A while ago, I posted about playing Skyrim on my 360 again- with all the new DLC and the like. I have now bought Skyrim for the third time in my life. I bought it again on Steam, the legendary edition was on sale for £15. They were giving it away.
I've always had a strange relationship with the Elder scrolls/new fallout series. An abusive relationship, almost. Once upon a time we tired to LP New Vegas on BSGTV, and playing the game so often and with other people made me hate it. Sadly, I haven't played it since. I guess the reason being is that it comes far too close to what I want, and falls just short. There are parts, ideas & mechanics I love- but for the most part that have flaws. These flaws sometimes give it character ,and other times they make the game frustrating and boring.
One of the main reasons for my slow dislike of this particular set of games was due to the fact I played them exclusively on console until now. The slow loading is the only real killer there, better graphics are nice but it doesn't really impact my enjoyment.
Concerning Skyrim, I've taken to modding. Over the past 2-3 days I've just been collecting, testing and trying out mods. The number is somewhere around 60, perhaps slightly less. I've finally come to a stop with adding these new mods, and found myself playing Skyrim in nearly all of my free time. For the most part, using the nexus mod manager is simple- I had a little bit of trouble with one or two mods in particular not loading in the right order and causing game crashes, thankfully it's all solved now. The sheer amount of effort, love and attention to detail some of these mods have is insane. I've never modded any PC game before, and I didn't expect so much from these mods. They've really made the game fresh and SO much more entertaining than it ever was.
Most of the mods I'm using are for immersions sake, there's a lot of crazy mods out there but I've tried to stick as close to the feel and lore of Skyrim as possible. There's also a lot of creepy mods too, but that's a dark place we don't want to go to. I don't really want to go into what particular mods I'm using, unless there happens to be any demands for it. I will, however, recommend four. Four mods I now consider a must have for me to be able to enjoy Skyrim again.
The first is Frostfall, in short this mod makes weather affect your character. You need to keep warm and stay out of frigid waters. Otherwise, you'll lose stats and eventually die. At first, I wasn't sold on this mod. I found it to be a little bit of a pain, but when it was mixed into the cocktail of mods I'm now running. I loved it. It comes with the option to disable fast travel, really forcing you to explore and make use of the carriages dotted around the world. This mod really makes the world of Skyrim feel hostile and dangerous in places, you'll spend your time planning journeys, checking you've got all the right gear and really feeling like you're battling harsh weather. A must have.
The second, improves Frostfall further. It's called realistic needs and diseases. This mod will force you to need to eat, sleep and drink at regular intervals. It'll also make diseases a lot more deadly, making them something to fear and not something you'll get round to curing when you find a shrine next. This mod makes Skyrim feel even more like a real place, it makes the environment itself an enemy. You'll find yourself making regular stops at the inn, making sure you've got the supplies you need before setting out. Looking for perfect places to camp. Once you've gotten used to not fast traveling, this mod combined with Frostfall makes Skyrim feel like a fully fledged world. Not that vanilla Skyrim wasn't a beautiful place to wander, I always felt the convenience of fast travel. allowed players to skip a lot of great content without even knowing it.
Another must have is SPERG. This mod completely overhauls the perk system. It adds new perks, and entirely changes others. There are now new ways to skill up the harder to level skills in game, amour skills for example. Completing quests will give you a random skill point too. This mod will force you to really think about what perks to choose, as all of them are now interesting and useful. It encourages you to play the game and not to grind stats so you can have the perks at the end of the vanilla tree.
The final must have, in my eyes is Dragon combat overhaul. This mod makes all the dragon fights fucking insane. They get much harder, dragons aren't the annoyance they once were. This mod changes so much, it really makes you feel like each dragon is a boss fight. I simply can't list everything this mod does, but trust me- you need it.
New video coming soon by the way! It's uploaded to YouTube and ready to go, I just need to make to public and tag everything. I'm writing this from my phone at work on my lunch break so as soon as I'm off work I'll try and get it all sorted.
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