Skyrim Modding Guide

[pinky6225]

tbh was hoping was reading wrong, doing the dx11 test verse the dx9 test on the tools that boris made kinda shocking how big the memory difference is and if that is accurate you'd have thought more peeps would have adopted dx11 by now

 

wonder what the majority of my 16gb of ram does with itself while its being ignored by dx9 games

[Vortec]

tbh was hoping was reading wrong, doing the dx11 test verse the dx9 test on the tools that boris made kinda shocking how big the memory difference is and if that is accurate you'd have thought more peeps would have adopted dx11 by now

 

wonder what the majority of my 16gb of ram does with itself while its being ignored by dx9 games

 

Like i said earlier, modded Skyrim memory settings- to me is confusing as ever. I too got 4064MB for DX9, then i get 39488 MB for DX11, i have 16 GB system ram and a 390x 8 GB Card. Lets see 16GB+8GB= 24GB.

  So where did this extra available ram come from 39488MB= ~40GB of available memory - 24Gb= ~16GB ??, disk swap file??

 

 Again so much confusion over proper memory settings.

[Sacremas]

Waaait... hold on. I just realized something. ENBs ignore exactly those settings. I highly doubt an ENB that can ignore normal memory settings care about Direct X or use any version. I tried setting ENB settings up to 8 Gigs again, and I have no issues and I'm running better.

 

Your correct ENB settings for stability is the following: VRAM + RAM - 4 x 1000. So since I have 4 GB VRAM, 8 GB RAM, that's a setting of 8000. -4 is for the 4 GB that Skyrim and Windows need together (actually even Fallout 4 do not need this much RAM, if you're willing to monitor how much your modded Skyrim and Windows uses do so, but this is a safe setting unless you are running heavy programs like firefox with hundreds of open windows in the background), and I round it to 8000 instead of 8192 for that extra little bit of safety in case I forgot to turn something off.

 

Also note that I just disabled OneTweak again, I was crashing on loading over and over and over with the game freezing mid load, I took out OneTweak and went back to fullscreen and I loaded the save just fine.

[Vortec]

 So does an ENB replaces DX9 then?.

[fishburger67]

 So does an ENB replaces DX9 then?.

 

No

[Sacremas]

 So does an ENB replaces DX9 then?.

 

No, it just allows you to ignore it's limitations, and the 32 bit limitations. So yes it kinda does graphically, but the DirectX package contains a lot more things than just graphics benefits. But basically as long as you are using an ENB you can ignore this windows fuckup for Skyrim at least, because Skyrim was always a 32 bit game and so would never be able to use more than something like 3.2 MB at the most, and I have never seen it use more than 1.5. Even Fallout 4 doesn't use 3.2 MB at it's most intensive, we're going to be throwing in a lot of mods for that. However the ENBseries can take advantage of up to a Terabyte combined of VRAM + RAM, ignoring all limitaitons imposted by DX and 32 bit, even 64 bit. Just don't try to uninstall your DX or anything silly like that, as base Skyrim still needs it.

[Sacremas]

I've been noticing recently that I'm crashing way more often since the last month or so. I seem to tap out of memory and end up with either infinite loading screens or a frozen image where that never happened before. I'm thinking this is probably a result of the Windows DX fuckup. Most likely I would say it's the SKSE memory patch being affected. I'm going to try reducing that in size and see if that works, to 768/256.

[Sacremas]

Nope, I'm still freezing, but it's at a lesser frequency. Which may be unrelated and it's only some actions that cause it. Grumble.

 

Heads up to anyone using Duel - Combat Realism or Deadly Combat. According to EnaiSiaIon, author of a whole bunch of mods and basically the guy I trust furthest when it comes to scripting in Skyrim, these are dangerous mods. They use unecessary cloak scripts and cause savegame bloat and scripting issues. I would highly recommend getting rid of them. Fishburger, if you're reading, feel free to put those on the bad mods list.

 

These are the viable alternatives as of now;

Ultimate Combat, got all of Duel's things and some cool stuff like locational damage, but is very script heavy. Use on light load games.

