Hi! Boy it's been a long time since I've been on these forums. But now I'm back!
I was big into modding Oblivion. Huge. I spent many sleepless nights and countless hours downloading mods, installing them, crashing, redownloading... Well, you guys know the drill. I even made a few small mods of my own, although I never released anything. But above all, I loved every moment of it. But I got caught up in real life issues, and eventually I fell off the grid. I got a new computer, and Oblivion was lost deep within the drawers of my desk...

But then Skyrim was released! And what a great game it has been! I've now reached level 48, however, and frankly I'm getting a little bored with the game. Now, I constantly think of all the fun I had with Oblivion, and I cannot resist the temptation to mod Skyrim. And why would I? This time, however, I want to start right. Well, at least better. It took me a long time to learn that the benefits far outway the hastles of using Wrye Bash, BOSS, etc. And let's not forget cleaning our mods with TES4Edit! Basically, I don't want everything I learned while modding Oblivion to go to waste. I want to put it all to good use when I begin to install and play mods for Skyrim.

Which brings me to Tytanis - The Ultimate Mod. I figure this mod is as good a place as any to start. I was a HUGE fan of FCOM, and while obviously the CK is not out yet and I can't expect anything of that size for quite a while... Tytanis looks pretty cool. I did some research before jumping into it (I'm trying to be extra cautious) and it's evident from the forums on SkyrimNexus that you need to download and install other mods along with it. I expected something lik this, but it's also said that there is no readme file or anything of the sort that tells you what to download along with it. I have Wrye Bash, along with BOSS installed and ready to go. First, is there anything else I should know about? Like any other tools I should be using? And what mods exactly do I need to download to get Tytanis to work.

Any help is extremely appreciated. I just want to get this off to a good start.

P.S. I would also appreciate any mod suggestions. Like, which ones are your favorite, which ones you recommend, etc. Thanks!

Actually, Tytanis is totally self-contained (to its detriment if you like modularity). All files are included in the main download.

I enjoy 99% of Tytanis, but be warned that the current version glitches up Wards and Lightning Spells.

As for mod recommendations, I recommend my own mods

But seriously, for essentials I recommend:
SkyUI: http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3863
Extra Hotkeys: http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3865
Reduced Distance NPC Greetings: http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=746
Tejon's Simple Spell Scaling Fix: http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2585

That's all I can think of at the moment.

Tytanis is not like FCOM. They are worlds apart. Tytanis isn't all that lore-friendly, either - most of FCOM was. FCOM combined aspects from Oscuro (a rebalancing of the entire game, redoing much of it, making various areas more un-leveled, etc), Martigen's (many many monsters added, new fleeing scripts, new interaction between creatures), Franscesco's (lots of new weapons, named enemies), and War Cry (sort of a mix of Frans and Martigen's).

Tytanis adds a bunch of miscellaneous stuff, mostly items and spells, from all over, with a few overbalanced perk changes thrown in. It's a conglomeration of mods, rather than so much of an overhaul of the game itself. It's definitely not very clean, either, with numerous bugs due to the massive amounts of content and lack of proper bug-fixing.

I'm not a big fan of it, tbh. Riding sabre-toothed tigers, for example? I'll pass..

Yeah, I probably should have said something about that... Plutoman is correct, a lot of it is unbalanced and most of it is not lore-oriented. It's basically a grab bag of goodies, with balance being worked on later.

Yeah. I liked some parts of the mod, but it was just too much randomness in one mod for me. Not to mention it conflicted with some of my other (more favorable) mods, so I had to ditch it. I like mods that have some main purpose, aside from "We're gonna do it all and probably give up, in the long run!"

I will say, it does have some things in it that you probably won't find in any other mods, yet. So, it can at least say that it's the first to do "X" thing, in some aspects. But personally, I'll be waiting for separate, more structured mods, to come out once the CK is released.

I used to use the earlier versions of tytanis when it just added a few deecnt (but still a bit unbalanced) features to crafting and loot...but now in my opinion it's just a big bloated mish mash of unrelated mods glued together.. I would just ignore it and wouldn't care about that if it was just the work of it's original author but I really dislike how the author seems hell bent on swallowing up good smaller mods into his own and many of the standalone versions of those end up abandoned or neglected by the original author in favor of the one in "tytanis".

Ok. Thanks for the feedback everybody! I should clarify: I never expected Tytanis to be anything like FCOM. I was a humungous fan of FCOM, and Tytanis looks nothing like it. After reading all of your concerns about it, I have decided to pass on Tytanis. I find the game too easy with my enchanted dragonscale armor already, (and I'm playing on masters) so the last thing I'd want to do is unbalance it more. But before this turns into a Tytanis hate thread, can we get back to where I should begin then? Thanks for the suggestions Eldiran! I will certainly check them out. Any more suggestions are extremely welcome. And if Tytanis is unbalanced, what about The Weapons of the Third Era mod? I know that was included into Tytanis, but is it balanced stand alone? Thanks everybody!

I definitely like Weapons of the Third Era. It's a solid one. It's slightly imbalanced, but not from the mod, more so due to the ease of how you get money in the game.

Now, bear in mind that I'm entirely biased, and I freely admit it; but I do think my own mod (in my sig) makes the experience more enjoyable without changing the feel of Skyrim. And it turns the difficulty in the other direction. At some point, of course, it doesn't have too much of an effect (enchanted dragonscale might be towards that point) but it does help.

Jaysus swords look good, too, if you're interested in additional content. Are you interested more in gameplay, content, or just anything?

There's a lack of straight-up content coming out because of the nifscope compatibility (meshes are only just now able to be edited well for most people), and that navigating hexadecimal is awkward for a lot of people who can make meshes, textures, but can't add them as variety. Of course, we'll run into the leveled list issues sooner or later.. sooner, rather than later, but still.

Tytanis is an aweful mod made by a guy who just takes others work and throws them in a big package without any real design

Good thing once the CK is out and we start getting REAL overhaul mods from experienced modders/designers, all the praise its getting from those less knowledgable will probably shift to mods more diserving.