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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 - 26 March 2022

Well, it's time to set up our MCMs and get ready to launch Kirsti's next adventure. If you're curious and want a mini-spoiler, I've updated the mod description with a brief capsule of what to expect. This is probably going to be a somewhat shorter than usual diary unless I run into any complications or surprises that I think there's value in documenting.   Interested in seeing the details of the configuration I'm running? I've updated my Modwatch Page with the setup for this adventure.

Skyrim Modding Diary - 25 March 2022

Hi folks, this is going to be a quick one. I'm still working on getting my new adventure set up, but I wanted to share a little insight into what I'm doing other than setting MCMs.   Elderly Faces   A Couple Late Additions   And that's the state of the modding project when I started doing the MCMs. That looks like its going to roll over into tomorrow, but I'm very excited about starting up a new adventure! If you don't see an entry tomorrow, don't worry - it pro

Skyrim Modding Diary - 24 March 2022

Good morning, folks! After thinking on it for a while, I've decided to more or less lock my configuration at this point for the next adventure. I've started regenerating the grass cache and as long as nothing goes wrong, I won't be installing any more mods that touch the exterior worldspace. I say "as long as nothing goes wrong" because I did a bit of an experiment last night - I merged three major grass mods plus several smaller ones - and I won't know if it worked right until I finish generati

Skyrim Modding Diary - 22 March 2022

Welcome back! We've got a bunch of things on our plate, don't we? We need to deconflict some fairly major Loverslab mods (though with Troubles of Heroine, this is my own fault - I should have unraveled those script conflicts much earlier!!), we need to do some navmesh for Bells of Skyrim, and of course we do still need to keep on top of them seemingly neverending flow of new textures and other useful small mods popping up on the Nexus.   We're starting the day with 1,537 mods installed

Skyrim Modding Diary - 23 March 2022

Happy Wednesday, everyone! Today we're going to update the Toys family of mods, and then continue integrating some of the backlog as we move towards starting our new adventure.   We're beginning the day with 1,550 mods installed, 1,501 plugins active, and a final load order index of ED.   Opening The Toybox   Random Goodies   Candy Recon   Nature Time   A Few Miscellaneous Finds Since I'm using Arri's Snow Elf Ruins Rete

Skyrim Modding Diary - 22 March 2022 Part 2

OK, I've got time for a few more items. It'll be lightweight stuff but we can still check some boxes off the list.   Another FYX Mod   Wholesome Content   Bath Time!   Alright, now I feel like I accomplished a bit more today. Much better - and another important milestone... 1,550 mods installed! Will we make it to 1,600 before I start the next adventure?   Edit - and a little late breaking addition, I knuckled under and did the damn navmesh

Skyrim Modding Diary - 21 March 2022

Welcome back, everyone. We're getting closer to starting our next adventure story, so over the course of this week we're going to start to pivot away from general improvements to more targeted content that's relevant to our next playthrough. Today we're going to start working on getting our mods up to date as well as wrapping up Bells of Skyrim.    We're starting the day with 1,534 mods installed, 1,488 plugins active, and a final load order of EC.   First Things First

Skyrim Modding Diary - 19 March 2022

Hi everyone! I have to say I'm loving how spring seems to have finally come to New England. Got the window open in my office enjoying a cool breeze and letting the house air out a bit after being closed up all winter. Good times.   Today we're going to start with something a little different. Someone asked me to look at a mod conflict they're having, and while I was reviewing the mods this person is having trouble with, I realized that one of these mods might offer some benefits for me

Skyrim Modding Diary - 18 March 2022

Happy Friday, everyone! I'm going to take a little change of pace today. I'd originally planned to continue with the Bells of Skyrim project, but after restarting my PC to install some Windows updates, SSE started crashing at the main menu  I'm not getting Net Script Framework crash logs, which is frequently associated with corrupted nif files or with video related issues. I'm leaning towards the latter since SSE was running smoothly last night, and now it's crashing after a Windows Update run. 

Skyrim Modding Diary - 17 March 2022 - Part 2

I have a little mini update before I call it a night. After I finished the main diary entry earlier, I poked around the Nexus a bit and found an interesting SSE mod in the LE Nexus of all places. I subsequently came across two more mods while I was browsing Reddit, and as such got a couple more additions today.   Botox Cocktail If you've been following my diary for a while, you know that I installed Botox for Skyrim very early in my load order - before even the High Poly NPC Proje

Skyrim Modding Diary - 17 March 2022

Welcome back, everyone. Based on my short 'part 2' post yesterday, I'm sure you can guess where we'll be starting today - Bells of Skyrim. Dark's Market, and the stack of mods that follows from that (Fortified Whiterun, City Trees) are on hold for now until I have a little more time for a more in depth integration effort. After Bells, we need to fix that navmesh issue with the old south gate, and then we'll see what other items on our modding plan we have time for. And of course there are, as al

Skyrim Modding Diary - 16 March 2022 - Part 2

Welcome back folks! With spring sunshine suddenly part of the picture (and my computer station right next to a west-facing window), my 'hobby time' has slid a little later in the evening. As you might have noticed on the way here, I just wrapped up the Groot's Solitude case study, and I found myself with a little bit of spare time. Let's hop back into general modding and see if we can get one or two more mods added.   Preparing for City Trees I mentioned earlier that I'm intereste

