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Copyright © 2021 Robin Scott. All rights reserved.
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Copyright © 2021 Robin Scott. All rights reserved.

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AceeQ

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About this mod

Enhanced Landscapes is a project which aims to improve Skyrim's landscape by adding thousands of objects. It also aims to improve the distant appearance of mountains, cliffs and other rock formations. Requires DynDOLOD to generate proper Distant- and TreeLODs.

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Changelogs

SPECIAL EDITION v1.65



Enhanced Landscapes is a massive project which aims to improve Skyrims landscape by adding thousands of objects, changing parts of the landscape and improving locations. The mod also aims to improve the distant appearance of mountains, cliffs and other rock formations. Requires DynDOLOD to generate proper Distant- and TreeLODs.

Requirement: DynDOLOD for Skyrim SE

Tutorials:
The tutorials explain how to generate new LOD for Enhanced Landscapes
How to generate 3D Tree LODs for Enhanced Landscapes & Enhanced Vanilla Trees
How to generate 2D Tree LODs for Vanilla & Skyrim Flora Overhaul

Recommended Mods for better LODs:
  • HD LODs Textures SE - this will enhance the LOD textures for landscape objects, buildings and more, highly recommend to use.
  • Enhanced Vanilla Trees - does not only enhanced the look of the trees but also provides 3D LODs for seamless LOD transition
  • Terrain LOD redone - this will improve the distant terrain textures/meshes

If you want to generate your own terrain meshes/textures I'd recommend to use xLODGen by sheson. It allows you to generate terrain LOD for all the landscape texture mods you've installed, so that the distant textures also match the actual ground textures.


Mountains
Mountains and rock formations all over Skyrim and Solstheim were enhanced/improved by adding hundreds of mountain and rock objects to make them look more realistic and detailed.

Throat of the World
The Throat of the World was overhaul by adding more mountain/rock objects and removing most of the trees for a more desolated look. This makes the Throat of the World look like a real mountain.

Forests
Enhanced Landscapes adds hundreds of trees all over Skyrim, increases existing ones in size and makes forests feel much more dense/lush and realistic. Especially the forests around Falkreath, Riverwood and Solitude were improved by adding lots of trees, tree clutter, fallen trees and much more plants. 

Volcanic Tundra 
A lightweight overhaul of this region by adding lots of smaller flora objects, some more ruin clutter and also some improvements to rocks formations.

Northshore
Enhanced Landscapes makes a lot of changes to the snowy parts of Skyrim. Removing lots of trees and only leaving smaller trees to make it look like a more desolated landscape, similiar to a frozen tundra, but with more trees to keep a little detail. Also adds lots of snow drifts to make it look like it's really winter.

Better City Outskirts
Better looking city outskirts. Enhanced Landscapes overhauls the outside areas of Markarth, Windhelm, Riften, Whiterun and Solitude. These are just small landscape changes, but they'll make the outskirts look a lot better.

Landscape Enhancements
Main part of Enhanced Landscpaes are hundreds of changes all over Skyrim. 


Plant textures
Plant and flora textures from Skyrim Flora Overhaul to use in combination with Enhanced Vanilla Trees. Only use this if you want to use EVT and need some better plant textures.

Grass Overhaul
This optional file is based on my Unbelievable Grass 2 mod, improved for Enhanced Landscapes. It will add unique grasses to each region of Skyrim. This has high grass variety and density, so it may have an impact on performance, though should be more performance friendly than verdant. Contains a ini file that controls the density setting, but you can change it to your liking. Just open the ini and change iMinGrassSize=52 to a higher number for less density or vice versa. For gameplay I'd suggest to use something between 55-65, it will still look good but have less impact on performance. The standard setting is more suited for high-end computers.



Green Fields
This optional file will turn the tundra region of Skyrim into lush and green grasslands. You can use this alongside the Grass Overhaul of Enhanced Landscapes; will work with other grass mods too. There is no support for A Quality World Map and I won't patch it, so don't ask for it.



Green Aspen Trees for EVT
Optional green aspen tree textures for Enhanced Vanilla Trees. Supports 3D LOD.

Solstheim Enhanced Ash Trees with 3D Tree LOD
New 4k textures from vurt for Solstheims ash trees. Supports 3D Ultra Tree LOD. This only works with 3D Tree LODs so choose this only if you use Enhanced Vanilla Trees.

Barren Marsh
A small optional file that removes almost all pine and reach trees from the marsh region, making it look more desolate.

