guide Skyrim SE for Beginners - V 3.2.6 (3BBB / HDT-SMP / HPH)

[Aylis]

On 11/7/2020 at 4:24 AM, wollboi said:

Okay, I think I get it. TML Standard, JK + Cities patch, EmbersXD + JK's. That's it? If so, the list is kind of confusing. Could probably specify "Tamriel Master Lights Standard," especially since the "default" one on the mod page has a gigantic picture that kinda makes it seem like it's the one you want. Waaaaay less CTDs in towns now. As in none so far.

It should be the 'cities' version of TML and the patch for it. Also EmbersXD and the patch for JK.

 

Lanterns got its own version of TML and requires different patches. Maybe you got a mix-up there?

 

On 11/7/2020 at 10:01 AM, JackTehDemon said:

@Aylis I’m trying to set up the bashed patch and I have no idea if what I did was right or wrong so I was curious if you had a screenshot available?

In post #3 is a step-by-step guide for this.

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Btw. if someone got a problem with missing schlongs for the creatures use SexLab More Nasty Critters Always Erect SE (just put it below 'Canine Update'). Its not as pretty as before but it does work as a temporary fix. 

 

Upcoming refinements:

(Optional) ABC                                                                              The actual version works fine.

Auriel's Weaponry (Primarily the bow, the rest is up to you)       Now all bows look good.

Cork Retexture                                                                              A nice mini-mod.

High Poly Blackreach Mushrooms                                                Better looking mushrooms.

Butterflies Unchained                                                                   Not perfect but way better than vanilla.

High-Res Dartwing (Dragonfly) Texture                                        Small but nice mod.

Snowberries HD Texture Option

(Optional) SexLab More Nasty Critters Always Erect SE               Temporary fix for missing schlongs

(Optional) SLACS - SexLab Advanced Cum Stages

(Optional) SLACS textures replacer

3D Pine Grass                                                                                Finally some 3D grass (i hope there will be more)

Remiros' Dragonborn Alcohol HD                                                Nice little update for those bottles too.

(Optional) Fill Her Up Baka Edition                                               Does work without issues

Enter the College of Winterhold without joining                          Now we got a choice if and when we want to start this questline. 

(Optional) NOLVUS Reshade

Wear multiple Rings                                                                      Requires one ESP and one mod less than 'Lefthanded Rings'. 

 

Tinkering with:

NordWarUA's Armor Variants

Rally's Riekling Outposts

Dynamic Immersive Seriously Dark Dungeons                              Realistic but extremely dark... This is too much for my taste.

Mfg Fix (plus the patch) and LipSync Fix

[wollboi]

@Aylis Hmm. That's what I was using before and got all the crashes in Windhelm. I'll check the Lanterns patches.

 

This seems kind've cool from an immersion perspective. Probably not to everybody's tastes, but it always bothered me that you can walk around a ten thousand year old abandoned dungeon and there's eight hundred candles lit by zombies. Seems like it works with any ENB.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/7535

[mknn]

Getting there, getting there, getting there.

 

I'm down to a decent sized list of "unsanctioned" mods that I'd like to incorporate. Asking if any of these trigger an OMG, what are you thinking, that mod breaks everything type reaction.

 

• Cutting Room Floor. Seems very popular, wondering if anything other than keeping up with the near-infinite number of patches keeps it off the approved list. Same question could apply to Bruma.
• Diverse Skyrim. There are a lot of variants on this, but the main Diverse Skyrim and the Diverse Guards mods worked for me before. There was a diverse Stormcloak one that caused predictable CTDs. They are unrelated, just named similarly.
• Immersive Skyrim. The key ones here are Creatures, Patrols, World Encounters, and Citizens. Again, I was unaware of these causing any issues, but that may just be my ignorance. I read the note above about creatures, and that makes sense. I'm not trying to arrange any LL stuff around critterSex, so that may be less of a concern for me.
  • To that point, I'm actually hoping to get Immersive Creatures and SKYTest running in it. I like more variety in critters.

That's really it. Once I get this working, I'm hoping I can share the various "unsanctioned" categories. If nothing else, they may help someone else looking for slight variation on the approved list. That depends on figuring out a clean way to export categories from Vortex. You know, before I move to MO2.

[jaeos]

2 hours ago, wollboi said:

@Aylis Hmm. That's what I was using before and got all the crashes in Windhelm. I'll check the Lanterns patches.