Skyrim Modding Diary - 16 March 2022

Happy Wednesday everyone! After I wrapped up my diary for yesterday I took a quick tour through the Devious Lore locations and I was very pleased to find that none of them had any terrain intrusion. I'll need to rebuild the grass cache of course, but we'll be doing that anyway before I start my next adventure in about a week or so. Today we'll do some polishing on Devious Lore and then tackle some other mods that I have in my queue. Today will probably be a fairly short session as I have to do s

Skyrim Modding Diary - 15 March 2022

Hi folks, hope you've been enjoying the case study series as it nears its conclusion. I was kind of dreading the navmesh work, but it turned out to be pretty minimal. Now we're just a few relatively simple steps away from the point when we can declare that mod fully integrated into my game world!   Today we're going to continue working through my backlog of mods to install. We're starting the day with 1,491 mods installed, 1,499 plugins active, and a final load order index of EA. 

Skyrim Modding Diary - 14 March 2022

Hi folks, welcome back. After I posted my diary for yesterday I took a quick look through the remaining packages in Hydragorgon and it looks like the amount of work required to finish it up will be pretty limited. I'm going to try and knock that project out in its entirety today, then move on to start tackling Groot's navmeshes. If time (and motivation) permit, then I'll be back after that to start working through my installation backlog.     We'll be starting the day with 1

Skyrim Modding Diary - 13 March 2022

Welcome back, everyone! Since I never really got back to it yesterday, today I'll mostly be focusing on the Hydragorgon project.    We're starting out with 1,482 mods installed, 1,497 plugins active, and a final load order index of EB. Barring any unexpected surprises I'm expecting it to stay that we throughout this session.   So What's Left? Not counting a smattering of interior furniture scenes that didn't get caught when I grabbed the AI packages for the vignettes, we

Skyrim Modding Diary - 12 March 2022

Hi everyone, hope you are having a good weekend so far! Over the last couple of days, a lot of interesting mods have dropped on the Nexus. Today is going to mostly just be a day for me to relax and take it easy, so I don't know if I'll get through all of them today - but we'll give it the old college try. I also need to keep working on the Hydragorgon project, but that might wait until later tonight in a "part 2" blog.    I'm starting the day with 1,471 mods installed, 1,491 plugins ac

Skyrim Modding Diary - 10 March 2022, Part 2

OK, folks, now that my little break is over, let's wrap up with today's Hydragorgon time.   First things first, we're going to transfer the Dragon Bridge records over to our patch file so we have a clean palette to work with for our next batch. With that done, we'll grab our next set of packages - this time for Rorikstead. One of the packages isn't actually used, so we'll skip that one, Package 2 uses a pole, Package 3 uses a cage, and Package 4 also uses a cage. We'll put them in simi

Skyrim Modding Diary - 10 March 2022

Happy Thursday, everyone! I'm really enjoying the current overlap between Star Trek: Picard season 2 and Star Trek: Discovery season 4, even though each week of this we get means one week some time in the future where we won't get a new episode, since across the franchise I believe we're getting 51 episodes this year. Still, I'll enjoy it in the moment.   For today most of my time is going to be spent on the Hydragorgon project, but that'll be later in the evening rather than around th

Skyrim Modding Diary - 08 March 2022

Hi everyone, welcome back. Today is going to be another relatively light day as far as modding work goes, but let's see what we can knock out as we work towards launching the next playthrough.   We're starting the day with 1,451 mods installed, 1,480 plugins active, and a final load order index of EB.   Patches, Lights, and Animations   Patches and More, Redux!   Why Did The Bandit Cross The Road?   That's it for tonight. I'll be back tomor

Skyrim Modding Diary - 09 March 2022

Hi folks, welcome to Wednesday! Today we're going to install a couple of new mods from the Nexus, then we'll swap out a mod in favor of one we're going to be giving a test run to in our next adventure. After that, we'll do some more work on the Hydragorgon project.   We're starting the day with 1,467 mods installed, 1,489 plugins active, and a final load order index of EC.   New on the Nexus   We Found Some Problems!   Do I Want to "Stop It!"?  

Skyrim Modding Diary - 07 March 2022

Hi folks, thanks for your patience while I took some sick time. I'm feeling better now and looking forward to getting back to full speed with the modding work. For today, we'll be mostly just catching up on some new items that came out while I was taking it easy. Tomorrow I'm planning to resume the case study for Groot's Solitude and I'll also be starting to plan out the path to our next adventure, which I'd like to start later this month or at the very start of next month.   Right now

Skyrim Modding Diary - 02 March 2022

Hi folks! In addition to my ongoing case study of Grroott's Solitude, I've got a few other mods to integrate today, including another standing stone overhaul from Ryn2g.   We're starting the day with 1,425 mods installed, 1,467 plugins active, and a final load order index of EA.    New On The Nexus   Big Fish, Little Fish   More Fishy Business   Knocking Out The Backlog I have a large number of mods from a previous major build that are

Skyrim Modding Diary - 01 March 2022

Welcome back, everyone! I hadn't been planning on doing a whole lot of modding today, but Ryn2g has posted three new mods in the last 24 hours which I think we'll integrate.    We're starting the day with 1,420 mods installed, 1,464 plugins active, and a final load order index of EA.   A Quick Texture Upgrade   Two Stones   Robber's Gorge   One thing that was really apparent with the Robber's Gorge mod as well as with my ongoing case study

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