How do y'all do it?

[MasterCobalt]

Okay, so I've been in and out of Skyrim as time has gone on, but I'm back now and I can't help but wonder...  How are some of these pics and vids that I'm seeing so GOOD?  Like they make it seem like all the mods they've got are running super seamlessly together, and my (admittedly fairly large) hodgepodge acts like it's something that was shoehorned together, runs slow, with not-so-amazing graphics, and is barely holding itself together.  I want to get my mods to work more seamlessly with one another, but I honestly don't know where to start.  I have CK and TES5Edit, but I really don't know how to use them super well.  And yes, I am pretty sure that I have a rather... eclectic and large group of mods, which is probably causing part of my issue, but... yeah.  I came back to Skyrim because it feels like that one place where you can mod the existing world to be basically whatever you like.  But I'd prefer it to... y'know... work.  It's daunting, and I'm really not sure where to even start --- if it's something that can be done at all.

[venomr]

Trial and error, mostly error.

[FauxFurry]

As venomr said, it is a long arduous process to learn the ins and outs of utility programs as well as finding out the hard way which mods are compatible and which have built-in conflicts by encountering a game breaking bug then losing progress by removing those mods (or wiping the whole installation) and starting again with the knowledge of what does not work at the very least. 

This is why one should take care to read the Support section of any mod that one is considering installing as well as looking to past thread about problems that a mod might experience before starting a new one as soon as one runs into difficulty. Someone else is likely to have done a lot of the hard work in figuring out a solution in advance. 

[MasterCobalt]

I've been looking through them, and it's not like I'm finding any game-breaking bugs or anything, it's more the fact that everything looks so slapdash and jank on mine, but all these other mod pics/vids I'm seeing everything looks so crisp and smooth.  The slowness and such I'm trying to see if there are ways I could edit the existing mods or make patches to make them work well together, but that may be an undertaking beyond my currently available time, lol

[belegost]

3 hours ago, JakeH13 said:

all these other mod pics/vids I'm seeing everything looks so crisp and smooth

 

Because that's for show and screen archery. You can't really play an actual game with that sort of setup and expect to get anywhere. Due to the very nature of Skyrim and how it bloats over time, stuff will inevitably crash and burn. So you can have a sort-of okayish setup and have mostly passable gameplay, or a truly wonderful visual experience, that you can only wank to on still screenshots after several hours of playing. If it even starts at all next time you try to load a saved game.

 

Heck, even totally unmodded Skyrim will start going haywire several hundred hours in (looking at you Civil War questline).

Edited February 9, 2023 by belegost

[Gukahn]

Like already said it highly depence on your grafical mods, retextures, ENB, Ini settings and such. Belegost isn't wrong either, at the end of the day, it's still skyrim and bethesda didn't made the best job optimizing it and it's old.  you can have a very good looking and playable game, BUT depending on your Rig and your work outside of the game, we talking about ini and mod tweaks, you will either burn your saves or can make your game very laggy and slow.

Heck,my setup is only focused on screenshots, I wouldn't even know if you can play the game with it and its rather light compared to others who run over 1k mods to make the game look great. That's another factor, the mods you pick. You can make pretty nice looking screens with a playable modded game if you focuse on lighting, a few retextures and an ENB that's on the lighter side. (I also made pretty good things with Reshade, which is lighter then ENB and might be an alternative. It was for me until I fell in love with ENB, can't look at the screen without it anymore.)

 

And apart from how the game will look at the end, most people also edit their screenshots afterwards too. Not everything you see is how it really looks ^^

for a, on my eyes, still playable good looking game I would pick:

 

Relighting skyrim

Obsidian Weathers

Skyland retextures 1K (IF you can run 2K do it, I can't. It fucks your fps rough, like every big retexture can do. 1k Is fine tho, runs smooth.)

And an ENB designed after your lighting or weather mod. You will also need to tweak this probably. I only ever used one ENB Preset but I tweaked it recently to customize it to my needs. Again this is highly only for screenshots in my case but I don't believe these mods will kill your saves.

 

 

 

 

 

[MasterCobalt]

Ah, I see.  I wasn't aware that people had builds set up for screenshots specifically, that does make sense.  I guess I have a lot to look into as far as that goes.  Also, 1k mods?  Geez, I thought I was on the higher end, but I just broke 100.  With all that said, though, are there ways/directions to (for lack of a better term) "mod a mod" to allow it to work better with other mods, or add new/edit existing things, or remove aspects that you don't want?

