Red Dead Redemption 2 Mods Hair
Kian Trip
While part of me suspects that I'm beating a dead horse just by asking this, I have searched far and wide and have yet to find what I'm looking for. Basically, I was just hoping that someone had a mod with more hair options for khajiits (female in particular, and long hair preferably.)
My first thought was to use a mod that will allow me to import hair from other races. Naturally, the mesh is all wrong and it sort of just floats there, because of the shape of the Khajiit's head. It would follow that any hair option would have to be custom made for the race.
Another suggestion I found on a forum was a mod that makes Khajiits essentially people but with cat-like faces. While the mod itself is impressive (and currently unavailable on TESNexus!) I'm not looking to modify the entire appearance of the race. I like their appearance, it reminds me of some of the ancient Egyptian artwork. (Which, consequently, has lion-headed folk with long, straight hair!)
.. I know it must exist somewhere because I see many screenshots for other mods where female Khajiits have different hair. But I can't seem to find it. I download the mods that the screenshots are attached to, and they generally don't include it. (I was hoping to get a hair option with the Skyrim race, for instance -- but alas...)
At the risk of plugging my own cosmetic mod, I tried to keep "floating" hair options off of the Khajiit, so the only hairs they have either have a headband to cover the gap, or the hairs have something like combed-forward bangs which hides the gap, and of course the default Khajiit hairs as well. I don't know of too many hairs made specifically for Khajiit however.
This guide is a brother of my Skyrim LE graphics and gameplay guides, in a single one - and a result of many months of modding Skyrim. My goal is a complete guide to save other people time that they can have a complete base list of mods for ultrarealistic graphics and challenging, nextgen gameplay, knowing how much these mods will affect on performance and in what order they should install the mods, which are compatible and which are not, etc. Skyrim has over 100 thousand of mods available and that's quite a task to check them all, but I spent some time and did this, and chosen almost everything you need to transform your game and also to have some variants of similar type of mods to choose from. List of 4500+ mods (but at the same time "quality about quantity", including different variants to choose from) to install to make your Skyrim graphics look nextgen and gameplay feel on absolutely next level - everything structurized properly so you can build both 50 and 1500 mod setups, depending on your goal. Installation order, performance notes, patches list and personal recommendations included.
This guide has both graphics and gameplay parts, two in one. For graphics mods installation, the [installation] order matters the most - so, for the best results, it's humbly recommended to follow the same order as mods are listed. For gameplay guide, installation order doesn't matter, but load order does, so read the mod pages/my own notes if preset carefully. Also you can check the videos at my YT channel to see how game can look when fully-modded. To make guide navigation easier, I placed guide sections into so called "spoilers" - when you see "Show" button - just click on it to expand corresponding group of mods. Click "Hide" again to close it :) Please also note that this guide is still designed for modern rigs - yet, guide also has section for low-end rigs, and many other advises here and there, as well as performance-hungry mods marked - so, you can build an ultimate setup for your own PC, no matter what it strength is.
But here comes another exciting part! Guide also has so called "modules" - a premade mod lists (don't confuse with mod packs please) for different tastes and goals - which you only need to mimic, without worrying about incompatibilities and other issues. Modules will fit perfectly to the people who don't have enough of free time to go through whole guide themselves.
Feel free to suggest any mod you want to see in this list or ask me any compatibility/stability questions I'm running Skyrim without any crashes and issues with about 1500 mods installed - and you can have even more and still have your game fully stable. That's not some kind of exaggeration - everything you need is to follow the guide attentively :)
Do not re-upload this guide to other website and/or resources, do not claim it as own work and do not sell it. In the rest - feel free to translate into other languages (just message me in Discord first), I'd be glad if you'll link it to help other people and so on. I'm here to serve - the more people can have stable ultramodded game, the happier I will be :)
This project is completely free. Still, it takes insane amount of my time to build and expand it - the modding guides and other related modding content already took me over 7,500 working hours in total. I'm also living in Ukraine during the russian invasion, and have to support two families at once. The extra work I'm doing to support our defenders, air raids and PTSD caused by the war also make every inch of the work I do more difficult than before. The more independent and confident I will fee myself as an author - the less stress and more free time I'll have - and so, the faster new updates and videos will arrive, and new projects will appear as well. But support only if you really want it and able to:
- Before you'll start modding. Disable Steam overlay, Afterburner overlay, add Skyrim to your antivirus/firewall "white list". Disable all possible overlays, "boosters", "tuners" programs you may be using in general. All of them can and most likely will screw up your modded game and/or it's many settings.
