No. I regularly get one-shot by enemies with SkyRe on Expert. And sometimes I one-shot them.
Bateau
1842
Maybe at high levels, in the first few levels it was even worse than vanilla when it came to killing speed. That’s not difficulty, it’s tedious gameplay. Vanilla had this exact same issue on Master difficulty, in the beginning you did so little damage that killing anything other than a regular bandit took forever, around levels 25-35 it was balanced and after that it just became so stupidly easy that I almost stopped playing.
godhugh
1843
Whether you want to use the color and lighting features of ENB, it’s worth it to setup just for some of it’s extra features. Things like Detailed Shadows, Parallax Mapping and, most critically, ENBoost can make an amazing difference. ENBoost is a function that allows Skyrim to fully utilize your VRAM and system RAM, helping to eliminate crashes from high-res texture packs. You can download an ENB preset that uses the vanilla color scheme (like SkyRealism ENB) or ENBoost standalone if you just want these features.
I’m using SPERG on my current playthrough actually. It’s very, very good. The automatic perks are fun and the revamped ones add some really interesting elements to the game. It really encourages you to practice and level up skills you may not invest any extra perks into (like Speech and Pickpocketing, for example).
The only caveat is that it will make you overpowered, so you need to balance it with some difficulty mods. Here are some of the more recommended (* next to the ones I’m using currently):
High Level Enemies (scaled or normal version) *
Organized Bandits in Skyrim *
[url="http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/24913"Skyrim Immersive Creatures *
[Deadly Dragons](http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/3829) *
Dragon Combat Overhaul *
Duel - Combat Realism *
Enemy AI Overhaul
Using these, along with Extensible Followers Framework, makes from a pretty awesome gameplay experience. Me, two of my housecarls, and my dog are roaming the countryside fighting some pretty epic monsters, bosses, and dragons. With some tweaking it ends up very well balanced.
If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, check out Skyrim Revisited.
what’s the current view on ugrids adjustments? I’m surprised it doesn’t seem to get much focus (any?) on that comprehensive site, as view distance is by far the most meaningful change to enhance the game.
I’d be interested in thoughts others might have on this as well.
godhugh
1847
The consensus is don’t change it. The newer LOD mods and view distance tweaks largely eliminate the need to extend the uGrids setting. I’m sticking with the default in my current game and, honestly, it looks just as good as if I had it at 7 and crashes much less often.
On my system, ugrids 7 never crashed, but I only explored about half the world in that playthrough so I’m worried about the effect it might have on larger game save files.
What newer LOD mods and view distance tweaks do you suggest instead?
godhugh
1849
uGrids starts to cause crashes when you begin loading in extra monsters, NPCs, etc (Immersive Creatures, Inconsequential NPCs, Populated Roads, Immersive Patrols, and others). I use a lot of those kinds of mods because I feel they add a lot of life to the game.
LOD mods:
Enhanced Distant Terrain 2 - Trudgement Day
HD Enhanced Terrain
High Quality LODs
The Skyrim Distance Overhaul
I suppose you could increase uGrids safely if you don’t install any mods that add new actors to the game. Personally, however, I don’t like adding that element of instability into my game, especially when you can safely use mods to accomplish nearly the same effect. Plus, I love the mods I mentioned above that add new actors to the game and those definitely kill the game when you increase uGrids.
Don’t increase ugrids. It’s just asking for trouble, and you won’t know when it’s going to hit. I’ve been lucky in the past and been able to successfully roll ugrids 7 back to 5 in a game to stop crashes, but the key word there is lucky.
It make the game look a lot better, but it’s basically russian roulette.
Where you also using mods, MrPerson? I’ll probably still play vanilla.
Some of those look pretty cool - thanks for the links.
Yes. However, you can run into trouble with increased ugrids even in the vanilla game. It’s really all luck. You could also get through a heavily modded increased ugrids game without any persistent crashes. It’s just less and less likely the longer you play. If you wanted to bang through in under 40 hours, I’d say you have reasonable odds of doing so with ugrids 7.
Once a game rots though, that’s pretty much it. Games can rot for a LOT of reasons, ugrids is just one of the most dangerous of “simple” tweaks.
