thommaal

JawZ, have you seen the comparison shots published by Mangaclub? I wouldn't be surprised if he had shot more and might share them with you. Some of the shots were quite surprising, and IIRC, there were at least two screenshots that showed a missing lighting effect while using Relighting Skyrim and ELE.

Usually, my characters believe that the widely spread disregard to the laws of thermodynamics has adverse effects on their plain of existence in the long run. So, they stay reluctant to use any kind of supernatural force (even their unique innate abilities) and, more often than not, discourage the use of magic anywhere by .. any means necessary. Last time, however, I installed a couple of magic-enhancing mods, like Apocalypse, to develop a versatile magic user, and then it became painfully obvious that this Dragonborn should not be bothered at all by adverse weather once some experience was gained. Crazy settings don't affect my immersion, conflicts within the internal logic do. Ideally, a mod would exist that uses up magicka to withstand Frostfall's otherwise deadly weather conditions. So, if your character were exhausted, weather effects would be felt again. But if Kelmych hasn't heard of such a mod, I very much doubt, there is one. Yeah, a pity, isn't it? It's quite simple to mask this "cosmetically" by adding cloaks and winter gear to NPCs, but sometimes that's just not enough. Anyway, the Campfire mod looks like a better fit for my planned playthrough. Thanks for mentioning it; plenty of mods have emerged since my last trip to Skyrim.

Looking for: a patch/mod that remedies the immersion breaking aspect of Frostfall wrt. a more advanced Dragonborn. I have finally found the time to reinstall Skyrim on my new SSD after the old one had burned out some time ago. Frostfall once was on my short list of must-haves for an immersive game -- but not anymore, for two reasons: 1. No one but the player feels any consequence of weather conditions. This is fine as long as you're alone in the wilderness but when a more or less scantily clad tavern wench strolls happily through the blizzard that threatens to kill you .. well, it gets a bit weird. 2. As long as I decide to play a hunter/rogue/warrior-type, the weather plausibly continues to be a threat even for a well-leveled character - especially when (s)he abhors magic or any other supernatural interference with the elements. But a magically gifted character or one who works to control the elements by any means should have little problem with adverse weather conditions once (s)he has gained some experience. It's a total immersion breaker for me if my character is on the one hand able to - e.g. - use fire magic to destroy small armies but can't produce enough heat to resist the adverse effects of a swim in a frosty lake. I doubt that any mod can do anything against the first problem, but maybe there is one that incorporates magic/elemental controlling effects into the Frostfall-mod? Otherwise, I am either going to simulate such an effect by gradually adapting the severity of the consequences of hypothermia to my character's ability to control the elements or I am simply going to abandon the mod.

dreadflopp, have you seen MorrowLoot Ultimate by ChocolateNoodle? This mod might be a better fit than the older Morrowloot 4e; it contains, e.g., a patch for Skyrim Coin Replacer Redux. I think, I'll give it a try to see if everything works as intended.

Yeah, the perks I'd really like to give to the NPCs are also the ones that lead to instant deaths, quite often regardless of differences in level. A more demanding combat experience without that kind of imbalance is achieved by Duke Patrick's, which is, imo, much better than any other combat mod I've used so far (Duel v5, v7; Deadly Combat; Combat Remastered). But you can't simply add it to a "STEP/SRLE/REGS/MMO"-build. Still, if you are a close combat fighter, you won't find a better fit for your character than this combat mod. I have not yet tried Ultimate Combat with MMO; IIRC, the NPCs act more aggressively with this mod and Mages and archers are better integrated as in Duel. It's possible to make combat harder in Skyrim, so hard that every little misstep means death. But I have not yet succeeded in making combat interesting. For my taste, Skyrim is simply too slow for the adrenaline spiked movement that I prefer. But if you like sneaky/sniper characters, a pretty good balance can be achieved. Skyrim on Adept or Expert; ASIS etc. as suggested by Garfink; Combat Remastered (to get access to the interesting inventory perks for an assassin-oriented character) + Dodge. You are deadly -- but you die quickly as well .. if you don't plan your retreat in advance. But that's just not my style and I got bored pretty quickly. Yeah, I was halfway finished with a patch for your MOD and BOYD when I realized that I don't kill those NPCs anyway, so why bother? But since all the NPCs who die due to scripted events needed a patch, it wasn't a total waste of effort .. hm, need to re-check if I didn't miss any. Or the ERSO AI.