Edited February 9, 2023 by JakeH13

[belegost]

1 hour ago, JakeH13 said:

are there ways/directions to (for lack of a better term) "mod a mod" to allow it to work better with other mods, or add new/edit existing things, or remove aspects that you don't want?

 

Yes. You can learn to code yourself.

 

Also learn xEdit, CK, Nifscope, Papyrus, Blender, python and whatever other 3rd party tools are used to make mods.

But xEdit is a good start. It'll allow you to make basic patches and solve some compatibility problems yourself.

Edited February 9, 2023 by belegost

[Varithina]

Also quite a few of those taking those pictures are not using actual game setup, the mods and those setup are purely for screen shots, in which case getting 10-20 fps does not matter the least, in this case it is all about quality of the screens.

[MasterCobalt]

All right, thanks everyone.  xEdit seems daunting, but I'll give it a look-see.  I know we all like our own mixture of mods, time to see if I can get mine to work the way I want them to.  Thanks again!

[Gukahn]

1 minute ago, JakeH13 said:

All right, thanks everyone.  xEdit seems daunting, but I'll give it a look-see.  I know we all like our own mixture of mods, time to see if I can get mine to work the way I want them to.  Thanks again!

Don't let it discourage you, I barely used anything but XEdit, or in skyrim SE/Ae case, SSEdit (don't confuse those.)

Other then tweaking a few mods and renaming stuff. You can go pretty far with the Minimum and as long as you know what you actually installing there and know how to troubleshoot, you should be fine getting a nice looking and playable game ^^

And no you don't have to learn to code for that..  I touched the CK maybe once and not to tweak a mod ? Think it only really gets important to tweak many things  in whatever tools is when you hit a the mark of a heavy Load order (Something I never did tbh. somewhat 500+ish mods. This is a more then common number, probably way lighter then most builds here., retextures not counted.)

[Seijin8]

17 minutes ago, Gukahn said:

(Something I never did tbh. somewhat 500+ish mods.

 

Agreed.  If you want to get to the point where you're getting thousands of mods working together, xEdit, CK, Nifskope, Papyrus, etc are absolutely necessary.

 

If you don't need that much, then learning a few basic tools for troubleshooting should do the trick.

[Anunya]

It kind of depends on your benchmarks. Some stuff is obviously just for screenshots, using poser mods and who knows what graphical solutions... and hey, you can also use photoshop/ gimp afterwards too. Which is great to produce excellent images.

 

The screenshots I personally post are all from in-game and I think they look pretty good... but, you know, I take a lot of screenshots but only post the better ones and never the janky looking ones (and there are a bunch). So there's a bit of the social media effect, where people usually show the best side of their games.

[MasterCobalt]

Yeah, I'm sitting at over 130 mods, and getting them all to play nice while still making sure they function correctly is a bit tough -- mainly because I'm not always sure how to tell if they're working or not, haha.  I'm more interested in the experience than the graphics, but I won't say no to better graphics if they don't kill my game.

[belegost]

4 hours ago, Gukahn said:

XEdit, (...) SSEdit

It's the same program. "x" just substitutes the game: FO4Edit, SSEEdit, TES5Edit, etc. Much easier to type in "xEdit" than the alternatives.

 

4 hours ago, JakeH13 said:

xEdit seems daunting

If you can do Excel, you can do xEdit.

 

Quote

mainly because I'm not always sure how to tell if they're working or not

That just comes down to experience. You have to mod in order to mod. You'll get there. Eventually.

Edited February 10, 2023 by belegost

[travelmedic]

3 hours ago, JakeH13 said:

Yeah, I'm sitting at over 130 mods,

 

130???  Them's rookie numbers!!!  (joking, sort of)  If you're happy playing a game that has only 5 mods, then good for you, if you want to cram in 500, then mod it till it breaks (which it will, eventually).

 

Like others have said, xEdit is really not too hard to learn the basics of.  Once you're comfortable doing that, you move on to the next tool, probably Creation Kit/Construction Set, or whatever it's called for your Bethesda game.

[Gameplayer]

Get familiar with the mods, already said here.

Get familiar with mod tools, also said...

 

Ultimately though SkyrimSE uses 16 Gigs of RAM and most gamers are running with either 8 or 16 total in the machine.

Best solution in a lot of setups even older rigs with DDR3 RAM is just to get 32 gigs of Ram and that solves that problem for about 100-300 dollars.

