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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

2024 AE Build: A Small Country Store

Hi folks, and happy Friday! Yesterday we took a bit of an unplanned deep dive into multi-mod compatibility as we integrated a small quest mod with a pretty significant location overhaul. Today, we're going to continue our journey back to Whiterun with a stop off in Riverwood. While we'll be customizing all the remaining areas in the zone during this trip (Riverwood really is that small - four houses, the store, and the tavern), the focus today is going to be on the Riverwood Trader and its inhab

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gregaaz in 2024 AE Build

2024 AE Build: The Cabin In The Woods

Welcome back everyone! Last time we did a nice expansion of Bleak Falls Barrow, and while some of the mods I had hoped to incorporate didn't seem like good fits (the Dungeon Darkness mod for example). It was pleasing to find that Bleak Falls Revisited preserves all the vanilla coordinates, which is a really nice compatibility decision and something the author Cooleoj deserves praise for doing.    Today we're going to leave Bleak Falls through the back door, walk through the mammoth gra

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gregaaz in 2024 AE Build

2024 AE Build: Our First Real Dungeon Crawl

Welcome back, everyone! Yesterday we did some work bugfixing as well as enhancing the mountain path that leads up to Bleak Falls Barrow. We also took a look at a nice environmental mod that would have been a great fit but just presented too much work to properly integrate - but who knows, maybe we'll give it a second look in the future?   Today, we're going to overhaul the interior of Bleak Falls Barrow and then look through it for opportunities to make smaller tweaks and improvements.

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2024 AE Build: Onward to Bleak Falls

Hi folks, welcome back! When we last left off, we had just delivered news of the dragon attack on Helgen to Jarl Balgruuf and been introduced to Farengar. Let's walk through what's going to happen next. In the vanilla game, Farengar will encourage the player to travel to Bleak Falls Barrow and retrieve the Dragonstone. Over the course of the Bleak Falls adventure, the player will also get the quest "The Golden Claw" if they haven't already, and since the exit to Bleak Falls will push the player

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2024 Skyrim Build: Inner Whiterun

Hope everyone is having a good weekend! Today we'll cross through the city gates and work on Whiterun proper, along with the Jarl's palace Dragonsreach. If you were reading the comments thread on the previous post, you already know that I had to delay this segment a little bit in order to do an integration of Hydragorgon Slave Girls that kind of grew into a side project of its own. You'll see some of the fruits of that in this volume, and continue to see more of it in future segments.  

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2024 Skyrim Build: Whiterun OR It's always bikini season if you're a werewolf

Hi folks, welcome back! I originally planned to cover both the Whiterun exterior and also the interior in this volume, but I'm still wrapping up some final details for WhiterunWorld and Dragonsreach, so we'll split those up to give me a little time to complete my work. Today we'll focus on the walk from Riverwood to Whiterun, the Whiterun exterior, and of course the iconic fight between the Companions and a local giant.     In keeping with our approach to selecting mods, we're going to

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2024 Skyrim Build: Riverwood

Happy Thursday, everyone! Last time we reviewed customizations of the elements of MQ101, the first segment of the main quest. This mostly focused on the courtyard scene, but it also flowed down into the Helgen Keep adventure to a small extent. Today, we'll cover the walk to Riverwood and customization of the town itself.    So, let's leave Helgen and start our walk!     The first point of interest that we come across on the road out of Helgen is the Guardian

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2024 Skyrim Build: Kicking Off The Main Quest

Welcome back, everyone. Last time, we talked about customizing one of the NPCs in pre-destruction Helgen, as well as sprucing up the Alternate Perspective starting room. Today, let's take a look at the opening scene of the main quest.    Needless to say, this requires us to trigger the main quest, which results in a lot of actors spawning into the game world for us to look at. If you recall the punchlist on the first post, we're going to look at customizing a lot of these characters. 

