guide Skyrim AE for Beginners - V 3.1.0

[MycoTao]

Hey there ,  Nordic UI has an installer , I'm confised as to what or what not to select , anyone tell me what the rule of thumb is if such info is not mentioned  ?  thanks ! 

[MycoTao]

4 minutes ago, MycoTao said:

Hey there ,  Nordic UI has an installer , I'm confused as to what or what not to select , anyone tell me what the rule of thumb is if such info is not mentioned  ?  thanks ! 

 Going to proceed with default selection , ie. won't enable anything than what already is unless someone knows better

[Aylis]

2 hours ago, MycoTao said:

Hey there ,  Nordic UI has an installer , I'm confised as to what or what not to select , anyone tell me what the rule of thumb is if such info is not mentioned  ?  thanks ! 

Unless I added some instructions, you can usually go with 'Pick what you like'.

[MycoTao]

36 minutes ago, Aylis said:

Unless I added some instructions, you can usually go with 'Pick what you like'.

 Alright , Thanks  Appreciated the reply ❤️

[Dez65]

On 3/29/2025 at 9:33 AM, hardcoremanuel said:

NGIO

Okay, I generated the grass cache.  I got all of the cgid files expected, made a "Grass Cache" mod and enabled it.  

 

I think now, though, that since I have Seasons of Skyrim in my load order, the correct thing to do is to generate "seasonal grass," using Grass Cache Helper NG.   

 

Not real clear on how to do that though.  I've read the Grass Cache Helper NG page descriptions and a bunch of the comments and I think the procedure is as follows:

 

1.  Open po3_SeasonsOfSkyrim.ini and set Season Type to winter (1) - rerun Precache Grass.   Rename the extension of each generated .cgid to .win.cgid;

2.  Edit po3_SeasonsOfSkyrim.ini and rune Precache Grass for each season and rename SPR|SUM|AUT|.

3.  Return the Season Type in po3_SeasonsOfSkyrim.ini 5 (Seasonal);

3.  Put all the renamed cgid files together in a Grass Cache mod.

 

The one thing I'm not sure of is if I need to first run non-seasonal cache without changing seasons.  In other words, is the first non-seasonal cache I generated necessary to generate the seasonal caches?

 

Thanks again for all of your help!

Edited March 30, 2025 by Dez65

[MycoTao]

World - Locations [Exterior Cities] , I've made it to this point and have missing masters for morthal.esp . The term cluster fuck comes to mind , its as clear as mud . Leaving this note to warn people about wasting 24 hours of thier life here .  If you want a crazy mod list to follow along with that won't leave you fustrated & disappointed serach Nolvus in google . This in a critique on the work here and not Aylis as a person , I've followed her guides many times over the past 6-8 years . Much love to her , but this monstrousity should be shot and buried . 

 

 

[_Warhawk_]

3 hours ago, MycoTao said:

World - Locations [Exterior Cities] , I've made it to this point and have missing masters for morthal.esp . The term cluster fuck comes to mind , its as clear as mud . Leaving this note to warn people about wasting 24 hours of thier life here .  If you want a crazy mod list to follow along with that won't leave you fustrated & disappointed serach Nolvus in google . This in a critique on the work here and not Aylis as a person , I've followed her guides many times over the past 6-8 years . Much love to her , but this monstrousity should be shot and buried . 

 

 

This sounds like user error and not something that Aylis did wrong. You can't come in here and say stuff like that with baseless claims like this. You either selected a patch for a mod you don't have, it comes later or you completely missed a mod. I know modding is difficult but you should check to see what mod that patch is coming from and see what it is requiring. You can go to the plugins section and look for any red icons. Modding is a a patient and time consuming process. I have ran through this list many times and never once saw a missing master for that specific plugin.

[SirusRobomage]

Continuing to work my way through the modding guide setup, and i'm finding that the leaves on the ground are full of these purple squares. I've been looking over the mods and I genuinely have no idea what the culprit here is. 

