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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 - 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

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 8 - Cleanup)

Before we move on to navmesh, we still have a few various items to clean up, mostly in the residential district of Solitude. Let's look at our punchlist and see what we still need to work.   Major Conflicts * Imperial Physician entrance * Books of Skyrim Town Square EA02BB62 - Hex Floor needs different texture 3800806B - ZDD static needs to move FE1DC863 - Shackles from "Public Executions" mod need to move 440089A2 - Unique sword "Justice" needs to be put on table EA02BAAA - Rotate C

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

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 7 - Marketplace)

Welcome back! Today it's time to tackle the conflicted market stalls and other items in the marketplace area. Let's look at our punchlist to see where we stand currently:   Major Conflicts * Imperial Physician entrance * Books of Skyrim Town Square EA02BB62 - Hex Floor needs different texture 3800806B - ZDD static needs to move FE1DC863 - Shackles from "Public Executions" mod need to move 440089A2 - Unique sword "Justice" needs to be put on table EA02BAAA - Rotate Cairn 90 degrees EA

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!"?  

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 6 - Town Square)

Welcome back everyone! Now that we've resolved both the conflicted buildings, it's time to start working down the rest of the punchlist. Let's look at what we've got left to do, and arrange it by location.   Major Conflicts * Imperial Physician entrance * Books of Skyrim Town Square EA02BB62 - Hex Floor needs different texture 3800806B - ZDD static needs to move FE1DC863 - Shackles from "Public Executions" mod need to move 440089A2 - Unique sword "Justice" needs to be put on table EA

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

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 5 - Bookstore)

During the previous chapter of this blog, we talked about the two major terrain blockers in Groot's - especifically, the Imperial Physician whose door ends up off center because of a building model change and the bookstore from Books of Skyrim that ends up in the same space as Groot's alchemy lab. We successfully repositioned the physician, but we couldn't get the bookstore to share its current location. Additionally, literally as I was writing that entry, I got a message from the mod author adv

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

A Quick Programming Note

Hi folks, you may have noticed that we didn't get a modding diary yesterday and that I haven't posted anything today. I've had an upset stomach all day and as a result I've been taking it easy and not working on any hobby stuff. The next blogs will come out soon - tomorrow or Sunday at the latest. Thanks for your patience, I look forward to sharing more of my modding experiences with you all soon!

gregaaz

gregaaz in Miscellaneous

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 4 - Physician's Office)

Welcome back! Yesterday we toured the modded area and identified a number of items that we need to address in order to properly integrate the mod. Today's we're going to focus on the two "big rocks" - the conflicted buildings used by Books of Skyrim and Imperial Physician. In today's blog we'll look at the physician first, relocating the entry to his interior so it's not conflicted anymore. We'll also start working on the bookstore, though that will spill over into tomorrow because of time const

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

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 3 - The Grand Tour)

Welcome back, folks. Now that we've gone through Groot's Solitude in MO2 and xEdit, it's time to see what we need to do in the CK. We'll start out by taking a tour of the city, starting at the outer gates and working our way down to the Blue Palace. What we're looking for today are any overlapping meshes, blocked passageways, or visual irregularities (Z fighting, texture issues, etc). This stage is important because it helps us plan out the best way to fix the issues, rather than just tackling e

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

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 2 - xEdit Conflict Resolution)

Welcome back, everyone! Yesterday we took Grroott's Solitude through installation and cleaning, and we did a bunch of navmesh repair. With that taken care of, now we can move on to conflict resolution.   Finding and Resolving Conflicts in xEdit Before we start looking for problems in the CK and in the game itself, we'll review this plugin in xEdit. The goal is to find records that more than one mod are trying to edit, and make sure the "winning" entry allows all the content to wor

