The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - MODS & TWEAKS

Scougar · 14 Apr 2012 at 23:07

Just like in Oblivion, I hate the way they do shadow's in this game. Too dark to see people's faces properly a lot of the time, and always flickering. Where do I go from here? (I'm playing it for the first time at the moment).

Also.. what is up with some random REALLY bad textures on things like cages?

opethdisciple · 15 Apr 2012 at 01:24

I've played about 44 hours so far, I am up to the bit in the story line where I take on A for the first time having retrieved the E.

Im a axe warrior, but have been using Wuuthrad since the beginning when I found it. (Base damage is up to 90 now)

Havent found a single weapon even close to its power.....

What am I missing?

yashiro · 15 Apr 2012 at 01:40

In the base game you cannot improve Wuuthrad and it is worse than a Daedric Battleaxe.

So either you have/use a mod that allows you to improve Wuuthrad or you use Blacksmithing to make weapons far stronger than Wuuthrad.

Also.. what is up with some random REALLY bad textures on things like cages?

The games textures were designed to run on the Xbox. The Xbox is a cheap kids toy.

opethdisciple · 15 Apr 2012 at 01:58

yashiro said:
In the base game you cannot improve Wuuthrad and it is worse than a Daedric Battleaxe.

So either you have/use a mod to allows you to improve Wuuthrad or you use Blacksmithing to make weapons far stronger than Wuuthrad.

The games textures were designed to run on the Xbox. The Xbox is a cheap kids toy.

You saying I will not find any thing better than Wuuthrad, and will have to fashion one?

yashiro · 15 Apr 2012 at 03:01

As far as basic 2H axes go, yes, you probably won't find a better one. Eventually you will find random Daedric weapons in chests after around level 45 if you don't bother to take up Blacksmithing.

CaptainRAVE · 15 Apr 2012 at 08:01

Scougar said:
Just like in Oblivion, I hate the way they do shadow's in this game. Too dark to see people's faces properly a lot of the time, and always flickering. Where do I go from here? (I'm playing it for the first time at the moment).

Also.. what is up with some random REALLY bad textures on things like cages?

Get Skyrim HD

UltraDad · 15 Apr 2012 at 08:04

Scougar said:
Just like in Oblivion, I hate the way they do shadow's in this game. Too dark to see people's faces properly a lot of the time, and always flickering. Where do I go from here? (I'm playing it for the first time at the moment).

Also.. what is up with some random REALLY bad textures on things like cages?

The shadows in game are the worst i seen for a long time, so i just switched them off

IF you go into your SkyrimPrefs.ini in my documents and make the following changes, it disables all shadows.

fShadowDistance=0.0000
fInteriorShadowDistance=0.0000
fShadowLODStartFade=0.0000

Got that from the nexus forums, best improvements i have used with no FPS loss are Skyrim HD - 2K Textures by NebuLa, Static Mesh Improvement Mod - SMIM by Brumbek, ULTRA REALISTIC WORLD LIGHTING for Skryim BETA by Marco, WATER - Water And Terrain Enhancement Redux by OpticShooter and Better Dynamic Snow by OpticShooter and Brumbek

The rest is just the map, clothes, weapons etc but it makes the game so much better

Leeroy123 · 15 Apr 2012 at 11:45

Whats the best way to fix the poor blocky shadows. I play the game on max settings and have installed the pack through steam, but the games shadows still look like an old amiga 1200 game!!! any way around it? they are actually so bad i can't take the game seriously and actually spend time playing it...

bakes0310 · 15 Apr 2012 at 11:48

CaptainRAVE said:
Skyrim HD is about a million times better - much more demanding though.

Theres like 4 different versions though, dungeons, landscapes etc. You cant activate them all at the same time though?

Mr Krugga · 15 Apr 2012 at 11:59

bakes0310 said:
Theres like 4 different versions though, dungeons, landscapes etc. You cant activate them all at the same time though?

Yes, you can.

Leeroy123 said:
Whats the best way to fix the poor blocky shadows. I play the game on max settings and have installed the pack through steam, but the games shadows still look like an old amiga 1200 game!!! any way around it? they are actually so bad i can't take the game seriously and actually spend time playing it...

Lower the shadow distance. You won't see as many shadows on distant objects but the ones closer to you will be of higher resolution.

