A Skyrim remaster is on its way later this year, but SureAI's five year-long pet project has suitably satisfied my appetite for an Elder Scrolls-like sandbox adventure for the time being. Enderal isn't without its flaws, but it's easily one of the very best total conversion mods ever made.
As for the official game, the Skyrim remaster launches on October 28 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. If you are playing on PC and own the base game and the DLC expansions, this upgrade is free. In addition, the remaster will allow console players to use mods, so it's possible (although probably unlikely given the mod's size) that Enderal could come to PS4 and Xbox One. Recently, Bethesda VP Pete Hines stated that the developer is aiming to make the remaster as "next-gen as possible". Keep an eye on GameSpot for more about the remaster in the coming months.
Skyrim Mods Like Enderall
Anybody familiar with the modding community for The Elder Scrolls games, and especially Skyrim, is likely to have at least heard of Enderal. One of the most well-known and ambitious mods for Skyrim, Enderal is a total conversion mod which has been available for a couple of years now. Now, Enderal: Forgotten Stories is available for free on Steam after a long wait; until now, the mod has only been available externally.
- Before you'll start modding. Disable Steam overlay, Afterburner overlay, add Skyrim to your antivirus/firewall "white list". Disable all possible overlays, "boosters", "tuners" programs you may be using in general. All of them can and most likely will screw up your modded game and/or it's many settings. - Also, make sure to disable autosaves in SkyrimPrefs.ini (set bSaveOnPause, bSaveOnTravel, bSaveOnWait and bSaveOnRest to 0). - Do not use any CC (Creation Club) content. All CC mods have better (and free) alternatives available on the modding stage. I won't be able to provide troubleshooting support if CC mods are used due to possible bugs and compatibility issues. - Follow the guide slowly without a rush. If it's written here to limit your fps using enblocal fps limiter - do it, and don't use and third-party software for it, and so on. You got the idea. Also, never have Skyrim installed in Program Files. If you have it there - reinstall it on another drive, or at the same drive, but out of Program Files folder. Lastly, it's heavily recommended to disable game autoupdates in Steam.
1) Download and install mod manager. Choose between Nexus Mod Manager (use the .exe file), Mod Organizer 2 or Kortex Mod Manager . All 3 of them are great mod managers, each with something own to benefit player. I personally use NMM. What's the difference? NMM is "simple yet effective". MO is a mod manager packed with tons of cool features, mod manager on steroids if we can say so. Kortex is something in between, more similar to MO, but has own pros and cons over it (look here for comparison). Almost all mods can (and should) be installed via mod manager. Do not install mods manually. The guide contains notices regarding some exceptional cases when you'll need to install some mod/part of mod manually, but for the 99.9% of cases - always use mod manager. You may also find these NMM tutorial, MO2 tutorial and Kortex info page useful. Extra note: If using MO2, make double, triple sure you have watched the tutorial linked and know how to use it properly before asking for troubleshooting support :) IMPORTANT NOTE #1: Kortex mod manager was tested by myself for working properly - I liked it, just don't personally prefer it over MO2 or NMM. Also, it's not quite the most popluar mod manager, so it lacks usage tutorials, and you'll need to learn how to use/troubleshoot it yourself. Due to the same reason, I won't be able to provide Kortex troubleshooting support in Discord - but once again, it's a great mod manager and you should be absolutely feel free to try it. IMPORTANT NOTE #2: Nexus Mods team is currently developing new mod manager called Vortex. It's looking pretty fancy visually, but sadly, it's still very glitchy and pretty dysfunctional. I won't be able to provide any troubleshooting support if you're using it as it's not suitable for modding games like TES or FO. My advice atm is, if really want to, track it and test it by modding some other games with much simplier modding stages. Do not use Vortex to mod Skyrim. Once again, DO NOT USE VORTEX TO MOD SKYRIM. Yes, this note still applies for 2021. If it will be fine one day, I'll let you folks know.
