I have plans to do another vanilla Skyrim playthrough in the near future. I'm a fanatically obsessive mod maker and mod user, but from time to time I like to return to vanilla when I play almost all of Bethesda's games. I find that it's instructive to periodically re-acquaint myself with the games. It helps me see the games with new eyes and it often has a profound effect on which mods I use or don't use in the future.

The only game I do not play vanilla is Oblivion. I cannot play that game without mods.

Vanilla Skyrim? No, although my mod list is not long.

There are two aspects of the game in particular that if I could not mod to my needs, I would abandon the game over (and return to Oblivion):

1. The leveling system to allow more control and specialization.

2. The absurd 'hand micromanagement' necessary to play a mystic archer who uses both bow and plenty of spells.

Happily, I can mod these 'game mechanic' aspects and am therefore fully able to revel in the magnificent 'feel' and haunting beauty that is Skyrim.

Hummm. What do you use to get beyond the "hand micromanaging"? I find I'm going to have a dunmer sneaky archer-mage.... so halp?

*Raises hand* I do... for the nonce.

OP.......NO.....No one plays vanilla skyrim anymore.


For three excellent reasons..


One....All consoles that used to play Skyrim are now broken and the discs are lost......truth


Two....We can ALL afford shiney new PCs....so y'know who wants a stupid console now? (Shrug)


Three.....PCs can't actually play vanilla skyrim......you must use mods on PC.....truth



Sometimes I just despair...I really do

Yes, crazy question. Clearly many people still play it on consoles and a few PC users play vanilla.... so, why do you ask?

Yes...that kinda bugs me too......WHY ask such a self evidently obvious question?


I mean some of us actually say in our signature blocks what we use to play.....its not exactly hard to see! (Shrug). The OP has been around a while too......its difficult to understand, if they read other posts, why they don't know the clear answer already!!!


Maybe I should corollary it.....


"Does anybody continue to mod their game of Skyrim" ?


Duh!

There are plenty of console players still and they have no choice but to play vanilla. And the majority sales from the figures were consoles.

Maybe you should have been more specific by asking do PC players still play vanilla anymore?

To answer the question I have heard there are some who do but they're probably a minority and mostly limited by poor hardware.

My first frustration is that with an unnocked by in her left hand, why can’t my mystic archer cast a spell from her right? No perfect solution to this but bits and pieces of ideas that have helped deal are sort of woven in below.

My second frustration was the bow disappears (goes into her inventory, not to her back) when you equip a spell. Begs the obvious question of where does a 95 pound elf supposedly ‘stick’ her bow when not using it – don’t want to think about that. So I embraced the conjured mystic bow and have been delighted with it. A summoned bow is supposed to disappear. I do tweak it in the console to reduce its power early game and increase its power late game.

My third problem was the hand micromanagement. I use the mod Smart Cast to help here. It has several neat abilities:

- You can associate spells to rings and hot key the rings. When you do so, the spell is simply cast – no equipping, no hands involved and it does not affect what is in your hands. Lots of possibilities here. One of the main things I use this feature for is so Buffy can summon her mystic bow from the saddle since she is an avid equestrienne.

- You can build ‘contingency’ spells. For example, whenever ‘combat’ is triggered, oakflesh is automatically cast on Buffy. She loves the visuals of muffle when sneaking, so muffle is ‘contingencied’ ‘on’ whenever she is sneaking. You could also have a healing spell cast if your health goes below xx% as another example. Can help save on quite a bit of spell swapping if desired.

- You can build smart spells that combine two or three spells into one. I don’t use that feature but it certainly has some capabilities to make life easier I’d imagine.

Thanks Acadian. I copied all that to file to work on later! Appreciate the assistance!

Smart Cast is one of those mods I can't live without myself, it makes the life of my cloak and flesh spell using melee characters much less tedious as I prefer warhammers and greatswords in combat.

No kidding. I am going to start a thread called "Hey, does anybody here actually play Skyrim anymore?"