Dreadflopp, the guide is getting better and better. Three suggestions to avoid confusion (a bit nitpicky): - since LOOT is still a relatively new tool, you could add a sentence or two that the user also needs to manually adapt the load order following the guide line for BOSS. - and Bash tags in LOOT can't be added in capitals, so someone not yet used to LOOT might be confused if he adds "NAMES" etc. instead of "Names" and the change isn't appearing afterward. - and since you recommend ERSO 9 as well as 9.2, the mod name "02 Morrowloot - ERSO 09 patch.esp" could be more precise to avoid any need for queries. I would also add a general reminder to sort masters. Dynamic patches and mod patches for a string of mods -- not looking at anyone in particular -- usually need some sorting. ADDED: Contradictory instructions:

Realistic Needs and Diseases adds more features: Food spoilage, added recipes, drinking from every water source, varied diseases.iNeed is uncomplicated and it works reliably with plenty of mods without adding patches (so it's less likely that a change in a mod will render a feature useless). The widgets are a nice visual reminder of your character's basic needs, follower needs are a nice touch, imo.The mod reduces the amount of freely available food noticeably and adds more salt instead -- which makes sense. You don't need to add any salt increasing mods any longer and you can't live of barrels easily. Food prices are also higher, which makes it more interesting to go out hunting.You can drink from rivers and streams but only close to waterfalls. Water skins, otoh, can be refilled so easily that this isn't a problem. The ability to forge water barrels and well buckets gives you another option to get water from wells and other sources.I miss spoilage a bit but with the increased weight of food you won't carry around an invisible larder anyway, especially when you reduce your character's carry capacity to a far more plausible level.Whenever I start a gameplay more focused on survival, I don't use iNeed, of course -- but neither do I use RND. Imps More Complex Needs is the better option in that case.From my pov, iNeed adds the necessity to go out foraging without distracting me from doing the more exciting stuff. And since foolishness is still punished with debuffs, diseases and death -- as it should be -- the balance works for me.

I experienced the same outcome you describe -- which is the reason why I deactivated it in the first place. But I use a sneak attack character at the moment and no companions, and then the fix the mod adds to the game outweighs the occasional inconvenience. But I would not recommend it while using followers; and any gameplay that will very likely lead to the results you describe will break immersion too often to receive any net gain from the mod. ADDED: Great find, Garfink. I am adding it to my list.

No, I have not yet added the Gold reducing mods -- and after my experience, I fully agree with you that such a function is needed. Adding your suggestions for the next session.At the beginning, I had forgotten to adjust Immersive Armors and it showed -- but that was remedied.I have reduced the RE spawn settings to "1" to let ASIS take control. The occasional imbalance is due to Extended Encounters: the mod author has deliberately added the possibility that events from EE might happen alongside vanilla encounters. Add ASIS and you might see a battle instead of a skirmish.The added NPcs are not a problem per se; there is just a higher chance than before to find some nice items.Combat Remastered is an interesting alternative to Duel but some of its (optional) perks are too powerful, imo, especially archery.I fought twice the same battles at level 4 with a) Duel, Dodge and the TTR skill set and b) Combat Remastered, Dodge. Once against a band of eight bandits (including two archers, two crossbow men) strolling around on the other side of the river near Embershard Mine (at the waterfall); and against four Thalmor Justiciars in the woods.Set (b) turned the first fight into a slaughter. Combat Remastered adds "Eagle Eye" as the first perk in its archery tree -- and that made the relatively stationary targets easy pickings. But the second fight was more difficult with set (b) since the mages were more deadly -- thanks to ASIS. Though the melee fighters will kill you in a heartbeat with Duel when they take initiative.If you add NPC Smarter Water AI - Full Compatibility to the first fight, things start to get interesting. The melee fighters immediately tried to reach my character -- it wasn't the best location for them to cross the river quickly, but the mod was working. At another place in another fight, bandits immediately jumped into the calm water and swam toward their target. So, the mod is back in my load order. I rarely use followers anyway.BTW, I playtest DukePatrick's combat mod in another profile, and it makes the other mods look .. unfinished. NPCs act smarter, and even wolves can be deadly when they jump and stagger you with their weight. The initiative-oriented v7 of Duel is more dynamic, though less "realistic". Lets hope that the latest alpha will become stable soon; the changes sound interesting.

