#Ore quest dark makes me tweak out so bad

[viaphni]

Little idea i got for a piece

My friends had to endure much yapping for this one

[awellboiledicicle]

Mok’s Mod List 2.0

Note that some of these mods require Content Patcher from the Nexus, and some mods listed need a bit of tweaking.

But thats not the point, the point is wanting to play Stardew Valley with Additions.

[cp] Babies Take After Spouse by Lakoria

What it says on the tin-- this mod lets your kids look like your kids! Its nice.

[cp] Dammit Clint Stop Hitting on My Wife by Rubecula

Tweaks Clint’s whole... thing to be closer to the whole “Guy with super bad social skills and anxiety about trying to talk to people”/”not really outgoing dude” and not so much “dude that literally watches Emily at her place of work and from bushes outside her house”/”Incel that you’d call the cops on if possible”. It correctly stops him hitting on emily when married to you. It makes him way more personable in terms of not setting off creep vibes. There’s a version available also of toning things down while being just friends. 

[cp] Elle's Cat Replacements by Junimods

[cp] Elle's Dog Replacements by Junimods

[cp] Elle's New Barn Animals by Junimods

[cp] Elle's New Coop Animals by Junimods

[cp] Elle's New Horses by Junimods

Lumping these together because they let you customize almost every sprite of a thing on your farm. Different cats, different breeds of dog, and new cuter barn animals, and horses. 

[Cp] Seasonal Villager outfits by Tanpopnoko and ParadigmNomad

Changes the villagers outfits as seasons change. No more Haley walking around in a tanktop and short skirts while theres like 3 feet of snow. Cute sweaters! Evelyn with nice sun hats! George not covered in food mess!

[cp ]Stardew Lottery Letters by Jokerine

You wanna play the lottery without putting anything in, and get like, cake when you don’t win? Want surprise money at random? Of course you do. Thats what this does. 

[cp] Canon Friendly dialogue expansion for all friend-able characters by Gizzymo

You ever play a file so long you’ve heard literally everything the npc’s can say? Like several times? Get this and get v in character lines that are spread out over the years. 

Abigail Dialogue Expansion by farmerjack

More Abigail! More words!

Adjust Baby Chance by JertsukkaTheMan

Some of us want to start a game with the goal of having a family with an LI. Its nice, its cute etc. But sometimes the game just won’t make your spouse ask you about having kids. For years. So this mod lets you adjust the chance of your spouse asking. 

All Professions by cantorsdust

Tired of only having one set of proficiency? Long to be a titan of farming? think its bullshit that you can’t master raising cattle AND growing potatoes? This mod unlocks both professions as you level things up. 

Animal Sitter by jwdred

Let your pet feed, water, and care for your farm animals. Or have your spouse do it. Pay for it or don’t, set if animal things go in to your inventory or a chest. Is very good if you wanna have animals but also are bad at telling which you’ve pet and which ones you haven’t.

Better Fruit Trees by CatCattyCat

Do you want an orchard without having to space things like a dnd movement grid? 

CJB Cheats Menu by CJBok and Pathoschild

Make fishing easier! Change walking speed! Change relationship levels! Complete that quest that you can’t find the thing for! Get chips for the casino! Get money i guess! 

CJB Item Spawner by CJBok

Decorate without being tied to the whims of everything else. Get things for quests. get ore without going mining bc mining is Danger sometimes. 

DokiDoki Dialogue Alex by alistairweekend

DokiDoki Dialogue Elliott by alistairweekend

DokiDoki Dialogue Harvey by alistairweekend

DokiDoki Dialogue Sam by alistairweekend

DokiDoki Dialogue Sebastian by alistairweekend

Collecting this together because it basically just adds more dialogue that makes the relationships much more convincing. 

Family Planning by loe2run

Lets you set the max number of children you and your spouse can have at a time. 

Free Dusty by skuld

Freedom for the doggo! Allows Alex’s dog Dusty to wander the town with Alex or wait for him in places. Not great irl, very good in game with the alternative being a way too small yard.

Gift Taste helper by tstaples

If you hover over the calendar on a birthday or on the portrait on your social menu, it’ll let you know what people like getting. A life saver. 

Happy Birthday by Omegasis

Lets you set a birthday for your Farmer, because really, you should have one.

Immersive Festival Dialogue by tangeriney

People now actually talk about the festivals happening around town! Like you know, normal people.

