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About this blog

Greetings everyone! This page contains my various Bethesda blogs. At the time of this update, it contains my troubleshooting playthrough series, my Skyrim modding diary, my mod cleanup case study series, and my Shout Like a Virgin beta test blog. You can access all the entries from the sidebar on the right side of your screen.

 

Playthroughs

I've recently exceeded the 1000 mod threshold, and it's time to start periodically doing brief playthroughs to ferret out hidden conflicts and other bugs. In this series, we'll do shorter, more focused adventures where we try to tell an interesting story and also talk about what problems we ran into them and how we addressed them.

 

  • Charley's Story: Charlotte Ellison survived a nuclear war by spending more than two hundred years in stasis. Now she has to survive in a very new world, facing very new threats. A Fallout 4 playthrough.
  • The Spider's Web: Kirstia's search for answers has taken her to the island of Solstheim. Now she must uncover the secret of The Teacher - also known as Mephala - and continue the journey to master her powerful magical heritage. But can she survive as her enemies, new and old, close in? 
  • The Curious Case of Forrien Hlaalu: A year after she returned to Northpoint, Kirstia is back in Skyrim and looking for answers. The strange events that occured during her search for Sybil Fjotra continue to trouble her, as does the ongoing influence of the strange gods of the Forsworn. After a chance encounter over drinks, a wizard from the College of Winterhold sets her on the trail of a scholar who may have the answers she needs...
  • The Search for the Sybil: Exiled from Skyrim to the remote land of Northpoint, Kirstia Bjissen has fallen on hard times. Just as she hits rock bottom, a voice speaks to her and charges her with a sacred quest that will take her back to her native land - and likely into danger. Can Kirstia find the new Sybil of Dibella before her past catches up with her?
  • Shout Like a Virgin: Miraculously saved from death, Monilee of High Rock finds herself in Skyrim, a land riven by civil war and harboring dark secrets. While she tries to build a new life in this foreign land, she's haunted by half-remembered dreams, and in chasing them she discovers her role in the turning of the ages. However, Monilee has not gone unnoticed by powers outside the mortal realm. Used as a pawn in the struggle between Nocturnal and Dibella, it will take all her wits, endurance, bravery, and stubbornness to reclaim sovereignty over her body and her soul.

 

Modding Diary

This series tracks my modding projects in-between playthroughs and case studies. The main focus will be on the technical processes of cleaning, editing, and integrating mods into a large load order configuration, including managing emergent multi-mod interactions. 

 

Modding Case Studies

This blog reviews the tools and techniques that authors and end users can apply to make their mods as stable and compatible as possible, as well as how end users can integrate complicated mods into a large load order setup. In addition to coverage of well known techniques such as automatic mod cleaning, this blog delves into more complicated issues such as navmesh repair. 

 

Entries in this blog

Skyrim Modding Diary - 31 January 2022

Welcome back, everyone. With the successful completion of Skyrim at War tailoring yesterday, I'm a lot closer to being ready to stat my next playthrough than I'd previously expected. Consequently, today is going to focus on a couple of later-breaking edits followed by the prep work to get into a playthrough-ready state.   We started the day with 1,256 mods installed, 1,311 plugins active, and a final index of EF.   A Late Breaking Addition     Nocturnal Clean

Skyrim Modding Diary - 30 January 2022: Part 2

Well it turns out that after some shoveling (I foolishly forgot to put my snowblower's battery on the charger yesterday night ) and a little nap, my energy returned and I decided to do some more work on this. The first thing I did was install a bunch of texture improvement mods that I've had backlogged for a while. I won't bother documenting these, since they are pretty much "fire and forget" deals where I just have to make sure the asset load order is correct.   Nocturnal's New Clothe

Skyrim Modding Diary - 30 January 2022

Well, yesterday actually turned out to be a pretty productive day, didn't it? I have some time constraints today, since once the temperature gets up to close to its high for the day I need to go out and do some snowblowing to clear my driveway, but before then I have a few matters to attend to that are relevant to this blog. My main goals are to package and publish my BHUNP updates the Wench's Wardrobe (I got permissions to redistribute my edits from the author) and to install a few more locatio

Skyrim Modding Diary - 29 January 2022

Hello, everyone. Hope those of you in the northeast USA are keeping warm today with this big blizzard blowing through. Yesterday we started updating the Toys ecosystem to its current version (including a release candidate version of the next framework release). Today we'll wrap up that process and then, if time permits, knock out a few more deliverables.   We started the day with 1,233 mods installed, 1,291 active plugins, and a final load order index of EF.   Toy Story

