Redirecting novice modders away from bad resources and towards good alternatives seems like the neighborly thing to do, as well as guiding question-askers toward the convention of using Load Order Library or Mod.watch, and Pastebin, for questions about load order or crash reports.

My thought is that such a list could eventually be stickied somewhere that's easy for newcomers to find.

I'll start with a small handful, in no particular order, and hopefully others will chime in with their suggestions. If this gets any traction I'll edit/polish this text body with all recommendations.

I got your beginner's guide(s) right here

So you've decided to mod Skyrim. You are strong and wise, and I am very proud of you.

Maybe you like to read. Here are the three indisputable kings of written guides on the subject, in (my own, subjective) ascending order of complexity.

Note: these guides assume that you'll be following them to the letter, and depending on your level of experience that isn't an awful idea. However, know that when it comes to graphics mods the choices shown in these lists are their authors' own, and you can substitute as you like.

The S.T.E.P. Modifications Guide

The granddaddy of modding how-to lists. The STEP guide will hold your hand through the entire modding process, from the first launch of your game all the way through finishing touches like running DynDOLOD.

STEP is designed by committee to be accessible to readers of any experience level. The site is rudimentary and simple to navigate.

The Phoenix Flavour

A more retail-ready suite of guides, with several versions ranging from "bare necessities" to "modded out the wazoo." TPF is an established walkthrough that has, with the advent of Wabbajack, branched out into fully downloadable modlists. As such, the lists' installation instructions are tailored to Wabbajack users, but the list "The Phoenix Flavor" itself is still a useful reading reference (despite a header that declares itself out of date at the moment).

The site is a little more whiz-bang than STEP's, and I find it a bit unintuitive to navigate if you don't know what you're looking for.

Lexy's LOTD SE

"Lexy's guide" has been around for as long as I've been modding the game, and it remains the best deep-dive walkthrough for those who want to set up their modding environment by thoroughly following a written guide. As it says on the tin: "It is strongly advised that new modders install everything without deviation."

If you'd like something a bit more conversational, and a bit less click-thru, than STEP, and if you aren't interested in using Wabbajack, then I suggest using Lexy's exhaustive guide. It may take you a day or two. The familiarity that you will have with your modding environment on the other side is worth it.

The site is slick, with a logical start-to-finish structure that makes it easy to stay oriented.

Tome of xEdit

xEdit, known as SSEEdit to Skyrim SE players, is the most important tool you can undertake to learn in order to make your modding journey as painless as possible. My own knowledge of SSEEdit is admittedly wafer-thin and I'm not equipped to provide any information about it.

Those who are may be found at Tome of xEdit and they will be pleased to take you through The Method.

It cannot be overstated that SSEEdit is the tool that will enable you to answer for yourself many, if not most, of the questions that will arise on your modding journey. Learn it and love it more than I have; I wish I understood it better.

xLODGen, DynDOLOD, Grass LODs and how to avoid losing your mind.

The author of DynDOLOD, Sheson, is a helpful fellow who is much, much smarter than me. I believe /u/yausd when he has said countless times on reddit that the official documentation is the absolute best resource for those with questions about the DynDOLOD tools and generating LODs.

But I also agree with every user I've seen gripe to /u/yausd that Sheson's prose is dizzyingly, even impenetrably detailed. My long-term suspicion is that /u/yausd is Sheson, and that he is simply operating on a level beyond that of mere mortals, with (it must be said) godlike patience for our questions.

Gamerpoets, as always, has an instructive video on the topic that will get you up and running in no time. For those of us who prefer a written guide, however, the absolute best that I have found is LivelyDismay's, located here on github. This is a very well put together walkthrough, accessibly written with logical steps, plenty of illustrations, and plenty of hyperlinks in the text for fast navigation.

Like all the other inclusions here, it's not just my personal recommendation to use LivelyDismay's guide; it has been recommended by other users many times over.

Sharing your mod list

Load Order Library and Modwat.ch are two easy-to-use hosts for posting your whole modlist, including your game .ini files. It's helpful to use these instead of copy/pasting your entire modlist as comment text, because other users will be able to see your load order and still be able to navigate the comments here without a wall of text smothering their answers.

I'd love to be told that I'm just misusing Modwat.ch, but in my experience it only seems to post your modlist in descending order, and without a clear presentation of any custom separators that you're using. Load Order Library otoh posts your list in ascending order with separators intact.

