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SPOILER INFO
This article doesn't contain any spoilers.
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back to the last part of the rehearsal game report
After the general rehearsal game, I switched off a few mods and re-patched everything.
This is the list of mods with which I will begin my game.
They are grouped by my new categories:
1) tools and prerequisites
2) user interface
3) sex tools
4) sex act
5) bodies
6) things you see (human)
7) things you see (nature)
8) things you hear or feel
9) things you acquire
10) player character properties
11) combat
12) behavior and rules
13) more people
14) improved locations
15) added locations and quests (already known)
16) new adventures
This article is only about mods. It would have been too much work to describe all the ini tweaks and changes I've made with TES5Edit. An example of the former: I have disabled essentialness. In other words, every NPC in my game is mortal. An example of the latter: I made all locks 10 times more difficult than vanilla.
TOOLS AND PREREQUISITES
Unofficial Skyrim Patch, Unofficial Dawnguard Patch, Unofficial Hearthfire Patch and Unofficial Dragonborn Patch fix many game bugs and are required by many mods. Actually, they are obsolete and replaced with USLEEP, but I am using certain mods that require these and won't accept USLEEP.
Vanilla Reduced Textures makes many textures require less space and thus diminish game stutter. There is no visible difference to vanilla textures.
Remove Underwater Grass and other stuff too makes the game run more smoothly by getting rid of some flora you almost never see anyway.
Crash Fixes is supposed to eliminate certain types of crashes.
SKSE is required by many mods to work.
Fuz Ro D-oh - Silent Voice is a prerequisite to some other mods. It does something when a mod has dialogue but no corresponding audio files.
Skyrim Elys MemInfo lets you observe your game's memory use. It's for troubleshooting only. It doesn't affect the game per se.
USER INTERFACE
SkyUI creates a proper inventory interface to replace that 2000'ish embarrassment Bethesda seems to be expecting people to actually play with.
Skyrim Search Plugin gives you a proper search to supplement the vanilla game's crappy help command.
MainMenu makes the load savegame menu (not the entire main menu, mind you) more convenient.
Notification Log allows you to view game messages (the ones displayed for a few seconds in the upper left corner of your screen) you missed.
Hide Those Futile Quests allows you to remove the quests you don't want to do from your journal.
OneTweak fixes the Alt-Tab bug and the console bug where some letters are displayed as squares or not at all.
World Map Min_Max Height Pitch Tweak removes the annoying tilt from the world map and lets you zoom out a lot farther.
Satellite World Map II makes your world map look like a proper map. (Actually it's a spoiler because it displays roads you haven't yet discovered, but it's no problem, because I'm already well familiar with Skyrim's general layout anyway.)
A Clear World Map removes much of that annoying cloud cover from the world map.
Map Markers is a collection of 6 mods that add map markers to a huge number of minor locations which the sloppy Bethesda developers omitted.
Dayspring Canyon Map Marker fixes the extreme inconvenience of having to find Dayspring Canyon anew each time because it's got no map marker. (In this game it doesn't really matter, because I'm going to play entirely without the Dawnguard quest, but I included this mod anyway, because it's a matter of principle.)
Single City Map Markers fixes the illogicality that some buildings in towns have their own world map markers, as if they were locations apart from the town. (I also used the records created by this mod to remove all spoiler map markers apart from two that were impossible to get rid of. Now my default world map has nothing on it except Helgen and The Dunpar Wall. Even cities will appear on the map only after I discover them. That is so cool!!)
Multiple Custom Markers with Notes allows you to add markers of your own to the world map.
Compass Mod - Immersive Undiscovered Locations prevents the compass from revealing the type of locations you have not yet discovered.
A Matter of Time - A HUD clock widget makes it possible to have a 24-hour clock.
BorderSense lets you know when you cross into another hold.
SEX TOOLS
Fores New Idles in Skyrim - FNIS, Register Custom Animation Events, NetImmerse Override, HDT Physics Extensions, Realistic Ragdolls and Force and XP32 Maximum Skeleton Extended - XPMSE are required to make it possible for you to watch the game characters copulate on your computer screen.
Note that with newer versions of SexLab, some of the above are no longer required. I am, however, sticking to the old version. Preparing for my previous game two years ago, I had such a hell of a lot of trouble getting sex animations to work. As long as my current sex tools configuration gets the job done, I'm not going to meddle with anything.
SEX ACT
SexLab - Sex Animation Framework makes copulation physically possible in the game.
MatchMaker lets you make NPCs have sex with each other. I intend to use it when I want to reward my followers.
