guide Skyrim AE for Beginners - V 3.1.0

[belegost]

I got rid of Northern Roads in its entirety, including any patches and everything. I couldn't get the plugin order in such a way as not to have either holes, mismatched textures or broken navmesh nearly everywhere. Not just cities and towns, but often in the wildreness as well. 

 

Problem solved. And I got rid of about 80 plugins as well. 

Edited November 18, 2025 by belegost

[DarkForce_256]

2 hours ago, belegost said:

I got rid of Northern Roads in its entirety, including any patches and everything. I could get the plugin order in such a way as not to have either holes, mismatched textures or broken navmesh nearly everywhere. Not just cities and towns, but often in the wildreness as well. 

 

Problem solved. And I got rid of about 80 plugins as well. 

 

So far the only area I've found with issues is Falkreath, I'm going to do more exploring before I decide to get rid of it.

[belegost]

51 minutes ago, DarkForce_256 said:

 

So far the only area I've found with issues is Falkreath, I'm going to do more exploring before I decide to get rid of it.

Falkreath, Ivarstead, southern Lake Ilinalta, Morthal and Solitude. Then I stopped checking and just yanked the whole thing out. Those roads are cool, but with the heavy setup, what with landscape fixes, eFPS, NotWL and totally redesigned towns and cities it was just a massive headache and a nightmare of patches upon patches, overwriting other patches. I managed to fix Ivarstead because it was fairly easy with More Informative Console, but with Falkreath even that was not enough.

Edited November 18, 2025 by belegost

[DarkForce_256]

I swear I have the oddest bugs. While exploring I passed Orphan Rock and the stone has the texture of a blanket! 

 

 

 

 

 

As far as Northern Roads I don't seem to have any issues in Ivarstead, Morthal, or Solitude. I might just have to get rid of Redbag's Falkreath if I can't sort all of the patches to play together nicely.

 

EDIT:

 

Turns out it was either texgen or dyndolod messing with the textures. After re-running both the rocks are back to normal.

 

Is anyone else having an issue with the nordic tents? With dyndolod active I get a second untextured mesh appearing at certain viewing angles.

 

 

It is only there when dyndolod output is enabled. I re ran a few times and it is still there.

 

Inching ever closer to actually playing the game!

Edited November 20, 2025 by DarkForce_256

[cloudmc]

Anyone else having issues with low fps in the world?  I drop to around 8-12 fps in open world areas (like near whiterun).  Not sure why as I'm running way over spec I thought

[PubliusNV]

40 minutes ago, cloudmc said:

Anyone else having issues with low fps in the world? 

 

The worst for me is around Skulvar's farm and the Whiterun carriage. I was getting FPS numbers like yours, so I went back and reinstalled almost everything with lower size textures, redid DYNDOLOD with lower settings, and removed a couple of shaders mentioned a page or two back, and now that very slow spot is in the 20s. Interiors I get 50-60, exteriors typically 30-50. 

[DarkForce_256]

50 minutes ago, cloudmc said:

Anyone else having issues with low fps in the world?  I drop to around 8-12 fps in open world areas (like near whiterun).  Not sure why as I'm running way over spec I thought

 

Even with a RTX5080 and an 9800X3D my FPS dips down to the 20's in Riverwood. Playing on a 4090 and I don't dip below 60 most times. It's all to do with your VRAM if you're using higher res textures.

[guangxitufei]

Sorry to ask a potentially stupid question, but I have a barely functional level of understanding of CS Light and other such lighting mods, and reading change logs and posts has left me confused. Now that CS Light no longer supports particles/particle lights, should I uninstall all the mods and patches with particle in their name, like Particle Patch, Water for ENB - Particle Waterfalls, True Light's (I believe) Particle Patch compatibility patch, etc., and any less obvious ones that more knowledgeable users could graciously suggest?

 

CS Light at Skyrim Special Edition Nexus - Mods and Community

I saw comments on the website, so should I still install modules like Particle Lights for ENB - Falmer Things or CS Particle Patch? They seem redundant.

[belegost]

5 hours ago, guangxitufei said:

should I uninstall all the mods and patches with particle in their name

No.

5 hours ago, guangxitufei said:

should I still install modules like Particle Lights for ENB - Falmer Things or CS Particle Patch?

Yes.

 

Particle lights is not the same as particles.

Edited November 22, 2025 by belegost

[guangxitufei]

4 hours ago, belegost said:

不。

是的。

 

粒子光和粒子不同。

I saw in the CommunityShaders comments section that "Particle lights have been removed with version 1.4".

[guangxitufei]

4 hours ago, belegost said:

No.

Yes.

 

Particle lights is not the same as particles.

You might not fully understand this either, but after reading the CS comments, I think I get it now: Particle light is simply a parameter set in the NIF file, which ENB and CS can read to simulate light. The same thing can be achieved with Light Placer without modifying the NIF file, making it less tedious and avoiding all mesh conflicts. The idea that thousands of placement lights are needed to replace particle lights is a misconception. Even if needed, theoretically, it's feasible through light limit repair because it implements a state-of-the-art rendering technique called clustered shading, developed specifically for that use case.

Placement light modules and other modules gradually add lights to all effects. You can still use particle lights until everything is overridden; they are deprecated, not removed, so they are still usable.

However, the particle light effect is likely not as good as using Light Placer and may still have mesh conflicts.

[faggotshit]

ok now the problem am having now is the install of "CBBE 3BA (3BBB)" page 3 (i think) whats the better option? full SMP or only CBPC? and explain the differences 

[belegost]

4 hours ago, faggotshit said:

ok now the problem am having now is the install of "CBBE 3BA (3BBB)" page 3 (i think) whats the better option? full SMP or only CBPC? and explain the differences 

I used CBPC on my old machine because it couldn't run full SMP. It worked. I use SMP on new machine and I have yet to test it fully, but erm... it is definitely amazing, but it has weird quirks. You can test both and see which one you like more.

