#once 2 years ago i spent 6 hours just walking around talking to npcs

[anzalias]

maps have come a long way since core tyria but im always going to miss how many npcs there were to just talk too scattered around

[white-tulips]

I spent most of this morning continuing playing through the hikikomori route, more of my thoughts below!! (major spoilers ahead!!!!!)

if you haven’t but want to read my first post on my hikikomori playthrough, you can see it [here]!! it’s been a month since I last played any, aha...

I played for quite a few hours earlier but I don’t think I really progressed all that much aha. most of my time went towards grinding and wandering around and seeing little things. oh, and also playing through Orange Oasis. I never actually did that in my first run of the game. it was okay.

I really love how many little details and things to go back to that there are, but I’m still a little bitter at just. how long everything is. I talked about this a lot in my previous post, but it irritates me that the first 15-20 hours (give or take depending on how fast you’re able to blast through this game) is just. exactly the same as what you experience in the main route. especially since now my hikikomori save file is even longer than my main story file, and I think I still have a decent ways to go until I finish. I don’t actually know! I haven’t been spoiled for this route, thankfully, so I don’t really know how much is left. I have a vague idea of a couple areas I need to go to, but that’s about it.

ok, on to my thoughts!! this post is probably just going to be me rambling about tiny details I found interesting since I didn’t progress through much plot stuff, I think.

when I opened up my save file, I. completely forgot what I had been doing a month ago and what I wanted to do next, so I decided to go back to the Last Resort. I don’t know what compelled me to go, but there was a lot of fun stuff there so I’m glad that I did!

I had never tried to use Aubrey to go into the girls’ bathroom before? it was very cute, I liked it. I don’t know why, but as soon as I walked in it really reminded me of Basil. I think it’s all the flowers, photos hanging from the wall, and general soft cutesy vibe. I’m not really sure what to make of that, but it was just my general impression. hmmmm.

I have no words for this other than it just made me amused. go get your vacation, king.

also:

I didn’t know Hero had a confirmed age!! all this time I had been assuming he and Mari were 16 years old, so it’s nice to have something set in stone!

I have no words for these, either. seeing all of the Hero pictures just made me laugh out loud a little I loved it.

when I was standing in Jawsum’s office, I noticed that the elevator behind his desk was shaking. I went to examine it, and was surprised when this was where I ended up.

the black space elevator.

something I completely forgot to mention in my last hikikomori post was black space!! it had completely took me by surprise so I can’t believe I forgot to talk about it.

last time I played and went back to Last Resort, there was a completely black car on the highway and it had really freaked me out. as soon as I clicked on it, instead of giving me some kind of prompt Omori just got in and it drove off. I was so shocked because I wasn’t expecting it fhgjdfhgj. it ended up taking Omori back to one of the black space rooms, and I had no clue what to make of it. I wandered around for a little while, and ended up finding this... friend?

I’m... not sure! who are you......

anyways, so I got in the elevator and we’re back here, now with more spiders.

the spider wasn’t interactable. not sure whether to be upset or relieved.

aaaand then there was this guy in the treehouse. I want to know what these black space NPCs are!!! as soon as I tried to interact with it, the screen glitched out (intentionally) and then it was gone. one day I’ll know what it means.

oh, another thing I spent quite a bit of time doing at the Last Resort-

getting statues made of everyone!! RIP to all of my clams, but these are so cute.

cuuute.

I really liked the comment on Mari’s! it made me happy that it highlighted her playful side.

after I was done reexploring Last Resort, I wanted to go back to Sweetheart’s castle. I was walking through Pyrefly Forest, and I noticed one of the picnic blankets had a cooler open (signaling that you can see a new picnic cutscene) so I went to go sit down and have a picnic.

so, when I was going around earlier and doing some stuff, there were a few picnics that I think I had skipped for some reason so I was doing them and mindlessly skipping through the text for no reason other than it would bother be if I just left them. nothing about the conversations was different even though Basil is here now, so I didn’t think anything would be different for the one in Pyrefly Forest, but I was wrong!! I almost completely skipped through everything aha.

it started off the same, with Hero being scared of the spiders, and then Kel prompted Basil to say something positive to try and make him less scared.

it’s pretty insignificant, but I thought it was interesting that he said pretty much the exact same thing he says in the spider room in black space.

when I got to the castle, I went straight to the library. something about the pattern of going to black space, plus being able to go into the barn in Otherworld, just made me feel like there would be something there. and oh boy was I right. the entire place was crawling with Something.

very good.....

