What Are Your Foundation Mods?, Ones that are always in the rotation Options

[SubRosa]

I have a ton of mods, many of which add new weapons, races, armor, etc... But I don't keep them all active all the time. Typically I will only turn on the mods I want to use for a particular character, and turn off the other clothing, weapon, etc... mods that they are not using. The reason is that there is a hard limit on how many mods you can have active - 252 or so. Also the more mods you have active will eventually start to slow you game down, especially script-intensive mods or massive 2k and 4k texture packs. It all depends on how powerful your computer is to begin with of course. 150 mods might not make a beefy comp blink, but could bring one that is slow to begin with to its knees.

But even that said, I have some mods that are always active, no matter what character. These are what I mean by Foundations. They are the rock on which everything else is built. Some of them are:


General Graphics

No Tint and Desaturation (wow, there are colors again!)

No Stretching (textures)

No Blood (No Blood Splatter On Your Hud option)

No Bloom


Landscape Detail

Shrine of Azura LOD Fix

A Clear World Map

A Quality World Map - With Roads

Enhanced Distant Terrain

Enhanced Night Sky

High Quality LODs

Pure Waters (makes the water semi-transparent from above, so you can actually see the shallow parts you can walk through without swimming)

Distant Detail Hearthfire Edition

Footprints

SkyFalls and SkyMills - Animated Distant Waterfalls and WindMills


Quests

Thieves Guild Requirements - No Auto Quest Start Brynjolf

Dawnguard Delayed Start


Armor & Weapons

Auto Unequip Ammo

UltraHD - Stormcloak and City Guards

Open Faced Helmets

Runed Draugr Greatswords

Well Placed Weapons and Quivers


Gameplay

Ash Pile Expiration

Open and Lock Spells

Lockpick Pro

Player Headtracking

Puppeteer Master (pose mod)

You Are Not The Dragonborn

Improved Skill Books


Creatures

Real Foxes


User Interface

SkyUI

Immersive Hud


Other Stuff

Female Mannequins

Neutral Hjerim

Guards Equipment Comment Tweak

Long Lost Smelters of Skyrim


Then of course I have my whole array of body and face mods Listed Here


So what do other people have that is always in the rotation? It is nice to share, because that is how we learn about mods we never knew existed.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Nov 21 2016, 03:27 AM

[haute ecole rider]

Now that I've been playing vanilla Skyrim with my jack-of-all-trades Oblivion character and discovered that this is her "home," I've restarted the game with the same character but with mods. I'm building a mod set that has now just hit the 62 number. It's close to what I had for Oblivion (something like around 80 mods), and I've played most of them long enough to know what I like the best.

Frostfall? I absolutely love this mod for the immersion. Skyrim is a cold country, and I always felt strange swimming across the inlet at Solitude without any penalty of any kind. This is exactly the kind of immersion experience that a game like Skyrim is crying out for. I love that the camping gear that is included in this can be set up anywhere. The first time I used this, it was on a tiny piece of flat ground right next to the river just north of Riverwood. Quite a bit off the beaten path, but quite safe once I removed those two wolves that like to hang out there.

A Quality World Map with Roads? One thing I hated about the default Skyrim map was that it had no roads, so I couldn't figure out the best way to get to some remote objective that would be 'marked' by some NPC. Maps are no good if they don't have roads, at least in a lore-friendly setting. So now both Alise and I are absolutely delighted with this mod.

Skyrim Horses Renewal? animation only files. When we first played through, the vanilla horses moved so badly that Alise absolutely refused to get on them. (As an aside, Julian took one look at them and turned right around and headed back to her beloved Gold Coast.) So I did some digging around because I figured if I found at least a packhorse mod, Alise would find the horse useful for carting around her survival gear and her loot. I initially skipped this mod because the new meshes still rubbed me the wrong way, especially the hindquarters. As a veterinarian who spent the past 20-plus years looking at lameness and breakdowns due to poor conformation, I just couldn't stomach these horses. But I loved the animations I saw in the videos and wished I could have at least just that for the vanilla horses. Quelle surprise! but the modder did exactly that when I looked at the files page. So now Alise has a nice, sturdy grey Riften horse that goes almost everywhere with her and lugs all the heavy stuff without complaint.

Live Another Life? Once was enough for me to tolerate the vanilla introductory ride to Helgen. I started looking for other ways to start this game that did not require storytelling gymnastics to explain why Alise ended up on that cart. I also wanted a way to hold off the MQ. I'm glad to say that Alise and I have been playing this game now for a couple of weeks and she is at Level 14 and we still haven't started the MQ! It's nice not to have to worry about the dragons, or to be called the Dragonborn by one guard and warned "Hands to yourself, sneak thief" by the next. Alise is still being told off, but at least the guards' comments are more consistent!

I've got other mods that have already been mentioned here on this thread, but I'll stop for now. I'm off to test drive yet another mod!

[Acadian]

...
A Quality World Map with Roads? One thing I hated about the default Skyrim map was that it had no roads, so I couldn't figure out the best way to get to some remote objective that would be 'marked' by some NPC. Maps are no good if they don't have roads, at least in a lore-friendly setting. So now both Alise and I are absolutely delighted with this mod.
...

Thank you so much for this endorsement. I've been tracking that very mod for some time but had not installed it - until now, thanks to your recommendation. It works fine and is indeed a big help.

When it was just Buffy and Superian, she didn't worry about the map too much because Superian the mountain goat heavy horse could darn near climb up or down a sheer cliff. Going from A to B was basically a straight line, knowing the horse could negotiate almost any obstacle. However. . . Buffy has quite gotten into having a small posse of critters and mounted follower(s) - all of whom are quite stymied by anything from fallen logs to medium boulders. As a result, Buffy has adapted by becoming quite the pathfinder - a role that she initially found irritating and restrictive, but has grown to quite relish. Getting somewhere is now a bit more of a challenge. The missing piece of support for her more detailed and careful navigation has been a quality map. This mod certainly helps.

Thanks again!