 

This seems kind've cool from an immersion perspective. Probably not to everybody's tastes, but it always bothered me that you can walk around a ten thousand year old abandoned dungeon and there's eight hundred candles lit by zombies. Seems like it works with any ENB.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/7535

I'm gonna check it out.. it bothered me that apparently the drauger keep torches lit forever...

[mknn]

Oh, one more, is there a reason Weapons Armor and Clothing Clutter Fix is omitted?

[wollboi]

@jaeos Let me know how you like it. It could either be great and challenging or something that is great for two hours and then gets uninstalled. But the fact that you can light braziers and torches as you go sounds fun.

 

@Aylis Nope, don't have the LoS II patch for TML per the instructions. I think my issue was because I was using the ESL so the patch for JK's just wasn't working.

 

---

 

Unrelated - Fun and stupid new way to play the game. Create a cleric, tank/healer type using Ordinator. Install a follower mod. Get 5-8 followers. Walk into a big-ass dungeon. Let them fight the boss. Try to heal to keep them alive. Really need to crank the difficulty up to at least legendary for this to have any challenge. When the followers die, it's part of the game.

 

Example: In Hillgrund's Tomb with five followers (not counting Golldir, whom I will always refer to as Goldar. Get to the big fight at the end with the necromancer summoning wave after wave of draugr. Huge fight. Dust finally clears, THREE of my followers are dead. Two suck and weren't expected to make it, one was Uthgerd, who I really thought was going to be there until the end of the game. JFC this is awful/awesome. Goldar says, "Let me know if I can do anything for you." Yes, Goldar. Yes, you can. You've got three pairs of shoes to fill, you scared man-baby.

 

Spoiler

This is all your fault, you son of a bitch.

 

 

[jaeos]

1 hour ago, wollboi said:

@jaeos Let me know how you like it. It could either be great and challenging or something that is great for two hours and then gets uninstalled. But the fact that you can light braziers and torches as you go sounds fun.

 

@Aylis Nope, don't have the LoS II patch for TML per the instructions. I think my issue was because I was using the ESL so the patch for JK's just wasn't working.

 

---

 

Unrelated - Fun and stupid new way to play the game. Create a cleric, tank/healer type using Ordinator. Install a follower mod. Get 5-8 followers. Walk into a big-ass dungeon. Let them fight the boss. Try to heal to keep them alive. Really need to crank the difficulty up to at least legendary for this to have any challenge. When the followers die, it's part of the game.

 

Example: In Hillgrund's Tomb with five followers (not counting Golldir, whom I will always refer to as Goldar. Get to the big fight at the end with the necromancer summoning wave after wave of draugr. Huge fight. Dust finally clears, THREE of my followers are dead. Two suck and weren't expected to make it, one was Uthgerd, who I really thought was going to be there until the end of the game. JFC this is awful/awesome. Goldar says, "Let me know if I can do anything for you." Yes, Goldar. Yes, you can. You've got three pairs of shoes to fill, you scared man-baby.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

This is all your fault, you son of a bitch.

 

 

I had to make a new profile in MO2 to shoehorn it in, so no dibella quests for me. But I have yet to even make it into a delve yet. (am trying a new race and the one spell you get sucks ass.. xedit it for the win...

[mknn]

Learning so much ...

 

Unsurprisingly, I ran out of load slots. And that was before populating the world with the 50+ followers I would like to see. SO ... yeah. Off to refine my understanding of how to create merged mods, with a focus on the various armor combinations.

 

Also, further research, trial, and error led me to believe there is essentially a choice between WCCAF and Morrowloot. Are there strong opinions on why one is better than the other?

[wollboi]

@jaeos Just tested it and it's not going to work. Reshade doesn't like working with it, which I didn't even consider. I think to get it to work it would require drastically altering the lighting setup for the list, and that's not worth it. Using the list as-is, it didn't work at all other than the MCM loading up.

[mknn]

One very, very encouraging note: what drove me to do a total mod rebuild was a game that was crashing in horribly predictable ways.

 

I had assumed I was back to Helgen and the chopping block--or some alternate start--but I fired up the most recent save with the current mod build and, shock of shock, it loaded and no longer CTD'd at the predictable places. I assume this is a result of resolving some conflicts from other mods, and, you know, too many damn followers.

 

I still think the smarter thing might be to start a fresh game, but as I have yet to really do much in the game (level 35 n00b), it would be nice to progress a bit.

[mknn]

18 minutes ago, mknn said:

I still think the smarter thing might be to start a fresh game, but as I have yet to really do much in the game (level 35 n00b), it would be nice to progress a bit.

