Best NPC Populations Mods?

[InsolentTedium]

I have pretty much always used Immersive Patrols, but I think it's time for a change, as I search NPC add Mods though, I see there are a ton of them, spoiled for choice... So may I ask what is your favourite NPC add Mod and why? Just adding, not really worried about their AI pacakages, I tried that Immersive Citizens, but it's pretty script heavy and I noticed it baked into my game when I tried to get rid of it, new games exhibiting IC behaviours despite not being in there, that's always a big NO from me.

[Dorabella]

Populated Cities Towns Villages Reborn

 

More People in Skyrim

[InsolentTedium]

13 minutes ago, Lestat1627 said:

Populated Cities Towns Villages Reborn

 

More People in Skyrim

Do you use these two together? I am interested in both of them, as they seem to offer different experiences... Thank you Lestat

[Heroine HoneyCrotch]

Etac and InConsequential(has all 5 vowels) Npcs are the 2 go-to's . How you dont care about AI and stuff is on you, The big draw for Etac and Incon is the npcs act like they're not just an npc,standing somewhere all day doing nothing?  

[Dorabella]

9 minutes ago, InsolentTedium said:

Do you use these two together?

I use Populated City. Its effects are most noticeable at inns, especially after a certain time in the game (after dark)

[Gukahn]

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/99406

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8429

 

No boring, braindead npc´s, real conversations, interesting topics, later one ads Quests and some followers too. INPC has some Vanilla npc x INPC Interactions, an Highelf Mage in Whiterun talks for example to Hulda every now and then. Not too often so it shouldn't get too repetitive. (and 2 of the more heartbreaking things i've ever come across in skyrim are added with it..)

[InsolentTedium]

11 minutes ago, Heroine HoneyCrotch said:

Etac and InConsequential(has all 5 vowels) Npcs are the 2 go-to's . How you dont care about AI and stuff is on you, The big draw for Etac and Incon is the npcs act like they're not just an npc,standing somewhere all day doing nothing?  

Thank you Heroine ...I do actually care what the NPC's are doing and have been hunting smaller less intrusive Mods (less script intensive and not baking) to rectify, I have found a few ...I plain forgot all about inconsequential NPC's, Ithaough used that back in the LE days lol... thank you for reminding me, that was a pretty good Mod ...I can't seem to pull up Etac  though, can I please have the extended name?

[InsolentTedium]

23 minutes ago, Gukahn said:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/99406

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8429

 

No boring, braindead npc´s, real conversations, interesting topics, later one ads Quests and some followers too. INPC has some Vanilla npc x INPC Interactions, an Highelf Mage in Whiterun talks for example to Hulda every now and then. Not too often so it shouldn't get too repetitive. (and 2 of the more heartbreaking things i've ever come across in skyrim are added with it..)

DAMN! These Mods look interesting, thank you again Gukahn ...am making myself comfortable to sit down and watch any video's on them, thank you for making me aware of them

[Heroine HoneyCrotch]

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/13608/

 

I use the old,complete version. Newer version has maybe 4 locations. 

 

This mod is expansive being that it changes towns and villages including adding new npcs and structures, very nicely done. Compatibility issues could arise. Check Etac's forum section,there is topic for compatibility which is a great read as it covers great info on Load Order,in general and load order advice for Etac. 

[InsolentTedium]

3 minutes ago, Heroine HoneyCrotch said:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/13608/

 

I use the old,complete version. Newer version has maybe 4 locations. 

 

This mod is expansive being that it changes towns and villages including adding new npcs and structures, very nicely done. Compatibility issues could arise. Check Etac's forum section,there is topic for compatibility which is a great read as it covers great info on Load Order,in general and load order advice for Etac. 

I will look into it shortly, thank you Heroine ...I am using JK's Towns/Cities, hopefully compatibility

[InsolentTedium]

1 hour ago, InsolentTedium said:

I will look into it shortly, thank you Heroine ...I am using JK's Towns/Cities, hopefully compatibility

Older version compatible with patch ...thank you Heroine

[Grey Cloud]

 

Pop Cities mostly just dumps NPCs in the cities etc and they clog up the inns at night.

I prefer Pop Lands, Roads, Paths as the NPCs are out and about on the roads etc. This means they can get attacked by animals and bandits etc.

 

Interesting NPCs is okay but it has too many NPC which don't appeal to me. There's a couple of mods which overhaul the NPC visuals.

