Hey all, it's your friendly neighborhood DV here with a (very) long in-progress landscape project.  There are already approximately 9,999,999,999 grass mods for Skyrim, and most of them are fantastic.  It would be reinventing the wheel just to give a fish a bicycle for me to attempt yet another grass overhaul, when so many excellent ones already exist.  Still, tinkerer that I am, I've never been satisfied to roll with a prefab environmental setup, even ones so eye-meltingly perfect it'd be a crime to mess them up (lookin' at you, Freak's Floral Fields, Skoglendi, Voluptuous, Verdant, etc.)  What I haven't seen many grass mods do as of yet is to work in a modular fashion so as to better mix and match with other grass and landscape mods.  They're mostly all-in-one setups, which makes a lot of sense given how the game sprinkles certain grass types all throughout the gameworld.  But I wanted to provide a way to slot in just one biome at a time, in case you, like me, wanted to try something new for a change in one area but also wanted to keep someone's version of somewhere else.  I also wanted to play with some diversity in the biome types- no so far as to be too jarring to the base game's world image, but a little different than the usual sorts of landscape that tend to be repeated and iterated on in other setups.  So began the BIOMES project, and boy howdy has it been slow going!

This first pack contains grass setups for the Marsh, Reach, and Volcanic Tundra regions.  The rest of the regions, from the Fall Forest to the Beach, Snow to Solstheim, will eventually be released.  Rather than wait for my nitpicky ass to tweak everything just so before sharing, I figured I'd drop these piecemeal as they're more or less finished.  Since the whole point of the project is for each biome to stand alone, with its own ESL plugin for ease of mixing and matching with other grass mods, this works OK.

All of these beautiful plants were rendered into Skyrim by other, vastly more talented modders.  All I've done is combine them in certain places, and occasionally messed with the colors.  Massive props to Dr. Jacopo for the monumental Cathedral project.  Dig it here (you'll need to in order to get the meshes that many of these grass records use, so drop an endorsement and some kudos while you're there).  Thanks also to Odin for Flora Orientalis, Grumbledoook for Folkvangr, Elyem for Veydosebrom, and Frolique for her custom Fluffy Fields mod.  All the plants are their doing (and their mods are all, of course, fantastic in their own right).  If I missed someone, please holler at me- this thing's been in the works for a long time and I've a memory like a colander.  Because of the collaborative nature of this project, unfortunately permission to use any assets contained herein for other mods is closed; you'll have to get permission from the original authors themselves.  Many thanks also to all the folks on the Unofficial SSE Remaster/Cathedral Discord for advice, feedback, and general good ideas.




The highlands of the Reach are envisioned as a lush grassland, dotted with ferns and flowers.  Something like a fantasy version of the Scottish Highlands the vanilla Reach was modeled after, mixed with the downs of the English Midlands, southern Ireland, parts of New Zealand, and other humid, temperate zones formerly forested and later colonized, clearcut, and overrun with sheep.  A sort of devastated ecosystem that is nevertheless very satisfying to look at, for whatever reason.  Scruffy turfgrasses, daisies and dandelions, clusters of ferns; short vegetation in a verdant carpet, undulating across the hilly terrain.



The Marsh country around Morthal is now a bracken swamp in early winter.  Frost covers dead fronds and fallen pine needles blanket the damp earth.  Inspired by images of a Scandinavian fir swamp.  Looks great with many different tree setups, though it goes particularly well with ones that feature pines, firs, and other conifers in the canopy.  Foliage is very thick and pretty deep, as bracken ferns tend to be.



The Volcanic Tundra of Eastmarch features dry brittle grasses at the end of a summer's growth, dotted with colorful flowers and hardy bushes.  Inspiration for this zone comes from the California Coast Range in late summer towards the end of the dry season.  Some areas are patchier, some denser to reflect the varied bunch-grasses and other flora that live in selenium-rich serpentine soils.  

*Note that some of the screenshots may not 100% look exactly like the landscapes in their current iteration.  I've tweaked and tinkered a lot over the course of this thing, so while I selected images that pretty accurately reflect the final version of the mod, there might be some outdated stuff peeking through.  Dig the vibes and don't sweat the details.


