Ambrosia ENB - Enderal SSE (2024)

Ambrosia ENB is subtly beautiful, variable yet cohesive, and best of all - highly playable!

Ambrosia was born out of a conversation about how to preserve Enderal's original look and feel while taking advantage of modern ENB features. By balancing lighting and effects around the game's original post-processing, Ambrosia celebrates and enhances Enderal's colours and tones, while a touch of magic is added through image-based lighting and (optional) depth of field.

The design philosophy is "more, but not too much" - it should be there when you want it, but subtle and undistracting.

I've attempted to keep the images on the mod page as spoiler-free as possible, but some of the later images may contain mild spoilers due to the need to show examples from that lighting. Where they may contain spoilers, they're as unintrusive as possible, and generic captions are used.

Features

Better-lit objects, grasses, skin, sky, and landscapes.
Texture lovers rejoice! Ambrosia adds detailed shadowing and bounce lighting enhance the depth of scenes and objects. With corrected "sky math", it also adjusts the sky gradient so details and clouds are more visible without sacrificing colour.Light is painted across landscapes in special conditions, such as auroras and sunsets,for a gorgeous and realistic lighting enhancement without adding faux brightness.

Includes an extensive array of ENB features, tuning them specifically for Enderal.
This includes detailed shadowing and lighting approximation (SSAO/IL), wetness effects (subtle for skin, heavier for objects), skylighting (sun-based shadows/brightness), subsurface scattering (penetration of light into surfaces), complex particle lights (for ENB light), and complex grass (for grass lighting and collisions). All parallax settings, complex materials, and dynamic cubemaps are enabled by default.

Works with, not against, the original post-processing.
For example, clear sunny skies remain tinged with teal, classic orange sunrays remain splashed across skylit shots, Goldenforst remains golden, nights and storms remain moody, Undercity tones remain slightly desaturated and cinematic, and Fogville weathers remain misty and eerie.

Avoids common issues with Enderal ENB presets.
These issues often arise from porting Skyrim values without compensating for Enderal quirks in some conditions, using under-adjusted Rudy values, or leaving default values untouched. Ambrosia avoids bright red windows/fires/sun, overly contrasted night fog/skies, blown out daytime skies, excessively flat or dark sun shadows, very dark dawn/dusk, and inappropriately vibrant lighting during rain and fogs.

Enhances playability through subtle brightening and slightly increased visibility.
All but the deepest of stormy nights and most abandoned dungeons are easy to navigate, and brightness is intuitive for the weather and lighting conditions. Contrast is balanced so that vision isn't obscured. You won't be unexpectedly scrambling in the dark (or strolling around at midnight like it's noon).

Offers a beautiful "sparkling" depth-of-field preset.
The bokeh effect has a gradual onset and applies to objects at a very close distance. It gives a fantasy touch that makes for some very pretty screenshots, but can also be easily turned off in the menu.

Accounts for modern lighting SKSE plugins, such as EVLaS.
Blends and slightly lengthens day/night transitions and brightens shadows in common problem lighting situations. Comes with optional configurations for EVLaS and po3's moon mod to synchronize light with the position of the sun and moons.Includes tweaked cubemap settings to avoid overbrightness in outdoor lighting.

Easily customizable for performance and personal preference.
Because Ambrosia does not include individual settings per weather, this makes it much simpler to quickly adjust settings. By default, Ambrosia comes with dynamic cubemaps and most parallax enabled (see below for more information).A short guide to customizing the ENB will be posted in the Articles section, along with FAQs.

Is Ambrosia a good fit for you?
Picking an ENB preset is highly personal, so I've tried to include as many example images and comparisons as possible! Check out the screenshots in the mod images. Before you do, please adjust your monitor brightness andcalibrate your monitor black levels. Proper black levels will make or break your experience with any ENB!

Ambrosia might be for you if:

• You're looking for a "vanilla plus" ENB.
• You want to do a playthrough with the original vanilla colours.
• You highly value detailed textures and precise shadowing.
• You're experiencing issues with other popular presets.
• You want to use modern ENB features with a preset designed to make them work well together.
• You want an ENB that's relatively simple to adjust to your needs.
• You want a base to work with to create your own ENB. ;)
  

It might not be for you if:

• You prefer a highly-stylized, hyper-saturated, or extremely bright look.
• You don't mind some of the tradeoffs of that approach.
• You want completely different, non-vanilla looks for lighting and weathers.
• You are using an older graphics card. While performance can be optimized, ENBs can be fairly resource-intensive, including Ambrosia.
  

Known Issues
Ambrosia is extensively tweaked for a wide variety of weathers, lighting palettes, times of day, and locations. I've put it through a long period of stress-testing with everything I could think to throw at it. However, due to the need to rely on the game's original post-processing, Ambrosia is tied to vanilla lighting and weather values and does not include per-weather tweaks. I've pushed the ENB to the limit of what I can do without an accompanying weather/lighting plugin or individual weathers, but I might release another ENB that takes advantage of these features in the future. ;) For now, I've stuck to a "vanilla, but tweaked" philosophy for this ENB.

Typical questions about ENB adjustments are answered the related article. I will provide as much ongoing support as I can for troubleshooting, but the article will serve as a helpful repository for FAQs.

Installation
Ambrosia is designed to work well with many other mods out-of-the-box. The mods listed as "highly recommended" in the installation steps below are soft requirements, but Ambrosia can work on its own with just the ENB binaries (0.484+, but I recommend the latest).What you install is to a large extent up to your preference.

