Few questions about mods and modding

[LunaOP]

1. Which follower mod should I use? I know that UFO is just outdated, AFT is somehow glitched for me, Lydia doesn't equip her shield. Should I use EFF then? Are there any other follower mods?

 

2. I'm looking for high performance ENB, but the problem is, I need bright ENB. NPCs can fight in pure darkness, why should I be at disadvantage?

 

3. I'd like to take up modding. I'm most interested in creating new world spaces, exteriors and interiors. I just want to make my own player home. I know I'm bad artist, so I'm not interested in creating items, armors etc. Can you recommend me good guide? Where can I find resources for furniture, buildings etc. ?

 

Thank you in advance.

[Guest]

1. I've used all of them. I prefer AFT overall, it's feature rich. The delay when selecting tweaks via dialogue bugs the hell out of me, so if you don't mind not having some of AFT's extra features, EFF is the more streamlined and light of the two. UFO as you say is pretty much abandoned at this point and isn't very stable even with the November update, wouldn't go near it. 

 

2. In my own experience a lot of 'performance' ENBs just turn off DoF, SSAO and a few of the more recent toys from the latest binaries but you'll still take an FPS loss of around 10% avg. And not many preset authors seem to approach it as a serious attempt, they often don't try to balance or compensate, they just throw a cut down version at you. 

 

Realvision ENB does a good performance version, it's quite bright and breezy depending on the options you go for. Too vibrant for my tastes but it's well made.

 

Project ENB performance version is pretty good, it's quite bold and vibrant again but it's a good entry to ENBs.

 

Saraan Suum - my personal favourite, eye candy without you feeling like a hobo. It's a cinematic preset, I guess it's exteriors are weaker than the full version, but they still look nice. Interiors with ELFX interior plugin are very nice, not too dark, but then dungeons aren't lit up like shopping malls either. Take a torch but only to find the odd chest or lever. 

 

 

[gvman3670]

My machine can't handle ENBs at all. Even "performance" versions have cost me 15-20fps. So I use this and it's required mods....

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/48554/?

 

It used Imaginator as one of it's requirements and that allows on the fly adjustments of brightness, contrast, color palette, saturation and so on. Plus it used Climates of Tamriel and Extreme Lighting and Effects, which makes it look pretty nice on my machine. All with no loss in performace. If you want the depth of field effect then you could also add Dynavision.

[D_ManXX2]

For your second question:

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/52239

 

Immersive npc in the dark. This will remove the advantage from npc from instantly seeing you in the dark they need light just as much as you to fight you.