I should have listened to the warnings. Alas, I did not. I have used Warzones for most of a nearly 60 hour playthrough on a character who is doing the CW questline. It wasn't bad at first, as only the actual content of the mod was buggy for me. A few NPC's hidden beneath the world cell, crashes when a script was not handled properly etc. It didn't affect too much, until I tried to complete the CW. Without going into too much detail, the mod simply doesn't fit with my current load order. Warzones, combined with things like Skyrim Monster Mod, have unleashed swarms of nearly unkillable enemies upon Tamriel.

It has gotten so bad that I can't even walk between Whiterun and Riverwood without being killed by a Sabre Cat at level 9. Now if I had a tool like FormID Finder for Skyrim I could determine if it is Warzones spawning these horrendous beasts or if it is the combo of Duke Patricks Heavy Weapons Combat and more difficult enemies resulting from Skyrim Monster Mod, either way, I dont like it.

Add this to my growing concern that the sheer amount of scripts it runs during the course of a single session is going to destroy my chances at having a nice clean load order and you have a toxic mix.

Its a good mod with a good idea and I have no doubt that the man/team behind it is very talented and probably frustrated at people like me. So....instead of causing him angst by posting for him or someone else to fix my problem, I am just going to walk away.

DONT READ ABOVE IF YOU DON'T CARE WHY I DON"T WANT TO USE Warzones

I have noticed that there are several mods which appear to do something similar to warzones, albeit in more specified situations. Here is what I wanted out of WZ and hopefully someone can give me some of the mods that will do this while causing me less gaming stress.

-Bigger and more action packed Civil War battles. I don't want 8 guys spawning fighting to the death and then having another 8 guys respawn.
- Boss characters
- Dynamic random battles: I like the idea that a large battle could occur at any moment, but I want it to be a bit more organic. Here's an example of something I experienced while using WZ that may have nothing to do with that mod but it was still cool.

I was crossing the geysers to the south of Windhelm and I saw a couple of Cyclops from SMM. They were pretty ferocious and I should have died, however a dragon flew overhead and grabbed their attention. Then, a giant came out of nowhere and started to battle the dragon down. See? A cool, dynamic battle that occured simply by walking through the right place at the right time. What I don't want, is 15 Vampires popping into view fighting against 10 Stormcloaks. This just causes lag hiccups and the scripts can get messy when they occur in places effected by quests.

I like the idea of the mod, but I just cant handle the amount of incompatibilities and CTDs that it tends to cause. Not to mention its scripts bloat my game like no other. Any mods that act as a replacer would be great.

I don't use any such mods myself (was using warzones but my system just couldn't handle the large battles) so can't really help, but just curious which version you were using? If pre-v3, then I suggest you try it again as he did a complete rewrite of the mod for v3 (and it's now at v4 since a few days). If you already were using v3+ then disregard this feeble attempt at helping.

I was actually using an old version and it was a bit smaller scale with less scripts that caused issues. The new version is nice. I really like the logic and concept of the mod, but I wish it was handled a bit differently is all. I often have problems when mods get too big, unless it is all integrated in a compilation like FCOM where compatibility is ensured through specific measures. WZ is just too much to handle at times both from a gameplay and technical sense.

I used an old version of Warzones as well a while back, and while it was epic and exciting at first it did make things too chaotic in the wilds for my liking after a while. It got to the stage where just walking across the overcrowded world was way more dangerous than any dungeon, which all felt empty and dull by comparison. Buffing your character to be able to handle the wilds took all the challenge out of dungeon crawling too. The game got kind of turned upside down, for me anyway. This sort of thing may have been remedied by now though since the mod author was talking about being able to customize the amount of spawns.

So yeah like you OP Warzones wasn't for me, though I expect there are loads of people getting great enjoyment from it. If I was to use it again I would probably build a small army with one of the follower overhaul mods to accompany me around the wilds and then leave them all outside when I went dungeon crawling.

The mod I use now instead is Occupy Skyrim http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12479 which spawns battles and encounters of varying difficulty. It just affects vanilla spawnpoints rather than adding loads of new ones so things don't go overboard and the battles do end up being quite dynamic especially when dragons get involved.

Thanks for the find ElderMoles. The overwhelming number of spawnpoints and the chance to have battles spawn anywhere was not only taxing on my gameplay, but also on my system. I would occasionally CTD, not as a result of just WZ, but due to a combination of mods and a script overload of sorts. For example, my log was only 18KB for about 20-25 mins of gameplay, I began to walk across Skyrim and came across an area that was supposed to be a spawn point (I had been killed there before) and my log jumped into the 150 KB range, then I encountered a small group of WZ related spawns and before I knew it the game crashed and my log size was >3MB or so.

I use a combination of a couple mods to add some life to the world. Along with Occupy Skyrim...

Immersive Patrols - http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12977

Skyrim Live - http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=13399

Travellers of Skyrim - http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=15501

Question .... did you use Wrye Bash?

I have Ocuppy Skyrim, Monster Mod, and Warzones and PISE all enabled.

But I found that before using Wrye Bash to bash the levelled list together etc that I was getting masses of mixed spawns all over the place. It was fun with Treratops and Ogres in the middle of a warzone with Stormcloaks and Imperials at level 10 character, but I didn't believe it was how it was supposed to operate.

After I bashed it all (and added the lore friendly reducer for the monster mod) everything seems a lot calmer and navigable.

If you're going to use Warzones with other spawn add and multiplyer mods, you really must merge their levelled lists otherwise you're just asking for trouble.

@Rozwell thanks for the link to Immersive Patrols, I hadn't seen that before.

All of these work well together Rozwell (including Occupy Skyrim)?

One issue that I have seen so far is that Imperials and Stormcloaks will pass each other on the roads and not attack. I beleive this is a faction issue between two of the mods but have not investigated anything yet. I have only noticed this a couple times.

Ok, thanks.

Thanks for posting those. They look really good.

Mh Skyrim Live, mh for me it's to much live of course Skyrim could need a bit more Travellers, but the hole feeling go away, you meet each steps a imperial/Stormcloack patrol, marodeurs or travellers.