Step 1.(Optional, recommended.)Tune your monitorblack level, contrast, whites, and gamma.

Step 2. Adjust your Skyrim (or Enderal) .ini files to match the following settings.

Step 3a. If you do not have ENB already installed, download and install the ENB binaries.

Step3b. Or, if you already had ENB installed, clear your ENB shader cache by deleting the files in the enbcache folder.

Step 4. Download and install Ambrosia ENB.

Step 5. (Optional, recommended.) Launch the game and ensure the ENB is installed correctly.

Step 6. Install your choice of the following mods (and their dependencies).
This will take advantage of the range of features Ambrosia has to offer, fix bugs, and will help ensure that everything looks good together. ENB Helper is not required for Ambrosia.

Highly recommended (soft requirements):
Auto ParallaxEnhanced Volumetric Lighting and Shadows (EVLaS)Moons and Stars - Sky Overhaul SKSE
Particle Patch for ENB. Choose any of the FOMOD options. The .esp for this must be overwritten with an .esp below.
No More Blinding Fog
Rudy ENB for Enderal Forgotten Stories, "ENDERAL essential fixes for Rudy ENB" file only (install as a mod).
Rudy ENB SE for Obsidian Weathers - Enderal, "Rudy ENB Enderal Special Edition REQUIRED files" only (install as a mod).Overwrite the particle patch .esp.
Shadow BoostSoft Shadows
Water Brightness and Reflection Fix
Feel free to skip ahead to the next step now if you're getting tired, but if not... more recommendations! :)

Optional, nice to have (utilities):

Optional, nice to have (meshes/textures, weather, lights):

Step 7. Install any optional Ambrosia files and let them overwrite.
Optional files are provided for configuring EVLaS, po3's moon mod, and Splashes of Storms. These files can be used with or without Ambrosia ENB and need to load after the corresponding mods above, so they're separate downloads.

Step 8. Configure the ENB to your preferences and setup.
By default, Ambrosia comes with several advanced or fairly demanding ENB features enabled, including:

• Depth of field
• Ambient occlusion, distant/detailed shadow, normal mapping shadows, cloud shadows
• Subsurface scattering
• Complex particle lights
• Wet surfaces
• Terrain blending
• Complex parallax and shadows
• Complex terrain parallax and shadows
• Complex grass and grass collisions
• Complex material
• Dynamic cubemaps
  

If you aren't sure what some of these features do or if you don't have textures installed specifically for them, you likely want to set those values to false. For more information about customization, refer to the related article. :)

Compatibility
Known compatibilities:

• All lighting mods are compatible.
• Weather mods are technically compatible, but your mileage may vary (see notes below).
• Other cloud textures and sky mesh fixes (such as Picta Series) should be compatible, but are untested.
  

Weather compatibility notes:
Ambrosia was designed with the vanilla weathers in mind. While there shouldn't be huge issues with using weather mods, your mileage may vary with how good they look. Whether (heh) you experiment with weather mods will for the most part be a matter of personal preference. :)

Please note that because I don't personally use any weather mods, these weathers are technically unsupported, but feel free to let me know how they look!

• Intense Sandstorms is technically compatible with Ambrosia, but Intense Sandstorms seems to have been designed with MJ Rudy in mind, which makes sandstorms very yellow. In vanilla Enderal, Ambrosia, and some other ENBs, Intense Sandstorms will look very white, more like mist or snow. I've included some screenshots on the mod page so you can decide whether you'd like to use it.
• Diverse Weathers makes some small additions to weathers that change the look/feel of various regions, so I personally don't use the mod and the new weathers are untested.
• True Storms makes extensive edits to vanilla weather colours, lighting, and particle values. Whether this is improved from Enderal's vanilla weathers is a matter of personal preference, but I'd encourage you to check out the vanilla storms with Ambrosia and see how you like them.
• Obsidian Weathers for Enderal simply overwrites Enderal weathers with vanilla Skyrim/Obsidian weathers. How much you like it will depend on your personal taste.
  

Performance, Customization, Troubleshooting
Check out the accompanying post in the articles section for a brief primer about how to adjust some of the settings and resolve some typical ENB hiccups.

I currently have a laptop-version RTX 4060 GPU, i7 processor, and 16GB of RAM. I cap my FPS at 60. With this ENB, a ReShade on top, and 4k textures, I get 50-60 FPS outdoors in most conditions. Your mileage will significantly vary depending on your hardware. :)

Default Key Mappings
The enblocal.ini that comes with Ambrosia is commented with explanations of the most common settings. You can look up key combination codes here to change values.
Shift + Enter - Bring up the ENB menu
F11 (or Shift + F11 on some keyboards) - Quick toggle ENB on/off
F7 (or Shift + F7 on some keyboards) - Quick toggle depth of field on/off

Other key mappings:

Credits
A big thank you and all credit to rudy102, the godfather of many ENBs, for helping us all have very pretty games. :) I referenced his Enderal LE and Skyrim SSE ENB settings as I was configuring this ENB preset, and his open-permissions atmosphere and clouds meshes/textures from Rudy Cathedral ENB are included in Ambrosia. Without him, Ambrosia wouldn't have been possible!

The shaders and settings in the ENB, and the assets included in Rudy's resource packs for Enderal, wouldn't have been possible without many contributors. All credit and a big thank you goes to them for their contributions to ENB modding:

And thanks to TieflingGrimoire, whose original distaste for ENBs and Enderal purism inspired this ENB. ;)

All donation points earned from this mod go to Ukraine Relief Effort.