GND Presents: Skyrim Modding Guide!
Okay. With this guide we'll be showing you what mods to get in order to make Skyrim a much more beautiful and enjoyable experience! We'll go over mods that will make Skyrim look better than real life....mods that will enhance the gameplay...and mods that aren't really needed, but just fun or cool to have. Remember that the Creation Kit has only just come out so there is still much to come..We will try to keep this guide updated, we'll do a recap every month hopefully. We'll start off with Graphical Mods. I'll go over all sorts of graphical mods on this page, all the way from full on Texture mods to Lighting Overhaul mods!
*Click the images to view full size!
This mod is a huge mod which is in the process of redoing every texture in Skyrim and making it 4-8x better than it's stock counter-part! This mod will make the average look extraordinary! Right now it covers every landscape texture, Windhelm, Whiterun, and Solitude. It's still WIP so more and more is being added in each update! Beware this is for top end PCs!
2. RCRN HDR- Realistic Colors and Real Nights by aLaa
This mod is alot more powerful than it seems, it will transform Skyrim into a seriously beautiful game. It totally redoes the lighting and coloring of the game, making for much brighter days, beautiful sunsets and sun rises, dark nights and best of all..Dark Dungeons! This mod even makes most of the armors look much nicer due to the special plugins it has. This mod is a serious must have because it does all this without any FPS drop.
This mod is alot more powerful than it seems, it will transform Skyrim into a seriously beautiful game. It totally redoes the lighting and coloring of the game, making for much brighter days, beautiful sunsets and sun rises, dark nights and best of all..Dark Dungeons! This mod even makes most of the armors look much nicer due to the special plugins it has. This mod is a serious must have because it does all this without any FPS drop.
3. High Res Face Maps for Men by Geonox
This mod may not seem like much but it takes the facial detail in Skyrim to the next level! With this mod, all male characters get extremely detailed face maps...You will be able to see their pores...Wrinkles are more defined and you can even see the facial stubble. It also evens out the Normal Map so you're not left with a blocky nose. This is one mod you'll just have to try for your self, it's another must have for me!
Vurt is a famous TeS modder who has been giving us beautiful Flora since Morrowind and his legacy hasn't stopped. He's back in Skyrim with an amazing flora overhaul which gives the grass, trees and shrubs a much needed retexture! All the grass and trees(and trunks) have been retextured with totally new textures at a higher resolution. The trunks are also randomized so not every tree looks the same. This mod will seriously improve your visuals and it comes in a high res and low res package so it's good for any PC!
5. Enhanced Blood Textures by dDefinder1
You may think at first, "Oh this is just a blood mod". Well it may just be a blood mod, but it does more than just make the blood look extremely pretty. This mod obviously retextures all the blood to make it much higher resolution, stock blood in Skyrim is almost embarrassing. But there's more! It also makes the blood react properly to different surfaces and even makes blood splatter onto your character and others. Blood is so bad in Skyrim so this mod is a MUST.
6. Improved NPC Clothing by BaronDavid
This is a simple mod but it really does wonders. If you've been playing Skyrim without it...You've probably noticed how all the clothing is a blurry mess...this fixes that. Now clothing is at a much higher resolution and actually looks like the fabric it is. A tightly woven robe will look tightly woven...A leather vest over a shirt will look like leather...This mod makes it looks nice to walk around in regular clothing. Be sure to download the INCPP Expansion aswell!
7. Realistic Water Textures by isoku
As you can probably tell from the title, this mod gives the water in Skyrim a much needed make over. It replaces Skyrim's ugly water texture with a high resolution texture taken from real life photography. It also adjusts the flow of water and makes it more realistic.
8. Hvergelmirs Armor Retexture by Hvergelmir
This mod is still heavy WIP and only affects Iron Armor at the moment but it's an ambitious project aiming to increase the quality of every armor in Skyrim. It's currently going from low tier to high tier so we still have some time until your beloved Ebony Mail and Daedric sets get the high resolution treatment.
9. Re-Defined Dungeons by gizmomzig
Another stunning mod here. This mod totally redoes each dungeon texture and makes it 2048x2048. If you enjoy dungeon crawling you're going to want to pick up this mod, I highly recommend it! It's still WIP so keep an eye open for updates.
10. AOF Believable Hair by AnOldFriend
This is a small mod but it takes Skyrim's hair (Male and Female) and makes it not look like a mess of spaghetti! Check out the screenshots and see if you like them!
11. Enhanced Distant Terrain by OpticShooter
Simple mod, just makes the distant terrain look much nicer. It's actually quite effective, give this a go!
12. Enhanced Distant Trees by hlvr
Another simple one. This mod gives distant trees shadows and improved LOD's. This can improve the look of distant trees significantly if you have your view distance high.
So that's all the mods for the graphics section so far.
Now I will go over some simple ways to make your game look better without modding it!
Alright, we'll start with .INI tweaks!
Navigate to your My Documents/My Games/Skyrim folder and find SkyrimPrefs.ini
You'll want to change these values to 1
bTreesReceiveShadows=0
bDrawLandShadows=0
Now add these lines to the bottom of your .ini file if they are not there already. I'm not sure these are necessary if you're using the water mod but I don' think it hurts.
[Water]
iWaterReflectHeight=1024
iWaterReflectWidth=1024
bUseWaterDisplacements=1
bUseWaterRefractions=1
bUseWaterReflections=1
bUseWaterDepth=1
Okay that's it for INI tweaks. Now I'll show you how to enable Ambient Occlusion in Skyrim.
First you'll want to download a program called Nvidia Inspector(A Google search should show you the DL link). Make sure you have the latest drivers too!
Here is an easy illustration of what to do in order to enable Ambient Occlusion.
*Open in new tab for full size.
You should be able to tell ingame if Ambient Occlusion is on or not. Ambient Occlusion really adds alot to the visual quality of Skyrim so I would really recommend doing this, but do note it is slightly intensive, so if you're struggling to play Skyrim...this may not be for you.
That is all for the Graphics Section! Onto Gameplay!
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