INTRODUCTION:
Originally this was just going to be a tweak of Tamu75's Unique Grasses and Groundcovers plugin to add more grass density, but I started to reintroduce some of my favourite grasses from SFO and Unbelievable grasses into the plugin, and before I knew it I had a whole new grass look for Skyrim!

This grass plugin is my personal take on skyrim's landscape, and almost all areas of skyrim have lots of dense grass. This mod uses the Grass on Steroids tweak, so people with medium to low end machines should be able to run this with less of an FPS hit than some other grass mods. I've also included a 1k grass version for extra performance.

This mod uses grasses from SFO, Unique Grasses, Unbelievable Grass, Tamriel Reloaded - Grass and Hoddminir's Flowers, but it is standalone and has no requirements.

INSTALLATION:
Install with your mod manager of choice.

I have now included a custom ini file (Verdant - A Skyrim Grass Plugin SSE Version.ini) for easier grass installation. The grass settings I normally require are located in that ini file, which will overwrite your settings to work for verdant! Thanks to Vurt for the info!

So for users who would like less grass for more performance, please tweak this ini setting located in the Skyrim Special Edition/data folder. It can go as high as 100 (which is less grass, but better performance) to 60 (recommended setting for grass density).

iMinGrassSize=60 - 100

RECOMMENDED SETTINGS:
By default I have this setting to remove shadowsongrass due to in-game AO looking terrible, but if you want grass shadows back, there is an optional file to remove this tweak. Either download that file or simply remove this setting in your verdant ini file.

SkyrimPrefs.ini

[Display]
bShadowsjavascript-event-stripped0

All my grass screenshots are using this setting. If you really insist on having shadows on, Amoebae suggested a tweak that definitely helps with the harsh blacks. See below.

Skyrim.ini

[Display]
fGlobalCjavascript-event-stripped-0.2

If you'd like more ideas for how to extend grass distances, or want suggestions from other modders, please check the stickies in the Posts section, or check this STEP Guide for more information on how to get the best grass in your game.

LOAD ORDER:
You can place this high in your load order, above water mods ( to avoid water seams) but below Majestic Mountains, as it's snow grasses will override mine. Landscape Fixes For Grass Mods and No Grass in Objects is encouraged!

'SOFT' REQUIREMENTS:

• Landscape Fixes For Grass Mods - Required to fix all clipping issues for roads and buildings. Load after Verdant!
• No Grass in Objects - fixes grass clipping through objects and can be used to generate long-distance grasses! Amazing!
• Tamrielic Landscapes - Mod of choice for lods! Fantastic landscape overhaul. :)
• Darker Distant LOD for ENB - If the tundra lod doesn't match Verdant, try this noise tweak to see if it helps!
• No Grassias (Default) - Alternative to Landscape Fixes for Grass mods. Removes some grasses from Verdant, but helps more clipping.

COMPATIBILITY:

• Skyrim Flora Overhaul - Trees Only Version!
• Skyrim 3D Landscapes, Waterplants, Skyrim 3D Trees and Plants, Unique Flowers and Plants and Flower Fields are compatible.
• Any tree mods are compatible
• All grass mods are generally incompatible. Always check the mods in question for compatibility.

RECOMMENDED MODS:

• Skyrim Flora Overhaul - Great mod for excellent trees. Vurt is amazing and I owe him so much for this mod (and the new .ini file!)
• Skyrim 3D Landscapes - Mathy79's work is amazing. Check out all his works!
• Skyrim 3D Trees and Plants - Mathy79's work is amazing. Check out all his works!
• Aspens Ablaze - Mindfluxs work is amazing! Go check it out!
• Grass Addon for Verdant - This retextures the egrass textures used in the tundra area of Verdant to look more HD! Thanks, Pfuscher!

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ):

Spoiler:  

Show

I'M HAVING ISSUES WITH SFO 2.6+ AND VERDANT AND GET HORRIBLE FPS TOGETHER

• There should no longer be an issue with this, so long as you install and load Verdant AFTER Skyrim Flora Overhaul. Now that this mod has it's own custom ini, it's grass edits should now overwrite vurts and work out of the box as intended!

• Other users have said that having SFO's tree shadows cause an FPS drop, and that changing their shadow settings from ultra to high solved their fps problem. Definitely try it out!

I'M STILL GETTING A HUGE FPS DROP!

• Firstly, did you change your ini settings appropriately?  See the notes above. You can find this file in Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition
• If you use  4k-8k textures in various areas you could definitely slow down your computer. There is a slight fps drop with this mod, but the damage is fairly negligible.
•  If you still suffer an FPS hit with iMinGrassSize=70, raise this setting to 80 or 90, or even 100 and higher to see if it helps. Sometimes your graphics settings can be set incorrectly which can result in slowdowns.
• You may also have inappropriate settings for your graphics card (set them to default), or are not using your graphics card to run the game properly. You could also need to update your card or optimize your game. Here's a link to some common issues people have with the game, and some of these solutions have helped people I know. I've never tried the patch they offer. Download at your own risk.

