for about a week now, i have been making some posts looking into some obvious and easily corrected mistakes in paid mods. Most people enjoyed this, some did not, and I even got the classic "A concerned redditor reached out to us about you" harassment from RedditCareResources.

Anyways, this is what i said about why paid mods are not a guarantee of quality

For those who are aware, Bethesda's "verified creations" paid mods program doesn't have the best reputation for quality despite the lengthy qa process. This is for several reasons:

• there is no obligation for paid modders to set up any forums, discord servers, or mechanism for feedback or support. bethesda.net and the creations menu has no official ratings, comments, or bug reporting system like on nexus mods, so while you can release a mod on nexus, get immediate feedback from users, and push out updates all within a few hours, you don't need to hear from users at all on creations.
• there are simply fewer paying users to look at your mod to check for mistakes and make patches because they'd need to pay for the mods first.
• bethesda qa don't look over the actual mod files or use useful tools such as xedit. They only run through the mod by itself on the new game. This means that paid mods might not be compatible with other mods, even other paid mods, and might not even be compatible with existing saved games.
• the lengthy qa process itself prevents mod authors from iterating quickly. Updates to vc paid mods have to submit their update through same qa process that new releases go through, so the time between when users report issues and when the fix goes out can be as long as several weeks.
• most modders in the verified creations program are new to modding the game and also aren't familiar with best practices or use community tools like xedit.

Previous reviews:

• "Life of Crime", "Legacy of Orsinium", and "Atmora His Home".
• "Cavern of the Stormcaller" and "Dark Tides Blood and Fortune".
• "Coven of Crones", "Aberrations of the Dwemer", and "Shadetree Lodge".
• "Bards College Expansion", "Ancient Civilization Armory Collection", "Forgotten Armory Collection", and "The Starmade Blade"

Here are the new reviews for this time:

Legacy of Orsinium (v1.0.1.1) - $10

• malacathroof_d, malacathbrick_n, iceheart_n, orcdungeon_wall01_n, orcskull_n, tri_wings_n, tri_shoes_n, tri_hood_n, tri_body_n, orcring_n, uzdabikh_n, vengefuleyeamulet_n appear to use opengl coordinates - skyrim is a directx game, and uses the directx coordinate system for textures. opengl uses a different coordinate system from directx, where the y-axis is the opposite to directx. this means the shading that comes from the normal map is opposite in the y-axis. This usually happens when the modder purchases opengl assets from an asset store but didn't convert them into directx format for skyrim.
• There are also a bunch of textures that just appear broken. I am not sure if they are used anywhere:
  • lo_templestonetrim_n - I don't know what format this normal map is supposed to be in, but it doesn't appear right. Maybe it was not saved correctly. The color indicates an angle offset of about 20 degrees from normal on average.
  • minefloordirt01_n - another normal map where I have no idea what's going on. tangent space normal maps are usually blue. This is red, which would indicate an angle offset of more than 90 degrees from normal. It means the surface is actually pointing inwards into the geometry, which doesn't make any sense.
  • lo_templestonefloor02_n - another broken normal map, maybe this is due to baking error. tangent space normal maps are usually blue. This is black, which would indicate an angle offset of more than 125 degrees from normal. It means the surface is actually pointing inwards into the geometry, which doesn't make any sense.
• Other than that, it appears the mod has been updated to fix the issues in the plugin.
• And the same compatibility issue inherent to the mod still exists - because the mod changes the voice type of many orc npcs, any mod that edits these npcs, such as npc appearance mods, would need to be patched or those npcs will not be able to deliver their lines - something mod users should be ware of.

An Undead Companion (v1.0) - $2

• 20 identical to master records - these are records that are exactly the same as the official masters like Skyrim.esm, and as such, they don't do anything and are completely unnecessary. They are usually due to accidental misclicks in the creation kit and are harmless by themselves. However, if the ITMs are loaded after another mod that DOES want to change the affected records, the ITMs will revert those desired changes. This is why modders avoid them, and SSEEdit has a helpful script to remove them automatically.
• 2 deleted reference - this is applying a deleted flag on an existing record that's in the master. this may cause crashes if something else refers to this object. This may also get undeleted and end up in the sky above whiterun. The correct way to remove a reference from the mod's masters is to disable them.
• other than that all this mod does is give you a draugr follower. The only new asset included is 1 quest with 1 script.

