Favorite mods Options

[Acadian]

I'm not familiar with such a mod that, I would imagine, reduces enemy spawn points along the roads. I'm sure there probably are such mods though.

I reduce the number of wilderness fights via SubRosa's mod Witchcraft. One of the features of this mod is that wolves, bears, lions, boars and spriggans are not hostile. For RP reasons, we still like to give them a wide berth, but that one mod can significantly reduce 'annoyance' attacks while traveling. I find that mud crabs, imps, trolls, wills, ogres, minotaurs, land dreughs, etc still allow for enough excitement while traveling. In fact, I tweaked SubRosa's mod to render boars once again hostile. Witchcraft is a flawlessly put together mod that has other nice features as well (some bound armors and the ability to summon forest creatures). It is well worth taking a peek at. And, of course, it has the wonderful plus that if you have any questions about it, we have the wonderful authoress of this mod right here at Chorrol!

[haute ecole rider]

TIE (Tamriel Immersion Experience) greatly decreases the number of bandits, et al on the roads.

I've also noticed the will'o'wisps aren't nearly as aggressive as they are in Julian's story. Whew! All of us - two-legged and four - are very relieved!

I also heartily second Acadian's recommendation of Witchcraft. It's a solid mod that plays well with TIE.

This post has been edited by haute ecole rider: Apr 15 2014, 09:17 PM

[Thomas Kaira]

Personally, I use Tamriel Immersion Experience.

It's actually more a tiny overhaul than it is anything else, but one of the features is highly reduced spawns on roads.

Just keep in mind, it also un-levels the entire wilderness (among many other changes), so don't go venturing far from the roads while you are a low level.

[Renee]

I've got MMM in my games, which has a 'Safer Roads' option, but MMM probably wouldn't work for you Rhiannae. It's a pretty involved mod with lots of options, probably too many for you from the sound of it.

[Rihanae]

Thank you everyone for your suggestions!

I really like the look of Witchcraft, but I'll check out both that and TIE, although I think I'll enjoy Witchcraft more for the other benefits it provides

EDIT: Scratch that... TIE also looks amazing. Grr... I'll most likely have both! haha

This post has been edited by Rihanae: Apr 16 2014, 04:46 PM

[Rihanae]

Okay, here are my most recent mods that I am loving.

Killiana - Adds a permenant, unique spider Daedra companion. She's pretty cool, but quite sloppy when it comes to using magic! Can't TELL you the amount of times I've been zapped! Haha.

Weye - A simple mod I discovered that turns Weye into more of a settlement. Can't remember the exact name of the one I need.

TIE - Introduced to this above, along with Witchcraft. I love the subtle, bt awesome changes it brings to the game. I enjoy dungeons being hit&miss when it comes to finding treasure.

Unique Landscapes Compilation - Adds some beautiful locations. I very much like my Cyrodiil to have quite a cluttered landscape.

[Acadian]

An update on Valenwood Improved (VI) + Elsweyr. As you recall, I'm using the older Elsweyr mod (will change over to Illiana's March 2014 version sometime fairly soon), and also, that the patch between the old Elsweyr mod and VI is no longer available.

Well, I'm pretty pleased with VI except for the western portions along the Elsweyr border. As I've gotten further and further into VI, the terrain rips, tears, and mismatched terrain planes are pertty bad. I'd say as much as 20% of Valenwood is unusable due to that. On one hand, the rest of VI looks good and is a pretty nice mod. My real concern, however, is that when back in Elsweyr and looking toward V-wood, those terrain abominations along the border or very visible. That really distracts from the beauty of Elsweyr - well, only if you look to the west.

I'm dealing with it for the moment since I'm not done pondering and evaluating and exploring. Once I change over to the new Elsweyr mod, I'll load Elsweyr after VI and evaluate things.

My long winded point here, I guess, is that at least with my setup, all is not happy along the Elsweyr/V-Wood border as I had initially reported. Again, I don't know yet how the new Elsweyr mod will fair with VI. If it comes to a choice between the two mods though, that is easy. Elsweyr, at least for me, is hands down the better mod to have.

If I do dump VI, I'll go looking for a separate worldspace (like SI uses) mod that provides a more rain forest/jungle feel to go explore.

[ghastley]

I think Acadian and I have the same VI.

It's not a mod, it's the beginnings of one. So there's a lot of new territory, but it's not yet properly filled in. Some places are virtual ghost towns, with nobody living in the houses. Some houses have no furniture. However, there are quests and NPC's in parts of the province, and what's there works fairly well. Because it was developed independently, it doesn't mesh with Elsweyr. The patch I have (from Illiana) fixes the border alignment issues Acadian mentioned, but doesn't go any further. There aren't any cross-border quests, for example, except between each province and Cyrodiil. Nothing that uses both Valenwood and Elsweyr.

We've probably mentioned a few of the bugs we found, like unkillable spriggans, and overpowered enemies. I patched my copy to fix them, so I forget they were there. I think I also fixed a multitude of smaller cosmetic things as I came across them, for my own use. I can package up my copy if anyone here wants it, but I can't support someone else's mod.

I also run Shezrie's Towns, and there's one in Valenwood, close to Anvil. I help her patch that for a few land tears etc. that VI caused, and again, I forget what we fixed. That patch is probably still available, but may not be on Nexus.

If I get round to pulling down the latest Elsweyr, I can check if the VI patch still works. If not, I might even rework it myself.

I use Dynamic Maps in my game, and I developed an overlay for each of Elsweyr and Valenwood. I only have one style, and it may not work for everyone. I'm not sure if they're part of the DM package now, from other authors.

