Modding Skyrim is the real game

I have had such a huge problem with 'modding the game becomes the game' that I've set myself a challenge where I can only add a mod after completing a quest, forcing me to actually enjoy the game and not just endlessly mod it.

I can relate HARD.

I've been working on mine since I upgraded to playing Skyrim on PC a YEAR ago. I had a laptop break on me and switched to a desktop in that time span. Sometimes I make it long enough to even try a quest mod. Forgotten City. Clockwork. Initially I had no clue how to run Dyndolod. Gave up on it. Then I found a tutorial video that explained it and tried again, and it worked. In this time frame SKSE and especially animation mods have worked on the latest version of Skyrim, been broken, and worked again.

At one point I decided to switch to a joke playthrough. I shuffled through a lot of stuff, but when I settled on my humor mods, that was the furthest I made it. Did a couple LotD quests and went through like half of The Wheels of Lull. I really liked the writing on that one, although I cheesed some frustrating layouts and bosses in the last part I did with a grappling hook mod and a mod that let me summon a non-offensive swarm of chickens. Keeping those. But before the next stage could trigger, I petered out. I. . .I think I might have gotten fed up with Nazeemic, a mod that spawned Nazeems in the leveled lists, which only got really out of hand at the level I was at? And then I wanted to try The Great City of Winterhold, but OH, NO! A couple of my joke mods were incompatible, and no one made patches! So I went back to planning for serious roleplay. Partially. And since I felt all of the LotD and Lull quests started too early, I downloaded a patch for LotD and kicked Lull's quest start levels up massively in xEdit. Did the same thing for The Forgotten City and Clockwork, too. Hopefully that doesn't break anything!

And of course the graphics and overhaul mods. Initially resisted on most of them. But the switch from laptop to desktop made me curious just how much of a power upgrade it was. I installed one or two at first. Happy Little Trees was one I really wanted. Dyndolod for it wasn't working for me for months and I gave up on that too, but I very recently discovered it was some really stupid user error. Fixed it. I also installed a couple of The Great Towns because they expanded content. Shor's Stone. Karthwasten. But after seeing The Great City of Winterhold, it became an addiction. Endless mesh, texture, and town replacers ensued, and are ensuing. My PC storage is starting to creak.

Enhanced Solitude in particular was a real head-scratcher. When I tried it on my laptop, it was broken in all sorts of ways. It added a replacement torch mesh without a texture. Entering the bathhouse crashed my game. And of course, the reported lag was true for me as well. But after seeing The Great City of Winterhold, I cautiously decided to try again resolving to investigate further since I'd learned to better read crash logs, and despite it being the exact same file. . .none of these things happened? My laptop was just weak enough that it somehow caused all kinds of chaos. I still made a personal patch deleting some of the extra NPCs, though, just in case. And a couple decor items I subjectively didn't find aesthetically pleasing. And I'm thinking of making another at some point to add Sweets and Such items to the bakers, or at least the baker on the street since his inventory is sad. Considering the perms, maybe I could even upload them if I feel satisfied enough.

I remember drawing on top of a meme in anticipation of Xelzaz 1.7. I'm now planning to tell myself "OK, NOW I'm done for sure" when Xelzaz 1.10 comes out.

It's always something.

. . .

Haven't seen a yak shaving mod, but there is a cow tipping one, BTW.

Yes I have it installed.

Same, I've been at it for a few months too. I've lost count of how many times I've had to re-run all the tools and patchers... Nemesis, Synthesis, Dyndolod... some manual patching in xEdit and oh look, a new mod! And this mod just updated, and this one too... here we go again

Yeah. Same boat. I spent 6 months building my last mod list, playes it for 2 months, then found some new mods that looked great and found out i didn't like some of my original choices, and have been building a new modlist for the last four months. Testing and patching as I go.

The good thing about EasyNPC is, after you do it once and figure out how it works, it gets faster and easier.