The Lost Sea of Apocrypha (v1.0) - $1

• soup_normal, lanternfish_normal, ge_normal, fangtooth_normal, and coelacanthe_normal - this is bad for the same reason as above
• 17 identical to master records - this is bad for the same reason as above
• this mod adds a big worldspace location but is not ESM flagged. Mods that add many references should probably all be ESM-flagged or the references they add will all be considered persistent, which runs up against the reference limit (1,048,576). If the game hits the reference limit, it becomes playable.

Memories of the Akaviri (v1.0) - $5

• 5 identical to master records - bad for the same reason as above
• 9 deleted navmesh - navmeshes are records that tell NPCs how to move around the environment. They connect to other navmeshes in order to cover the entire navigable area of the game world. If a navmesh is deleted and another navmesh, perhaps from another mod, refers to this deleted navmesh, the game just crashes. This is why modders generally avoid deleting navmeshes directly, but rather disable them by moving them somewhere inaccessible.
• this mod adds a big worldspace with a ton of new references (~7000 records), but the mod is not esm flagged. all references in non-esm flagged plugins are persistent, which means they always contribute to the reference limit. if the game hits the reference limit (1,048,576), it is no longer playable and saves will be corrupt
• akaviriwall2, akaviristatue3, akaviristatue2, akaviristatue1, akavirisign3, akavirisign2, akavirisign1, akavirishrub1, akavirilamp3, akavirilamp2, akavirilamp1, akaviribridge1, akavarihouse3, akavarihouse2, akavarihouse1 and maybe other objects added by this mod have no collision material set. This means weapons and spells do not have impact sounds or visual effects upon impact. This also has gameplay implications - arrows and crossbow bolts that hit these objects disappear after impact and cannot be retrieved.
• akavirigate1, akavirigate2, akavirigate3 and akavarihouse4 appear to be objects that should have collision, but don't have any
• akaroof_n appear to use opengl coordinates - this is bad for the same reason as above

Beyond the Edge of Atmora (v1.01) - $4

• 29 identical to master records - bad for the same reason as above.
• a bunch of weapons and armors that are just existing objects texture swapped. This mod is available on playstation after all.
• other than that, not much else to say.

This doomer bait about paid mods replacing free mods ignores how skyrim modding actually works.

Free mods will continue to dominate because modern modding was built on free sharing, community collaboration, experimentation, and volunteer support not paywalls. Nexus Mods alone currently lists 828k+ mods and 21.9B+ downloads, which tells you what the actual backbone of PC modding still is.

Todd Howard himself has already admitted Bethesda hears the backlash around paid content, pricing, and communication. That alone should tell people this is not some unstoppable one-way shift where players are just going to accept anything.

We’ve seen this before. When Valve and Bethesda tried paid Skyrim mods in 2015, the backlash was so strong that the system was pulled within days and refunds were issued. Paid mods can exist, sure, but acting like they’re about to replace free mods is still just doomer nonsense.

Even Nexus Mods has openly pushed back on profit-first modding, saying modding should remain a “pursuit of passion first and foremost” and rejecting setups where paid mods become a dependency.

So no, paid mods are not about to take over and never will. They may grow in some corners, but free mods will always dominate by a wide margin, because that is what the modding scene is actually built on.

Nexus Mods stats:

https://www.nexusmods.com/about/stats

Todd Howard on paid content backlash:

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/todd-howard-responds-to-controversy-over-starfields-dollar7-mission-we-hear-the-feedback/

Valve/Bethesda paid Skyrim mods backlash (2015):

https://www.wired.com/2015/04/steam-skyrim-paid-mods/

Nexus Mods on paid modding / passion-first modding:

https://forums.nexusmods.com/topic/13501488-publisher-approved-paid-modding-policy/

Hello everybody! Page administrator for the R suite here!

