Just came across a new mod on Nexus that screamed 'Jerric needs this!' Maybe Buffy too. Anyway, the mod is called Mule in Skyrim and adds a pack mule companion. Like anything new, I'll track it for a time before considering installing. Sure looks fun though.

I love it! Poor Flash was wearing a Traveler pack saddle at first (Convenient Horses) but then he looked too burdened and Jerric wouldn't ride him! A mule follower would be just right. Tracking for now (and making sure the mule won't oust Ulfe from her spot in the caravan). Thanks for spotting this!

I found my old vampire face fixer mod. It was one I made myself. It is very simple really. All you have to do is go to your Data\Textures\Actors\Female folder. Find femalehead.dds and femalehead_msn.dds. Copy each, paste the copies in the same folder, and rename them femaleheadvampire.dds and femaleheadvampire_msn.dds.

Viola! your female vampires look the same as your regular wimmins. Do the same to the two male head texture files to fix the boy fangs.

Here’s a new mod that made me think of ghastley’s Clarisse: Serenity – player house ship. It docks in Windhelm, Solitude, and Dawnstar like Captain Zanimal’s ship (Northern Cardinal mod), but this one is a whole lot prettier.

Grits, I'm tracking that ship mod as well. Just need to figure out how to get it to also dock in Anvil!

Seriously, there's some province-hopping RP possibilities there methinks.

Acadian, that’s a great idea! We pretended that Darnand and Jerric returned to Cyrodiil via ship this time, but it didn’t occur to me to have them actually board one of Skyrim’s ships. Fun!

Hey, a guy who can open the door of his IC Waterfront shack and, through the magic of fast travel, step out onto the beach of Anvil can surely manage this one! I still remember that as the most creative use of fast travel I've heard.

All of Elianora's player house mods are awesome, but I haven't been able to use any till this one - they have all required the DLC's, that I don't have. I DL'd it immediately when I saw it didn't require DLC. She has a flair for making a gorgeous player home. The fact that it moves the player around too is a real plus!

Thanks, mALX, for that endorsement of the Serenity ship's modder - that's good to know!

SubRosa mentioned in post #44 above that Enhanced Character Edit was a viable alternative to Race Menu which I have been using. Well, I dumped Race Menu and went to ECE and have been using ECE for a day or so doing quite a few little things with it. I'm happy to report that I've had no problems at all with ECE and prefer it to Race Menu in several small ways.

SubRosa comes through once again!

I'll have to try it, that Race Menu one is flighty.

I had one issue with ECE so far. When I am playing Persephone I noticed that her scars get partially covered over if ECE is active. But this does not happen with any of the vanilla races. I think this is because Persephone belongs to a race I modded into the game, and it isn't meshing perfectly wtih the femaleheadchargen.tri or femalehead.nif files that ECE adds. So if you are playing a custom race, that is one thing to watch for.

Oh thanks for the info. Happily, Buffy's a real Bosmer - so we get all the race-specific comments. There are few enough of her sisters in the game that I have done the few minor race tweaks needed to the whole vanilla race of 'female Bosmer'.

The thing that keeps me from trying ECE is that I’ve finally gotten RaceMenuOverlays to work for men, which means at long last Jerric gets some ink. I couldn’t tell if there is something similar for ECE. Does anyone know if you can add tattoos to just your character with ECE? Or perhaps I’m approaching the situation wrong.

You can use Race Menu with ECE, but some of ECEs features won't work. So that is one way.

ECE doesn't use overlays, but apparently there is a workaround to get tats with it, though it sounds confusing. Post #4 in this thread explains it all. If you can get the blasted page to load.

Here's the gist of it: There is a way its a bit of a pita but you'll need netimmerse override loose files. Next create your character using ece and save the preset then quit skyrim install RM and all the overlays you want load the character back up and go to town with the tats. Your character will look messed up just ignore that for now once you got all you want save/quit drop rm but make sure netimmerse override loose files stay put and probably the textures from the overlays. Load back up making sure ece is enabled go back into showracemenu and select your preset restoring your face/body shape. Because netimmerse override will preserve the overlays you placed your now set just repeat the process any time you want to redo em.

Another mod I'd recommend is Touring Carriages? which allows you travel between cities and actually see yourself sitting on a carriage. It has many options and you can exit carriages anytime you wish or change your destination anytime.

I also use Pick Up Books? mod that allows you to take books, not read them automatically. You still gain skill when reading them, though.

Campfire cooking? which allows you to make food at every burning campfire.

