Improving Skyrim / Recommended Mods thread (Mostly about Requiem)

[Drax]

Right?
What a nerve...

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Fuck off, DreadMessiah.

On other news, I made "killable children" obsolete.

mental anguish > death

And if you disrespect me again, your mom is next.

 

[DraQ]

I've recently beat Mirmulnir on Mighty Dragons (nightmare, unleveled), but it required carefully formulated approach just to keep him from healing up in the time it took me to say "oh fuck I'm screwed" and a healthy dose of desperate badassery to actually bring him down (currently at level 20).
Anything short of NM doesn't mesh well with Requiem because then the guards just shoot him to pieces with murderbows. On NM I can honestly say that I took crucial part in this battle because without my input Mirmulnir would heal his scaly ass faster than the guards could damage him and just nom, burninate or fusrodah them around at his leisure.

Also installed Requiem Plus to get rid of invisible entities which are one immensely retarded asshole feature I wish Requiem didn't have.

mental anguish > death

Ok, that was a pretty asshole thing to do.

Speaking of mental anguish:

Thanks for sharing the link to that manual. Now I know to stay away from that mod as well. All I want is enemies not to be so damn laughable when it comes to hp and damage output. They jump way too much from nothing to over done at certain transition points. This game is horribly "balanced" in so many damn respects.

Also not looking to play dnd skyrim thanks. Especially some pricks mod. Stuff your damn smugness arrogance up your ass modder fairy.

Spoiler

Not that butthurt is an unusual reaction to Requiem, but most people experience it only after they have started playing.

 

[hell bovine]

I've recently beat Mirmulnir on Mighty Dragons (nightmare, unleveled), but it required carefully formulated approach just to keep him from healing up in the time it took me to say "oh fuck I'm screwed" and a healthy dose of desperate badassery to actually bring him down (currently at level 20).
Anything short of NM doesn't mesh well with Requiem because then the guards just shoot him to pieces with murderbows. On NM I can honestly say that I took crucial part in this battle because without my input Mirmulnir would heal his scaly ass faster than the guards could damage him and just nom, burninate or fusrodah them around at his leisure.

Also installed Requiem Plus to get rid of invisible entities which are one immensely retarded asshole feature I wish Requiem didn't have.

I think an invisible enemy is a nice idea, but not possible to implement in Skyrim, because they are invisible only to the Dragonborn. If you have summons or followers (especially since in some places you can't get rid of Serana; she's more persistent than a leech), they see them just fine. Makes fighting them feel rather stupid.

 

[DraQ]

I think an invisible enemy is a nice idea, but not possible to implement in Skyrim, because they are invisible only to the Dragonborn.

Much more importantly - invisible enemy is a nice idea IF you have some means of detecting them and/or they don't one-hit you.

Invisible entities are just plain awful - there are no tell-tale signs they could be lurking ahead (like you could infer that you're about to get raped by Falmer, Dwemer constructs, spiders, vampires, assorted wildlife and so forth), they are undetectable by standard detection spells (only that single shout IIRC), they don't allow you to use environment to track them (like you could with Bloodsuckers in STALKER: CoP) or employ clever tricks to visualize them and they hit for awfully massive damage meaning you usually only learn of them after they have killed you.

They are retarded and cheap, plain and simple.
And, for reference, I'm the kind of person that considers being instakilled by an arrow (as in earlier versions) or blown up by single hypersonic fireball good fun and not cheap at all.

Player should *always* have an opportunity to prepare *or* react to a threat.
That doesn't mean that the threat should be telegraphed or obvious, but if the only way to check for threat is getting killed by it, then you fucked up.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Regular invisibility works for every character, not just the PC. There is a dummied spell for casting it on other people, even. The Entities apparently achieve their "invisibility" by not having meshes or textures (so followers can "see" them just fine). Detect life/undead don't work on machine or daedra enemies, which may explain their immunity. I've read that Xarrian (original author) intended them to be Xivilai who liked to cast invisibility, but couldn't find a good model for them and settled for the current abomination. Who knows, it's so insane it might be true. Modders gonna mod.

