It appears that there has been some mix-up vis-a-vis my scheduling. The archives of this very blog say that it has been a mere two years since I last set foot in Tamriel, yet everyone tells me that it's now 4E 201, when last I checked it was 3E 427. Dragon Breaks are funny things.
Be that as it may, I've started a new Skyrim (Special Edition) playthrough and decided to get serious about modding this time. I've installed a few mods before, but nothing more complicated than SkyUI. (If you're curious about modding your game but don't know where to start, the beginner's guide on /r/skyrimmods is a great resource and I highly recommend it.) After installing scores of mods and playing for 7 hours, I have yet to see a single crash: I must be doing something right!
Let's start with a big Kahuna: ENBSeries. ENBSeries completely reworks Skyrim's lighting engine to spectacular results.
 |
| The College of Winterhold is looking fine today. |
If you've ever seen some absolutely ridiculous-looking Skyrim screenshots and wondered how they possibly got the game to look like that, this mod is how. On top of the base ENBSeries library, other modders create "presets" that configure parameters to adjust the lighting engine. (Of course, you can always fiddle with the values yourself.) I am using the SkyrimSE Re-Engaged ENB preset optimized for Rustic Weathers and Lighting. Be warned: the truly amazing presets will likely drop you to single-digit FPS values and are intended for screenshots only. I've been pleased with this mod's performance so far.
I found myself intrigued by the possibilities of Alternate Start - Live Another Life, in particular the option for Altmer characters to start as a member of the Thalmor in the Embassy. I figured there would be good entertainment value in role-playing as an elf supremacist dedicated to keeping the filthy humans in their place. Naturally, an Altmer is best specced as a mage, so I grabbed everything in the embassy that wasn't nailed to the floor, walked down the hill, killed a wolf, and hopped on a carriage to Winterhold, where I sold everything and started buying spells.
I now faced my greatest challenge: Bethesda's all-consuming dedication to preventing anyone from having fun while playing as a mage. Let's start with Winterhold.
 |
| Winterhold. Note the complete lack of any way to easily get anywhere else. |
Bethesda has embraced convenience over immersion by letting the player zip from location to location by simply opening their map and clicking on where they would like to go. Fortunately, someone there remembered that a few players (ahem) preferred the Morrowind system in which transportation was actually integrated into the game world and so put in some carriages (and boats, with Dawnguard installed) that the player can hire to move from city to city. Unfortunately, they really half-assed it. Although you can ride a carriage to any city or major town (including Winterhold), you can only take a carriage from the big cities of Whiterun, Solitude, Windhelm, Markarth, and Riften. Once you're in Winterhold, the only ways out are map-based fast travel (shudder) or walking (double shudder). If you're playing as a mage, you will almost certainly join the College of Winterhold (guess where it's located) and have to hike to Windhelm or Dawnstar many times. Characters who join the Dark Brotherhood will have similar problems whenever they try to leave Falkreath.
Help me, modders, you're my only hope!
The day was saved by Carriage and Ferry Travel Overhaul. To the delight of players like me whose love for immersion is rivaled only by our delight in throwing fireballs at our foes, this mod adds a boat to Winterhold accessible by following the path leading under the College bridge to the shore. Talking to the ferryman will allow you to travel to Solitude, Morthal, Dawnstar, or Windhelm, providing easy access to the rest of Skyrim.
The next problem facing the would-be mage is that of dealing damage to their enemies. The school of Destruction magic, despite its name, is of little help. (I suspect, but have yet to prove, that "Destruction" is actually a typo for "Mild Annoyance.") Unlike attacks made with weapons, Destruction spells do a fixed amount of damage and do not scale with your skill level. Since enemies' health increases as the game progresses, your magical attacks will become steadily wimpier! To add insult to injury, Skyrim does not allow the player to create custom spells, which might allow for unauthorized fun.
This looks like a job for Deadly Destruction! It makes the obvious fix of scaling Destruction damage to skill level, plus adds an enchantment effect to further increase the damage. It's still impossible to match what a high-level Morrowind mage can do, but every little bit helps.
Speaking of Morrowind, I downloaded several mods that do nothing but restore spells that were present in Morrowind but are inexplicably absent from Skyrim:
Cure Disease is particularly puzzling. The Cure Disease effect is already present in the game: it's what happens when you drink a Cure Disease potion. The mod can't possibly have been hard to make; just create a new Restoration spell and attach the Cure Disease effect to it. Bethesda went out of their way to ensure that mages can't easily leave their faction headquarters, can't deal damage effectively, can't teleport, can't cure diseases, and can't open locks. Why?
Fuck mages, that's why. - Bethesda
At long last, we have come to my last major complaint about mages in Skyrim: mage robes look really dumb compared to high-level armor. Characters wearing armor will eventually be decked out in Dragonscale or Daedric gear, while mages get...the same plain wool robes they've been wearing all game. Fortunately, this is a cosmetic rather than a mechanical issue, so the modders have fixed it. Oh boy, have they fixed it.
I chose Opulent Outfits - Mage Robes of Winterhold 2018-SSE. What drew me to this mod was the fact that it has an option to replace only the mage robes instead of adding a million immersion-breaking fancy outfits to all of the NPCs, most of whom logically should be dressed plainly. The modder was also considerate enough to add a merchant in the College of Winterhold who sells unenchanted versions of all of the new mage gear, which will no doubt come in handy once I'm a master Enchanter.
 |
| Tolfdir strutting his stuff in his new duds while the apprentices look on. |
I would be remiss if I didn't mention some of the more subtle mods I've installed, like Amazing Follower Tweaks SE. This adds many options for customizing follower behavior, most of which I have no interest in, but includes some essentials, like the ability to tell your followers exactly which items they should equip. Other points of interest include "followers don't set off traps" and "followers don't attack until you do," which remove 90% of Skyrim's follower-related annoyances. You may have noticed the effects of Immersive Compass in the screenshots above. It turns Skyrim's Magical Mystery Compass into...a regular compass. When I discover a new location, I like to actually discover it, rather than find it because my compass said "POINT OF INTEREST DETECTED." It also eliminates the odd annoyance of seeing a location on your compass that you're not ready to explore yet and deliberately skirting around it so you don't "discover" it and feel pressured to investigate. It's hard to imagine something less immersive.
So far, I'm having a grand old time with my mod setup. I'm about to start checking out Hjaalmarch and seeing what adventures wait for me there. I'm also looking forward to using my new modding experience once I start another playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas sometime this year. Excelsior!
 |
| The College again, because wow it's pretty. |
No comments:
Post a Comment