Instant grow Trees by cantorsdust

are you, too, impatient as shit? Want to have a syrup farm in a specific pattern but dont wanna wait? Get this and instant trees in the morning.

Kisekae by Kabigon [use Pathoschild unofficial update]

Like Get Dressed, this mod lets you alter the image of your farmer without having to pay the wizard. Why do you have to do dark magic for a haircut. It’s bullshit. So use this mod and get dressed up for festivals. The unofficial patch is on the compatibility page of the wiki.

Longjevity by RTGOAT

Adds more things to the game. Optional taxes, also adds more crops and clothing changes, and soda crafting. Can conflict with Seasonal Outfits, but can be worked in together. 

Map image exporter by spacechase0

Screenshots are now less of a pain

NPC Map Locations by Bouhm

“Where the fuck are they?” a sentence of the past! Adds markers to the location of villagers and shows if they move.

Paririe King Made Easy by Mucchan and PathosChild

Spelling Prairie is hard, but the games shouldn’t be. Makes you functionally immortal bc that minigame hurts me. 

Range Display by CatCattyCat

Displays a colored grid showing how far things cover. Scarecrows, beehives, and sprinklers. No more guessing where things reach!

Remote Fridge Storage by arjan3004

Fridge is tiny, is too small for mighty farming and foraging skills. Chest, though, chest is many and large together. Use chest as ice chest to store fridge, and cook with those things! No inventory management required.

Replanter by jwdred

Like Animal Sitter, but for the farm bit. Option for instant selling upon harvest. Also has option to put it into a chest for later. 

Part of the Community by bmarquismarkail

Ever feel weird about the fact you never get to know people through, like, social osmosis? Like if you’re super good friends with Sam, he’s probably talked to his family and friends about you. If you’re selling all these things to people, and helping people out, shouldn’t most people at least know ur a chill person? This mod gives a couple points toward your relationship to the citizens for every festival, for every thing sent in the box, and if you talk to people in a room with others, they all get a point or five. It’s very useful for keeping relationships going.

SBM Black Roof by ??

Mod i used to make my house pretty, but i can’t find it anywhere. 

Skull Cavern Elevator by Bifibi

Adds an elevator to Skull cavern, with option to change when the thing appears. No need to keep trying to not die every 10 floors only to need to do it again later.

Stardew Hack by bcmpinc

Basic thing that allows for below mod.

Wear More Rings by bcmpinc

You have ten fingers, why not so many rings? It would only make sense. So get your shinies on yall

Note 2: I have not included links in the post as links would make it not show up in the tags and thus would make sharing harder. Searching the Nexus modding website or the compatibility page will get you there. 

[returnerofthesky]

why do you hate skyrim so much, anyway?

To be honest, I don’t… “hate” Skyrim, per-say? Hate’s too strong a word for any game for me, and even then Skyrim isn’t necessarily a terrible game despite how much I dislike it.

Which probably sounds weird, but that’s just me; most games that I dislike aren’t just plain old bad games. I don’t have an emotional dislike of, say, Bubsy, or Superman 64, or so on. They’re shit games, but there’s nothing particularly redeemable about them. They might have had potential, but it’s more conceptual, rather than being very flawed games with some good ideas (like Gates to Infinity, or Super Mystery Dungeon to a lesser extent).

Anyway, to get back to the question, the reason I don’t like Skyrim is because it feels creatively bankrupt.

To steal a quote from Super Bunnyhop, it’s hard to get engaged in Skyrim when every character feels like the most boring character, when every quest feels like the most boring quest, when every dungeon feels like the most boring crawl… you get the idea. To me it feels like every single time Bethesda had the opportunity to do something creative or interesting in Skyrim or its DLCs, they took the easiest, most boring route possible instead, even though it actively hurts the game’s appeal. And it’s very telling that what I consider to be the two most interesting quests in the game (the murder mystery in Windhelm and the peace treaty in the main story) are also two of the buggiest quests in the game.

Like, vampires in Skyrim are a good example of what I’m talking about. There’s a book in the previous games about a vampire hunter and a scholar (actually a vampire) advising him, and he describes Skyrim vampires as having breath that could freeze the blood inside of you, as well as actually living underneath frozen lakes and being able to reach up through the ice, grab people, and drag them under to feed. That’s not only a fascinating (and grim) concept, but an incredibly cool idea for a snow-based vampire.