Price depends on the generation of the Ram,

DDR3 ~110

DDR4 ~120

DDR5 ~300-500

Speed of Ram actually helps a lot too, at DDR3 probably at 1333 Mhz but in some PC's can clock that up to 1866 which is perfect for a lot of games right now and even is good for 1440p gaming at 60FPS with say a 1080 or 2080Ti card.

 

DDR4 is about what is affordable now on a new budget gaming pc build, RAM speeds usually either 2133 or 3200, it is obscenely fast with last generation 30 series cards in all games and you can play in 1440p or 2166p  basically 2K or 4K resolutions.

 

DDR5 is cutting edge, speeds start at 4800 and looks like they are going to get into the 8000 range.

 

Having proper amount of Ram at good speeds plus a decent graphics card will make a whole heck of lot issues go away, seriously.

Also those screen archers....

Some of those are not running 20FPS they are working with either a singular good graphics card or even SLI/Crossfire a lot of people were using 2x980ti Blacks or 2x1080Ti

SkyrimLE/SE and Fallout 4 support SLI, dual graphics cards setups.

You dont need 2 Cards though, since a single 2080TI is enough and anything more powerful than that will handle even the most demanding ENB profile.

 

I was playing at 1440p 60FPS on an SR-2 Classified Mobo from 2009, with Dual Xeon w5580's, 32 Gig 1866, and a 2080Ti....

All the jiggly, great ENB, using SkySA combat animation mods enabled for NPC's, plus sex mods from LL.

 

Its all doable, just have to get your hardware sorted and be really familiar with the modules.

[Mr. Otaku]

Lots of time and lots of practice, das how dey do it.

 

Man i wanted to do that shit too but between work, family stuff and other hobbies/games it's just not a realistic goal for me anymore. 

[MasterCobalt]

7 hours ago, travelmedic said:

 

130???  Them's rookie numbers!!!  (joking, sort of)  If you're happy playing a game that has only 5 mods, then good for you, if you want to cram in 500, then mod it till it breaks (which it will, eventually).

 

Like others have said, xEdit is really not too hard to learn the basics of.  Once you're comfortable doing that, you move on to the next tool, probably Creation Kit/Construction Set, or whatever it's called for your Bethesda game.

Hey, that's good!  Tbf, when I started all I really wanted was some sexier armor -- I don't need full-on bikinis, give me something that shows off some skin but maintains some semblance of realism.  But then I saw jiggle physics and my attention was further piqued, so I dug a little deeper.  And then I saw a full-on sex framework and I wanted that too.  Then there's Paradise Halls, and then its addons, and survival mods and succubus transformations and lycan/vamp improvements and new followers and torture devices and now I'm even seeing stuff like Pamatronic's furniture and Ravenous --- the rabbit hole keeps getting deeper and deeper, haha.  I keep finding newer and newer things that I want to add/modify, and while I do enjoy it, I also have a similar problem to Mr. Otaku; work, family, hobbies and such make it hard for me to devote that time as much as I would like, especially as trying to get the mods to synergize in the way I want them to gets more difficult the more I add.

 

 

5 hours ago, Gameplayer said:

Get familiar with the mods, already said here.

Get familiar with mod tools, also said...

 

Ultimately though SkyrimSE uses 16 Gigs of RAM and most gamers are running with either 8 or 16 total in the machine.

Best solution in a lot of setups even older rigs with DDR3 RAM is just to get 32 gigs of Ram and that solves that problem for about 100-300 dollars.

Price depends on the generation of the Ram,

DDR3 ~110

DDR4 ~120

DDR5 ~300-500

Speed of Ram actually helps a lot too, at DDR3 probably at 1333 Mhz but in some PC's can clock that up to 1866 which is perfect for a lot of games right now and even is good for 1440p gaming at 60FPS with say a 1080 or 2080Ti card.

 

DDR4 is about what is affordable now on a new budget gaming pc build, RAM speeds usually either 2133 or 3200, it is obscenely fast with last generation 30 series cards in all games and you can play in 1440p or 2166p  basically 2K or 4K resolutions.

 

DDR5 is cutting edge, speeds start at 4800 and looks like they are going to get into the 8000 range.

 

Having proper amount of Ram at good speeds plus a decent graphics card will make a whole heck of lot issues go away, seriously.

Also those screen archers....