I've not tried Citizens of Tamriel but the description says 'voice acted' so that means I probably wont.

 

Hydra Slave Girls puts NPCs on the roads and in settlements.

 

MINPCS adds some interesting NPCs including hostiles.

 

Enemy Plus for more hostiles. No MCM and some of the things are a bit weird, e.g. King Mudcrab who is about the size of Wales/Rhode Island.

OBIS for more bandits or Genesis for more bandits and other hostiles. Has MCM where your can set the number of spawns etc.

Warzones for more hostiles. Has MCM where you can toggle various things like locations.

Genesis (which I only installed yesterday as a change from OBIS) spawns hostiles in dungeons or on the surface, levelled or unlevelled. MCMs to configure lots of options.

 

Forgotten Dungeons, Skyrim Sewers and Skyrim Underground add news locations and some NPCs and creatures.

 

I use JK's Skyrim Lite and Settlements Expanded.

 

 

It depends on exactly what you want. There are over 25000 NPCs in my current game. My idea of a 'mod conflict' is when the NPCs from mod A are sluggin' it out with the NPCs from mod B. ?

 

[Gukahn]

14 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

 

 

 

 

It depends on exactly what you want. There are over 25000 NPCs in my current game. My idea of a 'mod conflict' is when the NPCs from mod A are sluggin' it out with the NPCs from mod B. ?

 

you just want to sell them all Skooma ?

[InsolentTedium]

49 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

 

Pop Cities mostly just dumps NPCs in the cities etc and they clog up the inns at night.

I prefer Pop Lands, Roads, Paths as the NPCs are out and about on the roads etc. This means they can get attacked by animals and bandits etc.

 

Interesting NPCs is okay but it has too many NPC which don't appeal to me. There's a couple of mods which overhaul the NPC visuals.

I've not tried Citizens of Tamriel but the description says 'voice acted' so that means I probably wont.

 

Hydra Slave Girls puts NPCs on the roads and in settlements.

 

MINPCS adds some interesting NPCs including hostiles.

 

Enemy Plus for more hostiles. No MCM and some of the things are a bit weird, e.g. King Mudcrab who is about the size of Wales/Rhode Island.

OBIS for more bandits or Genesis for more bandits and other hostiles. Has MCM where your can set the number of spawns etc.

Warzones for more hostiles. Has MCM where you can toggle various things like locations.

Genesis (which I only installed yesterday as a change from OBIS) spawns hostiles in dungeons or on the surface, levelled or unlevelled. MCMs to configure lots of options.

 

Forgotten Dungeons, Skyrim Sewers and Skyrim Underground add news locations and some NPCs and creatures.

 

I use JK's Skyrim Lite and Settlements Expanded.

 

 

It depends on exactly what you want. There are over 25000 NPCs in my current game. My idea of a 'mod conflict' is when the NPCs from mod A are sluggin' it out with the NPCs from mod B. ?

 

My preference is wandering NPC's as I don't spend much time in the towns or cities, though I have narrowed down to a couple of possible contenders suggested for towns, but yes, I'm primarily looking for NPC's outside of towns. I was about to give up and just go back to Immersive Patrols when you piped up ...That Warzones looks pretty epic ... and I'm now looking into MINPCS. I can't find Enemy Plus, though it did lead me to finding Mortal Enemies to play alongside Smiladon ...though yes, the Mudcrab would definitely put me off. I have looked into OBIS before, but it's not really what I'm after, too many Mages from what I can see, I already use Mods to rid the Game of most of the Mages as is.

 

I know Genesis very well, I was one of the original Sands of Time users and fan, a couple of others and I were the souls who got Tony going on introducing the Surface Encounters (that was his biggest challenge and made up for most of the Script at that time), but after a few years a new crew came along and with them Tony took the Mod in directions I didn't like, so I eventually dropped off the radar, cést la vie. I have tried the Genesis Mods, I have the Dungeons in my load order, but my game had problems with the Surface Encounters one. I never could find the issue, so just not re-adding it. I have found a Mod that does something similar though Skyrim Unhinged, I'm going to try that one out

 

Yes, I use JK and have Hydro Slave Girls downloaded and ready to go into my load order when I rebuild my Skyrim ...I also found a Wandering Bandits Mod and thought that would pair well with that More Bandit Camps Mod.

 

Thank you for the heads up on the new Location Mods, will check them out ...Wow! You have a lot of NPC's in your game, I'm not sure if mine could handle that or not.

