Jump to content

Skyrim Modding Diary - 02 March 2022


gregaaz

435 views

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

Spoiler

I found two new mods on the nexus that caught my interest: Ryn's Apprentice Stone and Bandit Lines Expansion. Ryn's new mod is just as clean as his other recent work, and there's not much to report here that wasn't already covered in yesterday's blog. 

 

ScreenShot1464.png.dab1ac5909615d23afd7cc6e0f9752da.png

ScreenShot1465.png.43f29d765051985cec847c634e0a276d.png

ScreenShot1466.png.d7bf8b9b9fa4d3564ed2c35ee42a22f6.png

 

Looks good, and just as easy to get rolling as the three we installed earlier.

 

Bandit Lines Expansion is one of the many mods authored by Jayserpa, whose work I've used before and experienced good results from. The mod doesn't have any asset conflicts and is already ESL flagged. The mod also contains no errors, no deletions or ITMs, and has no conflicts with other files. Sadly, as a sound mod I don't have much to offer in terms of screen shots, but I was pleased with how easily this mod installed.

 

Big Fish, Little Fish

Spoiler

Two of Mihail's mods that I've been looking to install for a while are his Snow Whale and Snow Ray mods. Let's install those today.

 

Both of these mods are ESL flagged plugins with no asset conflicts. Between the two of them they have no errors, two deletions, and 24 ITMs. I cleaned all of those. The Snow Whale mod has no conflicts, and Snow Rays has a single hidden ITM that I patched out. 

 

image.png.2e123510777628e664c2b33d1da6d849.png

 

Neither mod edits leveled NPC (LVLN) entries, so these creatures are hand placed in the game. Let's identify a few places to visit so we can see them in the world. There's a pod of four whales at Tamriel 19, 3 and four rays at Tamriel 32, 17. Let's visit these locations and see what these critters look like!

 

image.png.a9478ad1496349799dd4e2464ac3c981.png

 

ScreenShot1468.png.96662d8cb2757b716ea7677fefc79d0d.pngScreenShot1467.png.49d0b372d43ad027bd12a59cb0cd08f8.png

 

Looks good!

 

More Fishy Business

Spoiler

Since we have Snow Whales in the game, we might as well also add Snow Whale Bones, right?

 

This mod has no asset conflicts and it's an actual ESL (not an ESL flagged ESP), which is something of a rare sight. xEdit revealed no errors, deletions, ITMs, or conflicts, so we can go right in and check it out in the game. 

 

ScreenShot1469.png.36602510764e94b648909e5d1b96b708.png

 

Perfect!

 

Knocking Out The Backlog

I have a large number of mods from a previous major build that are currently unsorted and generally undecided whether or not they'll go into this build. Today we'll pick a few and either install them or rule them out.

 

Cloud Textures

Spoiler

The first one we'll look at is Ethereal Clouds. This mod conflicts with, but does not totally dead-end, Draco's Beautiful Clouds. Curiously, when I went to Draco's to assess which one I liked better, I got an orange box telling me to use Ethereal Clouds. We'll leave Draco's installed for its Soul Cairn textures, but otherwise I'll let Ethereal win. Since this mod doesn't have a plugin, we don't need to take any further action.

 

Nymphomania

Spoiler

Next let's look at Nymph Girls of Skyrim. Back when I was doing my earlier build, this mod had some teething problems and didn't quite work right. However, it's been updated since then, so let's see if we want to install it now. I do see they fixed the skeleton issues, which is definitely good. The Nexus page is a little hard to parse, since it consists of just screen after screen of 24-point text, much of it being the author's lore or analysis of canonical lore. After much scrolling, however, I found the other key data point - this mod is not CBBE based. I'm pretty hopeful that means it'll play nice. Let's download it and take a closer look.

 

The mod is an uncompacted ESM file with 1,267 records, so it's a candidate for ESL flagging. We'll give this one a shot. The first thing I'm seeing is that this mod overwrites a bunch of character assets from my texture replacer mods. 

