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[Tellemurius]

yea me and my brother had some issues with the unofficial patches, for me i was peeved that the Embrus quest was still broken so really i don't use it.

[Vendayn]

Here are some more screenshots of Skyrim, two of the scenery and one of my character.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/174084 - Whiterun at night (vampire power turned on, and it actually came out really good. A lot better than I intended. )

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/174083 - Another of Riverwood

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/174085 - My Dark Elf with his glowing eyes...very vampire/werewolf like.



I have a mod (not Dawnguard compatible) that lets you be both a Vampire and a Werewolf. It doesn't come with glowing eyes though, it is just how the lighting came out.

Here is the mod for those who are interested: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/11503

I also use Better Vampires by Brehanin, Tales of Lycanthropy and Werewolf Mastery. Vanilla vampires in Oblivion and Skyrim are rather lackluster. Well I don't have Dawnguard, which does a lot of vampire stuff. So I can't really comment on that.

[Caz]

Just started playing Skyrim a few days ago. It's pretty neat but the open-worldness of it all really requires you to have a goal. The first few times I tried to play it I just wandered about, killed a few bandits then got bored. Making a few different chars and actually using the game as a sandbox to see what those characters would do in each situation is better. Somehow I contracted vampirism though and now I burn in sunlight.

Do you guys know of any 'essential' mods for Skyrim? I've been looking around but there's so many, lol.

[Rex_Nex]

Here are my personal essentials, all can be found on Nexus, all are compatible with each other. Make sure you install SKSE beforehand, which can be found here.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A Quality World Map - A better map.

Better Dialogue Controls - Sensible controls when using dialogue boxes.

Better Distant LOD Waterfalls - They look like ice sheets in vanilla.

Better Messagebox Controls - Similar to Dialogue Controls, but for message boxes. Or something.

Enhanced Distant Terrain - Small improvement to distant textures.

High Quality LODs - Distant terrain is shaped more accurately.

HiRes Legible Roadsigns - So you can read them.

Immersive Hud - iHud - Turns off HUD elements when they aren't useful (No cross-hair with a melee weapon...) as well as gives you a button to disable the compass/quest markers.

Player Headtracking - I guess this isn't essential, but it adds so much to immersion. Your character will look at things of interest.

Project Reality - Climates of Tamriel - Adds hundreds of new weather types, changes the lighting everywhere, etc. Really great mod.

Skyrim Distant Detail - Increases the render distance of a few common objects (boulders, really). It fills out all that barren distant terrain without requiring you to kick up your uGrids and murder your FPS.

SkyUI - Almost required. The UI is now redesigned for mouse and key, no longer do you have to deal with Console controls.

Unique Region Names - "Fixes" the entirety of Skyrim just being labled "Skyrim". They now have real names depending on which hold owns that land.

Unofficial Skyrim Patch - Fixes a metric ton of bugs. Additional: Unofficial Dawnguard and/or Unofficial Hearthfire patches if you own those DLCs.

Lastly, there's also T3nd0's Skyrim Redone (SkyRE). I don't really suggest using it until you've played more of the base game, but it changes nearly every one of the gameplay systems. I enjoy it, most do. Others don't.

Less essential stuff that I love:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Bowlegged Jump Animation Fix - Changes the ugly "spread my legs" animation while jumping.

Clanking Armor - All armor no longer sounds like leather. Heavier armor now clanks when moving/running.

Cloaks of Skyrim - Cloaks! They look great, but they do tend to clip into other things (like your feet, sometimes weapons on your back, bolt quivers...).

Detailed Cities - Adds more objects to cities. Don't use if you're FPS starved.

Enhanced Blood Textures - Better blood!

Enhanced Lights and FX - Creates a more dramatic mood by changing the lighting in certain areas.

Enhanced Night Skyrim - Better nights! Changes the skybox at night to be clearer, shows galaxies and stars.

Expanded Winterhold Destruction Ruins - Winterhold sure doesn't look much like it was destroyed in a cataclysmic event. Now it does.

Follower Trap Safety - Because you can't really stop followers from triggering traps.

Get Snowy - Snow accumulates on your character if it's snowing.

Immediate Dragons - Dragons no longer require you to advance in the main quest to spawn. Best used if you're also downloading an alternate start mod, which I'll suggest later...

Immersive Armors - More lore-friendly armors! Make sure to download the SkyRE compatibility patch if you're also downloading SkyRE.

Improved Combat Sounds - Better combat sounds!

Lanterns of Skyrim - All in One - Adds lanterns to cities, villages, roads, etc. Great if you're also using Climates of Tamriel, as the nights will be darker.

Lore-Based Loading Screens - Adds a few hundred loading screens with snippets from ES lore.

Main Menu Spinning Emblem - The Skyrim icon now spins!

Mercy - If someone begs for mercy, they actually stop fighting you. You can still kill them, of course.