Vigor - Combat and Injuries, this is what I'm using now and I like it. It's very configurable with a built in uninstaller for disabling it's scripts, it has locational damage, and a lot of tactics changes that will genuinely change how you play the game, and it's also much more compatible with perk mods than most combat overhaulers. I also noticed Snares posting on this and it's predecessor in a positive manner. I suggest usign it with this mod by the same author, Weapons and Armor Attributes. While this is meant to be able to be combined with another combat mod, I wouldn't, use one of the below AI addons instead and ASIS.

 

Also Enai mentioned that he's soon going to announce Swordfall - Combat of Skyrim, at which point that will be the obvious choice almost guaranteed.

 

In addition while Combat Evolved is still a great mod and best if you prefer simplicity, there's now a much better alternative available from the author of SkyTweak, Grimy Combat Patcher, which puts special combat styles and AI on every single individual NPC and moster in Skyrim in regards to all the other mods in your load order! You can use it alongside Revenge of the Enemies just fine with the special instructions. Note that all three of these mods are script free and will not ever get in the way of your sex mods or whatever, and can be combined with any of the above freely.

[Old Book]

I just finished Rigmor of Bruma, which I had thought of as just a voiced companion mod, but which has grown since its first version into a massive eighteen-quest DLC. The reason I mention this is that it adds some absolutely huge battles, including one with over 100 NPCs outside of Whiterun. That particular battle was crashing my game every few minutes, which was frustrating as hell, but the rest of the mod was really excellent and (imo) made up for it. All of that said, I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a major quest mod.

[Old Book]

Mod related vent about This Fucking Game. 

So, yesterday morning, my Skyrim install was fine. I'd just finished an epic quest mod, and I decided to change mods around a bit and continue with the same character. 
Removed Deadly Combat. Added Hydra Slave Girls and Pet Kingdom (no mounts version) back in. That was it.
Rebuild my Merged, Bash, ASIS, and FNIS as I have a hundred times before. 
Now the game crashed every time I tried loading a saved game, even my "safe" saves alone in an empty cell. Fair enough; I started a new game. 
New games start fine. Then, as Immersive Armors finishes configuring itself, crash every damn time. Every. Damn. Time. 
Time to figure out this may be the problem; over three hours of removing mods and rebuilding patches. 
As I type this, I'm getting ready to try starting games without Immersive Armors, to see if they launch, and will then do a complete clean re-install of Immersive Armors and Weapons to see if I can get them working again. 
A pisser, this is. 

EDITED TO ADD:
OK, seriously, it was Immersive Armors. 
What The Actual Fuck?
That has been in there forever. Never a problem with it before. No conflicts showing in Mod Organized except for the minor bump with UKCs Immersive Armors tweaks, and those have, again, been the same forever.
I'm guessing this is actually some sort of papyrus issue, but even then, nothing has changed that recently.
So, working on it more. 

[Sacremas]

I'm not too fond of the Immersive Armors complexity. It uses a script to both swap between light and heavy versions of an item, and to place it on NPCs, the latter which breaks easily and you'll see NPCs with the armor one scene, turn a corner and they don't have it anymore. Legate Rikke is an especially bad culpit, she might get Heroic Imperial at Castle Dour, show up in normal Imperial armor at the jagged crown quest, have another armor (random it seems) at the Whiterun battle and another armor when she shows up in camp for you to report to her. This also overrides anything you have assigned to the NPC already, if you find a sexy multi-piece armor and give to Legate Rikke, she'll have one of either Imperial, Heroic Imperial or the ebony Imperial Knight armors when you meet her, and each of those four places she gets rerolled for another armor if you manually change her with consoles. I would have hugely preferred it to be done like in Immersive Weapons, where the weapon is assigned to the NPC's entry instead, but then probably a lot of folks wouldn't like that because they don't run a TES5Merged that can keep the NPCs looks as well. Most likely some of these scripts is what went wrong in your save, and I doubt reinstalling it will work, most likely you'll have to take out IA for that savegame or start a new one.

