The OFFICIAL Anandtech Forums TeS V: Skyrim Thread

[shortylickens]

That is how I play TES games, I never play the 3rd person, I like the first person better.

No I mean all you gotta do to change that is press one button, or roll the wheel back.

 

[Gothgar]

So I just got this last night, what mods do I need for it?

What mods make it better, etc.?

 

[diesbudt]

A mod that makes the visuals much sharper and pristine is good. If your computer can handle it.

Otherwise most mods is if you/how you like to play. Some give you god items, like a ring that slows time by 100x. Or a weapon that kills in 1 slice (However these take a lot away from the gameplay).

And some mods change the models of people, and weapons, and so on.

Go to skyrim nexus (google it) it has an array of mod choices.

 

[zinfamous]

So I just got this last night, what mods do I need for it?

What mods make it better, etc.?

SkyUI

 

[diesbudt]

SkyUI

Oh yea, this def.

It made life much easier sorting items and such.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

So I just got this last night, what mods do I need for it?

What mods make it better, etc.?

This is a list of mods I use that I posted a few pages back, hopefully the links still work. These are strictly for the visuals in the game. As others have said, SkyUI is a must have, and you'll need Script Dragon to run that. You also may consider some of the community uncappers or various crafting overhauls, follower overhauls, magic overhauls, etc. You'll have to figure out what your playstyle is and see if any of those appeal to you. I recommend playing through once on the vanilla game (with graphic mods to improve the visuals), just to get a feel for the experience before you go changing all the fundamentals.

WATER - Water And Terrain Enhancement Redux
Static Mesh Improvement Mod
Skyrim Realistic Overhaul (This is the bulk of my high-res textures except for ones overwritten by the following)
XCE - Xenius Character Enhancement
Improved NPC Clothing - High Res
Skyrim Flora Overhaul
Better Dynamic Snow
Enhanced Blood Textures
Deadly Spell Impacts
AOF Believable Hair -Female and Male-
Enhanced Night Skyrim
Nordic Ruins Clutter Improvement

I'm running the official HD pack as a base with a few bug fixes for it, then these as texture replacement mods. I'm using RCRN v21 HDR - Realistic Colors and Real Nights as my lighting mod on the "Legacy" setting so the nights aren't pitch black, but are still noticeably darker than Vanilla. Ingame settings on Ultra High preset with 4xAA and 16xAF forced through drivers, FXAA disabled.

That last paragraph is no longer accurate; I now run an ENB config by ForceWithin. The performance hit is fairly huge though, probably at least 50%. But holy God, with that running, it is, bar none, the best looking game I have ever seen. You need a beastly rig to run it, so if you're having trouble getting 60 FPS as it is, don't bother with the ENB; RCRN looks pretty good as is and has a minimal impact on performance.

Be warned, with all these installed, you will use a lot of VRAM, so you may need to use medium res versions of some of these files based on your hardware.

 

[Gothgar]

^ holy shit

get those in addition to the hi rez pack too right?

 

[shortylickens]

God dammit! Ima be downloadin all night.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

^ holy shit

get those in addition to the hi rez pack too right?

Yes. Although it used to be that there was a specific command you had to add to your config file to allow texture mods to override the textures in the high-res pack; don't know if that's still the case. Regardless, I still have the command file altered like that and it works, so if you're having issues, you may need to do it. Here are the steps as outlined by the XCE mod:

Step-by-step guide on how to get texture replacements working with the official texture pack.

1. Disable the two .esp files HighResTexturePack01.esp and HighResTexturePack02.esp
2. Go to the Documents\My Games\Skyrim folder and open Skyrim.ini
3. Find the [Archive] section in the .ini file
4. Add the following two entries: HighResTexturePack01.bsa, HighResTexturePack02.bsa
5. Your .ini should look like this
6. Now you should be able to use texture replacements as usual

 

[Atomic Playboy]

And I'll add (in a separate post so it's easier to read), you should get some form of mod organizer. The Nexus Mod Manager is the most popular because it links with the Skyrim Nexus to keep all your mods up to date and let you know when updates are available. I personally use this, and it's fairly simple to set up and get working in conjunction with SKSE script extender (required for SkyUI and some other things). You could also use Mod Organiser or Wrye Bash, but I won't speak to their utility as I haven't personally used them.

