Sometimes I see a mod and think "Hey, that looks interesting!" Often in a screenshot from someone else's game. Or on those occasional visits to the Nexus and I see it on the front page. I thought I would create a topic that might make it easier for all of us to keep up on what mods are out there -new or old - that at least look good. If other folks already have it, they can chime in and offer their opinions/experience with it. If not, they might decide to try it themselves.

Rogue Armor looks interesting. It requires Dragonborn, and is basically a mash up of vanilla armors. But it seems to come together alright. Has anyone tried it? I don't have a character right now who it would be appropriate for, so even if I download it, it could be months before I actually try it out.

This is a good idea for a thread - thanks!

I haven't seen that Rogue Armor one, as it's fairly new. It looks fabulous though - like it really fits and belongs in the game for a rogue character. I very much like that it has some color (red) but that the red is subdued enough that it would be totally appropriate for dungeon crawling.

It has a bit too much metal on it and is too 'roguishly rough and ready' for Buffy the mystic archer, but it's a great looking armor for the right character for sure. It looks like something Aravi the skirmisher might like perhaps.

That looks great on the Khajiit! I love the fingerless gauntlets. It looks like something Valdi would wear on her more roguish days. The rough armor she wears now exposes a little too much boob for her liking.

I'd love to see it on Aravi.

OK, I had Valdi do a quick fashion show in Castle Volkihar. Our findings:

It looks awesome. BUT it shows a bit more hip than I would like. Especially with the armored hood on Valdi’s bare skin seemed to say, “Stab my kidneys.”

However Valdi does not have fur. I would still love it on a Khajiit.

Picture

Another one

And one more

Valdi is hot!

Erm, I mean the armor does look good. It does expose the love handles a bit though.

I already saw the mod on the Nexus and thought the same thing - too much hip exposure. As I've become more exposure-minded thanks to Frostfall, I've been avoiding those custom/modded armors that reveal too much. The vanilla fur armor shows a little too much cleavage for my Alise's taste, but we decided that the armor still provides Full protection thanks to the Snow Cat who donated the pelt for this particular piece. Anyways, she wears her enchanted fur travel cloak over it so it's not that noticeable.

One thing I adore about Skyrim are the DOGS! The way they look at you with those big brown eyes that somehow glint with mischief, the way they lie down when you're idling, and the way they hang their shaggy wolfhound heads when you look at them funny. They all remind me of how I always imagined Grit's Ulfe to be! Anyway, I found this mod last night and thought hmmmmm . . . I like what it does to Vigilance, Alise's current companion (along with SubRosa's summoned Saber Cat).

Anybody know of a nice little to make the dogs stop barking all the time? It's nice for about five minutes but forces me to fire the dog before long. Barking to acknowledge commands only maybe? or only a couple times a day instead of every couple minutes?

I tried one of the huskies from DG and ran right into the same disqualifying problem right away.

There are mods like Shut Up Dogs that make them stop entirely, but I do not know of ones that only make them bark a little bit of the time.

I love the Skyrim dogs, too. They are exactly how I imagined Ulfe, only grey instead of blonde. I was so happy when I saw the first screenshot of one! That Unique Dogs mod looks neat. Changing the color is the next thing I’m trying to figure out for Ulfe.

I use Deeper Dog Bark to make the barking a little more pleasant. Sorry I don't know a mod to make them bark less.

Oh thanks for that! I'll have to check those out!

This just in from the Unique Dogs version 1.2 change log: "-added less barking and no barking options."

I haven't tried it yet, but it's looking pretty good to me now.

One thing about the mod, it turns Stump positively PURPLE! It's especially noticeable in bright sunlight.

First time I saw this I was "Watthef--" Then I cracked up laughing when I realized the kids must have concocted some kind of shampoo with purple mountain flower, lavender and garlic in an attempt to rid the poor guy of fleas. I'm not sure if it did get rid of the fleas, but it certainly explains the purple color!

I noticed purple Stump in the screenshots. Here's the other comment from the change log: "- Fixed the purple tint bug! (Woohoo!)." Lavender and purple mountain flower, that's awesome.

I came across an interesting armor mod today while l was looking for new outfits for Persephone. Berserk Sonia Armor and its retexture mod have a great, realistic look. It would be good for an ordinary, no-nonsense girl. The curling feather on the back of the helmet is the only thing that looks a bit fantastical. But the rest of the helmet is a classic burgonet, and with the chest plate, is straight from Real Life.