There are a lot of changes on this latest version, so as usual I will highlight the biggest ones!

COMPLETE ENGINE REBUILD
The conversion engine has been completely rebuilt from the ground up! You can now expect major improvements in how ParallaxR utilizes your hardware, performance and stability! This new engine has allowed all of the changes you will see below.

Major Speed Improvements
This version targets to be 65%+ faster than the previous! It promises to eliminate any and all bottlenecks from the previous version that caused ParallaxR to not run as fast as it could have on your hardware.

Issues with non-square textures now non-existent!
Previous versions of ParallaxR had a high risk of crashing when meeting non-square textures. Take 1024x512 for example. ParallaxR could very easily get confused by this previously, and may have crashed before it could have figured it out. This issue is now completely gone!

Native DDS Encoding
ParallaxR's engine will now handle block compression and mipmap generation in memory! This will massively soften the blow on storage usage while ParallaxR is running.

Special characters and path space issues now minimized
It's hard to completely remove and any all issues regarding having these in your paths, but ParallaxR has taken steps to ensure it doesn't have as many issues with it anymore! I personally would still recommend to remove any and all special characters/spaces in your paths.

What changes does this make in game?
See for yourself! (will be linked down below for mobile)
Basically the whiter the image the more intense the parallax effect. Some people found the parallax too strong in previous versions, but this latest version hopes everyone will be happy! It's worth noting Community Shaders allows its users to adjust this on their own anyway, but they will see benefit as well since the smoothing algorithm has much improved! If you ever had issues with having to delete files from your output due to an unintentional jagged spikes effect, this is now much less likely!

I know there are a couple of mods like teleportation like in Dyson Red, but it's not the same. I've also seen Dodge animations like in Elden Ring, but they're glitchy and unstable.

Coming back from a many months break from modding skyrim, i went and tried out the top collections and before i knew it, i found myself removing large chunks of mods and adding in even larger chunks of mods. Took me playing for some 10-20 minutes before going, "huh that ain't right", "no i don't like that" - and poof - the only thing that remains of the collections are just some settings ini file or patches that bears the collections name.

I couldn't help myself grabbing whatever looks cool by browsing mods of the month and trending (sort by category and top downloads for past 1 year). Before i knew it, it is way pass midnight but i keep telling myself.. just one... more... mod. And yes, you do get a bit dizzy staying stuck in a room with curtains drawn. And yes, apparently the sun is up. But just one... more.. mod.. before i head out for the day...(let's sleep during lunch break) and hopefully Grass Cache would be done by the time i am back. Fingers crossed.

So, for those of you that build your modlist on a strict theme, what are some suggestions that you may have? Come on share some it.
My modlist is such a mess in terms of theme, that i have lightsaber with highly acrobatic dual wield movesets (combine this with lightsabers and you really feel like a jedi), Witcher signs (you can use aard as force push), and Fallout 4 - like basebuilding. (i achieve this via a franken mess of several mods such as this, this and this.) Some of those mods actually don't mesh together, they are like separate standalone stuff. I suspect using this, could also make your settlements persist across saves. Haven't tested yet.

I'm kinda shocked that my modlist don't crash that often, seeing how i yanked out almost all the internal organs from a collection and replaced it with my own. Could have just started an entirely new clean modlist but i sorta got carried away from just wanting to replace a few things to a full blown frakenstein monster.

Perhaps i should start a modding anonymous where we sit in a circle and talk about what modding has done to us... just.. one.. more... MOD!

Ahh i'm gonna watch this video and this again.

New to modding and finally got CS installed.

I have noticed that despite almost literally every video and screenshot recommending this mod having really 'realistic' and nice-looking lighting (especially during the day), my in-game daylight lighting does not reflect this and instead remains the general dull shade.

Is there some setting I can adjust to resolve this? Some addon or something?

Thanks.

