Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas

[Valmy]

As I am all but finished with my EE degree (just waiting for one last grade to be posted) I thought I would finally start these two games that have been on my must play lists for years.

Any recommendations on what expansions or mods for Skyrim I should have?  I have the vanilla game I got waaaaay back around when it came out.  I am going for a good normal playthrough of the game.  Same goes for FO:NV.

[The Brain]

FWIW I don't think you need hundreds of mods to make Skyrim or Fallout: New Vegas enjoyable. They're perfectly playable vanilla, but I suppose a UI mod makes sense.

[Valmy]

FWIW I don't think you need hundreds of mods to make Skyrim or Fallout: New Vegas enjoyable. They're perfectly playable vanilla, but I suppose a UI mod makes sense.

Just curious since when Skyrim was mentioned before there were often big lists of 'essential' mods.  I will be playing both of these exactly once so I would like to get the whole experience as much as I can.

At the very least it would be nice to know if there were unofficial patches everybody uses.

[Norgy]

Some mods improve the experience of Skyrim, certainly. But like some have experienced, they can take a lot of time and effort to install.

Skyrim's relatively stable in vanilla, and I felt it was good value for money even without mods, but modifying it will certainly add to its longevity.

[Syt]

I would agree that you would start vanilla, with interface mods, maybe.

Then, if you feel like a part of the game is lacking, look for a mod that fixes that.

Then branch out into other mods. I picked mine by browsing on Nexus and looking for ones with many recommendations.

Oh, and if you decide to mod your game, learn how to use SKSE (it has a pretty good tutorial on its page). When I last tried modding Skyrim it wasn't nearly as user friendly as it's now, and I gave up after a few hours. You can still spend hours modding your game, but the process of installing/sorting/fixing mods has become a lot less cumbersome IMHO.

[grumbler]

Just curious since when Skyrim was mentioned before there were often big lists of 'essential' mods.  I will be playing both of these exactly once so I would like to get the whole experience as much as I can.

At the very least it would be nice to know if there were unofficial patches everybody uses.

I'd use the 5 "unofficial" patches from the Nexus, proper aiming, SkyUI, the Mod Configuration Module, and SKSE.  None of those need any skill at modding (you can just unpack the ones that don't come with an installer) and they'll all improve your game without adding any burden on it.

Once you have played the game, there are a number of pretty decent quest mods, but those can wait.

[MadImmortalMan]

Two hud mods that I want to try on my next play (in addition to SkyUI of course) are iActivate and moreHUD.

Those look pretty damn useful.

Both in this video.

[Grallon]

Everything you need to know is here:

http://wiki.step-project.com/Main_Page



G.