The game also has trouble areas, where ugrids changes are more likely to bite you because the areas themselves are already problematic. The wilderness around Riften is a complete mess (low framerates even in vanilla, stuttering, broken navmeshes, messed up scripted events, etc.) The area just south of the bridge into Windhelm seems to be a frequent problem area as well, and can get itself stuck in a persistent crash state that increased ugrids makes more likely.
I think ugrids is mostly risky because of a combination of the increased resource use (not just memory, but things like in-game reference counts which may have artificially low limits) and because it just exposes you to more scripts running at once, and Skyrim scripts are kind of a mess. Just the act of having more cells active increases the risk that something is horribly wrong in one of them. On top of that, the script engine can freak out if the load gets too heavy. That’s more a risk with modded games, but there are vanilla scripts that are a complete disaster.
All that said, the game looks so much better at ugrids 7 than 5. I mostly notice the difference with the level of detail on waterfalls, which pop in and look horrible at ugrids 5. If you’re willing to take the extra risk, it’s going to look better. Even if things go wrong, you can sometimes salvage the game by going through the steps to revert ugrids to 5. I just don’t find it worth the risk if I’m planning to play a long game.
I see a lot of posts on skyrim forums along the lines of “my rig should be able to handle ugrids X” that completely miss that the issue isn’t hardware, it’s the game engine itself. It’s just not stable above 5 (not that it’s really all that stable in the first place) because Bethesda doesn’t test anything other than the default ugrids, and they don’t really care if a higher ugrids value causes problems.
Appreciate the detailed info. I did put in more than 200 hours previously at ugrids 7 without any crashes, but it sounds like a single experience shouldn’t necessarily be extrapolated into concluding it’s safe. I did not spend much time around Riften, for instance. I basically explored the entire southern half and most of the eastern half (but not as comprehensively) but little of the NW.
I’ll start with 5, I guess, and if it really bugs me I’ll either gamble or try some of the other mods that improve appearance. I am heavily biased towards vanilla though, but this may be an exception since I’ve already played through a lot of that world. I haven’t played any of the expansion areas though.
Yeah, I don’t want to give the impression that ugrids 7 is going to always lead to crashes. I played a heavily modded 80 hour game of it just fine because I’d FORGOTTEN I had left it at 7 back when I was playing unmodded (since at release it was about the only thing you could do to make the game look better). It’s just that it’s one of the highest risk things you can tweak, and it’s painful because if you’re using a “reasonable” value like 7 you can run a long way before it bites you, if it ever does.
If my plan were to run around Skyrim for a few hours just to experience how awesome it looks, I’d certainly increase it. Even with the increased risk of corruption it tempts me, because it does look better. It’s just so damned painful when a long running playthrough becomes corrupted.
godhugh
1856
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this mod:
SkyFalls and SkyMills - Animated Distant Waterfalls and WindMills
It solves the waterfall problem very, very nicely.
I actually did a ton of playing with ugrids at 7 as well.
One thing though was that there were a number of very interesting, very neat-looking mods that simply didn’t work with ugrids at anything above default (5). One was some kind of neat war in Skyrim thing that I was disappointed not to be able to play (it had too many npcs for a ugrids 7 setting). Sounds like a lot more mods are like that, and are worth playing.
I’m going to give it a shot at ugrids 5.
I’m about to get a new video card that should be able to run this @ 2560x1600, but I’m daunted by re-installing all the STEP mods. I really wish there were a set it and forget it way to do those updates…
Did we mention ‘Skywind’ yet?
https://www.youtube.com/user/SkywindGame
http://morroblivion.com/forums/skyrim/skywind-mod-releases/3323
I don’t know the details (like did they put back all the skills stripped out since Morrowind?) but there are links on those pages for more info. Personally i’d love to play the whole series in one seamless game, but yeah these kind of projects are one step in that direction.
Skywind is looking impressive, but it’s basically still an alpha and just the world at the moment. A lot of standard functionality still isn’t working, let alone adding back in skills that were in Morrowind but not in Skyrim.