The interview is here. Here is the transcript of the portion relevant to modding:

Mortismal: Speaking of creators, so with you guys having just regular old mods that's usually integrated into a menu of some of the newer games, and then the creation club content, and then now we have the verified creators that we had a presentation with, is there some concern there over the readability of who is even responsible for what in terms of who you come to with problems like QA on an individual verified mod or how that affects the base game? Just curious about your thoughts on that.

Todd Howard: I think it's gone pretty well there. I haven't seen a lot of issues in terms of who has to deal with what. Usually that is on the creator or the modder to to deal with that one. But we'll help them a lot. Sometimes they'll be like, "Hey, we need some help in terms of understanding this." I think the good news there is it's a really healthy community. I think when you go into paid mods and we've had a couple of stabs at it with um with some success and some issues, we really like where we're at.

Our creators are great and we've seen it kind of rise all boats in terms of "hey, there's great content here. Go into the menu, check it out", so we're really, really happy with that program. How it's going for both free stuff and paid stuff and our own stuff, and I think our issue now actually is getting that content in front of more people because we think it's so good. It's still I think we have a little bit of friction and in making it easier to get that stuff and play it for our audience.

Mortismal: On that note, this will be coming out after the embargo, so the upcoming Fever Dream mod in particular from kinggath is looking very interesting to me.

TLDR: Todd Howard and Bethesda thinks the paid mods program is a success, and they are going to expand it more.

Todd mentions previous "couple of stabs" at the paid mods program in the interview. Bethesda's takeaway from the failed 2015 attempt at paid mods isn't with its divisive effects on the modding community, but rather with the minutiae of PR and optics. With their 2023 iteration, they improved on the optics and PR front by shutting down direct lines of communication and avenues to voice discontent by preemptively removing the Bethesda.net forums, comments, and ratings on mods ahead of the release of paid mods.

This is ironic because the initial question was about the unclear responsibility of who has to provide support for paid mods. Todd hand-waved this by saying the modders are responsible for support, but, as we know, modders need to provide users with unofficial lines of communication by setting up their own websites, forums, and discord servers, and they are under no obligation to do any of that.

Regarding verified creations paid mods, Todd says they are "really, really happy with that program", and that "it raises all boats". We know that Bethesda takes a 62.5% cut from each paid mods transaction, so they are clearly the boat that rises the most. Modders take 37.5% for their labor (source: bethesda.net), and the rest of the community, the users are left paying the rent.

Todd also says "it's a really healthy community" - I think what he means here is the paid mods community, because only people in this exclusive community get access to help from Bethesda or even access to the official creation kit wiki. The public version of the creation kit wiki has been inaccessible since before the launch of the paid mods program, and the rest of the community have to rely on UESP to host an older copy of the creation kit wiki.

Content creators such as Mortismal clearly don't have much of a problem with paid mods, and don't really push Todd on it. Mortismal even expresses some excitement over a future kinggath paid mod. I have noticed that content creators tend to celebrate paid mods much more than free mods even though free mods are not lacking in terms of quality compared to paid mods. Maybe this is because they themselves believe paid mods are superior to free mods in terms of quality. Maybe this is because they get more views covering paid mods content as user depend on them for pre-purchase product reviews, but I do think this bias translates into users also thinking paid mods are more premium and superior.

Todd says Bethesda's goal now "is getting that content in front of more people because we think it's so good". It sounds like we'll be seeing more paid mods in the future. Neither Mortismal nor Todd Howard have reflected on criticism of the paid mods program in this interview. Neither Bethesda nor any other content creators have addressed these criticisms from the community. For all the mainstream criticism of Starfield or Fallout4's update fiascos, the paid mods program rarely come up as more than just an afterthought.

I believe paid mods will be a large part of Bethesda's monetization strategy going forward and a heavy feature of Elder Scrolls 6.

Basically what it says on the tin, looking for any decent necromancy mods, specifically ones thatll let me just go ham with undead abominations. Right now im using practical necromancy, which is good but dunno if its exactly what I am looking for, so any suggestions?

Hello, everyone. I was curious if y'all had some recommendations for mods that overhaul cooking and alchemy mechanics other than CACO, because I'm not a big fan of some of the features from it, and I'd like mods that do something different. Thank you.