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2024 Skyrim Build: There is such a thing as too long a blog OR Customizing Helgen

Hi Everybody, hope you are having a good winter so far! A while back I posted about how the release of Skyrim 1.6.1130 - and in particular, the doubling of the ESL cap - got me interested in modding Skyrim again. If you've been following this blog for a while, you know that I had a very successful build in 2023 that met all my expectations and proved really satisfying to put together. Originally, I had thought about doing another build from scratch using the new version, but as things have devel

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gregaaz in 2024 AE Build

I was kind of burnt out... but then Bethesda rekindled my interest

Hi folks, I hope everyone has been having a good winter season so far. You might have noticed that I kind of disappeared a while back. I'm sorry I abandoned you all - at first I'd planned on just taking a little break but then seasonal depression started to set in, and then my whole family got COVID. Jumping from one challenge to another, I never really had the energy to get the blog going.   However, today version 1.6.1130 of Skyrim dropped and it contained a very interesting change:

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gregaaz in Miscellaneous

Distant Opportunities (Charley's Story, Chapter 94)

"The Institute?" Quartercut said, working the words slowly. "This is the mythical group that engineered the Commonwealth Provisional Government massacre, correct?"   Despite the support the power suit gave me, I could still feel my shoulders weighing heavily on me with fatigue. Our escape from the fishery in the wee hours of the morning had left me with precious little energy, but I felt the news of our discovery couldn't wait.    "Far from mythical," I corrected. "I suppose

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gregaaz in Charley's Story IV

Charley's Story Book 5 Poll

Hi folks. I recently posted the first half of Chapter 94. It ends on a bit of a cliffhanger where Charley has to make an important decision about how to split resources between two different operations. In this poll, you can decide which path Charley will take. The adventure will start around Chapter 100 and will last about 25 chapters, comprising the 5th book of the series.   This poll will run for 48 hours, closing on October 11th.   Without spoilers, a few broad factors in

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gregaaz in Miscellaneous

Distant Opportunities (Charley's Story, Chapter 94A)

Editor's note: this entry is only the first half of Chapter 94. After it was posted, I conducted a poll to determine the Charlie's decision about how to proceed after she reaches Beverly. I've moved this version to the "miscellaneous" section and will update the table of contents links once the complete chapter is posted in the near future.   "The Institute?" Quartercut said, working the words slowly. "This is the mythical group that engineered the Commonwealth Provisional Government m

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Fishy Business (Charley's Story, Chapter 93)

"You can't just ignore the threat. As long as they're still there out there, they're a threat; and on top of that, they have the Vestments."   We'd awoken to a rainy morning, though fortunately Quartercut's people had put down the sleeping backs well away from the open part of her hall's roof. Heather was up before me, scanning the near distance and rather pointedly ignoring the argument that was happening upstairs - but very much in earshot.     "Ugh, what's the r

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gregaaz in Charley's Story IV

Anna's Legacy (Charley's Story, Chapter 92)

"Got a second, Charley?"   I'd awakened just before dawn, and with Heather and Piper flanking me in bed I quickly started to feel uncomfortably warm. After a quick shower, I left the Paisleys' house and started walking around the perimeter of the settlement. Red's people had done a good job building up the defenses, but other aspects of the project seemed to be lagging a bit behind. Of course, the one we noticed most acutely was that the main house hadn't been repaired. So I had a bit

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gregaaz in Charley's Story IV

Religious Experience (Charley's Story, Chapter 91)

The next morning, while Piper went downstairs to give Tony Savoldi the bad news about the mattress and pay him for a replacement, I thought more about how we were going to track down Cabot's package. I assumed it had already been missing at least some time before Deegan met us at Bunker Hill, and in turn several days had passed since that meeting. That meant that unless the courier was dead in a ditch and the package just abandoned, we weren't going to find it in the immediate area of Lynne Wood

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gregaaz in Charley's Story IV

Cabot House (Charley's Story, Chapter 90)

With all the drama that surrounded donning my power suit complete, we left Kendall Hospital northbound towards the Mystic River. From there, the plan was to follow the river east and then swing down in to Bunker Hill. Based on when we arrived, we'd either scout the immediate area, following the loop of the Freedom Trail on that side of the Charles, or we'd press south to Cabot House. Personally, I was inclined to take a more systematic approach and start with the Bunker Hill area, but Heather an