I wasn’t able to get screenshots of them, but there were a couple text popups that really stood out to me. my memory is so bad I can’t remember all of them even though it was only this morning,,, but I’m pretty sure one of them had a popup that was just “Liar.” and I was like HM....

it just really had me thinking....

in my previous post, I mentioned that I had a gut feeling that the Something in the barn was supposed to represent Basil, not Mari. this kind of added fuel to that thought!

the barn in Otherworld was only used in the main route in reference to Basil, with it literally showing Omori a vision of him, and also having Stranger walking into it. now, the library also has a lot of connection to Basil! after picking up one of the keys, it shows us another vision of him, and it’s also littered with egret orchids. I don’t think choosing to have all of these Somethings in both of these places is just a coincidence.

now, about the “Liar.” line. in any fight with Something, if there’s a text popup meant to be Something speaking, it’s always done like this-

with the “???:” to indicate character speech. but the “Liar.” popup was just a standalone line. and it instantly reminded me of this room in black space-

and this just kept making my brain whirl.

in this room, there were all of these popups with “Liar.” and then of course there was-

see here how there also weren’t indications of who was saying ‘liar”, but there was for Something? my idea for this room was always that it was Omori repeating it to himself. because we all know by now that Something is Mari, and her saying “I love you”, especially in this form, is nothing but pure torment. and I think here, we have Omori unwilling to believe it. there’s no way Mari could love him/Sunny. she has to be lying.

soooo then, this brings me back to the library. having the “Liar.” popup there, keeping in consideration that the Somethings there might represent Basil, what could that mean?? it could be in reference to Basil’s words “Everything is going to be okay” because clearly everything is not okay. if all of these Somethings are meant to be Basil, it could fit!!!

... so there’s my long winded theory. idk! I think it makes sense, but I could be wrong!! that’s just my first impressions right now, maybe my thoughts will change when I play more!

moving onto the piano room-

this was when I thought “ohhhh so that’s why the wall always felt hallow. it all makes sense now”

and then I spent the next 30 or so minutes fighting all of the Somethings

I LOVED this. this was the first time a fight was put on a time limit, and since Something was so much more powerful, it felt actually stressful. I was stressed! but I managed to make it with 2-3 turns left, and I didn’t die. I did die about 1 or 2 times to arachnophobia and thalassophobia though F. but it’s okay because I got an achievement and also Omori’s suffocate skill is really good.

anyways I did some more mindless walking around (I had to kill time waiting for all my statues to be built, you know!)

this made me really happy. Big Molio I love you you’re the mvp and you deserve the world.

... looking through my screenshots I wish I could forget this one-

,, do I need to even explain it.

I remember a while ago, I saw someone on twitter post this and iirc the caption was something like “isn’t it a bit morbid to have the jumprope there” and, at the time, I had never gone through Orange Oasis, so seeing that tweet I had the wind knocked out of me. I was just sitting there like “fuuuuuuuuck”. and then I went through Orange Oasis today, saw it again, went “fuuuuuuuuck” and then forgot I screenshot it. it’s just a lot.

okay who knows how I filled the rest of the 6 hours I played because I didn’t take many screenshots of the downtime and running around completing sidequests I never did. the last point of interest today was I had went back to Humphrey.

I didn’t do too much, but I did fight Mutantheart.

I adore her!!!! so cute!!! Mutantheart my beloved.

I lost to her once, because I was a bit confused, but once I caught on to the gimmick of her fight, it was actually pretty easy. rest in peace, queen, I love you...

and then, uh. Her-

I tried 3 times. I didn’t win... all of the characters are maxed leveled at 50, but this is so difficult... well, the first half of the fight I found to be pretty easy, actually. but once she switches into full power mode it’s over. I don’t know how I’m supposed to win. farewell my dream of completing the foe facts book, it was a nice goal while it was realistic. 

and then I stopped for the day! I think I needed that month of not playing, because coming back into the game after a lot of my rage and burnout settled was probably best, and I had a lot of fun playing! hopefully it doesn’t take me another month to continue.

if you made it all the way through this post, thank you for reading! I hope you like my thoughts~

I’ll leave on this note-

king shit

[ciathyzareposts]

The Black Gate: Wee Britain

More than once, in idle moments, I’ve gone through a sentence like this, seeing how it changes meaning depending on where you put the emphasis.

