alternatives to Skyrim Realistic Overhaul

[slayer80]

hey I recently ordered the legendary version of skyrim off ebay and I was wondering are there any alternative mods to Skyrim Realistic Overhaul I should look at cause tbh I don't feel comfortable downloading a torrent

Edited May 13, 2015 by slayer80

[DoubleYou]

There is Vivid Landscapes, Skyrim HD, aMidianBorn Landscapes, Serious HD, Langley's Textures, and Skyrim Realistic Texture Overhaul.

[Nozzer66]

However, you can certainly trust that torrent. It's OK.

 

However I hate torrents with a passion too, so all I did was grab that one, then delete all the torrent client stuff and give my whole computer a clean down with hospital grade disinfectant on general principles after having to deal with a torrent. (I jest a little, but I did give it a through going over with Microsoft Security Essentials and a few adware and crapware crawlers and nothing showed up. Still... Torrents, brrrr)

 

Once you do get it downloaded, zip it up and save a copy somewhere. I have a little folder on my desktop of handy Skyrim mods I don't want to have to torrent or rely on dodgy sites for again. Things like SRO, KS hairs and SG hairs.

[thunderclam]

My response is contingent on the country you live in, I expect, but:

Unlike Nozzer (and no offense intended here), I don't think torrents are anything to be scared of. The people who go after you for "piracy" are almost universally content providers and their lawyers. No one will go after you for a torrent that is not tied to an illegal use of an IP ("stolen" music, for example, is a target... free stuff like public domain ebooks or legal game modifications are not targeted). 

 

With regard to the client program itself, I would use QBitorrent or another lightweight client. They are less likely to install malware or adware on your computer when you install the program, and they do not use ads which can also lead to malware/adware. I would avoid uTorrent for these reasons. These clients are perfectly legal in North America. It's one of those "not what you use but how you use it" sort of things. 

 

If this is about file safety... well, torrents in general have always been generally safer than P2P programs like Kazaa or Limewire from way back in the day. That said, you have to rely on the community to vet stuff you may be interested in downloading. When it comes to legal stuff like public domain books, music, movies, and legal game mods there is not much incentive for putting viruses, malware, etc in the files being downloaded. 

 

In this case, STEP vets the SRO mod fully as does the Skyrim modding community at large. The only reason it's a torrent is because the file is so big that other methods of downloading are unreliable at best. It is not the only mod out there where this is the case.

[slayer80]

thx for the suggestions guys but i think ill go with the mods doubleyou suggested instead of downloading the torrent also with the mods doubleyou suggested should i download and install them all cause i noticed some of the mods retexture things that the other mods dont retexture

[Nozzer66]

I quite like Vivid Landscapes and Serious HD.

[DoubleYou]

You definitely should not use all the mods I mentioned together, unless you're going to do some serious testing, picking and choosing of the textures.

[SoonerMagicEE]

Tip to ensure you have no problems with Torrent downloads:

 

- Keep a bootable live Linux DVD or USB thumb drive handy (I prefer Linux Mint, as it's very similar to Windows and very easy to learn/use...just Google it)

- Boot into your live Linux OS

- Run the included Torrent client (for Linux Mint, it's called "Transmission"...typically just search for "torrent" in the system menu and it will pull up automatically)

- Download the file you need to the desktop, unzip it and inspect the contents

- Copy the file(s) to your Windows partition (this will be labelled as "OSDisk" or something similar in the file explorer)

- Reboot into Windows....Windows was never harmed in this process and you had the opportunity to inspect the Torrent file(s) before moving them to the Windows partition

 

Note: This isn't 100% foolproof unless you are able to inspect the files themselves at the bit-wise level AND know what you're looking for. However, that isn't at all an issue with Torrents, but with files in general. Even a seemingly benign .jpg image file downloaded from any website can contain harmful code, so that risk was always there whether you were aware of it or not. Using Linux in "live" mode will, however, prevent auto-execution of harmful code and also protect the Windows partition from bad stuff should it occur. If you think something went wrong when you downloaded/opened the file(s), simply reboot and all is well again.

[TechAngel85]

Nice. Good to have another techy around. I have Ubuntu on mine.

[z929669]

Torrents themselves are not generally anything to worry about ... it's the navigation around torrent sites that can be more of a problem, since they often incorporate HTML redirects or other potentially harmful code associated with links, buttons, etc.

 

Just use a good antivirus program like ESET (MS Security Essentials is not usually good enough) with real-time browser protection turned on. Also, don't ever run files inside the torrent file without first scanning them.

 

STEP does not advocate the use of torrents, but SRO is only available this way, so we vetted and made an exception. We will be dropping SRO soon though for this reason.

[thunderclam]

Speaking of which, this may not be the time nor place, but I never understood STEP's attitude toward torrents. Is it a guilt by association with piracy thing?

[TechAngel85]

Only one or two staff members and users have issues with torrents. Personally, I have no issues with them when they're used for the right reasons.

[darkside]

What is the alternative that STEP is looking at?

[z929669]

Speaking of which, this may not be the time nor place, but I never understood STEP's attitude toward torrents. Is it a guilt by association with piracy thing?

Basically, that's it. Torrents get a bad rep due to many/most? being a primary avenue for piracy (although a proportion are perfectly legal and legit). I personally prefer them for obtaining and sharing large files, but we'd rather not tarnish our reputation here by association with what the majority of the public (and our users) think is a bit 'shady'. Torrents and torrent sites are still considered the 'underbelly' of the internet by the general populace, regardless of that being Truth or not.

What is the alternative that STEP is looking at?

a whole assortment of mods. SRO covers more material than anything else by far. It really is the best "vanilla makeover" mod out there, regardless of what a few people say about the source of the textures (Bethesda vanilla/DLC) and their edits (some general filtering, some hand painting).

[thunderclam]

Good to know, thanks guys. I'd be interested in an alternative to SRO due to its weight on RAM/VRAM more than anything. But that said, what a beautiful dang mod.