Help with Skyrim SE mods

[Inception9269]

As someone that's never liked the game for most of its history, I very recently decided to give it a go. I did play and mod the original version, but found it to be a really buggy experience, with it being very hit or miss on whether my mods will work or not.

 

One positive about getting into the game this late in its life is I haven't had any notable issues with the game or installing mods, with it being more stable now than back when I tried to get into it so long ago.

 

The biggest annoyance I have though is just how restrictive the combat system is. With you by default being limited to whatever you assign to your left and right hands, and as far as magic/shouts/etc you get just a single hotkey to use whichever ones you assign to it.

 

I was really hoping that someone knows of a mod to improve this. I do have SkyUI installed, so I have been able to get by by just favoriting spells, weapons, whatever and then using the Q button to open a list of favorites, but I would like the ability to register more things to hotkeys. I prefer fighting with melee weapons, and would like the ability to use various spells or shouts without having to reassign anything or remove my weapons.

 

Also on the topic of hotkeys, the keyboard I'm using (Corsair K95 I believe) has 6 macro keys along the left side of it (the buttons are G1 through G6) and I was wondering if anyone knew how I could use those keys when playing games like Skyrim. By default the game doesn't detect them when I try setting something to those keys.

[Stahlmann]

There is a mod called Extended Hotkey System that allows you to assign your favorite spells and weapons to any key on your keyboard. I'm not sure if the G keys work though. If you have to, just assign a regular key like 'U' to 'G1' in your keyboard software and then assign the spell to 'U' in the game.

 

You can also use the Hotkey Groups feature in SkyUI. This feature allows you to assign a group of two weapons or spells to a hotkey instead of just one. This makes it so you don't accidentally put your sword away by pressing the hotkey for a spell 2 times. You can basically set one key to fireball + sword, the next key to lightning + sword, etc.

 

Personally, I prefer a melee + bow playstyle, so I never made extensive use of the hotkey system, other than switching between my sword and bow in my main hand and torches or shields in my offhand.

 

Magic is a bit weird in this game, and basically always feels underpowered or overpowered, and I haven't found a mod to fix that yet. Most mods that change magic go way overboard and completely break the game balance.

 

In my experience, the Ordinator mod does the best job of trying to balance different playstyles while adding new things to the mix.

 

 

 

The most important tip I can give you as a new modder is to use Mod Organizer 2. Do not manually drag mod files into your game directory (with a few exceptions like ENB) and do not use Vortex. Mod Organizer 2 is special because it doesn't install anything into your game files, so installing and uninstalling mods doesn't mess with and potentially corrupt your game files. Instead, it uses a virtual folder to load your mods when you start the game.

 

To make sure mods work as intended, always check the mod's page for dependencies. After installing the mod and enabling the plugin in the Mod Organizer, click the Sort button to make sure your loading order is correct. The popup that appears after sorting will also check for potential problems or incompatibilities in your mod list and tell you how to fix them.

 

If you have any other questions about modding Skyrim, I'm happy to help. I have never created mods from scratch, but I have a lot of experience in making huge mod lists work with no or minimal problems. There have been times when I had over 700 mods installed at the same time and I didn't brick the game. (Tbf, at least half of them are graphics related, so they don't have as much potential to cause problems...)

 

It is extremely rare that I ever come across a mod that just doesn't work. Most of the time it's something I did wrong when I installed it.