In SkyrimPrefs.ini:

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=3 (default value; 0-2 will give sharper shadows, but perhaps more blocky at low resolution, 4-6 will result in softer and more blurry shadows)

fInteriorShadowDistance=3000 (leave on default)

fShadowDistance=8000 (8000=Ultra preset; relatively low resolution but far distance; 4000=High preset; slightly higher resolution and lower distance)

bTreesReceiveShadows=1 (switching them on makes a difference to trees that now receive shadows...)

bDrawLandShadows=1 (apparently makes a difference but I haven't noticed any)

iShadowMapResolution=4096 (self-explanatory)

iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=1024 (you can tweak this value from 512-4096, see what gives you the best results; try Secondary=2048 and Primary=4096 for starters)
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=2048 (as above)

bakes0310 · 15 Apr 2012 at 12:04

Mr Krugga said:
Yes, you can.

I must have not tried properly then. Cheers ill get them instead of the serious verison

Mr Krugga · 15 Apr 2012 at 12:10

UltraDad said:
The shadows in game are the worst i seen for a long time, so i just switched them off

IF you go into your SkyrimPrefs.ini in my documents and make the following changes, it disables all shadows.

fShadowDistance=0.0000
fInteriorShadowDistance=0.0000
fShadowLODStartFade=0.0000

Counter-productive, really, the game looks far worse without shadows on, even though they aren't pretty.

Got that from the nexus forums, best improvements i have used with no FPS loss are Skyrim HD - 2K Textures by NebuLa, Static Mesh Improvement Mod - SMIM by Brumbek, ULTRA REALISTIC WORLD LIGHTING for Skryim BETA by Marco, WATER - Water And Terrain Enhancement Redux by OpticShooter and Better Dynamic Snow by OpticShooter and Brumbek

Good for you, except almost all these mods affect FPS, regardless of whether you noticed it or not. If your game ran at already low framerates, you wouldn't want to install high resolution mods, at least not the largest textures.

And Ultra Realistic World Lighting is just terrible. You can use Imaginator yourself and get the same over saturated results with it.

blasphemyweb · 15 Apr 2012 at 12:15

bakes0310 said:
I must have not tried properly then. Cheers ill get them instead of the serious verison

If your installing using Nexus Mod manager, install the first part (doesn't matter what one), when you click to activate the next one it will ask you if you want to update the mod with this one, click no. Rinse and repeat for the other parts.

Mr Krugga · 15 Apr 2012 at 12:17

blasphemyweb said:
If your installing using Nexus Mod manager, install the first part (doesn't matter what one), when you click to activate the next one it will ask you if you want to update the mod with this one, click no. Rinse and repeat for the other parts.

To explain this a little further, if you choose "Yes", your mod will act as one which means disabling any part of the mod will result in disabling the whole mod. Good for updates but not so much for mods that are in parts where it's easier to just tweak certain parts or disable them when needed. Which is why you should choose "Yes".

CaptainRAVE · 15 Apr 2012 at 14:27

Have installed a load of new mods, including the sexy cities, new houses, lands etc. still need to get the main ENB mod working - I installed it,must everything appeared blurry. Not sure what has happened to the FXAA injector mod that I used to use. Updated it,must nothing seems as vibrant anymore

- guess it always was a little OTT though. Still need to look at the ultra realistic world lighting and snow HQ texture (although skyrim HD probably included this anyway).

Mr Krugga · 15 Apr 2012 at 14:51

CaptainRAVE said:
Have installed a load of new mods, including the sexy cities, new houses, lands etc. still need to get the main ENB mod working - I installed it,must everything appeared blurry. Not sure what has happened to the FXAA injector mod that I used to use. Updated it,must nothing seems as vibrant anymore - guess it always was a little OTT though. Still need to look at the ultra realistic world lighting and snow HQ texture (although skyrim HD probably included this anyway).

Sexy cities - jRPG towns? no thanks...

new houses, lands - links?

main ENB mod - tried tweaking blur/DoF? I don't use ENB configs because of the fps hit and they're too bright for my liking

FXAA injector mod - which one? the one with an installer? that was so oversatured, it hurt my eyes...

ultra realistic world lighting - it's terrible and judging from the comments, the guy is just learning how to mod

snow HQ texture - not included in Skyrim HD, he uses his own snow textures but they aren't perfect. I use the ones included with Realistic Lighting mod now but there was another set with nice textures as well. Better Dynamic Snow is a must too.