Auto Unequip Ammo corrects (usually) the bug that a quiver remains equipped during sex. Sometimes, unfortunately, you still have to use unequipitem .
Defeat makes it possible for your player character to rape NPCs or get raped by them. In this game, my character being female, I'll disable the option of her raping others (because a woman isn't supposed to be able to physically overpower people) and enable her getting raped (the idea is that when male enemies could kill you, they'll choose to spare your life and rape you instead).
Sex with Thieves allows you to refuse payment to highway robbers (incorrectly called "Thief" in the game) and let them fuck you instead.
Skyrim Strap Ons and StrapOn - CBBEv3 - StandAlone - Craftable create strapons your female character can equip.
BODIES
Caliente's Beautiful Bodies Edition -CBBE makes it possible for women to get naked.
Sexy Natural Body and Fair Skin Complexion make women prettier.
Revised Khajiit and Argonian Textures, Better Khajiit Female Body Texture, Feminine Argonian Textures and A Beast Race Beautiful make Khajiit and Argonian women prettier.
Consistent Older People makes most old women actually have old women's bodies.
SOS - Schlongs of Skyrim makes it possible for men to get naked.
SOS – Leito Schlongs Addon adds the choice of a proper penis to SoS.
FloppySOS allows men not to have erections while not fucking.
Grower not a Shower is supposed to improve the ludicrously enormous size of default penises. I'm not sure if it does anything, but I kept it switched on just in case.
SoS ERF - Whanger Addon adds one utterly horrible-looking penis type to SoS. I'm keeping it because I want to create a small probability that my female character has sex with a man and is disappointed to discover he has a crappy penis.
DCE - Realistic Male Face, Handsome Male Elves and Humans and Less Harsh Elves make men look less repulsive.
Realistic Body System Remade and EBD - EveryBodys Different Redone create random variety in men and women's height as well as women's anatomy (e.g. larger or smaller breasts relative to body size).
Brows adds eyebrows to the character creation menu that actually look like human eyebrows.
RaceMenu allows you to make adjustments to your player character mid-game, so when you realize later you made a mistake during character creation, you won't be stuck with it for hundreds of hours. Also, if you're playing a woman, it would be natural for her to want to change her hairstyle occasionally.
Breast and Butt Size Scaling for NPCs gives you a spell with which you can increase women's breasts. I am going to use it to make a selected few very special women (such as my followers) happy, if necessary.
THINGS YOU SEE (HUMAN)
No More Females Walking Like Machines and Orc female idle fix are supposed to prevent women from walking like men. They succeed in that partially. The problem is they work by altering the records of all women one by one, removing the "use opposite gender anims" flag, which means, firstly, they won't affect mod-added women, and, secondly, for a reason that is beyond me, they still don't alter respawnable women, such as soldiers. How difficult can it be to create a script to always override the "use opposite gender anims" flag? Anyway, having seen in the past how these two mods (as well as all the others of this kind) just fail to do their job properly, I went through the records of all (I hope) women with TES5Edit myself and removed the "use opposite gender anims" flag. Still, I'm keeping these two mods switched on as backup.
No Spinning Death Animation makes dead bodies fall down the way they're supposed to, without those idiotic dance movements.
Realistic Piercing Arrows improves the look of arrows shot into bodies.
Get Snowy makes people's clothes and faces covered with snowflakes while in snowfall.
Warmth - Light Armor Replacer, Super Sleeves of Skyrim, Practical Female Armors, Skyrim Modesty Mod and Stormcloaks with Sleeves correct some of the absurdly weather-inappropriate armors.
Open Faced Guard Helmets makes city guards in Skyrim proper and Falskaar wear helmets that don't cover their faces.
Holidays creates celebrations in Skyrim settlements on certain dates.
THINGS YOU SEE (NATURE)
Imaginator lets you make the Skyrim world visually more beautiful. It's no worse than ENB and far easier to use.
Realistic Nights makes nights actually dark. As you know, vanilla Skyrim's "nights" are just twilight.
Lanterns of Skyrim places lanterns in settlements and along main roads. They are really beautiful and greatly help you find your way around when you use a mod that makes nights darker.
Real Rain makes rain look much better than in vanilla.
Lightning during Thunder Storms creates awesome lightnings.
Cinematic Fire Effects makes fires amazingly beautiful. I know it doesn't sound important, but the mod is really magnificent. You just have to see it!
Beware of the Swamp - Poisonblooms puts some plants into the Morthal swamp that emit poisonous gas. They're really cool.
Sheep Flocks creates shepherds with dogs and flocks of sheep who occasionally appear in various places in Skyrim.