But where's the fun in that and, more importantly, where is the learning.

 

I walked into The Bee and the Barb (a prior source of CTDs) and most of the NPCs look great. And then ... there are dockworkers and hunters that are either nude or have no body at all. I assume that I have either removed their clothing mods as part of the rebuild or have done something to change their skeletons. The question is this: if I am just patient, will they regenerate eventually in game? And, if not, how do I troubleshoot/fix?

 

I was very intrigued by some of the mods that claim to randomly modify bodytypes for NPCs--some tall, some short; some thin, some hefty, that sort of thing. But they all sound very complicated and very much a thing to only do at the start of a game. But maybe I'm wrong.

[Aylis]

9 hours ago, mknn said:

Oh, one more, is there a reason Weapons Armor and Clothing Clutter Fix is omitted?

Thre are so many replacers for armor in there that this mod isn't needed.

 

Btw. 'Immersive Creatures' isn't 100% stable and can cause CTD. Thats why i kicked it off the list.

 

4 hours ago, wollboi said:

@jaeos Just tested it and it's not going to work. Reshade doesn't like working with it, which I didn't even consider.

I'm leaning more and more to NOLVUS Reshade (just get the right version of it). It fixes the previuously broken shadows on PC and NPC.

 

Also i don't have to rework my mod for the loadscreens.

 

3 hours ago, mknn said:

I still think the smarter thing might be to start a fresh game, but as I have yet to really do much in the game (level 35 n00b), it would be nice to progress a bit.

You have no idea how often i had to restart...

 

3 hours ago, mknn said:

The question is this: if I am just patient, will they regenerate eventually in game? And, if not, how do I troubleshoot/fix?

 

I was very intrigued by some of the mods that claim to randomly modify bodytypes for NPCs--some tall, some short; some thin, some hefty, that sort of thing. But they all sound very complicated and very much a thing to only do at the start of a game. But maybe I'm wrong.

They usually don't. Sometimes you have to reset them, then its a change of weight, then it is a specific weight, then... You get the idea.

 

I gave up on those mods. A pain to set up and, one way or another, they'll screw you over.

________________________________________________

 

Uploaded my updated Skyrim ini files

 

 

[mknn]

Yeah, restarting. Somehow, after a couple of times through, now my saves won't load. Doesn't seem worth troubleshooting at this point.

 

In good news, successfully merged 20 weapons mods into 1 ... saving mod slots left and right. ?

 

In the meantime ... the game itself now takes a long time to start up. Not the save, but the game itself. I launch it, and the black screen lasts about a minute before the ENB text shows up. Is that usual for ENBs?

[Aylis]

21 minutes ago, mknn said:

In good news, successfully merged 20 weapons mods into 1 ... saving mod slots left and right. ?

 

In the meantime ... the game itself now takes a long time to start up. Not the save, but the game itself. I launch it, and the black screen lasts about a minute before the ENB text shows up. Is that usual for ENBs?

Be careful with merging mods. Especially if there are scripts involved.

 

Thats normal. With all the stuff we add to the game (in my momentary build 188 GB) it will take more time to process.

[mknn]

4 minutes ago, Aylis said:

Be careful with merging mods. Especially if there are scripts involved.

I had assumed that at some point in the process with mergeplugins.exe, it would alert me if there were issues. Reading about it seemed to indicate that mods that were similar and didn't add functionality were relatively safe. I started with weapons packs, and was going to move on to vanilla followers.

 

If merging doesn't work, is that likely to just break the mod--that is, the follower or weapon or armor won't show up or won't show correctly--or is it likely to have wider impacts?

[Aylis]

10 hours ago, mknn said:

If merging doesn't work, is that likely to just break the mod--that is, the follower or weapon or armor won't show up or won't show correctly--or is it likely to have wider impacts?

That depends on the involved mods. Sometimes they just stop working (thats if you're lucky) but it can also lead to random CTD (which are a pain to diagnose). And sometimes the fix for a bug is worse than the bug itself.

 

Some might remember the water bug we had north of Solitude. It took weeks to find the cause and then a few more to lessen it so much that it is almost gone. Same with 'Dibella Sisterhood' (which is fixed now) and several more mods...

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Uploadet a modified msn file for those who want to use my skin pack with Puffy Nipple Sliders for CBBE 3BBB.