By the way, Requiem Plus wasn't updated for Requiem 1.8 so there might be some issues. The entity fix probably works still, but it's something to keep in mind. DISREGARD THAT I SUCK COCKS

 

[DraQ]

Regular invisibility works for every character, not just the PC.

One more reason to hate the entities as they are retarded AND broken.
And to patch them the fuck out.

Won't mind not having to heal my horse up all the time either, or being able to advance crafting skills at reasonable pace.

I'll keep the stamina cost for jumping, though - it just feels right and is a meaningful factor in combat when you're trying to take an acrobatic shortcut to an enemy.

There is a dummied spell for casting it on other people, even.

One more reason to brutalize the fucker who came up with the idea to remove spellmaker comatose.

By the way, Requiem Plus wasn't updated for Requiem 1.8 so there might be some issues. The entity fix probably works still, but it's something to keep in mind.

It's stated to have been updated for 1.8.1.1

 

[bloodlover]

Anyone that could advise me on what setting to use for Requiem? Leveling, respawning, weight etc. I am not going for the ULTRA 1337 HARDC0R3 experience fyi so no shit like "max all".

 

[Perkel]

Anyone that could advise me on what setting to use for Requiem? Leveling, respawning, weight etc. I am not going for the ULTRA 1337 HARDC0R3 experience fyi so no shit like "max all".

If damage multiplier in combat is to big for you (to much damage on both sides) then switch it to 2x or 1x. Aside from that there is poison visual effects in options which imo in requiem is waaaaaaay overdone.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Not sure I understand. Requiem already changes all that stuff.

Edit: oh, you mean the MCM options. Default is probably best as it's H4RDC0R3 enough and balanced. But I like to make doublecasting a bit cheaper and a bit stronger, to compensate for having both hands full. Around 2.5x stronger spells for 2.0x the cost.

 

[DraQ]

Anyone that could advise me on what setting to use for Requiem? Leveling, respawning, weight etc. I am not going for the ULTRA 1337 HARDC0R3 experience fyi so no shit like "max all".

I don't mess around much.
I generally keep most stuff at default, but increase deathcam duration, decrease respawn times (it will probably take closer to month than a year for wildlife/bandits/some other squatters to reoccupy an area I made vacant, plus it's less data to save) and disable bow breaking (some uniques are breakable, plus the script seems to fail for NPCs in my game - if I want to disable archer in melee I bash them to disarm them anyway). I may tweak NPC accuracy, but it's hard to strike balance between them being accurate and not predictable.

 

[Delterius]

Only things I've changed in Requiem so far was decreasing spawn rates, enabling fast travel and allowing myself to walk around without exhaustion.

 

[bloodlover]

Does Requiem change some graphical settings that I don't know of? The game is unplayable because of the low FPS and this only happened after I installed the mod. I changed my setting to LOW and the game still runs like crap. Is there a separate .ini folder now or some kind of way to launch the game while still having the "options" setting?

 

[DraQ]

Does Requiem change some graphical settings that I don't know of? The game is unplayable because of the low FPS and this only happened after I installed the mod. I changed my setting to LOW and the game still runs like crap. Is there a separate .ini folder now or some kind of way to launch the game while still having the "options" setting?

Skyrim mods typically run tons of scripts in the background and often are not super well optimized (i.e. they just run checks for things constantly when you realistically only need to do it every X frames). Especially if you have mods with conflicting scripts running at once, they can all pile up and really kill performance.

Yup. Skyrim's scripting engine is its biggest bottleneck and if the mod needs to do something advanced, it pretty much has to use scripting engine.

 

[bloodlover]

Guess I won't be playing Skyrim any time soon then. I could without modding the game but that's not really worth doing. Oh well... one more year for the dust to sleep over the box.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

You could just install less demanding mods. This one for example is pretty extensive and has no scripts, give it a try and see how the performance feels.

http://erkeilmods.altervista.org/skyrim/r-s-o/

 

[DraQ]

You could just install less demanding mods. This one for example is pretty extensive and has no scripts, give it a try and see how the performance feels.

http://erkeilmods.altervista.org/skyrim/r-s-o/

Also *less* mods.

When you have tens of mods competing for the scripting engine, well, yeah - I think you see where it goes.