Hold Border Banners places border signs of sorts on roads where one hold ends and another one begins.
Skyrim Better Roads improves the look of main roads. I am using only the Solitud module.
Immersive Fallen Trees adds fallen trees here and there, on roads as well as across rivers. They are very convenient for getting to the other bank in a number of places where there are no bridges far and wide.
Bloody Dragon Bones makes skeletons of dead dragons look more realistic.
Ash Pile Expiration corrects the vanilla bug that when someone is burned to ash, the ash pile remains lying on the ground forever.
Animated Dwemer Lift Load Doors adds a small movement animation to dwarven elevators.
THINGS YOU HEAR OR FEEL
Bard Instrumentals Only - Sing Upon Request prevents bards from singing the same fucking four songs over and over. (Never mind the pictures on the mod page – the mod doesn't actually change the outer appearance of bards. It only forces them to choose their music from instrumental pieces only. They'll still sing the songs if you ask them to.)
Fuck Off Courier and Forced Greetings prevents couriers and a number of other NPCs from interrupting you with their dialogue.
No NPC Greetings makes NPCs annoy you less with their blabber. (I'm using the version that doesn't eliminate NPC greetings completely, only alters the range at which they address you.)
Better Dogs - Silence prevents dogs from barking. I admit it is a bit unnatural, but it's a lesser evil than their constant barking.
No More Arrows in the Knee removes that stupid repetitive line from guard dialogue.
Guard Dialogue Overhaul makes guards treat you with more respect once you've become very powerful.
Vendor Sale Delay Gone removes the irritating delay between your "What have you got for sale?" and the opening of the trade screen.
Don't Push Me While I'm Talking prevents NPCs from pushing you away while you are in dialogue mode.
Come together N Out of the way - Nausicaa-S Tweaker allows you to adjust a few game variables. I use it only to change my carryweight. (I have made a rule which allows me to buy permanent extra carryweight for money.) Contrary to what the mod's name says, it doesn't make people get out of your way (or maybe it does 1 time out of 5). Also, the mod description blatantly lies that the mod helps against followers' blocking your path in doorways. It doesn't do anything of the sort. Why is it that during almost 8 years of the game's existence, no one has been able to create a mod that makes followers get out of your way when you need to come through????
No Predators on Roads removes the annoying nonsense of bears, sabercats and such sitting in the middle of the road and always in the same fucking places. Most unfortunately, it also applies to the wolves on your way to Riverwood, but it can't be helped.
Dawnguard Away prevents the Dawnguard quest (as well as random vampire attacks) from automatically starting. You can still start the quest by going to Fort Dawnguard, but I don't think I ever will. I am using the mod, because I want to be rid of those disgusting vampires and I can't switch off Dawnguard DLC, because too many good mods require it.
The Choice Is Yours prevents many quests from starting without asking your permission. (Warning added later: Don't use this mod. It fucks up many quests big time!!)
THINGS YOU ACQUIRE
Auto Harvest 2 lets you automatically pick up things without having to press E on each item separately. It is, strictly speaking, a cheat, but the game would be intolerably grindy without it.
Weighted Arrows corrects the vanilla bug that arrows don't weight anything. (With this mod, mind you, your inventory still shows as if they were weightless, but that's only because it can't display weights below 0.1. Actually your arrows do have a weight which you can notice when you gain or drop a large number of them.)
Immersive Lockpicks does the same thing with lockpicks.
Enchantment Reload Fix corrects a small bug in vanilla game which causes enchanted items to unload quicker than they are supposed to.
2x Enchantment Strength On Loot and Shop Inventory alleviates somewhat the ludicrous uselessness of standard enchanted items.
LC Immersive Looting, Dynamic Dungeon Loot, Lock Related Loot, Alchemical Loot and Increased Urn Loot (Lite) make the distribution of loot in dungeons and such more reasonable, as well as correct such childish nonsense as animals carrying money.
Coins of Tamriel corrects partly the erroneous referrals to money as "gold". It also makes the monetary system more credible by introducing copper and silver coins, as well as non-Empire coins that can be found in places like Dwemer ruins.
Khajiit Merchants Buy Stolen Items makes Khajiit caravans that travel between cities buy stolen items regardless of your perks and guild membership. I think it's realistic that they should do that.
Sell Unusual Gems enables you to get rid of those "Unusual Gem" things you keep picking up and won't be able to do anything with.
Drinks for the Thirsty corrects the bug that practically all drinks in vanilla game are alcoholic.