 

EDIT: Deleted link and info, didn't work properly.

[Old Book]

Awesome! And thanks. Good to know UKC is still around and kicking, even if he has stepped away from Skyrim.

I'd give up and run without Immersive Armors, but I'd probably lose a save game I've sunk a lot of work into. May be no choice, though. If I have to dump it, I'll try using Save Tool to salvage the saves; there's an option to remove all forms created by a given mod, and that might at least get the armors safely out of there. Of course, it would also leave quite a few characters nude, and not in a sexy sexlab kind of way.

[Sacremas]

Sorry, the Racemenu doesn't work properly like the old one. It is just the Nexus Racemenu merged together, no Overlays. I'm in the process of merging in all my overlays so my characters aren't ruined by this.

 

As for Nude characters, it's a bit of a hassle but do this;

 

First get to qasmoke or another cell without NPCs (I actually use the Underground Bathouse's armory, or the secret area of the Dragonborn Museum) then make sure you're watching the time/date, like maybe that of A Matter of Time. "Set Timescale to 10000" console command. Wait 5 mins until a month has passed, set it back to what you prefer (8 for me), save, exit, reload, go see if they are still naked. If they are click on the character, type "resetinventory" and they get whatever their FormID say they should have. You have to do this in this case for every naked NPC, which could be a lot. Hence why you should try the wait for a month thing first to see if that resets them.

[Sacremas]

Something didn't work out either in my or UKC's mergers, because a lot of things don't work now, plugins like SOS and XPMSE for example. Going back to the old UKC one, I doubt there's that many changes. Deletign my link above.

[Vortec]

Sorry, the Racemenu doesn't work properly like the old one. It is just the Nexus Racemenu merged together, no Overlays. I'm in the process of merging in all my overlays so my characters aren't ruined by this.

 

As for Nude characters, it's a bit of a hassle but do this;

 

First get to qasmoke or another cell without NPCs (I actually use the Underground Bathouse's armory, or the secret area of the Dragonborn Museum) then make sure you're watching the time/date, like maybe that of A Matter of Time. "Set Timescale to 10000" console command. Wait 5 mins until a month has passed, set it back to what you prefer (8 for me), save, exit, reload, go see if they are still naked. If they are click on the character, type "resetinventory" and they get whatever their FormID say they should have. You have to do this in this case for every naked NPC, which could be a lot. Hence why you should try the wait for a month thing first to see if that resets them.

 

 Ok where is this secret area in the Museum lol. I can't find it.

[Sacremas]

Semi-secret, I mean the Tomb of the Dragonborn, the sarcophogus in the end of the library in the big room, activate it and it slides back to reveal staircases leading to a secret section to place thieves guild, dark brotherhood, werewolf and vampire artifacts.

[Old Book]

I like Coc vampiredreamworld01 for an empty room. Modders often drop stuff in qasmoke, but very few touch the dream worlds.

[SexyTop69]

 

Good news maybe, dare I say but it seems as far as I have played it it has not crashed....... yet. I think I'll keep on playing till it doe or hopefully won't, then I think I'll add on bits of sexlab mods till it does to narrow it down fingers crossed hopefully no more CTDs.

 

UPDATE: If this problem has bowed its head another one has taken it's place or just increased it's number.... I have the 2D bug for trees all the tress have zero meshes and looks pixelated and in 2d rendering anybody get out of this one?

 

It seems that whatever issue you were having it was contagious, my formerly rock-solid game now freezes up and doesn't resume when I enter cities on my current game. I'm going to start a new game and see if the issue persists.

 

May I ask what operating system you use, and if Win 10 did it update very recently?

 

EDIT: My crashes may be due to either my large SKSE co-save from XPSME skeleton, or from the new Vigor - COmbat and Injuries mod uploaded yesterday. On a new game with an old XPMSE and without that mod I am not crashing, install that mod and I crash. It may be a load order issue however.

