Speaking of looting and such, I just installed a couple immersion mods, Frostfall, Wet and Cold, and iNeed, and holy crap, I am pretty much unable to loot anything. Between the tents, cloaks, heavy food, axes, wood, leather etc, I have to leave almost everything behind, or risk not being able to start a fire and dying. It's fun, but I decided to turn off fast travel, and when you get a quest like in the Thieves Guild line, that requires you to go from Winterhold to Markarth, I want to kill myself IRL. I have tons of gold though, so that's nice. Had I played with these mods from the start+a higher difficulty, this would most definitely challenged my patience.
To me that just doesn't seem fun. I don't want to spend more time looking for food or trying to setup a camp site, than I am doing quest and actually exploring. I mean it might be fun to goof off with, but I don't think it is something I could do for an extended period of time.
Well, I can say this, after about 30 hours of game time with these mods installed, I have deactivated them, and reverted to an earlier save. This is not to say that I don't see the merits in these mods, and they work pretty well together and provide a decent amount of immersion, it just didn't suit me
Speaking of looting and such, I just installed a couple immersion mods, Frostfall, Wet and Cold, and iNeed, and holy crap, I am pretty much unable to loot anything. Between the tents, cloaks, heavy food, axes, wood, leather etc, I have to leave almost everything behind, or risk not being able to start a fire and dying. It's fun, but I decided to turn off fast travel, and when you get a quest like in the Thieves Guild line, that requires you to go from Winterhold to Markarth, I want to kill myself IRL. I have tons of gold though, so that's nice. Had I played with these mods from the start+a higher difficulty, this would most definitely challenged my patience.
To me that just doesn't seem fun. I don't want to spend more time looking for food or trying to setup a camp site, than I am doing quest and actually exploring. I mean it might be fun to goof off with, but I don't think it is something I could do for an extended period of time.
Well, after about 30 hours of playing with those mods enabled, I had deactivated them and reverted to a previous save. This is not to say they didn't work, and that I can't see the merits these kinds of mods have to offer, but after giving them a fair shake, it became apparent that in this playthrough, what these mods bring detracted from my experience.
Frostfall is a great immersion mod, and combined with Wet&Cold it makes for interesting gameplay choices, but even after lowering the rate of exposure I found it was very difficult to find a rhythm while playing the game and going from one objective to another. It does make you find shelter, and go into caves, barrows, and forts that you may have otherwise ignored, but to me, that in and of itself can be immersion breaking. If I have to travel for a quest from Windhelm to Winterhold with some expedience, having to stop every ten minutes of in-game time before dying seems kind of silly. Not to mention having to wear a backpack just to be able to carry the tents and firewood, and axes needed to be able to stave off the cold. For this playthrough, I want to accomplish a lot, so stopping every few hundred yards in a snowstorm kills it for me. If I were RPing as a hunter, or an outdoorsy type of rogue, I could see how this would be awesome.
As for needs and disease mods, I used two, and split the time evenly between Realistic Needs and Diseases, and iNeed. RND was really cool, and made things like hunger, thirst, sleep, and diseases something that was always on your mind, and the implementation was pretty damn good. Gather water from a stream then boiling it over a fire to make it drinkable was brilliant, and worked flawlessly with realistic water two, the diseases weren't something you could play with for two hours and go, "Oh hey, I've got Droops!" and not have noticed, but they did seem to happen after every encounter, and I felt as if my nord was a little sturdier than that. iNeed was far simpler, and has nice potential, You have to eat 2-3 times a day, and drink when you're thirsty, and sleep when you've been out and about all day, so it worked as intended.
it just seemed like with all of these mods enabled, by the time I found a place to camp, set up my campfire, my tent, found wood, found water, boiled water, drank water, ate food, and slept, I needed to repeat the process all over again. My time was split 50/50 between playing the game and gathering resources and setting them up. Sure, you could just gather up what you need for a long journey beforehand and set off, but after 2-3 hours with no fast travel, mild combat, and some exploring, you needed to do it again to subsidize what food/water/fire implements you have left. Not to mention you have very little room for other things like loot, other weapons to have fun with, books (I collect them), etc. I think with very low stamina, and lowered carry weight, it would be challenging to start the game this way.
All of that being said, there is a certain satisfaction in being in a vulnerable position and building a fire and putting up a fur tent, and then going out hunting, bring what you have back, and cooking it up. If played this way, it's pretty cool. The most fun I had was when I would carry the least amount of supplies that I could, and I would try to make due out of my surroundings. I might try it again when I make a new character, but I will likely adjust my time scale, and allow myself use of carriages, mild fast travel, etc. just to make my experience a little more streamlined.
& When you're out of Magicka equip a staff & war axe to add to the RP aspect of things. I also recommend the spell binder armor mod on the nexus, perfect battlemage armor set.
