Disable these in Vortex if you want to go full vanilla graphic effects for extra performance:

• Community Shaders
• Water Blending
• Vanilla HDR
• Tree LOD Lighting
• Soft Shadows
• Screen-Space Shadows
• Grass Sampler Fix
• Grass Collision
• Complex Parallax Materials
• Complex Parallax for Northern Roads
• Auto Parallax
• TAA Sharpen
• Light Limit Fix

• INITIAL CONFIGURATION: First, you will choose your appearance. A message will greet you and ask you to wait a few seconds while the mods configure. A second message will appear once this is done. I recommend making a save and immediately reloading the save at this point before proceeding.
• CHOOSING YOUR STORY: Take the items that fit your character, then talk to the dragon to choose your origin story. By selecting "I'm the Dragonborn" you can do the vanilla intro or skip those quests altogether. You can also start with a different background and do Helgen later. Go through the door when ready.
• STARTING THE MAIN QUEST: With a custom start, Helgen won’t be destroyed and will host several voiced NPCs. To start the main quest (MQ), tell the innkeeper at Helgen that you want her best room. After telling Jarl Balgruuf that you were attacked by a Dragon, he won’t send you to Farengar right afterwards. Some days/weeks later, you will receive a letter that continues the main quest. This is done this way since Bleak Falls Barrow is no joke and I recommend being around level 15 before attempting such a big dungeon. However, you can talk to Farengar at any point to continue the MQ without waiting.
• VANILLA INTRO: The vanilla intro can sometimes have issues depending on your system. If you're struggling with funky physics, reload a save and try again.

Gate To Sovngarde takes a hybrid approach between a leveled and unleveled world, taking the best things of each method. This means the game will still remain a fair challenge at later levels, but at the start you will have to train and be mindful of what sort of enemies you face.

I recommend focusing on bandits and animals at the beginning, followed by draugr, forsworn and mages as you work your way to tougher enemies. You can see the enemy’s level as part of the UI now, so consider paying attention to this before commiting to a difficult fight. The level of quests and loot has been adapted to this progression approach too.

If you encounter a location where the enemies are too high level, leave and come back once you're stronger. Alternatively, you can decrease the difficulty from the main menu.

GTS uses Survival Mode (with improvements). It should provide a good middle ground between immersion and getting in the way of a fun gameplay session. If planning to go north, be mindful of carrying firewood with you to start a campfire. If planning to swim in frozen waters, either use a fire cloak or have a fire at the ready.

To sleep, press E to enter a bed or bedroll (enjoy the lovely blankets) and then press the WAIT menu to bring up the sleep screen. By default, this is the keyboard key “T”. Note: if using a tent from campfire, you need to sleep the traditional way, no "waiting" there.

Also: you can disable Survival Mode from the Settings menu.

In addition to Cold/Hunger, you also need to take care of long-term injuries and mental stress.

This might sound tedious, but these systems are implemented in such a way that they are out of your way 99% of the time, but when they kick in, they should create interesting narratives. There’s a small chance of being injured during fights. Injuries can range from small cuts to broken bones. All of these are animated and provide the perfect excuse for your character to spend a day or two back in town taking care of their injuries.

There’s no magic spell to cure these long-term injuries, you will have to rest and take it easy for a couple of days. Injuries appear in the effects menu and can be treated via the “Treat Injuries” lesser power. Stress is way simpler: fighting and getting hurt can increase your stress. Stress can be reduced by drinking alcohol, fishing, petting a dog, playing music... It provides the perfect opportunity to engage with all the roleplaying systems added in GTS.

Some miscellaneous items have new utilities. Don't worry, as these are explained in-game too.

• Instruments can be played when equipped from your inventory.
• Soap can be equipped to get a thorough cleaning. Scissors can be activated to get a new haircut.
• Clean bandages can be equipped from the misc item menu to provide faster healing on any given injuries (but this does not replace the “Treat Injuries” power, applying bandages directly just speeds up recovery at the price of temporarily losing an equipment slot where the bandage is placed).
• Lanterns and torchbug lanterns provide light when picked up. Activate the light with the L key.

The collection counts with many modded followers with thousands of new lines. Vanilla followers have also been enhanced with new mechanics and dialogue. You will be allowed to have several followers in your journey, but only one vanilla follower at the same time.

Also, please note that you should no longer use followers as meat shields. Followers (that are not attached to important quests) have a small chance of being injured or even dying in combat. The chance is very small, but it should encourage you to protect your followers. If they die, Immersive Interactions will allow you to mourn them and you can even bury them thanks to Skills of the Wild.

Some followers cannot die as they're crucial to the story. They will get permanent injuries instead. Permanently injured followers will still accompany you, but they will not fight.

So chances are that you eventually get injured and need to spend some days in town. Sounds boring, right? Wrong!

Almost all NPCs have received new lines, there are plenty of new NPCs you can talk to and if conversation is not your thing, there are many chill activities while in town: learn to play an instrument, go fishing, go hunting and deliver carcasses to NPCs, climb everything you see, take some skooma and see the world like you've never seen before… Endless possibilities!

The collection makes use of the latest version of Skills of the Wild. This mod rewards your progression with a few new skill trees related to cooking, exploring the world, hunting and interacting with animals. Progress is automatic as you play the game, but these perks can only be accessed through Campfire's "Make a Campfire" spell. There's a in-game tutorial that you can follow if this is the first time interacting with this system.

Most importantly, the compass and sneak eye are re-introduced in the game in a diegetic way. Meaning… as part of your character’s in-game progress. I’ve done this on purpose because I want you to pay attention to the screen, to your surroundings and to the sound of enemies, especially at the beginning. Both UI elements can be unlocked later on by investing points into the Wayfarer perk tree. These points are granted to you just by travelling and discovering new locations. You can also unlock them with the console by inputting "Set CompassCheat to 1" and saving/reloading.

You can press F11 in-game to see all the hotkeys. You can also find them below.

The collection has been made with keyboard in mind, but it shouldn't be too hard to run it with a controller too.