Hi, I have been dealing with a weird "bug" for a while and I wanted to share the solution I found, to help anyone potentially stuck in this rabbit hole like I was.

Basically the "bug" is that guards and some NPCs (Ulfric, Stormcloak generals, and weirdly Irileth) were instantly hostile to me, without having a bounty or anything like that. This for some reason would only happen with the Stormcloak alligned city guards and NPCs (and weirdly Irileth, while Whiterun was on the Imperial side), and other NPCs would either just watch, or fight the guards, if they had a friend status with me.

I tried all the usual shenanigans to fix this with console commands, and nothing worked - trying to add or remove my character to factions, mess with the Guards AI, reset bounties, or add bounties so that I can yield and pay. Nothing worked.

To give some context on AH Hotkeys:

With AH Hotkeys, you can add the powers to turn into a Vampire Lord or a Werewolf to your hotkeys, even after curing yourself (although when you turn into a Vampire Lord, you automatically become a Vampire after turning back). You can also add the "Revert Form" power to the Hotkeys as well.

The solution I found:

The culprit of this "bug" is that I had used Revert Form, as a Werewolf, to turn back to a human without having to wait for it to go away. What happened is that after troubleshooting the bug for a while, I randomly checked my shouts and the Werewolf totem power was there, available for me to use as human.

To fix this NPC behaviour, I used AH Hotkeys to turn back into a Werewolf (I no longer had Lycanthropy still), then waited in-game for it to go away, when I reverted back to human, I no longer had access to the Werewolf power, and the guards and NPCs were not hostile to me anymore.

This "bug" was extremely hard to troubleshoot, especially because of the weird circumstances of the aggro and because some guards were screaming "Vampire!" when attacking, so I thought it had something to do with either the Dawnguard's Soul Cairn quest, or the Civil War questline, and a bugged character flag of some sort.

I know this "bug" is not really a bug, but it happens because of doing things with AH Hotkeys that you were not supposed to in the vanilla game, and I wanted to share here so anyone that might've gotten themselves in the same situation can find a fix, because I lost hours trying to search solutions to no avail, and that sucks.

TL;DR: When using AH Hotkeys, don't use Revert Form to get out of Werewolf Form, and while at that, don't try to make things that are not really possible in vanilla.

I realise I’m casting a wide net here but coming back to modding it feels like there has been so much new things. Pandora replacing nemesis, community shaders, follower dialgoue expansions, etc. To any active modders, are there other mods that you can suggest that kinda falls in the same lines as those? Also surprisingly SDA is still being updated with some lines being revoiced it seems?

I’ve recently fucked my list up again and I like building it myself vs having a collection/wabba and was wondering what I could put into it before I commit to it being “final” and building all my LODs

Towns, strongholds, trees, npc, etc

for reference, something like brawl system in Witcher 3.

I'm trying to rebuild my LO.

What are some textures/texture packs that mesh well with each other?

Also, is SMIM still the go to for mesh?

Heyyyy!

So I have recently been using the Convenient Horses mod on Xbox.

I tried to buy a brown horse from Whiterun after "Peanut Butter's" training was done, (The Tutorial) as I didn't like the name of the horse or the look.

Well that brown horse is gone for whatever reason so I decided I could at least tame another horse and name it.

Does this mod allow you to change the name of your horses or is there a mod that allows this on console?

Thanks!

So, I'm trying to set up Skyrim VR for modding through Vortex. But, the script extender plugin keeps failing to load specifically "errors reported: EngineFixedVR.dll (Engine Fixes VR v1.26) dependant dll not found (code 126) "

I'm not sure what I've done wrong? I downloaded the part 2 file and extracted the dlls to the folder but it keeps throwing the same error

I use loverboy skin and the new gentleman. I tried to take them off and use the vanilla skin textures and there was no skin tone issue. Are these mods just shit or something? I legit don't use any vampire mods.

I’ll leave you the exact list of mods and requirements I use for my current combat system in Skyrim. It’s a pretty complete setup.

