As far as I could tell, it was just a way for me to use the ridiculous number of radiation, health kits, and food you got in the game. Even drinking water wasn't a big deal because hey, you could just use some RadX and be fine. It never added any moments of tension for me. It was also supremely annoying without an extra mod that required installing a script extender, in order to see your hydration and hunger levels on the HUD and not have to go into the Pipboy every single time. It was just stupid, EXCEPT for the fact that healing was over time, which I thought is something that should be in the regular difficulty modes since insta-heal by going to inventory is silly.
Yep, making you eat and drink doesn't work in any of the Bethesda games due to how absurdly plentiful food and water are. It's a cool idea but horribly implemented in Fallout. I also agree that the Stimpacks were much improved in hardcore mode. I also liked that limb damage had to be healed using doctor's bags.
That sounds really poorly balanced. I expect the FWE guys have done a complete overhaul and rebalancing of the system for NV which may be more to your liking. I rather enjoy having to take care of my character so long as it adds to immersion in the game world rather than simply becoming a tedious chore, though I think my fondness for it is tied specifically to sandbox RPGs with a survival bent. If Bioware added hunger, thirst and exhaustion to Mass Effect, I would be irritated beyond belief.
I decided to play this again for a while on self-imposed Dark Souls exile. I was really hoping for more perk overhaul mods to be available by now, and I seem to remember the archery stuff being reworked at some point but I couldn't find anything that was to my satisfaction. Does anyone have anything along those lines that they actually use full time and enjoy?
If I were to play Skyrim again I'd be awfully tempted to use Automatic Variants. It's a mod that allows creatures to select from a number of different textures at random, so you get four different looking wolves coming at you, instead of four identical ones. I'd probably use this too just to save me the effort of thinking.
#1 thing to do for archery in this game is to get rid of the bullshit vertical auto-aim that the game applies to your arrows: edit Skyrim.ini in My Games\Skyrim add this or edit it if it's already there: [Combat] fMagnetismStrafeHeadingMult=0.0 fMagnetismLookingMult=0.0 f1PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.7 f3PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.7 fVisibleNavmeshMoveDist=12500.0000 That last one lets you hit anything you can see, which offers the possibility of cheesing the AI that won't be able to find you, but fuck it, because if you can actually hit shit at that distance you deserve not to be seen.
I removed the bit that I think confused you. Auto-aim just makes archery unintuitive because the game introduces a vertical angle to the shot depending on how far away the target of the crosshair is, so you shots would fly high especially if you tried to lead a shot on a moving target. It was dumb. With the tweak you can aim above the target and get a more intuitive sense of where the arrow will land (after some practice of course).
So I am playing Skyrim again, this time on my new PC with a good video card, Dragonborn expansion and the high res texture packs and it looks *fantastic*. I'm trying some mods this time, and really liking the Sky UI mod. I'm not super interested in the graphics mods, but might be interested in cool gameplay mods. What sort of mods are highly recommended and worth checking out? Also, I have a specific question: I see a bunch of mods to fix the magic system, and I want to try a caster. Which of the various mods is the best? I would basically like the magic system to scale better, like melee does, and for there to be more variety of magic stuff to do. Plus lots of big explosions, of course. On the magic mod front, there is a surfeit of options, like these: Mighty Magick Empowered Magic Better Magic and Truly Balanced Magic Any thoughts?
Anything that adjusts scaling is good. If you want even more options you can try this mod, too. On an unrelated note, Climates of Tamriel 3 has been released.
Man the whole mod thing is a ridiculous bounty of options. I'm now taking a look at the "Immersive Armor" and "Immersive Weapons" mods and Jebus, some "subject matter experts" are hardcore, truly hardcore. Has anyone tried either one of the "Immersive" Gear mods? Any thoughts? Edit: Man I just fired up the "Quality World Map" for the first time and it's... outstanding. Truly amazing. If you haven't tried it, it's well worth firing up Skyrim again.
Yeah, the immersive gear mods are great. I've installed those and a handful of other item mods that try to remain "lore friendly", all of which improve on the base game immensely. Unique Uniques is also good! Grass on Steroids paired with Grassification of Skyrim is amusing briefly, then you realize YOU CAN'T SEE ANYTHING EVER> and the game becomes farce. Stumbling around blindly shooting fire in random directions, desperately trying to hit whatever is attacking your character is about as fun as it sounds.