CaptainRAVE · 15 Apr 2012 at 14:57

Mr Krugga said:
Sexy cities - jRPG towns? no thanks...

new houses, lands - links?

main ENB mod - tried tweaking blur/DoF? I don't use ENB configs because of the fps hit and they're too bright for my liking

FXAA injector mod - which one? the one with an installer? that was so oversatured, it hurt my eyes...

ultra realistic world lighting - it's terrible and judging from the comments, the guy is just learning how to mod

snow HQ texture - not included in Skyrim HD, he uses his own snow textures but they aren't perfect. I use the ones included with Realistic Lighting mod now but there was another set with nice textures as well. Better Dynamic Snow is a must too.

Sexy cities I haven't tried yet, so am curious to see how they look. Think it is a personal taste type thing.

New houses and lands - I have just picked the top few most downloaded from each category

ENB is going to take a lot of tweaking, won't have time for a little while.

FXAA - yep the installer one and one of the first few mods. It doesn't oversaturate like it used to.

Guess I will skip the realistic lighting for the time being then.

The better dynamic snow is definitely a fantastic mod

Is there a list anywhere of a good combination of graphic mods/tweaks? The OP was useful, but Neil hasn't updated it much for a while.

Mr Krugga · 15 Apr 2012 at 15:21

CaptainRAVE said:
Sexy cities I haven't tried yet, so am curious to see how they look. Think it is a personal taste type thing.

New houses and lands - I have just picked the top few most downloaded from each category

ENB is going to take a lot of tweaking, won't have time for a little while.

FXAA - yep the installer one and one of the first few mods. It doesn't oversaturate like it used to.

Guess I will skip the realistic lighting for the time being then.

The better dynamic snow is definitely a fantastic mod

Is there a list anywhere of a good combination of graphic mods/tweaks? The OP was useful, but Neil hasn't updated it much for a while.

Mr Krugga said:
Post #1712 and #1893.

Didn't have time to update it yet.

As for tweaks, Nvidia's Guide is decent.

CaptainRAVE · 15 Apr 2012 at 15:34

Mr Krugga said:
1) Gameplay Mods:

Deadly Dragons + PISE + Wars in Skyrim -> couldn't live without them.

Seriously, vanilla Skyrim is way too easy, try starting up a new character (an old one will be too overpowered already) with these three mods and choose Expert/Master difficulty, that's where the true RPG fans will find the essence of this game.I don't recommend Heroes and Villains for starters or higher levels of Wars in Skyrim (Rainbow and Normal are fine).

Warzones is a great mod that works well with Wars in Skyrim but alters the gameplay too much to my liking. Great for the end game though.

2) Interface:

SkyUI + Better Sorting + Categorized Favorites Menu + CFM Mods Supported
And A Quality World Map for the new world map.

3) Essential Texture Mods:

First of all, make sure you have the official HD Pack and HD Textures DLC Fix.

OR

Bethesda Hi-Res DLC Optimized, which merges the two and optimises some textures for better performance.

Skyrim HD - 2K Textures (the largest texture mod out there, high resolution textures for pretty much anything)
Realistic Water Textures
Static Mesh Improvement Mod
Enhanced Distant Terrain
Skyrim Flora Overhaul
Bellyaches Animal and Creature Pack
Better Dynamic Snow
Glowing Ore Veins 300

Optional:

Realistic Lighting With Customization

4) Tools:

Nexus Mod Manager
Mod Organiser - NMM alternative with more options
BOSS - load order sorting

5) Resources:

Skyrim Nexus
Steam Workshop - Skyrim
Curse - Skyrim
SkyForge

Script Dragon and Sky Boost
SKSE

Skyrim Tips
IGN Guide to Skyrim
Skyrim Wiki
UESP - First Time Players Tips
Guide to Load Orders (now obsolete)

Watch this space, I'll make a comprehensive list for both new and advanced players at any level.

CaptainRAVE · 15 Apr 2012 at 15:34

Mr Krugga said:
Just a heads up, Realisting Lighting 3.4 Beta includes a few other mods now, namely Alternate Sunglare, Vibrant Auroras, Enhanced Distant Terrain and Better Dynamic Snow (plus some HQ Snow textures).

Realistic Water Textures is no longer in development by isoku (the guy stopped working on Skyrim mods now) and has been taken over by WATER (OpticShooter). WATER includes GetWet and Wet Rocks mods as well.

So for me it goes like this:

1) Optimised Bethesda's High Resolution Texture Pack - 2048+1024 Hybrid (included in my previous link)
2) Skyrim HD - 2K Textures Lite
3) WATER with extras
4) Realistic Lighting and the other mods it comes with