COMPATIBILITY PATCHES?


Just load up whichever mod you like and Verdant in the Creation kit, and find all the towns/houses in the object window, which will load up in
the render window. Turn on landscape editing and start painting out the areas you don't want to have grass. Here's a handy list of landscape textures that DO NOT have grass attached:
NO Grass Landscape Textures (some have rocks respectively)

• LSnow01
• LRocks01
• LReachDirt01
• LScrub0
• LDirtSnowPath01
• LCoastBeach01
• LCoastBeach02
• LFieldDirtGrass01
• LFallForestDirt01
• LVolcanicTundraMinerals01
• LVolcanicTundraMineralPool01
• LFrozenMarshLicen01NoGrass
• LFrozenMarshGrass01NoGrass
• LDirtPath01
• LCoastOceanFloor01NoGrass
• LBlackReachDirt
• LDirtSnowPath01
• LSnowRocks01
• LSnow02
• LSnowCobble01
• LTundraRocks01
• LRocks01NoRocks
• LGrassSnow01NoGrass
• LReachMossyRocks01NoRocks

Landscape Textures with Minimal Grass (Pebbles/Small Grass Tufts/Leaves)

• LGrassSnow01
• LSnow01Rocks01wGrass
• LDirt01
• LDirt02
• LRiverBedEdge01
• LReachMossyRocks01
• LCaveDirt
• LMineFloorDirt01
• LFallForestLeaves01
• LFallForestRocks01
• LFallForestRocks01NoRocks
• LVolcanicTundraRocks01
• LVolcanicTundraGravel01
• LVolcanicTundraDirt01NoGrass

Pro tip: You can sample an area by putting your brush cursor over it and pressing "i" if you'd like to make sure you pick the right textures!

If you ever get a black texture appearing, you can fix it simply by pressing the "I" key over the affected area in the cell render window and finding one of the areas that has 7 textures listed (skyrim can only handle 6 textures in one quadrant; this has not changed for SSE) and removing whichever you like. Then save into a patch, load it last and you're good to go. You should easily be able to merge verdant with this esp as well, just make sure the patch is below verdant.

WHAT IS THE 'GOS TWEAK'?
It's a simple tweak in TES5edit/SSEEdit where you find a grass, ANY grass, and change the density to 255. It's THAT SIMPLE. YOU COULD DO THIS TO ANY MOD AND MAKE YOUR OWN GRASS ON STEROIDS TWEAKS TO ANY GRASS YOU WISH. So just like with Grass on Steroids, you will get a slight FPS hit at lower settings (like iMinGrassSize=50 to 70) but you will apparently GAIN FPS at higher settings like 125 ... although the grass will be less dense.


MY GAME IS CRASHING WHEN I LOAD GRASS!
If this grass seems to cause a crash it is definitely due to a combination of this grass mod and other mods, like many really high res texture packs, high res LODS, bigger tree mods, SMIM, village mods, you name it... there are a LOT OF MODS that can crash your game, which can use only so much RAM. Overloading your system (or setting your iMinGrassSize to 10 and failed to read the FAQ) is a problem no matter how good your card is. There is something in your load order/textures that isn't playing nicely and when you load up that save with this grass present and that texture/mod edit, it causes a CTD.

Watch GOPHER'S VIDS for more info on game crashes and problems:

• Load Order # 1 - What is it?
• Load Order # 2 - LOOT
• Beginner's Guide to Modding Skyrim - Part 10 : Problems
• Skyrim Crash on Startup FIX : Part 1 (Troubleshooting your Load Order)

GRASS IS CLIPPING THROUGH STUFF LIKE ROCKS!
Thems the breaks unfortunately when you download dense grass. Every dense grass mod you download will do this. However, you can mitigate this issue by downloading the mod in the required section Landscape Fixes For Grass Mods or alternatively, trying a tweak that JohnnyWang33 discovered about using the minslope grass setting to avoid grass clipping. Here's the post and here's the instructions to make your own patch!

