The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - MODS & TWEAKS

So I ended up purchasing the Legendary edition off the Steam sales, so will be re-installing Skyrim and starting again:)

My question is this - I still have my mods (around 200) saved and I am hearing a lot of good things regarding Mod Organiser. Should I start using this over NMM to update and re-install my mods?

It seems the main advantage MO has is that it stores all the mods in separate folders, so nothing gets overwritten. Are you then free to create rules/tell MO which mod has priority over conflicting resources?
 
Finally gave Alternative Start - Live Another Life a go and it's incredible how much of a difference it makes to the game. Skyrim feels fresh again, I'm doing stuff I never would have otherwise done, and it makes the starting level(s) so much harder without Helgen and Riverwood as a crutch to level you up a bit. Cannot recommend this enough.

Also, I'm another fan of Mod Organizer. The fact that it instances your mods and keeps them out of your main Skyrim install completely is incredible, so much easier and cleaner. Not to mention it has it's own ini files for Skryim which you can edit directly in the program itself which is incredibly handy. It's only real fault for me is that it's visual indicator for an installed mod is harder to see, but that's insignificant in the face of it's greater benefits. So yes, use it!
 
What's so great about Alternative Start? I seen the mod and looked at it but doesn't it just spawn you elsewhere with a small house or something?

Anyway, am trying to decide if I should disable Towns and Villages Enhanced - Riverwood : http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/18952/ since it's the cause of my FPS problems in Riverwood, can't move or look anywhere without my FPS dropping and starting but it does make Riverwood awesome.

If I keep it, I might disable Eyefinity and see about playing on one monitor.. but that's a pain in the ass since I will have to rotate my center monitor and move the other two to the sides a bit for that to work!

That and I think I got a broken mod or something which is crashing my game in a few minutes in. :l

Looking for house mods now, once that's installed, am going to try playing for a few hours and see what happens.
 
It just changes how you play. Instead of doing the same thing in the same path with basically the same playstyle it can change how you play completely. There are around 10-15 choices of where to start which have a significant impact on what you do. Only one of them gives you a home I think, you can start as a new recruit in the guilds, or you can start as a prisoner escaping a prison, as a necromancer (which is hard as nails I here as you need to escape from enemies you can't kill yet) etc.

For example I chose the "Took a boat into Skyrim" option which put me in Windhelm docks with just normal clothes and a mace. From there, since there was no Riverwood to gift me with full armor and potions I actually scrounged a bit and did the small quests that I usually ignore, which was a nice change.

And as I say, the starting levels are a lot harder too without the handholding, so it's been more interesting too. Mainly it just introduced me to quests that I hadn't really seen before and areas I hadn't spent much time in previously.

So yeah, I recommend it :)
 
Got a quick question myself actually, I'm looking at mods to overhaul the magic system since I'm going for a mage character once more, but there are a couple and I'm torn.

I noticed that Balanced Magic seems to be the most endorsed and the least intrusive in other areas (it just scales, doesn't change perks) but it's massively out of date. Is it still usable or am I better off looking elsewhere?

If it isn't recommended anymore, which out of Better Magic and Empowered Magic are the better options? (If either)
 
Definitely going to give Mod Organiser a try in the future, though I guess it's a bit of work to move to it if your game is already modded up using NMM?

On an unrelated note, it seems like following my re-install the game is less stable than I had it before - I get relatively frequent CTDs with no error whatsoever. Seems to mainly happen when outside in the main "Skyrim" overworld and maybe my imagination but seems to happen often when on horseback (though not necessarily when riding along fast)

I had a quicksave earlier where game CTD'd a few seconds after I quicksaved and if I reloaded the save it would happen again at the exact same moment every time... Eventually I got around it by quickly opening the menu when I loaded the save and doing another save, then it seemed to be okay for a bit

Any ideas where to start trying to track this down? Is there any sort of profiler/debugger I can use to get an idea for what is happening internally when the CTDs happen? I tried using the papyrus save cleaner and although it reports a lot of warnings etc. using the basic clean doesn't seem to make a difference
 
uncle_rufus said:
Definitely going to give Mod Organiser a try in the future, though I guess it's a bit of work to move to it if your game is already modded up using NMM?

