Advice request: first modded playthrough

[Apap]

Hello guys,

 

I am about to start my first playthrough with mods. I've been browsing LL and Nexus for mods to pick and I must say the amount of stuff out there is kinda overwhelming, so I figured I'd ask the veterans for some advice in regard to what is best  Here's what I'm interested in:

 

1. First step

 

Do I need to reach a certain part in the game on vanilla before installing any mods? In Fallout 4 it is recommended to first leave the vault before installing anything, so I want to make sure if Skyrim works like that too.

 

2. Better textures + lighting/ ambience

 

The game does have its years so it would be nice to give it a bit of a facelift. Bonus if it won't require a NASA computer afterwards

 

3. Best body replacer + physics

 

As I understand, there are a few body replacers to choose from at this point. I'd like to pick the one which has good physics and possibly supports the most clothing/ armor mods.

 

4. NPC/ races visual improvement

 

Vanilla chars are quite ugly, aren't they - I'd very much like to fix that

 

5. Clothing and Armor replacers

 

Do you guys know of any cool mods that replace how the vanilla clothes/ armor look? The skimpier and sluttier the better  

 

6. Movement, idle animation replacers

 

Something that would make how characters move a bit more pleasing to the eye.

 

7. NPC/ enemy enslavement + working restraints

 

I'm looking for something that works similarly to Just Business in F4: capture or resurrect NPCs/ bandits and make them followers etc. I'm also looking for something like Real Handcuffs to be able to restrain the captives. 

 

8. Player home mod to keep captured NPCs

 

A dungoen maybe? 

 

9. Recommendations

 

Anything that in your opinion makes Skyrim a better game

 

 

I appreciate any and all tips and suggestions

 

Thanks in advance!

 

[woodsman30]

33 minutes ago, Apap said:

First step

The first step is to make sure you have SKSE and the memory patch to go with it. Second is to make a real plan for your game what is important what is not.

There is to many mods to name but a a quick and proven one is https://heroedeleyenda.tumblr.com/ give you many choices for skin ect. saves a boat load of time on figuring everything out and many headaches they did everything for you. After you find your body hair ect. make your character and are happy with it make a hard save BEFORE you mod anything else. Again make a plan to make a playable game stay away from mods that have a shit load of requirements as it will cause issues.  Experiment with some mods if you don't like the set up uninstall the mods and go back to that hard save I mentioned earlier and start over. Rinse and repeat till you find the balance you are happy with. have fun and play the game..... Last piece of advice I have read all mods in their entirety you want to use this includes posts and understand the requirements and game changes.

 

[travelmedic]

@woodsman30 gave good advice about getting SKSE installed correctly.  Also, you should definitely install Crash Fixes and ENBoost (even if you don't want to use an ENB, ENBoost will help with memory management).  I always run both of them, and don't use an ENB myself.

 

Second, decide on a mod manager and learn to use it correctly, best bets Mod Organizer 2 or maybe Vortex(I have no personal Vortex experience).  Look for Youtube tutorials by Gopher or Gamer Poets.  After that, FNIS, TES5Edit and WryeBash.  Learn to make a merged patch and bashed patch, necessary steps for a heavily modded game.

 

Textures and Meshes - forget the official Hi Res packs, they are reputed to be poorly optimized.  Get SMIM.  I use several retexture mods by amidianborn (book of silence), el sopa, and frank family armor retextures.  No matter what your computer video specs are, game engine has a 3GB video graphic memory limit, don't try to overload your game with ridiculous 8k textures everywhere.

 

Bodies with physics - UUNP seems to be very popular these days and a lot of new stuff comes out for it, don't know how it is for backwards compatibility with older UNP/UNPB stuff.  I use the COSIO body (Clams of Skyrim) from here on LL, it doesn't have a lot of stuff made expressly for it, but it is CBBE based so I'm able to use CBBE outfits with it.

 

Clothing/armor/movement and idle stuff are all subjective.  You'll have to decide what you like.

 

Slavery stuff - PAHE here on LL (not older version on Nexus) and PAHE Home Sweet Home here on LL are probably closest to what you're looking for.  I used them before and they work, but you'll find that as you capture more people, less bandits will respawn at the sites where you captured people previously.  There's also the AYGAS add-on for it.  As I said, I used the PAHE stuff a lot previously, and they're still very popular, but after a while I found they weren't exactly what I was looking for.  I replaced them with Sexy Bandit Captives here on LL - a little different in that you can't randomly enslave anybody, but there are specific NPCs placed in the world who you can rescue from the bandits yourself, and then either subjugate/enslave them yourself, or release them and have them become potential followers.  I found it more to my taste, and the mod author actively continues to add new features.

 

Homes/Castles/Dungeons - find Einar The Reds Hearthfire Dungeon addon here on LL.  Keep in mind you don't want to overload any one area with too many slaves/NPCs or otherwise you'll get a lot of lag or frame rate drop.

[Grey Cloud]

Assuming you have at least 8GB of RAM and 4GB of VRAM.