 

[scooterlibby]

This is a list of mods I use that I posted a few pages back, hopefully the links still work. These are strictly for the visuals in the game. As others have said, SkyUI is a must have, and you'll need Script Dragon to run that. You also may consider some of the community uncappers or various crafting overhauls, follower overhauls, magic overhauls, etc. You'll have to figure out what your playstyle is and see if any of those appeal to you. I recommend playing through once on the vanilla game (with graphic mods to improve the visuals), just to get a feel for the experience before you go changing all the fundamentals.
WATER - Water And Terrain Enhancement Redux
Static Mesh Improvement Mod
Skyrim Realistic Overhaul (This is the bulk of my high-res textures except for ones overwritten by the following)
XCE - Xenius Character Enhancement
Improved NPC Clothing - High Res
Skyrim Flora Overhaul
Better Dynamic Snow
Enhanced Blood Textures
Deadly Spell Impacts
AOF Believable Hair -Female and Male-
Enhanced Night Skyrim
Nordic Ruins Clutter Improvement

I'm running the official HD pack as a base with a few bug fixes for it, then these as texture replacement mods. I'm using RCRN v21 HDR - Realistic Colors and Real Nights as my lighting mod on the "Legacy" setting so the nights aren't pitch black, but are still noticeably darker than Vanilla. Ingame settings on Ultra High preset with 4xAA and 16xAF forced through drivers, FXAA disabled.

That last paragraph is no longer accurate; I now run an ENB config by ForceWithin. The performance hit is fairly huge though, probably at least 50%. But holy God, with that running, it is, bar none, the best looking game I have ever seen. You need a beastly rig to run it, so if you're having trouble getting 60 FPS as it is, don't bother with the ENB; RCRN looks pretty good as is and has a minimal impact on performance.

Be warned, with all these installed, you will use a lot of VRAM, so you may need to use medium res versions of some of these files based on your hardware.

How can you check if the ENB Config is working? I downloaded and extracted the files into steam/steam apps/skyrim folder. Is that all I need to do? For some reason my mod manager doesn't think I have admin rights so I don't use it and just manually extract the files.

Edit: to be clear, I did read the readme, but was still confused

 

[darkewaffle]

Man, I am just not feeling the combat controls. I only played for like an hour after just getting the game finally but even just swinging your weapon feels so unwieldy, it's as though even a small sword is way too heavy for my character. Also I could do without the God of War death sequences lol.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I deleted the game a while back, but do kinda feel like playing again sometimes. I think I'll wait until I have a better computer and mod the hell out of it.

Man, I am just not feeling the combat controls. I only played for like an hour after just getting the game finally but even just swinging your weapon feels so unwieldy, it's as though even a small sword is way too heavy for my character. Also I could do without the God of War death sequences lol.

Are you holding down the attack button? I'm not sure what weapons you're using either, but a lot of the earlier weapons are heavy and they did try to make them seem that way. Holding the attack button does a more powerful strike, and I believe its how you get the kill animations, so that could also be your problem. Try doing just quick hack 'n slash type of button pressing and see if it changes much as it doesn't take much of a hold to trigger the "charge" type attacks if I remember right. Even then, yeah its got that kinda clunky almost drunk type of swinging that is prevalent in first person melee.

Another thing that I felt improved the feel of movement and spatial visualization is adjusting the field of view. The standard setting is just too constrained and makes movement feel especially odd.

I personally think the Elder Scroll games fit better in first person view. Skyrim improved the 3rd person view quite a bit I thought (felt unusably clunky in Morrowind and Oblivion for me personally, whereas I've actually played a decent amount of Skyrim in 3rd person), but its still not great. I'd argue the first person view isn't either (the default fov is part of the problem, but that's not the only thing, and really its not just a Skyrim thing either, I feel first person view in pretty much every game could use an overhaul and some real improvement). I think it fits the interaction and exploration elements a bit better.

