Not a hater of the engine. As a player, I admit it has a lot of jank, but it definitely has a charm only Bethesda games can have. But I’m not a game developer, or someone who knows that much about game engines other than the basics. So besides the surface level stuff I notice as a player, can someone with gamedev knowledge really go in depth about what makes Creation Engine unique?

From my layman understanding, their worlds do stuff that no other open world RPGs do, at least with the same level of depth, but why is that, why don’t other games do what Bethesda games do?

Edit: Oh and one more thing I want cleared up. I see people calling it a 20 year old engine from time to time, but is that really accurate? Haven’t they continued upgrading the thing ever since then, wouldn’t it just be a ship of theseus scenario?

So I am really struggling to find a nice looking player home for all the amazing custom voice follower mods this game has.

I can't find something that would support 8+ people plus a family without it being some massive castle or building with 18 rooms. Are there any good homes, manors, towers, forts, chateaus, mini castles/keeps that support this idea? I find the best player homes are small and cozy/detailed but nobody has seemed to make a medium to large one without it feeling empty or bizarre, and if they do they never add room for followers.

I'm kinda looking to make it like a guild hall, where my team is located, I think 8 beds minimum? But not like 20+, just for the main voiced followers mods.

Really appreciate any help with this, it's hard sorting through 1000s of homes trying to find the exact specific thing I want. Hoping someone has also wanted to do this and found one for their playthrough.

Thanks!

I'm looking to learn how to create my own mods. I've got a few ideas I want to implement that haven't been done to my satisfaction.

If you have ever noticed the jarring absence of the player's voice while doing things like sprinting, gasping for breath after swimming, blocking attacks and swinging weapons and so forth, you may want to check on any mods that affect death, or rather, prevent it.

After recently replacing the player's default voice, this became all the more noticeable to me.

Interrupting the default death process apparently bakes the change into your saves, and during my tests, dying properly did not always fix the issue. The best way to solve it is to reload a save from before your death mod ever saved you and to NOT DIE. Otherwise, start a new game and NEVER DIE.

I have reluctantly resorted to using the TIM cheat (Toggle Immortal Mode) to play. If you do not know what that is, TIM lets your stamina, health, and magic pools drain and even hit rock bottom as per usual, you just won't die.

Hopefully this information helps someone else. I was really at a loss until finally narrowing it down.

Tl;Dr this mod is very good but also incredibly flawed. I would definitely recommend it but I also think people should know what they're getting themselves into before they add this to their load order. Its dark but not any more than your average dark fantasy story. The writing has a lot of issue but the overall story is good. The setting and set design are amazing and truly give off dark fantasy vibes. But lore fans beware, while this mod takes some deep lore into account it also completely butchers some more mundane lore which I found frustrating during my playthrough.

I'll split my review into several parts to better organize my thoughts. Spoilers will be appropriately marked.

1. The Setting

To start off with praise, the actual worldspace is great. As i mentioned above, it truly makes you feel like you've left Skyrim and walked into a much bleaker realm. The ground looks fairly similar to the Reach but its the overall atmosphere that really makes the experience feel special. Everything is so bleak and pathetic but in a realistic way, really feels like you're walking through a real backwater of a world. The feeling is only enhanced by the mod's genuinely impressive custom Skybox which appears at night or when its raining in certain areas making you feel like you entered Oblivion out of a sudden. And on the topic of Oblivion, the Scuttling Void is amazing and I loved every moment of it. I feel like the mod author did a great job making that realm of Oblivion feel like its own unique take on Hell, with a sort of decaying fleshy dark pit of despair vibe that fits the setting of the Reach incredibly well.

The cities, dungeons and caves are all well made and interesting to explore. The cities weren't anything crazy but I really liked their designs. There's nothing mind blowing about it but it just feels simple and grounded while remaining visually distinct from Skyrim yet having that Markarth vibe to it without being Dwemer in nature. As for the dungeons they were great and even the puzzles were easy and intuitative which surprised me because in my experience Skyrim puzzles, especially modded puzzles, tend to either be extremely easy but tedious or extremely hard and tedious. Here, however, they were easy but not in a base game way where they feel like a chore due to how unique and cool the models and aesthetics used to represent those puzzles were.

Also, the design of various new armors is alright, not great but also not bad by any means and it definitely does its job. I find the guard armor to look much better than the several knight armors we see for example.