And though this is purely subjective, I've finally found a combination of mods that make characters look as I want them to - it's a combination of XCE? and Younger characters?. While XCE does a great job by making characters feel and look more believable, faces can still appear completely different when seen in different lights, sometimes a younger character can look old when seen from a different angle etc. Using Younger Characters beside it softens some facial lines and makes characters look more or less "the same", no matter at what light do you look at them. Of course that's purely subjective but I decided to share it anyway.

nom nom eat u up ! Touring Carriages looks pretty cool, and also the campfire one.

On day 1 of my Skyrim-on-PC career I'm going to have quite a list of mods to install

So you like that carriage mod, eh? Then here are some pics for you:

Leaving Riften
Downhill
Crossing a bridge

Shezrie's Hearthfire Kitchens and Greenhouses is (are?) back on the Nexus. Just a heads up, the Heljarchen greenhouse goes in the Trophy Room, not in the Storage Room like at Lakeview.

Yay!!

I'm still happily using ECE (instead of Race Menu) and am happy with it. Thanks again, SubRosa!

*

Buffy is doing the Dawnguard questline for her second time. I remember Serana as being a pretty good follower, but the nice thing about a second go through is that I pay much more attention to the less than essential details and have more time to be concerned with how Buffy perceives things and feels. Anyway, this play through, I’m struck by how often Serana repeats the line, “Yes? What did you need?” Once sensitized to this, it was becoming very tedious/irritating. I did some poking around on NEXus and found I was not the only one with that complaint. I found two relevant mods that address it:

Serana SHUT UP. This is a tiny (<1kb) mod that simply removes that line from Serana’s repertoire. It is well-endorsed and seems like a simple solution.

Serana dialogue edit. This is a bigger (~24MB) mod that goes into all of Serana’s existing voice dialogue found in the CK (both used and unused in game) and does some major tweaking. It specifically precludes her from repeating that offending line any more that once every 2.5 hours so it does fix my complaint. It goes much further though, even offering new dialogue branch trees by cutting and pasting magic with her existing dialogue bits – again, including some not used in the vanilla DLC. This mod is also highly endorsed and seems actively supported.

Anyway, I went with the bigger choice (Serana dialogue edit) and have been using it for a couple days now with Serana ‘welded’ to Buffy. It absolutely fixes my complaint about her overly repeating that one line. It also subtly brings Serana much more alive. There are several new lines and some creative use of existing ones. And, as I mentioned, there are new dialogue branches. Yesterday, Buffy was asking Serana about her family (as you could without the mod). That branched into a new dialogue when Serana replied, then asked about Buffy’s family. To which Buffy was able to respond that she was an orphan. Serana sympathized, saying that given how dysfunctional her own family is that she feels like an orphan as well. The mod is not massive in the dialogue revisions, but I am finding the subtle changes and improvements to be noticeable and quite well done. Bottom line is that it does indeed improve Serana, at least in my view.

Reading about Amazing Followers Tweak in another thread I decided to give it a try a few days ago and I heartily recommend it. The main reason why I installed it, is to manage followers' outfit when outside and when at home, so thanks to AFT Lydia automatically changes to common clothes when in Breezehome and no longer cooks in her steel plate armor. Another great feature is that if standing idle for some time, followers begin to do something on their own, be it eating, cooking, tanning, basically anything. It has a lot of other cool features too that I have yet to try out.

Here's another mod I installed recently - Clothing and clutter fixes?. It applies more realistic weight to clothing items and renames some items, so that not all shoes are called just shoes and boots but they're instead called cuffed boots, fine shoes, etc...It also makes reduces clipping when wearing amulets and clothes, making amulets more visible. Among others, it also changes Gold to Septims. It has a bunch of other features as well.

And although I usually don't care how my characters look when not wearing any clothes or armor, I installed a body replacer for men just because despite using XCE mod that cleans the skin, it still looked too dirty IMO. I used the most popular mod called Better males because it has an option to use a new body but keep vanilla underwear. The skin is now cleaner and fingers & toes are more detailed. It also allows setting body hair either from completely shaven to as hairy as bear.

For now I don't use any female replacer because I have yet to find one that keeps underwear untouched or only slightly changed without making women too model-like.

Sounds like we are using the same mod for males. I use Better Males - Younger Faces Merged With Men By Geonox.

I found that UNP does not look too model like, so long as you keep the weight boob slider over to the left. UNP Skinny eliminates that problem altogether. It has various underwear options. Coverwomen with the Seamless UNP and Coverwomen Look #4 option gives you a makeup free face that greatly reduces neckseams. Fitness Body will let you give your female characters as much or little muscles (mainly abs) as you like.

Thanks for suggestions, I'll look them up.

Any good mods to make decorating homes easier? With vanilla it's almost impossible to position objects on shelves as we want, not to mention that some objects get tossed on the floor when the cell is reentered or save reloaded.