 

image.png.12b0027c5e276435837380940c724fdd.png

 

We're going to hide everything that's conflicting with Vanilla Warpaints Absolution and Tempered Skin, but we'll let the vanilla conflicts prevail. Next, we need to compact this mod for flagging and reindex its facegen. Cleaning didn't reveal any errors or deletions, though I did clean a few ITMs. While the mod contains cell records, none of them are novel cells so the bug related to those isn't a concern. 

 

image.png.413259d188b74bc628ed4e2b8845c9bd.png

 

With reindexing complete, now we can resolve any conflicts we find. 

 

image.png.2c2d731a64c58fe44ecd00c7c40db820.png

 

Not too bad. A little top-level cell data, some creature records, and two locations. Only one TLCR needed action (adding a location code). The creatures were all conflicts between this mod and SkyTEST, and merged the faction from this mod with the other data from SkyTEST in my conflict resolution patch. Similarly, the location records just needed merging with data added by other mods. 

 

image.png.1aa294346f62321f94a67ad5821c0579.png

ScreenShot1471.png.6dc89af3fcca001355401b494beb7c8d.pngScreenShot1470.png.935a83aaa322984aa8a0fa20467e4f89.png

 

The new NPCs are spawning properly and their custom body parts (like the tail you can see in the second picture) are working right. Looks like this one is all set for now!

 

More Textures

Spoiler

Next is an easy one - Sovngarde HD. This is a straight texture replacer, and it's only conflicting vanilla assets, so we'll just add this one to the mod stack. 

 

I moved several mods that are obsolete (UNP body renewal and whatnot) to by "not used" section, as did I for a few mods I decided I'm not going to use.

 

The next mod I came across was Caves and Mines UHD HD, an out of print texture mod. Almost everything it provides is also provided by other high quality mods, but two assets - a root texture and a normal map for mushrooms - are only getting served up by SMIM and vanilla Skyrim, respectively. I hid everything else in the file and just kept those two assets. Forgotten Retex Project got a similar treatment, with most of its conflicted files hidden so only the replacers for vanilla textures got through.

 

image.png.a9232476bb50d268b04da5ef366c4b61.png

 

I took a more inclusive approach with Designs of the Nords. Other than one banner that's conflicted by a quest mod, I generally allowed this mod to win its conflicts. Most of what it was fighting with were big broad-based replacers, whereas this one focuses on a particular area (banners) and so I'll give it precedence. For RIS Realistic Ice and Snow, We'll go back to the more conservative approach and only let it win where other snow or ice replacers aren't already in action. 

 

Ruins Everywhere

Spoiler

Last but not least, we'll install The Ruins. This mod may cause us some minor headaches in the future since it adds a lot of geometry to random places, but we can always disable stuff that gets in the way.  Curiously, the "mods depending on this mod" section revealed a patch for another interesting mod called "Dibellan Holds." I'm not going to install it today but I've added it to my list for future consideration.

 

The Ruins has no asset conflicts and is already ESL flagged. The mod has no errors or deletions, but it did have some ITMs that I removed. Conflicts are generally limited to top level cell records with conflicting water flow data; Water for ENB was allowed to win all these conflicts. We won't get the full effect from this mod until the next time I rebuild my LODs, but we can visit a few of the sites now to get a feel for what it adds.

 

ScreenShot1473.png.f6dd70ad823b2736c81c7b48c9f05483.pngScreenShot1472.png.0db9e574ec8af32d8ff00914cdba6091.png


 

I think that'll do it for today. We had a pretty productive day, especially in terms of working through the unsorted section, and that'll definitely help enhance the next playthrough.

 

We ended the day with 1,439 mods installed, 1,474 plugins active, and a final load order index of EA.

0 Comments


Recommended Comments

There are no comments to display.


×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. For more information, see our Privacy Policy & Terms of Use