1. Install the 3D Cathedral Grass Library Meshes
2. Install the main files plus the updates from Cathedral 3D Pine Grass (you don't need to activate the .ESP, just need the texture files)
3. Install the BIOMES I Resources file from this mod's Downloads section
4. Install one or more regional selections from this mod's Downloads section
5. Set your INI files:
In skyrimprefs.ini set iMinGrassSize to 50 (or 60-70 for less density and faster framerate, or 30-40 for excessive density and slower framerate)
In skyrim.ini set iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure to 15 and don't correct the spelling

Make sure that all BIOMES files overwrite any other grass or landscape mods you might also have.  This mod is designed to fit into other grass setups, but it only works if it takes precedence over other mods.  If you let a different ESP/ESL load lower in the load order, overwrite the textures in the Resources file, or the meshes in the Cathedral Library, you will be missing out on these BIOMES! 

One exception to this is the work of BloodyFreak, whose textures are frankly much nicer than mine.  Let the textures from Floral Fields overwrite, if you want, but set my ESLs to load with precedence over Floral Fields.

Note: Some of these flora types use textures suitable for the ENB Complex Grass feature.  Possibly this also works for Community Shaders, and possibly it does not look awful without either ENB or CS.  Try it out and if it looks like ass, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


LODS?
No, grass.

Landscape texture?
No, still grass.

Yes, I know it's grass.  I mean, what landscape textures are you using?
Oh, that makes more sense.  A mix of different stuff.  Some shots feature Tomato's work, others Pfuscher's, others Winedave's.  Probably there's some other random stuff mixed and matched in there.  Trees are from Nature of the Wild Lands or Ulvenwald, depending on the shot.  And while I'm at it, ENB is either a modified Cabbage or a mostly stock Rudy's for NAT.  Homebrew ReShade on top with a miscellany of color grading and film effect shaders.

Will this affect my performance?
Probably?  Some of these grasses are pretty light, some pretty heavy.  Depends on your rig, how many other vaguely optimized mods you're running, what kind of physics your combat Barbie is bouncing around with, what scripts you've got looping in the background, the ludicrous resolution of your ground textures, cabbages, etc., and whatever the ambient Bethesda jank happens to feel like doing on any given day.  I tried to make these grass setups more or less suitable for actually visiting and not just taking nice pictures of, but your mileage will almost certainly vary.  If you're worried about your performance more generally, remember to eat healthy, exercise a little every day, maintain a sense of humor, and hate the soulless algorithm of capital acquisition that alienates you from your natural community and destroys everything beautiful and good in this world instead of your fellow humans each just trying to get by in their different ways or your own beautiful self.  Optimize optimize optimize!

I seem to be missing a texture: one of my grasses is bright purple!
Try downloading the Resource Textures from the Cathedral Library, Cathedral Pine Grass, or Flora Orientalis, all linked above.  It's possible I've been using one or more of those stock textures the whole time.  If so, the missing tex is probably in one of those locations.

This is like a grass mod right?  Does it mod the grass?  Can I use a different grass mod instead?  Could you make a patch for the specific combination of mods I like?  I haven't tested it or looked at the file structure or read the description, but could you tell me what this does and if I will like it?   Actually I don't like it.


I like it!  But could you just change this one thing?
No.  It's pretty simple to alter just about everything with xEdit and/or GIMP.  Have fun exploring the exciting world of DIY modding!

Is there any way I could show my love for your outstanding modding by waving some cash in your general direction?
Why yes, thank you generous internet person!  I have a Patreon set up where WIP mods and screenshot archives are posted.  All WIPs are members only for a month or so, then free for everyone.  I work on stuff so slowly I figured I ought to share it somewhere while in development, but not be so exclusive as to keep things behind a paywall indefinitely.  Mods with assets that belong to other folks (like BIOMES) will only ever be released for free on the Nexus in a (more or less) complete state.  Thanks for your support, I promise not to blow it all on food and rent.




Stay tuned for BIOMES Part II...