SPOA Silver Knight Armor looks very neat as well. A lot fancier than the Sonia armor, but still very functional. A good knightly attire.

Maty's Mithril Armor is another good looking armor set.

SubRosa, the SPOA Silver Knight Armor looks absolutely stunning! Every bit of it. In fact, it sports a helmet that I would actually put on a character!

It does have a helmet. But it completely covers the wearer's head and face. So even if Persephone goes with it, she will be bare-headed.

*glances at avatar* Yeah, I love full face helmets - both the practicality and mystery they provide. I like wearing the one in my avatar to keep that pesky blond ponytail from popping out. . . but it doesn't work so well, does it? Back in OB, I used to imagine the look on folks' faces when the massive knight in shining golden (dwarven) armor removed the full face helm to reveal - Sir Mazoga!

Lost Paladins of the Divines Armor is one that caught my attention. I think it might have too much gold for Persephone, though. I also think the Quicksilver Elven Set looks nice.

Here’s one that I’m having reckless fun with and hopefully not sowing the seeds of my game’s destruction. Jaxonz Renamer. Best thing so far: custom potions names!!! You know how happy this makes me.

A happy Grits!

Flea shampoo, Jerric juice, ...

That is a great way to give Flash and the other horses names as well!

I started using Face Light a few days ago. It is a simple little mod, that puts a light on the player character's face. It does not sound like much, but it does look really good. There are two spells, for varying levels of brightness, and two more to cast them on NPCs. I find I like the darker version best, as it adds only a subtle light to the PC.

Ok, so this mod may be the final piece of the puzzle that gets me to recreate Njall the Unliving and put him through the vampire side of Dawnguard as SubRosa suggested. I’ve always loved the ancient Nord armor except for the miniskirt part. It looks like this mod just gives it pants.

BTW, Facelight is working great for me. Thank you for the tip!

Yaay pants!

I hate the way the Ancient Nord armor and the Imperial Legion armor leaves knees so bare. I mean, come on, this is eternal Frostfall! Brrrrgh!

I used to use an armor mod just for the pants that you could put under other armor. I felt itchy with all of those bare legs walking through thigh-high brush.

Weren’t we just talking about how silly it is that NPCs don’t seem to notice the glowing eyes and butt faces of NPC vampires? Here’s a mod for that: Humanoid Vampires - Vampires use normal faces and Serana’s eyes variant.

I haven’t tried it since I’m using a different mod for eyes and fangs plus my own player vampire face tweaks with whatever I did that I don’t remember, but it would seem that this mod could replace both.

Thanks! I'll download that after work and give it a whirl.

Here's a mod I just discovered. It's called Familiar Faces.

It allows you to bring old characters into your current game. "...meet your Dragonborn from past play-throughs, create a monument to their achievements, and even bring them to your world as faithful allies... or worthy opponents! Whether you're a role-player trying to build a coherent story of Skyrim or you just think it'd be cool to use your other players as followers, Familiar Faces is the only way to do it!"

The reason this mod interests me is that I've been doing this for almost 12 years but I've always had to do it manually in the Construction Set. It looks like this mod offers an easier and more automated way of accomplishing the same thing. I will definitely be trying this out the next time I play Skyrim.

Looks very neat, Pseron Wyrd! I'm sure there are several folks here who would be interested in it.

I'm watching this one: Fast Respawn 72 Hours . Seems like it makes everything that is supposed to respawn do so in 72 hours. Plants, critters, dungeons.

I play at the same time scale of 10 that I use in OB and three days is perfect for me. Buffy's such a voracious dungeon diver that 10 days is just way too slow. The dungeons in Skyrim are so pretty that we're rather addicted to clearing them.

Thanks for that info! I haven't yet played Skyrim with a different character, but I may want to import Alise as an NPC into my next char's game. Too bad this mod isn't for Oblivion - I would totally put Julian and Tallei into each other's game!



I'm like you, Acadian, but I prefer a slightly longer respawn time - more like 5 in game days. I pace things so slowly because I play hardcore - my characters have to eat, drink and sleep daily. No marathon modes for them! So I guess I'll wait until I'm ready to figure out how to reset the respawn time in my game.

Rider, that mod I linked to has several optional files you can load for differing respawn times. I think there's about 5 options running from 72 hours up to about 360 hours I think.