 

Make sure you have SKSE, SKSE Plugin Preloader, Crash Fixes and ENBoost/ENB installed and configured correctly. These will give you a stable base game. There's a few more which you may or not need depending on your hardware, OS and whatnot.

 

As woodman30 has already said, reading is key.

 

You don't have to wait until a certain point in the game before installing mods.

 

Don't install 100 mods in one go. Work your way through your steps above, installing maybe 5-10 mods at a time. This makes trouble-shooting a lot easier. It's a pain in the arse but well worth it in the long run. It also makes it easy to spot what changes are being made by which mods (and whether you are happy with them).

 

And following on from woodsman30 you wont get it just how you want it on the first attempt. It's an ongoing thing with new mods coming out and old mods getting updated with new features etc.

 

As a good general overview and guide:

 

https://wiki.step-project.com/STEP:2.10.0

 

Edit: Ninjad by travelmedic. One thing I would partially disagree with is that you don't need to worry about merges and Bashed patches at this point.

I was going to make the same suggestion about mod manager choice but forgot.

 

One last piece of advice: make sure the mods you download are for the version of Skyrim you are running, i.e. LE mods for LE and SE mods for SE.

[woodsman30]

6 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

you wont get it just how you want it on the first attempt

Or the 2nd or the 100th just when I get a great set up I change everything just because lol....... it is the fun part modding and making it work.

[Grey Cloud]

6 minutes ago, woodsman30 said:

Or the 2nd or the 100th just when I get a great set up I change everything just because lol....... it is the fun part modding and making it work.

Well, there is that of course but I was waiting until he got too far in to back out. ?

[donttouchmethere]

1 hour ago, Grey Cloud said:

Well, there is that of course but I was waiting until he got too far in to back out. ?

That's the way to go ?

Let them taste the drugs for free first ?

[Apap]

Haha, no backing up here - I've been through that modding journey in Fallout 4 so I'm perfectly aware how it goes  Just looking for some starting setup and we'll go from there.

 

Speaking of which, this guy seems to have a decent build:

Spoiler

https://www.reddit.com/user/izzyguy1234/comments/d6zcxv/izzyguys_stuff/

 

I think I'll use his list as a template for the start, add some of the suggestions you guys posted and then keep adding as I go

[Apap]

On 10/13/2019 at 3:15 PM, travelmedic said:

Bodies with physics - UUNP seems to be very popular these days and a lot of new stuff comes out for it, don't know how it is for backwards compatibility with older UNP/UNPB stuff.  I use the COSIO body (Clams of Skyrim) from here on LL, it doesn't have a lot of stuff made expressly for it, but it is CBBE based so I'm able to use CBBE outfits with it.

I'm actually torn between COSIO and the all-in-one pack that @woodsman30 recommended. If you have COSIO, is it necessary still to convert CBBE outfits if the body is CBBE-based or does it work fine without any extra adjustments?

[travelmedic]

If I remember correctly (and I may not) the all in one pack includes the COSIO body anyway.  I had tried an older version of the AIO a few years ago, and if memory serves right I had some sort of texture mismatch, which is why I uninstalled it and did everything one step at a time.  Using the textures on the COSIO page also caused a mismatch for me, but I installed regular CBBE textures from Nexus onto the COSIO body and it seemed to work fine.  Don't know if my issues were operator error or not, but as I said, installing textures from Nexus onto the COSIO body worked for me.

 

I have not converted any CBBE clothes to work with the Cosio body, no.  There ar some conversions available here on LL.  I just make sure that I do specify Cosio and then my CBBE preset if I'm building outfits that have Bodyslide files.  I don't know if I'm doing that the way the mod authors intend or not, but it works for me.

[Wolborg]

> Do I need to reach a certain part in the game on vanilla before installing any mods?

 

Most assuredly not. Especially when you're inexperienced, make sure you have your mod configuration in place and run at least a few short test games before you start your actual game. Changes to your mods inamidst a game are to be avoided unless you're sure you know what you're doing.

 

 

> Anything that in your opinion makes Skyrim a better game

 

Would these be helpful to you?

https://bardslayer.blogspot.com/2019/04/review-of-my-mods-after-500-hours.html

https://bardslayer.blogspot.com/2019/06/my-final-mod-configuration.html

 

[Apap]

6 hours ago, Wolborg said:

Would these be helpful to you?

 

https://bardslayer.blogspot.com/2019/04/review-of-my-mods-after-500-hours.html

 

https://bardslayer.blogspot.com/2019/06/my-final-mod-configuration.html

 

Most certainly worth a check - thanks

 

By the way, I forgot to ask in my original post - do I need an extra mod to be able to earn Steam achievements while playing a modded game? Fallout 4 by default cancels the possibility when detecting mods so it did need an override. I will be playing the good old Skyrim, not the SE one.

[Wolborg]

13 hours ago, Apap said:

 do I need an extra mod to be able to earn Steam achievements while playing a modded game?

Frankly, I've never been interested in Steam achievements. I've noticed myself having earned some but I haven't really been paying attention. So maybe someone more knowledgeable can answer that question?