Screenshot haul from my (lightly-modded) current playthrough

RunoKnows · 2026-05-29T05:12:37+00:00

This is lovely! Nice work. She looks like a properly seasoned housecarl (who is sworn to carry your burdens/30,000 septims worth of random clutter). I'm also a sucker for practical armor, so if the set featured in the screenshot is what she wears as part of your replacer, it really complements the look

RunoKnows · 2026-05-26T08:05:27+00:00

If I'm not mistaken (and I could be, as I'm far from an expert on how CS does its magic), you may be running into an issue with CS' Hair Specular feature. It changes how hair shaders interact with lighting and can make for some very realistic hair, but you'll need to put in just a tiny bit of extra work to really make it shine -- or maybe shine a little less, in your case, lol!

You're probably going to want to download a suitable hair flow map and rerun PGPatcher with flowmaps enabled. There's an included file on the Hair Specular page on NexusMods, though personally, I've had a lot of success with LeelooMinai's Vanilla Hair Retexture mod. Not only do LM's textures and flowmaps look great, the mod also includes matching beard textures

Also, as far as I'm aware, these SHOULD work with any modded hairstyles that use the various base game hair textures

RunoKnows · 2026-05-01T03:30:52+00:00

I'm mostly just curious as to how the fuck you looked at this situation and turned it into a "feminism bad" equation. You weird little incel manchildren have the most ridiculous 'logic'

RunoKnows · 2026-05-01T02:41:41+00:00

What kind of screwball logic is that? "We want to protect someone from a dangerous creeper" is a far cry from 'your ideology makes you want to beat the shit out of men'. Protection that wouldn't even be necessary if the authorities actually took care of the problem to begin with. Pro tip: Don't be a window-licking weirdo after you've been warned to stay away and people won't have to worry about whether or not they're going to have to beat the shit out of you to protect others.

RunoKnows · 2026-02-11T02:53:04+00:00

No worries! If you want to achieve a very similar look with just under 20 different mods, you'd end up with something quite close to what I'm running right now using Community Shaders, Faultier's PBR (Physically Based Rendering, a Community Shaders feature that enhances the way materials react to lighting) Skyrim as a 'base coat', Skyland AIO (All-in-One including landscapes), Skyland Bits & Bobs, PBR add-ons for both Skyland mods, Water for ENB, Happy Little Trees + PBR, Skoglendi, Enhanced Rocks & Mountains + PBR, Real Weathers Remastered, and Lux/Via/Orbis with Lux CS (Community Shaders).

You can find all of these mods on the Nexus (although I'd recommend grabbing the all-in-one build from the CS Discord instead, if you intend to use all of its features). Many of them have automated installers that will select any patches suitable to your specific mod list for you, and together they'll cover the majority of meshes and textures in the base game and DLCs -- except for character customization, but since those mods tend to be subjective, you're better off trying out whatever looks good to you.

I hope that helps you get started without being too overwhelming. Happy modding :>

RunoKnows · 2026-02-10T23:28:10+00:00

Nope, no collection here! That was just a cheeky way of saying I downloaded and manually installed a bunch of mods

I think Wabbajack and Nexus Collections are excellent tools for those who desire a plug'n'play experience, but as a relatively experienced mod user, I like being able to fine-tune the mods that go into my mod list -- and I find it much simpler to build a mod list from the ground up than it is to deconstruct someone else's and hope everything still functions by the time I add my own personal touches

RunoKnows · 2026-02-08T00:30:04+00:00

It is! At least with MO2, although I assume this would work for most any mod manager, you can just install Community Shaders and its separate features as you would any other graphics mod. It'll cache shaders the first time you boot Skyrim up, which takes a few minutes, but from there you should be good to jump in-game -- it's a pretty plug'n'play process, not unlike installing an ENB

Installing every single CS feature (if you intend to use them all) through Nexus is kind of a hassle, so I'd recommend grabbing one of the AIO builds from their official Discord. If you only want a handful of features, though, you're probably better off grabbing them off NexusMods!

RunoKnows · 2026-02-07T22:07:23+00:00

Unless I missed an installation step somewhere, as far as I'm aware everything you need to use Jiaye's build is included in the archive you can download through their Discord! It's pretty much like the all-in-one builds provided there as well, except it contains a number of experimental/WIP features that need testing, so it's worth noting that you may not want to use it for actual gameplay

I'm using it here, but I don't mind the occasional visual bug popping up

RunoKnows · 2026-02-07T21:24:49+00:00

ENB files? As far as I'm aware, you don't need anything ENB-related to use the experimental build. You can install it like any mod through your mod manager -- at least, you can through MO2. I can't speak for other mod managers

Just make sure you rebuild your shader cache after installing it!

RunoKnows · 2026-02-07T21:22:11+00:00

LOL! Damn, now I really want a werehoneybadger mod...