No Skill Limit - Removes limits.

Random Alternate Start OR Alternate Start - Live Another Life - Random Alternate Start spits you out randomly at one of a few hundred locations. Alternate Start - Live Another Life only gives you the option of spawning in a dozen or so locations (including the vanilla start), but you get to choose where.

Ruins Clutter Improvement HD - Improves a lot of things you'll commonly see in dungeons and ruins. Also, 3d chain links!

SkyTEST - Enhances the AI for wildlife as well as adds predator/prey systems.

Static Mesh Improvement Mod - Similar to Ruins Clutter Improvement, but for everywhere else! Better models for all the little things in skyrim.

The Dance of Death - Adds more killmove animations. Also lets you tweak how often or not they trigger!

Thundering Shouts - Louder, deeper dragon shouts. RAWR I IZ DUVAKEN!

Varied Guards and Stormcloaks - Changes up the gear that guards and stormcloaks wear. No longer are they all carbon copies of each other!

W.A.T.E.R - Improves water and everything to do with it. Better animations, better textures, etc.

Wet and Cold - Adds some dynamic effects for being wet/cold. Water will drip off you, you will breathe out warm, foggy air, etc.

Hope that helps.

[Caz]

Wow. That's quite the list. Thanks a lot!

[Rex_Nex]

No problem! I think I'll throw that on the OP and get it over with, although it'd be nice to find the time to link them all.

[Vendayn]

Here is a screenshot of what dungeons look like with ENB + Sweetfx + Blackout

Blackout - Simply Darker Dungeons: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/27960

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/174532

[Slayerhero90]

I hate the Thalmor Embassy quest. I never remember that Delphine will take everything else, so I give Malborn all sorts of weapons that I never use, and Delphine takes my bow and armor. So I'm stuck `kill ing everyone untill a bow is dropped.

[WillowLuman]

That's not dark enough. Here's MY lighting fix for dungeons!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[buckets]

That's not dark enough. Here's MY lighting fix for dungeons!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's actualy not too bad, it's very realistic as you won't find many caves in real life that casualy just light themselves up for our viewing pleasure.

I suppose you have to rely on magic and torches to light your way, so cool!

Do you have a modlist that I might peruse? Or is just a custom non-released mod you've built yourself?

[forsaken1111]

That's not dark enough. Here's MY lighting fix for dungeons!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's actualy not too bad, it's very realistic as you won't find many caves in real life that casualy just light themselves up for our viewing pleasure.

I suppose you have to rely on magic and torches to light your way, so cool!

Do you have a modlist that I might peruse? Or is just a custom non-released mod you've built yourself?

Its actually a metamod achieved by placing a paper bag over one's head before play, or simply wearing 3 pair of sunglasses.

[Caz]

No problem! I think I'll throw that on the OP and get it over with, although it'd be nice to find the time to link them all.

I installed all the mods you listed, except 'SKREEE' (kept crashing nexus mod manager) and 'Deadly Dragons' (crashed skyrim on startup, took awhile of activating/disabling mods to figure out what it was) Not sure why those two are being finicky, maybe because I didn't get 'Skyrim Redone' yet. Maybe once I get bored of sword and shield combat. It does seem to be a nicer-feeling game now, less empty than it was.

The way Skyrim handles save games annoys me a bit when I have 7 different characters and can only differentiate between them by arbitrary save numbers. I probably missed a really obvious way to rename saves or something though. Would be awesome if they grouped saves by character so everything was more organised. I wonder if there's a mod for that... *goes back to trawl through the nexus another 4 hours*

One funny thing I noticed when doing the alternate start as a bandit, as soon as I'd walked 10ft a dragon screamed its way out of the sky. So I fought my first dragon at level 1, with an iron sword wearing mere rags. Fun.

[Rex_Nex]

D'oh! I never noticed Deadly Dragons was a Dawnguard-only mod. Sorry about that Caz, I should of checked. No idea what was up with SKREEE, though... I'll remove that from my recommended mods.

Ahaha, nice! I've had that happen, but my way of dealing with it involves wishing I had infinite stamina... *run!*

[Euld]

I don't suppose there's a mod for organizing save files according to characters, is there?

[WillowLuman]

That's not dark enough. Here's MY lighting fix for dungeons!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's actualy not too bad, it's very realistic as you won't find many caves in real life that casualy just light themselves up for our viewing pleasure.

I suppose you have to rely on magic and torches to light your way, so cool!

Do you have a modlist that I might peruse? Or is just a custom non-released mod you've built yourself?

Actually, it's a large image filled with the bucket tool in GIMP. I made a mod deleting all light sources in dungeons, but that's kind of lazy to go abou tit and it turns out most of them are lit by ambient light anyway.

Save files by character? Use the ~ console and just type "save 'save name' " to save your games, that way you can choose the name yourself instead of "#2675"