How to achieve the perfect darkness ?

[Blonde Travolta]

There are several good mods for darkness but comes at a severe cost for the sneak/combat oriented.

One major issue with realistic darkness is that it often breaks sneaking and even combat.

For if you are thinking that you are standing in perfect darkness around you, the NPCs seem to see you just fine and even the archers can pinpoint an arrow at you. Although it looks realistically pitch black to you, the Skyrim engine treats you as being daylight visible.

The engine is hardcoded around vanilla levels of light in dungeons and thus no matter how a mod overhauls the players' perception of darkness, the engine and the hostile NPC are not affected by the mods. They act as if it is vanilla darkness to them. This leds to frustrating combat experience with the darkness mods.

It is actually very difficult to mod darkness. Any suggestions ?

One way I know is to have a lantern so that when the enemy charges at you in the pitch blackness, you can quickly turn the lantern on so that you can see where he is exactly so that you can hit back. Otherwise the NPCs just have no problem pinpointing your location in pure darkness and slashing at you while you are pitchblinded and sitting duck. Like I said they even fire arrows. But have not found a solution to sneaking.

[ＳＨＡＤＯＷ２ＫＫ]

Never personally had a problem with sneaking in Oldrim or SSE, I can move like a ghost through enemies and they never see me till I want them too.

Vanilla or modded, still easy to sneak undetected imo.

[Blonde Travolta]

I have completely the opposite experience. Which sneak mod do you use combined with which darkness mod ?

[Blonde Travolta]

One way to fix this paradox with NPCs fighting in pure darkness as if it is pure daylight for them, would be to make them equip a torch when they come to scout and investigate the source of noise. This would be much more realistic. Plus the torch they bring would also identify them to you where they are located around you to start combat.

If it was animals doing that, okay they have smell and extra senses, but a damn bandid how the hell does he see where to swing in the pitch black ?

[StreamWhenGuy]

Check out Realistic AI Detection. From my experience it plays best with ELFX.

[Jpc1023]

Sneaking gets affected by many things namely your armor weight and sneak skill

[Blonde Travolta]

I know that. Vanilla has no pitch blackness so when you get detected from a distance it is realistic to be seen visually and therefore attacked. The problem is with the darkness mods which manipulate the player's perception making it look much darker. But hence arises the dilemma with the AI, it ignores the darkness and still charges at you.

[Blonde Travolta]

I don't like entirely pitch black mods. Sometimes the fun is finding the darker shadows and hiding in them. When everything is made pure dark around then it just eliminates the shadow spotting and maneuvering from as a stealth element.

I need something which is moderately darker, not overdone, but not as light as vanilla. I am looking into ELFX with Realistic AI Detection now, but am worried if ELFX is too PC intensive for my framerate.

What is cool is to have bright sources of light in dungeons, like a fire, or some glow source which casts shadows on objects like pillars. Then I can hide in the shadow of the pillar and observe the enemy from there.

[StreamWhenGuy]

Originally posted by obidogo:

I need something which is moderately darker, not overdone, but not as light as vanilla.

Then check out both Dungeons - Darker and Interiors - Cold (or warm) modules from Climates of Tamriel. I assume those just work with contrast and RGB levels from vanilla lighting, they don't add/remove light bulbs.

[Blonde Travolta]

I will look. The thing is that you cannot make everything too dark. Not everyone wants to play a thief and dislikes darkness. Might be a mage and then complain hey I don't see a freaking skit here I dont like it why this game so dark. And that would be valid complaint. So the perfect ways have to be with retaining reasonable levels of light but creating unique hiding spots and shadows that have a dark feeling.

[ＳＨＡＤＯＷ２ＫＫ]

Originally posted by obidogo:

I have completely the opposite experience. Which sneak mod do you use combined with which darkness mod ?

Never used sneak mods, vanilla sneaking maxed out works perfectly well imo.

Used to use Pure preset for RCRN for Oldrim, which was dark, and played with Darker Nights with RLO and a few others.

Hope you find something you can use and more importantly, have fun doing it.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Originally posted by obidogo:

I know that. Vanilla has no pitch blackness so when you get detected from a distance it is realistic to be seen visually and therefore attacked. The problem is with the darkness mods which manipulate the player's perception making it look much darker. But hence arises the dilemma with the AI, it ignores the darkness and still charges at you.

I've always been curious how "Sneaking" is even a thing in a game that has in-lore Detect Life spells that can be purchased for a few hundred gold. Surely every guard and miser would have it?

I've always been of the belief that high-level sneaking in these games should be contingent on the Illusion skill, especially against animals and other creatures with hightened senses. The ability to defeat those senses instead of just squat in a shadow makes a lot more sense at the high level of play. (Alchemy too if you don't want to go the magicka route)

[Blonde Travolta]

The bandits in the dungeons are over confident and been running their criminal business for years. They may have Detect Life but they are used to not being challenged in their dungeon so they are largely ignoring the thief threat. Until a thief arrives to visit them, it is already too late to cast Detect Life. You know...30x Sneak attack noone can survive that to cast Detect Life.

But your point is valid. What if the thief gets detected ? Then someone should cast Detect Life to reveal the intruder. So the master thief must never reveal himself even once. Must take them one by one in silence. Which is not possible in Skyrim as you often get detected and retreat to hide again.