Lighting mod recommendations

[Solmyr]

I am currently using ELFX with CoT, but I'd like to ask if anyone can share their experiences of other mod combinations (looking at RLO and RCRN here).

 

What I'm looking for:

1. DARK dungeons and caves. Aside from lights like dwemer ruin glowing lamps, braziers, and torches, everything should be pitch black, to make torches or night vision mandatory.

2. DARK nights, perhaps with a little ambient moonlight if the moons and stars are out and it's not cloudy. It should be realistic that you could perhaps see to a short distance but not much out in the distance except silhouettes against the night sky.

3. No ambient light that comes from nowhere, all light should have a corresponding light source. Open windows or holes can be a source of light in interiors, if there's daylight.

4. Preferably compatible with Lanterns of Skyrim.

[Aiyen]

It would take me hours to descibe in detail how to get that... but long story short.. there are no simple "install a few mods and done" solutions to get all of that.

I am currently using ELFX + ELE image spaces + CoT Weather Patch and my own Skylight ENB. It does mostly what you are asking, but might be a bit too bright for ya... since well after a while TOO dark dungeons and nights just gets frustrating/dull to look at.

 

To quickly go over your requests.

 

1: This is kinda easy, since you just need a mod that provides unique image spaces for caves, while leaving houses etc alone. Then you can make them as dark as you want.

 

2: This is already done with the CoT Weather patch in a multitude of different ways.

 

3: Use an ENB to try to simulate this effect until you are happy. It can never be 100% since that would require redoing every interior cell.

 

4: It would almost always be compatible, since that mod adds unique new stuff to the game rather then editing vanilla entries.

 

 

As for using other combinations then it will require varying amounts of tweaking on your part. There are no simple and easy to install full lighting overhauls for Skyrim. Mostly because we all got different ideas on how stuff should look.