[Grey Cloud]

1 hour ago, Gukahn said:

you just want to sell them all Skooma

Well I'm not going to give it away. Do I look like a charity?

 

[Grey Cloud]

Warzones

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9494

 

MINPCs

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/99772

 

Enemy Plus

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/93245

 

I use More Bandit Camps and there are a few related mods -

 

More Bandit Encampments Falkreath. Found this one a bit much as in too many in a small area.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/87660

 

More Bandit Camps -- EtR Patch. Also available from LL.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/98497

 

I thought I had another but I can't see it.

 

Two examples from my game.

Elgrim's Elixirs.

This doesn't happen every time but it does it in other the alchemists. The way I see it is more chance of getting ingredients I need for making skooma and more potential customers for my skooma and prostitution services.  ?

MINPCs I think.

 

 

Left Riften for Shore's Stone and the 'ore sample' gig. I decided to go through Ft Greenwall rather than around it. Quickly found myself regretting that as things started to look a bit grim (About 10 of them and exactly 1 of me ☹️). Suddenly out of nowhere, in storms Meat from Hydra Slave Girls. Worra gal.

 

I don't know where he was but he wasn't in the courtyard with me and Meat.


 

 

The naked girl in the background is from Honeypopcorn's Skyrim Overhaul but that is no longer available on Nexus.

 

If you decide to go with Hydra SG then I would recommend having a look at the various patches made by Corsec here on LL. I'm using the Luxury Collection patch which assigns a random outfit to every girl.

 

Edited June 7, 2021 by Grey Cloud

[InsolentTedium]

19 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

Warzones

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9494

 

MINPCs

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/99772

 

Enemy Plus

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/93245

 

I use Bandit Camps and there are a few related mods -

 

More Bandit Encampments Falkreath. Found this one a bit much as in too many in a small area.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/87660

 

More Bandit Camps -- EtR Patch. Also available from LL.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/98497

 

I thought I had another but I can't see it.

 

Two examples from my game.

Elgrim's Elixirs.

This doesn't happen every time but it does it in other the alchemists. The way I see it is more chance of getting ingredients I need for making skooma and more potential customers for my skooma and prostitution services.  ?

MINPCs I think.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

 

Left Riften for Shore's Stone and the 'ore sample' gig. I decided to go through Ft Greenwall rather than around it. Quickly found myself regretting that as things started to look a bit grim (About 10 of them and exactly 1 of me ☹️). Suddenly out of nowhere, in storms Meat from Hydra Slave Girls. Worra gal.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

I don't know where he was but he wasn't in the courtyard with me and Meat.


 

 

 

 

The naked girl in the background is from Honeypopcorn's Skyrim Overhaul but that is no longer available on Nexus.

 

If you decide to go with Hydra SG then I would recommend having a look at the various patches made by Corsec here on LL. I'm using the Luxury Collection patch which assigns a random outfit to every girl.

 

I suspect my PC isn't near as kick *ss as yours is...I have been doing a lot of reading up on the various Mods you have posted, I realize I am going to have to choose very carefully, my PC is good, but not awesome, I don't expect it to cope with all that. 

 

Warzones is a MUST, I'm happy to sacrifice other Mods to have it, I figure that with Skyrim Unhinged and either Populated Dungeons or Genesis Dungeons and then maybe perhaps Bandit Camps if my PC says yes.

 

I have a question about Hydra Slave Girls, just how many Slaves does it add? Reading the posts there seem to be a lot, I was expecting maybe 2 to 6 slaves in a town, depending on the size of the town and only expected to run into Slave Caravans as an irregular occasion, maybe about 5 or 6 Caravans around, it sounds like a great deal more than that. Would you give me an idea of what I could expect please? That would give a much better idea if I would be able to or not.

[Grey Cloud]

9 minutes ago, InsolentTedium said:

I don't expect it to cope with all that

Most of the NPCs that spawn are generics who use vanilla armour and equipment. I generally have less than 10 active scripts. I don't go for the 'hell' versions and a lot of the mods give the ability to set the number or frequency of spawns. Even with Warzones I have the 'battles' toggled off as well as some of the spawn/encounter locations.

Some of the mods I edit the esp to make them more to my liking (e.g. I remove or shrink the huge King Mudcrab or other mega-sized creatures).