 

 

I did an full reinstall on my skyrim folder, I run windows 7. So far problems I have been having are the 2d tree bug where it replaces the 3d ones with the LOD/far away ones? I don't understand why that's happening, haven't started to weed out my sexlab mods yet trying to figure this one out gonna try tamrel reloaded if I figure nothing else out.

 

[Sacremas]

Never seen that dream cell before. Well it's Ysolda's house obviously, but what quest is it from? My Prisoner when doing it from the main menu ended up grayfaced, a showracemenu fixed his face. I found a few books and letters scattered around from various quests, but nothing else not already in Ysolda's house.

 

UKC just forgot about the textures for the missing addons, here's the full mod; https://mega.nz/#!lEgDVSDJ!N3-HqmJLKFSU39d86o7ZFrO1TJrGCzrPlzLf6ax6slU

[Old Book]

Never seen that dream cell before. Well it's Ysolda's house obviously, but what quest is it from? My Prisoner when doing it from the main menu ended up grayfaced, a showracemenu fixed his face. I found a few books and letters scattered around from various quests, but nothing else not already in Ysolda's house.

 

UKC just forgot about the textures for the missing addons, here's the full mod; https://mega.nz/#!lEgDVSDJ!N3-HqmJLKFSU39d86o7ZFrO1TJrGCzrPlzLf6ax6slU

Thanks, got it. 

 

The VampireDreamWorld01 was from a never implemented quest for player characters infected with sanguinare vampiris. 

 

Fishburger pointed me to another really interesting cell, WICourierCell. It contains the barrel that your letters are stored in before the courier delivers them, and sometimes the courier himself. The barrel is locked, but you can unlock it with the console. Use Grimmy's tools to mark and then remote activate it, and you can check your mail from anywhere, without the courier running up to you. 

 

Thanks to SaveTool, I was able to remove Immersive Armors and salvage my save game, but I'm still completely at a loss as to why Immersive Armors would have become a guaranteed crash in the first place. I've been using it for years without a problem; now i can't even start a new game if I put it in my load order, even if I remove everything I installed between the last time I know it worked and now. 

 

On the plus side, all of the digging I did to try to fix this latest disaster got me to fix some errors I'd introduced in my enblocal.ini when I recently tried to use Hialgo Boost. I had to give that one up because it's not compatible with the latest enb binaries. 

[Weyban]

Yo! Sacremas' guide recommends Verdant, right? - Version 2.2 is out since yesterday, let me just quote what the author throws out:

 

"WARNING: This mod in it's latest stage does now in fact have landscape texture worldspace edits in it's .esp, which is essentially harmless in itself, but if you have many, MANY mods that alter your skyrim worldspace (house mods, village mods, landscape overhauls), your game can lose stability from this, and even crash. Always be aware of the mods you are installing, and make sure you read all the instructions and suggestions for best compatibility."

 

My LOOT put Verdant somewhere in the middle, though you're now advised to put it at the bottom, right? Without too much effort I already noticed the consequence of this in action with that house mod "Haafinheim" (looky here and here)... Even though Verdant tells you it should be at the bottom of your load order, Haafinheim and I'd wager a good deal more mods are gonna have to go after (not to mention Alternate Start/Bashed Patch, etc). The grass is beautiful and even at Density 60 I don't feel too much of a performance impact myself, but this whole world edit business... egh (Sorry if y'allready knew all this xD)

[Vortec]

 Hi  Sacremas, i was wondering if you could start a Blog/thread were only recommend Mods or alterations as separate from this thread and just use this thread for discussion?. Was trying to find a Skyrim world texture mod you recommended but can't find it, among others mods.

[Sacremas]

Yo! Sacremas' guide recommends Verdant, right? - Version 2.2 is out since yesterday, let me just quote what the author throws out:

 

"WARNING: This mod in it's latest stage does now in fact have landscape texture worldspace edits in it's .esp, which is essentially harmless in itself, but if you have many, MANY mods that alter your skyrim worldspace (house mods, village mods, landscape overhauls), your game can lose stability from this, and even crash. Always be aware of the mods you are installing, and make sure you read all the instructions and suggestions for best compatibility."