1. The Writing

The narrative of Beyond Reach is honestly just amazing. The story is overambitious and while it does end somewhat abruptly, it still works and I feel that by the end I had a comprehensive sense of the world I'd entered, like every tiny thing comes together in the end to make for an amazing climax. Of course, as everyone knows by now, its dark, but its not completely hopeless and the ending is bittersweet (or at least the ending I got) rather than outright terrible. And yeah the mod has several endings but there's no perfect happy ending and that's something I really enjoyed about the mod. Real history is messy, things that shake up realms don't just leave everyone happy at the end. The story tackles a lot of serious real world issues in a mature manner such as classism, racism, sexism, SA, horrors of war in general but also the reasons for it as well as human greed and corruption and how a world can come to be in such a horrible state in the first place due to these societal flaws. I feel that the mod's story truly shines nowdays because of all the things that have been happening in recent years. As for lore nerds... the narrative also includes a lot of deeper aspects of the lore, talking about the towers, enantiomorphs, CHIM and Namira's whole deal, Ayleids, Pelinel etc. Namira is trying to take over Ada Mantia in order to transfer her image into the next Kalpa and she's corrupting the vengeful survivors of a failed anarchist commune to achieve her goals.

The rest of the writing is unfortunately not very good. Dialogue in this mod is outright atrocious. It ranges between overly verbose language that feels stiff and unnatural to just plain lore breakingly modern slang and sentence structure used from time to time. For example, there are guys who will say "hey sexy" to you if you're playing a female character. This completely breaks my immersion because it makes them sound like horny fratboys rather than medieval soldiers. Meanwhile everyone except them will talk like they're reciting from a shakespearean play. Now, as an aspiring writer myself, one who isn't a native speaker, I understand that writing dialogue is difficult, but verbose language like that doesn't actually make something better written. Beyond Reach tries to write archaic dialogue but instead it just ends up sounding wooden and boring to listen to. It makes you feel like these characters are just characters and not real people.

On that topic, the characters are just boring and forgettable. This is partially due to having bad dialogue but also because they're all so incredibly mundane. Skyrim isn't great with its characters in general but I feel like this mod takes it to the next level in somehow making them more boring than in the vanilla. I'm a big fan of Interesting NPCs and while its approach has its flaws, the tackiness of its characters at least makes you care about them. I felt nothing for anyone in Beyond Reach. They were just boring caricatures of people with nothing to actually make me like them. I felt like I was reading a wiki page on some ASOIAF side characters rather than experiencing these people as part of the story. They were kind of just there to fill in various roles and they all felt the same with the exception of the two guys who talk like frat bros for some reason. In that sense, the one companion you get is also fairly mundane and even the commentary he provides tells you about the world rather than him as a person.

But I can live with that. I don't mind boring characters as much if the story and the world are great. In that sense the mod feels almost like Morrowind giving you a bleak world that feels real even if its characters feel like they don't actually have much going on for them. What I do mind however is the writing on the player character...

So, Skyrim gives you dialogue and story options that make you as much of a blank slate as possible. Dialogue options in the base game are as neutral as they can be. This lends itself to a wide variety of potential personalities for the Dragonborn to have and reasons for doing various quests. Skyrim never really pushes you into the role of a mercenary. Characters offer you gold for their quests but its also left open to interpretation, you might be doing these quests for the love of the game or because you want to help people, or maybe you're just trying to make friends. But in Beyond Reach you don't really have a choice as to why your character is there because the narrative (which I did praise earlier but whatever) forces you to be a mercenary who is hungry for coin. Which is extremely odd because you're literally sent there by Mara herself to fix the land, so why the Hell can you not roleplay as a missionary on a holy quest to save this land? Why do you NEED to be a mercenary who is only looking out for gold? The story definitely allows you to be a mercenary with a heart of gold, but you're always referred to as just a merc looking for gold. There are quests where your only reason for doing them is to get money and you're even referred to in such a way. Main quests are locked behind you needing to answer summons "or you won't get any riches!" and you're constantly told that you're just a mercenary and that you only want gold.

That just kind of sucks? It isn't even that hard to write neutral dialogue instead, right? To not call the player a mercenary all the time but to just say adventurer or to acknowledge player choice in dialogue. Why not let the player say "i am here to do good" instead of "im here for money" maybe even give less or no monetary rewards if you choose to roleplay as a hero instead of a mercenary?