I use Apocalypse Magic instead. It has an alteration spell called Ocato's Recital that provides most of the functionality of smart cast, although it would not do what Acadian wants and allow control over spell casting on a horse. Ocato's just auto casts up to three spells when you enter combat.

I don't. I just test the mods I'm making. Not the same thing at all.

I get that, and you are probably not the only one who is doing more modding and playing. But if no one were playing, what would the point be of making mods? That would be like a toy maker making toy no one would ever play with, which would be sad.

I saw some dude on r/skyrim over on Reddit that posted about spending tens of hours just working on his modlist and compatitibility, but never even ended up playing the game. I've dabbled with mods, and I can see how the temptation to alter the game to "perfection" can be distracting from actually enjoying it. I know some people really enjoy the modding aspect of these games though, it's just not something I like to get into super deeply.

Lol....and that would be why I don't put serious time into learning the CK . It can take me a week or more to get my Characters created to look the way they should ( not nessessarily beautiful, but uniquely them) I'd really get errr obsessive over something that other people would errr critique.

Because it's fun in and of itself, if you like problem solving. When I was a kid I used to paint toy soldiers, try to make them as realistic as possible and put them in little dioramas. I wouldn't play witth them afterwards: the paint could have got chipped!


I spent the Easter weekend porting over Waalx's 'Realswords Breton' from Oblivion, because I really dislike the Skyrim weapon models and I like Waalx's. I thought it would take a couple of hours, but I encountered a load of unexpected complications and ended up altering all the meshes and completely re-texturing the blades from scratch so they would work with Skyrim's shaders. I probably won't publish it anywhere (its not all my own work for one thing), its just something I did for my own enjoyment. I made several small mods for Fallout NV that were never released into the wild.

Exactly. Sometimes creativity is its own reward.

Oh boy, you guys enjoy modding way more than I do. I too enjoy the creative and problem solving aspects of it, but if I'm going to spend that much time working on a computer, it's either going to be so I can enjoy the game the way I want or so someone else can. Most of the mods I've made are changes I wanted to play the game that I've decided to share with the world, but I have made a few just for others to use, which is rewarding in its own way. But I would not want to make mods just for the sake of my own creativity and then hide them away in my own personal Isle of Misfit Mods, never to use them myself or share them with others.


Maybe it's because I'm relatively new at making mods, or maybe (more likely) it's because I enjoy playing the game far more than making mods for it.

Wait....Im on vanilla....so I have to ask.

The CK....can it allow you to shape your chars face EXACTLY how you would like it....not just use 'Race Menu' provided eyes, mouths, ears, noses etc? Actually change the shape of the underlying mesh to what you want?


Is this true?


Using the CK.....in theory then, could it make new ani as well.....like say pick up an ice cream/lolly raise it to the mouth and.....eat it?

Could a char raise a wine bottle and swig from it?


Can you go that far?


Please tell me it is so!

It is so, my friend. Depending on just what you want to do, you may need assets (meshes and textures) or animations that would need to be made outside the creation kit using a modeling program or some other software, but yes, what you are wanting is definately possible and there are mods on Nexus people have created to allow you to do just this. Check this out.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29624/?


As far as eating and drinking animations, those are possible too.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/26271/?

Rick, we should start a GoFundMe and start accepting donations for building a gaming PC.

No it can't do either of those, but it lets you build mods that do so. You need a few extra tools in combination with the CK, generally to make the components the CK assembles.

New face shapes require a 3D modelling tool to create the morph targets, and then the CK lets you specify which races can use them. You'll also make textures in a tool like GIMP or Photoshop, and link them to the meshes using a third tool (NifSkope).

Similarly, you need to build the animations outside the CK, and then link them to the actors - Horse animations to horses, etc.

You can create new creatures and use the CK to import them, add their AI, dialog (yes, dialog like wolves howling) etc. You'd need a sound recording tool, as well as the CK.

If it makes you feel better, I'm tempted to because this botched STEP install is making me rage.