         After speaking to Lord British, I had three items on my “to do” list for Britain–five if you include a quick trip back to Paws:

          Find out if the Crown Jewel docked in Britain after leaving Trinsic.

Talk to the mayor about the murder from a few years ago.

Investigate, perhaps infiltrate, the fellowship.

Make sure Weston made it back to Alina in Paws after his release.

Buy some Mutton in Paws for Boots, the castle chef.

        But before I did any of that, I wanted to experience some combat. It’s rare that I’m five entries into a game without being able to talk about combat. From watching a recent humor video, I had picked up the accidental knowledge that there were some bandits just west of Britain, on the way to Skara Brae. I thus walked past the city’s row houses and pumpkin patches (noting with satisfaction that one of the street names is “Avatar Avenue”) and made my way towards the bandit ambush.

       …and then we’ll take it higher.

             I arrived just in time to see some random knight finishing them off. Where did he come from? Britannia just has roaming police knights now? He wouldn’t speak to me, so I couldn’t even thank him. All I could do was loot the corpses of the bandits he’d killed, because he didn’t seem interested in doing that.        

This guy came along and swordthwarted me!

             I thus headed back to Britain to begin exploring the streets systematically. The first NPC I met was a woman named Millie who made it impossible not to conjure the phrase “silly bint.” She stands on the street all day recruiting for the Fellowship. She spouted the usual drivel about their philosophies. It’s from her that I first hear about the organization’s Meditation Retreat, where it’s supposedly possible through concentration to hear “the Voice,” which the members interpret as an “inner voice,” but which I suspect is actually the Guardian.       Moving on, we come to a farmer’s market run by spouses Kelly and Fred. Fred resells meat from Paws. I check his prices, and the best deal seems to be dried meat at 2 gold pieces per 10 portions. I buy 20 of them.      I then take about two and a half hours to organize my inventory. Like most things in Ultima VII, the inventory system is at once amazing and annoying. I believe it is the first game to offer a completely slotless inventory. Your items don’t exist in defined spaces; they exist in a jumble, like a real backpack. They overlap each other and often get mixed around in between times you open the same container (I honestly don’t know if this is a bug or a feature). You can nest containers in containers. Some behind-the-scenes statistics enforce logical limits (based on volume, weight, or both) that you can store in a single container, as you occasionally get messages stating “Won’t Fit!” when you try to drag something in.         

If it had three half-finished packages of gum, it would be indistinguishable from Irene’s purse.

          It all makes for impressive programming, but when you got to find something–especially something small, like a key–you start to remember fondly the days when inventories were just textual lists of items, and even better, when the party just shared one common inventory pool. Particularly annoying is how precise you have to be when you click on things; otherwise, you’ll click on the wrong thing or the container itself.

But given the way things are, you need to spend some time coming up with an organization scheme. One character carries the quest items, another the wealth of the party, another food, another exploration gear like torches. As you add more party members, you can better subdivide these responsibilities. It also makes sense to use nested containers, so that (for instance) all the food is in one bag and all the gold in another.

All your organization goes out the window when you buy 20 pieces of meat. They just get dumped into the backpack of the first character, spilling over to the second if you run out of room. Then you have to spend time dragging each piece of meat to its appropriate container. Based on my experience so far, I suspect that about 25% of the game is going to consist of dragging inventory items around, either trying to find something or trying to organize things.       The inventory system works well with the overall engine. It’s nice that NPCs can hide keys under potted plants or that the Avatar can stack crates to create a staircase. You take the good with the bad.          Gordon sells fish and chips at the northeast end of the farmer’s market. He’s the one that tells me about Buccaneer’s Den, which has become a kind-of themed amusement park. Apparently, the pirates learned that they could make more money selling a pirate-themed bacchanalia than actually pirating, which is one of the funnier developments of the last 200 years.            Moving up the road, Diane runs the stables and offers to sell me a carriage pulled by a pair of horses. It’s a nice idea, and I buy one just to see what driving is like before reloading, but it’s really impractical. The contraption really needs to stick to roads, and the party can’t always do that. You’re better off just walking.       

Avatar and company race along the street in their new carriage. There’s no horse leg animation, so movement looks very awkward.

              The shipwright (Clint) is across the street from the market and here we struck out on the Crown Jewel lead; he said that the ship hadn’t been in the port in months. I couldn’t find anything to contradict him. Clint builds and sells ships, and he had one going in dry-dock, but I still have Lord British’s flagship to pick up in Vesper.

