Modding on the Spectrum

Hail, fellow adventurers!

What things did you experience on your recent journeys through the land of the Nords? Did something funny happen? Did someone or something scare you to death or get on your nerves? Or were you enchanted by beauty of the landscape while traveling?

Here you can share your impressions, talk about quests, occurrences with your followers, your encounters, mods, and much more. And if you just want to showcase your character, you can do this as well.

Feel free to complement your post with screenshots and videos.

Useful BBCodes for this are:
imgc for embedding images
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Misc codes:

Use InlineSpoiler to avoid spoiling certain parts of a story for example.

Combine TextWidth with [align=justify][/align] to match the width of a text with the width of an image that is embedded with imgc. I used this combination for the long captions which you can see in the next post.

I changed the title and expanded the description of the main post so it's more clear what the thread is about.


Regarding my own adventures, I haven't much to say most of the time because I usually start the game to test stuff from my mod projects . But at the moment I play the game more extensively because I'm working on a spell (and a corresponding ability) that tries to fix the hostility between followers that can occur due to friendly fire. I only started recently to play with multiple followers in Skyrim. Before that I mainly traveled alone and, occasionally, have one follower with me. Then I got the idea to playtest version 1.6 of my Spectral Music Player mod with multiple followers.


On one of the recent journeys, my team discovered this huge Dwemer ruin in the distance:

"What treasures await us there?"

At first, it seemed that there was no way in. I didn't want to spend a couple of hours wandering around aimlessly to find a solution. That's why I consulted the internet. It turns out I needed to do the quest

The Only Cure

in order to enter Bthardamz. According to the The Elder Scrolls Wiki it's the "largest ruin in the game". Exploring the dungeon pushed my patience to the limits. "Will this ever end?!" I thought. I was lucky when I finally reached the end of the dungeon and even more lucky after exiting it and seeing the daylight again.

While I traveled with my followers I noticed one thing that really got on my nerves: Followers that fight each other due to friendly fire. There are mods which negate friendly fire damage but I haven't found one that stops the hostility due to friendly fire between followers. So I decided to create my own one. I'm still working on it. Each time I thought I finished the mod, I got the idea for an additional feature that makes traveling with followers more comfortable. I managed to implement all planned features a few days ago. Then I learned it's probably better to limit the number of actors, who can get ability, to minimize the impact on the performance (the ability registers OnHit events and stops combat between actors who have this ability).

Because, if I understand it correctly, if too many instances of a script are attached to too many actors doing something at the same time can cause lag, freeze or stutter. Also casting spells inside ActiveMagicEffect scripts should be avoided because it can impact the performance negatively as well (some of my ActiveMagicEffect scripts cast spells), see this Reddit post. But if the magic effects are short lived, then casting shouldn't be a problem. The Reddit user, who wrote the post that I linked last, uses a quest with aliases that have a script attached to them instead of ActiveMagicEffect scripts. When he wants to attach a script to an actor, he can force the actor to an available alias. I plan to do something similar.

So I will rewrite some parts of my Bond of Friendship mod (again) and I hope it's the last time I do this.

I still struggle to balance the time I spend on working on my projects and playing the game just for fun (don't even get me started on playing other games than Skyrim). I think I generally spend about 90 % of the time on the former and about 10 % on the latter.

So I felt proud to have been able to search the Nexus for some new outfits for my gang and try them out in the game:

Edit:

Regarding my Bond of Friendship mod, I managed to limit the number of managed actors via actor slots (which are quest aliases). I had problems to get the aliases to work. After hours of trial and error, I found out what I was doing wrong: I simply forgot to start the quest that contains the aliases . If the quest is not running, the script will not be able to fill the aliases with ForceRefRo. Now everything seems to work as intended. Next comes the final test of the mod.

I really like the golden light


Scalez acquired his helmet in the fort behind him where he cleared out the bandits to help some folks to retake it.


On the back side of Azura's shrine




Sightseeing in Chanterelle - Day 1

One of the passages of Chanterelle

and new gear for Scalez

Scalez: "Come and join me exploring Chanterelle, my dear friend."
As a side note, I removed the mask from the helmet and adjusted the shape of the helmet to Scalez' head shape using Outfit Studio.