Turbosnowy's Whipcane creates a spanking implement, the only one I have ever seen in the Skyrim world. (I mean, I don't use any of those sick creep mods that place tied-up naked women in random places for no plausible reason. This one is a whip your character can actually equip and use on NPCs, and it looks quite credible.)
SEO - Skyrim Economy Overhaul makes shop inventories more varied and attempts to make prices more logical. Be aware that it makes enchanter's potions nonfunctional and reduces the strength of health potions so much that they become useless for all practical purposes. The mod is good, but it requires some work with TES5Edit.
PLAYER CHARACTER PROPERTIES
iNeed makes you need food, drink and sleep.
Bathing in Skyrim makes you need to wash yourself occasionally.
Friendlier Taverns with Baths (I only want this mod for baths, which is why I'm using an old version that doesn't have barns) adds bathrooms to all vanilla inns. Unfortunately it also adds a lot of useless crap (the most annoying part of which I manually removed with TES5Edit ), as well as a number of duplicate doors (which I was unable to get rid of; it's no big deal, you'll just have to press E twice, but why in heaven's name did the author feel he had to fuck with those doors in the first place????).
Skyrim -Community- Uncapper allows skills to rise above level 100.
Make Haste allows your running speed to increase with your overall level.
Ish's Souls to Perks lets you exchange excess dragonsouls for perk points.
Smart Training - Tweaked eliminates the unspeakably mean feature in the vanilla game that unused training slots are not carried over to the next level.
Fires Hurt makes you take health damage when touching fire.
Swimming and Skyswim - Encumbered Swimming correct the ludicrous bug in the vanilla game that allows you to swim almost as fast as you can run on dryland.
DUT - Expanded Perks and Treebalance - Speech Tree greatly improve the system of perks that is painfully inadequate in vanilla game.
Harder Locks is an optional addon of DUT which makes locks harder to open. I have edited it with TES5Edit, making the locks much harder still.
Crafting Improved Smelting allows you to create several ingots at a time at smelters.
Vitality enables you to adjust some attribute-related parameters. I use it to decrease stamina regeneration rate 4 times and eliminate health regeneration altogether. (Vitality has a nasty bug: you always wake up with a slight health damage. You can also lose health when dropping items. I once dropped 2 kettles and lost half my health, which is quite absurd. Fortunately, you can make your desired adjustments and then switch Vitality off in MO. The adjustments you made are stored in your savegame, meaning they are permanent even when Vitality is turned off. That way you can benefit from Vitality without having to endure that annoying bug.)
COMBAT
Skyrim Realistic Archery removes some outrageously mean "features" from vanilla archery, thereby making archery actually viable.
Better Critical Hits increases the values of vanilla game's ludicrous "critical" hits. (I actually re-overhauled them all manually, using the entries created by this mod and a couple of others.)
Poison in Bulk lets you poison several arrows at a time.
Loot Paralyzed People fixes the bug that makes paralyzed people practically untouchable.
True Yield makes NPCs who say they surrender actually surrender.
Understandable Draugrs displays English translations of draugrs' combat taunts in subtitles.
Traps Make Noise makes nearby NPCs hear noise when you set off a trap.
Follower Trap Safety prevents your followers from running into traps (but not into swinging blades).
Better Stealth AI for Followers improves your followers' behavior in sneak mode.
No Talk Detection prevents you from being detected when your followers gab.
Glowing enemies makes NPCs you're currently in combat against glow in red, making it easier to tell friend from foe.
Khajiit - Sense of Smell gives you a special power that makes all nearby NPCs glow in different colors depending on their friendliness or hostility. (In order to make the mod less cheaty, I decreased the range of detection 2.5 times and the duration of the glow 6 times with TES5Edit .)
Realistic AI Detection (Lite) makes the way NPCs detect you more realistic.
Summermyst - Enchantments of Skyrim creates an amazing variety of fascinating weapon and armor enchantments and lets you find surprising enchanted items in various places.
Immersive Patrols adds random encounters (bandits attacking you, soldiers fighting each other etc.) all over Skyrim.
Creature Size Variants randomizes the size of many animals. (It's in this category, because most of those animals are aggressive. By the way, it is advisable to switch off the resizing of dragons in the MCM.)
BEHAVIOR AND RULES
Extensible Follower Framework (EFF) enables multiple followers and makes follower management much more convenient.
Housecarl and Homeowner Greeting Fix eliminates some annoyances in follower behavior.
Winterhold Housecarl enables you to get a housecarl when appointed thane of Winterhold.
My Home Is Your Home enables you to set a home for mod-added followers who ignore EFF.
