When we did our last adventure, @VirginMarie was nice enough to provide a pre-release version of the next version of Toys (1.8RC2). Since then, 1.8 has released and 1.83 is now the current version. We're going to update to that, tailor it to match my preferences, and then make sure all its dependent mods are up to date.

The whole Toys family is available via links on VM's website, so we can click through them all and see which ones have new versions. At this time I will not be integrating Dark Desires Club or Gossip, so we'll be focusing on the other mods. I also won't be adopting any of the components of the "Mods with Support for Toys" section, though several of them are on my list for future installation - notably Bathing in Skyrim, which at some point I need to patch together with Dirt and Blood to make my personal "super compatibility version."

Toys 1.83 also comes with a new bodyslide file, so we'll grab the BHUNP version of that and build it out before we move on. Don't want to lose track of that one! After that, I went into xEdit and purged the three dental retractor type Toys out of the file. I also checked the SKSE files and made sure I still had the minimum value for stripping and magical bindings overridden and set to zero.

Since the other edits were stored in my deconflict patch, they carried over through the version change. We'll still clean and conflict check the Toys master, but given how clean this family of mods generally is, I'm not expecting any trouble (and I didn't find any, so that's excellent).

What about the other mods? Here's the changes we made:

• Toy Story: 1.21 -> 1.3
• Toyful Temptations: 2.0 -> 2.0.1
• Shout Like a Virgin: 8.2 -> 8.21
• Hot and Wet: 1.3 -> 1.31
• Toys Workshop: 1.2 -> 1.21
• Whorecrux: Already current at 0.2

After rebuilding bodyslide for all these, I proceeded to xEdit to check for any new conflicts that I need to resolve. There weren't any really big surprises here, though I did need to go back and compact Toy Story so its Form IDs lined up with my conflict resolution patch. This was slightly complicated as it seems some of the compacted Form IDs shifted when I recompacted it (probably from them having to 'go around' new native forms that the mod gained between 1.2 and 1.3).

In any event, with that work done we'll now be able to enjoy all the latest Toys content on the next adventure. We may however be revisiting this stack down the road since I'd like to go back and extend the sugar effect from Toys Workshop to some mod-added sweets.

I have two leveled list mods that I'm going to be integrating today: Dynamic Dungeon Loot and the now-out-of-print Unique Tavern Menus. I used both of these in my last big build a few years ago and had good results with them. I had to compact and flag DDL, but otherwise the mods were clean and free from errors. Conflict resolution was generally straightforward for DDL - I just had to hook up its new loot calls to the relevant containers. 

Unique Tavern Menus is a little more complicated because if fairly agressively prunes the vanilla lists. This wouldn't be an issue normally, but other mods might be touching some of the leveled lists it cuts down and I don't want to dead-end those mods' content. You can see an example below - UTM almost entirely removes the leveled list shown here, but it's the entry vector for all these items from the Tea mod. The food list that gets a similar treatment hooks into even more mods. 

So instead of entirely killing these lists, we are going to reduce them to 25% of their vanilla values. That'll allow both the vanilla and modded items to appear, without flooding out the new individualized lists. Let's visit a tavern and see how it looks.

The Sleeping Giant's menu is still more or less vanilla, but you can see how now the new items - like the Jarl Grey Tea - aren't completely absent. I think that's meeting my needs.

Another food related mod (and also that tie-in with Toys Workshop I mentioned earlier) is Candy Shops of Skyrim. I don't think this mod is going to make the cut for Kirsti's upcoming adventure but I want to at least temporarily load it in so we can look for potential conflicts. I'm especially concerned about Riften, but let's see.

Whiterun looks good, but it'll need landscape work and also it conflicts with a building from Dark's market mod which I also plan to use.

Riften fits in much better, probably just needs its door link patched into the navmesh.

Markarth is heavily conflicted, busting into another building. As I look through these, I wonder if it's a better idea for me to just install one of these locations - especially since the stores all have the same sign. The Riften one is probably the logical choice if I go that route. Windhelm also looks fine and I'll probably keep it as well. Solitude isn't too severely conflicted, but as you can see on the right it has some terrain intrusion. I think what I'm going to do is reinstall this with the "choose your stores" feature and only install Riften, Windhelm, and Solitude - and for Solitude I'll remove the store and remap the door to one of the unused doors from Groot's Solitude.

This one is going to take a bit of work in the future, but it's still good to have a feel for what integrating this mod will involve.

Another pair of mods in my lineup are Bent Pines II and Birds and Flocks. B&F is currently out of print, though the author has provided dropbox links. The asset side of these mods were pretty clean, nothing there worth talking about. When I went into the mods however I saw something that was very pleasing - the navmesh compatibility patch for Bent Pines II uses navcut boxes instead of editing the navmesh. While this isn't as flexible in certain areas, navcuts are a great way to cleanly add things like new trees.

Conflict resolution wasn't too bad either, mostly top-level cell data in Birds and Flocks. There was one sound related record, but since that mod is a specialized bird mod, it was easy to decide to let its version prevail over my more generalized sound mods. Bent Pines didn't have any conflicts, so that was pretty easy. Let's go into the game for screenshots -- and see if the Lab will let me upload them.

Much better upload speeds than before - and the new content looks good inside the game!