Skyrim Modding Diary - 28 February 2022

Hi everyone! The next few diary entries are going to be shorter, since my main focus is on the case study of Groot's Solitude. I hope you'll enjoy reviewing that project and maybe learn some tricks that will help with your own modding projects.   Including Groot's mod, we started the day with 1,417 mods installed, 1,462 plugins active, and a final load order index of E9.   More Horseplay Some idle browsing yesterday ended up taking me to this mod by vivi. It's a pretty h

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 1 - Getting Started, Mod Cleaning, Navmesh Repair)

Hi everyone, and welcome to our second Modding Case Study (formerly known as "Mod Cleanup Case Studies"). I changed the name because the emphasis will be as much if not more on integration than on corrective action. This time we will be reviewing Grroott's Solitude, which adds additional streets and buildings to the city. When I pre-screened this mod, I was expecting a lot of problems integrating Legacy of the Dragonborn, but the author has subsequently produced a patch, which is good.   

Skyrim Modding Diary - 27 February 2022

Hi folks, hope you all had a good weekend. Today is going to be a bit of a cleanup session as we get ready to launch our next case study tomorrow. We'll be addressing a couple of small issues I ran across yesterday, revisiting a change I made during a previous session, and doing our usual daily scrape of the Nexus.   We're starting the day with 1,412 mods installed, 1,459 plugins active, and a final load order index of E8.    Incidentally, the "next adventure" poll closed tod

Skyrim Modding Diary - 26 February 2022

Happy Saturday, everyone. As we get ready to transition into our mod cleanup case study on Monday, today we'll be focusing on cleaning up some lingering items that need some attention. We'll also be doing some work on unannounced content related to the upcoming third adventure - though probably not too much today.    We're starting with 1,405 mods installed, 1,458 plugins active, and a final load order index of E8. Why did this go up overnight? Because when I did my grass cache a few d

Skyrim Modding Diary - 25 February 2022

Welcome back, everyone. Today is probably going to be a fairly short entry as it's a busy day at work and I won't have the usual amount of downtime. We're also getting close to starting the next mod cleanup case study, so this weekend our remaining focus is going to be on some cleanup activities and generally getting the mod into configuration where, once the case study is done, we can fairly quickly roll into the next adventure. Speaking in which, if you haven't voted yet on which lead Kirstia

Skyrim Modding Diary - 24 February 2022

Welcome back, folks. With everything going on in the world today, I'm not sure how much modding I'm going to be in the mood for, but I'm sure I'll do a little and hopefully by sharing it I can at least offer up a little distraction from all the bad news.    We're starting the day with 1,386 mods installed, 1,437 plugins active, and a final load order index of E8.   Harvesting The Nexus   Horny DAR   Tamrielic Grass?     I think that's

Skyrim Modding Diary - 23 February 2022

Welcome back everyone. Today's entry may seem a little shorter than usual, but that's because I'm anticipating I'll be spending most of my time completing the patchup of Lux. That requires edits to every single vanilla interior top level cell record, so it's a bit labor intensive.    When we wrap up with that, we'll be at 1,379 mods installed, 1,429 plugins active, and a final load order index of F0.   A New Start   Crunching Down   Unique Skulls

Skyrim Modding Diary - 22 February 2022

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a good weekend, and to those of you in Ukraine, I hope you are staying safe. We've got about one week before I start my next series, which will be a mod cleanup case study. After that, we'll do a little more modding (mostly final setup stuff) and then kick off Kirstia's third adventure.    Today we are going to update a few mods and also install some 'unannounced content' related to our next story blog. After that, if time permits, we'll keep knocking

Skyrim Modding Diary - 21 February 2022

Welcome back, everyone. Hope all of your in the USA had a good President's Day! Today's going to be another fairly short entry as I've been following the news pretty closely and that's distracted me from hobby time. However, we'll at least get finished up with Frostfield and then take a look at what's new on the Nexus.   We're starting today with 1,365 mods installed, 1,379 plugins active, and a final load order index of EF.   Finishing Frostfield   On The Nexus T

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