It’s been a while, huh? Let’s talk modlists.

Living Skyrim v4.2.0 is under heavy development right now. We’re working on an absolutely huge slate of changes, some of which I’ll talk about now and some of which will be a surprise. The biggest changes right now are an absolute boatload of bug fixes. All in all, by the time I’m ready to release 4.2.0, I expect we’ll have fixed over 50 bugs. Beyond that, you can also expect a bunch of mod updates, some mod replacements, some new mods, and a few removals of mods we’re not satisfied with. One cool new mod I’ll mention is that we’ll finally be adding a horse mod to Living Skyrim 4 so that your valiant steed isn’t useless.

Before I move on to other modlists, I want to talk briefly about the performance of Living Skyrim 4. I know right now it’s not in an ideal place, and I’d like to explain why. Originally, the goal was to have two profiles for LS4. One that was the “as intended” profile, and another for people with PCs that struggled to run the standard profile. Over the course of developing LS4 initially and the updates it has received since release, the two profiles have become almost identical. The only difference as of LS 4.1.0 is that the performance profile has lower quality LODs and one mod that reduces the texture quality of a lot of the game. However, in my testing, I’ve discovered that the real world FPS of both profiles is almost the same, with the performance profile having approximately 5 FPS more than the regular profile.

Obviously that’s not enough to justify switching to the performance profile, and with LS 4.2.0 I’m planning to fix that. Not only will the LODs be lower quality, but I’ll also be using lower quality textures for a ton of the graphics mods, some lower quality meshes, and a different grass mod, and perhaps even a different flora setup (trees and plants and such). My goal is to have at least a 20 FPS difference between the regular profile and the performance profile in my testing. This should translate to substantial gains for those of you who have weaker computers. That said, I am changing up some of the baseline mods to improve performance as a whole, so those of you using the regular profile will also see some performance improvements. As a concrete example, just with the baseline mods changing, I’ve managed to get Whiterun from 45 FPS on the regular profile up to 55-60 FPS consistently.

MOISE, SSEE, and POTD aren’t changing anytime soon, so I hope you’ll forgive me for skipping over them for now.

Masterstroke has been receiving regular updates thanks in no small part to Miss Corruption. They’ve been keeping mods up to date, fixing some bugs, and helping me with the endless to-do list that comes with a modlist like Masterstroke. I don’t have anything to share regarding future updates for this list just yet, but trust me when I say that Masterstroke v1.10.0 is going to be a big one. The time to join the hype train is now.

I also want to briefly talk about Silent Skyrim, the latest modlist to join the FG’s Modlists lineup. It’s still in beta, but unfortunately that beta has been on hold because of a major save corruption issue that we haven’t been able to track down. If you want to help us hunt down this bug and fix it, I would strongly encourage you to try out the list. It’s a lot of fun and a very different Skyrim experience from anything I’ve played or made before. Quite frankly, I think Silent Skyrim is my favorite modlist to date and I would love to be able to share it with the wider Wabbajack community but I need your help to make it happen. I really want to release Silent Skyrim fully in time for Halloween this year, as I think it’s the perfect modlist for that day. I hope you’ll join me in playing the list and helping us hunt down the one bug that keeps it from being ready for release.

As for future plans, well… Let’s say that I’ve got a lot on my plate right now but as soon as Living Skyrim 4.2.0 releases I plan to take a week or so to hammer out any post-update bugs. After that, I want to finish up Atelier 2 as we’re quite late on releasing that list. It was supposed to come out in July and I was unfortunately extremely busy that month and the following ones and unable to complete it. I’m now getting into a new rhythm with work and such so I should have enough time to finish it up by the end of the year. As for the other two upcoming modlists, Immurshun and Zenithar’s Forge, their future is (mostly) still bright. I expect to spend as much if not more time working on ZenForge as I did on Living Skyrim 4, so I’m optimistically saying that it will be exactly what hardcore Skyrim players have been looking for. Immurshun on the other hand… Well, I’m on the fence about actually making that list. If you’re not aware, there’s another modlist called Curseadelica that is very similar to the concept for Immurshun: memes, jokes, and hilarity. I’ll keep thinking about Immurshun, but for now the plan is to proceed with the list.

Cheers.

FG

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