Since I have not yet solved the problems with Smithing Perk Overhaul, I am testing the frugal economy and the increased spawn rates with a combination of TTR [Alchemy, Smithing], Combat Remastered and Merged Thievery Skill, which is needed if you want to use an optional module in Combat Remastered that replaces Lockpicking with an Inventing skill.I use the same encounter enhancing mods that Garfink is testing [HLE/SIC, Radiance, Random Encounters, Extended Encounters, ASIS increased spawns (0 -100; 1 - 50; 2 -5)] and stayed with Populated Dungeons.The behaviour of the NPCs is enhanced with ASIS, Deadly Dragons, Endgame NPC Overhaul, HLE/SIC, No Combat Boundaries, Revenge of the Enemies.A harsher environment is achieved by using Frostfall [Hardcore], Hunterborn [no reduced settings for time consuming processes], iNeed [activated Diseases, Death, more realistic weights of food, no added benefits to health etc. when eating, Follower Needs].Extended Encounters makes spawn rates at times quite unpredictable; meeting three wolves and two werewolves at level 2 is .. a good reason to test your character's abilities as a sprinter and swimmer.Dungeons are, at times, unbalanced but not one has been impossible so far; though I am likely dropping Populated Dungeons too.Sneak characters will have an easy time to level their main skills from the start since hostile NPCs spawn frequently and at far more locations than you might be used to. The Dodge Mod has proven to be extremely useful against archers. If you avoid effect combat mods, script lag should be so short that the mod will work reliably even against a horde.The downside of the increased spawns is obvious: too many corpses and therefore too many interesting items are lying around, even with Morrowloot and Scarcity [loot 8x rarity] in the load order; some additional patching is indeed required. Added: Though it's quite obvious, I still want to add that anyone who wants to have less loot should NOT activate in CCOR the addition of Bandoliers etc. to leveled lists.

ELE Interior + addons for the DG, DB and HF addons -- but IIRC only the HF one missed entries from the unofficial HF patch. It's much better to make separate patches for mods and merge them afterwards if needed. The result is far more flexible. I had the effect mods in my all-inclusive patch and had to cut them out again (from a copy, of course, I might need the original one again). Next mod I will cut out of my all-inclusive patch is Realistic Water. I want to try out Pure Waters again with my current ENB and it's just annoying that my own entries in the patch don't allow me to simply deactivate the mod (missing master). Also, with the new patches from AOS my own entries are not needed any longer, if my cursory glance isn't misleading me. "Bring Out Your Dead" is another candidate -- but this one is added to so many patches that it will take a while to play without the mod.

Loot collected by NPCs Do you know a mod that makes NPCs loot fallen hostiles/comrades? I'd like to try out some other mods that add NPCs to Skyrim -- but I don't want their added valuables lying around. If NPCs collected the stuff of their fallen companions or their victims, it would solve the problem of too much loot quite elegantly.

Thanks for the patches, dreadflopp. If there is one thing I learned about patching in the last weeks, it is: Don't add them all into a single file. Even if it's just for your own playthrough. I've now pretty much finished my separate ELE Interior Lighting patch. It's now compatible with the mods in Garfink's setup -- too many ELE effects were overwritten using those mods. If anyone else uses ELE with LOOT: Manually load ELE after mods like Skyrim Coin Replacer Redux (included in SRLE and STEP Extended) and Morrowloot. More than 30 otherwise necessary additions to an ELE patch are not needed any longer with this adapted load order. Of course, a later placement of ELE makes it absolutely necessary to add all the Skyrim Unofficial patch changes to an ELE patch.

If you want to know how to manually place esps into a specific order with LOOT, here is a quick pictorial:

Re. absent NPCs: I deactivated Endgame NPC and the NPCs reappeared. Problem solved? Not quite. Because a similar setup works well in another profile, so I reactivated the mod and the NPCs .. were still present. The problem, it seems, is not a mod in particular but this setup; it's apparently prone to produce errors. Remember the problem with the Dwarven items I could forge without having any perks at all? It also reappeared even though I had started a new game with this profile. Garfink, may I ask you to publish your mod list created by MO? Some players don't like to do that, so I fully understand if you don't want to. Re. "Duke Patrick's combat mod": Even placed at the bottom of the mod list, the incompatibilities with other mods I use are too great to ignore. It needs a specific setup to work properly. BUT it is unique among the combat mods since it comes as close as possible within the restrictions of the game to actually simulate combat with medieval weaponry. Anyone familiar with medieval European martial arts (for example the Liechtenauer tradition and Talhoffer) will recognize distinct tactics, combat phases and moves. I like it despite its demanding nature -- but I am going to resolve the issues in my Garfink profile first.

