Morrowind/Skyrim Modding

[N.tony]

About a month ago I saw someone on PCMR subreddit showing his skyrim with "just these two mods" and thought "man, that looks way better than I remember, I should try it..."

 

And then I learned that one of the mods was a do-it-yourself texture pack comprised of 60+ other mods. But it was too late, so I spent the next couple of days glued to a pc mostly between downloading, shuffling and figuring out why it crashes

 

But I ended up with pretty decent fantasy-like coctail:

 

As people above mentioned, regardles of your intentions you'd want to install SKSE for SkyUI, and an unofficial patch - fixes a lot of things with the game.

 

I'd separate the visual mods into the following categories:

• Texture mods, it's pretty clear, here you need Bethesda's own hires pack, and as many packs on top of it as you feel is right. I'd recommend going through the list of the texture pack combiner and picking those you think are necessary: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/20801/? (the combiner is very old, I can't really recommend using it, since most of the texture packs have been updated since)
• Mesh mods, basically, there's only one mod, but it's definitely worth having - Static Mesh Improvement Mod (SMIM). It will increase the polygon count on a lot of objects in the game, making them appear less like the painted textures and more like proper 3d things.
• Lighting mods, I went with Enhanced Lights and Effects for a very fantasy look, it's a matter of preference, I suppose. Has a SMIM additional patch (see above). Then there's Climates of Tamriel mods, that overhaul the weather conditions, there are additional things to install, like supreme storms and weather patches, the two mods seem to work very nicely together.
• ENB, this is pretty much the icing on the cake. These mods take over a lot of visual effects, including anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, bloom, shadows, lighting, DoF, ambient occlusion, parallax mapping, and a bunch of other things. Basically, this defines the finishing look of the game more than all of the previous mods, since you can configure all the shaders. I went with RealVision ENB, since there's a preset for the EAFX and stuff. There's also a Parallax mod, making the roads and walls "pop".

This is pretty much all I use. The most important thing is to not get tired of moding to the point when you stop wanting to play Happened to me a lot in the last years.

[MoonSpot]

Probably too late, but I'd like to recommend that you use Mod Organizer instead of nexus mod manager as the platform you use to install your mods.  I recently started using it, and must confess that it is much better than NMM at the moment in important ways.

 

I don't really care for ENB mods myself, ENBoost is an exception since it is NOT a graphic improvement mod but a memory allocation/64bit fix/thing.  Most ENB mods are resource intensive filters that make me feel like I'm wearing sunglasses/gunners.  Texture packs are what I go for, then armor and weapon mods.  I generally notice better texture on characters more than the environment as they're generally the focus(visually).

 

Required mods

SkyUI - Because PCs can.

 

SKSE - Absolutely required for everything worth getting that isn't straight up textures replacing your vanilla files.

 

Unofficial Skyrim Patch - I didn't get it for a long time because I was concerned about the "unofficial" part.  Big mistake.  Get it naow!

 

XP32 maximum skeleton XPMS - You're probably going to get this sooner or later, whether you believe me now or not is another matter.

 

ENBoost - yea, your probably going to want this to at some point or another.

 

Environment textures

I use both 2k textures and the official high resolution download.

 

Better Towns and Textures - There are probably newer or better ones out there, but I like and use this one.  Haven't had any issues with it that I'm aware of.

 

**BetterWinterhold.esp - Sorry can't find it.  Basically added a forge behind the town shop(I think), which make the town visitable for me.  I don't know what it is with the north part of skyrim having to suck soo bad.  All my characters have high smithy skills so I need tables and grindstones.

*I'd need to confirm that there was texture improvements contained in this mod that I can't find....so ignore for now I guess.

 

Static Mesh Improvement Mod(SMIM) - Really awesome.  This is the sort of mod your asking for.

 

Towns and Villages Enhanced ~ Riften - The purdest town I've got.

 

PC & NPC Textures/mods/MakeForMorePretty

 

The Art of Magicka - Love this mod.  Mage clothing/armors that make mages look like mages.

 

ApachiiSkyHairs - A lot of new hair styles.

 

Ponytail hair styles - More hair styles.

 

Eyes of Beauty - The Eyes of Beauty offers many new eyes textures for player and NPCs. All texture are high resolution and are made for the best result in Skyrim. No other eyes will be so real and unique.

 

Improved NPC Clothing - Clothes are made from fabric!  Who knew?  Wouldn't know from the vanilla textures.

 

 

Better controls / immersion

360 Walk Run Plus - Makes the camera control more natural feeling when in 3rd person; at least for me.  Plus makes checking out equipped armours and weapons a bit easier.  Also fixes cloak clipping.

 

Interesting NPCs - Wow.  Crazy amount of content.  Makes Skyrim more real by sidetracking your train of thought in the game, but generally in a good way(Unless you're Gopher and kill/ignore the added NPCs).  Just get it.

 

Breezehome fully upgraded - Mandatory.  Lore friendly, and immersive.  Allows your character to use materials in storage when crafting while there.  sorta like your GFX card shelf.

 

Cloaks of skyrim - Because it's effing cold out!

 

Craftable and Placeable Havok-enabled Bedrolls - Because sometimes you want to crash and not catch bedbugs by using some hygiene deficient bandits fecal matter embedded & protein stained floor rag.  Especially useful if you're using realistic needs and diseases.

 

realistic needs and diseases - pretty much as advertised.  You NEED to sleep, eat and treat your injuries.

 

Because its good

Instant Mining - I'm sick of the mining/digging animation.  Just grab and go.

 

Extended UI - Your not playing on a large phone.

 

More Hud - because you're not playing on a console.

 

Be a man, do the right thing MODS

Bijin Warmaidens - A visual mod for folks with man parts.  So, be a man Luke. 