- Also, make sure to disable autosaves in SkyrimPrefs.ini (set bSaveOnPause, bSaveOnTravel, bSaveOnWait and bSaveOnRest to 0).
- Do not use CC's (Creation Club) Survival Mode. It has way better alternative on the modding stage listed in this guide, and the mod itself is quite wonky.
- Follow the guide slowly without a rush. If it's written here to limit your fps using enblocal fps limiter - do it, and don't use and third-party software for it, and so on. You got the idea. Also, never have Skyrim installed in Program Files (or other system folder like Documents/Windows/AppData etc). If you have it there - reinstall it on another drive, or at the same drive, but out of Program Files folder. Lastly, it's heavily recommended to disable game autoupdates in Steam.
- If the mod has different main file versions for SE and AE, make sure to get a proper one - or to choose a proper version in the FOMOD installer, is such is provided.
1) Download and install mod manager. Choose between Nexus Mod Manager (use the .exe file), Mod Organizer 2 or Kortex Mod Manager . All 3 of them are great mod managers, each with something own to benefit player. What's the difference? NMM is "simple yet effective". MO is a mod manager packed with tons of cool features, mod manager on steroids if we can say so. Kortex is something in between, more similar to MO, but has own pros and cons over it (look here for comparison). Almost all mods can (and should) be installed via mod manager. Do not install mods manually. The guide contains notices regarding some exceptional cases when you'll need to install some mod/part of mod manually, but for the 99.9% of cases - always use mod manager. You may also find these NMM tutorial, MO2 tutorial (installation and setup video, general usage playlist here) and Kortex info page useful. Extra note: If using MO2, make double, triple sure you have watched the tutorial linked and know how to use it properly before asking for troubleshooting support :)
IMPORTANT NOTE #1:
Kortex mod manager was tested by myself for working properly - I liked it, just don't personally prefer it over MO2 or NMM. Also, it's not quite the most popluar mod manager, so it lacks usage tutorials, and you'll need to learn how to use/troubleshoot it yourself. Due to the same reason, I won't be able to provide Kortex troubleshooting support in Discord - but once again, it's a great mod manager and you should be absolutely feel free to try it.
IMPORTANT NOTE #2: Do not use Vortex to mod Skyrim.. It's looking pretty fancy visually, but sadly, it's very glitchy and pretty dysfunctional. I won't be able to provide any troubleshooting support if you're using it.
2) Download and install SKSE. If you allready have it - great. If no - install it. It's obligatory. SKSE is [essential]. Stability mods are also working through it, as well as vast majority of amazing gameplay mods. Consider it a basic invisible evolution element of Skyrim.
Make sure to download the correct version! 1.7.3 is for Skyrim LE - you don't need that at all now. If you have [exactly] the Skyrim SE version of the game (1.5.97, you can right-click on the game .exe file and see the version there) - get SKSE for 1.5.97. If you're on AE (it's still named Skyrim Special Edition in your game library, it's the .exe that differs) - get the current AE version, and VR version for VR. Download the archive somewhere, unpack it. From the folder, get the .dll, .exe files and \Data folder, and place them to your Skyrim SE/AE folder, as showed here (SKSE for AE and GOG do not have the "steam_loader" file btw, that's normal). MO users should archive the \Data folder and install it as any other mod trough MO (you can do the same in NMM as well if you wanna). From now on, launch your game only via SKSE (skse64_loader.exe), not the game regular launcher.
3) Download and install SkyUI. As mod itself, SkyUI is basically a "PCfication" of ugly vanilla Skyrim interface. On practice, it's also required by most of well-known mods in addition to SKSE. Also install this fix for it, this (get the ESP version), this and this. Lastly, if you're on latest AE version (and only in this case, it's not needed for SE) also install this ==NEW== to fix SkyUI issues caused by the latest Skyrim AE updates messups.
Optionally (but very recommended as it's just looks so much more alive and beautiful) install animated icons mod for it (make sure to choose "Celtic" icons type in SkyUI MCM for this mod to work). Also optionally, install this "wider" addon for MCM look. Also install iHUD.