A Dragonborn's Fate

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IMPORTANT:
Everything in this guide is written down for a reason! It is vital to read everything!
You can NOT skip any paragraphs/instructions and expect your game to function as it should.

Introduction

Overview

A Dragonborn's Fate is a modding guide for Skyrim Special Edition that will carefully walk you through how to install all the mods you will need for a perfectly stable, smooth and enjoyable experience.

The guide is highly accessible for everyone, no matter your modding experience. It is still incredibly important that you read all the instructions very carefully, even if you believe you are experienced enough to skip them. There are many small instructions that are vital for your game to function, and could be easily missed if you aren't careful. Although you don't need any modding experience to use this guide, it is expected for you to be relatively experienced with operating a computer in general.

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Features

  • Stability: The guide includes all essential stability enhancements and no placebo/dangerous mods.
  • Performance: Every tool, setting and mod in the guide has been carefully selected and play-tested to ensure maximum possible performance.
  • Customizability: The guide is split into 2 sections; all the mods required for the game to work and perform better are contained in the first section. The mods that can be considered subjective and that alter or add game content are in the DBFE Extended section.
  • Better Gameplay: As part of the DBF Extended section, the guide includes many mods that greatly improve the gameplay without drastically overhauling the core experience or straying away from the game's original intent.

Requirements

  • An English copy of the game from Steam or GOG.
    • Only the English version of the game is supported for maximum compatibility; translations can conflict with mods and cause issues. The Epic Games Store and Xbox Game Pass versions of the game are also unsupported, as they do not work with SKSE, which is essential for many mods.
    • Only the Creation Club content that ships with the game is supported. Most of the CC content will need patching, which is beyond the scope of this guide. You will have to remove them as instructed later in the guide when uninstalling the game.

    • You can buy a cheap activation key for the normal version on Instant Gaming (affiliate link), or Anniversary Edition for a little bit more, even though the extra content won't be used by this guide. Both store pages allow you to switch to a GOG key.

  • At least 26GB of free drive space, game included (22GB if you delete all the downloads).
  • Windows 10 or higher (64-bit).

    • Windows installations deviating from the public release (e.g. customized or LTSC) are not supported by us. We can refuse to provide help in such cases.
    This is because they don't guarantee the default functionality expected from the public release, which can cause unforeseen issues.

  • A text editor (Notepad++ is recommended, but the default Windows notepad will work).
  • An archiving tool (NanaZip is recommended).
  • The latest GPU drivers (either NVIDIA, AMD or Intel).
  • A Nexus Mods account (a Premium subscription will allow uncapped speeds).

Recommended Specs

Here are the recommended minimum specifications to run it at 60 FPS 1080p with the High preset:
  • CPU: Matching or surpassing the single-thread performance of a Ryzen 5 1600.
  • RAM: 8GB or more.
  • GPU: Matching or surpassing the performance of a GTX 1060 or RX 480. 4GB or more of VRAM.
  • Storage: Solid state (SSD).
You can get away with less GPU power if you skip the heavier Community Shaders addons later on in the Visuals section.