shitload of time spent on ANY game.
It wouldn’t be a lot for any MMO. I know dozens and dozens of people who have played EQ1 or WoW for far longer than 1300 hours. I haven’t heard any of my friends to play a single player game that long, though.
I thought the 250 hours I spent in Fallout: New Vegas was excessive. Well, it was excessive. I wonder if Ethilrist typoed.
I just got Skyrim too, and so far I have implemented the container naming mod, the one that makes unread books glow, and a mod that manages your soul gems a little more effectively so that you don’t end up filling a large soul gem with a petty soul. I’m going to stop there for now because I want to experience the vanilla game before going and changing it too significantly.
Interesting. Link?
I don’t have the glowing book one, but I have a simpler one that renames skill books to tell you what it gives you. E.g. “Withershins” becomes “Withershins (Restoration)”. So if you don’t want to read it yet, you can pull it out of the container and skip it, or if it’s in the world, tell your companion to grab it.
Unofficial Skyrim Mod fixes many many bugs including the one involving Brand-Shei mentioned in post #11: Steam Community :: Error
Some others:
The Tamriel Compendium; it adds a bunch of the books from older Elder Scroll games into the random books you find. I like it since it adds variety.
Heavy Armory - New Weapons Adds a bunch of new generic weapons that can be found/crafted. Halberds, spears, short swords, spiked clubs, etc. Again, adds variety.
Open Face Helmet Compilation (Craftable): Lets you craft open faced versions of common helmets. Useful if you don’t want your character or follower to look generic when he/she has a helmet on.
There were three; the creator seems to have taken all of them down for some reason.
Acquisitive Soul Gems. If you don’t have the Dawnguard expansion, make sure you install version 2.1.
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I see the Dawnguard-only version is on Steam Workshop.
It always amazes me, actually, how many basic things Bethesda screws up given the craft they put into their games. I remember when oblivion was launched, within hours there were replacement .ini files that improved the way the game looked, improved loading speed, and actually increased performance all at the same time. And I wonder if some modder who doesn’t know anything about the game can figure that out in hours, Bethesda can’t figure that out during their whole development process?
Similarly with skyrim, the mouse in menus is laggy and horrible, and apparently with one little tweak it’s fixed. There are also mods like the above mentioned that make things look better while actually increasing performance.
How good is your machine? There’s a load of graphical mods that will improve the experience. Mods I use on Steam Workshop that I’d highly recommend, that don’t alter any major game mechanics;
House Map Markers - just saves a bit of time when you want to go back to one of your houses. A bit redundant with Hearthfire but in vanilla very useful.
More Village Animals - Just a bit more immersion for Skyrim’s farming communities.
Crowded Cities (v5) - Again, adds more immersion when the capital of Skyrim doesn’t have about 5 people wandering around.
Well Lit Cities and Towns - If, like me, you found the cities a bit dark.
Terrain Bump - Makes roads and the like more bumpy and less smooth and ‘gamey’.
Lush Grass - Make the wilds of Skyrim a bit more realistic, IMO.
Lush Trees - A companion mod for the above.
Civil War Cleanup - What it says on the tin, without getting spoilery.
Detailed Outskirts and Detailed Cities - More features for Skyrim’s cities.
EDWS Enhanced Dynamic Weather System - Adds more variety in the weather.
HQ snow texture - If, like me, you thought the snow texture could be better.
Enhanced Distant Terrain and Distant Detail - Both made a big difference to my game, some spectacular views with these mods.
HD Plants + Herbs - A little thing but if you’re in the wilderness a lot like me, make it look nice.
Sounds of Skyrim - The Wilds - All sorts of wildlife noises that add to the immersion.
Spells Give Off Light - Holding fire in your hands should give off light, shouldn’t it?
Better Dynamic Snow - Another really good mod that gets rid of an ugly texture, the before and after shots on the workshop page says it all.
Invincible Horses - If you’re sick of your mount getting turned into dragon snacks.
Pure Waters - Makes Skyrim’s various waterways, lakes, rivers and streams look better.
Most likely, that issue didn’t exist during their whole development process, and just cropped up right at the end. Likely, the programmers at Bethesda knew exactly how to fix it, but simply didn’t have time. The last few weeks of any title’s development is a constant triage of bugs: how bad is an issue? How long will it take to fix? What’s the risk of something else breaking if we change it? How long will it take to test the fix? All of which has to be weighed against a shelf date that was fixed months ago - possibly, before you even started writing the code. When you’re coming down to that GM date, and you’ve got thirty hours worth of crash bugs to fix in just under twenty four hours, stuff like laggy mice or slow load times has to be ignored. At least until the first patch.
Mr. Kobayashi, how good is your computer? I’d be worrying about too many of those slowing down, and I’d estimate I have the middle to upper middle computer needed for vanilla Skyrim.
Those of you who say they “screwed up” Skyrim or Oblivion: I laugh - LAUGH! - at you. If you’ve played Daggerfall, these new bugs would seem incredibly minor. At minimum, the MQ was impossible to complete without patching, and in those days internet access was rarer and dialup, never mind Steam autopatching existing.
With the .inis, might it be an issue of them wanting to lower the minimum specs to sell better (increased performance on your computer does not mean that someone with a poor computer will improve)? It doesn’t seem like a problem of theirs if they know that tweaks exist, more of an intentional thing. A bug would be something that they should’ve fixed in QA, but missed.
One additional mod I just installed, which is amazing and I highly recommend it:
Immersive Water. The water already looks pretty good in Skyrim, but this mod makes it look like actual running water. It’s outstanding. (Not available on Steam Workshop as far as I can tell, unfortunately.)
GTX560Ti, 8Gb RAM, i5. If you find too many mods slowing you down the good thing about Steam workshop is that you can get rid as necessary and find your sweet spot between appearance/performance.
My friend tells me he think he saw a mod to be able to see your most recently picked up items in the inventory, either a tab on the inventory page or maybe a sorting method. Does anyone know what mod that might be?
It’d be useful for finding quest items or discarding accidentally picked up buckets and such.
One thing I enjoyed but may not be everyone’s cup of tea is the realistic lighting mod. It makes dungeons dreadfully dark, so that if you want to see anything more of a draugar than a pair of glowing blue eyes you need a torch. It also lets you drop a lit torch when you pull out your weapons. So there’s a tradeoff between using a shield and sword, or a two hander, or two weapons, and using just one weapon and carrying a torch in combat. It also makes the game harder, which I find I need… Once you get to level 10 or so even Expert is a breeze.
I found a mod that barely touches the fundamental gameplay, and just very subtly tweaks everything a tiny little bit to make it better.
Dammit, Beef. Your vid led me to this vid. Which led me to… well, you know how youtube happens.
I know. I have a problem.
I want those two hours back.
Since you’re asking only for basic mods that facilitate gameplay, I will mention QDInventory that helps with your inventory and allows to sort items in various ways (damages, price/weight,…). I downloaded it long ago so there might be better inventory mods nowadays.
Also, if you intent to pick up metals, I would recommend “glowing ore veins”, since ore is barely visible in the original game.
Are there any mods that let you filter potions by effect? I create a lot of combo potions which are only listed by their primary effect, but I have a lot of random like “resist frost 14%, barter +5%” and when I need a barter potion it’s a pain in the ass to figure out which ones have barter as a secondary effect.