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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

Kirstia's Adventure

Getting Comfortable (Kirstia's Adventure, Chapter 10)

I had a sense of floating, of not quite inhabiting my body. I felt hands on my body, gently rubbing me down with warm washcloths, then padding me dry again. I heard indistinct voices: concerned, angry, resolute. I couldn't follow the conversation, but I'm sure I heard more than once the word blasphemy.    At length, my senses started to come back to me. I opened my eyes, then immediately squeezed them shut against the light. More cautiously, I opened them slowly and found myself lying
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gregaaz in Kirstia's Adventure

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Kirstia's Adventure

Humility and Outrage (Kirstia's Adventure, Chapter 9)

The afternoon's exercise completely took whatever energy I'd regained out of me. I managed to roll out of bed enough to drop into the balcony chair for a light breakfast, but that was my limit. The warmth rising off the fire pit and the bard's music and songs made for a soothing dinner, but every time I tried to put my mind to the coming day's tasks I soon found myself wandering off into daydreams. I felt... I don't know. I felt like a foreigner in my skin. It wasn't that I was upset about the e
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gregaaz in Kirstia's Adventure

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Kirstia's Adventure

Healing, Shopping, and Training (Kirstia's Story, Chapter 8)

I finally rose from the bed after dozing off once or twice more. Finding a jug of fruity red wine next to my bed, I slaked my immediate thirst as Edippa returned to our room.   "Ah," she said, "you're finally up."    "For now," I laughed, "I feel pretty worn down."   Nodding, Edippa agreed, "that doesn't surprise me. We made a long journey by foot, and you didn't get proper rest for a lot of it. We'll take things easy today, then tomorrow we'll travel to Markarth by
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Kirstia's Adventure

The Long Road to Sleep (Kirstia's Story, Chapter 7)

The dawn gently coaxed me back to wakefulness. Edippa had risen a time earlier and prepared a light breakfast from our provisions. After enjoying the warmth of the sun for a few moments more, I joined her and slaked my thirst.   "Divines," I complained, "I'm still dead tired. I think we'll need to stop at Whiterun just like you suggested."   Edippa smiled at that, offering me a mug with what turned out to be wine in it.    "I figured you might feel that way. You str
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Kirstia's Adventure

Milk, Brass, and Stone (Kirstia's Story, Chapter 6)

I woke up back in the elf's hiding spot. Edippa was sorting through a pile of odds and ends laid out on the table, and paused in her work when I sat up.   "Daughter, I see you're awake," she said.    I shook my head a few times to try and clear the fog from my mind before answering, weakly, "more or less."   Edippa smiled indulgently. "Considering yesterday's ordeal, I'm not surprised. But we did it. You did it, considering I couldn't help you during the final battl
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Kirstia's Adventure

The Word (Kirstia's Story, Chapter 5)

"Daughter, wake up."   I roused reluctantly. You wouldn't think it, but the ill-fated Bosmer's hidey-hole was actually a rather comfortable place to rest. The large hearth kept the entire chamber well-warmed, even the stone floor, and a spacious chimney prevented smoke from building up even after many hours. Still, I pulled myself back to the present and found Edippa looking down at me.     Unbidden, a thought passed into my mind, and then from my lips.  
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Kirstia's Adventure

Traps, Locks, and Sapphires (Kirstia's Story, Chapter 4)

My father was a traitor. And yet, strange as it sounds, he was deeply concerned with honor. Indeed, it with his sense of honor that led his to forswear his oath. When I was little, he told the story in simple words - once upon a time, he served a strong Jarl. At first, they were as brothers, fighting side by side for justice and glory. But in time, his Jarl grew cruel and corrupt, and no longer brought justice to the people. And so, with a deep sadness in his heart, he turned against his Jarl an
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Kirstia's Adventure

The Haunting of Ivarstead (Kirstia's Story, Chapter 3)

A strange dream haunted my sleep. I was there, sitting alone on my bed, as the women who'd been sitting at the bar the night before barged into the room.    "Well, look at the birthday girl," said the Dunmer woman.   "I think we should give her something special," said a woman dressed like a tavern wench, her face covered by a dark cowl. Glowing red eyes peeked over the top, watching me hungrily.   "Yes," the older Nord woman said, "I think she needs a birthday span
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Kirstia's Adventure

