kryptopyr

I think this makes a lot of sense around a forge or an area with a decent expanse of roof overhead (plus the heat radiating from the forge would probably be enough to melt any nearby snow). However, I think the abrupt transitions look a bit strange. It would be nice to have some dusting of snow, or even snow drifts, along the railings and edge of the decks. And I think the smaller sections of roofs, like those above some of the doors and entries, wouldn't really exhibit much difference in the snow accumulation; snow would blow under these areas pretty easily. If those areas were being frequently shoveled, then why aren't the owners also shoveling the steps? I'm not sure how feasible it is to address those issues, though. Overall, I really like the idea behind this mod, and the 3d snow and added snow drifts look pretty good. I'm very interested to see how it develops, and maybe some of the things I mention above will be addressed eventually.

The "Cabbage in a Pot" mod comes to mind, though apparently it's no longer available on Nexus.

Moonstone does occur in a wide variety of colors including blue, brown, pink, orange, and yellow. Moonstone as it occurs elsewhere in Skyrim is a light yellowish-brown color.

Here's another moonstone/onyx comparison. Includes vanilla, Better Circlets (obviously stones only), New Jewels, and a couple of others for good measure. :)

I've used the loremonger version of Deadly Dragons for quite awhile and in general I like it (and the ability to customize via MCM). I didn't care for all of the fancy effects and new dragons added by the regular version. I use Bellyaches New Dragons to add some extra diversity (actually what I use is a customized version of Bellyaches dragons that removes the static, unleveled dragons that were hand-placed in the world and simply adds the new species to the leveled lists with a chance to spawn like any other dragon). I've also tried Dragon Combat Overhaul alongside Deadly Dragons, and I didn't have any problems using them together. I like most of the changes in DCO, but it has a few features that I think are pretty unbalanced (I forget exactly what they're all called, limit breaks?, reinforcements, etc). If DCO adds some customization options (via MCM or otherwise) and works through a few of the other remaining bugs, I suspect that it will gain a permanent place in my load order.

I wasn't all that impressed with the look of True Circlet Gems in the comparison screenshots, with the exception of the rubies, which I think look great. However, I took the time to actually load these up and check them out in game. I have to say, the screenshots just aren't really capturing True Gems very well. Not that the screenshots are inaccurate, but they just can't capture the depth of the gems. I ran around a bit in different lighting and watched how the light shifts in the True Gems depending on the direction of the light. Actually you can just stand still and watch the character breath, and that small movement is enough to make the facets in the gems sparkle slightly. Then I loaded New Jewels (and also vanilla), and the difference is pretty dramatic. The gems look rather flat and plasticy. The emeralds have the best definition in New Jewels (the rubies have the least), but even in the emeralds the highlights and reflections don't shift or move along with the character or light sources, which does give them something of a painted on appearance. I do think it would be nice if the green and blue colors in True Gems weren't quite as bright. I'd prefer a deeper color or maybe something slightly less saturated, but overall the added depth that the new meshes lend to the jewels is a rather nice effect. EDIT: Also the moonstone in New Jewels is a bit blinding. The black pearl is very nice, but I think the moonstone needs to be darker.

Haven't tried it myself, but this mod might be what you want: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8409/?

I've always been a fan of Balanced Magic by mysty. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/2275/?

There is one other circlet gem replacer that I'm aware of: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/3480/?

Was the Gopher's character sneaking when Kharjo was ignoring enemies? If so, then Kharjo's behavior pretty much defines exactly what Better Stealth AI is suppose to do.Nope, sometimes it would happen when Gopher was not sneaking. But as I said, it's probably a mod conflict of sorts in his case, since I've not encountered that problem with the mod myself.Also, we all know that Gopher doesn't RTFM :p Ah, okay. Hard to say what the problem is/was. I'm glad it's not a problem you've experienced (neither have I). I stopped watching Gopher's Let Play when he got to Dragonborn. I haven't had a chance to play through Dragonborn yet, and I didn't want to spoil it.

As DoubleYou said, there's a limit to how many creatures/NPCs can have AI. The following mod came out fairly recently, you might see if it helps: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50823/? If the problem is indeed too many NPCs, then even if the mod above fixes the standing-around issue, I would imagine there will be some impact on framerate caused by increasing the number of NPCs using AI at a given time. I have no idea how significant that impact will be, though. Was the Gopher's character sneaking when Kharjo was ignoring enemies? If so, then Kharjo's behavior pretty much defines exactly what Better Stealth AI is suppose to do.

Actually Azirok just released a Trade and Barter Patch for Requiem: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50965/?

Thanks for the info. I'm always hesitant to merge files with dialogue or script records, so it's good to hear that this works. I haven't decided if I like the changes in EFF well enough to keep this mod over the more simplified follower mod I've used in the past, but EFF seems to be the preferred follower mod for many here, so I definitely want to give it a try.