 

[scooterlibby]

Been searching around for when the heck they'll release the PC expansion pack. Seems like they just released the 360 version and then forgot about it.

Edit: Apparently it might be July 26th.

http://www.product-reviews.net/2012/07/17/skyrim-dawnguard-counting-days-until-ps3-dlc/

 

[Atomic Playboy]

How can you check if the ENB Config is working? I downloaded and extracted the files into steam/steam apps/skyrim folder. Is that all I need to do? For some reason my mod manager doesn't think I have admin rights so I don't use it and just manually extract the files.

Edit: to be clear, I did read the readme, but was still confused

You'll need to download the standalone ENB file here. Then download the ENB config you want to use (I use the one by ForceWithin). Follow the Readmes in both to make sure that you get the files in the proper spots. You also need to set bFloatPointRenderTarget=1 inside your skyrimprefs.ini. When you load up a game, look at something close to your character; if everything else in the scene goes out of focus, that means the ENB config is working (there are options for various depth of field settings, but that's the most obvious way to verify that it's enabled).

Actually, now that I think about it, you'll get a message when you load a game in the upper left corner of the screen telling you that ENB series 0.113 by Boris Vorontsov is running. If you aren't getting that message, it means you either didn't place all the necessary files in the proper folders, you didn't set bFloatPointRenderTarget=1 inside your skyrimprefs.ini, or some other installed mod is conflicting with the ENB materials. You should also double check that "Load loose files" is turned on, but I don't think that setting actually affects the ENB files in any way.

Apparently Shift+F12 is a keyboard shortcut to enable and disable ENB after loading, so try that, and if nothing happens, it probably isn't working properly. I'll have to verify this later as I didn't know this shortcut existed. Should be handy for taking screenshots showing the difference between vanilla and ENB.

-EDIT- OK, the SHIFT+F12 shortcut totally works, so that's convenient because it means I could take a quick comparison shot.

First, here's the text that shows up in the upper left corner immediately after loading Skyrim:

Now, a quick comparison shot to show off the depth of field and ambient occlusion added by ENB which are extremely noticeable when viewing objects up close.

ENB Disabled:

ENB Enabled:

If you blow those shots up, you'll notice how the depth of field in the ENB mod makes the background appear out of focus while everything in the vanilla shot is in focus. If going up close to an object isn't causing the focus to shift, the ENB files haven't loaded properly.

 

[Qbah]

Soo... where's Dawnguard for PC ?? Total silence It's been a month a day since the Xbox360 release...

 

[The_Golden_Man]

Soo... where's Dawnguard for PC ?? Total silence It's been a month a day since the Xbox360 release...

Wondering the same. It was released for XBox 360 the 26th of June. So hopefully the PC version will be out tomorrow.

 

[scooterlibby]

You'll need to download the standalone ENB file here. Then download the ENB config you want to use (I use the one by ForceWithin). Follow the Readmes in both to make sure that you get the files in the proper spots. You also need to set bFloatPointRenderTarget=1 inside your skyrimprefs.ini. When you load up a game, look at something close to your character; if everything else in the scene goes out of focus, that means the ENB config is working (there are options for various depth of field settings, but that's the most obvious way to verify that it's enabled).

Actually, now that I think about it, you'll get a message when you load a game in the upper left corner of the screen telling you that ENB series 0.113 by Boris Vorontsov is running. If you aren't getting that message, it means you either didn't place all the necessary files in the proper folders, you didn't set bFloatPointRenderTarget=1 inside your skyrimprefs.ini, or some other installed mod is conflicting with the ENB materials. You should also double check that "Load loose files" is turned on, but I don't think that setting actually affects the ENB files in any way.

Apparently Shift+F12 is a keyboard shortcut to enable and disable ENB after loading, so try that, and if nothing happens, it probably isn't working properly. I'll have to verify this later as I didn't know this shortcut existed. Should be handy for taking screenshots showing the difference between vanilla and ENB.

-EDIT- OK, the SHIFT+F12 shortcut totally works, so that's convenient because it means I could take a quick comparison shot.