I have a recurring bug in the playthrough that duplicates Garfink's mod list: missing/not present NPCs. - When you walk by Whiterun Stables for the first time, Skulvar Sable-Hilt is talking with Uthgerd the Unbroken. But while I can hear her part of the conversation, she is not present in body. My character can walk through the space she should be occupying. - Entering Whiterun for the first time, you find Adrienne and Idolaf Battle-Born engaged in a conversation; strangely, Idolaf isn't there, but Adrienne is performing her part of the conversation. Has anyone experienced anything like this before?

Sorry about the delay in providing more accurate information. Two quests didn't finish in my playthrough, and that's why I considered it to be not an isolated incidence: Garfink has already mentioned the one that didn't work in his playthrough. I went there to test it for myself and when the bandit chief follows you and you kill him outside, the quest will not be solved. It happened a second time at Fort Neugrad, when the commander of the Fort followed my character outside. I see that you have already reacted and updated the mod. Thank you. No Combat Boundaries was still in my mod list since it had proved to be too useful to deactivate it because of those two incidents -- and now I don't have to worry about adding another reason for a civil war quest to go bonkers.

Same experience here with Extended Encounters. It doesn't break anything, but stresses immersion too much. Unfortunately, No Combat Boundaries shows quest-breaking results; I can confirm Garfink's findings. fireundubh's mod + "NPC Smarter Water AI - Full Compatibility" added so much dynamic to combat with "smarter" and well-equipped NPCs that it presented quite a challenge without activating ASIS increased spawns. And it worked really well with the more locational hot spots added by the populated mods. Worse, OBIS needs some patching to work with a harsher economy. So, my situational hot spot distribution is going to lose its core. A viable solution is Garfink's approach: let ASIS control spawns. The result is a nice challenge but I need to test it more to see if it takes away too much from immersion in favour of excitement. I simply need to find my own balance of relatively peaceful areas disturbed by situational spots (higher and more random spawns) and interspersed by highly challenging locational hot spots (so far provided by populated caves and forts) without adding too much loot. And I'm not really satisfied with Duel v7. The alpha is too buggy for now and the stable version doesn't quite show the qualities I am interested in. That's why I added a profile with Duke Patrick's combat mod. But the author is not kidding when he says that the mod needs to take control over every aspect of combat to work properly. Simply adding it to the end of my load order isn't sufficient to balance the game properly. OTOH, it's a better combat mod than Duel, imo.

I am a bloody idiot. Yesterday, I took a look at TTR's Smithing perk and added dreadflopp's step patch to see in TES5Edit what he had done. And while I deactivated the smithing perk, I failed to do the same with the step patch. Sigh. Everything's back to normal again. The perils of testing mod after mod after mod. Re. a better combat/gameplay: I once played with an earlier version of "Duke Patrick's Archery And Heavy / Light Weapons Combat", but with all the other effects mods running scripts, combat was a lag nightmare whenever skirmishes among more than a few NPCs occurred. With fewer mods involved, I'll give it another try. He has constantly improved his combat-mod and the locational damage module seems to work pretty well. How the mod fares with higher spawns, well, we'll see.

Damn, yes, I see. Thanks.

You get kicked out of the game completely? Yeah, that is tiresome. I usually go to the main window after a death to force the game to actually get rid of the temporary files -- it's less time consuming than a restart and better than non sequiturs after re-entry. But it's tiresome as well. Archers and ASIS-powered Mages are a terrible threat. But since I have cut out many script-heavy mods, combat lags far less which means: I can dodge arrows far more reliable than before; and cover against magic attacks works better as well. Imo, a melee character should not have acceptable survival odds against precise and powerful attacks from afar -- an arrow hitting the vulnerable parts should hurt or kill your character, whether it's made of iron or ebony. A shield covering you from head to toe, however, should render the archer helpless -- unless you are attacked from multiple angles at once. Melee characters need close combat quarters and there, they should rule. But once an opponent with longer ranged weapons gains or already has space, they should quickly lose effectiveness. Of course, Tamriel is a land of magic, so our standards don't quite apply. :)

The absence of Learning Recipes was a trivial matter: I couldn't find a reason, so I simply reinstalled the mod -- and it works now. A file must have been corrupt. Another matter are recipes I should not yet be able to use. But it's quite possible that I have a wrong idea about the mechanics of forging with the added perks from TTR and kryptopyr's Smithing Perks Overhaul. Example: I did not add the perk that allows the forging of Dwarven items. After I had gone to Dragonsreach for the first time, "Dwarven" appeared in the list of potential forging trees. Now I cheated a bit by adding a Dwarven Metal Ingot to the player and forged a Dwarven item. This might just be how it's suppossed to work -- but it's not what I expected. I thought any Dwarven items were out of bounds without activation of the perk. I am going to take a closer look in Tes5Edit now, after the other problem solved itself in the most simple way. ADDED: Garfink, could you tell me what quests were affected by No Combat Boundaries? If the mod breaks quests, I won't use it.