Heading north from the shipwriight, I spoke to some shop-keepers. Sean, an arrogant Fellowship member, runs the jewelry store. It would be ripe for burglary if I did that sort of thing. He’ll buy gems for 30 gold pieces per gem. Grayson runs the arms and armor store and is also a Fellowship member.  I’m sorry to see that he doesn’t buy used arms and armor because I’ve been carrying some. I guess I’m thinking of other RPGs.

North of the armory, Iolo introduces me to his apprentice, Coop, who runs Iolo’s Bows in Iolo’s absence. Somehow, having Iolo in the party doesn’t entitle me to a free bow. Coop notes that Iolo recently opened a second location in Serpent’s Hold. If Iolo lives to be 800 years old, he might have a pretty good franchise going by then.

I like how NPCs interact with each other.

          The clothier, Gaye, is another Fellowship member. She sells swamp boots, which I note for when I can afford them. Wilhelm is the baker, absolutely in love with his craft, partly because “the way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach.” Right now, he’s juggling two women, Jeanette and Gaye. He thinks he’s too good for Jeanette, “a tavern wench,” and he’s not sure about Gaye because she’s a Fellowship member. So he’s a bit of a jerk but also he has good judgement. Wilhelm offers to hire me to bake bread and also says he’ll buy sacks of flour from me if I get them wholesale in Paws.         

Learning breadmaking in Wilhelm’s kitchen.

          The process of baking bread is a testament to this game engine’s flexibility but also a commentary on the limited utility of that flexibility. To make a loaf of bread, you must:         

Double-click a sack of flour to open it.

Double-click the sack again and click a table to spread it out. 

Double-click a pail of water and use it on the flour to make dough.

Click and drag the dough to the oven to bake it.

Wait for the icon to change to bread.

         Do this five times and Wilhelm will give you one gold piece for the bread. The problem is that water and flour run out fast, so you have to go buy more or dip the bucket in the well. If you were paid in the real world with real gold, I’m still not sure it would be a good hourly rate. Nevertheless, the Internet is full of people who swear that back in the day, they spent countless hours baking bread in Ultima VII–disgusting, unleavened bread, I might add, consisting of nothing but flour and water.          It’s getting dark as I leave the bakery, so I head to the Blue Boar for the night. The tavern is run by Lucy and staffed by a waitress named Jeanette. Their house band is called “The Avatars” and includes a moonlighting Coop. For the third or fourth time, I have the choice to introduce myself as “Gideon” or “Avatar.” I figure the latter signifies a lack of humility. Anyway, it turns out the Blue Boar is just a tavern, not an inn and tavern, so I head back to the castle to sleep.        The next morning, I pick up where I left off. I open the door to a random house and find Shamino in bed with a female “entertainer.” They both start yelling at me for entering the house uninvited. Shamino doesn’t seem at all surprised to see me. He reiterates that magic isn’t working and mages are going crazy, including Nickademus in the Great Forest. He gives me a pocketwatch that I apparently left the last time I was in Britannia. (It’s actually very helpful to know what time it is at any given moment.) The woman he was in bed with is an actress named Amber. Once he finds out about the murder in Trinsic, he agrees to join the party. He comes with a sword and shield, no armor, and a slice of ham. I give him some of the armor items I’d been expecting to sell.             

You guys need to work on your terms of endearment.

          West of Lord British’s castle is a playground where the kids from the nursery go when they’re not in the nursery. The park features a sword-in-a-stone, but I can’t seem to pull it out despite doing well on the park’s “strength test.” Southwest of that, I meet my first trainer–a young man named Zella who specializes in hand-to-hand combat. I actually have gained a level since the game began, and I have 6 training points, but we’ll cover training and leveling later.           

This faux Early Modern English is getting out of hand.

           South of him is another trainer, Sentri, who offers to join the party. Sentri has been around since Ultima II, which took place on Earth, so I guess that explains his long life, although I must point out that he’s fallen from baron of Serpent’s Hold (Ultima IV) to a sword trainer in Britain. I let him back in the party, though it’s getting pretty big now. Sentri comes with both a one-handed and two-handed sword, a bow with one arrow, and a side of ribs. I was about to complain about him having no armor, but it turns out he has a full set of plat armor behind a locked door, the key found in his dresser. I distributed the pieces.           

It’s about time someone brought something to this party besides a grumbling stomach.

