So I got this game from a friend over steam recently. I have a GTX 580 and game on a 27""1440p screen. can some one help me set this up with the best graphics and improvement mods please. I feel like I did at 8 the first time I played DnD and the DM brought out 3 rulebooks. I would like to have the best possible look in game but still have a healthy frame rate, improved game mechanics and any AAA addon on quests. Any Ideas where I should start. So far I got improved mounts mod off steam.
Skyrim Nexus is probably the best place to go. The mod manager works great for installing and switching mods on and off. The steam workshop does have mods, and plenty of them, but filesize limits can sometimes mean that mods which would be a single item on nexus end up being a bunch on steam, I also prefer the nexus mod manager over the steam method. I've just reinstalled skyrim to play through again and have so far spent about 3 days mixing and matching mods and enbs to try and get the best looks and performance. Make sure you get the free steam DLC High resolution packs. A few essentials I would recommend are: Unofficial Skyrim Patch Unofficial High Resolution Patch Any of the unnofficial patches for the DLCs Skyrim Project Optimization (this really boosts FPS indoors) And then in no particular order, I'm also running: Birds of Skyrim Sounds of Skyrim (Civilization and Wilds) Beautiful Whiterun & Riften Lightning during Storms Unique Grasses and Groundcovers WATER Superior Lore Friendly Hair The Eyes of Beauty Enhanced Lights and FX Immersive Skyrim Thunder Divine Talos Statue HD 2K HD Stone Quarry and Clay Deposit for Hearthfire Superior Rock Textures No More Blocky faces Vurts Skyrim Flora Overhaul Detailed Terrain and Tree LoD Project Parallax Remastered Static Mesh Improvement Mod Rich Merchants And at the moment I think I'm running the Quiet Cool ENB without DOF. I get roughly 30ish outdoors and 40+ indoors and it's just playable still. I may be being limited by my aging CPU though. It will take you a while before you get a setup your happy with, as looks are a very personal thing, so one ENB which looks good to one person, might look terrible to another.
I've only just start messing about with Skyrim, but other than Steam Workshop stuff, this looks like a good place to start: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/topalltime/?adult=2 (list of most endorsed mods on Skyrim Nexus).
Cheers guys! Can some on point me in the direction of an install tutorial and or which is the best Mod manager to use? Watching some youtube videos they say you need like 100 graphic mods to get the shown result. Thats a lot of mods!
Use Nexus Mod Manager(NMM). You browse the mods on the Nexus site, download with NMM although it will limit your speed, and then add it to your mods. You can then install it from NMM, so the mod appears in the plugins list, and then you can toggle them on/off there. You can download the mods through a browser and then add them to NMM if you wish. You will probably find skyrim will refuse to load at times, it may just be a case of rejigging the order of the plugins. I'm using Recommend using, will change parts of the game Unoffical Skyrim Patch, and the ones for all the dlc too SkyUI Better Dialogue Controls ( not sure if this is still needed or not), Cosmetic changes - Project Reality I think has some gameplay changes to do with freezing, but I have them off Skyrim HD 2K, A Quality World Map, Project Reality - Climates of Tamriel V3, Supreme Storms for Climates of Tamriel Areas - Adds extra areas that are worth looking into. I believe Moonpath is also an extra area. They will add stuff to the game though. Moonpath to Elsweyr Falskaar Additions to the game, aren't needed, probably considered cheating in some way simply for the items that can be found in them. Unread Books Glow, Instant Merchant - Goonie Shawks Corner - Hideout Airship - Dev Aveza Dorn Heven Dragon Falls Manor Society of Merchants Do you have the DLCs? IIRC some mods require the DLCs, and Hearthfire breaks stuff. Oh, keep an eye on your VRAM too.