On an unrelated note, it seems like following my re-install the game is less stable than I had it before - I get relatively frequent CTDs with no error whatsoever. Seems to mainly happen when outside in the main "Skyrim" overworld and maybe my imagination but seems to happen often when on horseback (though not necessarily when riding along fast)

I had a quicksave earlier where game CTD'd a few seconds after I quicksaved and if I reloaded the save it would happen again at the exact same moment every time... Eventually I got around it by quickly opening the menu when I loaded the save and doing another save, then it seemed to be okay for a bit

Any ideas where to start trying to track this down? Is there any sort of profiler/debugger I can use to get an idea for what is happening internally when the CTDs happen? I tried using the papyrus save cleaner and although it reports a lot of warnings etc. using the basic clean doesn't seem to make a difference
Click to expand...

I can't help on the CTD's, but I can give an opinion on Mod Organiser. It's good, very good, I converted from NMM after I had a few clashes with mods. Some over writing others etc.

With MO, you get more control over what's going on, it will alert you and mention if a data file is being over written and made redundant, or it will clearly indicate which mods over rule others and you simply move them into order. It's very handy.

You can even go right down and disable certain files. Such as the high res packs (can't remember which ones, the ones everyone uses) has a sun file which makes the sun shine through solid objects. It really annoys me, MO allowed me to disable that one file rather than having to disable the mod.

I've not played in a while, but Omeaka mentioned some quest mods last night and now I want to get stuck in again :D
 
Didn't have as much time as I planned last night but had a quick look at MO - seems you can automatically pull in all your mods from NMM, then deactivate them in NMM and just start using MO.

It does seem to give you a lot more control than NMM does, but has a slightly higher learning curve - shall play with it more tonight!
 
BubbySoup said:
Didn't have as much time as I planned last night but had a quick look at MO - seems you can automatically pull in all your mods from NMM, then deactivate them in NMM and just start using MO.

It does seem to give you a lot more control than NMM does, but has a slightly higher learning curve - shall play with it more tonight!
Click to expand...

Again, once you get used to it, it's as easy as NMM is. Just a tad more involved but with more of a reward.

Tonight, I might uninstall everything and focus on modding the game back up again, based off STEP.

Why I bother I don't know...
 
uncle_rufus said:
I take it you then have to download things "manually" instead of using the "Download with NMM" link on Nexus?
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Nope, you can setup MO with your nexus account and it associates the links with MO. So it's no different.

Actually, that's a lie, it's a little more involved. So lets say you've put in your account details and have then made sure MO is associated with the links (just google, lots of info out there, not hard in the slightest. If you installed Skyrim, then you are already smart enough).

So, you click the link, it saves in a default location which you set in the MO settings. I have a download folder in my Skyrim install folder. Then once it's downloaded, you need to open that download and then it installs.

It's one pain in the arse compared to NMM, granted. As it's easy downloading and installing on NMM.
 
uncle_rufus said:
Definitely going to give Mod Organiser a try in the future, though I guess it's a bit of work to move to it if your game is already modded up using NMM?

On an unrelated note, it seems like following my re-install the game is less stable than I had it before - I get relatively frequent CTDs with no error whatsoever. Seems to mainly happen when outside in the main "Skyrim" overworld and maybe my imagination but seems to happen often when on horseback (though not necessarily when riding along fast)

I had a quicksave earlier where game CTD'd a few seconds after I quicksaved and if I reloaded the save it would happen again at the exact same moment every time... Eventually I got around it by quickly opening the menu when I loaded the save and doing another save, then it seemed to be okay for a bit

Any ideas where to start trying to track this down? Is there any sort of profiler/debugger I can use to get an idea for what is happening internally when the CTDs happen? I tried using the papyrus save cleaner and although it reports a lot of warnings etc. using the basic clean doesn't seem to make a difference
Click to expand...

I know this isn't exactly a fix, and more of a workaround but I have 50+ mods installed at the minute, but none of them require SKSE and I haven't had a single CTD yet. I have quite a lot of beefy content mods, 2 of which were quests that had objectives at the same place, went there the second time and saw all the stuff from the previous quest :p still no CTD though.
 
Hmm I'm not sure I can live without SKSE sadly... I think I have around 100 mods and many of them require it...