Now granted, that’s a fairly dynamic idea, and it’d be hard to implement in Skyrim (especially given they never bothered to add underwater combat), so while I could criticize them for that, I won’t. What I will criticize is the fact that they didn’t even try to make the best approximation of that idea, instead opting to make vampires into slightly tweaked and reskinned bandits/draugr/etc etc.

Like, it wouldn’t need to be exactly like the idea presented in the book, but imagine this: vampires spawn in this invisible, walk-through-able state and have a circle that activates them. Once you walk in and out of that circle, an “invisibility spell wears off” animation plays and they properly spawn, body, weapons and all. Then, they aggro and you might get ambushed if you weren’t being careful. It’s not exactly like the book, but it’s close enough, and since the rest of the game’s enemies are so samey it’d be a nice change of pace.

There’s so many elements that are lacking that it’s very easy to sense the hand of the devs making out exactly what you can and can’t do, despite the whole TES brand emphasizing freedom. It’s obvious that you can’t do absolutely anything (well, at least it was obvious until Breath of the Wild came out), but Skyrim is especially bad at locking you out or not considering other options.

You can’t double-cross or double-deal in the Civil War aside from one single part that basically is the last chance for you to decide your faction. Being a thief is basically useless unless you join the guild, because the Fence perk for Speech doesn’t unlock until the skill is almost max. Conversations in general are far less varied and open-ended than before, meaning speech checks are few and far between as is. Stealth is only really useful for sneak-attacking, since most dungeons aren’t designed to be stealthed through completely. Most of the game’s “puzzles” are those simple match-the-symbol ones, and there isn’t anything particular brain-teasing or dynamic compared to even Oblivion.

I mean, even dragons have this issue. Anyone ever try fighting a dragon without any ranged options? It’s hell. And boring. And oh, oh so bland.

Similarly, like I mentioned, the quests themselves are incredibly bland. I’ve already seen plenty of posts on here throughout the years about how even the most mundane, non-combat-sounding quests usually end up with “please go to this dungeon full of Draugr and get my thing”, but it really is that bad. Most of the quests in Skyrim are either being sent to a dungeon to deal with the incredibly mediocre combat, or you get a vague, completely unashamed fetch quest.

A lot of this is tied to the Miscellaneous quest option, which is basically the game’s way of saying “we whipped up a quick, shitty quest in an hour or two, have fun”. In Riften alone, there’s at least seven or eight Misc quests that essentially amount to “I need you to find me some items, please”:

Finding ten fire salts for the blacksmith

Getting a sword and bringing it to its owner at the castle

Finding alchemy ingredients for the alchemy shop’s apprentice

Finding some gemstones and other items for a jeweler

Finding some gemstones for a bartender’s unfinished wedding ring

Finding ice wraith teeth for a lady to preserve her

Going to another big city to deliver a dagger

Going to a small village to pick up some ore and bring it back

And there’s very little proper “masking” to make these quests seem more interesting. The two quests that I didn’t include that are still fetch quests are a quest about mead being stolen (actually smuggled out at lower prices, which you can partake in or tell to the guards), and a quest about a Dunmer raised by Argonians who wants to find out more about his real parents (which is at least vaguely interesting in and of itself, due to the general relationship between Dunmer and Argonians and all that).

It isn’t just the Misc quests that suffer from this, though. Most of the writing is flawed, bland, or otherwise retreading old ground already, and a lot of it suffers from huge pacing issues. The main quest seems to expect that you’re not going to get distracted, so all of the “urgent” situations it sets up fall flat.

The Fighters Guild recruits you, has you do one proper quest where you find out that they’re werewolves, do one more radiant quest and suddenly they decide that you’re important enough to become a werewolf too. Not that “you know so you might as well”, but that you’ve actually done enough work (two quests worth, oh boy) to merit it (also you’re forced to become a werewolf even if you don’t want to). The Dark Brotherhood essentially does the same Oblivion story of a traitor in the guild over again, except with less interesting characters and less personal stake in the goings-on.

And the quests that aren’t tied to guilds aren’t really that much better, save for maybe a handful that I can’t even think of off the top of my head. It’s lazy, messy, and boring. It’s not completely, utterly terrible or full of plotholes, it’s passable at its best, but it’s still not terribly thought-provoking. I mean, thinking about it is what made me realize it’s not that good, so.