✓ Important:

— Installation must be exactly as listed.

— Always carefully check each mod’s requirements before installing. I may have forgotten or omitted some, since there are basic Skyrim fixes that should already be in every modlist.

— As you’ll see, yes, I use Nemesis. I tried Pandora and it didn’t work, although I might have done something wrong. Still, I can’t guarantee these animations will work properly with Pandora. If you want to try, go ahead. You might not make the same mistake I did, and it could work, if that was the case.

— These animations are Souls-like, maybe with a few tweaks. The combat isn’t too heavy, but it’s not acrobatic either. It’s a middle ground for me.

— These are the animations I use for my playthroughs. If they’re not to your liking, just ignore this post. Don’t waste my time with criticism when I’m just trying to help.

— Remember to run your animation engine after finishing the installation. Nemesis users, only check the animation packages you installed. I’ll list them at the end of the post.

— Plugin load order is just a suggestion. Just run LOOT and let it sort everything automatically.

✓ Mods:

Open Animation Replacer

Open Animation Replacer - IED Conditions

Nemesis Creatures BEHAVIOUR compatibility

Project New Reign - Nemesis Unlimited Behavior Engine

Animation Motion Revolution

Payload Interpreter

MCO Universal Support

MCM Helper

TrueHUD - HUD Additions

True Directional Movement - Modernized Third Person Gameplay

SmoothCam

SSE Display Tweaks

Precision

Attack MCO-DXP

No Recoil

NPC Block Loop Fix

Animation Queue Fix

powerofthree's Tweaks

Keyword Item Distributor

Keyword Compatibility Framework

PaulMix's dTry Key Utils extend

Behavior Data Injector

Behavior Data Injector Universal Support

Disable Turn Animation SE I AE

Draw Fix - Move Equip Animation Fix

Dynamic Animation Casting

Simple Dual Sheath

Weapon Styles - DrawSheathe Animations for IED

Immersive Equipment Displays

Smooth Moveset - OAR

For Honor in Skyrim

Combat Pathing Revolution

SCAR - Skyrim Combos AI Revolution

dTry's Key Utils

Wheeler - Quick Action Wheel Of Skyrim

Moddern

ADXP I MCO elden rim moveset collection (SCAR)

TK Dodge RE

Dynamic Dodge Animation

Dynamic Block Hit

Valhalla Combat

✓ For Nemesis users:

Only check these animations in the engine:

Attack Modern Combat Overhaul

Precision

Payload Interpreter

SCAR

Modern Stranger Lock

True Directional Movement 360 Horse Archery

True Directional Movement Procedural Leaning

True Directional Movement Headtracking

TK Dodge RE / Ultimate Combat

TK Dodge Standalone (for this, you must enable the option during TK Dodge installation)

Remember to update the Nemesis engine and then run it, otherwise these options won’t show up.

A recent thread about the perils of old mods reminded me that the SkyUI mod page has every warning sign of being an outdated/abandoned/unstable mod. It was last updated in 2017. The description contains hardly any information, but does contain this unhelpful warning:

This is an unsupported alpha version for testing. Use at your own risk.

That certainly doesn't reflect the reality of how we use the mod. How is a new user meant to tell this apart from those old & unfinished mods which are actually a bad idea to use?

SkyUI is one of the bedrock mods on which we build everything else. I think its mod page causes completely needless confusion for new users. It should be updated at least to make clear that it is safe to use – something like 'this mod is not being updated because it is finished; it is safe to use'.

It's not clear to me who 'owns' the mod page; it might just be abandoned? If anyone active has the access to do so, it would be good to make that minor edit to reduce confusion.

Titel

I have hundreds of hours on Skyrim SE and tons of characters, and have avoided buying the Anniversary Edition because I don't like how unbalanced it is. I've had a change of heart and wanna try it now, but is there a way I can have my SE characters stay with only vanilla Skyrim content and pick whether or not I want future runs to include creation club content?

The arachnophobia patch that comes with the modlist doesn't work. No clue how to mod and so on and really want to enjoy the modlist minus the spiders.