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Let’s talk Skyrim mods!
This is a calling for all my fellow TESV modders; hello! How are you? What mods are you running? Know of any hidden gems? When will I be satisfied with my modlist and actually play the game? Any and all modding conversations are welcome here, because I don’t want to fill ~games with identical topics lmao.
So I haven't been playing with just individual mods in a while. Thanks to wabbajack, I've been using massive modlists for my Skyrim and Fallout experience.
I can highly recommend Tempus Maledictum (https://www.wabbajack.org/modlist/wj-featured/tempus_maledictum ) for Skyrim. It's a very well-put together list from a really good modder. It's also massive... but it both brings life to the game, and it doesn't make it feel like a different game.
I love WJ so much, I’m currently using a modified version of Legends of the Frost. I was gonna try out Tempus Maledictum a while ago, but I was put off by the awful documentation.
I never found the documentation bad, Lively is usually good about the readmes. Though it's just a simple "install it like this" readme, not a full-depth thing with a ton of options
Wow, that's a spectacular mod list. I recognize an awful lot of that from the oldrim days, good to see so much of it made it all over to SSE. No Requiem on that list though, so I'd probably start with Wanderlust and then integrate every other mod in this set that's remotely compatible with Requiem. This set has a focus on bugfixes, gameplay improvements, and upgrading all of the locations and art. It's perfect.
Yeah, I can't stand that :D
It's what I meant by the list keeping the feel of the game - I've tried Requiem and it feels too much like an attempt to do Dark Souls in Skyrim... and I'm not a fan of the Souls-like playstyle.
The great thing about mods is that you can do stuff like this, though! :D
My big problem with Requiem is that it seems designed without care for world and quest design. Most Draugr for example are supposed to be common pests used in many quests intended for low-level players, but in requiem they are an insurmountable wall for low level players so they are locked out of many quests that the game intends for them. I'd like Requiem more if they integrated their deleveling with the quest and world design. Other than that and a few utterly bizarre things (full plate...) I like it quite a bit, but I can't see myself returning to it.
I'm busy with a playthrough using The Phoenix Flavour: Dragon's Edition. It is a heavy modpack like Tempus Maledictum (though not quite as heavy), but tries to be mostly lore-friendly. It can be hard for me to tell what it adds and what is vanilla at times. Doesn't add things like Nemesis for example.
Enderal, it's a total conversion mod that uses Skyrim as a base to make an entirely new game. It has a compelling story and characters, it's a fair bit harder than Skyrim, significantly better dungeon design than Skyrim, and it's fully voiced in both English and German (I can't comment on the German VO, but the English voices are, most of the time, extremely good). And you can still use most Skyrim mods for Enderal as well as it having its own modding community. It's one of my favorite games and I wish more people knew about it and played it.
The one that makes all the mudcrabs wear little top hats.
I’ll start with something I came across recently: the SFW version of CBBE. I was always hesitant to delve deep into character and NPC customisation because of the type of mods that are release in that space, but it was really easy to set up w/ nevernude bodies in bodyslide (which I hadn’t used before). I’m using both CBBE and HIMBO with super variable sliders, so there are all sorts of body types around the place. One thing I haven’t gotten into yet is AutoBody/OBody (standalone, because it requires ostim otherwise 😬), I don’t know if I’m ready to risk breaking my otherwise functional list for that.
As you can see, I am all about the vibes, the ambiance, and the animal companions.
How have I not heard of Simple Little Buddies before? That's hilarious, I love the fungal familiar.
It's a good one! I found it because I have done some pretty deep dives in the Nexus catalogue to find quirky little mods that don't show up near the top when sorting by most popular and don't tend to be mentioned in places like reddit. For example, browsing every mod on Nexus that mentions the word "mushroom" or "halloween" (for Skyrim and Stardew Valley!)
Oh goodness, I just re-modded my Skyrim and so far I'm quite happy about the setup. It's nearly 200 mods, so I won't go into all of them, but some highlights:
I haven't installed Skyrim on my new computer so these might be dated. Other than the major ones like SKSE and the unofficial patch mod, I really liked the one that gave you Dark Souls-like combat targeting. I also had a lot of immersion based mods to make NPCs more varied and add some quest lines. Populated Roads and Cities was one that I used I think.
My hope is ChatGPT type features will make NPC dialogue super immersive someday. The most immersion breaking thing for me was the small size of the cities and small number and homogeneity of the "generic" non quest related NPCs.
I've been out of the loop on Skyrim for a while now. When I was playing Oldrim I spent a weekend and built the legendary version of Requiem. I bundled in dozens of other content mods on top of it. Best time I spent modding, it all worked like fine wine together though that was one tedious build. I still have that backed up as a sixty gig file and can get it running again in about an hour on a fresh install.
I've been meaning to do something like that again with the newer Special Edition engine, which is a colossal upgrade over the older game engine. I see that there is a continuation of Requiem for SKSE and I also see that Wildlander is basically Requiem + Content so I'd start there... and then gradually add every other major content mod I can find to it until it explodes.
This Wabbajack tool is interesting. Where was that the last time I spent weekends doing this? :P I'm also interested in seeing how Skyblivion turns out.
I'd second Wildlander. It (and its predecessor Ultimate Skyrim) are my favourite Requiem modpacks. Requiem is fine with just a few mods too though, as it is a full overhaul and has plenty of 'new' experiences just on its own.