optimize .nif files (models) which would result in an increase in framerate. SMCO does this.

10 years ago
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Mod Organizer extracts the BSA automatically for you. I didn't know about SMCO optimizing .nif files though. I'll take a look at it. Thanks!

Edit: Looks like some .nif changes might crash the game.

10 years ago
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right he warns about that, I tested it fairly recently and haven't had any problems thus far (10 or so hours of play) just backing everything up beforehand is pretty much a given at least until your sure it works.

10 years ago
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I'll try it and see if it works for me. :)

Thanks!

10 years ago
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I used DDSOPT to optimize the textures, along with this Optimized Textures BSA: Linky

10 years ago
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my problem with moddable games is, I spend more time modding than playing.

10 years ago
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I'm guilty of that too. I spend more time reading about mods than playing the game. Dang.

10 years ago
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same here

10 years ago
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LOL Yeah xD

10 years ago
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Hi. Aside from the unofficial patches and, maybe, the graphic mods, I HIGHLY recommend doing an unmodded playthrough for at least 1-3 hours. Anyway, seeing that many people have already suggested awesome mods, I strongly suggest you try out T3nd0s Skyrim Redone. Note, however, that this mod is a HUGE overhaul for most of the gameplay stuff.

Here is a quick summary of it and my comments about it:

Perk System Overhaul - It changes some of the perks and 'reorganizes' some of it resulting in a very solid and a much more flexible character development experience.

Race Overhaul - With the changes, choosing your race becomes more fun because racial abilities become more of an actual consideration and not just because of looks. Like what the author of the mod said, "In vanilla Skyrim, the only real difference between an Orc and a Breton is that one needs an additional piece of magic resist gear."

Combat Overhaul - Let's face it, Skyrim's combat isn't excellent but this mod (coupled with other mods) makes it that there's now a degree of strategy in combat (especially in weapon wielding builds).

Enemy Scaling - NOW THIS IS WHAT I LIKED THE MOST! Vanilla Skyrim makes it that wherever you go, the enemy scales to you. This makes the game less challenging and so in my case, less fun.

Other stuff - More awesome stuff, just check the link to see the author's full overview of it :)

GJ on getting Skyrim LE! Have fun!

10 years ago
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I prefer ACE Combat rather than SkyRe. SkyRe breaks compatibility with a lot of other mods as well and would require manual patching here and there which is equal to unstableness.

10 years ago
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SkyRe is pretty much a huge collection of overhauls (it's not just a combat mod - really, it isn't. I think my first post clearly pointed that out). Because of this, mods trying to change the same mechanics will surely have some incompatibilities (in my case, I wouldn't even consider getting another mod to change a mechanic that SkyRe already touches upon).

Nevertheless, SkyRe has been gaining much popularity that other mods have included a note similar to this, "Compatible with SkyRe." Manual patching isn't also that hard, either or both the author of such mods and the users comment how to make those mods compatible to each other with relative ease.

Still, I see where you're getting at so I go back to my first point - SkyRe is a collection of overhauls. What makes me like SkyRe so much is that these overhauls compliment each other so well because it's made by one modder.

TL:DR If you only like one aspect of SkyRe, then I highly suggest to try other mods instead, because you will surely have a hard time getting other mods while thinking, "is this compatible with SkyRe?" However, if you like where T3nd0s (mod author) is going with his mod, then prepare for an awesome experience with SkyRe!

10 years ago
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Yeap. It's an overhaul "overhaul", hence it won't be compatible with other combat systems (like Dragon combat systems), or even mods that add items to the game like Immersive Weapons/Armors. I actually like SkyRe a lot, but I'm disappointed that it is incompatible to a lot of mods that I use.

10 years ago
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Fair enough. SkyRe will always have compatibility issues given it's nature of being, in your words, an overhaul "overhaul."

I would just like to remind anyone who is interested in SkyRe to check the other mods you would like to get if it's good with SkyRe because some popular ones are indeed compatible with very easy workarounds. In the case of weapon & armor mods, there is the ReProccer.

I'll leave it at that :p

10 years ago
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Yeah, Reproccer is a god send for weapon and armor mods, but not all the weapon and armor mods. Just the popular ones. Looks like I'm going to overhaul my mods tonight and try SkyRe again ;)

10 years ago
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I know you want performance mods but Falskaar is like an expansion DLC and worth checking out ;)

10 years ago
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Winter Is Coming - Cloaks
Adds cloaks to the game

Immersive Weapons
Adds tons of new weapons. I think the vanilla game doesn't have enough weapons

Blaze Of Eventide
Adds a very cool summonable flaming horse (also check out his other mods)

Breezehome FullyUpgradable
Allows you to upgrade the vanilla home. The upgrades give the home more character and makes it much nicer

JaySuS Swords
Adds 51 new weapons for you to craft

10 years ago
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ill have to remember this thread for when i can get skyrim on my pc, seems like alot of awesome mods here

10 years ago
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there are mods for skyrim??? GO AWAY!!!! i dont believe you!

10 years ago
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Closed 10 years ago by Bartimaeus93.