Some of those are not running 20FPS they are working with either a singular good graphics card or even SLI/Crossfire a lot of people were using 2x980ti Blacks or 2x1080Ti

SkyrimLE/SE and Fallout 4 support SLI, dual graphics cards setups.

You dont need 2 Cards though, since a single 2080TI is enough and anything more powerful than that will handle even the most demanding ENB profile.

 

I was playing at 1440p 60FPS on an SR-2 Classified Mobo from 2009, with Dual Xeon w5580's, 32 Gig 1866, and a 2080Ti....

All the jiggly, great ENB, using SkySA combat animation mods enabled for NPC's, plus sex mods from LL.

 

Its all doable, just have to get your hardware sorted and be really familiar with the modules.

Yeah, I'm still back on LE at the moment, and my hardware isn't terrible.  I'm running a 3070 Ti with 32GB RAM, though I'm not sure if it's DDR3 or 4.  I'm sure I could do more with it, too, it's just a matter of figuring out how to optimize things.

[t.ara]

if you want better looking nature (higher resolution of the textures, you should not use 4K. Take 2K and exactly look if that is really better. TAKE2 :-))

The game can handle quite well 2K textures and look really well in detail. Some textures with only 512MB are more better shot then some, which come in 4K.

You need to check the mod´s content and use a serious MO for it´s installation to get rid of the stuff easily, if it is not suiting to your desires.

You can also MIX textures of different mods and take the best of different packs, add the stuff simply manually as the replacers....

And some texture-mods simply make skyrim to become not better...you have simply to check out what is fine-architecture-mods mostly screw up the game into very far away and more native looking areas. The work in details of texturing is a very hard and long time job, for a game it can take some years to get suiting textures and this is not easy to handle as a mod to offer a well looking replacement stuff. Even bethesda did not offer new texures for sse-they only autocomputed the stuff of LE -which has not been a real step up. On the other hand is skyrim as a vanilla game offering better textures, compared with RDR or GTA-so it is making a fantastic picture on screen with an older graphical engine, but it shows a HONEST graphic without virtual-new effects, which are dying in newer engines, depending on the angle of view, which is really CRAP and awful. The engine of honor IS the CREATION ENGINE and it has a fantastic weather-sky-cloud system, night dome and some other details, which are all beloved by the players without noticing this aspects in foreground. You can compare the sky of RDR2 with SKYRIM. You can closly look to wood-textures or onto stone/rock textures in compare between RDR and skyrim. Directx10 is faking rough surfaces, which simply are not existing-if you would see that game / and you can swithc that off / you will see what is going on there. That I meant with: SKYRIM is more honest with it´s engine and also with a serious soundtrack coming (which other games only can dream about)-so do not pump it up to it´s limits. This is NOT honest and against the performance.

 

The script stuff is another chapter and also can have a serious bad impact on the performance. If you want to play sexual content, I´d only choose one theme, check it out and add another theme, which probably could work with the first theme...together-and this way you can go on-until you suddenly get problems-then you need to replace that mod, which probably brought issures...and this is the experience, which is coming slow by slow....

 

Edited February 10, 2023 by t.ara

[Gukahn]

7 hours ago, Mr. Otaku said:

Man i wanted to do that shit too but between work, family stuff and other hobbies/games it's just not a realistic goal for me anymore. 

damn it! But hey, at least those are fine reasons, Not being able to do a hobby because of other hobbys isn't a loss in my book ?

Edited February 10, 2023 by Gukahn

[Harvald56]

Its not only the textures. There are lots of replacers beginning with 3D or high poly.  Skyrim has o lot of things the 3 D impressiion is only coming from  _n.dds like this. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/81282 or https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/81282  Such high poly or 3D models cost little performance but make a big difference.   

[t.ara]

5 hours ago, Harvald56 said:

Its not only the textures. There are lots of replacers beginning with 3D or high poly.  Skyrim has o lot of things the 3 D impressiion is only coming from  _n.dds like this. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/81282 or https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/81282  Such high poly or 3D models cost little performance but make a big difference.   

Yes,  that normal mapping is also little "illusion"-addition-but not like we know from other moderner games-it is simply "moderate and always it is more honest.