 

 

HSG does add a lot of NPCs. A good number are just static eye-candy (e.g. slave in cage* outside a settlement or slave standing with a tray of drinks in a longhouse). The 'caravans' consist of a couple of slavers plus a slave. They are not like the Khajiit caravans which have a caravan site to go to and from.

* I deleted a few of these as they were either pointless or the location was conflicting with JK's or Settlements Expanded.

Then you have a bunch of slave and master/mistress combos (like Meat and the dwarven armour guy) who wander around and enter settlements and inns. Some of these are merchants.

The mod also adds a few locations. There is a large 'temple' thing behind Whiterun which I seldom bother with as it doesn't really 'do' anything. There is a second place not far from Blind Cliff Cave which doesn't really do anything either. A third place is behind Solitude not far from the lighthouse and is basically a skooma den.

The main added location is the Cave Club which is underground (CC and CC Deep).

 

All are using vanilla assets.

 

I've built up mine over a couple of years, tweaking and editing as I go. I also have most of the vanilla game toggled off so I don't e.g., have dragons or vampires springing up all over the place or any CW. I've spent many, many hours in TESVEdit but the reward is coming across encounters/fights which might involved several mods.

That's why it pays to have a decent backup on call.

 

I forgot this fun little mod:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/69104

i have several mods which add a few NPCs here and there.

 

[InsolentTedium]

15 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

Most of the NPCs that spawn are generics who use vanilla armour and equipment. I generally have less than 10 active scripts. I don't go for the 'hell' versions and a lot of the mods give the ability to set the number or frequency of spawns. Even with Warzones I have the 'battles' toggled off as well as some of the spawn/encounter locations.

Some of the mods I edit the esp to make them more to my liking (e.g. I remove or shrink the huge King Mudcrab or other mega-sized creatures).

 

 

HSG does add a lot of NPCs. A good number are just static eye-candy (e.g. slave in cage* outside a settlement or slave standing with a tray of drinks in a longhouse). The 'caravans' consist of a couple of slavers plus a slave. They are not like the Khajiit caravans which have a caravan site to go to and from.

* I deleted a few of these as they were either pointless or the location was conflicting with JK's or Settlements Expanded.

Then you have a bunch of slave and master/mistress combos (like Meat and the dwarven armour guy) who wander around and enter settlements and inns. Some of these are merchants.

The mod also adds a few locations. There is a large 'temple' thing behind Whiterun which I seldom bother with as it doesn't really 'do' anything. There is a second place not far from Blind Cliff Cave which doesn't really do anything either. A third place is behind Solitude not far from the lighthouse and is basically a skooma den.

The main added location is the Cave Club which is underground (CC and CC Deep).

 

All are using vanilla assets.

 

I've built up mine over a couple of years, tweaking and editing as I go. I also have most of the vanilla game toggled off so I don't e.g., have dragons or vampires springing up all over the place or any CW. I've spent many, many hours in TESVEdit but the reward is coming across encounters/fights which might involved several mods.

That's why it pays to have a decent backup on call.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

I forgot this fun little mod:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/69104

i have several mods which add a few NPCs here and there.

 

You have inspired me to learn TESVEdit ...I'm watching Tutorials on it now ...follow your example and edit Mods I really want

[Grey Cloud]

7 hours ago, InsolentTedium said:

You have inspired me to learn TESVEdit

It's a great tool and well worth the effort. Back up any esps you work on and it doesn't matter if you make mistakes. Any questions just ask.

[NismoMan]

I'm using High Poly Heads and therefore restricted on what Mods I can use without running into blackface and leveled lists issues among other things, throw Jk's Skyrim and other city overhauls in the mix and making them work together is a pain. That being said, my load order seems to balance things out just about right, nav-meshes are working fine, NPCs are doing their thing and the cities and wilderness have enough NPCs in them to keep things alive without encumbering the world around me.

 

City Overhauls that add NPCs:

- JK's Skyrim

- Dawn of Skyrim + JK's patch

- Capital Windhelm Expansion

- Shor's Stone

- Raven Rock Redone

 

Mods that add NPCs:

- Immersive Patrols Lite

- Immersive Patrols Simplified (This makes it so that Immersive Patrols use the vanilla leveled lists. so that whatever mod that changes those lists, the NPCs from Immersive Patrols will benefit from them instead of relying on patches)

- Masculinized Level Lists: this makes it so that Bandits / Soldiers have more males than females which would make more sense in the world of Skyrim, since almost every other NPC mod out there tend to focus more on adding females in contrast to males. This balances things out, there still are female bandits/soldiers/adventurers, but not as many.