 

DIMONIZED UNP female body - Just grab the body mod, don't worry about the textures because of the next mod.

 

Mature skin texture and body for UNP CBBE ADEC - Better looking textures means better looking PC & NPCs and therefore a better looking game.

 

HDT Physics Extension Project - enables hair, clothes and other "HDT physics enabled meshes" as showcased in this video.

 

Skyrim Hair Physics Project - hair that moves.  Not particularly realistically, but way better then without using this.

 

UNP HDT-PE BBP TBBP - Body meshes for physics support (...yeah thats me being full of ****.  it makes bewb and bums bounce)

 

Fores New Idles in Skyrim (FNIS) - Makes everything that moves with animations and physics work.  It's REQUIRED if your maning up

Just need to run it after installing and uninstalling any physics enabled mods.  Easy peasy, and so very awesome.

 

The dark, and deviously delicious, side of the force

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/19588-sexlab-index/

Might make your mum cry, but you're an adult and have moved a bit beyond the interests of eleventeen year olds.  Might get a high five from dads though(mums can not be present for high five events).

[Termater]

For Skyrim here are some of my personal favorites:

 

No/Low Graphic Demand

Medium Graphic Demand

High Graphic Demand

 

Realistic Lighting Overhaul

Post Process FXAA Injector

Skyrim HD

Unique Grasses and Ground Covers

Verdant - A Skyrim Grass Plugin

W.A.T.E.R

SkyUI

Static Mesh Improvement Mod

Purewaters

Populated Lands Road Paths

T.A.V.E (Towns and Villages Enhanced)

[N.tony]

My own preference is Skyrim Mod Combiner. Mainly because I'm too lazy to install each texturing mod to find what I like.

The author spends countless hours scouring the mods and picks out what he thinks are the best possible combination of mods and individual textures.

The program then combines it all into one easy to install file.

 

Ok, so that one Texture mod combiner I mentioned is actually not supported and for all intends and purposes been replaced by this mod. This got me very curious, so I decided to spend some more time redoing the whole pack and this time added a lot more mods to the mix. I gotta say, this mod has a way more streamlined interface - basically, pointing it to the Nexus Mod Manager's folder with donwloaded mods will make the whole process semi-automatic - you go to the mod page from the SMC interface, then download them with NMM, and it's picked up next time you load SMC. It's just a chore to constantly check the compatibility tab for each mod to make sure you won't break stuff.

 

Otherwise - great mod! The only problem is that due to the sheer amount of texture packs used within it basically prevents you from using Project Parallax mod. But what can you do...

 

I don't really care for ENB mods myself, ENBoost is an exception since it is NOT a graphic improvement mod but a memory allocation/64bit fix/thing.  Most ENB mods are resource intensive filters that make me feel like I'm wearing sunglasses/gunners.

 

I guess to each his own, but I would say there is no competition to ENB in terms of improving the overall look of the game. I cobbled together a couple of images I got during the modding process:

 

http://imgur.com/a/3MAYA

 

This time I went with Vividian ENB - "Vivid" version, that is similar in terms of the palette to RealENB, but doesn't make everything so dark. The "dark nights" feeling was interesting for a while, but I got tired of straining my eyes and casting the light spell under each tree...

[MoonSpot]

--snip--

 

You make a compelling case, its forced me to reconsider my statement, and realize that my distaste for ENBs is probably largely drawn from their generally high taxation on my system (2GHz Core2Quad & GT130m).

I do like the relative absence of fog/mist in the distance that the non vanilla shots you've posted show.  I've a particular dislike of mist in my skyrim as I can literally feel my laptop cooking when some of them are displayed (I did something stupid a long time ago with the providence mod and can't fix without wiping, so...meh).

That said, I still think textures > ENBs.

 

@Slick Just saw todays hot files on the nexus and another Bijin mod is up.  Noiiiice

[BobbyG2]

Otherwise - great mod! The only problem is that due to the sheer amount of texture packs used within it basically prevents you from using Project Parallax mod. But what can you do...

I guess to each his own, but I would say there is no competition to ENB in terms of improving the overall look of the game. I cobbled together a couple of images I got during the modding process:

http://imgur.com/a/3MAYA

If project parallax comes with its own meshes and textures, I would imagine it would be compatible as long as you over write the SMC pack with it? Might make a lot of SMC redundant, though. Maybe try it out?

[MoonSpot]

Just found these and am trying to see if my PC can run them effectively, and was reminded about this thread and @Slick request for these mods.

 

RUGNAROK - high rez rugs (also contains some efficiency design changes for Vram handling of some rug textures, details on page)

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/64830/?

 

PELTAPALOOZA - Pelts of Skyrim Expansion

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/60412/?

 

:edit update:

I can!  and they're purdy kewl

[MoonSpot]

Here's an awesome immersion/graphical mod (or graphic handling mod) made by the same person that made one of the 2 memory patches that everyone uses.

 

Dynamic Distant Objects LOD - DynDOLOD

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59721/?

 

The more beast the machine, the better the potential results. 

 

Help me @Pohernori won kenobi, your my only hope.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

Here's an awesome immersion/graphical mod (or graphic handling mod) made by the same person that made one of the 2 memory patches that everyone uses.

 

Dynamic Distant Objects LOD - DynDOLOD

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59721/?

 

The more beast the machine, the better the potential results. 

 

Help me @Pohernori kenobi your my only hope.

 

Darn it, I'm heading out soon. Will have a look at it later in the night 

Will update soon!

[KarmaMuscle]

DynDOLOD is probably the most exciting thing to happen in Skyrim in a long while. Can't wait to test it out.

Watched the install video twice, doesn't look as complicated as I first thought.