It's just a bit disappointing because prior to getting the DLC and re-installing my game was pretty stable and I didn't have many problems at all...
 
uncle_rufus said:
Hmm I'm not sure I can live without SKSE sadly... I think I have around 100 mods and many of them require it...

It's just a bit disappointing because prior to getting the DLC and re-installing my game was pretty stable and I didn't have many problems at all...
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This is another area where Mod Organizer would be superior as it only loads in active mods to the Skryim instance. So whereas with NMM there might be leftover files in your Skyrim directory which might be conflicting, with Mod Organizer once you've unticked the box it's no longer loaded in - it makes troubleshooting much easier, for sure.
 
agnes said:
Again, once you get used to it, it's as easy as NMM is. Just a tad more involved but with more of a reward.

Tonight, I might uninstall everything and focus on modding the game back up again, based off STEP.

Why I bother I don't know...
Click to expand...

Ha, I know how you feel. I actually start feeling a little uneasy if I can play Skyrim for longer than an hour or 2 without something breaking. I inevitably start adding more mods until it starts to crash, usually a bunch at a time so i'm not actually sure which new mod is now causing issues.

Thus Skyrim reveals it's secondary, often more time consuming sink than actually playing :D
 
agnes said:
Nope, you can setup MO with your nexus account and it associates the links with MO. So it's no different.

Actually, that's a lie, it's a little more involved. So lets say you've put in your account details and have then made sure MO is associated with the links (just google, lots of info out there, not hard in the slightest. If you installed Skyrim, then you are already smart enough).

So, you click the link, it saves in a default location which you set in the MO settings. I have a download folder in my Skyrim install folder. Then once it's downloaded, you need to open that download and then it installs.

It's one pain in the arse compared to NMM, granted. As it's easy downloading and installing on NMM.
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Don't know what you doing, but you don't need to manually click anything with MO to install files, the only time you ever need to manually need to open a mod to install if the download servers are not working.
 
IronWarrior said:
Don't know what you doing, but you don't need to manually click anything with MO to install files, the only time you ever need to manually need to open a mod to install if the download servers are not working.
Click to expand...

Are you sure? Are we getting our wires crossed?

I have to click a link on Nexus, which then auto downloads through NM to it's download folder. Then I can import it using NM's import and then select said downloaded mod.

As I said, tonight I will totally delete Skyrim, any save files on the cloud and all mods, including re installing NM because the amount of times I've moved it all around and re set it up using old files... It's stable but just doesn't feel right lol
 
agnes said:
Are you sure? Are we getting our wires crossed?

I have to click a link on Nexus, which then auto downloads through NM to it's download folder. Then I can import it using NM's import and then select said downloaded mod.

As I said, tonight I will totally delete Skyrim, any save files on the cloud and all mods, including re installing NM because the amount of times I've moved it all around and re set it up using old files... It's stable but just doesn't feel right lol
Click to expand...

We are talking about ModOrganizer right.

If so, as soon as that is linked to your Nexus account and click the "Download NMM" button, ModOrganizer will open up or if already open will start to download the choosen file in the "downloads tab" once the download is complete, you just click the file in the list.

Sounds like you have both installed and for some reason using NMM still to download then moving the file to ModOrganzier. lol
 
IronWarrior said:
We are talking about ModOrganizer right.

If so, as soon as that is linked to your Nexus account and click the "Download NMM" button, ModOrganizer will open up or if already open will start to download the choosen file in the "downloads tab" once the download is complete, you just click the file in the list.

Sounds like you have both installed and for some reason using NMM still to download then moving the file to ModOrganzier. lol
Click to expand...

I reinstalled everything last night and nope, still the same, MO will add it to the download list, then you can click to open... Which, I will be honest, only discovered that last night.

But typically, Nexus was playing up. It's such a **** site lol.

Anyway, I installed some mods back on, not even launched the game up to test, only to get graphics settings to kick in and then to delete all previous game saves...

I had an issue, the ground was very... Blocky. This was before the full removal of the game and mods and reinstall. Not checked yet.

Like the grids were too small so you would see repeating square textures for the ground, it looks disgusting. I had this before but after setting something in an ini. Even after clearing out the ini files it still was apparent. So I need to see which mod is causing it really.
 
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