Here is my list on both sites as an example. If you click "show inactive/disabled" you can even see all my disabled graphics mods, because I'm running a plain-Jane vanilla game atm:

My list on Modwat.ch

My list on Load Order Library

Both sites are free to use. Modwat.ch requires you to install a small uploader; LOL does not. For the several reasons I've mentioned, I prefer LOL.

Sharing crash reports & papyrus logs

Pastebin is the best way to share any kind of lengthy text document without copy/pasting directly here. Again, this is recommended for ease of navigation by other users who will be trying to answer your questions. A free account is not required to use the site. May I also wholeheartedly recommend using this to post crash logs on Nexus.

Help, I need a video tutorial

You want to watch a video about all this stuff, and somehow in 2023 you've still managed to find yourself in front of a Sinitar guide.

Stop.

Please, please navigate to Gamerpoets' YT channel instead, and bathe yourself in the healing waters of Michael's dulcet voice. In case it needs saying, I am not affiliated in any way.

Disclaimer: right this second Michael seems to be updating a number of his videos, so quite a few are wearing an "Archived" banner. Don't be discouraged. Gamerpoets is the most oft-recommended, universally beloved modding channel on YT. He will get you where you want to go.

How tf do I use BodySlide

We see this one a lot, for good reason. My personal favorite guide that I've found is the HIMBO Installation doc on Nexus, but it's been so long since I've needed it that there may be a far better alternative at this point. LMK if there's one that you like!

So that gets the thread seeded. There's obviously room for many, many more. Hopefully some others will weigh in. :)

edit: added the written guides. Revised the title to make it more obviously useful. Removed some editorial snark about Sinitar.

Thank you @[email protected]

A lot of the wabbajack lists are pretty beefy but I just have a mid-range rig.

My specs are as follows:

• GPU - 2070 Super
• CPU - Ryzen 5 3600
• RAM - 32GB

I should also add that I play at 1440p, if you know of a cool list I should try, please let me know!

We're remaking Morrowind as a total conversion mod for Skyrim. We've been on Mastodon for a while now, and today seems as good a day as any to also start sharing on Lemmy. Looking forward to seeing this community grow!

Last time I modded Skyrim was on the original one with mod organizer and using the STEP site as a guide.

How much has changed since then? Is STEP still a good resource to get started and is mod organizer 2 still a good go to?

My question for y'all today is inspired by this comparison vid by wSkeever showing off Realistic Water 2, Water for ENB (looks like the Nordic Blue variation), and their own Simplicity of Sea aka Water Mod. Then there's Cathedral Water, which only edits water records and doesn't make all the cell edits that make water mods the usual patching mess. This video adds vanilla water with ENB to the comparison, with results that surprised me.

What are you doing to make your water look good?

Whatever you're doing, Natural Waterfalls is probably an amazing addition. And come to think of it, Natural Waterfalls claims to have a water mod built in that I haven't tried out yet.

Hello, thinking of giving Skyrim a go on Linux through Proton, does anyone have a resource that helped with getting some mods going? Can a mod manager be used ?

A simple, stable mod that I adore. Adds Alfiq Khajiit to caravans, adds a few as potential followers, and has a random chance to be a courier!

This mod is called Know Your Enemy 2 and it changes the way enemies in Skyrim have resistances and weaknesses to different types of damage. It adds 16 damage types and lets you customize the difficulty level. It also gives you a power to inspect creatures and learn their effects. The mod aims to make combat more challenging and balanced.

• The 16 damage types are: physical, fire, frost, shock, poison, disease, bleed, sun, holy, unholy, magic, arcane, psionic, ethereal, silver and daedric.

• The inspect power can be used on any creature to see its resistances and weaknesses as well as any other effects it has. It can be activated by pressing the shout button while sneaking and aiming at a creature.

• The mod is compatible with most other mods that change enemies or add new ones. It has patches for some popular mods such as Skyrim Immersive Creatures, Animallica, Beasts of Tamriel and more. It also works well with mods that change combat or damage such as Wildcat, Smilodon or Vigor.

Hello! I've been looking for mods that help beef up a playthrough centered around a Conjuration mage with an interest in studying the planes of Oblivion, but I've been struggling to think of the right way to search for them. If I look up "Conjuration," "Summoner," or "Sorcerer" I'll mostly just get spell mods, and often specifically for necromancers rather than anything related to Daedra. If I look up "Daedric" or "Daedra," I'll mostly find things related to either Daedric Armor, the destruction of Daedra, or the worship of Daedra, when the kind of character I want to run has a more scholarly interest in the subject.

