I'm looking for simple populating mods

[lupus_hegemonia]

Hey there.

One of the major thing the game suffers, is the... emptiness. You traveling here and there and you meeting very few people all over the region.

I tried Steve's (smr1957) idea, to add a lot followers to "populate" the Skyrim region, but it needs a lot work in xEdit, because a lot followers mods having issues, bad cell records, etc.

So... I'm asking you to tell me which "simple" populating mods I could check.
I know for long time that "Populate Skyrim" series, but suffers from issues. I want something newest, some mods that adding simple NPCs here and there; like the "More Kats" & "More Argonians", which I so love these two mods...

Any suggestions?

[Docsprock]

I have a couple I use in nearly all builds:

Adventurers and Travelers - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4560
Adds people on the roads/inns that can be interacted with.

Immersive World Encounters - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/18330
Adds new encounters with some interesting characters. (The wizard/thief girl with the french accent is hilarious).

Friends in Skyrim - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/553
A useful mod that adds several NPCs that can be hired as followers and some that act as merchants. I have had this mod since Oldrim days.

Travelers of Skyrim - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1973
Adds a bunch of roaming merchants and mercenaries throughout the land.

As you can see, I like a populated world. There is never a dull moment while using the roads.

[Quevik]

DAMNED, NOT DOOMED eredeti hozzászólása:

Quevik eredeti hozzászólása:

Could you be more specific please?

No problem at all. Immersive Patrols is somewhat notoriously known for being unstable.
https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimrequiem/comments/4kpb84/immersive_patrols_stability_discussion_thread/
This guy does a great job of explaining the issue most have with the mod and why he had to uninstall it.

My game of 300+ hours never had any issues at all with any mods, including Immersive Patrols. No CTDs or anything...then, further into my playthrough, Immersive Patrols started causing CTDs like crazy.
As for Populated Lands...
Many have random CTDs as stated in that post, yes, but I also noticed there was a consistency specifically in my game with them sometimes that wasn't random- unlike others: when NPCs from Populated Lands were spawning nearby. It made the issue much, much worse. Which is strange because the two mods should be perfectly compatible with each other otherwise and were for the entire play-through up until the random CTDs.

But there is something to note:
Immersive Patrols is safe to remove whenever. So there's no harm in trying it out if you really want to. It's safe, just buggy. Hell, it only gave me problems after hundreds of hours into the game. So even if it works at first that doesn't mean there won't be stability issues down the line.
Immersive Patrols was one of my favorite mods. Top 5. The battles were always really entertaining to watch/fight in.
Such a shame, really. I thought it was getting along with my game just fine. I had to head back to my home in Riften to wait 11 days indoors.

Thanks for the info!

One of the reasons i was asking was that i always used IP with battles version. (IP was actually one of the first-ever mods i installed like 8 years ago). I always loved it (especially the battle in the falkreath riften valley).

But i decided to nix the large battles this time around (The civil war is more of a cold war in this mod list until i actually start the quest). Anyway, after a ton of testing of other mods, i realized i was almost never seeing the actual patrols.

And since i've got populated roads, travellers of skyrim, and npcs travel i felt like IP was just nostalgia at this point.

While the post does seem a little bit of heresay (And focused on the LE version i think)... it does line up with some crashes i have had myself. I'll go ahead and skip it this time and see if things seem more stable.

Appreciate that extra nudge towards this decision :)

[FauxFurry]

Inconsequential NPCs and Citizens of Tamriel are my recommendations as it adds fully voiced NPCs who do not necessarily have full quests to engage with but change along with player choice to add more interactivity to the world in a somewhat realistic way.
Even if the Dragonborn is a deity incarnate, not everyone will go to them with all of their problems to solve.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/29069
(Inconsequential NPCs will need to be ported by the user but the patches are all available on the Nexus for Special Edition)https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/36334

[lupus_hegemonia]

Thxs a lot all your suggestions.

[258789553873]

Here's my 2 cents.