I'll second the nod for the immersive gear mods. I've just started playing Skyrim for the first time, so I cannot say that I'm an expert, but I find the immersive mods to be a good addition to my experience so far, and they look quite a bit better than the vanilla textures.
So, some impressions on Skyrim mods thus far; SkyUI is the best thing since sliced bread. Highly, highly recommended. Immersive weapons is good but not, IMO great. I tried Immersive Armors and it was even better than Immersive Weapons, but sadly due to my degenerate & prurient interests, I had to switch off Immersive Armors to accommodate the CBBE body models. Mature and right thinking individuals will of course avoid CBBE but if you want nude and/or skimpily armored anatomically ludicrous female characters and NPCs then it's a must-have. Sigh, "Easily Amused." Of the various magic mods, I ended up going with Mighty Magick, and I am liking that quite a bit. Lastly, the Quality World Map is truly excellent. I am considering trying the Heavy Armory mod and/or the Complete Crafting Overhaul mod next.
I really, really want to try the Tropical Skyrim mod. I have it downloaded, and a fresh install of Skyrim ready to go. I'd just that when I actually fire up Steam, and look at the hours played, and... well, thinking about playing Skyrim is more productive at this point. There's just this wall that you hit in all of the "modern" ES games (Morrowind onwards) that no amount of nifty mods can break through; when you're done, you're DONE.
I'm not sure if this is the same for others, but I always hit a point where I realise it's all so pointless. There's no soul to it, no characters I care about, no one to share the adventure with. Once I've achieved all those little goals that kept me going, seen what's over that mountain, picked up that sweet bow, there's nothing to make me press on. Then the next one will come out and I'll repeat the cycle.
I am finding that using a bunch of mods that affect core gameplay is giving me something of a second wind. Specifically this go round I'm using the Mighty Magick mod and have been building up a spell-sword character (more spell than sword at this point). Mighty Magick scales the magic system, and also revises the support/utility schools of Alteration and Restoration to be much more viable and interesting. It does make magic somewhat OP if you focus on that, but heck, anything in a TES game gets OP when you focus on it. Also, the Immersive Weapons mod has breathed some life both into the melee combat and the crafting. Ultimately of course the primary hook with a TES game is building your character and once those carrots are all consumed, it does begin to pale. There is also a strong secondary hook of exploration but again, once you've seen most of Skyrim, you've pretty much seen it all. That said, it has taken both in Skyrim and Oblivion, hundreds of hours to get to this point, so I'm not complaining.
I wonder how difficult it would be to make a mod that removes every monster from the game so I can just wander around and enjoy the world, the wildlife and neutral NPCs without worrying about being attacked. I know you can turn off hostility but that's not quite the same thing. Alternatively, if there were a Skyrim: Origins mod, I could probably bring myself to start fresh. It's a pity they didn't put something like that in the main game given how wonderfully sprawling their games tend to be. Start as a thief here, a blacksmith over there, a farmer's child somewhere else. It's not like they do a lot of deep storytelling anyway so I can't imagine it'd have been a lot of work. If they were feeling expansive they could have tied those meager beginnings into the various guilds, circles, brotherhoods, so that we're forging a path that has a more personal feel to it. But I guess they like to start everyone off in shackles. (<-- this is unfair, don't hate me Bethesda)
I use this mod for that: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9557 It's called "Alternate Start - Live Another Life". Not only does it allow you to skip the lengthy intro sequence at Helgen but allows you to chose several different alternative starting options. You can start as a new member of any of the guilds, as a hunter in the wild, a house owner in any of the mayor cities, a shipwrecked traveller, a vigilant of Stendarr and so forth. The main quest is still available and can be started whenever you want to.
Excising every enemy from the game would be tough due to the fact that some hold plot-relevant bits or are scripted in such a way as to be necessary. Making the vast majority of them non-hostile unless otherwise affected by a script would be pretty easy. How would you handle skeletons and such? Just kill them as soon as they spawn?