Which brings me to the southern part of the map. The Elsweyr mod is strictly Anequina only, and doesn't include the Pellitine cities of Torval and Senchal. So that piece of the landscape only exists in the Valenwood mod, and they didn't get it right. Since all that was needed was a border region near Haven, there's enough to take you over to Duncori, which is as far south as the Elsweyr Anequina mod goes. The peninsula south of that is the wrong shape, and needs reworking before Senchal could be added. Also, Elsweyr Anequina has invisible walls along its borders, which I had to remove by updating Illiana's patch, as she'd left the Torval area walled off.

There was a separate project to create Senchal, (by StarX) and you can still find images of it on the TESAlliance site, IIRC. It was intended to be merged into a composite Elsweyr mod, and someone else was going to do Torval. Rimmen likewise, but it looks like that area was surrendered, and Illiana's got control.

I've held off from making any pieces for my mods that go into Elsweyr or Valenwood, but they have had mentions in some quests. Aranxa was summoned by Altmer conjurers who wanted to mount an attack on Riverwood, but she never left Fort Black Boot. The Mane was to be the assassination target of Enilwen, but she was talked out of going to Torval while she was still in Skingrad. Taminwe goes to Senchal from Leyawiin, while the player stays in Cyrodiil. The only actual cross-border quest was to my own Falkreath, but I was always hoping Elsweyr would be fully released, and I could use it. Maybe that's a bit closer, now that Rimmen's included.

[Acadian]

ghastley, thanks! I've already adjusted the Valensprigs to match how we have the Cyrdiil ones. Heh, Buffy encountered what seemed to be pretty stout storm atronach as the boss down in the bowels of some dungeon. In fact, it seemed so sturdy that we opened the command console to query its health. After inflicting enough damage to kill a vanilla storm several times over, this guy still had more that 10,000 health! Buffy felt up for the challenge though. With a change in tactics to optimize stacked weakness to magic, he went down fine.

[Renee]

Interesting reading, all your adventures in extra-Cyrodiil areas. Sounds fun. I'd look into it but it sounds like I'd need more of a background with building mods before I do, huh? ..

Rihanae: what's the name of the Weye mod? That sounds like something I'd be interested in, assuming it doesn't somehow clash with Better Cities I.C. (which it shouldn't).

[haute ecole rider]

Rihanae may be talking about AFK Weye. I have that one, and like it a lot. The story lines are more interesting than your usual fetch and carry quests.

[Acadian]

I've deleted Valenwood Improved (VI) from my load. I was willing to tolerate the near empty cities, unfinished building interiors, forests instead of jungle, and land tears that were contained within V-wood.

The mod went on 'probation' though when I saw that the land tears and mismatched terrain planes were quite distracting when looking westerly from Elsweyr. That probably would have ultimately caused me to uninstall it. The patch between the two is no longer available and was made for the older Elsweyr mod anyway.

What caused me to uninstall it however was some excitement earlier today. As Buffy progressed into central V-wood, she began encountering the 'I HAVE NO GREETING' glitch. At first, we attributed it to a problem in central and possibly southern V-wood, since the NPCs in northern V-wood had talked fine. On a whim, however, we popped back to northern V-wood and encountered this new problem there as well. Nervous now, we popped to Anvil and encountered it there! That generated an instant uninstall of VI - which did not solve the new problem in Cyrodiil. What fixed our game was loading an archive save from right before we installed VI.

I'm certainly no whiz with mods, but I know my limitations. VI is not for me. That said, I'm very glad I tried it (and emerged relatively unscathed), since I've been curious about the mod for some time.

[Renee]

I'm certainly no whiz with mods, but I know my limitations. VI is not for me. That said, I'm very glad I tried it (and emerged relatively unscathed), since I've been curious about the mod for some time.

Well if you're giving up, there's no way I'm going in there! That sounds like a broken game waiting to happen, unless you know a lot about fixing things. Which I know less than anybody here, just about. It'll be cool once everything gets ironed out though, eh?

How large is VI's landmass? Similar to ES games or smaller or larger?

Thanks for the Weye AFK tip, haute.

[Acadian]

Hi, Renee. Yes, Buffy's game without VI is fine now, thanks. The land mass of VI seemed to be about a third the size of Cyrodiil - pretty big.

[mirocu]

So no more pics from Buffy in Valenwood?

[Acadian]

I have three more yet to be posted, but won't be able to take any more. That's okay, Cyrodiil, Elsweyr and the SI are a pretty big and varied range. I also have another mod that adds a small V-wood tree village and yet another that adds Falkreath up in Skyrim.

[mirocu]

I reckon that last place is also last on Buffy´s list of favourite places.. !

[Rihanae]

Sorry I took so long to get here!

Renee I am indeed talking about AFK

Acadian it's a shame VI wasn't for you. I can't blame you though. I tried it a while back and had the same personal issues with it. It's disappointing because it truly has the makings of a great addition to the world.

The description of the mod claims it to be a 'Landscape mod', explaining the lack of interiors... but personally I just think it's laziness to describe it as that when it's clearly just unfinished.

[Acadian]

I've great respect for modders. I can understand putting out VI 'unfinished' and I'm sure the modder had plans to refine and fill in things. But like many projects, it never really got updated beyond a certain point.

I'm still using the older version of Anequina. For those using the new (March 2014) version, is it working well? Any problems? I'm likely to switch over to the new version at some point, but am, kind of selfishly, hoping for some 'trouble-free' reports.

[Renee]

Renee I am indeed talking about AFK

Thank you.

So last night I used Camping for the first time holy moly I love that one. I love the fact that there are different levels of campsites (pup tents to caravan-style, fully-enclosed shelters). I am RPing that she can only use a tent if Saga's got a horse to carry it from place to place, and of course since she's not afraid of the elements, she's using the cheapest tent + bedroll we can buy.