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The first minutes: where a new game puts you

• A new game skips the cart ride. Alternate Perspective takes everything off you, dresses you in farm clothes and boots, gives you 72 gold and drops you in its start room, then opens character creation. The Starts page has the choices you get from there.
• The start room is where GTS puts its two big first choices: the Book of Traits and the Balance Gear. Both stand in that room, so make them before you walk out.
• From the Book of Traits you pick up to three traits for your character, and you don't have to pick any. They are for keeps: once you leave the room you can't change them. Setting
• The room also has a few odds and ends set out: a health, a stamina and a magicka potion, a lute, a drum, a flute, a fishing rod, a bucket, a broom and a blacksmith's hammer.
• A second Balance Gear stands in Helgen, out in the open, so you can still make or change the choice after you have left the start room.

The Balance Gear: Default Experience or Story Mode

• Using the Balance Gear asks you to choose between the Default Experience and Story Mode. If you never touch it, you play the Default Experience.
• Story Mode gives you 100 extra carrying capacity, which cancels Survival's 100 penalty, and a hidden perk: your attacks do a quarter more damage and attacks on you do a quarter less.
• Story Mode shows the compass, the sneak eye and your own marker on the map from the start. In the Default Experience they stay hidden until you take the Spatial Awareness perk (compass and map marker) and then Sixth Sense (sneak eye), in the Wayfaring survival skill.
• Story Mode cuts the stress each hit adds: an ordinary hit adds a fifth as much as in the Default Experience, and a power attack, or any hit while you're below half health, three fifths as much. Stress from other causes is the same in both.
• In Story Mode an enemy that carries potions has just one to drink; in the Default Experience it can have up to four.
• Story Mode hands you 20 empty bottles for alchemy. Switching back to the Default Experience takes 20 away again.
• In Story Mode your followers can't be killed off or injured by the follower death system when they fall in a fight.
• In Story Mode sneaking no longer eats your stamina the way it does in the Default Experience.
• In the Default Experience a hidden effect drains a little stamina while you attack with anything but a bow (not during power attacks, which cost stamina anyway). Story Mode switches it off; this is the easier stamina use its message promises.
• If you become a vampire, Story Mode spares you the burning that strong sunlight deals GTS's vampires, and people don't turn on you on sight at the last, starving stage.
• You can use the Balance Gear again, in the start room or later in Helgen, and the new choice replaces the old one. Each Story Mode pick hands over another 20 bottles, though, and each Default Experience pick takes 20 away.

Messages you'll see as the game starts

• Right at the start a GTS welcome box comes up: click OK, then give the game a moment to finish setting itself up.
• If that box is a warning instead, stop: it means some of GTS's own plugins (or its Anniversary Edition optional files) are missing. The warning tells you to fix it and start a new game, as that save can't be used.
• When you close character creation, a run of small notes in the corner of the screen names menu settings being played in. That is GTS's own menu setup running once by itself; let it finish.
• The first time you mount a horse, a tip tells you that getting off means holding Activate down for a moment.
• When you get into a bed, a tip tells you to press Wait (T) to sleep. The Sleep and rest page has the rest.

The everyday keys

• GTS ships its own key map, and the everyday keys sit where Skyrim players expect them: WASD to move, E to use, R to draw your weapon, Space to jump, Left Alt to sprint, Left Ctrl to sneak, Left Shift to run, Caps Lock to always run, C to auto-move, F to change view, Z to shout and T to wait.
• Menus: Tab opens the main menu (skills, magic, map, items), I your inventory, P your magic, M the map, J the journal, / the skill trees and Q your favourites. Escape pauses, and ~ opens the console.
• Keys 1 to 8 (and the matching number-pad keys) use whatever you've put in those favourite slots.
• F1 to F4 equip your favourite groups 1 to 4 while you play; you set the groups up in the favourites menu. Setting
• F11 brings up a keyboard sheet with GTS's own labels for the keys. A few labels are off (G is labelled for taunting too, though taunting has no key in base GTS, for one); where the sheet and this page differ, this page follows GTS's files. Setting