Meeting Mother in the Fatherland (Kirstia's Story, Chapter 2)

As the sounds of the rowboat faded behind me, I walked up the beach and into the treeline. Under the bright moon, I didn't have much trouble finding my way around, and soon the rasp of sand changed to the crunch of snow. It reminded me in a sense of Northpoint, another land blanketed by snow, but there was something different here from my old home. Northpoint had been... almost a wasteland. Even at the peak of summer, life struggled to persist, and as the lines of communication between the other
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Kirstia's Adventure

Whispers in the Coals (Kirstia's Story, Chapter 1)

"Hear me, Kirstia."   The words shook me, snapping me out of the warm haze of the glowing embers. I'd spent my last copper Septim the night before buying a meager loaf of bread, and now I was well and truly destitute. The lord's bannermen had evicted me from my father's home weeks ago now, and without the coin to rent a room at the inn, I was reduced to passing the night behind the blacksmith's forge, borrowing what meager heat it had to offer.     "Hear me, Kirsti
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gregaaz in Kirstia's Adventure

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Mod Cleanup

Mod Cleanup Case Study - Ambient Slaves 0.2b - Part 6

Welcome back, everyone. Now that the navmeshes are all patched, it's time to wrap up some final matters and get everything neatly packaged.   Windhelm Dock Barrel and Fishing Poles Before we get into the top, level stuff, you might recall that there were a couple of static conflicts left at the Windhelm docks. In researching these, they turned out to be from an out of print mid - Argonian Hatchlings - so I'm not going to make a separate compatibility patch for this one. I'll just
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Mod Cleanup

Mod Cleanup Case Study - Ambient Slaves 0.2b - Part 5

Welcome back, everyone, and thank you for your patience with the delay. This week I ran into a stubborn crash bug related to Beyond Skyrim: Bruma that I am still working on diagnosing, and which interrupted my work on this project. For now I've uninstalled BSB so I can focus on this effort and on preparing for my next playthrough.    Last week, we went through and reviewed about half the navmesh conflicts in AS. We'll start by working on the other half, and if time permits then we'll m
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gregaaz in Mod Cleanup

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Miscellaneous

Help me plan my next story blog!

Hi folks, I wanted to take a moment to cross-post this poll from the forums. I am looking to start a new narrative blog in January, and I'd love your input on the kind of adventure you want to see. If you're seeing this because you follow my blog posts, I'm especially interested in your input and hope you can take the time to fill out the poll!
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Mod Cleanup

Mod Cleanup Case Study - Ambient Slaves 0.2b - Part 4

Welcome back, folks. When we left off in part 3, we had just concluded that AS had a major conflict with navmesh FC127, where substantial navmesh fixes from the unofficial patch were getting reverted by AS. However, we also determined that the changes did not overlap (other than existing in the same mesh). Today, we are start by cutting the FC127 navmesh at the lines marked in green below. We'll keep the north pier area from AS and weld it onto the rest of the USLEEP version of the navmesh. At t
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Mod Cleanup

Mod Cleanup Case Study - Ambient Slaves 0.2b - Part 3

Welcome back, everyone! After a little break during the busy part of the week, it's time to get back to work on Ambient Slaves 0.2b. If you haven't read Part 1 and Part 2 yet, I recommend you do so first, as by now we're pretty deep into the project.   To recap, here's what's on the agenda still:   We need to go through the navmesh conflicts and create determine which ones need compatibility patches. We'll review the two ways to accomplish this. After working with t
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Mod Cleanup

Mod Cleanup Case Study - Ambient Slaves 0.2b - Part 2

Welcome back everyone! If you're new here and haven't read Part 1 yet, I recommend you start there. It has some background and setup information that I won't repeat here, and it also covers navmesh deletion repair, which we've finished for this mod and won't be rehashing.     SolitudeWorld - Prison Overhaul Conflict When we left off, I had just identified a conflict between Ambient Slaves and Prison Overhaul Patched in the plugin file. What had looked like a benign conflict i
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Mod Cleanup