           Kessler the Apothecary has been working for Lord British, studying increasing addiction to silver snake venom. He’ll pay me 50 gold pieces for every vial I can bring him. (I know where I could get eight if I was willing to steal.) Csil the healer has independently developed germ theory and is working on a microscope to see the germs he hypothesizes; he’s not a fan of the Fellowship and their disbelief in actual medicine. Greg runs the adventuring equipment shop and happens to mention that he recently sold equipment to the Avatar–probably the same guy who signed his name at the Salty Dog.              

Ultima VII becomes the third RPG to feature venereal diseases.

                 I find the Wayfarer’s Inn, which I had been looking for last night, just a block from the tavern. The innkeeper, James, hates his job but feels he has to keep doing it for the sake of his wife, Cynthia. He worries that because she works at the mint, she’ll begin to covet money and expect him to make more and more, then leave him when he can’t. I wonder if this is a phenomenon that befouls the marriages of bank tellers. I’ve never known one. I later meet Judith at the Mint, and she tells me to relate to James that she still loves him. (I do, and he becomes happier.) I can bring her gold bars or nuggets to convert to gold coins. There’s also a famous way to kill her, steal her key, loot the mint, and get Lord British to resurrect her, but I won’t be doing that.         At Town Hall–which has no other employees despite several offices–I meet Patterson the Mayor. He’s also President of the Britannian Tax Council. (I guess I was wrong in my last entry about never meeting them.) He brags that he won an overwhelming victory over his last opponent, Brownie–naturally because he had the support of the Fellowship. He denies that Britain has a class system but keeps betraying it with his own words. He says his marriage to Judith, a teacher at the Music Hall, is wonderful.         

Just keep digging, buddy.

         When asked about the murder, he relates that the victim was a man named Finster, a politician who wanted more power for the Great Council and wanted to disband the Fellowship. His mutilated, beheaded body was found in an abandoned building near the castle which has since been demolished. Honestly, the Fellowship has been so obviously evil since the beginning that it might have been a better twist if they had turned out to be a bunch of well-meaning-but-clueless people.       Judith runs the Music Hall and contrary to her husband thinks her marriage is in trouble. She doesn’t like the growing power of the Fellowship, and she says that Patterson sometimes stays out all night.

Next to the Music Hall is the Royal Theater, which has a lot of the town’s humor. The director, Raymundo (an in-game avatar of lead writer Raymond Benson), is staging a 100-hour play called The Trials of the Avatar. An old actor named Jesse is playing the Avatar. He’s struggling to remember his most important lines: “Name!,” “Job!,” and “Bye!” No one else is happy with his role, including the self-proclaimed greatest actor in the world, Laurence, who is playing Iolo, and Shamino’s squeeze, Amber, who is playing Sherry the Mouse. Laurence is also practicing his lines, including: “This is the Dungeon Despise!,” “Ready the bow to use it!,” and “I hear something to the east!”           

The actors practice their respective lines.

        Raymundo suggests that I understudy for the Avatar, first by purchasing an “Avatar costume” at Gaye’s shop. It costs 30 gold pieces, which is a lot of money just to see a joke to the end. Upon returning, I read my lines and Raymundo says that I’m unconvincing as the Avatar.          

“Thou must taste like the Avatar!”

         The Royal Museum houses the Runes of Virtue, the Stones of Virtue, the Avatar’s old swamp boots, the Vortex Cube, the silver horn used by the gargoyles to summon silver snakes, statues of Lord British and the Avatar, the Avatar’s ankh, and . . . the Britannian and gargoyle lenses! What are they doing here?! Wasn’t the whole point of the last game creating these lenses so that the two respective rulers could use them to consult the Codex?         

I remember when we literally had to walk through fire for these.

         The curator, Candice, is no help. A Fellowship member, she almost immediately lets it slip that she’s sleeping with Patterson. (When I confront Patterson later, he just sputters, and there’s no option to say anything to his wife.) Iolo suggests that we steal the Stones of Virtue because they can still be used to cast “Mark” and “Recall” spells. I honestly don’t remember doing that in any previous game. I mean, between the Magic Carpet and the Orb of Moons, it’s not like the party is hurting for modes of transportation.

As evening falls, I make a quick run down to Paws. Alina is still in the shelter, but she has received word from Weston that he’s free and working temporarily for Lord British so that he may return to her with some money in his pocket. Morfin sells me mutton for 3 gold pieces each; boots agreed to pay me 5. I buy 10 pieces to bring her.             

I guess Weston didn’t bother to write about my involvement.