Now, spell mods are perfectly fine, of course. I've naturally installed quite a few that I intend to try out. Apocalypse, Odin, Arcanum, Flames of Coldharbor, Necrom, Dead and Daedric Guardians, an absolute slew of different Mihail mods that add both world encounters and summon spells. But I can't help but feel like I might be missing something because all the keywords I can think of related to what I'm going for tend to be specialized in different directions.

So, I figured I'd go ahead and ask in order to try to see if there's anything hidden in that weird information gap I've been struggling with. What are some good quest mods to pair with a Daedric conjurer playthrough? Armor sets? World additions? Player homes? Basically anything that gives a Conjurer something to do with all those spells, or something else to roleplay with in addition to spells. What do you all use for these kinds of playthroughs, or what would you use if you decided to start one?

Any recommendations for combat mods using MCO?

Hey people. Had posted this earlier on rddit earlier but f u/spez, deleted it and gonna post it here instead. This is a simple guide to explain how to use the mod Immersive Equipment Display.

I acquired the information below by reading some comments/posts and watching few videos about IED. I have no knowledge of the inner mechanics of this mod and am not affiliated with the dev. This unprofessional guide is an attempt to explain how to adjust your displayed weapons or items.  

Note: I messed with the UI only for a few hours and modified only through the existing nodes and have only adjusted the positions of some weapons. However, i believe that modifying the items' displays could be done in a similar manner, after assigning an existing node.   

1.     Save your game.

2.     Install Immersive Equipment Display and all requirements.

3.     Find a bright place. Be aware that once in IED UI, time will not be paused by default. (check below note1)

4.     Put favorite marks on several weapons to see if mod works correctly. If all is good, move on.

5.     Remove favorite marks.

6.     Equip the weapon(s) you want to adjust. They should remain sheathed.

7.     Press backspace to open IED UI.

8.     Click “View” on top left corner.

9.     You’ll see 2 tabs: “Display manager” and “Gear positioning”. Choose the later.

10.  An interface will open. On top you will see: Global – Actor – NPC – Race. Choose Actor.

11. Check if gender matches your character.

12. Beneath you will see “Positions” and “Placement”. Choose the later.

13. From here on ill explain via an example. A normal 1h sword will be the subject, be sure to have equipped such weapon.

14. Under the “Placement” tab find “Sword” and click on it. You will see a bar which shows different nodes when clicked on. You may try the different nodes to see where is which. We’ll assign a node to this sword that best matches our goal. In my case I chose “Sword NMD”.

15. Go back to “Positions” (Next to “Placement” above).

16. FIND THE NODE YOU HAVE CHOSEN, which in this case is “Sword NMD”.

17. Open it. Read the lines. Optional: Find the “Offsets” and click on it so to diminish the visual pressure.

18. To adjust the positioning of the weapon we’ll only use the board placed beneath “fixed frame rotation” and above “visibility”. The board consists of 3 lines (Position, Rotation and Scale) and 3 columns for the first two lines, one column for the last line.

19. Mess around with the numbers. LMB press and move right-left OR double click and write a different number. First line changes the position, second line changes the rotation and the third line changes the scale (1 being the default value).

20. That’s it. Mess with the numbers and find a display that matches your taste. For this example, I have:

Position: -1.3; -3; -10.5

Rotation: -12; -2; 19.5

Scale: 0.9

This is an adjustment that fits the animations and outfit i have equipped, might not suit you. It is given so you have an idea of the process. Mess around, you can always click on the triangles left of the lines to reset the values. You could also write down the values before making major adjustments.

21. When done, click on “x” (top right) to close the tab(s) and return to your game. You can also close the IDE UI mid-adjustments and save, in order to not loose progress if something goes wrong.   Note1: Later you can check settings on top left corner to enable freezing time.  

Check GiraPomba’s articles for more detailed guidelines. (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/76956?tab=articles)  

Sky above, voice within.

Skyrimmods and daddit were the only two reasons I went on to reddit anyway. Hope to see all the content creators, mod authors, wabbajck list makers and everyone else here!

Mine would have to be:

SkyUI

Unofficial Patch

Simply Knock

SMIM

Blended Roads