[wollboi]

Immersive Creatures also can be pretty immersion-breaking right off the bat. Rieklings should not be in Skyrim. Neither should goblins. The only thing I really miss are some of the cool uber-draugr. And it does not play well with MLU, despite what it says. It's fine from a technical perspective, but from a gameplay one. If I'm in a dungeon with max level enemies 15 and run into some towering red monster that's level 50 ... yeah, no. Also I LITERALLY started a new game one time with Live Another Life, picking to start off with camping in the woods (after all, they're so peaceful this time of year). I was walking over to Helgen to pick up the note and was ambushed by something like 15 (not  an exaggeration) goblins, some of which were level 20ish. First thing in the game. Haven't even found a weapon yet. There's a toggle to restrict random encounters based on player level, but I have never noticed it playing fair. Or doing anything really.

 

@Aylis

The screenshots are great, btw. I just recently started using them. Also, I usually play Skyrim without music while I'm listening to the news or a podcast, but recently decided to install the music mods you've got listed. Ho-ly-crap. Whoever made these needs a job at a major game studio. Especially the dungeon ones. It sounds creepy like a horror game when walking around and gets frantic during fights. Fantastic.

[wollboi]

Also, as a tip for new modders (or people playing Skyrim 9 years after it came out in general), remember CTDs in this game are fairly standard because Bethesda doesn't like to fix anything. Remember to close other programs you may be using. I have a bad habit of trying to flip back and forth between the game and my desktop that I'm trying to break by using my laptop to look stuff up. And ESPECIALLY if you a Firefox user, close that before playing Skyrim. Firefox uses a ton of processing power, even if it's just idling. It's gotten better over the years, but it's still a hog, especially with plugins.

[Aylis]

Shadows on face and body with NOLVUS Reshade:

Spoiler

Aylis skin and preset plus EVA body (weight 50)

No 'striped' shadows anymore and the previously sometimes appearing 'oily skin' in interiors is gone too.

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Updated the recommended settings for the changed FOMOD of 3BBB.

[wollboi]

@AylisNew ini files work really well. Lots less tree pop-in now. Thanks!

[mknn]

Uh oh. So, got to the big moment. Started a new game. Configured a bunch of MCM stuff. Saved. Went to the statue of Mara. Saved. Went to sleep in the magic bed. Loading screen comes up, changes once, takes a little more time ... and CTD.

 

Question now is how to troubleshoot this, given that there's no real indication of the cause. I guess just start disabling large swaths of mods?

[mknn]

Just now, mknn said:

Uh oh. So, got to the big moment. Started a new game. Configured a bunch of MCM stuff. Saved. Went to the statue of Mara. Saved. Went to sleep in the magic bed. Loading screen comes up, changes once, takes a little more time ... and CTD.

 

Question now is how to troubleshoot this, given that there's no real indication of the cause. I guess just start disabling large swaths of mods?

Actually, as a first step, it's probably time to abandon Vortex for MO2. If I must troubleshoot, I'd rather not be swimming upstream against the tool as well.

[mknn]

15 minutes ago, mknn said:

Actually, as a first step, it's probably time to abandon Vortex for MO2. If I must troubleshoot, I'd rather not be swimming upstream against the tool as well.

OK, that brings up a big question ... right now all of the mods prior installed by Vortex are listed as unmanaged. Do I need to redownload and reinstall them all again? It may be smarter to do so just out of an abundance of caution, I would guess?

[Just Don't]

1 minute ago, mknn said:

OK, that brings up a big question ... right now all of the mods prior installed by Vortex are listed as unmanaged. Do I need to redownload and reinstall them all again? It may be smarter to do so just out of an abundance of caution, I would guess?

You should start with a clean game. Any file flagged as unmanaged in MO is a file in the actual game folder. MO won't be able to manage these files in the same sense other mods installed through MO can be managed. I wouldn't say this is a recommended step, but a mandatory one. Much like the strong recommendation to start with MO from the beginning.

[mknn]

11 minutes ago, Just Don't said:

You should start with a clean game. Any file flagged as unmanaged in MO is a file in the actual game folder. MO won't be able to manage these files in the same sense other mods installed through MO can be managed. I wouldn't say this is a recommended step, but a mandatory one. Much like the strong recommendation to start with MO from the beginning.

LOL. Smartass.

 

I like what Vortex is trying to do--take some of the challenges of this process off casual gamers. If everything were integrated correctly, it would work, too: more advanced users could use Groups, others could just toss mods in and let Vortex do its thing.

 

BUT ... it's just not there yet, obviously.

 

I succumb to the greater wisdom. Steam is doing its thing as we speak ...