          One thing that I’m noticing is that a lot of events slow the game to a stutter. It’s usually when there’s too much animation on the screen. If the party is walking past a few other walking people at the same time a storm cloud passes overhead, forget it. I can deal with the problem by just hitting CTRL-F12 and increasing the number of cycles in DOSBox, but it must have been maddening on an era PC.       Interactivity notes:

Move any furniture that it would be reasonable for a single person to lift.

Open and close shutters.

Turn gas lamps on and off.

          Wasn’t Shadowlands doing this the same year and bragging? Ultima VII did dynamic lighting as an incidental part of gameplay.

               Fill a bucket from a well.

Light and douse torches in wall sconces.

Double-click a bale of wool and use it on a spinning wheel to create yarn. Use the yarn on a loom to create fabric. Use a pair of shears on the fabric to make bandages.

             The Avatar works a loom–without dropping his sword.

          Sit down at a harp or harpsichord and double-click on it to play it. (Unfortunately, you can’t really play them by pressing keys for notes the way you could in V.) Instruments don’t seem to interrupt the game music (if you have it on); they just show a series of graphic notes.

Double-click the winches next to the castle portcullis to raise and lower them. There’s one on both sides, which somewhat defeats the purpose.

            I end this session standing in front of the Fellowship Hall, contemplating whether I really want to try to infiltrate the organization by joining, or whether I’d rather proclaim my animosity from the start. Granted, I don’t have many leads if I don’t join (it may even be necessary), but I wonder if it wouldn’t make a more interesting (and less traditional) game if I stopped following the official path here and tried to piece together the mystery without the duplicity. Next time, we’ll see what I decided.           Time so far: 10 hours         

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-black-gate-wee-britain/

[game-refraction]

Skyrim: My experiences with mods

Like the majority of people, I started playing Skyrim in 2011 when it was released.  I put a solid 90+hours into the game, and made it decently far into a lot of side quests and a little way through the main quest-line.  I always get distracted by side quests, and lose my focus on the main quests.  The same thing happened when I played Fallout 4, but I eventually got myself back on the path of the main quest-line for it, and finally finished that; however, I’ve never finished the main quest-line in Skyrim.

As silly as that sounds, I am glad I have never finished it.  I will always have something to do in Skyrim, though Skyrim really doesn’t need anything like that for me to keep me playing.  About 4 to 6 months after Skyrim first came out, I got distracted by another game, and for reasons I cannot remember, and Skyrim kind of fell into my forgotten realm on my hard drive, sitting there idle.  As it turns out when Bethesda was getting ready to release ‘Skyrim: Special Edition’ I remembered my old save from when I first played Skyrim.  I fired it up and was immediately overwhelmed by where my character was, and I couldn’t remember what my plan was or where I was headed.  At that point I quit the game and didn’t really give it much thought.  Soon after, I started looking into more mods for Skyrim.  Mods were available at Skyrim’s launch in 2011, but they were not as main-stream as they are now. I had tinkered with a few mods, downloading them from the Steam Workshop.  Each mod was fairly simplistic; a player house mod, or one that changed the guard’s helmets.  My entire mod list at that time was maybe 3 or 5 mods in total.

When Fallout 4 came out, mods were definitely more prevalent in my game.  I learned about The Nexus, a massive website where creators shared mods for most modded games out there.  Fallout 4 had thousands of mods available, and I quickly learned the ins and outs of installing and removing mods, using their mod program the NMM (Nexus Mod Manager).

Mods for games like Bethesda’s Skyrim and Fallout 4 can be broken in to several parts.

Mods – an add-on for the game, generally include a plugin in order to be used, but not always

Plugins – This is what the game actually uses

Texture/meshes – these replace the default or vanilla textures and meshes in the game

Scripts – these are used to make certain things happen in the game

But back to Skyrim, with me being a bit more informed on mods, I started digging into the Skyrim mod database,

and found that the nexus had over 200,000 mods available for Skyrim on the PC.  More mods are being added every day for Skyrim.  I started looking at the mods that were most endorsed.  The Nexus site has an endorsement system, where if you liked a mod, you would endorse it, and the higher endorsed mods are generally the most downloaded.  It is a lot like the thumbs up/thumbs down system for YouTube.