A 72-hour respawn mod was one of the first Skyrim mods I used. The game works great this way, I like it. I'm just too used to 72-hour spawns in Morrowind and Oblivion. The longer times seem too long to me.

The only problem I had was with the main quest. There's am encampment of bandits right outside the entrance to Sky Haven Temple and it can be a serious PITA to have to clear them out every time you want to get inside.

There may be clever ways to avoid having to fight them, but I don't have the patience for cleverness, lol. I ended up disabling my respawn mod for the duration of the main quest.

I noticed the various esps have different names, so I can easily use them with profiles to suit different characters. The Zanimal definitely wants the shortest one so he can raid his favorite spots more often. I think most of my characters will use the six day one. It looks pretty easy to change it to five days if it turns out that would suit better. This is a great find! Thank you!

Thanks for the endorsement, Pseron. I figure I'll start a new playthrough within a few weeks and tweak my mods to include that one.

I disabled the main quest instead...

Unlike yourself, I have no morals. Or the ability to think for myself, apparently. I slaughtered Dragons because Beth told me to. I rationalized this by telling myself that they attacked me first. What could I do? It was self-defense. I tried this argument on Alvor and he seemed to buy it. "That sounds reasonable," he said. But, then, Alvor doesn't strike me as being very bright.

Unfortunately [here comes my favorite Skyrim rant] Bethesda decided to tie the main quest into both the civil war and the Dragonborn expansion. This hideous game design decision meant that I was forced to begin the main quest two more times (triggering more Dragons) in order to experience those quest lines with other characters.

I hope they never do that again, ever. Ever. Ever.

Those are dragons? I thought they were over-sized cliffracers! I got so tired of killing them in Morrowind, that I have no desire to do it again in another province.

I did stomach enough of the main quest to do the civil war from both sides. But never again. Honestly, the Civil War questlines were not very interesting. I do hope they don't interweave more major questlines into their main quests again, but I think that is only going to become more the case, not less. Bethesda seems to be becoming more and more like Obsidian in their desire to control the player's decisions, to the point of them becoming meaningless.

An update. I've been using this mod for a couple days now and love it. In vanilla, dungeons that are marked as 'cleared' respawn in 30 days; everything else that is suppose to respawn does so in 10 days.

This mod has several files so you can install one that changes these values to something close to your liking. I'm using the file 'Fast Respawn 144'. It makes 'cleared' dungeons respawn in 6 days and everything else respawn in three days.

Buffy's a voracious dungeon diver and has a wide range. But 30 / 10 days was simply too long. As a result, we were getting bored after a few hundred hours, frustrated by empty dungeons and restarting her game. With this mod it pretty much ensures that by the time she returns to a dungeon it's reloaded with fresh victims.

I also downloaded and added the Fast Respawn mod to my loadout.

I went with the 240 file, which respawns cleared cells in 10 days and all else in 5.

I was already in Falskaar when I added this mod, so I have yet to see its effects here. But I'm totally looking forward to our return to Skyrim! Alise is not quite the inveterate dungeon diver that Buffy is, but she really hates bandits, so she is vigilant about them . . .

Another mod I'm watching is Roman Camp. I'm looking at this and wondering, did the Roman legionnaries really build these things every night?? If so, I'm even more impressed!

Thanks for the Fast Respawn mod, Acadian, I have yet to find the optimal respawn time for my game but I'll definitely use it.

For those interested in adding some more inns that are also each unique in its on way, here is Inns and Taverns of Skyrim. Then there are Sleeping innkeepers and Sleep tight mod, which give even bandits some basic schedules. And then there's also Simple Actions mod which not only allows you to sit anywhere but also to sleep anywhere, just as it was in Morrowind.

Did anyone else watch the vid for "Sleep Tight?" I was in stitches! Especially at the end when the credits were rolling and he started dancing! SPEW! That lady beating on him as he danced ... OMG, that was hilarious!!!

That mod "Simple Actions" sounds great!!! I def want that one! Thanks, Lopov!

Thanks for the endorsement of Simple Actions, Lopov. I've been tracking that one for some time but haven't downloaded or installed it.

You're both welcome. The only issue (minor, at least for me) is that when waking up, your character will have eyes closed but reloading fixes it. Apparently this wasn't always the issue but it happened with the official update that disabled blinking, for instance, my character in Skyrim didn't blink at first but I fixed it with this mod.

Have you had a chance to use Humanoid Vampires? I have been using it, but the vampire in the Solitude Court still looks the same. Did they just overlook her? Or is it just an issue with my game?

