Which lighting mod is better for a stealth playthrough for Skyrim SE?

[Darkpig]

I'm trying to decide between Modern Lighting Overhaul, the Placed Light and LP Overhaul for a stealth playthrough. Three of them sound like a good way to fix Bethesda's lousy lighting placement. Problem is I am no expert on lighting mods.

 

Which one is the best for stealth?

Edited February 21, 2025 by Darkpig

[belegost]

Unless you have a mod that actually takes light level into account for stealth, it doesn't matter.

[Darkpig]

2 hours ago, belegost said:

Unless you have a mod that actually takes light level into account for stealth, it doesn't matter.

Light does affect sneaking a little bit in Skyrim:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Sneak

 

But if you must know I use the mod Realistic AI Detection for my games.

Edited February 14, 2025 by Darkpig

[belegost]

1 hour ago, Darkpig said:

Light does affect sneaking a little bit in Skyrim:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Sneak

Every single stealth archery character I rolled (which is all of them, even if they did not start like that) in the past 13 years would disagree.

 

But anyway, I do not have answer to your original question I'm afraid.

Edited February 14, 2025 by belegost

[BattDaPsycho]

1 hour ago, Darkpig said:

But if you must know I use the mod Realistic AI Detection for my games.

 

Both as lighting and weather ELFX is pretty highly rated to go with RAID.

there's also a patch for true storms that's nice to have with it.

Additionally, at the bottom of the patch page is a "highly suggested" section to go with the setup. I downloaded all of it and I love this lighting + weather setup.

I'd also suggest dynamic weather and time based detection

To go with those and maybe no bs projectile dodge as well

Edited February 14, 2025 by BattDaPsycho
added infograph

[Melissa_69]

You forgot to mention  CLARALUX, which is a lighting mod.

 

[Arkbar.]

TLDR at the bottom
If you are concerned about sneak, then you should definitely should consider RAID and https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/62546. 
Raid changes the detection formula by reducing sneak skill weight, and increasing visual detection around player.gll. 
The higher the number the more likely an NPC will detect you. 

Once we establish that, then we can focus on lighting concerns. 
What Raid author basically does when evaluating different lighting mods is how much of a disparity there is between what seems to be your lighting level and what is the output of player.gll. No mod is free from inconsistencies, because these are baked in the engine, but some mods are much better than other. 

The most common issue with detection is that you are in an suspected dark area surrounding but your player.gll shows high values. This is more prevalent in mods in the window shadow family (IE, any mod that boast having window shadows in my experience has these inconsistencies with window lights and window induced shadows), but many mods have similar issues. 

Now lighting in skyrim can be very complicated, but in my testing the 2 most important variables are:
1- Lighting templates
2- Lighting sources

If your lighting templates suck, then you will have far too many inconsistencies which will be detrimental for sneak focused build. A clear example of these roles are the mods  Ambiance, and Relighting Skyrim SE. Ambiance is basically some darker lighting templates, and relighting skyrim fixes light placements through the skyrim engine (old school like most other lighting mods)

 

I have done some testing for both placed light and MLO, with community shaders (around new year). 
1- Placed light is a complete lighting overhaul. Which means it changes lighting sources (via light placer) and changes lighting templates both for interiors and exteriors
2- MLO is just a light source fixer. It removes fake lights and replace all lights with particle lights. 

During my testing Placed light had some inconsistencies which were not conducive to a sneak playthorugh. I can't elaborate much, but I remember it was not very good in the player.gll category. MLO on the other hand was decent, however I had to tweak the values a bit with CS, because by default the lights were too dim and I couldn't see anything, nor I had a reasonable player.gll values  with the default CS configuration. After configuring it, the values were much better (near light sources I was visible, and had high player.gll and so on)

 

Another mod you may want to consider is LP Overhaul - Light Placer Confs - LPO, which can be coupled with CS Light. Both aim to do the same as MLO, but via light placer, rather than using particle lights. 

When I tested LPO, it was still a bit inconsistent. Some lights were too dim, and the game was too dark as a consequence, so it was unplayable to me (I mean near a fireplace I could not see my hands due to how dark it was). 

 

-------
TL;DR
Now for my answer,
Placed light was not good for sneaking in my testing (when it was just out) MLO is more ready, but IMHO is not a complete solution when considering sneaking, you probably have to compliment it with other mods (like ambiance, elfx, lux or others) :

If you are using ENB, go for MLO. 
If you want to play right now, go for MLO (you are basically done modding, and this is the last piece)
If you are using community shaders, are using other lighting mods, you may want to consider other light mods like cs light, LPO  which you can use with MLO, but I'd encourage to test in your game to see if the dark/light balance works for you (you can see where you need to see, and not when not expected) and don't be afraid to combine some lighting mods. 
 

[Darkpig]

Thank you for the insight @Arkbar.

That is interesting. I didn't know that Placed Light was that bad on stealth playthroughs. I haven't seen the LP Overhaul before so I think this will be worth checking out. I think I will add a few things to the poll. I will leave Placed Light as a possibility in case something changes in an update.