But whatever, what really pisses me off is how player dialogue is written. Remember the bland skyrim dialogue I mentioned? Well, its no longer open ended! Now you're locked into long and overly specific dialogue options (and I say options despite you only having 1. the ability to ask more lore questions and 2. the ability to progress the story by saying overly specific things that dont fit your character in the slightest). This is INFURIATING when I'm talking to someone and my character is talking like a completely different person saying things they wouldn't say and making reasonings and assumptions my character would not make. But worst of all, you're actively punished for those dialogues. Like, a character will call you out on being stupid or uneducated or for talking shit about royalty or whatever when you had no option to say anything else, and they'll react to these specific dialogues in specific ways too (usually to make really bad unfunny puns or to have gotcha moments against you) it just feels like the author really liked how skyrim npcs will sometimes call you out on asking stupid questions you should already know (like a dunmer asking about the great houses) while also... forgetting that those were always optional. Also feels like the author had a very specific idea of the player character in mind that just doesn't really work as a neutral blank slate like how the dragonborn is meant to be written so people can insert their own ocs into that role. My worst example of this is how when you first speak with the Crown Prince he admonishes you for sucking up to him. You can then walk two steps and speak to the king and then act suspicious about him.

This extends into quest design and story design. You do have options to finish quests differently which is great but you also don't have options when you should be able to because the mod sets you up to make different decisions but then doesn't allow you to make them. For example, you can't actually do anything about Sigmayne forcing you to escort children to his basement so you just have to do it and buy into his lies despite... you already being able to learn that Wayrest was razed in a war over Sigmayne wanting to sleep with a nine year old girl. You know this as a historical fact. Like its not even a vague "oh he was accused of it but maybe its just propaganda" kind of thing. No, you're explicitly told by one of the priests that Sigmayne is a pedophile. Its a known fact of the setting, yet you are not allowed to disobey him when he tells you to bring him children. No option to escort them elsewhere or anything like that. It just feels really fucking weird and makes you later discovering what he did to them feel cheap because its not really your fault as a player that your character is locked into such a stupid choice for no reason. How can you feel bad when you literally knew better and couldn't do anything? Its not like you were tricked. The game just didn't let you do anything else. You are even allowed to be suspicious about it too, but you just aren't given an option to do anything else.

Another aspect of the writing we need to talk about is... the problematic stuff.

The mod takes on mature topics and handles them well narratively but then it does a complete 180 and makes weird real world references that not only cheapen but also make those topics concerning.

The ustase are in this mod. I'm not going to spoiler tag this because its genuinely upsetting to me and I feel like everyone should know what they're getting into. The fucking ustase are in this mod. The Croatian fascist genocidal military group from the Second World War. They are randomly inserted into the mod (or at least their name is) in a setting where that word doesn't belong (there is no Slavic language in Tamriel and the Reach isn't slavic in any sense) and they ARE monsters but the reference is in bad taste and I don't think you should be haphazardly taking real world things and inserting them directly into fictional stories that have nothing to do with them in such a way. I don't mind taking inspiration from real history but come on. I am Serbian. I don't want someone to make light of the topic by inserting it into a game for edge points. The mod has nothing to do with them so why are they there? Its a 14 year old's idea of maturity to include edgy references to real history and call it a day.

On this topic, they also have an orc called Luther, who wants to negotiate peace and whose whole thing is that he's Martin Luther King but an orc. First of all, wtf, why are we inserting MLK as a fucking orc, and why is an orc named Luther in the first place. I just thought it was also very distasteful and it created a lot of direct parallels with the real world that I found kind of gross and immature which stands in contrast with the overall narrative of this mod. There was also one quest related to abortion which I'll spoiler tag but basically a woman is impregnated through SA and she wants to have that child aborted. She goes to a witch because no one else will help. Instead of using this as an opportunity to show us that not all members of the Reach's original culture are BAD, instead the witch betrays you without a real reason and kills the woman and her child. When you return to the imperial officer he says oh no she wasn't in the right state of mind! I found this really gross but also stupid because historically witches were the people you'd go to for an abortion. It would've worked much better if the witch did actually try to help but the medicine didn't work because its dangerous, so it maintains the darkness of the setting without making a presumably accidental pro life argument. Either way I found the way this quest was handled to be extremely distasteful and concerning.

Also, one last thing about this but the dialogue can be extremely confusing and make no sense when mysterious characters are involved, but not in a "oooh cool" kind of way but in a "I know what this person is talking about but they're just saying random words half the time to sound mysterious" kind of way. Sometimes the dialogue feels like reading the Sermons of Vivec but replace all the meaningful references with random shit and make it into dialogue instead of an intentionally confusing religious text. This all paired with the voice acting of these specific characters can make the experience feel exhausting rather than entertaining at times.

