Re: Maigrets Skyrim Album

[Maigrets]

Currently I'm only using a heap of texture replacers, including the Xenius Character Enhancement and other textures to make males look younger and not so weather beaten. I prefer the natural look of the NPC's, (with a few minor tweaks) and I personally think Bethesda did a very good job with faces. I don't have much problem creating a good looking character even though I play mostly in 1st person and don't even see her much except when I want to take a screen shot.

I'm not even using a body mod yet and may not bother depending on future armour and clothing mods as I also think the vanilla body is very good. I'm probably in the minority there but when I loot a body I can't really see what the issue is with the vanilla bodies. I could elaborate on that but I won't except to say I don't need or want a Barbie doll or fashion model heroine. I did use HGEC (EBE) for Oblivion and Robert's male, but no-one could say those vanilla faces and bodies weren't just ugly and scary.

Other than that I'm using SKYUI, Categorized Favourites and a few tweaks like the awesome NoNPC Greetings which in itself has just about saved my sanity. Oh, and Lost Art of the Blacksmith and Weapons of the Third Era. At the moment I'm just enjoying the game mostly vanilla, but I'm sure that will change later.

Anyway, my first character is Tukassi, a Khajiit, level 54 with 207 hours played and still to finish the last part of the Main and Companions Quests. She specializes in sneak, archery blade, destruction and thievery. A couple of days ago I started a Nord warrior, sword and shield, heavy armour and little magic. I must say since I played Age of Conan obsessively for months before Skyrim was released I find the warrior type very enjoyable and a lot easier and I'm thinking I may have to up the difficulty as even at level 10 I can take down most things with little problem on Adept.

These shots are mixed scenery, some character ones and random stuff. I'm also using Slof's textures for the dogs, sabre cats and horses.

As I said in the other thread here I'm using full size images so I apologize if you prefer thumbnails but it's my preference.

Early shot with Lydia. I ditched her pretty quickly as I couldn't stand her complaining.


Nightingales


My horsey... Slof's textures.

[Maigrets]

[Maigrets]

Horse thievery


Mammoth Caught In Ice


Ice Cube...Baby!


Majestic Sabre Cat


Protector of the Word

[Maigrets]

Mountain View


Nice Spot for a Picnic


New Character...Storm Cloaks Rule!


Poor Faendal looks sad. Being dragged through a dungeon Full of Draugr will do that... I'm sure he wasn't expecting that when I asked him to tag along for awhile. When I get a few more levels with this character I'm going it alone with my horse and dog as it irks me no end that companions can't ride horses. Not to mention I get sick of being in the middle of a trap when they set it off, among other things.



Warming our boots by the fire at the Stumbling Sabre Cat. It's in one of the forts after we took it from the Imperials.


Horned Helm

[anohosikara]

Khajiit and the screenshot of the dog are very good!
Is it a dog of Daedric Quests?

[Maigrets]

Khajiit and the screenshot of the dog are very good!
Is it a dog of Daedric Quests?

Thanks. I haven't done the Daedric quest yet with this character, but all the dogs have the same textures until the CK is released. That dog is Vigilance. He ended up costing me 1000 gold as when I did the werewolf quests he went back home and I had to buy him again. If it happens again I'll go and pick up Meeko when I get to that part of the map. He's free and needs a good home..

It was worth it though because I did have Faendal as a temporary follower for a few early levels and he decided it was a good idea to go hostile on me after a Thalmor attack and nothing I did would fix it. I ended up leaving him behind and he eventually went back to Riverwood with all the gear I gave him to carry. But, I couldn't get it back either because he reverted to pre-follower status. Luckily he only had ore and some things I can replace eventually. I'm going it alone now with my dog and horse and loving not having to worry about glitchy companions. It just means having to organize my inventory better and make more trips home.

Ironically, one of The Companion quests was a rescue mission and guess who was the hostage at a Forsworn camp? Faendal. I should have left him there. These quests are Radiant ones and the hostages are random, but I thought that was payback.

War Horse.



I haven't finished the Companions quests with my Khajiit, but my warrior Nord is now a werewolf. Vigilance isn't that impressed. He thinks we are now cousins.



I waited until I was out in the wilderness to transform after the initial change in Whiterun just to see what was like. I just came out of a dungeon and didn't realize I was close to a fort so I was chased down by Storm Cloaks. I'm on their side so I reloaded after this...plus I changed back just at the wrong time and they saw me.

[Fessels]

At least their family did not need to spend gold on flowers, plenty to go around there.

[Maigrets]

I'm using the Deadly Dragons mod and it's getting scary to leave the city. Not really, just kidding but trying to get a good screen shot is proving difficult in the panic trying to stay alive. I will get some though.

Anyway these are two of Sigrid for the time being.

Blue Haze


At the puzzle door. The lighting in this game isn't much better than Oblivion at times for taking good shots. It looks great in game but not so much outside.


Electrify the cat.

[Fessels]

Yeah with Deadly Dragons you do not have much time to think...hey now this would make a great screenshot. Let alone that you can think to disable the HUD and/or use tfc 1.

A important reason for having no time to think is in my screenshots thread...just one though.