I've never heard of Immersive Patrols causing crashes. Looking at that thread on reddit, it would appear the issue is mainly caused by a conflict with requiem. I will say though that anything that adds new spawns to the game can cause crashes. Apparently there's an issue where if two actors spawn in such a way that their models overlap, it'll cause an immediate crash. Beasts of Tamriel is really infamous for this due to it containting some rather large creatures, along with a lot of ineptly placed spawn points for them. Yeah, that mod needs to be updated badly. I've also heard that simply adding stuff to the leveled list is enough to cause issues. I don't know if Immersive Patrols does that though. I've been mostly testing mods for the past few years, so I haven't played with in a LONG time. I was getting crashes with it, but I also got crashes without it. I don't recall crashing while walking down the roads. I did have a problem for a time where I could randomly crash right after combat ended, which was quite annoying as you can imagine. Another road crash I pinpointed to that navmesh issue Moonpath introduces I think (or was it Moon and Star? I can't remember). Normally my crashes were either out in the wildnerness when I played with Beasts of Tamriel, or when I crossed these specific cell borders infront of the honningbrew meadery. That I've since fixed btw, and haven't had a crash since other than when I walked infront of the meadery on a test profile where I had forgotten to enable my stability mods.

For others, I never liked Interesting NPCs. Pretty much every dialogue I entered into I just exited out of because I didn't like any of the responses it gave me to choose from. In particular there's this one woman in Whiterun who claims she conducts obviously immoral and cruel experiments on animals, and you're only given three different ways to praise her for this. Yeah. I never played with that mod for long.

The only population mod besides Immersive Patrols I've ever taken a liking to is Inconsequential NPCs. It populates your world without adding basically a bunch of villains everywhere like Interesting NPCs does. You'll have to port it yourself though, because the MO refuses to give anyone permission to do so. Its not that big of a deal to do so luckily.

I've also seen people here suggest Immersive Citizens. Its not really a population mod, it just adds new ai and more interesting schedules to the already existing npcs. It will make it so you can run into vanilla npcs travelling the roads, which is the only aspect of it that makes it feel like a population mod. I must warn you though that mod conflicts with just about every city overhaul out there. Anything that places stuff in areas that are normally a path in vanilla will result in an npc mindlessly walking into a fence or wall or some such non-sense. I used to love the mod, but I had to remove it just so I could have decent looking cities. The only city mod I know of that its compatible with is Dawn of Skyrim. The Expanded Towns and Settlements mod is also getting a new version with compatibility in mind, but that's still a work in progress.

If you want more road encounters, I think the go-to these days is Immersive World Encounters. Its quite a nice mod, though to be honest the new interactions can get rather repetitive, especially given that many of them have a clear and fairly detailed plot to them. There's also an older mod similar to this called Extended Encounters that's recently been re-uploaded. Its more similar to Immersive Citizens in that it makes vanilla npcs wander the roads killing monsters and such. I have yet to play with it myself though, so I don't have any first-hand experience on what its like. I know in the past the thing was apparently known for being rather buggy. I have no clue if that's been fixed or not though.

[Know Won]

I think its over crowded at times. Packs of vampires , bandits, etc etc ...can't go 100 feet down a road without some skeever trying to bite me.

[Quevik]

IXBlackWolfXI eredeti hozzászólása:

Here's my 2 cents.

I've never heard of Immersive Patrols causing crashes. Looking at that thread on reddit, it would appear the issue is mainly caused by a conflict with requiem. I will say though that anything that adds new spawns to the game can cause crashes. Apparently there's an issue where if two actors spawn in such a way that their models overlap, it'll cause an immediate crash. Beasts of Tamriel is really infamous for this due to it containting some rather large creatures, along with a lot of ineptly placed spawn points for them. Yeah, that mod needs to be updated badly. I've also heard that simply adding stuff to the leveled list is enough to cause issues. I don't know if Immersive Patrols does that though. I've been mostly testing mods for the past few years, so I haven't played with in a LONG time. I was getting crashes with it, but I also got crashes without it. I don't recall crashing while walking down the roads. I did have a problem for a time where I could randomly crash right after combat ended, which was quite annoying as you can imagine. Another road crash I pinpointed to that navmesh issue Moonpath introduces I think (or was it Moon and Star? I can't remember). Normally my crashes were either out in the wildnerness when I played with Beasts of Tamriel, or when I crossed these specific cell borders infront of the honningbrew meadery. That I've since fixed btw, and haven't had a crash since other than when I walked infront of the meadery on a test profile where I had forgotten to enable my stability mods.

For others, I never liked Interesting NPCs. Pretty much every dialogue I entered into I just exited out of because I didn't like any of the responses it gave me to choose from. In particular there's this one waldo in Whiterun who claims she conducts obviously immoral and cruel experiments on animals, and you're only given three different ways to praise her for this. Yeah. I never played with that mod for long.