I did notice that Alva in Morthal looks normal. I haven't thought to look at the other vampires Persephone has killed lately. She has been too busy chopping with her sword to really study them. I think I'll take her back to Movarth's Lair for another look.

Just took a look. Movarth not only still has the butt-face, but his whole head has turned grey! However, the generic Ancient Vampire also there looks like a normal human. I opened up the mod, and see it only changes the vampire race entries. Alva is officially a Nord Female race, like Serana, so that's why she looks normal. Sybille Stentor is a BretonVampireRace, which the mod alters, but still shows up with the butt-face? I have no idea why. I moved the mod to the bottom of the load order, so it is taking precedence over anything else I have that might be conflicting. I think this is going into the recycle bin.


Thanks for the link on Simple Actions. I have downloaded that and added it. Even though it might be a while before I play a character that sleeps (Persephone is undead, so she has not eaten or slept in four thousand years).

Enhanced Character Edit looks interesting. This preset character face led me to it, and it seems to do a great deal more than Race Menu (which never really impressed me). It says you can even save the face you make, and has an Undo/Redo system. Has anyone ever tried it?

Edit: I installed it, wow, there are tons of options. After starting the game and trying it out, I recall I had tried it once before and not bothered to keep it. But I can see a whole lot of new options now, which I like. You can do things like change eye size and width, brow arching, the size of your mouth, the size of just the upper lip, or the lower, etc... You can even change your character's height, how big your head is, scale the size of your weapon up and down, and so on. It has multiple levels of zooming in, and lighting of various levels it can spawn for you to see your character better.

It even has a really nice option to completely change your skin hue, saturation, and lightness. Same with your lips, so now we can have any lipstick color we want! The inability to do that in vanilla Skyrim is one of the reasons I made my Deadwalker Race for Persephone, with new textures. Thanks to this, we can see what she would look like if she were alive, without me having to tinker around with changing her race.

SubRosa, that's good to know. I'm using Race Menu, but I'll have to keep my eye on that one you're using. One thing I do like about Race Menu is that I can change size/shape/angle of elf ears. That really helps vs hair clipping since almost all hair mods are designed for round ears.

You can do the same with the ears with ECE. In fact, you can give your human elf ears if you want, of several different varieties.

Oh, thanks for letting me know that! When I quickly glanced at ECE, I didn't see any ear tweaks. Thanks again!

Fast Respawn is still working great for me. It is very easy to adjust the settings so that they’re just right. Great recommendation!

I still haven’t tried that Humanoid Vampires mod yet. Sybille Stentor being overlooked would be a big issue for me. The whole point is that my mortal characters should not recognize the vampires who are passing for human, like Alva and Sybille. I’ll try it out with Zanimal’s game, since he has access to Castle Volkihar.

Oh! Also I found a Male Brute voice set that someone made for Nanahane’s Additional Voice Sets. It’s Set 2 in this mod whose exact name I can never remember. That’s Jerric’s voice, so I gave it a whirl. It is awesome!

He and Darnand were heading out the Whiterun gate around six in the evening. I was debating where they would want to stop for the night. Out of the blue Jerric said, “By the Nine I’d give good money for a pint of ale to warm my bones.” (He “discovered” Breezehome by walking past it due to a new mod with a map marker.) Needless to say they went back to the Bannered Mare!

Of course I'm still using CFS's Player Voicesets mod with Wulfy's voice for the Zanimal. That voice makes the character!

OK, I just tried the Humanoid Vampire face mod and Sybille looks the same in my games without it, I'm assuming because I'm using a better fangs and non-glowing eyes mod that I think replaces the vampire characters' individual heads. The Volkihar vampires looked the same in Zanimal's game without it. So if for some reason I don't want to use that one I'll check out Humanoid Vampires again, but it seems I'm covered without it.

The fang mod would be a major pain to remove, so I didn't check without it. I've been having issues lately.

I actually don't mind the bat faces on the Volkihar clan. They wouldn't have any reason to conceal their nature while they're at the castle.


Edit: D'oh! Humanoid Vampires affects the player as well as some NPCs. I've already tweaked Z's vampire face myself, but that must have been what I was thinking about when I looked at that mod. The vampire player. *sighs*

Lopov, I went ahead and installed Simple Actions and am very happy with it. Simple and effective. Mostly I simply want the ability for Buffy to sit wherever she wants, and this does it! Thanks!