- Populated Cities Towns and Villages Lite (Less NPCs, Regular version was a bit overwhelming in both performance and visual impact)

- Dawnguard Sentries Plus

- Sisterhood of Dibella

- Immersive Wenches (I'm thinking of removing this one, it just adds TOO MANY wenches, Wenches in Inns sometimes outnumber customers 3 to 1, which is ridiculous!)

- Genesis Unleashed: What this mod does is magic, it randomizes additional spawns in dungeons / caves / Ruins etc. by detecting the type of NPCs around, it doesn't interfere with other mods and works with mods that edit dungeons too. You'll get the occasional enemy mismatch spawns (sometimes spawning Mages / Necromancers in dungeons filled with Witches/Hags and Hagravens and they proceed to fight it out, nothing game breaking and its fun to use the distraction to your advantage or go in guns(arrows) blazing and take them all out. Has an MCM menu to control spawn numbers and turn the mod on/off, useful when you think the spawned NPCS are interfering with certain quests.

 

All of the above are currently active in my load order and work together without issues, The only labor you have to do is make sure to grab High Poly Heads patches if you're using it and any other patches you might need.

 

Hope that helps.

[Grey Cloud]

1 hour ago, NismoMan said:

I'm using High Poly Heads and therefore restricted on what Mods I can use without running into blackface and leveled lists issues among other things,

That does not make any sense. Blackface (or brownface) is lack of VRAM and the HP head is a mesh so it doesn't use VRAM and it certainly has nothing to do with levelled lists. The HP head does not restrict which mods you can use.

 

1 hour ago, NismoMan said:

Immersive Wenches (I'm thinking of removing this one, it just adds TOO MANY wenches, Wenches in Inns sometimes outnumber customers 3 to 1, which is ridiculous!)

That's more or less why I stopped using it.

 

I've only been using Genesis for a week or so but I'm far from convinced. In any bunch of spawns there are too many that are too far below my level. I'm currently level 20 and I'm still getting level 1 and level 9 bandits plus maybe 1 or 2 at my level and one a way above my level. This is with the supposedly levelled versions. I'm also getting the impression that the hostiles don't move too far from their spawn point (at least indoors) so it is easy to either stand off and take them out or take them out a spawn point at a time.

[NismoMan]

3 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

That does not make any sense. Blackface (or brownface) is lack of VRAM and the HP head is a mesh so it doesn't use VRAM and it certainly has nothing to do with levelled lists. The HP head does not restrict which mods you can use.

 

HP head does cause problems when the mods that add npcs come with facegen data and certain hairs (tintmask issues?). I wasn't saying that leveled lists cause black face, it's just another thing I kept in mind while adding NPCs. But I can see how it came across the way it did, the whole sentence was poorly written. My apologies ?

 

3 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

I've only been using Genesis for a week or so but I'm far from convinced. In any bunch of spawns there are too many that are too far below my level. I'm currently level 20 and I'm still getting level 1 and level 9 bandits plus maybe 1 or 2 at my level and one a way above my level. This is with the supposedly levelled versions. I'm also getting the impression that the hostiles don't move too far from their spawn point (at least indoors) so it is easy to either stand off and take them out or take them out a spawn point at a time.

Yes, Genesis has its quirks. But it was the cleanest of the bunch IMO. I used to use Pop. Dungeons it either didn't cover everything or had too many in certain areas that it becomes impossible for my character to survive the encounter. With that said, I rarely get low level enemies with the mod, I usually tun across scaled NPCs and few higher leveled ones.

I do agree that at times, the spawned enemies seem to just stand there and are not sandboxing like the rest.

[Grey Cloud]

21 minutes ago, NismoMan said:

HP head does cause problems when the mods that add npcs come with facegen data and certain hairs (tintmask issues?).

There are instructions for rebuilding the facegen. The main problems I had was with eyebrows being half visible and half hidden and a not a problem with beards where the guy would speak but the mouth/beard wouldn't move. ? I think I've now got a HP brows or hair or beards mod or two.

[InsolentTedium]

13 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

It's a great tool and well worth the effort. Back up any esps you work on and it doesn't matter if you make mistakes. Any questions just ask.

Thank you Grey Cloud ...the Tutorials make it look fairly simple, but I have said that before ?