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SPOILER INFO
This article describes some things that happen during the first minutes of the game. It also describes a bug which occurs very early in the game.
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The beginning
I decided to play the game unmodded first, because understandably I wanted to get a feel of the game before starting to mess around with it. Otherwise, when something was to my disliking, how would I know if it was the fault of a mod or a feature of the game itself?
By the way, the official version of Skyrim, that is without any mods added, is commonly referred to as vanilla Skyrim.
So, I decided I'd play the vanilla game through once, or at least play it long enough to become familiar enough with the game to start fumbling with it.
I had read that the Skyrim game would allow the player to choose from different kinds of characters, so I was rather confused when I didn't see any character creation in the options menu. Neither was there a tutorial anywhere. All I could do was to click New Game and I found myself in the middle of events.
Well, nothing to worry about. In a few minutes, one of the NPCs asks you "Who are you?" and then you will get to choose your race (not really a race, but the kind of creature you are, they have just chosen to call it "race"), name and physical features.
Neither does it matter that there is no tutorial. The beginning of the game itself is a tutorial. That is, you are given instructions on the screen, and the game just holds until you have done what you are supposed to do. That way it is very easy to learn the gameplay. The downside is that you have to go through that kindergarten every time you start a new game, but that's no big deal.
Even though the controls were very logical for a jump-duck-fence type of game, it was still a jump-duck-fence game. Meaning, the mere act of walking from one place to another could become a pain in the ass. I simply hate the helpless-child-like feeling of running against walls and turning in various directions in search of a way to get through. For most of that quasi-tutorial, the screen of my computer was filled with various shades of gray – some of it floor, some of it wall, some of it a hole in the wall, some of it the castle outside as seen through a window, some of it sky, some of it stairway, some of it furniture, some of it dragon... Almost everything was gray. And when I eventually got out of the interior into the wilderness, it didn't get better. It was all gray, monotonous and profoundly joyless.
When I read someone say about Skyrim: "and there you are beneath a beautiful sky, surrounded by the beautifulest nature game developers can make," I thought: she must have been high, or not from this planet.
Before I forget – there is one part where the quasi-tutorial misleads you. (This is not a spoiler, it's something you need to know.) After you have left the kindergarten village with an NPC, he tells you "It's probably best if we split up. Good luck." I didn't want to get in any trouble so early in the game, so I duly walked the other way. That was completely unnecessary. You don't have to split up. Follow that man. He will not attack you, he will not get in any way unfriendly. I cannot imagine why they made him suggest to split up, because he definitely doesn't want that. In fact, if you do follow him but walk too slowly, he will occasionally stop and wait for you to catch up. This is the one place in the quasi-tutorial which actually lies to you about what you need to do.
Anyway, just as in numerous other games of that type, I got disinterested in (vanilla) Skyrim on my way through that grey wilderness before I had even reached the first destination. The game's entertainment value had no chance to outweigh the clumsiness of movement and the general pointlessness of what was going on. If I hadn't known about the existence of mods, I would have probably quit playing and never spent another thought on Skyrim. (And I would have never known that it will actually get more cheerful. It just happened to be night at the moment I got out of the dungeon. During the day, that gray and dull world will indeed become "the beautifulest nature game developers can make".)
To sum up – under normal circumstances I would have quit playing. But I had heard about that amazing thing called "mods". Now, I wouldn't care for running around naked in a game that was otherwise pointless, but that rape mod... Maybe it would be very crude and clumsy, maybe it would be silly, maybe it would need very much effort to install, and maybe it wouldn't even exist – but I had to find out.
My care- and cluefree first steps at modding
As I was saying, the beginning of Skyrim left me wondering which part of it did the game developers believe to be interesting. And that absurd feminism.... Even though I had planned on playing the vanilla game for some time, I couldn't. As early as on my way to the first... um, village?... I decided to get the sex mods, because that was the only chance to make the game even playable.
To start with a clearly definable goal, I decided to find a mod that would make the completely looted corpses naked, find out how to install it, and actually do it. In the vanilla game, when you take everything from corpses, they remain in their underwear. That is beyond ridiculous. Bra and panties? In a medieval world like that? Get real. Besides, even when people are wearing underwear, it is not supposed to be exempted from looting. It's a matter of principle. When I take everything off from a corpse, it means everything.
So, I began looking for a mod that would correct that ludicrous design flaw.
It turned out to be a real science. You can't just get the mods, you need separate software for installing and managing the mods, and some of the mods need some external software in order to work. I soon gave up trying to understand, and just followed the instructions as well as I could.
Now, one thing you inevitably need to do is to register on a website called Nexus. When you google for Skyrim mods, you will be directed there frequently. And there is something very important you need to know about Nexus. You see, when you follow a link in your search results, the Nexus website won't let you see any mods unless you have registered. But when you enter your data in order to create an account, you are asked to pay. It's so mean. I even blocked the Nexus site in my browser, because I have absolutely no tolerance for sites that lure you into wasting your time on registering without telling you first that you will have to pay.
Soon, however, I learned that I just couldn't do without Nexus mods. I mean, I was discovering one appealing mod after another, and Google just kept sending me to the Nexus site. I began searching for means to somehow get my hands on Nexus mods without having to pay. Turned out I wasn't the only one with that desire, and in one of the forum posts was the solution: the Nexus site itself is actually free! Meaning, on the page with all those payment options, you can simply click "register" without choosing anything!!!
Infuckingcredible.
The other website you will have to register to is LoversLab . It's the other site you will inevitably come across when googling for Skyrim mods. Registration isn't required, but you're going to have to do it sooner or later, because you will need the forum. The Nexus forum is rather pointless. The LoversLab forum is a striking contrast. It's possibly the best forum I've ever seen in my life. The speedy and friendly manner of answering questions is unbelievable, and trolling is rare and mild. I have no idea how they have achieved it, but LoversLab forum is THE place for asking questions about Skyrim (not just sex mods, mind you).
Added in 2019: Unfortunately, LoversLab forum is now but a shadow of its former self. The number of active users has decreased dramatically and I've seen a number of people mention being disturbed by attacks from leftist fanatics. It's still a good site for getting mods, though, and when I searched for a better Skyrim forum in November 2019, I couldn't find any, so I'm still visiting LoversLab forum from time to time.
These are the only sites you'll need to bother with at first. Less than 1 mod out of 20 is hosted anywhere outside of Nexus and LoversLab. And when you eventually are going to need to ask some very specific questions, there are niche forums, but by the time you'll need them, you'll learn how to find them.
There's a program which you need for modding Skyrim. It's called Mod Organizer. Unfortunately I knew nothing of it when I first began modding Skyrim. I installed an obsolete but still widely used program called Nexus Mod Manager instead. And then I began modding. That nakedness thing taken care of, I would think of the next thing I wanted to achieve, then I would search for a suitable mod, download and install it, see what happened, and so on. For a while, things went well, but then I just ran up against the wall. The game wouldn't run properly, mods wouldn't do what they were supposed to do. And that's the thing with Nexus Mod Manager. The beginning is very simple. You can just install NMM and begin to use it. You won't need any tutorials. But when things go wrong, you're screwed.
To cut the long story short, I ended up doing a clean reinstall of Skyrim. I only kept my savegames which, by the way, came really handy later for experimenting.
continue to Part 3
[originally published 2016-10-13]
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