Starting Skyrim on PC Options

[Renee]

Yes, it looks like it's finally happening. It's raining and lovely outside, and is supposed to do so all through Sundas. I mean Sunday. And I am going to maybe start Skyrim on PC tomorrow.

So what I want to do here is to collect any advice the community here at Chorrol feels like contributing. For instance: I still want to install my game outside of Program Files, right? That sort of advice. I have heard that modding Skyrim is different from Oblivion.

What's the best (easiest, actually) mod manager to use? That's a good place to start. OBMM isn't as fancy as Wrye Bash, for instance, but I still use OBMM most of all because it does what I need it to do. And so I am assuming Skyrim also has several mod managers to try using, right?

I'm pretty excited about my first character. I already know a lot about him, since he is based on a character one of my friends from high school (1980s, lol) created. The only tricky thing is this character will be Asian, and I'm going to want some Asian face-tweaking mod, because I could never create this guy with vanilla tools on Xbox (yes, I tried). Anybody know a mod that adds some Asian elements to faces?

[SubRosa]

Definitely install outside of Program Files. That really goes for everything these days. However, Skyrim is going to install itself to your Steam Folder, so the thing is to make sure Steam installs itself outside of Program Files. If you have more than one hard drive, you can choose to install your games to any drive you want. It will create a Steam folder on that drive, and then bury the game under several folders inside of it.

I still use OBMM as well for Skyrim. As you said, it is easy to use and does everything I need in a mod manager. There is an updated version of it for Skyrim called TES Mod Manager that I use.

You will want SKSE as well. It is the Skyrim version of the OBSE, and a lot of mods require it.

Sky UI is another must-have, not only for how much more useful it makes the game's interface, but also for its mod configuration menu, which allows you to configure many mods straight from the menu system in the game.

Immersive Hud goes nicely with Sky UI, and it allows you to do things like remove the compass and crosshair, either permanently, or making them visible for certain things.

Outside of those, look in the Foundation Mod, Face and Body Mods, and This Mod Looks Interesting topics for more mods that might catch your interest.

I tried making an asian character once, and even downloaded a so-called asian character mod to do it with. I still didn't end up looking at all asian. Unless someone has put some new Asianizing mod out there, you are probably going to be out of luck.