Basically install what you actually *need* - would you rather have some fancy scripted scabbards for offhand weapons and whatnot, or jiggly boobs, or would you rather have something that actually helps your gameplay?

 

[Avellion]

I want to give some combat/gameplay mods a try. Any suggestions?

I was going to recommend this,



But then I heard it was in third person, and may not support first person... ever. So... Deadly Combat and Duel-Combat realism.

 

[Eirikur]

Here's a couple of small mods I created in order to remedy two pet peeves of mine, as someone who prefers to support the Stormcloaks:

• Consistent Vignar Gray-Mane
• Nord Housecarl for Lakeview Manor

 

[A horse of course]

You could just install less demanding mods. This one for example is pretty extensive and has no scripts, give it a try and see how the performance feels.

http://erkeilmods.altervista.org/skyrim/r-s-o/

Also *less* mods.

When you have tens of mods competing for the scripting engine, well, yeah - I think you see where it goes.

Basically install what you actually *need* - would you rather have some fancy scripted scabbards for offhand weapons and whatnot, or jiggly boobs, or would you rather have something that actually helps your gameplay?

But jiggly boobs help my gameplay very much

 

[DraQ]

Here's a couple of small mods I created in order to remedy two pet peeves of mine, as someone who prefers to support the Stormcloaks:

• Consistent Vignar Gray-Mane
• Nord Housecarl for Lakeview Manor

Eh, I'd expect Nords to consider Redguards pretty chill - no shared border so no historical grounds for animosity, strong warrior culture, they both got fucked by Empire's concessions to Thalmor.
Sure there's going to be some racism and distrust (not to mention curved swords), but with neither a history of border skirmishes, forced cottonpicking, nor mudslimes Nords and Redguards would probably treat each other in pretty bro manner and after getting over initial reservations there is no reason single Redgaurd individuals couldn't rise to relative prominence in Nord society.

tl;dr
Both white and black bros are too busy hating on pointy ones to hate on each other.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Clearly this mod is racist.

 

[DraQ]

Clearly this mod is racist.

With so much in-universe racism you need to fail pretty hard to make a mod that's racist in stupid, unsubstantiated manner.

 

[hell bovine]

You could just install less demanding mods. This one for example is pretty extensive and has no scripts, give it a try and see how the performance feels.

http://erkeilmods.altervista.org/skyrim/r-s-o/

Also *less* mods.

When you have tens of mods competing for the scripting engine, well, yeah - I think you see where it goes.

Basically install what you actually *need* - would you rather have some fancy scripted scabbards for offhand weapons and whatnot, or jiggly boobs, or would you rather have something that actually helps your gameplay?

But jiggly boobs help my gameplay very much

To be honest, even though it had an annoying tendency to go all "angry tentacles" at my characters head, I probably wouldn't play without the Merida's hair mod anymore. I even started playing melee because of that hair - axe swinging, blood spraying and hair swooshing, it just looked so nice. :D

 

[circ]

Meridia's hair is a joke. Not only does it look like something died on your head, but the physics are crap.

Oh yeah and guy with FPS issues, bloodsomething?

You could try cleaning your save file with a script cleaner. Might help if you've uninstalled mods with scripts.

Or try these settings for SkyrimPrefs.ini:

[Papyrus]
fUpdateBudgetMS=1.8
fExtraTaskletBudgetMS=1.8
iMinMemoryPageSize=128
iMaxMemoryPageSize=512
iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=230400
fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=500.0

vanilla fUpdateBudgetMS is 1.2 I think, same for fExtraTasklet. I think those are vanilla memory page sizes. Allocated memory got a boost from about 70k memory pool to I think triple? PostLoadUpdate is just the time Skyrim waits between load screens to load scripts - setting it to 2000 is pointless because it will always use the max amount then, and 500 seems to work fine.

Anyway, those are all fairly small increments - causing minimal frames drain, whilst speeding script handling quite a bit. There is some really retarded advice on the net though, like raising Update Budget as high as 500. Lololol. And allocating like 1 gig of memory. Unfortunately papyrus is a piece of shit and the overhead will be massive. Don't do that.