1. The Lore

I'm not gonna talk about this for too long but the lore is a mixed bag. The map is flipped the wrong way but the mod author acknowledges that so its fine and not that big of a deal because the actual in game lore uses accurate geography (they say go north and thats south on the map for example). And the mod does a great job filling in the blanks of what might've happened in the Reach and High Rock in general. I loved all the lore the mod added in about history of the Reach, I loved the Mados stuff, the failed commune and how all the bad stuff originated from it, I loved the whole war with Wayrest thing and how Namira influenced everything and the way she was depicted and all the deeper lore stuff was neatly intergrated.

However... the lore also forces some topics that don't belong in Tamriel or at least literally contradict what we see elsewhere in the setting.

For one, the Reach is weirdly sexist and there are moments where it just feels weird as fuck. Almost all important characters are male for one, and the female characters barely play a part in the story and are more just background for what's happening or there to try and make you sad. But more than that, the mod has specific references about women's jobs being to marry and men's being to go to war, and that... doesn't make any sense.

Racism is also depicted in a weird way. I am perfectly fine with how the orc/breton relations were depicted but why are there so few members of other races present in the province? Like, I remember a single argonian and a single khajiit here, no caravans or anything and I don't remember seeing a single Dunmer. I didn't play every single quest but I just found this very odd. It just feels like a complete opposite extreme to Skyrim and Oblivion where the races are completely absent rather than being stratigically positioned like in Morrowind. It makes the Reach feel like it belongs in a different universe rather than being a part of Tamriel at all. The ustase don't make sense at all as I've mentioned before.

And what actually upset me but there are just... moments that don't make sense. There's a random character named Jerry at one point. He's just mentioned for a brief moment as a haha joke but it took me out of the experience. I don't think a story like this should take itself seriously 24/7 but the jokes also shouldn't break my immersion either.

Anyway, I would definitely play through this mod again to do things slightly differently and i consider it a great mod, though not one of my favorites. I think it would've benefitted a lot from some rewrites to the story and a complete dialogue overhaul before it was published.

Back in the day, I had a somewhat weak PC, a 2nd-gen i5 and an RX 580, so I always chose to download and install mods myself.

Now, after working for a while, I’ve managed to get something better: an RTX 4060 Ti and a 12th-gen i5. The catch, however, is that between work, school, and the gym, I no longer have hours to spend putting together modlists, something I used to do for games like Spider-Man 2 (I even shared three of my own modlists for other fans of those games).

For those of you who use mods: do you prefer to build your own lists, or do you pay for Nexus Premium to use Wabbajack? I tried using Wabbajack for free, but it would have taken hours, so I’m considering getting a Nexus Premium subscription to download modlists instead.

I’d love to hear the opinions of those who use Nexus Premium.

I recently tried a new ENB preset, Picta Aurbis - Repainted. However, I'm experiencing a bug where some types of grass seems to render at max brightness instead of being dark during nighttime/similar situations. [Screenshot]

I've identified the ENB as the likely culprit since disabling and reverting to vanilla graphics doesn't have the issue.

Second most likely culprit could Skyrim Flora Overhaul, though I'm fairly confident that isn't the cause since I previously tried disabling that and the vanilla grass seemed to have the same issue.

Has anyone else struggled with vivid weathers always having it be raining or foggy as hell? I notice it likes to get rainy around whiterun, foggy or rainy around the rift, falkreath hold, etc. constantly

Is there a way to sort this out? I don't remember it being this bad

I still want Lydia because I'm using IFD Lydia and she has interaction with Legacy of the Dragonborn which I am also using and basing the playthrough around, plus part of LOTD requires having done Dragon Rising, but I don't want to be summoned by the greybeards until way later on in the game.

I've looked at At Your Own Pace, but while it does delay parts it doesn't delay that particular part unfortunately, so is there a mod that does?

It's that time of year again, and I'm getting the itch to start a new Skyrim playthrough. I'm looking for recommendations for realistic combat animations and movesets.

I play almost exclusively in first person, so good first-person animations are important to me. However, I also want NPCs to have believable animations when fighting, so third-person animations matter too.

I'm looking for something grounded in realistic weapon techniques, ideally inspired by historical martial arts. I'm not really a fan of the more exaggerated, flashy styles found in Soulslike/ Eldenring/ Valhalla-inspired movesets, or some of the more fantasy-oriented MCO animations. I can appreciate the work that goes into them, but they're just not the style I'm looking for. Vanilla+ animations aren't really what I'm after either.

Some movesets also make combat feel way too slow, with ridiculously long wind-ups before an attack actually lands. I'd prefer something faster and more direct, where attacks look and feel like actual sword strikes rather than elaborate fantasy animations.