 

https://i.imgur.com/6See5jQ.png

 

Any ideas where I messed up?

[hardcoremanuel]

11 hours ago, Dez65 said:

Okay, I generated the grass cache.  I got all of the cgid files expected, made a "Grass Cache" mod and enabled it.  

 

I think now, though, that since I have Seasons of Skyrim in my load order, the correct thing to do is to generate "seasonal grass," using Grass Cache Helper NG.   

 

Not real clear on how to do that though.  I've read the Grass Cache Helper NG page descriptions and a bunch of the comments and I think the procedure is as follows:

 

1.  Open po3_SeasonsOfSkyrim.ini and set Season Type to winter (1) - rerun Precache Grass.   Rename the extension of each generated .cgid to .win.cgid;

2.  Edit po3_SeasonsOfSkyrim.ini and rune Precache Grass for each season and rename SPR|SUM|AUT|.

3.  Return the Season Type in po3_SeasonsOfSkyrim.ini 5 (Seasonal);

3.  Put all the renamed cgid files together in a Grass Cache mod.

 

The one thing I'm not sure of is if I need to first run non-seasonal cache without changing seasons.  In other words, is the first non-seasonal cache I generated necessary to generate the seasonal caches?

 

Thanks again for all of your help!

I can't help much with this one as I haven't used Seasons of Skyrim in a while and never with the Grass Cache.

I did find this Powershell script for renaming the .cgid files :  Grass Cache Seasonizer.

You will need something like that to automate renaming the files given the large number of .cgid files created.

[Dez65]

7 hours ago, hardcoremanuel said:

You will need something like that to automate renaming the files given the large number of .cgid files created

Thanks.  I saw that, but I'm not sure why I can't just use the ren command in DOS.

 

Just the cache for Winter has been running all night and has produced 8200 files so far.  And it's still running, since like 8:00 p.m. last now (now 6:16 a.m.). 

 

I knew it would take a long time but I didn't think this long.  Hope I didn't screw something up!

Edited March 31, 2025 by Dez65

[Aylis]

@MycoTao

User error. 

 

So many have used this guide over the years and nobody else saw this happening to them? That alone would make me recheck my downloads. And this one is easy to fix as you know exactly what is missing. Btw. this guide is partially based on Nolvus and others... I just improved on them and gave it my spin.

 

@Dez65

Four seasons means roughly four times as much time required for creating files.

[Dez65]

3 hours ago, Aylis said:

Four seasons means roughly four times as much time required for creating files.

Understood. 

 

Shizof also suggested creating a new profile and disabling all mods in that profile except "anything that modifies exteriors" meaning anything "that doesn't touch exterior terrain" before running precacche.  He said that running "grass precache on your regular mod list would take ages."   I was attempting to generate a "winter" cache with the entire modlist enabled, so that's probably why the program was still running after nearly 12 hours.

 

Shizof also recommended this guide, which has answered a bunch of my questions.  https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/articles/6920

 

Passing this all along here in case anyone is as much of a noob as I am, which seems unlikely.  

[Dez65]

I think I'm going buggy.  I have Seasonal Landscapes in my load order and I can see that I downloaded and installed it when I first starting working on this modlist but I can't find it in the list now.  Did that mod get replace by Floral Fields?  Can both be used together to generate the grass cache?  

 

 

[wollboi]

Imagine thinking Nolvus is easier to install than this mod list. It isn't, and it sure as fuck doesn't look better.

[trgdolors]

6 hours ago, Dez65 said:

I think I'm going buggy.  I have Seasonal Landscapes in my load order and I can see that I downloaded and installed it when I first starting working on this modlist but I can't find it in the list now.  Did that mod get replace by Floral Fields?  Can both be used together to generate the grass cache?  

I think Seasonal Landscapes (and Seasons of Skyrim SKSE) was removed a while ago. If you look in the guide in the group below Lighting, there is Seasons (Later™). The intention was to eventually bring the Seasons mods back.