The keys GTS adds

• Left Shift is the Dynamic Activation Key: hold it while you press E for a second action, which the on-screen prompt names. As GTS sets it, that opens a follower's inventory, takes a book without reading it, puts on armour, a weapon or a scroll, or eats food or an ingredient, and GTS's own add-on gives more, such as petting an animal or taking a nap. Shift with traders, trainers, planting and a horse's packs is switched off. Setting
• The = key opens a character sheet (Character Menu). Inside it, F shows details, G is its action button, and Q and R flip between pages. Setting
• On that character sheet, P swaps the stress display over to your fears. The Stress and fear page explains both. Setting
• V drinks a health potion, B a stamina potion and N a magicka potion. The mod picks the potion for you, so you needn't dig through your inventory. Setting
• H calls your horse. Setting
• G calls out to someone nearby to get their attention (Interact From Afar, from Remote Interactions). Setting
• X shows or hides the parts of the HUD that Immersive HUD runs, such as the compass, the crosshair and the floating quest markers. As GTS sets it, they start shown when you load a save. Setting
• L lights or puts out the lantern you carry on your belt (Lights On). Setting
• The left square bracket key steps your helmet through three states: worn as the mod decides, always on, always off. Setting
• The middle mouse button locks on to an enemy, and pressing it again lets go. While locked on, move the mouse or turn the wheel to switch target. Setting
• In third person, when several things sit under your aim, hold Left Shift and turn the mouse wheel to pick between them. It doesn't work in first person, as the mod ships and GTS keeps it. Setting
• Insert opens the equipment display menu, and Shift with O opens the animation menu. Setting
• End opens the graphics menu, the number-pad * switches the shader effects off and on, and F10 shows a performance overlay. Setting
• The SKSE mod menu opens with F6, as GTS sets it (the mod ships F1). You can change the key in that menu's own settings. Setting
• Taunting has no key and isn't in your powers as GTS sets it up. Setting
• Photo mode has no key until you give it one in its menu. Setting
• While you hold an object up in front of you (hold E on it), the mouse moves it: the left button turns it, the right and middle buttons and the wheel move it about, and R sets it back straight. Setting

What works differently in the first hours

• Survival Mode is on from the start, with hunger, cold and tiredness all running. You can switch it off in the game's Gameplay settings. The Survival page has the detail. Setting
• With Survival on, you carry 100 less than usual. Setting
• With Survival on, your health hardly comes back by itself: Survival takes away your natural health regeneration, and only GTS's summer bonus (Mid Year to Last Seed) gives a little back. Bring food, potions or a healing spell.
• GTS gives every character a small bonus that changes with the season: in spring (First Seed to Second Seed) you move a tenth faster, in summer (Mid Year to Last Seed) you heal a little faster, in autumn (Hearthfire to Sun's Dusk) you resist frost by 10%, and in winter (Evening Star to Sun's Dawn) you carry 10 more. Vampires, werewolves, werebears and liches don't get it.
• With Survival on you can't fast travel from the map. Journeyman's Travel Pack lets you, and carriages still run but cost more. The Getting around page has the detail. Setting
• Armour slows you down: each light piece takes a little off your speed and heavy pieces take more, unless you have the matching armour perk (Unhindered for light armour, Unstoppable for heavy).
• Hits can wound you: each melee blow has a small chance to leave a cut, a bruise, a broken bone or a concussion that needs treating. The Wounds and injuries page has the detail. Setting
• Fights build stress, and a bad enough one can leave you afraid of a kind of enemy. The Stress and fear page has the detail.
• Tiredness counts up while you're awake, and where you sleep decides how good your rest is: inns and your own home are best. The Sleep and rest page has the detail.
• Crafting and training pass game time. As GTS's setup sets it, a cuirass takes 3 hours, a sword 1.5, a greatsword 2, training 2; mining, chopping wood, eating, picking plants and learning spells take none. Setting
• You need soap to take a bath. Setting
• Followers can be injured or even killed for good when they fall in a fight: as GTS's setup sets it, a 10% injury chance and a 3% death chance. Setting
• The health, stamina and magicka bars show as in plain Skyrim. The compass, the crosshair and the floating quest markers are left to Immersive HUD, which X shows or hides. Setting
• Skill perks come from Adamant's perk trees. On top of the usual skills there are six survival skills with their own trees (Camping, Beast Handling, Culinary Arts, Endurance, Hunting and Wayfaring), which you can open at a campfire. The Levelling page has the detail.

Saving

• F5 makes a full save of its own, not a quicksave that gets overwritten. F9 is still quick load. Setting
• As GTS sets up the game's ini, opening the pause menu also saves the game. Setting
• The game saves by itself straight after character creation, and again once your chosen start has moved you out of the start room.
• Leftover SKSE save files with no matching save are cleaned up for you. Setting
• If the GTS warning about missing plugins shows when you start, don't carry on with that save: the warning says it can't be used even after you fix the plugins.

Settings, and what GTS's setup changes

• GTS's menu setup runs once by itself, when you close character creation. After that its choices are ordinary menu settings you can change.
• Besides the keys and times above, GTS's setup sets random encounters: 10% on roads and in the wild, 2% for dragons, and 5% when you sleep, wait or fast travel. Setting
• GTS's setup also makes Honed Metal's smith and enchanter services dearer than the mod ships them: tempering costs about four times as much, enchanting nearly four times, crafting and materials about half as much again, and recharging about a third more. Setting
• Waiting and sleeping run faster on screen than in plain Skyrim. Setting
• Most keys can be changed: the game's own controls menu for the everyday keys, and each mod's page in the Mod Configuration menu for most keys GTS adds. The SKSE menu and the equipment display set their keys inside their own menus; the character sheet's keys, and the animation and graphics menus' keys, sit in files GTS ships.
• GTS's ini settings also take the Creations entry off the main menu and skip the opening logo videos. Setting

From base GTS 118's own files: the records as the game uses them, the mods' own settings files as Jay's collection ships them, and GTS's own menu setup. Each line was read by one reader and checked by a second. A line marked Setting is a menu or settings-file option: what it says is the default. Your own add-ons can change any of this.