Dead Marsh
Overhaul of the swamp region of Skyrim with dead trees and big mushrooms, giving this region of Skyrim a more dark fantasy look and making it look very unique. Full support for 3D Tree LOD and LOD for mushrooms. There are also 2D Flat LODGen billboards, but they are quite inferior in quality.



Immersive Citizens Patch
Enhanced Landscapes and Immersive Citizens cause some ground issues outside of Windhelm, since both mods do edit this area. This patch will fix that.

Install
  • Download the main file and install with a mod manager. Mod Organizer is highly recommended.
  • Choose the options you want and click at install.
  • Make sure Enhanced Landscapes has a higher priority in MO as any other landscape mods & LodGen billboards! If using NMM let Enhanced Landscapes overwrite all necessary files.
  • Enable the Enhanced Landscapes.esp and all optional esp files if you've installed them.

Video tutorials for DynDOLOD & Enhanced Landscapes
Spoiler:  
Show



Enhanced Landscapes is using a built-in patching function of DynDOLOD to disable conflicting objects when using with certain mods. The patcher will disable the objects while generating LOD with DynDOLOD and the changed references will be saved into DynDOLOD.esp. The following mods will get patched when used with Enhanced Landscapes:

List of patched mods
  • JK's Skyrim
  • Cutting Room Floor - load Cutting Room Floor.esp after Enhanced Landscapes.esp!!
  • Arthmoors town mods

MERGING
If you want to use any of the optional marsh plugins, you'll have to merge them together with the main file for compatibility patching. The merged file must be named "Enhanced Landscapes.esp" like the standard main file. Use MergePlugins for this process.


Green: compatible
Orange: semi-compatible
Red: not compatible

Flora mods
Enhanced Vanilla Trees: Fully compatible and highly recommended for best looking LODs possible. EVT fully supports 3D Ultra Tree LODs with DynDOLOD.
Skyrim Flora Overhaul: Fully compatible. If you plan to use the Grass Overhaul from Enhanced Landscapes, make sure to load its .esp after the one from Skyrim Flora Overhaul. Billboards for LOD generation are included in SFO.
Skyrim 3D Trees and Plants:  While this mod is compatible it is currently not recommended to use both mods together, since 3D Trees seems to have some issues with tree scaling (which Enhanced Landscapes does a lot) and you may run into performance issues. You can use the plant meshes/textures from 3D Trees and Plants without problem. Simply delete all files inside the 3D Trees and Plants meshes folder, except meshes/plants and meshes/landscape/plants; don't delete the texture folder and don't enable the plugin file.
Verdant & Veydosebrom: Fully compatible.
Simply Bigger Trees: While compatible, you may end up with massive trees, since Enhanced Landscapes does add and increase a lot of trees by hand.

Town & City mods
JK's Skyrim: Was patched and is fully compatible.
Dawn of Skyrim: Fully compatible.
Arthmoors town mods: Compatible and patched.

Landscape mods
Landscape Fixes For Grass Mods: Compatible. Make sure to load the .esp files from Landscape Fixes For Grass Mods after Enhanced Landscapes. If you're using Cutting Room Floor make sure to grab the patch from LFFGMs modpage. Load Order should be as following:
Enhanced Landscapes.esp
Landscape Fixes For Grass Mods.esp
Cutting Room Floor.esp
Landscape Fixes For Grass Mods - Cutting Room Floor Locations.esp
The People of Skyrim: Not compatible.

Other mods:
Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul: Compatible. Most new added objects have collision boxes with NavCut (which will prevent NPCs from walking through them). There is also a small patch in the installer to fix a ground issue outside of Windhelm.


TEST SYSTEM: i5 7500, GTX 1060 6GB, 16GB DDR4
Enhanced Landscapes is not a performance friendly mod, especially in combination with Enhanced Vanilla Trees and 3D Tree LOD (also DynDOLOD medium preset for LODGen). I tested the newest update for dozens of hours, just normally playing through the game. I could achieve almost 60 FPS in most areas, but especially in the forests around Falkreath and Riften it went down to 50-60 FPS. There were also some places where the framerate would drop below 50 fps. This all without ENB. I also used the Grass Overhaul included in the mod.

That being said; you'll get better performance without 3D Tree LOD or if you use DynDOLOD low preset. Also less grass density may help to achieve better performance. Also while testing I used lots of high resolution texture and graphic mods.