 

My LOOT put Verdant somewhere in the middle, though you're now advised to put it at the bottom, right? Without too much effort I already noticed the consequence of this in action with that house mod "Haafinheim" (looky here and here)... Even though Verdant tells you it should be at the bottom of your load order, Haafinheim and I'd wager a good deal more mods are gonna have to go after (not to mention Alternate Start/Bashed Patch, etc). The grass is beautiful and even at Density 60 I don't feel too much of a performance impact myself, but this whole world edit business... egh (Sorry if y'allready knew all this xD)

 

No I don't use Verdant. I recommend Verdant as an FPS boost because it hides other things that could be there, same as tree overhauls does, but if you do not actually need that FPS boost I do not recommend using them. Frankly I don't like the look of trees everywhere, they look out of place, and the long Verdant grass interferes with a lot of places it shouldn't be. I sometimes pop it in for a sort of "savannah hunter" type of stealthy archer creeping around, but I don't generally use it. What I use is the same answer to the below;

 

 

 Hi  Sacremas, i was wondering if you could start a Blog/thread were only recommend Mods or alterations as separate from this thread and just use this thread for discussion?. Was trying to find a Skyrim world texture mod you recommended but can't find it, among others mods.

 

I could do that, but for now it's very simple; Tamriel Reloaded HD. It's gorgeous, and even at 1k (which is the only thing I would recommend with Win 8 or 10 with Microsoft's memory fuckup) it looks gorgeous. Take out ALL other landscape mods, basically install this and see what it conflcits with, take all of that out if there is not a patch for those files in TRHD's optionals. Specifically the only mods I leave behind is Complete Alchemy and the mod it recommend (it includes textures for below water plants and such), a water mod (I prefer Realistic Water 2, use whatever of the three options) and one mod for mountains specifically, One Mountain which is patched by TRHD and has superior textures of the same parallax type as TRHD. Beyodn this I would not install anything that conflicts with TRHD and is not patched, such as a lighting overhaul like ELFX, this means that combined with ELFX changes Static Mesh Improvement is OUT entirely, just disable it, and use instead the SMIMM meshes optionals in TRHD and ELFX which puts it back in with the changes of thsoe mods. Likewise delete and unsubscribe from the shit Bethesda Official High Res DLC, horrible crap. Try to use as few texture packs as possible, if two of them interfere - as Verdant will with most texture, forest etc changes - you will see a much greater FPS drop than their mere VRAM cost should imply. A few very big replacer packs will ALWAYS be better and provide better FPS as well as look more consistent than

 

Other than this, I use Gamwitch's textures, every single one of them except ESO armor (because I don't use the armor, if I did I would use them) and Rustic Children, otherwise put in everything (errr... including One Mountain! I just noticed he's the one who has that, heh!), because the guy is just genius and you get such a massive impact in your game. The first time you install Rustic Clothing (which do me a favor and vote for Nexus File of the Month on that?) and go in game, your eyes will pop open just as hard as with Tamriel Reloaded HD, but for characters.

 

For skins I have also settled on some choices I will use whenever I can;

 

Demoniac for the ladies, this skin is AMAZING, and I would say that it is the ONLY choice you have. When you install you can install versions (improved that is) of Fair Skin, SG Skin, Mature Skin, Real Girl or a custom skin that is blended SG and Real Girl (this is the same skin used by the Bijin mods, except rx improves it and fits it to each girl), as well as a separate choice of head, all blended, with a lot of addons like makeup, freckles, muslce maps, seat, specular etc. This will lead to both a beautiful face for both humans and elves (evne Orcs get a little reshaping, basically think ESO for all races rather than the harsher Skyrim anglular faces for elves and such), with NO SEAMS for neck or anywhere. This is also PRE-FITTED for HDT Vagina, so if you use such a mod (I recommend HDT Bounce and Jiggles UNP Edition (or CBBE, look up the author, but UNP offers more choices) then it will automatically work with no patches or blending necessary. If you use HeeroeLynda's mod (which also adds HDT pussy to Bijin) which you can find here it's likewise compatible with no patches needed, you just need the meshes and XML, overwrite with Demoniac and/or jiggly (depends on which XML weighing or body mesh you prefer) and Demoniac skin and everything will work, including your UNP Schlong and SOS strapon. Compliment with whatever hair, eye and NPC overhaul mods you prefer, as long as they don't chnage the meshes and textures (like Bijin does) they will work with your choices.