I can’t originally remember why I wanted to get back into play Skyrim, but all I do remember is I wanted to play the game this time with as an immersive game as possible, so I started researching immersive mods and other highly endorsed mods.  The mods that were definitely worth getting were some like SkyUI, a menu system for Skyrim that includes a MCM (mod config menu) allowing you to configure most mods in the game.  SKSE was also another essential mod that was required.  The SKSE was the Skyrim Script Extender, a small add on to Skyrim that allowed mods to run new and added scripts, opening up a whole slew of new things that could happen to your game.  It is easy to get overwhelmed with mods, and it is also easy to get addicted to trying out and testing mods like crazy.  There is a limit to how far you can mod your game though.  The original Skyrim was created so many years ago it relied on older hardware, and faced limitations in the code and engine that restricted you to only 254 maximum plugins.  Since the Skyrim main and its 3 DLC’s are also considered plugin’s you are automatically restricted to 250 plugins.  You can increase

the amount of mods and plugins you can use by creating merged plugins or bashed patches, but that makes things really more complicated, and I won’t really go into them more.

So as you can see, there is a lot of stuff you can add to Skyrim with mods, like new armors, changes to weather, graphic overhauls and additional monsters, NPC’s and followers.  With such a huge variety available on the nexus, it’s easy to keep looking for new mods to try out.  I did just this, almost to the point of getting ‘addicted’ to searching for new mods to try out on the Nexus, all while playing my new play through in Skyrim.

I decided on a new play through because my old one started back in 2011 was well, old.  I didn’t remember what my plan was with the character, so I archived the save, and started fresh.  I wanted to play a style of character that I had never played before in either Skyrim or Fallout 4.  I chose a tank warrior style, relying on heavy armor, a sword and shield.  I didn’t want to fall into the stealth trap I always end up doing, so I didn’t use any stealth at all, just my sword, and on occasion, a bow.

Inigo, is a Kahjiit follower mod that adds many charming aspects to the game, such as him randomly singing while you adventure

Everything was going well; I had started off with a handful mods that I felt make the game more interesting to play.  I wanted to step away from the main story line of the Dragonborn, so when I discovered the mod ‘Skyrim Unbound’ I was excited to have that in my mod list.  Skyrim unbound allows you to start a new character in Skyrim, but not take part in any of the main story line of the Dragonborn.  You might think this kind of bypasses the whole point of Skyrim, but this is where you would be wrong.  Skyrim is a rich, open-world for you to explore.  My main goal was to be just an average adventurer, with an evolving backstory as I went.  I also decided on FrostFall, which is a mod which enables weather effects and disables fast travelling.  Fast travelling allows you to instantly travel to any place

you have already discovered in the game, making getting from one place to the next as easy as click of the mouse on the map screen.  Frostfall also enables weather effects on your character.  Skyrim is made to be a cold and frozen north to the continent of Tamriel, so suffering from exposure and struggling to deal with the cold seemed appealing.  Coupled with the inability to fast travel you suddenly needed to plan your excursions, so you wouldn’t freeze to death while travelling.

I also had a smattering of armor mods tossed in, changing how armors looked, as there is so many of them available for female characters and NPC’s, as well as body replacers that allowed you to change how character bodies looked.  When I was ready to begin I had about 2 dozen mods ready and loaded.

Some other tips I learned from starting out with mods, was the load order.  Mods and plugins needed to be loaded by the game in a specific order so they overwrite each other properly.  If something isn’t loaded in the right order, it either won’t work, or the game will crash.  Let me tell you, having your game crash is not fun, and I’ve spent many hours troubleshooting and reviewing my mod list due to crashes.  I’ll talk more about this later.

Mods can be sorted generally by a program called ‘Loot’.  Loot is an acronym for Load Order Optimization Tool.  It has access to a database that is somewhere on the cloud that keeps a track of which mods need to go before or after other mods.  It is not a perfect system, but it gets it right in 9 out of 10 times.  Once it is run, your nod load order is saved and you are good to go. Fire up Skyrim and lets play.

Mod Organizer, using the dark theme, shows your installed mods on the left, and activated mods with the load order on the right

With my mods list sorted, the game loads fine and in I go.  Using ‘Skyrim Unbound’ I chose a few settings on how I want my character to begin.  I chose the north shore, as if shipwrecked, as my mind begins to form a backstory of my character having no memories, and waking up on the frozen coast of Skyrim, with nothing to his name.  The mod dropped me off on the coast, right next to a campfire and a cave, and upon entering the cave I find bandits and begin working my way through them, trying to get better gear and the ability to survive.