HOW TO PATCH FOR VERDANT

• Load up WATER, Verdant, Open Cities or any other mod want to make a patch with Verdant (you can even load up your entire load order if you wish - hold SHIFT when you press OK to load it faster), then once it's all loaded into SSEEdit, right click and choose "Apply filter for conflict losers". Now wait a bit until it figures this out. This will find and isolate ALL RECORDS that are conflicting with one another. The appropriate files will be in red, such as the mods you want to patch, like RW 2, WATER etc etc.
• Select the mods you want to be compatible with verdant (like WATER for example). Click the Plus symbol (+) next to the esp - this will reveal the dropdown of edits in the mod. All the areas (i.e. Worldspace, Landscape Texture etc) that conflict with verdant will show up in the list.
• Look through the records one by one and simply drag the new water data across into Verdants esp. Save. This is exactly how I make a patch.
• Same situation for Open Cities and other visual overhauls. Find the individual records that conflict with verdant and drag them in. SSEEdit will let you know which records are losers, seeing as they will be in red! Pretty much anything that conflicts with verdant, you can make a patch this way!
• If Tes5Edit asks to make the file you are patching a master, it is doing so for a good reason. Like with RW2, it has it's own unique records. In order to have the proper water edits carry over, always say yes to making verdant use it as master.
• You can also create a patched file for the edits to be dragged into. You can easily start this esp by highlighting the two or more mods (or your entire load order) you want to be compatible with each other, Right click ANYWHERE in the left hand window and select Other>Create Merged Patch, then Say yes and name it 'SSEMergedPatch' and wait for it to load. For big load orders it can take time! This will automatically find the conflict losers for specific records and create a compatibility patch, then once it's finished you can comb through the records and make sure the patch is fixing what you are looking for. If not, please try the steps above as well for a more manual and fine-tuned approach!

Here's a Video by GamerPoets for a more in-depth instruction on making a merged patch. Highly recommended!

You can also check out the "make your own grass tutorial" on the oldrim verdant page.

CAN YOU MAKE THIS MOD COMPATIBLE WITH X VILLAGE/HOUSE/OVERHAUL MOD?
If you search on the nexus, there are a lot of compatibility patches out there. If not, just load up whichever mod you like and Verdant in the Creation kit, and find all the towns/houses in the object window, which will load up in the render window. Turn on landscape editing and start painting out the areas you don't want to have grass (use simple ground textures like LAND_DEFAULT, dirt01, dirt02 and dirtpath etc since these have no grasses tied to them ... also rock textures should be fine (you can sample an area by putting your brush cursor over it and pressing "i" if you'd like to make sure you pick the right textures).

If you ever get a black texture appearing, you can fix it simply by pressing i over the affected area and finding one of the areas that has 7 textures listed (skyrim can only handle 6 textures in one quadrant) and removing whichever you like. Then save into a patch, load it last and you're good to go. You should easily be able to merge verdant with this esp as well, just make sure the patch is below verdant.

THERE ARE DARK GRASSES/BRIGHT GRASSES WHAT GIVES?

• If you're talking about grass not being affected by light sources, that is an in-game skyrim issue, but thanks to the recent innovations of ENB you can now get ENBs and meshes with the right properties to display lights on other meshes, including grass! Search for ENB Light and you'll see what I mean.
• A possible culprit is that you've got the shadowsongrass setting to 1 in your skyrimprefs.ini - In order to fix this, follow these steps: Edit your SkyrimPrefs.ini located in your Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition folder and search for this under the DISPLAY section and change to 0 like so.
• Using any new weather overhaul can cause many color and lighting changes to grasses, since most weathers are not usually designed to work specifically with verdant. Depending on your setup, you will likely see a weather here or there, specifically in the Tundra region where the colors can conflict with the distant LOD. I would suggest testing weather mods in the tundra region (I personally always test in coc roriksteadexterior01 because the ridge there has a great view of the tundra) and set timescale to 2000 to see all the many weathers and transitions on the grass and how it's affected. For me personally, I found NAT ENB and Wander to have the least issues overall.

• Also oftentimes using an ENB, sometimes the AO in ENBs can be too harsh. Try turning off the AO in your enblocal.ini, or try testing with other ENBs to see if it solves your problem.

WHAT CAN I EXPECT IN THIS MOD?


The reach landscape has been completely overhauled. I was never satisfied with the reach grass ending up being a forest grass clone, so I've given it lots of variety and made it more bushy and less grassy; it feels a little bit more arid and warm, something akin to northern California. Also the occasional poppy field.


The beach grass has been completely redone. Lots of beaches, even beaches in the north, can be pretty grassy like this.
Now you can enjoy running through it along the coast.


Forest grass regions are green and lush, the kind of grass you just want to fall into and take a nap, but still feel wild and natural.


I've removed the cattails due to popular request. The banks now have a much more subtle grass.


The fall forest near riften, with lots of golden brush and the last few wildflowers still holding on before winter. I wanted to give the feeling of true autumn in this region.


Morthals marsh just got a whole lot spookier. And grassier. I've added a little more variety and a lot of handplaced plants to help add to the creepy vibe.


And last but not least, the tundra. Golden and matching the vanilla lods almost perfectly. Enjoy!

CREDITS:
Many thanks to Vurt, Josh Ezzell, Aceeq, 32cm and Tamu75 for giving me permission to share this, and thanks to elinlen as well for providing her grass resource for skyrim.