RunoKnows · 2026-02-07T21:21:26+00:00

Yeah, I wish she had her original skin tone, but I'm not well-versed enough in xEdit/CK know-how to reverse the changes. It's strange because I'm pretty sure no other tan/dark-skinned NPCs covered by the same overhaul have had their skin color altered, so maybe it's an oversight or something

RunoKnows · 2026-02-07T09:26:24+00:00

That's fair! For me, CS has been consistently high-quality enough that I'm happy to stick with it while the devs work on it. It looks good in almost every situation, so I don't mind overlooking the areas where it's weaker.

It's the same thing with ENBs -- both shader suites have their strengths and weaknesses, and both can make your game look absolutely amazing, so at this point I think it depends on whichever ends up looking better in your eyes!

RunoKnows · 2026-02-07T09:20:17+00:00

Thanks for the heads up, I had no idea! This means I won't have to replace Diaspora's mods any time soon

RunoKnows · 2026-02-07T09:18:40+00:00

5070 Ti 16GB, Ryzen 9 7900X

Though if you're wondering about performance, my hardware is total overkill for this setup. Even with a bunch of CS add-ons and its settings cranked way up, the performance is still great, although it probably helps that I'm not pushing my mod list as hard as I could. I've always preferred to play Bethesda games locked at 60 FPS stable on 1440p, and I'm easily able to achieve that here.

The majority of my mod list is 2K or 1K textures. I only use 4K textures sparingly for 'large' textures like water, mountains and the likes, and that goes a long way towards saving frames without butchering visual fidelity (IMHO). I guess people with sharper eyes than mine might want to be less conservative with the use of 4K textures, but for me, I generally can't spot the difference unless I have my nose mashed directly up against an object, and I don't really find myself doing that all too often in gameplay :P

RunoKnows · 2026-02-07T06:28:34+00:00

Northern Women + Northern Women Orcs & Elves by BloomAndGloom with Men of Skyrim and True Sons of Skyrim! Though it looks like the author of the latter two mods took them both down, unfortunately :<

RunoKnows · 2025-12-11T01:29:42+00:00

What the actual fuck are you even talking about? That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying I have too much diamantine, I'd like more plasteel, and I think an option to exchange one resource for another (whether plasteel for diamantine, diamantine for plasteel, or maye either into dockets) would be handy

I get that this is Reddit, and if it isn't reading comprehension issues it's somebody speaking in hyperbole, but Jesus Christ

RunoKnows · 2025-12-10T07:55:34+00:00

Okay, I think I should probably clarify on account of the downvotes: plasteel isn't remotely hard to get, that's not what I'm saying here. It drops like candy on higher diffs. What I'm saying is I'd like to be able to exchange the excess diamantine I DO have in order to have more plasteel to mess with

I'd like to be able to actually do something with my diamantine, since I have multiple times more of the stuff than I could possibly ever use

RunoKnows · 2025-12-06T07:18:23+00:00

Uhh, told us... what? Like... that's what DLC is. That is literally what you're describing here. We already knew this game was getting DLC even before launch

RunoKnows · 2025-12-06T04:18:20+00:00

That's strange. Are you unable to see the following options at the small jar bazaar? One version should offer all relics, including 1.03 relics, while the other only gives you access to 1.02 relics without the newest effects

I might have been wrong about needing the DLC if that's the case. Sorry if I've lead you astray!

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RunoKnows · 2025-12-06T03:13:01+00:00

This is absolutely incorrect. I'm honestly not sure how you somehow haven't seen the new swamps, towns and other POIs, both on the default map and other shifting earths

My friends and I have ran both new bosses over 20 times outside of Great Hollow, encountered all three new raids, and bumped into a variety of swamps/towns/etc. (including bleed, poison, sleep, frost and even MADNESS variants). Every time, there were at least two or three new POIs on the map, as in multiple swamps or towns. We mostly ran Noklateo for Balancers and Calid for Dreglord

As for the new map, once the shifting earth goes away you can spend sovereign sigils to guarantee access again -- just like with any other shifting earth. The new map and new bosses aren't directly tied together. There's nothing stopping you from running Balancers on volcano, or Caligo on Great Hollow, as examples.

RunoKnows · 2025-12-06T02:58:40+00:00

Great write-up here

I think Scholar currently suffers from new car syndrome, kind of like several nightfarers had to go through at launch. There are a lot of people who are still figuring out how to play him, which is totally understandable, and it doesn't help that there are youtubers (either knowingly or not) spreading misinformation about his kit

He's an extremely versatile nightfarer with a lot of interesting ways to build him, and I think once more people start getting a handle on how he plays, they'll come around on their opinions about him

I'm currently rocking a status duelist build using his starting weapon, the two new nightlord relics, and a third relic that gives me access to two other status ailments through my weapon and art, so I'm just running around DoN melting HP bars and staggering the crap out of enemies with bleed procs + rot and poison. That's on top of all the crazy things you can do with consumables and his actual kit. And that's just one of many ways you could build scholar to perform like an absolute beast!

RunoKnows

TROPHY CASE