Things go well, and as I progress through the cave, and soon after other areas I come to enjoy the disabled fast travel.  You see there are many hidden things in Skyrim, places you can only get to if you explore. By not fast travelling I discovered many new places I had never been, and I actually enjoyed getting side-tracked by discovering a new bandit lair, or a new cave while travelling between the main cities of Skyrim.  Let me tell you, the map is huge.  Walking from one place to another takes time, which is why most people love fast travel, but with fast travel off, you find a new appreciation for exploration.

Mod: Helgen Rebuilt

While I had fast travel off, there was always the option of horse, and the carriage system.  I decided that from an immersive game standpoint, the carriage system would be allowed, as they only go to the main capital cities, and you actually have to go to a city to use them, you can’t just summon them to where ever you are.  To me, this made the game more immersive in the long run, and I still rely on the carriages to get between cities often.

Let me get back to the mods though.  As I found myself adding and removing more mods each week, my mod list grew to over 200 plugins after about 200 hours of game play.  My character had progressed up to around level 50, he had a nice homestead, a wife and several followers (thanks to mods that allow multiple followers) and things were going well.  Or so I thought.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that by added and removing mods so often, I was actually causing my game to get unstable.  My save files started to cause crashes, and after 261 hours of playing I was at the breaking point.  I spent a good 4 or 5 hours tinkering and cleaning my save game of broken scripts, orphaned add-ons and other items of bloat, all to no avail.  You see when you add a mod that has scripts, those scripts are tied to your game, even after the mod has been removed, causing it to be orphaned.  That adds up to bloat, making your save file bigger and taking longer to load, as well as crashes your game whenever your game calls the script that doesn’t work any further because the mod has been removed.  As I mentioned you can clean your save file of these orphaned scripts, but that only gets you so far.  After spending several hours a day for about a week, I had to abandon my save due to instability.  I researched up different items in forums as to why my save file corrupted and I found out that some of the mods I had used were so script heavy (meaning they had massive scripts or scripts being run constantly by the game in the background) that my game was just too badly corrupted there wasn’t anything I could do.  Even though I tried cleaning my save, I discovered the remnants of mods I had removed months before still lingering around.

Sad at losing 260 hours of game play, I moved on.  I chose my mod list a little more carefully, and scaled back to about 160 plugins, I started another character, following along the same lines of my last one, a tank warrior with a sword and shield.

Things went well this time for about 30 hours, until I ran into similar problems.  This time though my mod list was smaller, and I wasn’t adding or removing mods at all.  But it seems several of my mods were still quite script heavy and they were causing issues.  One such example is a mod called ‘Wet & Cold’.  ‘Wet & Cold’ is a mod that ads the ability for NPC’s and followers to equip a hood or face mask when the weather is cold or dusty.  A great mod for Immersion, but one thing it does is it runs on every NPC in the game all the time, and this can cause issues on a lower end system like mine.  Let me say this here, I am not bashing the mod author in any case.  I love this mod, and I would use it if it wasn’t a possible culprit in my instability, but because it was, it had to go.  I was upset again after losing 30 hours this time, but at the same time, not sad I hadn’t lost 260 hours.  I needed to figure this out, I after all wanted to play Skyrim, but it had to be stable and also enjoyable with mods.

This third attempt I spent about a week organizing picking and choosing my mods carefully.  This time I managed to scale back to about 70 plugins in my list, most of them armor mods or graphical mods, along with Frostfall, SkyUI and a new one called ‘Live another Life’ which did the same thing a Skyrim unbound, but according to my research was a lot more stable in the long run.  Deciding to make things a little closer to the main quest-line I also added Dragons to my game, by way of a mod called ‘Immediate Dragons’.  I felt that Dragons were an integral part of the Skyrim experience, but I still didn’t feel like playing the Main quest-line as the Dragonborn.  I also added Falskaar, which is a new area of the map to explore, a whole town with new NPC’s and new quests to run.  While this mod does add some scripts into the mix, it is well done and fun to play.  Scripts are not bad, just adding and removing them all the time is what is bad.

So far on this play through I have had almost no crashing, and my game continues to be stable.  I have not added or removed any mods since starting, and it will stay that way while I play.  While there is always the ability to add and remove mods, my plan is to stick to what I currently have, aside from the odd texture or mesh replacer which won’t affect the game play in any way.  Mods that add scripts will not be touched.  I still have my old saves from my corrupted plays, as well as my original character from 2011, and I know there is a way to extract the characters and place in a new play through, and I might look into that someday, but for now I’m content to continue exploring and interacting with all that there is to offer in Skyrim.

Skyrim: My experiences with mods was originally published on Game-Refraction