Skyrim Modding Diary - 28 January 2022

Hello everyone, and happy Friday! Today we are going to have a bit of a themed day, as we'll be focusing on bringing the Toys ecosystem up to its latest versions (though there are a couple non-Toys items we'll be doing first just to clear the proverbial decks). We will also be doing another LOD & occlusion rebuild, but since I covered this recently I will only go into detail if we encounter problems.   We started the day with 1,231 mods installed and 1,290 plugins active. Our last

Skyrim Modding Diary - 27 January 2022

Hello, everyone! Hope your weeks are going well so far. Yesterday we got some new armor and actors into the game and we scouted out a location that'll eventually add a lot of depth to the central part of the map. Today we're going to install some more of our Winterhold locations and then work through some line items on the to-do list as time permits.    We started the day with 1,219 mods installed, 1,281 active plugins, and a final index of EF.   Some Cleanup Work  

Skyrim Modding Diary - 26 January 2022... Part 2

Hi folks, I hope you enjoyed part 1 of today's diary. Since it turned out I had some more free time this afternoon, I wrote up this second part to supplement the earlier entry.   As we touched on in part 1, there are a few things on the docket - some new armor items, an NPC overhaul, and more exterior location improvements in particular. Hopefully we can have a pretty productive day!   We picked up from last time at 1,216 mods installed, 1,279 plugins active, and a last index

Skyrim Modding Diary - 26 January 2022

Welcome back, everyone. Yesterday we installed a few more locations in the Pale; we also moved a village that was conflicting with a nearby location. We added game mechanical support for Kirstia's magical bodily fluids, and finally, we got a number of new armor sets into the game.    Today we're going to finish up with the armor mod by creating a new distribution branch to offer them in lieu of Elven gear for non-Thalmor characters. This not only helps my ongoing effort to make sure th

Skyrim Modding Diary - 25 January 2022

Hi folks, welcome back. After things went kind of sideways with my plan to chop up and repackage Wild Mountain Farm, I moved on to another worldspace item - filling in the Pale and Winterhold in order to cut down on the amount of empty space in those areas. We got three new settlements up and running, but when we went to do the fourth - Dunpar Wall - we found it was occupying the same geometry as one of the other settlements we'd just installed. Today, we'll move the hamlet of Dunstead so it's n

Skyrim Modding Diary - 24 January 2022

Welcome back, everyone. Yesterday we went in and address a number of minor issues that I've observed over the past month. We also dusted off one of my long-neglected modding projects and finished it. You might be wondering why I posted it on the Nexus instead of the Lab. I normally post my SFW stuff on the Nexus and NSFW here - this way I don't have to worry about drama or censorship on my NSFW content, while benefitting from the Nexus' excellent cross-referencing features for my 'safe' material

Skyrim Modding Diary - 23 January 2022

Welcome back, everyone. Yesterday we did some fairly involved outfit integration, but ran into a wall trying to do a mashup outfit without heavy Outfit Studio work. If you followed the comment section, you'll know that I had a sudden insight hours later when I remembered I had made a mod last year that has the potential to exactly solve my problem. Today, we're going to get that outfit set up and also do some bugfixing.   Black Leather Armor - Finishing an Old Project    

Skyrim Modding Diary - 22 January 2022

Hi folks, welcome back. Yesterday we delved into the possibilities of SPID with a look at Detailed NPCs. We also updated Phenderix Magic World to a new version and we moved the Windhelm ferry to the opposite side of the river. Today we're going to continue working on Phenderix by giving the inhabitants a somewhat less safe for work overhaul; afterwards, time permitting, we'll also customize a mod-added NPC and get some new monsters up and running.   We're starting today with 1,199 mods

Skyrim Modding Diary - 21 January 2022

Welcome back. Yesterday we did some cleanup work, burned a lot of time updating a mod only to throw it out because of incompatibilities, experienced heavy snowfall in Windhelm, and gave Malacath the confidence to ditch his loincloth. Today we're going to first look at a series I've been tracking for a while - Detailed NPCs. After that, if time permits, I have a few other mods only my list that I'll try to get to.   We currently stand at 1184 mods and 1250 plugins, slightly down from ye

Skyrim Modding Diary - 20 January 2022

Hi folks, welcome to my new modding diary blog. Whether you came here from one of my previous blogs or this is your first time delving into my stuff, I hope you'll find this interesting and educational.   A little background first. Skyrim is as much a hobby as it is entertainment for me. I enjoy creating complex, stable load orders and doing lots of compatibility work. I don't pretend to be an expert on every aspect of the game, but by now I have many years of experience and I think so

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