First, here's the text that shows up in the upper left corner immediately after loading Skyrim:

Now, a quick comparison shot to show off the depth of field and ambient occlusion added by ENB which are extremely noticeable when viewing objects up close.

ENB Disabled:

ENB Enabled:

If you blow those shots up, you'll notice how the depth of field in the ENB mod makes the background appear out of focus while everything in the vanilla shot is in focus. If going up close to an object isn't causing the focus to shift, the ENB files haven't loaded properly.

Thank you! Looks like I don't have it installed correctly, as I am not seeing that text in the corner.

 

[Madia]

This is a list of mods I use that I posted a few pages back, hopefully the links still work. These are strictly for the visuals in the game. As others have said, SkyUI is a must have, and you'll need Script Dragon to run that. You also may consider some of the community uncappers or various crafting overhauls, follower overhauls, magic overhauls, etc. You'll have to figure out what your playstyle is and see if any of those appeal to you. I recommend playing through once on the vanilla game (with graphic mods to improve the visuals), just to get a feel for the experience before you go changing all the fundamentals.

Thanks for the links. I'm playing Skyrim again in anticipation of the Dawnguard release and wanted to upgrade from the vanilla Skyrim. I installed everything except the ENB config and things look dramatically better. It was definitely worth the hassle of getting the mods installed.

Offhand do you or anyone else know the best mod to up the merchant's gold cap? That and the ui were two of my biggest annoyances in the vanilla version.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Thanks for the links. I'm playing Skyrim again in anticipation of the Dawnguard release and wanted to upgrade from the vanilla Skyrim. I installed everything except the ENB config and things look dramatically better. It was definitely worth the hassle of getting the mods installed.

Offhand do you or anyone else know the best mod to up the merchant's gold cap? That and the ui were two of my biggest annoyances in the vanilla version.

I use this one. It's a simple ini file which raises the merchant gold by 10,000. There are more advanced ones, but this one is simple and does exactly what it promises.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

Still no Dawnguard for PC? It's been 30 days since the release for Xbox.

I almost find it unbelievable that the crappy old console should get the benefits in earlier released content. I wonder how much Microsoft must have payd Bethesda off for this to happen.

 

[waggy]

The only house with purchasing issues is Markath, cuz the thane sells it to you in the middle of another quest and its possible to miss your chance permanently.

download a addon house called Castle grey. its fricken huge and nicely done

 

[Grooveriding]

Still no Dawnguard for PC? It's been 30 days since the release for Xbox.

I almost find it unbelievable that the crappy old console should get the benefits in earlier released content. I wonder how much Microsoft must have payd Bethesda off for this to happen.

http://games.on.net/2012/07/no-news-about-skyrim-dlc-coming-to-pc-is-apparently-bad-news/

Serious fail.

Hmm. Remember when Skyrim‘s Dawnguard DLC was announced for XBox 360 and we all assumed that, after an exclusivity period, it would be coming to PC and PS3? Well, turns out Bethesda never actually said it was coming to either platform, only 360. According to the Twitter account of Bethesda’s vice president of PR and marketing, Pete Hines, there is no timeline for the DLC to come to the PC or PS3 and that “if we have news, I promise I’d tell you”.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

http://games.on.net/2012/07/no-news-about-skyrim-dlc-coming-to-pc-is-apparently-bad-news/

Serious fail.

If this holds true I will never buy a Bethesda game anymore. I bought Skyrim for PC, and accepted it was a Console port, waited patiently for patches to fix the game and optimize it... We were also promised large DLC content and now this... :thumbsdown:

Not only that, but Dawnguard does not seem to be a very large DLC when thinking of what Bethesda promised us. But no matter how crappy it is, it should at least come to PC! I don't care about PS3. Consoles are ruining PC gaming!

 

[cytoSiN]

We'll get Dawnguard (or something better) sooner or later. There's plenty of other shit to keep us busy in the meantime, not to mention millions of GB of Skyrim mods that are only possible on PC because of the CK, which 360 didn't get. Same old shit, nothing to see here, etc....

That said, this, of course, is true:

Consoles are ruining PC gaming!