2) Download and install SKSE. If you allready have it - great. If no - install it. It's obligatory. SKSE is [essential]. Stability mods are also working through it, as well as vast majority of amazing gameplay mods. Consider it a basic invisible evolution element of Skyrim. Make sure to download the correct version! 1.7.3 is for Skyrim LE - you don't need that at all now. If you have [exactly] the Skyrim SE version of the game (1.5.97, you can right-click on the game .exe file and see the version there) - get SKSE for 1.5.97. If you're on AE (it's still named Skyrim Special Edition in your game library, it's the .exe that differs) - get the current AE version, and VR version for VR. Download the archive somewhere, unpack it. From the folder, get the .dll, .exe files and \Data folder, and place them to your Skyrim SE/AE folder, as showed here. MO users should archive the \Data folder and install it as any other mod trough MO (you can do the same in NMM as well if you wanna). From now on, launch your game only via SKSE (skse64_loader.exe), not the game regular launcher. A general note about SKSE-based mods and what to do with them. Situation with the SE ==> AE update is different from those SE updates in past. Why so? Thing is, the problem with past SE updates was basically pretty simple and related only to the game version update itself, which was fixed by Address Library mod (further in this section). For AE, huge amount of SKSE functions themselves were changed or deleted, so for most of SKSE based mods to fully and properly work in AE, most of SKSE mods code will need to be rewritten by its author, on some scale - from just a few lines to possibly a complete rewriting from scratch, depends on the mod. That's why AE modding stage will need more time to recover then it was usually taking for SE updates in past (if ever). Remember that alternatively, you can simply mod LE for your current run, as it doesn't have this issue to begin with - and for the another run, some time will pass, and AE modding stage will be most likely recovered by then. What does this mean for those modding AE now and wanting to use SKSE-based mods? Simply look on every such mod page Files tab - if the mod is already updated for AE, there most likely will be a separate version of it, with an indication it's for AE - so, you'll need to install the AE version of the mod. Similarly, if you're on SE (not updated to AE yet) - when downloading an SKSE-based mod, make sure you're downloading the SE and not AE version of it. That's it!
8) Install SSEEdit. It's an awesome tool for cleaning your mods, making changes to mod records (like balancing various values up to your taste, deleting conflicting and/or unneeded objects and so on) and more.Mods may contain "dirty" records and some other issues, and when you have hundreds of mods, that could be a problem and cause crashes. Clean all mods that have dirty records (until it's directly written by mod author to not do that for some reason) and all Skyrim's DLCs (which have [hundreds] of dirty records. Yeah - Betheshda didn't even bother to do this for the game "remaster"). Don't be afraid of it, it's not as hard to use as it may look. Check these awesome video tutorials about it. Also there is a lot of info and videos on its Nexus page. Note #1: Make double sure to clean all base game master files (Update.esm and all 3 DLC .esm plugins) - otherwise you'll experience random crashes. Note #2: MO2 users can (and it's pretty much recommended to) download and use zEdit as an alternative. zEdit is like a successor to xEdit - but please take into account though that it's still a WIP (work in progress) project. If you're a newbie modder - better just stick to xEdit (SSEEdit) now as it's absolutely fine. zEdit may provide better functionality than xEdit, but it's still not fully stable and there are not as many video tutorials for its usage as for xEdit. It doesn't mean it's bad - quite the opposite, but until it's officially and fully released, I won't be able to provide troubleshooting support for it - so use it at your own wish. There's a basic documentary and description of it here, and short but great video tutorial here.
10) Download zMerge (highly recommended) or Merge Plugins. Yes, Merge Plugins is hosted in Skyrim LE sections and yes, it does work with SE absolutely fine. At the other hand, zMerge (it's a part of zEdit) works just fine with all mod managers, no just MO2 (big thank you Euphemia for once pointing me on this). You will need this if you'll make really heavy load order and reach the 255 plugins (.esp) limit. By merging mods, you can technically have almost endless amounts of mods installed, so you will be limited only by your PC specs and mods themselves (meaning no using broken/dangerous mods and not overloading your game with script-heavy mods). These tool (once again, zMerge is recommended over Merge Plugins) easily merges plugins into one .esp file, drastically decreasing the total amount of plugins and allowing you to install more and more mods. But why zMerge over Merge Plugins? Simply said, it's more powerful and will allow you to merge more easily compared to Merge Plugins tool. For A to Z simple tutorials about using zMerge or Merge Plugins, watch these tutorials here (for Zmerge) and here (for Merge Plugins). Note: But what about .esl'fying the mods? It's allegedly a cool feature, so maybe we don't need to merge mods at all anymore? There is a bit more about that - indeed, marking plugins as .esl is a new alternative way of not reaching the 255 plugins limit, but: 1) not all the same mods you can merge can be esl'fied, so sooner or later, you'll eventually need to merge mods anyway 2) esl/ified plugins have some specific bugs 3) Some other mods, especially mods with dynamic patchers (like ASIS, Bashed Patch etc) simply don't recognize .esl plugins [AT ALL], meanining that if you'll, let's say, have 200 esl plugins, and then build a Bashed Patch (which is essential for any medium-to-heavy modded game), all the changes/additions, whatever those plugins are doing, will be not present in your game with utmost chance, making them meaningless to begin with. The sooner you'll learn how to merge mods (guide provides assistance with this), the better it will be for you - moreover, as soon as you'll get the basics, you'll see there's nothing to fear at all :3 SOME mods are fine to be used as esls, and if for some of the mods/patches you're using there's no alternative asides of the esl version of its plugin - install it. The explanation/solution to this will is mentioned in the end of the guide. 2ff7e9595c
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