And your examples show nice wood in a healthy color-or better it is COLORED in brown (while nobody in skyrim cares about wood color (mostly))-it s simply the "weathered away" stuff yeah, and then we come to the ground parts of that NEXUS link...it is simply a modern stone ground and to me absolutly not suiting. The healthy grass doesnt suit to the burned away bushes and so on and so on....the opposite way to add healthy green trees onto this blond ground floor of whiterun is a more moderate and suiting way....anyway is a mod which adds into the city area lot of trees calming down the overall FPS...BUT: same is happening inside of SSE...and about nearly the same amount of framedrops...(checked and tested! SLE (little lower)-vs. SSE (little better) is in that case only about 4-6 frames in difference with the same content outside!!). I had a ground texture in the past for skyrim, which had some cigarettes on the ground-also not really wanted with an actual zigarette-brand-name on it:-)))-I found some more details onto other textures for skyrim, like candy wrappers and such like:-)))

The wooden texture basically I like-but I would change it´s color to become weathered, if I would use it globally.

The replacers mostly have some nice and same time some ugly stuff inside. And mostly the stuff is looking too much "healthy"/"new". But that ´s all of course  about taste.

Edited February 10, 2023 by t.ara

[Gameplayer]

13 hours ago, JakeH13 said:

Hey, that's good!  Tbf, when I started all I really wanted was some sexier armor -- I don't need full-on bikinis, give me something that shows off some skin but maintains some semblance of realism.  But then I saw jiggle physics and my attention was further piqued, so I dug a little deeper.  And then I saw a full-on sex framework and I wanted that too.  Then there's Paradise Halls, and then its addons, and survival mods and succubus transformations and lycan/vamp improvements and new followers and torture devices and now I'm even seeing stuff like Pamatronic's furniture and Ravenous --- the rabbit hole keeps getting deeper and deeper, haha.  I keep finding newer and newer things that I want to add/modify, and while I do enjoy it, I also have a similar problem to Mr. Otaku; work, family, hobbies and such make it hard for me to devote that time as much as I would like, especially as trying to get the mods to synergize in the way I want them to gets more difficult the more I add.

 

 

Yeah, I'm still back on LE at the moment, and my hardware isn't terrible.  I'm running a 3070 Ti with 32GB RAM, though I'm not sure if it's DDR3 or 4.  I'm sure I could do more with it, too, it's just a matter of figuring out how to optimize things.

 

With a machine like that you have DDR4 so that is 2133 or 3200 speed which is overkill for Skyrim and Fallout 4.

You are already missing out on a lot of the typical tech support stuff that I have seen over the last 10 years.  Can easily play the game with the sort of screen archery type graphics mods, although it would have to be Skyrim Special Edition not Legendary.  In SE you wont have issues with graphics or getting decent frames as long as you are good at zoning in on your specific mod collection rather than attempting to do everything all at once something that takes some maturing as a mod user to get good at.

 

Legendary is not an easy platform to get the most out of your hardware on and there are going to be limitations.

Anyway there are reasons to play LE over SE mostly due to what mods are available on the LE version not all the LL mods are ported over and a lot of mods that are "ported" play better on LE as well.  SkyrimSE main reason I play that over LE is just the combat mods that have been being made for it over the last year or two really modernize the game and that makes the game play loop feel fresh.

[MasterCobalt]

3 hours ago, Gameplayer said:

 

With a machine like that you have DDR4 so that is 2133 or 3200 speed which is overkill for Skyrim and Fallout 4.

You are already missing out on a lot of the typical tech support stuff that I have seen over the last 10 years.  Can easily play the game with the sort of screen archery type graphics mods, although it would have to be Skyrim Special Edition not Legendary.  In SE you wont have issues with graphics or getting decent frames as long as you are good at zoning in on your specific mod collection rather than attempting to do everything all at once something that takes some maturing as a mod user to get good at.

 

Legendary is not an easy platform to get the most out of your hardware on and there are going to be limitations.

Anyway there are reasons to play LE over SE mostly due to what mods are available on the LE version not all the LL mods are ported over and a lot of mods that are "ported" play better on LE as well.  SkyrimSE main reason I play that over LE is just the combat mods that have been being made for it over the last year or two really modernize the game and that makes the game play loop feel fresh.

Totally fair.  I would get SE but a little tight on money, so LE is where I have to put my focus.  If I get enough cash, and the mods I want are there, then I'm all for it.  But yeah, I'm honestly kind of trying to do everything at once.  XD  I know I shouldn't, but that's the kind of gameplay experience I'm looking for.  Lots of adult mods, difficult gameplay without being impossible, combat tweaks and animations, some survival elements...  And of course I want it to all blend together seamlessly!  Come now, is that really so much to ask?  XD  (And yes, I know it is, I'm joking.)