From the mod description of Chanterelle:

A world Skyrim sized made to be used with Campfire/Hunterborn/Frostfall. Huge, no civilization. To expand Skyrim with wildlands. Two full worldspace to explore. Portal between Chanterelle and Falkreath hold. Native tribe with poor furnished merchants. Hundreds of animals and creatures everywhere!
[...]
Chanterelle, the Savage World. Forests for hunting survival
Hall of the Mountain King, the Tribal land. Choose your path: clear the land of evil Tribals or join the Madness (WIP but can be explored - two passes in the west lead to it)
Ruclonburg., the derelict city (WIP, a row boat on Chanterelle coast lead to it)

A furious fight


Tranquil pond


I haven't posted all of the images of Chanterelle because otherwise the post would have become too long. You can find the other ones in the Chantarelle gallery.

Sightseeing in Chanterelle - Day 2

Previous day

A lovely ruin


This statue guards the entrance to a realm of magma

Unfortunately, the area is not finished yet.



Recently, I started to play with a mod which makes most of the creatures friendly because I was tired of fighting wolves and the like all the time while I simply want to enjoy the landscape.

This also made screenshots like this one possible:


Scalez found this bow in a display case inside the cave:


Nice lookout


Sawon Village


More pictures

Sightseeing in Chanterelle - Day 3

Previous day

Today, I started to play with ENB on my notebook (I used to play with ENB on my desktop PC only). It's a tweaked version of The Vanilla ENB Two. I played around with the bloom intensity day (enbbloom.fx), CC: In white and the CC: Channel mixer (both in enbeffect.fx), and the Technicolor (enbeffectpostpass.fx) settings.

Untweaked


Tweaked





Scalez took a break from his sightseeing tour in Chanterelle and returned to Skyrim. As soon as he entered the land of the Nords, he immediately wanted to tell someone about his adventures. Luckily, he found a hunter in his camp not far away from the passage to Chanterelle.



Scalez: "Where will I travel next?"

I decided against using ENBs on my notebook because it takes a lot of time until the main menu is loaded completely and the notebook can't handle most ENBs. I tested several ENBs and The Vanilla ENB Two (see previous post) had the least impact on the performance but I'm not content with the look anymore (too bleak).

That's why I was looking for a way to change the color and bloom settings of Skyrim without ENB and found Imaginator.

This is the look of my game after spending a couple of hours tweaking

The vampire in the first picture ran past Scalez without fighting him and Scalez pursued her because he was curious why she was in a hurry. He followed her to an unmarked mine (in Vanilla Skyrim; thanks to Atlas Map Markers the location got a map marker). She stopped near the entrance to the mine and just stood there. You can talk to her but shes gives you only default answers - no special dialogue. Well, I may make a follower out of her to test the features of my upcoming mod...


Other mods I used for the lighting:
Lux
Paraphernalia - Ambience

My Imaginator settings:
Presets -> General - Contrast: -22, Brightness: -31, Saturation: 25
Cinemagic - Sunlight: -1, Sky: 2; Bloom - low: 1
Tintor - blue: 10, red: 3, remaining colors: 0

The weather is still Vanilla.


Scalez is studying old books to find some long forgotten treasures

He doesn't do this to become rich. He does it to embark on a new adventure wherever that will be.

I installed Facelight Plus and combined it with Better lighting for Face Light to lighten up his face. So I'm independent from any placed light sources.

I created a new character, a female one this time. Although I prefer playing with male characters, I want to give a female character another try (I have played two female characters in Oldrim but only a short time each). I'm curious how long this playthrough will last.

Lynwen

Lynwen's race is The Aasimar Race.

Shortly after I made this screenshot, I switched back to my desktop PC because wanted to not degrade the notebook's battery health even further. The notebook is about 3 years old and the battery health just started to degrade faster when I played the game for several hours in one session. The battery isn't the only reason. I missed playing with ENBs (as i mentioned in the previous post, the notebook cannot handle most ENBs).

I tweaked PRT XII - PhotoRealistic Tamriel




Thanks to the alternate start mod Alternate Perspective Helgen is still intact (unless you talk with the innkeeper about a certain topic).

In the next step, I will install some mods for the grass and the trees. Do you have any recommendations? I used Folkvangr in my previous playthrough on my desktop computer. I'm looking for mods that add more bushes, ferns and deadwood in various sizes to the forests making them look wild and dense like on this picture for example.

Edit:

I searched for videos about forest mods on YouTube and found this one: More mods were recommended in the comments of the video like GW's Grass Patch 2 and Traverse the Ulvenwald. With the former, the variant with Origins of Forest, Cathedral and Folkvangr appeals to me.
Both come pretty close to what I want. I'll try a few in-game and see which I like more.