Perhaps more damning than any of this though, is that the gameplay itself is so boring. It’s already kind of an issue that Skyrim has iffy writing in a genre that generally needs to have semi-decent writing most of the time, but its gameplay isn’t really interesting enough to pick up the slack, either.

Admittedly, this problem goes back deeper than just Skyrim - even back during the Morrowind days, people were complaining about the combat due to how you could walk up to enemies and attack or use a spell, and you’d miss even though you’re standing right next to them. People still complain to this day about how confusing the combat is for an action-RPG.

But the problem with that logic is that Morrowind isn’t an action-RPG, it’s a proper old CRPG, more along the lines of Baldur’s Gate or Icewind Dale. You might be moving in first-person with the WASD keys and so on, but make no mistake that its core gameplay is far more in line with how the older isometric RPGs played, right down to standing right next to an enemy and missing your swings even though the animation played. When you view the game this way, most of its design decisions make a lot more sense.

Unfortunately, that never really registered (again, people still say Morrowind’s an action-RPG), so Oblivion changed things to have some sorta-kinda action-RPG combat. They didn’t rebalance the rest of the RPG elements (how to level up, level scaling, etc) to compensate, though, but instead of tweaking everything to work more naturally in Skyrim, they just removed all of the RPG elements entirely except for the Health/Magicka/Stamina thing.

Of course, that results in another problem: if the game is going to lean so hard on its action elements instead of its RPG elements… why not just play a better action game? Like, Skyrim’s combat is nothing to write home about. Oblivion’s wasn’t great, but at least it was faster and you could attack while jumping and swimming. Skyrim’s is just slow and clunky, and lacking in depth unless you actively choose to add it in.

The perks system is what ties into the combat problems the most. The issue is that the combat actually does have a small bit of depth and quality of life improvements… if you pick the perks that activate them. There’s two main screws with this, the first one being that due to how the level scaling works, you’re better off choosing the perks that just upgrade the raw damage you deal. Since even the most basic enemies slowly become health sponges, the fancy perks usually aren’t as helpful when it comes to actually defeating them.

The other screw is that these upgrades are even perks in the first place. While some abilities are understandable (like the one that sometimes replaces a normal cinematic kill with a decapitation), the ones that alter your power attacks to have extra effects have absolutely no business being optional when the combat is already as shallow as it is. If these tweaks to the power attacks had been default abilities, the perk trees could have been changed or expanded to capitalize on the differences between each kind of attack. On top of this, the choice between maces, axes and swords could have been more significant, rather than simply being minor differences in speed and power.

I know there are more abilities and special things you can do with the dragon shouts, of course, but between having to fight through dungeons in order to get those shouts, and then kill a dragon for a soul to unlock it, it’s usually too much of a pain in the ass to be worth it. Forget going out of my way to get Throw Voice - why not just give me a Noisemaker Arrow or something and be done with it?

The unfortunate thing is that despite all these issues, the combat is still generally just okay at best, so it can be hard sometimes to complain about it. But when the entire game is focused almost entirely around this combat, with almost no quest or gameplay variety to speak of, the only way it could be really seen as “good” by any stretch is by people who haven’t played other, better games.

But anyway… uh, yeah. tl;dr: I don’t like Skyrim because even though it’s incredibly safe and boring to play… it’s incredibly safe and boring to play.

Like, it’s oddly depressing to hash all this out because I really was excited for Skyrim six years ago, and I did genuinely enjoy it at first. Hell, despite all these problems I’ve still probably put way too many hours into it than I really should have. But nowadays, it just doesn’t feel that interesting. Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall, and ESO are all much, much better games, and even though they have their flaws, they have a lot more interesting ups, as well. Morrowind is all-around an excellent CRPG, Daggerfall is an incredibly interesting roguelikey experience, Oblivion generally has better atmosphere and more quest variety, ESO has great combat and writing, albeit at the expense of stealth and some puzzles.

Skyrim... I dunno. Skyrim is stuck somewhere between being an average game and an undercooked one, and that really eats at me because I know that the franchise can do better. I didn’t even discuss a lot of the other problems I have with the game, just the major ones. But considering that Fallout 4 has a lot of the same issues, but even worse... I worry for what the next entry in the series might be, if it’s handled by Bethesda proper.

[itsgirlcraft]

HES BEAUTIFUL

Little idea i got for a piece

My friends had to endure much yapping for this one