[Dez65]

7 hours ago, trgdolors said:

was removed a while ago

Darn!  Don't know how it ended up in my load order.  

[Dez65]

I think I know what happened.  Freak's Floral FOMOD has a setting for Seasons, but Seasonal Landscapes is a prerequisite.  I must have though that I missed Seasonal Landscapes in the list somehow since I wanted to use Seasons, so I also installed Seasonal Landscapes.

 

Gonna keep it in my load order for now (while I figure out Seasonal Grass Cache) since apparently its supposed to work with Floral Fields.

[wollboi]

Freak's also got an update a while back that I just got around to installing a few days ago. Looks absolutely incredible.

[Tiemphyx]

Yet another Heretic?!  To the stake with him!  Bwahahahaha!

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Just a couple of FYI utility mods anyone here might benefit from:

 

FOMOD Plus - A mod installation overhaul for MO2  - Remember your FOMOD choices?  Requires running them again, but then it's one and done.

Skyrim Autocorrect - Dialogue Grammar Fixes  [requires: Dynamic Dialogue Replacer] - Particularly pleasant with some SL mods...give 'em a shot.

[SirusRobomage]

Ok so I found the solution to my problem. Apparently if you're not using ENB with Freaky's Floral Fixes you need Community Shaders, or else the grass/leaves textures don't work properly. Word to the wise.

[SirusRobomage]

@AylisI've run into what appears to be a missing instruction when building the load order, where Dremora Markynaz Armor is concerned.

 

The patches for it use the esp for DMA as a master, but the file defaults to giving you the ESL, which won't work as an appropriate master. If i'm mistaken, feel free to correct me, but I believe what you need to do is open up the mod in MO2, go to the Optional INIs tab, and use the arrows there to swap out the esl for the esp.

 

Something that, if true, should probably go into the instructions for the guide so people don't miss it.

[wollboi]

5 hours ago, SirusRobomage said:

@AylisI've run into what appears to be a missing instruction when building the load order, where Dremora Markynaz Armor is concerned.

 

The patches for it use the esp for DMA as a master, but the file defaults to giving you the ESL, which won't work as an appropriate master. If i'm mistaken, feel free to correct me, but I believe what you need to do is open up the mod in MO2, go to the Optional INIs tab, and use the arrows there to swap out the esl for the esp.

 

Something that, if true, should probably go into the instructions for the guide so people don't miss it.

You don't need to do that. I hit that problem too. One of the downloads provides an esp, the other an esl. Or maybe it's a FOMOD choice, but you can definitely get an esp plugin.

[trgdolors]

16 hours ago, wollboi said:

Freak's also got an update a while back that I just got around to installing a few days ago. Looks absolutely incredible.

Some user on Reddit a while back did an amazing comparison of grass mods.

 

Comparison of 20 different grass mods in 6 regions

 

One takeaway was that Freak's was arguably the prettiest, but very heavy performance-wise. I am still on Folkvangr myself.

[Dez65]

Hi!  I have the swimming animations from the list installed as well as the recommended No More Swimming In Air - Fixed Floating SwimIdle bug fix.  

 

Sometimes,  as soon as the PC steps into shallow water (that is, before it's deep enough to swim) she will immediately go into the swimming animation.  A hard restart sometimes fixes the problem.  Other times, I can fix it by disabling the No More Swimming in Air fix.  Still, the bug eventually re-occurs.  

 

Any clues as to what I'm doing wrong?

 

Thanks!

[Dez65]

On 3/31/2025 at 1:50 PM, Dez65 said:

Four seasons means roughly four times as much time required for creating files.

Wanted to report back on generating grass for four seasons.  Per instructions from Shizof, I pared down my modlist in a separate profile to just the grass mods and anything else directly touching the landscape.  I was able to generate caches for the four seasons in about three hours including the renaming with Grass Cache Seasonizer, recommended by hardcoremanuel.  

 

Results look great so far!  Yay!  On to Dyndolod!