I haven't tried this one but it looks like it might do the job. I believe Grits and others have used the renamer mod from the same author, and liked it, so it's likely this is equally well-made.

Looks good, thanks.

Noted in the mod's own thread, but I downloaded Hearthfires Multiple Adoptions to see if it would bypass the issues with adopting Uzgash at the Stronghold, and it did!

The mod gives you a spell to "bless" your home. What this does is check for various features that make it child-friendly, such as:

• Beds/chests owned by the right faction,
• A training dummy,
• Idle markers for kid activities,
• map markers so they can go home!

If the house passes the test, you can tell an adoptable kid you have a home for them (the dialog option doesn't say where). Because it has all the location data captured, the kid will move there, and do all the usual adopted child things, such as adopt a pet, give you gifts, argue with sibling, etc.

Quite a few (20+) player home mods already qualify, and my Build Your Own Stronghold will add to that number. Although Bethesda developers made a lot of thing harder for me by hard-coding the list of official homes into their scripts, they made it a lot easier, too, with the location type keywords that this mod can detect and use. I just had to mark a few items with the right keywords, and the house became a home with a few minutes' work.

Wait, can you give more details about what makes a home child friendly? Example: What idle markers, furniture, and ... why do they need a training dummy? And is there a specific training dummy they need?

There's quite a list, but it's all in a text file with the mod itself. It could do with a bit of re-organising, as I think things were added to the list as they were added to the mod, rather than put into sub-lists like "inside", "outside", or "markers" or "furniture". But I just worked down the list with the CK open, and it all worked the first time.

There's a child-sized dummy that comes with Hearthfires, and you can place more than one. If you give a child a wooden sword or dagger, they'll go try it out, so they need a target other than their adoptive parent!

I already had most of the things they needed in the Stronghold, it was just a case of flagging them with the right keywords.

Yes, that list def needs some organization, but they have a lot of tips on it (along with some things that were unnecessary to say, like "build an interior" - but the list is Awesome! I have archived it for future reference, lol.

Yep, I use the Positioner too. I even bought a keypad so I could use it. So far, so good. Happy decorating, Lopov! (There's a thread somewhere for you to post screenshots of your house, hint hint. Ah, here it is.)

The Positioner is great, I tested it in some cave, the best functions are to finally be able to turn items around and lock them in place so they don't fall off shelves all the time. I will post some screenies of Breezhome when they return there but I think they'll be on the road for a long time. Because when cultists attack, one just has to investigate what's going on...

I've done all my home decorating using the console SetPos X, SetAngle z etc. only to find that it get knocked out of place by a follower. I may start using that just for the lock.

I have troubles even with objects that are supposed to be locked in places. Some will stay there after being locked but others will appear floating in air when the cell is reentered or I reload the game. Does anyone know how to fix this? I tried finding the answer at Nexus but it's hard to find what you're looking for in a very long Posts section.

EDIT: After some more searching, I found the answer and I can confirm that locking objects in place works if done that way. Here's a copy from Nexus:

That matches my experience. I have a habit of collecting dragon claws in the display case in the Lakeview Entryway, and they always leap back out the first time I put them in there. Second time always works, but the new ones sometimes knock out the old ones on the way.

Just noticed that the Skyrim Child Overhaul is out. I downloaded it and tried it in an existing game. It messed up Uzgash, as it replaces some of the files she uses, but I wouldn't normally expect to use both together.

It changes all the existing children, and appears to do so in a way that may prevent it being used with any other mod that adds new children, as those won't use the new/replaced assets.

Except ... I'm currently testing to see if I can use it as a master to make extra children. Mixed results so far.

I don't understand what the "morphs" means on that Overhaul link, really didn't understand what they were talking about on that Details page.

I have been trying hard to find a really good child face/head shape - was hoping to find a way to make a cute standalone vampire child.

Morphs = Shape variations - sliders for the CK facegen tab, since the mod does do playable children. So eye shape, pointed/round chin, eyebrow height/angle, thick/thin lips, wider/narrower nose.

E.g. a Redguard might use a rounder chin, wider nose, thicker lips than a Wood Elf. Same differences as the adults are made available, instead of all the kids having the same face.

A morph target set uses the same mesh as the base, with the vertices only moved - none added or deleted. The sliders determine how far in between the two positions for each vertex the result occupies. Since the meshes for the child head and the adult head are different, you can't use the adult morph targets with the child, and Hallgarth has made extra target heads for the kids.

However, there's a lot more in the mod than just heads, and it's the other stuff that's giving me problems. There's a new skeleton, for some reason, and all the clothing has been replaced with items that fit that. So my outfit for Uzi doesn't work on any other child. I'm still trying to track down what was done to textures, as Uzi's skin is also looking wrong with this in place.