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gregaaz in Charley's Story IV

North or South (Charley's Story, Chapter 89)

I'd spent June of 2288 on what was increasingly feeling like a wild goose chase. First we'd gone to Cambridge looking for an MRI machine, but that had turned into a protracted expedition that looked like it was going to take Susan Cain and her team weeks before they got any results. Then I'd met the Brotherhood of Steel's leadership and hammered out what I hoped would be a framework for coexistence... maybe. I knew that this was an important accomplishment, but I still felt very ambivalent about

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gregaaz in Charley's Story IV

Fallout 4 Data Reference: Who's Where and Doing What - Summer 2288

The purpose of this file is to give a quick summary of where all the major characters are at and what they're doing as of the end of Chapter 88.   Charley's Pre-war Family Charley has decided to seek out the Railroad as part of her plan to locate Brian Virgil. Before she begins with that mission, however, she needs to return to Kendall Hospital to check in with Dr. Cain and to take possession of Kellogg's implant. Codsworth is living in Sanctuary, helping maintain the ne

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Fallout 4 Data Reference: Charlotte "Charley" Ellison

Name: Charlotte Ellison Aliases: Charley; The Sole Survivor Date of Birth: August 3, 2052 (apparent age in 2288: mid 20s) Hair color: Pink (pre-war: Blonde) Eye color: Blue Distinguishing marks: freckles, Vault 111 tattoo Profession: Feudal warlord (pre-war: Lawyer) Sexual preference: Preferred men pre-war. Charley has not had a satisfying heterosexual relationship since the death of her husband and circa 2288 her current partners are women. Relationship s

Charley's Story: Getting ready for more adventures

Hi folks, hope you've all had a good summer! I'm just winding up a round of playtesting on my Skyrim build and I'm starting to feel the itch to continue Charley's adventure. It'll still be a little bit before I can post new chapters because I need to reread where I was at to make sure I'm not forgetting key plot points. I'm also thinking that I might want to do some non-story articles recapping the key characters' backgrounds and plot threads. This won't just help me get my brain back in the sto

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gregaaz in Miscellaneous

A quick check-in: Skyrim build progress and future plans

Hi folks, hope everyone is having a good summer so far! It's been a while since I've posted to my blog, so I wanted to take a moment to check in with you all about what I've been up to.   I finished my initial Skyrim build at 618 mods and 479 plugins. It runs great! There are a few lingering large reference-related visual glitches which I'll be cleaning up as time permits, but otherwise I've had something like 2 CTDs in 20 levels of play. Fantastic! I'm generally getting above 60 FP

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gregaaz in Miscellaneous

New AE Build Part 13: Customizing Outfits

Hi folks, hope you are all having a good week. The pollen count is finally starting to drop and its time for me to get back to work on this Skyrim build. As I mentioned in the last chapter, I have a few specific things I need to knock out before I spend some time playing, and today I want to do one of the more "hands on" items: I want to customize some equipment for the game to look the way I want it to.   Part of this is the elven/glass/ebony swapouts I've talked about before, but I'm

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gregaaz in 2023 AE Build

New AE Build Part 12: Retreading Old Ground

Welcome back, folks! I've played Skyrim dozens of times and there are few, if any, vanilla quests I haven't played yet. For this new build, I want to mix things up a bit, and for today we'll focus on installing vanilla quest overhauls.    I want to be clear that we're not talking about vanilla quest tweaks that just add time or skill gates or slow down quest chain progression. I may yet add some of those, but for today we're looking at mods like Extended Cut: Saints and Seducers, which

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gregaaz in 2023 AE Build

New AE Build Part 11: The Textures of The World

Welcome back everyone. I'm still feeling a little allergic, but the worst of the pollen has passed and the landscapers have moved on to greener (or at least more overgrown) pastures. Today we'll continue working on the creature integration, but to do that we'll need to swerve a bit into the world textures. Why? Because Dwarven machines share there texture set with a lot of architectural stuff.   Still, you might be asking, wouldn't it be easier for me to just grab the dwarf textures an

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gregaaz in 2023 AE Build


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