[Maigrets]

Actually what I used to do in Oblivion was go into God Mode, disable the HUD and tfc and then spam the Print Screen key. Sometimes I ended up with a 100 shots and one or two decent ones out of them all. I like action shots more than pics of characters...not that characters are boring but there's more to the game than portraits.

Not wanting to insult people as I know many use these games as an art form and some don't even play the actual game at all.

You can also use the tai (toggle AI) command on NPC's to stop them in their tracks in attacking or other action positions. Just click each one when it's in the right frame. Or at least I think it still works in Skyrim. I haven't tried it yet...only just remembered it myself. I remember doing that with the road runners in WAC.

[Fessels]

I guess it is possible that some people do use it as an art form. Nothing wrong with that i think but if they do not play the game like you and me then i think it is a shame of a sort. Oh well their loss i say.

As for TAI, i think that command still leaves npc's and creatures movement.(They stay in place but look around and such?) But tfc 1 stops Creatures and NPC's in their tracks, but things like sound and flowing water continue to play and move. If you think that a attacking creature/npc is doing something cool then hit the console and use the "tfc 1" command.

[Maigrets]

I'll give that a try. I really want to capture some of the dragon attacks if I can remember to do it when I see one. Even with Deadly Dragons though I'm not getting many, but enough to activate the shouts I actually use.

[Maigrets]

The Headless Horseman. This is the first time I've seen him and if you follow he leads you to something nice. It's easier if you have a horse but I managed on foot even after stopping to kill sabre cats, bears and bandits. He waits for you if you get too far behind.



Takedown - The red shader is because my Katana is enchanted with Damage Health.



The Sacrificial Cow. First time I've seen this as well. A farmer is leading a cow to the giants as a sacrifice and he tells you why. I saw him leave it and the giant take it away, but the giant didn't want me anywhere nearby.



This is a bit dark but a rabbit got himself caught in the ground trying to get up a slope so I took it's picture. It looks like I'm holding it by the neck, but I'm not. It stands up and looks around and does a couple of other little idle animations.



My character has had a makeover. Still using the vanilla body though for males and females. I can't really see anything wrong with them.



I have a love hate relationship with Bethesda games. For awhile now Skyrim has been stable except for a few CTD's here and there. Tonight however it has some kind of huge crash in a cave and from then after I cannot save without it crashing. Did all the usual things...generated new ini's, verified the cache, reinstalled video drivers (because Fallout NV also had a crash that caused driver errors,) disabled a couple of new mods etc, etc. I was able to get it to save via the console once after removing all other saves except an earlier one, but that didn't last long. Anyway, I guess I'll get it sorted one one or another, but I hope I don't have to start over again.

Sometimes I wish I never got into rpg's, especially Bethesda's. I seem to spend more time troubleshooting them than playing and it really gets old after awhile.

[Fessels]

I like the one with the rabbit in the front, almost as if your character wants to say..."Do not worry rabbit, i will not hurt you."

As for the headless horseman...shjees a lot of people have met him already, but in 219 hours of Skyrim i have not met him once. But the sacrificial cow on the other hand, i have seen that one enough times. Then again i do use Plutomans PISE and CorePC's Skyrim Creatures Alive mod so those two could be the reason for that.

[Maigrets]

I'm definitely going to give PISE a try after reading the description as it reminds me of OOO for Oblivion and I never played without that mod, and later FCOM.

[anohosikara]

Time to touch it in MOD is longer than I play a game. The game of Bethesda is mysterious.

[Maigrets]

This is my new character Sonje, a Nord warrrior. I've got hi res leather textures since so the armour looks better since I took that picture.

[Fessels]

She looks really good.

But i have to ask, is that the light which makes her skin look like that in this screenshot?

[Maigrets]

Yes, it's the light, and I think the shadows unfortunately. I may have to look into ini tweaks or something to make shadows or reflections look better.

Edit: Actually it turned out to be dirt. Don't know why Bethesda allowed a choice of clean face with no dirt and left the body textures with dirt. I've since found a clean body texture on the Nexus which is very good.

[Maigrets]

Outside Riften I approached an Orc stronghold and they were fighting a giant, two trolls and a couple of wolves. I think that battle must be scripted because I've been there before with my other characters and they were fighting the same enemies.

Anyway, after we finished them off, I get the three hired thugs coming down the road after me, AFTER the Skooma dealer stops me to ask if I want to buy. We dispatch the thugs and I see a huge shadow pass overhead. It's getting towards evening now.

Much to my surprise it's a ghostly dragon and it's HUGE. Not only that, it summons skeletons and breathes icicles, not just frost. It was a long fight, but the one remaining Orc, Marcurio, Meeko and I finally killed it. I think I saw the Khajiit drug dealer have a go with his fists as well and he also survived. The dragon was just called Blood Dragon, but it was obviously an upgrade. That's the hardest dragon I've fought so far with Deadly Dragons.



On the ground


Also near Riften yesterday we killed another dragon, but it was just a default one.

Giving a pep talk after the dragon died. The guards are taking notes for next time..


The traveling trio. Sonje, Marcurio and Meeko.