The screenshots didn't show much difference between them that I could see; and they still seemed to have a pumpkinish look - I wondered all along if someone couldn't do a better skull for the children; and maybe even have different ones for some of the races so they would be a bit more distinguishable and varied.

What is the difference in this overhaul and RS Children Overhaul? How did the RS manage to make those cute faces on the children? (or are they adults shrunk like that giant Orc girl I showed you?)

I came across Alternative Scaled Armor today. It is a good pair of lore- (and realism) friendly cuirasses. There are several different versions, from replacers for the vanilla scale armor, to a standalone version.

SubRosa - that does indeed look nice. I like the scaled armor, but this in addition looks like it could be nice for some characters. Thanks for sharing!

Look what I found - Tolfdir the Archmage. Awesome! Lucius was forced to join the College as a part of the main quest and I roleplay it in such a way that he doesn't have access to the library immediately so he has to act as a student for some time. But I didn't want to do any quests because I knew that you become the Arch-Mage at the end. However, with this mod I can safely do the questline and choose Tolfdir as the new Arch-Mage. This mod my day!

I use that. There are a few things it missed, that you can fix with the console. Which naturally I cannot find now, even though I have posted the commands on these forums, and saved them to my backups...

Here is some of it. This will stop people calling you the Archmage. It takes you out of the Archmage faction, and puts you back in the regular Mages Guild faction:

player.removefromfaction 103372
player.addtofaction 1F259 4

I came across two more interesting looking armor mods today while hunting for something for Molly to wear.

Ghorza's Armor adds a light and heavy (mailed) set of armor.

Deadly Trio adds three sets of armor. The one for females looks really striking.

Of the two, this is my favorite. I never wear heavy armor, but loved the look of the mail in this one better than the light armor the mod offers. It was really awesome how you could get many different looks out of it too! Both of these are made with the heavy armor:

http://static-5.nexusmods.com/15/mods/110/...-1407667846.jpg

http://static-5.nexusmods.com/15/mods/110/...-1406668890.jpg

Thanks for those console commands. I’m adding them to a note I keep on my phone. I can never find these things when I’m looking for them!

Here’s one that is supposed to allow followers to walk next to you: Followers As Companions. There is a long list of follower mods that won’t work with it, but I’m hoping that walking at the player’s side will become a new feature for others now that this one is out there. Also I hope it works with KC’s Followers Can Relax. I remember the follower distance part of the Game Jam video. I wanted that so much!!

@SubRosa: thanks for these commands, I'll use them when needed unless Lucius changes his mind and accepts the honorary title of the Arch-Mage.

@Grits: sounds like an interesting mod, I'll try it out because followers walking behind our characters really annoys me. Lucius intends to travel with Brelyna in the near future, I'll let you know if it works.

Lopov, I'm told that Followers as Companions really does require the SKSE 1.7.2 beta, which I'm not using yet. I'd love to hear about how it works if you try it.

I did some testing.

In the MCM you have the option to choose which button to assign to change follower's position from behind to beside. This works fine as long as you don't stop walking, then you have to press the button again because the follower is yet again behind you. This might be because I use AFT.

I will do some more testing but it might be that it conflicts with AFT.

Thank you, Lopov! From the mod comments it definitely conflicts with AFT. I use KC's Followers Can Relax in my games where I don't need multiple followers, so I'm hoping it will work with that one.

One of the things I like about AFT is outfit management, but I don't use AFT in all of my games. There's a new mod called Empty Slots that might work for giving followers invisible items so that you can dress them from their vanilla inventory menu if you make stuff that they will equip. I'm giving this one a try with my own tweaks. Then poor Stenvar won't have to wear his armor into the spa. Hopefully.


Edit: Empty Slots works great. I spent about two minutes in the CK making a few heavy armor versions of the hands, feet, circlet, and body slots so that I can play dressup with followers using the Trade Items dialog. No more gauntlets at the dinner table or armor in the bathhouse!

Also handy for its intended use, unequipping items like capes and earrings when you use a hotkey to change outfits.

Lind's Necromancer Robes adds some spiffy retextures of the vanilla necro robes. This is now in my regular rotation.

This is regarding Ghastley's children project - in playing Fallout 3 since Skyrim came out; I've been struck by how well done the children were in Fallout 3 - I went to Rivet City and that cute little girl kept waving at me and saying hi - very cute idles on those children; the children were cute and realistic looking for children -

What I want to know is; if Bethesda had that kind of capability in Fallout 3, why did they not use it in Skyrim? I would love to see those children - or at least some of those awesome child idles - in Skyrim.

I know WE can't bring them over, but Bethesda could have.

I really wish they could be used as a model to try for though.