Mod Cleanup Case Study - Ambient Slaves 0.2b - Part 1

This entry is something a little new. With permission from the author, I'm going to go through version 0.2b of Ambient Slaves and talk about clean modding, conflict resolution, and some of the tools that mod authors and end users have at their disposal. The goal here isn't to criticize @gargamel9, but rather to delve into some of the hidden challenges that exist with Skyrim and how we can overcome them to support bigger, more stable mod lists.   Getting Started Before we start mes
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Monywyr's Adventure

Chapter 32: The Thalmor Inferno

Monywyr took a moment to examine the Redguard's corpse, being careful to avoid touching or disturbing the black soul gem.    "You know," Rosa said, "I've seen the Thalmor do a lot of bad things, but somehow I'd never thing they'd stoop to soul stealing."   "Believe it," Rigmor answered. "Whatever you've seen here in Skyrim is just scratching the surface of what they're capable of. Look there, do you see those tools," she pointed to a long iron implement, something like an ove
Monywyr's Adventure

Chapter 31: Descent to Fort Black

Beyond the rough camp, the mine shafts started to gradually slope upwards. After a time, the party passed into a more developed section of the mine, with log stairs laid down on the steeper slopes and wooden doors separating distinct sections. Before Monywyr could extinguish his halo and cleave to the shadows, however, a roar turned all their heads to the gloom at the head of the stairs. A lone bandit observed them, urging on the source of the roars - a troll and a chitinous monster that could o
Monywyr's Adventure

Chapter 30: Breathless

"Did you think Nocturnal would just let you leave?" the ghostly figure asked.   Monywyr tried to answer, but cold steel clamped tight around his throat.    She continued then, smiling thinly as she explained, "I'm not sure what power hid you from my mistress' sight for these past days, but... steps have been taken to rectify that error. Any you... there's a fitting punishment in store for you." The ghost turned, walked from the tent, and vanished.    Struggling to d
Monywyr's Adventure

Chapter 29: Damsel in Distress

It must have been nearly midnight when Monywyr arrived at the old border post that marked Riverwood's southern limit. He wondered if Lucan Valerius would remember him - remember Monilee, that is - but somehow he doubted it. Really, Monywyr was more concerned with just getting in the door. He knew he had the gold to afford a night at the Sleeping Giant, but Rose's urgency pushed him to avoid delay.   And yet, delays found him. The gaggle of elves dressed in golden armor was impossible t
Monywyr's Adventure

Chapter 28: Rebirth

"Approach, my child, and choose how your new life shall begin..."   Monywyr felt a presence behind him. Just moments ago, he was sure he was alone in the cell. Now... he was not so certain. Dim memories flitted through his mind, of another life, and of a dream of pine and lavender. He knew that when he turned, he would once again face the idol of Mara.     Monywyr considered delay. The transformation Nocturnal had subjected to had been anything but painless, and hi
Monilee's Adventure

Consequences (Monilee's Adventure, Part 27)

"I've been meaning to ask you something," Lucien said, "got a moment?"   Monilee nodded her assent as she lounged on one of her new home's comfortable chairs.    "Look, you know I'm not very good at practical things. You know... combat."   Edippa chuckled, "I don't know, there's plenty of... practical things you're good at."   The scholar blushed for a moment before driving on. "What I mean is, I rely on you to win our battles and... I shouldn't. So I supp
Monilee's Adventure

Defiance (Monilee's Adventure, Part 26)

After her and Lydia had redressed, Monilee asked her if she was alright.   "That was amazing," the warrior answered.     "I cannot deny it," she continued. "You're a lover like none other."    "I'm glad I made you happy, Lydia."   They talked for a time longer on the road back to Whiterun. Lydia shared her misgivings, her concerns that Balgruuf might have failed to live up to his promise to see that she was valued and cared for. They talke
Monilee's Adventure

The Problem with Lydia (Monilee's Adventure, Part 25)

They were back in the Moorside Inn, doing their best to ignore the fleeting, curious glances from the other patrons. Whispers of Dragonborn occasionally reached the table and Monilee had to suppress a great urge to stand up on her table and harangue the barflies, demanding some quiet and privacy.    "If you're thinking what I'm thinking," Shayna said, "it would be even better if you took the opportunity to demonstrate your thu'um. That'd shut them up."   Monilee scoffed, "Oh,

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