[weeb_piglet]

I am at a loss here.  I'm missing some kind of texture but I can't find what mod or file I actually missed.  These purple spots disappear when I get close so I'm thinking I must have downloaded a "parallax" version of something but I can't figure out what that would have been.  I've reinstalled "Skyland AIO" twice now.  Ran and rerun PG patcher multiple times (deleting everything in the output folder each time), and I even reinstalled reshade just in case this was caused by the settings in reshade.

 

I can't for the life of me figure out what I could have done wrong.  Anybody know what this is?

[PubliusNV]

A recent problem has been reported with the At Your Own Pace - College Quest Expansion Patch in the discussion thread for the College of Winterhold Expansion mod discussion page. Apparently a recent change to the College Expansion mod breaks the patch if loaded in the order that this guide recommends. The patch still seems to work, but only if it is now loaded AFTER At Your Own Pace - College of Winterhold instead of before, as this guide recommends.

 

With the patch loaded in the order as recommended by the guide, no dialog options with Tolfdir appeared for me to start the Expansion quests. After moving it AFTER AYOP - College of Winterhold, and loading a save from before First Lessons was started, the dialog option to start the quest worked.

[thegoodbuoy0]

On 11/6/2025 at 5:31 PM, belegost said:

Okay, everything looks nice... except that everything is so dark if the area is not in direct sunlight. You can barely make out the details.

On the other hand, open areas in broad daylight when there is a a sunny weather, everything is so bright I have to change my monitor b to darker, because it just blinds me. 

 

Had the same issue. Man, Just when I was happy to move from ENB, Community Shaders proved to be buggy as hell. I had to reinstall CS with all its plugins, make some load order changes for mods that affect lighting and that fixed it. The postprocessing offered by Reshade isn't that good, imo you should skip that and the klarity preset entirely or you could tweak it to your liking. 

[thegoodbuoy0]

2 hours ago, weeb_piglet said:

Anybody know what this is?

 

Use asset doctor to help figure out what asset that is and then replace or remove the mod.

[belegost]

6 hours ago, PubliusNV said:

A recent problem has been reported with the At Your Own Pace - College Quest Expansion Patch in the discussion thread for the College of Winterhold Expansion mod discussion page. Apparently a recent change to the College Expansion mod breaks the patch if loaded in the order that this guide recommends. The patch still seems to work, but only if it is now loaded AFTER At Your Own Pace - College of Winterhold instead of before, as this guide recommends.

 

With the patch loaded in the order as recommended by the guide, no dialog options with Tolfdir appeared for me to start the Expansion quests. After moving it AFTER AYOP - College of Winterhold, and loading a save from before First Lessons was started, the dialog option to start the quest worked.

That patch had always had to be loaded after AYOP, especially since it requires AYOP as a master. I don't know why would anyone load a patch before the mods it requires.

Edited November 23, 2025 by belegost

[weeb_piglet]

11 hours ago, thegoodbuoy0 said:

Use asset doctor to help figure out what asset that is and then replace or remove the mod.

Thanks, I didn't even know we had a tool like this.

 

Unfortunately I'm fixing everything in my load order, except THESE ANNOYING PURPLE LEAVES...

 

but I think I can narrow it down a little easier.

 

I just wish I knew what mod they were coming from.

[cloudmc]

8 hours ago, belegost said:

That patch had always had to be loaded after AYOP, especially since it requires AYOP as a master. I don't know why would anyone load a patch before the mods it requires.

They are saying these two need to be switched

At Your Own Pace - College Quest Expansion Patch

At Your Own Pace - College of Winterhold

 

They should be the College of Winterhold Patch first then the College Quest Expansion Patch.  

 

[belegost]

55 minutes ago, cloudmc said:

They should be the College of Winterhold Patch first then the College Quest Expansion Patch.

That makes no fucking sense.

[PubliusNV]

3 hours ago, cloudmc said:

They should be the College of Winterhold Patch first then the College Quest Expansion Patch. 

 

Exactly. AYOP - College of Winterhold needs to be first, and then AYOP College Quest Expansion Patch after it. The AYOP - College Quest Expansion Patch contains scripts that need to override AYOP - College of Winterhold in order for the Quest expansion dialog lines to show up.

Edited November 24, 2025 by PubliusNV

[weeb_piglet]

I found the offending mod.  It's Freak's Floral Fields.  Thanks again for the tip on the "Asset Doctor" that helped a lot.

 

I can't figure out how to fix it though.

 

I skipped ahead and downloaded Community Shaders, but it's still not showing complex grass.  Not sure if there's a setting in that or ReShade that I need to click on first.

 

I tried PG Patcher to see if that would enable them, but it didn't work.\

 

Idk if I need to skip ahead and download "Grass lighting" or if I'm missing an checkbox in one of the mods I already installed, but everything up to that point in the list is correct.

[weeb_piglet]

Got it, I needed "Grass Lighting" after all.  

 

I'm just going to put the shaders higher on the mod list for now, and hopefully that will fix some other visual glitches I've run into when rebuilding the mod list.

[PubliusNV]

Minor problem, but I'm curious about it. Belethor, when seen from certain angles, has his pants (between his boots and the bottom of his jacket/tunic) disappear. I can walk around him and see his legs appear and disappear. I thought originally it was a Bodyslide problem, but when I discovered that they do appear normal from some angles I started to wonder if it was a shader problem. 

Edited November 24, 2025 by PubliusNV