Added later: My Home Is Your Home is redundant because, as I've found out by now, EFF allows you to force-hire anyone you want, after which you can set their home in the regular EFF menu.
Simply Knock allows you to knock on a door and ask to be let in rather than pick the lock when someone is home.
Perseids Inns and Taverns (Basic) allows you to change room rates in vanilla inns.
Sleeping Innkeepers forces every innkeeper to sleep once every 24 hours.
Sleep Tight makes sleeping people wear bed clothes rather than street clothes.
Run For Your Lives prevents most civilians from attacking dragons and vampires.
People are Strangers prevents the game from displaying a person's name before you have spoken to him.
Masculinized Level Lists decreases the occurrence of female soldiers.
No same sex disables same-sex marriages.
NARC - No Animals Report Crimes fixes the bug that can get you punished for a crime no human being has witnessed.
Modern Brawl Bug Fix prevents brawls from incurring a bounty.
Kill Maven, Blood on the Ice Redux, Thieves Guild Alternate Routes, Heart of Dibella Quest Starter and Caught Red Handed - Marry make improvements to existing quests that have to do with the NPCs' behavior.
MORE PEOPLE
Crowded Solitude adds many generic NPCs to Solitud, so it now really looks like the capital of Skyrim.
Populated Skyrim Prisons Cells Reborn and Populated Prisons add prisoners to Skyrim prisons for increased realism.
College Students corrects Bethesda's ludicrous blunder of leaving Winterhold College almost without students.
[mod name hidden] and [mod name hidden] create three teenage girls who live in Hviterun.
Kidmer and Khajiit Child Maisha create a few non-human children for more realism.
Killable and Lootable Children, TK Children and New Children remove the invulnerability of children and improve their utterly horrid vanilla faces. They don't add any children, but I put them in this category because I merged all children esp's into one.
IMPROVED LOCATIONS
Expanded Towns and Cities adds many buildings and NPCs to vanilla Skyrim settlements. I am using the modular version without Windhelm and Morpork.
ImpeREAL Empire - Unique Cities - Falkreath vastly improves Falkert.
Windhelm Exterior Altered, Snow City, Dunmerized Gray Quarter, Windhelm's Morrowind Refugee Camp and Windhelm Lighthouse vastly improve Windhelm and its vicinity.
Whiterun Expansion Redone adds a large eastern suburb.
Solitude Expansion, Solitude Public Bathhouse and Public Executions improve Solitud.
CoP - Markarth makes Morpork look more beautiful.
Sexy Winterhold College makes Winterhold College much more beautiful.
The Naked Dragon - Brothels of Skyrim adds four amazing brothels.
ApachiiSkyHair is a prerequisite of The Naked Dragon and coincidentally gives you many nice hairstyles you can use on your female player character.
FoxClub_Z adds a very beautiful brothel in Riverwood.
Nernies Thief Pack adds some stuff here and there, mostly in Bitchen.
Additional Child Beds For Major Hold Vanilla Homes adds some more space to a number of houses the player can buy. (Since adoption has been totally buggy in my past games, I am going to do adoption only using an EFF cheat from now on – make the child my follower, bring him to my house, tell him this is his new home, and dismiss him. However, I am keeping this mod just because I like having that extra space in those notoriously cramped player homes.)
A Small Patch For Labyrinthian is supposed to fix a bug in Labyrinthian.
ADDED LOCATIONS AND QUESTS (already known)
These new locations are already familiar to me from my previous games.
New lands:
Summerset Isle
Falskaar
New locations in Skyrim proper:
Legendary Cities - TES Arena
Falkreath Hold Extended
Moon and Star
The Forgotten City
An Altmer Intrigue
Aurora Village
Places: Laintar Dale
Places: Oakwood
Elisdriel
Annoyance fixes:
The Forgotten City - No Audiobooks prevents letters created by The Forgotten City from reading themselves with voice.
NEW ADVENTURES
These are mods that add new locations and/or quests and have not been played by me yet.
Beyond Skyrim - Bruma
The Republic of Maslea
Voyage to the Dreamborne Isles
Doltania
Folkvangr
The Redguard Expansion
The Great War Reignites in Hammerfell
The Frontier to Cyrodiil
Tava's Blessing
Outcast Valley
Valley of Outcasts
Santanism
The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal
Mines of Moria
Quest: Sea of Ghosts
The Second Great War
Project AHO
Much Ado about Snow Elves
Dwemertech
The Candle Makers
Fortune's Tradehouse
Teldryn Serious
Thief in the (K)night
It Beats For Her
The Hunted
Rescue Bronwen
Sins of the Past
Luma From Beyond
continue to the game report