Nightingale Hall Restored I just finished updating this mod and discovered that it didn't have a thread here. While I know that STEP doesn't generally consider house or follower mods, I consider the majority of the changes made by this mod to be true fixes to the game. To be honest, I actually believe that the oversights that this mod fixes are, in general, more blatant than the subtle corrections made by WAF or CCF. I understand that this mod might be considered too specific or specialized for STEP, but I wanted to at least create a thread for it here. WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE THIEVES GUILD QUEST LINE. Here is a list of the bugs that this mod corrects: It adds a working Portal between Nightingale Hall and the Twilight Sepulcher. Karliah very clearly states that there will be a portal between these locations, but Bethesda didn't add one. The actual dialogue from the game is: "Should the need arise, a portal connects the Sepulcher and Nightingale Hall. Use it whenever you wish."It repairs Nightingale Hall and makes it feel useful and liveable. Again, dialogue indicates that Nightingale Hall would be fixed up and would become functional as a home for the player. Some bare changes to the cell were made after the quest, but nothing that changes Nightingale Hall into anything other than the damp, dank ruins that it was before the quest. Relevant dialogue from the game: "Now that you're a Nightingale, you may consider this your home." and "You'll find that this place offers many things that will help you in your endeavors as well as a wealth of information for you to learn."It adds conditions to several lines of dialogue that seem out of place after the Thieves Guild quest has finished. For example, even after finishing the quest, you can continue to ask Karliah "Who is Nocturnal?" (this is after you've promised your soul and eternal service to Nocturnal and had a fairly extensive conversation with said Daedric Prince). Several other similarly inappropriate and immersion-breaking questions have been removed. It reverts Karliah's outfit back to her Thieves Guild outfit after the quest is finished. Lines within the quest script suggest that she was suppose to switch back to this outfit at some point during the quest. This also fits the lore better and improves immersion since it doesn't make sense that she would permanently wear this "secret-identity" outfit. It removes the hood from Karliah's thieves guild outfit (both before & after the quest). Granted, a better fix would be to correct the awful mesh used for this hood, which makes Karliah appear bald. However, removing the hood also fixes/avoids this issue and allows Karliah to actually have her true appearance.Corrects the stats on TGNightingaleArmorChest01 and 03. These items had the odd progression of Resist Frost 15/30/50; this was changed to 20/30/40, which is more consistent with other items and leveled stats in the game.I've kept all changes very vanilla and lore friendly. I wanted the changes to feel like they were part of the game from the start, and while this mod does add a few other "extra" features, I think these are all justified by lore and in game dialogue.Â

The weight changes to ingots and ores was made in order to try to make these materials more consistent with the items made from them. It made no sense to me that all of the ingots (which are the same size in game) weigh the same while the items (weapons & armor) that were made out of them were drastically different in weight. This change still doesn't make the weight ratios between all of the crafting recipes and their finished products entirely logical (in part because the weight of weapons scales differently than the armors), but I feel that it does help rationalize some of the difference in weight. I've made sure to keep light armor materials like quicksilver and moonstone less dense then corresponding "heavy" materials like Dwarven or Orichalcum. With the dragon bones and scales, the ground models for these items are fairly small, not much larger than an ingot (the ground model for dragon bones also indicate that you're grabbing either smaller fragments or 'finger' bones). Also the ratios for constructing dragon armors and weapons out of bones and scales are very similar to the number of ingots required for other armors (this is the case both in the vanilla game and in CCO). Given this, I felt that the size/number of bones and scales that these items represented was pretty small...much smaller than their relative weight would suggest. There was nothing that I could find to justify the enormous weight given to these items. Even if dragon bones are not as light weight as bird bones, I doubt that they are more dense than solid metal or rock. Also, note that I lowered the value of the dragon bones and scales as well, in order to keep the price/weight ratios for these items the same as vanilla. EDIT: I actually considered reducing the value of dragon parts significantly. There seem to be very few smiths in Skyrim who have the skill necessary to forge dragon equipment. And with no alchemical or other use, the value of dragon parts to most of Skyrim is going to be marginal at best. Unless you can forge the bones, they really only have value as a novelty item. I decided to keep the ratio the same as vanilla, but I feel it could be justifiably lowered (or perhaps an alternative solution would be to create some alchemical or other use for the parts, though that would be outside the scope of this mod).

So I was installing EFF for the first time, and I decided to try out the beta version. Can someone confirm whether this mod truly requires all 6 plugins (1 esm and 5 esp files)? Maybe it's just late, but I couldn't find any information in the mod description as to why this mod needs so many different files to function. It seems to work okay in game so I'm assuming that I installed it properly, but jeez, I'm not sure that any follower mod is worth 6 plugin slots. It seems rather exorbitant to me.

It's on the CCF page under Misc files: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/43053/?

Improved Closefaced Helmets_Legendary.esp doesn't include those two options. I think STEP is still recommending at least the imp_helm_imp.esp file, or has that changed?

Has anyone here tried this mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/47332/? It claims to adjust brightness depending on moon phase. I like the idea behind the mod, but I haven't tried it yet.

I'm in complete agreement here. I've actually managed to read just by the light of a full moon on a clear night. Even on a moonless night, there are times when Venus is shining brightly enough to cast shadows. Nirn's moons are simply massive compared to our single moon. Take a look at our moon when it's near the horizon, look at how small it actually is, then compare that to the size of even the smallest of skyrim's moons. Personally, I think that the vanilla nights are almost too dark to be realistic given the size and number of the moons, not to mention the stars and galaxies. Unless the weather is really bad, there's going to be plenty of ambient light. I've spent some time hiking at night, and it's a pretty rare evening when I need a torch (flashlight) to avoid running into a tree or rock. As far as dungeons... yeah, realistically, you wouldn't be able to see your hand in front of your face without a light source. But any dungeon that is inhabited by living humans, I would expect to be fairly well lit. I don't think bandits would choose to live in darkness (falmer or draugrs on the other hand...). I see this issue as related more to the limitations of the game engine, which makes it impractical to place a realistic number of light sources to make a dungeon appear properly inhabited.

Thank you. That information certainly helped me out.