I've been using this mod for my last few play-throughs and I think it is the best overhaul for the Bard's College. It's tastefully done and fits right into the game world. I ported it for my own use for SSE and wanted to come back and tell you how much I enjoy your work on this. I love the "Become a Bard" mod and am always looking for ways to expand on that theme. This mod really makes you believe that the Bard's College is a hub for art and music and culture in the most metropolitan city of Skyrim. Thank you for that!
Report: All lighting mods need patches, but some are barely noticable.
ELFX with or without enhancer need a patch for major issues like blank walls and windows behind fireplaces. Lighting looks great with your mod otherwise.
Shadows: I forgot how dark this makes things. I won't be using it. It really clashes with your cozy aesthetic, as it is very like a cold, very dark, wet castle aethetic. It does need a patch badly for things outside aesthetic.
Relighting Skyrim: Needs small consistency patch, but is playable as is. Looks good.
ELE Lite: Needs consistency patch. Almost playable as is, but for a couple of conflicts.
Realistic Lighting Overhaul: This looks the best in my opinion, which surprised me because I don't remember liking it this much. Needs small consistency patch.
Suggestion: Use the lighting templates from RLO (open permissions) to adjust the lighting, and set up your esp to override changes in the cell from other lighting overhauls, thereby negating the need for a patch. Just instruct to load after lighting mods. I'll consider making such an esp if you're interested. Message me if I don't respond here: I might forget, and this site doesn't notify me if someone responds to me in a post thread.
Major oversight on my part. If you load your plugin after any of these lighting mods, it's playable as is and in fact looks great with all of them including Shadows. They could still use consistency patches, but not because of your changes - because of the vanilla stuff your changes necessarily revert. And not because these are terrible things, but that the lighting mods make the vanilla oddities more obvious - the more drastic the lighting mod changes the worse. So for an overhaul like Realistic Lighting Overhaul, which tries to be complete in its realism, exceptions stand out. For Shadows, you still get the effects while keeping the vanilla lighting, which looks fantastic actually. ELFX with Enhancer looks great, but does emphasize the odd lighting placement of vanilla more than others.
Your mod looks great even with Vanilla lighting. RLO is best without ENB for great looking NPCs, if you have them modded. Shadows also looks great on NPCs without ENB. Not sure which lighting looks good with ENB as I am on potato.
One more thing: with Extraordinary Hags mod, the older NPC (forgot her name) has gray or black face because you changed her outfit. Not many people use that mod, I think, and I'll be forwarding my NPC mod visuals into a patch anyway, so mostly no big deal.
I've uploaded a version that removes the edits to Inge Six Fingers, that should help the black/gray face issue that you encountered with the Extraordinary Hags mod. And thank you for looking into the lighting, I haven't used many lighting mods myself so the information is very useful moving forward.
Oh thanks! I'll just use that esp then for my game and not worry about Inge. Sorry for the bad mistake with load order for my testing. I ended up running around with more than 10 different setups. I learned a lot by experimenting in college. ;)
The beds are all owned, I wanted to use them for followers, nevermind.... I have tried setownership and they won't use them. I'll keep looking for a mod.
Thanks for making this, I will certainly add it at some point. Never made sense to me that the player does not get a bed + container, even after the College is joined.
11 comments
I use either ELFX or Shadows. I'll try it out in game and let you know if I find they conflict. Maybe if they do I'll try to make a basic xEdit patch.
ELFX with or without enhancer need a patch for major issues like blank walls and windows behind fireplaces. Lighting looks great with your mod otherwise.
Shadows: I forgot how dark this makes things. I won't be using it. It really clashes with your cozy aesthetic, as it is very like a cold, very dark, wet castle aethetic. It does need a patch badly for things outside aesthetic.
Relighting Skyrim: Needs small consistency patch, but is playable as is. Looks good.
ELE Lite: Needs consistency patch. Almost playable as is, but for a couple of conflicts.
Realistic Lighting Overhaul: This looks the best in my opinion, which surprised me because I don't remember liking it this much. Needs small consistency patch.
Suggestion: Use the lighting templates from RLO (open permissions) to adjust the lighting, and set up your esp to override changes in the cell from other lighting overhauls, thereby negating the need for a patch. Just instruct to load after lighting mods. I'll consider making such an esp if you're interested. Message me if I don't respond here: I might forget, and this site doesn't notify me if someone responds to me in a post thread.
Your mod looks great even with Vanilla lighting. RLO is best without ENB for great looking NPCs, if you have them modded. Shadows also looks great on NPCs without ENB. Not sure which lighting looks good with ENB as I am on potato.
One more thing: with Extraordinary Hags mod, the older NPC (forgot her name) has gray or black face because you changed her outfit. Not many people use that mod, I think, and I'll be forwarding my NPC mod visuals into a patch anyway, so mostly no big deal.
I have tried setownership and they won't use them.
I'll keep looking for a mod.
Looks good and comfy!