For the ENB graphics enhancements, a good place to go would be the ENB forums for existing user presets: http://enbseries.enbdev.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=11 Not all of the topics there are Skyrim (you may also spot a few other games you play), but there's plenty to choose from and most of the good ones include screenshots or videos to give you an idea of the effects that it adds. You can customise the enb, though it can be very daunting for someone who's not used to it. So I'd start off with playing around with some existing ones to get a taste of how they change the look of the game. As mentioned, the Skyrim Nexus is a great place to seek mods for the game and is jam-packed with thousands of choices. You can generally find the good ones by sorting them in order of endorsements (always worth reading the recent comments on the mod as well to see if anyone mentions any conflicts with other mods). For installing, the Nexus has a a mod manager in the form of a bit of software which can install and uninstall mods at the click of a button. You can also download the files directly to the manager, so it's all in one easy to find place. As for what mods... it's hard to advise on that one as everyone has very different tastes. If you want to push your graphics card, then STEP - Skyrim Total Enhancement Project would be a good starting place: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/11/? Also practically everything made by Xenius on the Skyrim Nexus is lovely eye-candy: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/726673 A very useful collection of mod patches that you'll want to bookmark is Sharlikrans Compatibility Patches: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/26230/? Frostfall: Hypothermia - fantastic mod if you want the game to be a bit more challenging with having to survive not only the dangerous creatures, people and dragons but also having to be wary of the elements: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/11163/? Immersive Armors - adds loads of lore friendly armours to give you a ton more variation in the look of your character: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19733/? Immersive Weapons - As with the armours mod, adds a whole bunch of new lore friendly weaponry: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27644/? Skyrim Immersive Creatures - a great little mod for making the game feel more alive when you're exploring the wilderness. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/24913/? Become King of Riverhelm - just a fun content add-on that allows you to own and partially manage your own minor city, there's no real benefit to it but it can be a nice way to kill time and have a bit of fun outside of the normal content of the game: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/16374/? Really, the best thing you can do is play around with installing a collection of mods for a trial and error and add or remove bits to see what fits well with how you want the game to look and feel.
THank you again guys! the Links are a godsend gave me a real good idea how to get into this now I'm reading through the guides hope to actually start playing the game soon
Oh yes almost forgot! A lot of mods (usually Gameplay/UI related ones) require the Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE). http://skse.silverlock.org/ Which is dead easy to install, as there's either an installer (.exe) option or an archive file which simply needs to be extracted into the games core folder.
Gopher (mentioned previously) has just announced his new modding website where you can find all of his videos much easier than trying to find them on youtube, I learnt everything I needed to know about modding Skyrim from his videos. The Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) is a mod that Gopher helped develop and he has a video on what it does and how to install it, it's not difficult and is a must have as it allows you to change the configuration of many mods that support SKSE.
Gopher's videos are the best, very clear. I'm yet to install Skyrim on my new machine but would love to get the mods and crank it to the max.
Modding Skyrim will become your life There are so many mods and you can make the game look so different with a summer or winter mod it's like playing a new game, I've been playing and modding Skyrim (mainly modding) for a few months and even bought a new GTX780 so I can play with an ENB mod, I'm using Project ENB plus around 50 other mods and it looks great so I'm trying to stop modding for a while and play the game but then someone suggests a mod or a new mod is released and I have to try it Giant trees, you've got to try the giant trees, I got completely lost in a forest of them
I like the GEMS mod-list. It's very lengthy, but has detailed instructions all the way through. I too have a 580 and the game runs like clockwork with all the graphical mods. If you just want to add slutty looking pre-teens caked in makeup with tits like footballs, then a cursory google will find them for you.
I think my CPU is starting to show it's age, along with just having 4GiB of RAM. With my GTX660, which should be about the same as a 580, I'm only getting mid 30 fps outside, sometimes dropping as low as low 20s. Indoors it's great now that I'm running the Skyrim Optimizer thing, get constant mid 40fps indoors. What draw distances are people using?
If you mean the uGridsToLoad the default is 5, I've tried 7 but for the limited improvement in the way the graphics look by loading more middle to distant grids I didn't find it was worth it and it caused random CTD (crashes to desktop) which is one of the problems that often occur when changing the uGridsToLoad value also if your CPU is struggling it will only stress it and the GPU more by increasing this value. Default values: uExterior Cell Buffer=36 and uGridsToLoad=5 If your using HD texture packs and mods with 4K or 2K textures try the lite versions that many of them have as that will help the fps.
I meant the settings in the skyrim graphics options actually. I don't think I've got any significant 2k/4k textures, apart from hearthfire quarries and talos statue. Might try playing with some stuff again, see what happens with no ENB and disabling various mods to find out the performance hits.
Sorry forgot those settings, most ENB's will recommend turning off the Skyrim AA and AF game settings because the ENB handles AA and AF, my detail settings are all set to high, can't see any difference with shadow detail and decal quantity on ultra and again shadow and ambient occlusion handled by an ENB will look better than standard settings. All view distance settings maxed and distant object detail on ultra although I use amidianborn Landscape and AOF HD Tree LODs mods which increase lots of landscape details and these mods probably overwrite these standard Skyrim settings. ENB's are fps killers but some ENB's have performance versions designed for lower spec PC's, they turn off lots of the ENB effects so are easier to run, I bought a gtx780 3GB VRAM to be able to run the full quality Project ENB with a load of mods and even that will drop to 50-55fps at times.
