Returning to Skyrim SE? Here are some questions I have.
Returning to Skyrim SE? Here are some questions I have.
I heavily customized Skyrim until it kept crashing. Most changes were just cosmetic. Eventually I gave up. I realized my account still has Skyrim SE even though I don’t recall purchasing it. Probably it was included as a free bonus for anyone with the game. Is it worth trying without visual tweaks? The visual enhancements are noticeable but not drastically better than the original. It seems to use more than 4 GB of RAM, so you might need to adjust settings or use a lighter version. Script extensions aren’t necessary unless you want extra features. For safe mods, Vortex works well as a replacement for the original manager. Any advice on using it?
Skyrim SE was available for free to its owners, which makes sense. Installing SKSE via Steam is likely what you were thinking. Vortex serves as the mod manager. The graphics remain similar to what I remember, though the main change is that SE runs on a 64-bit engine with more than 4GB RAM. I've heavily customized mine both visually and with gameplay features. Perhaps it's just my luck—I've discovered SE mods tend to be more stable and less prone to crashes, even though most of the mods I use are from the original Skyrim version. Vortex is quite simple; just use Loot to arrange your load sequence and you should have no issues.
SE offers improved character lighting while LE has better landscape illumination. To run many mods in LE, I used ENB/ENBoost to manage VRAM and SKSE for the Sheron Memory Patch. Without them, my game would only last about 5 seconds. With SE, I don’t need those tools. ENB/ENBoost doesn’t include an executable for VRAM handling, and I mainly use SKSE for character mods. If I had to choose, it’s still LE, but mostly due to the effort involved. I stopped modding Skyrim LE in 2016 (started in 2011) because it kept crashing, but in 2018 I reinstalled with all mods and it ran smoothly on a 2080 Ti. The issue turned out to be hardware-related, not mod incompatibility.
You can easily enhance Skyrim without causing issues. I managed to install 150 mods. I haven’t played the SE before.