Integrating modded gear - your mileage?

[nilead]

 Main question: How did you implement modded gear into Skyrim to make it properly present in the world? What worked, and what didnt? 

My shot at it so far looked like this:

 Quite a while back i started to crack on the problem - all those cool armor sets, utility items, weapons and so on, they were really only available for PC, usually via craft or AIM.

My approach was initially using NPC Clothing Replacer, and fair enough, it works, now i can find and loot unenchanted versions of many different modded items. But it leaves the issue of - 1st, unenchanted, the roulette of getting the item you need with an ench you need is just not there. Second - chests, and particularly boss chests, get dull really quick, since all that cool gear does not appear on them. Same goes for vendors, albeit they are technicly also chests. Some items, like compases, rare custom ingredients, YPS fashion stuff and so on, ive just implemented using CID, an imperfect method given that it appears to add extra copies to merchants every time you initiate trading, but it works. Still, its a bandaid. No way i can feasibly make something like 50-100 different enchanted versions of modded item, of wich i have... no idea, thousands, and then distribude them among leveled lists manually, thats simply not feasible.

 In the end, id call approach of using NCR+CID a failure, it gets you half way there, but require way too much manual setup as is, let alone if you consider getting enchantments in.

 Balancing is another question, using SkyValor and manually overriding particulatly outstanding pieces with Proteus works so far. It feels like an endless grind, but spread across the gameplay, its tolerable.

 

 

[jhjg121837]

Maybe you can try owl and do this by editing level lists. A better way to access level lists is to write ini through skypatcher

[nilead]

14 hours ago, jhjg121837 said:

Maybe you can try owl and do this by editing level lists. A better way to access level lists is to write ini through skypatcher

Well, im currently trying to use this: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/25395

On top of NCR+SPID/CIDs i used before. This one requires a much more thorough prep stage, as while tweaking a single items stats postfactum is not an issue, tweaking 60 versions of it with different enchantments is in fact quite problematic. Still, initial test show promise. I do get consistent and proper looking outfits thanks to NCR and interesting loot from ALLA'd leveled lists.

[jhjg121837]

11 hours ago, nilead said:

好吧，我目前正在尝试使用这个：  https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/25395

除了我之前使用的 NCR+SPID/CID 之外。这个需要更彻底的准备阶段，因为虽然事后调整单个物品的统计数据不是问题，但调整 60 个带有不同附魔的版本实际上相当困难。不过，初步测试显示很有希望。由于 NCR 和来自 ALLA 等级列表的有趣战利品，我确实获得了一致且合适的服装。

I used to use it a few years ago, but there was some male nudity, how did you avoid it? If it can solve the problem of male nudity, it will be the best solution.

[nilead]

6 hours ago, jhjg121837 said:

how did you avoid it?

 Well, outfits are handkled almost exclusively by NCR, so i guess thats what stops me from seing that. Beyond that - a ton of armors are female only, and you would probably have to flag them as such in ALLA to avoid that.

[reuad6]

Would also be curious to hear how others are doing this. I'm currently using Halgari's RPG Loot (https://github.com/Synthesis-Collective/SynthesisRPGLoot) to generate enchanted versions of everything. This uses synthesis to replace leveled lists, so I run it with only the lists activated where I want the enchanted gear to show up. One of the main lists I use it on is the boss chest list. So the modded stuff serves as a kind of special end-of-dungeon reward.

 

This is not a great tool to distribute modded/enchanted gear among npcs though. For that I currently just use manually edited lists and SPID. Quite cumbersome and as you say the balancing is tricky/tedious. I tried ALLA in the past but just couldn't get it to work the way I wanted.

 

[NymphoElf]

On 10/12/2024 at 8:56 AM, nilead said:

How did you implement modded gear into Skyrim to make it properly present in the world?

My shot at it so far looked like this:

 Quite a while back i started to crack on the problem - all those cool armor sets, utility items, weapons and so on, they were really only available for PC

 

NPCs need to have outfits established. Each NPC can pull an item from a levelled list for their outfit, but that requires that you first add those items to the levelled list in question. Otherwise, you need to define a static outfit. Additionally, there are NPCs which are levelled encounters, so you have effectively two independent dice rolls affecting your loot.

 

As you pointed out, pre-enchanted variants of items need each variation to be established somehow, either through CK itself by adding an extra item object with the appropriate enchantment, or by using Papyrus to add enchantments via script to the object, or some mix of both. These individual items need to be added to the appropriate levelled lists too.

 

Unfortunately, this is a tedious process no matter how you slice it, and due to this tediousness most modded items tend to be PC-only. I'm aware of mods offering a "workaround" by automating this levelled list integration, such as but not limited to Spell Perk Item Distributor, but there will always be some amount of leg-work that needs to be done. It's impossible for every mod to be accounted for inherently.

 

On 10/12/2024 at 8:56 AM, nilead said:

Balancing is another question, using SkyValor and manually overriding particulatly outstanding pieces with Proteus works so far.

 

Balancing is effectively impossible since there are so many combat-altering mods, and everyone's idea of "balance" is different. Just in my personal opinion, vanilla stats are generally the best reference. Any mods altering stats are likely to keep the modded item in line with the others.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Also, just a friendly word of caution, be wary of entitled people who don't understand what they're talking about. If things were really as easy as they claim, then more people would to it.

[nilead]

16 hours ago, NymphoElf said:

Balancing is effectively impossible since there are so many combat-altering mods, and everyone's idea of "balance" is different. Just in my personal opinion, vanilla stats are generally the best reference. Any mods altering stats are likely to keep the modded item in line with the others.

Well, obviously, im balancing it for my own view of what it should be.  I wouldnt call it impossible, but ... lets call it a long term project. Basicly, one has to bring items keywords, stats, value and crafting conditions and resources to a unified baseline before sending it to ALLA and/or other patchers. Team TALs pack took a weekend of tinkering, and that pack is actualy quite well grounded to begin with. 

[NymphoElf]

1 hour ago, nilead said:

Well, obviously, im balancing it for my own view of what it should be.

 

Fair enough. My statement was from a more generalized/public perspective. I hope you're able to accomplish what you're looking for! It may be a long road, but it will be rewarding to see your hard work come to fruition!

[Deliah Blue]

Came across this on the new mods section of Nexus the other day, might be of interest
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/132091

[greencroc2]

Honestly a ton of different SPID mods to distribute clothing to specific factions and or NPCs.  I personally want to learn SPID so that I can eventually get to a point where I can have it set up so that my modded NPCs receive the armor and SMP wigs from the getgo so that I am not distributing them with simple outfit system.  Many of my modded clothes are distributed to vampires, bandits, wizards, and wenches and I've also found a few stores that sell things such as Apachii store or furious knitters from coldsun.  If someone can figure out a more user friendly approach to getting modded gear at stores or in chests, I'm open to it, but most of them are pretty intense from what I've seen. 

[nilead]

19 hours ago, greencroc2 said:

Honestly a ton of different SPID mods to distribute clothing to specific factions and or NPCs.  

I can advise against it. It does achieve the basic goal, but you'll be locked away from enchanted versions, chests, merchants etc. Its practicly the same as using NCR - it does get you halfway there, but no more than that. 

[Aldid]

Levelled List Object Swapper seems promising: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/133377?tab=description

Not many patches made so far, but it's still fairly new