The only population mod besides Immersive Patrols I've ever taken a liking to is Inconsequential NPCs. It populates your world without adding basically a bunch of villains everywhere like Interesting NPCs does. You'll have to port it yourself though, because the MO refuses to give anyone permission to do so. Its not that big of a deal to do so luckily.

I've also seen people here suggest Immersive Citizens. Its not really a population mod, it just adds new ai and more interesting schedules to the already existing npcs. It will make it so you can run into vanilla npcs travelling the roads, which is the only aspect of it that makes it feel like a population mod. I must warn you though that mod conflicts with just about every city overhaul out there. Anything that places stuff in areas that are normally a path in vanilla will result in an npc mindlessly walking into a fence or wall or some such non-sense. I used to love the mod, but I had to remove it just so I could have decent looking cities. The only city mod I know of that its compatible with is Dawn of Skyrim. The Expanded Towns and Settlements mod is also getting a new version with compatibility in mind, but that's still a work in progress.

If you want more road encounters, I think the go-to these days is Immersive World Encounters. Its quite a nice mod, though to be honest the new interactions can get rather repetitive, especially given that many of them have a clear and fairly detailed plot to them. There's also an older mod similar to this called Extended Encounters that's recently been re-uploaded. Its more similar to Immersive Citizens in that it makes vanilla npcs wander the roads killing monsters and such. I have yet to play with it myself though, so I don't have any first-hand experience on what its like. I know in the past the thing was apparently known for being rather buggy. I have no clue if that's been fixed or not though.

I have hidden the name "Waldo" in this wall of text. See if you can find it without cheating. (No using the search feature damnit!)

[Vlad 254]

I wouldn't read that wall of text if there were a free game token hidden inside

[Quevik]

Vlad 254 eredeti hozzászólása:

I wouldn't read that wall of text if there were a free game token hidden inside

And just to be clear since i do type alot myself. My issue is not with the amount of words but the lack of spacing. (And i really did hide Waldo in there after quoting him)

[lupus_hegemonia]

This thread is not about enemies spawing.
I was talking about give more "life" to Skyrim, with travelers, common people, etc.

[ralphtobybob]

FauxFurry eredeti hozzászólása:

Inconsequential NPCs and Citizens of Tamriel are my recommendations as it adds fully voiced NPCs who do not necessarily have full quests to engage with but change along with player choice to add more interactivity to the world in a somewhat realistic way.
Even if the Dragonborn is a deity incarnate, not everyone will go to them with all of their problems to solve.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/29069
(Inconsequential NPCs will need to be ported by the user but the patches are all available on the Nexus for Special Edition)https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/36334

There's a ported version somewhere; I downloaded a copy. I don't remember the site, and just checked bookmarks and don't have one. I stumbled on it, possibly following a link from a Nexus tweak of it to another site. Not much help, but at least there's one out there somewhere that's already been ported.

Whaddya know, I found it:

https://mega.nz/file/cl42EIgD#-0RJOkQ-SWQLvJZHxaQjKwqbiW14Y5DQGx7AH9SLboA

Edit: Link got deleted. Here's the Nexus forum page with the link on it:
https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/9092508-inconsequential-npcs-se/

[ralphtobybob]

The population mods I'm using are:
Alternate Followers
Bunch of Wanderers
Companions and Followers Essential
Companions of Dragonspear
I don't use them as followers, but some of them travel the roads.

Interesting NPCs - there are multiple files and a hotfix that have to be installed
Populated cities towns villages for Open Cities
Immersive Patrols

For just sheer crazy with roaming Imperial and Stormcloak patrols that attack camps and cities:
Immersive War and Violence
Skyrim at War
Skyrim Live Patrols Streamline edition

[itagamineko]

Just a reminder: DO NOT USE INTERESTING NPCs IF YOU HAVE A SCRIPT HEAVY GAME.

because it adds so many more scripted things that it might be too much.

[Nabinkemper]

Quevik eredeti hozzászólása:

Vlad 254 eredeti hozzászólása:

...And i really did hide Waldo in there after quoting him)

Found it -
[....there's this one waldo in Whiterun....]

[Quevik]

Nabinkemper eredeti hozzászólása:

Quevik eredeti hozzászólása:

Found it -
[....there's this one waldo in Whiterun....]

Well done!

I'm torn between hoping you didn't cheat with the search feature, and sad that you actually had to read all that if you didn't.