 

For males the best choice until FadingSinal finishes his SkySight Skins mod (which looks fantastic and really much more my choice, but incompatible for now with any mod that adds a dick, even favoredsoul's permanently erect one) I would recommend Smooth Male Body as well as Fine Face Textures. Note that Smooth is not compatible with SOS, and Fine Face will lead to really really ugly neck seams. There is supposed to come a new mod from the author of Complete Male Overhaul (which has been taken down), but most likely the best choice will be SkySight Skins as said. However the benefit of Fine Face is that it fixes male elves like your female ones are fixed by Demoniac, and you can still make your Nord or Orc look rugged and harsh using beards, scars and facepaint if you prefer the more brutal type of hero. As an example of more rugged men with this skin, take a look at this Vilkas and Farkas replacer. Note that Smooth Male Body do not work with SOS light and WHENEVER HUMANLY POSSIBLE you should use SOS light, because SOS full will bloat your save unless you turn off it's schlongificaiton and only manually assign schlongs (it assigns schlongs to every bandit and the like you kill, which is then saved as a record in your save, then you kill said bandit a moment later, but it is never unloaded in your save, with the save game bloating over time and occasionally crashing when loading saves.

 

Now with these mods beast races are the same as before. So here's some mods to fix them;

Feminime Khajiit Textures Gray Cat results in HDT Kitty with Bounce and Jiggly. You could use CoverKhajiits as well but I think you will get very ugly seams. How do you make a beast race sexually appealing anyway without making it more human catgirl style like in anime? Beast races freak me out.

Feminime Argonian Textures, Chameleon is the choice for HDT Lizzy, or whatever you'd call a lizard vagina if you're into that.

FAR - Forgotten Argonian Roots is your choice for male argonians, it includes female skin as well, use that if you don't care about HDT Lizzy.

Extra Furry Khajiit Skin for SOS is probably best for male cats.

SOS Leito Schlongs Addon is in my book the best choice for dicks if you have to use SOS Full, this provides foreskin for males, and cat dicks and lizard dicks for beasties, and has an option for either hairless or hairy in installation, Hairless will fit fairly well with Smooth Male Body. Install one of the Vector Plexus SOS dicks of your choice and assign to redguards or others who should be circumcised, as well as any werewolves if you do not use More Nasty Critters. Note that HeeroeLynda's HDT vagina works with non MNC werewolf dicks, as well as other MNC beasts, but if you leave that (optional install in the FOMOD, not an auto one) installed without MNC you get blue dicks on all animals it would affect. Note that MNC has similar issues like SOS, just worse because it includes every NPC, not just humanoid ones. These are also things that really can't be fixed with the mods themselves without radically changing how they work, like swapping Schlongification for a Skyproc Patcher.

[Vortec]

Thanks i agree with Demoniac skin totally. What are your thoughts on the new Climates of Tamriel?

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/17802/?

 

BTW your link to UKC Utilities download isn't working. Has he taken it down?

 

[Old Book]

Immersive Armors Update:
Found the conflict, and confirmed it. Immersive Armors sometimes crashes when trying to run its start up script with Rigmor of Bruma installed. Somehow I got away with it before, on my RIgmor run through, but I had added Rigmor to my load order after having already set up Immersive Armors. When I tried to start a new game with RIgmor in my load order, it bit me. 

So, if you want to play Rigmor, bye to Immersive Armors, or install Rigmor after Immersive has already started up. I kind of wonder if that problem happens with other DLC sized mods.