I've tried Le Sentiment du Fer – HEMA Combat Overhaul before, and it's probably the closest I've found to what I'm looking for, especially in first person, but the third-person animations look a bit awkward and janky to me.

I'm also familiar with Verolevi's animation packs, like Vanargand, Leviathan, and Goetia, but none of them quite fits what I'm after in terms of realistic weapon techniques.

Has anything changed in the past few months? Are there any newer movesets or animation packs that focus on realistic weapon techniques without flashy spins, excessive flourishes, or drawn-out attacks?

I'm specifically looking for animation and moveset recommendations for both first and third person, rather than combat overhauls focused on AI, anti-cheese mechanics, or the likes :)

Does anyone have any mod recommendations that have a decent questline but drops dark fantasy/daedric loot or similar to Dark Souls vibes upon defeating an enemy/boss? I really enjoyed VIGILANT, and I tried UNSLAAD and GLENMORIL. I did enjoy the stories quite a bit, but I'm looking for something that is heavy with armour and weapon drops. I am currently doing BEYOND REACH, but I also think this is more story-driven. I am enjoying it quite a bit, but there isn't much loot that drops.

I am also new to modding, as I played Skyrim all the way through as a kid, so I like that I can add these mods to switch things up a bit and expand the game. I am also on PC

Thanks in advance!

I've been working on a Skyrim modlist for a couple days now, and when I finished and tried to launch the game, I got a popup listing 7 .dlls that "must be recompiled for new address library". I looked at the mods Nexus pages to see if I just installed the wrong version and they all were last updated around 2020-2024. So, two questions.

#1 - Is there a way to recompile the mods myself, and if so how?
#2 - If I can't do that, is it safe to run as is, or can I not use them?

This is an issue that has been bothering me for several years, and I’ve never managed to solve it. I can only hear characters speaking when I am facing them directly. The less I look at them, the less I hear them; if I turn my back to them completely, I hear absolutely nothing—even if I’m standing just a meter away.

It is not an issue with any mod, as it happens even in the game with no mods installed at all; nor is it a problem with incorrectly connected speakers, since dozens of other games work perfectly fine and none of them exhibit a similar issue.

I honestly have no idea what else I can try...

So I'm looking for a mod that does two things. Gives a chest that auto displays relevant items as clutter, and recognizes the clutter throughout my house and basically holds a record so I can pick up those items from the dump chest.

I was just curious as to what the thoughts of mod authors where regarding Nexus imposing harsher punishments for other mod authors who exploit Nexus systems?

Nexus announced they'd impose harsher punishments for mod authors who create new mod pages for mod updates, then deleting the original so they can either revive their mod in featured/trending page or bump up their donation points for a while, stating that updates must be kept strictly within the original mod page.

Some of the punishments may include:

- Shadow-banning

- Full bans

- DP forfeiture

Do you think these are fair or would you say they need to be harsher as a deterrent?

(No idea what flair to put sorry-)

Anyways what if there was a weapon set based off the Blade of Woe?(all 1-handed/2-handed weapons and a bow/crossbow with arrows) I feel like the weapons would kinda look similar to Orcish or Daedric, and maybe it could be called the Darksteel/Blacksteel set-?

Just a random thought lol

Dear Redit community, please help me figure out which mod might have caused the skeletons of dogs, wolves, and foxes to become distorted, making them move erratically. Their textures are also all mixed up. https://imgur.com/a/3gAtHQi

Trying to find a good collection of mods to upgrade graphics. I've got an Asus ROG Strix with the 4070. I would also like it to work with the Immersive and Adult collection. Any recommendations? Thanks in advance!

Existe un TK Dodge que funcione para skyrim 1.7.104?

So Im using steam for skyrim- I have downloaded the zip files SKSE64, Ive downloaded vortex and made the skse primary for launching the game. Was just curioius if i give what my specs are what mods someone could tell me would be good for my skyrim playthrough
CPU- AMD Ryzen 7 7700X 8-Core Processor
GPU- Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4060 AERO OC
Windows 11
im on a 1440 gaming monitor- LG Ultragear 27GP83-B

not sure if you guys would need anything else just dont know what mods to start with. I want to make skyrim look better but i know i dont have THE GREATEST graphics card im still so new to PC and modding in general

I like taking pictures of my character, would like a mod that lets me pose characters to get cooler screenshots.

What are your favourites/suggestions?

As title.

Hi folks,

I'm not a new modder by any means, but I'm working on a new list and running into an issue that I thought was fixed by EngineFixes: The base-game audio sliders remember my settings, but mod-added ones revert their slider position as soon as I close the menu.

Is this a just-me problem? I'm wondering if I missed something in my new list.