I think the TTR perks are also affected by the bug in ASIS. The two populated mods were already in my mod list but I am reluctant to further increase spawns in general. It adds to the challenge but it takes away immersion. And I can get away with it since I prefer to play without followers; they only come into play if needed. The follower AI doesn't do well with mods that circumvent vanilla restrictions on gameplay. NPC Smarter Water AI - Full Compatibility, for example, gets rid of one of the immersion breaking restrictions of NPC behaviour, but when NPCs and followers dive into deep water where they can't fight each other, the situation turns ridiculous. I have not yet had any quest related bugs with No Combat boundaries, so I'd be interested to know more. I am currently dealing with a problem in CCOR and I have not yet found the cause: the Learning Recipes do not work. All of a sudden, all recipes were present in the menu (Dwarven, Daedric etc.) and when I went back to an earlier save, I couldn't learn anything from the steel weapons I had. Though at that earlier point in my playthrough no recipes beyond the regular starting ones were visible, as it should be. It worked perfectly in my previous play test. ADDED: The added mods should not have had any impact on CCOR - unless ASIS' dynamic patch somehow interferes. So, I need to take a look at the patches for TTR, the bashed patch and the dynamic patch. Here are the added mods: Apple Garden ASIS Enchanting Awakened (deactivated Smart Souls) Radiance SkyTweak No mod except the patches comes after CCOR in my load order that should interfere with the learning in the mod.

Your No Combat Boundaries is already in my "always on"-list; and this looks like another interesting immersion mod. Lets see how it works in a morrowloot/scarcity setup aimed to make the economy tougher. Hm, Campfire Cooking sounds interesting too. It could add another layer of immersion to my Frostfall/Hunterborn/iNeed trifecta.

Skyrim's combat is boring in vanilla since it provides no challenge. Higher difficulties don't make combat more interesting, they just add the already far too prominent element of grinding to an aspect of the game that should be nothing but exciting. And they make combat an immersion breaking experience when you can shoot a creature full of arrows without any discernible effect.SIC/HLE, ASIS etc. actually improve combat by using leveled lists to make NPCs more diverse. Add Random Encounters + Radiance and you never know what to expect. Revenge of the Enemies adds the cream, No Combat Boundaries the cherry on top.*Balance, of course, is a major problem.It doesn't make sense to replace boring combats with boring running - mostly away. And too many hostile NPCs everywhere break immersion in another way.That's why I have reduced spawns and deactivated Extended Encounters (for now): the road to Whiterun was a war zone right from the start. It was just not feasible that any kind of civilization could still be up and running under such conditions.The added and diverse NPCs also need to be held to a reasonable amount of health in their normal/out of combat state; they can not be allowed to be health sinks, so that surprise attacks from afar and sneak attacks (that hit hard unexpectedly and move fast into their middle dealing quick damage and sowing confusion) are a viable option to deal with otherwise superior NPCs.In other words, I want to re-arrange the reward system of the game as far as possible towards sound tactics. When I can simply kill a bunch of NPCs with brute force, I don't need to sneak around them to avoid a fight or know enough about their characteristics to use concerted actions against them. But a more tactical approach is crucial with higher and diverse NPCs. However, it only works if they don't soak up tons of damage in their normal state.Like you, I don't want to deal with too much setback punishment. That's why balance is so important -- haven't found it yet.I am leaning toward an encounter zone map that makes the roads a safe[r] place for travellers. More guard patrols might also help but this can lead to loot that should not lie around .. Hm, need to find a mod that makes NPC plunder their victims to deny me easy access to the fruits of their labour. Does anyone know such a mod?It's also mandatory to lower vanilla difficulty setting from highest to something in the middle to lessen the strain on a new character.And the SkyRe mod might indeed be more suited to balance this approach than my current setup. --- * When NPCs follow you beyond their usual boundaries, tactics that abuse this game mechanic don't work any longer. But you can utilize it in a world that is more populated by factions that are not necessarily friendly toward another.