Skyrim Modding Guide

[Sacremas]

I'm using latest Climates of Tamriel. Here's a file you might like if you are using V5;  Climates of Tamriel Merged ESP.

 

This is a merger of the following ESPs; Expanded Snow Systems COT, Climates of Tamriel Dawnguard+Dragonborn, Dungeons - Hardcore, Interiors Warm, Nights level 2, Supreme Storms - COT version, Weather Patch (normal + Dragonborn + Expanded Snow Systems Compatibility Patch), Night Level 3 (sorry this is a miss I didn't notice, the Weather Patch ended up with a different one than normal COT, so NL3 is what will apply, this will make your nights DARK, use Predator Vision if you need to be out after 7, or use Campifre and set up a camp), Snow -40 % brigthness (to fit better with TRHD), Supreme Storms weather patch. You still need all of these mods installed (linked below, except for the Weather Patch which is merged in full and unecessary), but once you have you can disable all ESPs except for Expanded Snow Systems main ESP and Climates of Tamriel ESM. Alternately what you can do is just Merge all of these files yourself with the Merge Plugins xEdit Script.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/28110/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/63478/?

 

You might try this as well, this will actually help with FPS while still makign things look good as it decreases the default weather texture, but might lead to too dense rain with True Storms. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/56665/? (which I technically already recommended with Gamwich's other mods).

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.

 

That's very interesting, thanks for that. You should post that on those mods Nexus page.

 

I have no issues with Immersive Armors with mods like Falskaar, Spectraverse, Dwemertech, Wyrmstooth, Helgen Reborn, Moonpath, etc, and these are the most famous "DLC sized mods". Most likely Rigmor directly conflicts with IA, by using a similar script to change an NPCs outfit or other settings, IA then wants to change the same NPC and your game crash as the two scripts clash together for hot steamy sex. Or possibly a heated argument. Open Rigmor in TES5edit and see what NPCs it change, if it it's any vanilla ones that's probably your issue.

 

Are you using the Latest version of Immersive armros (updated recently) or the previous one, and if the current did you update mid play?

[Sacremas]

Oh yeah I totally forgot to mention, because I've mentioned this before some 30 pages back (meaning no one will ever find it again); With this rain and these storms installed it will be VERY tempting to run Wet & Cold. AVOID THE FUCKING TEMPTATION! If you want to run W&C, only do it on a game so light it's liable to float into the atmosphere. W&C is a MASSIVE impact on your system, it was suppsoed to be fixed in latest version but it really really is not.

 

Now let me be clear here; I love this mod, I love ALL of isoku's mods, I adore that modder so much I want to pay him if not for my faulty Paypal (UKC sent Chesko and Isoku some money instead) and wish death and damnation and rape and torture on the fuckers that sent him death threats due to ModGate (Isoku was one of the main leaders of the Mods for Sale along with Chesko) almost a year ago. If those fucking trolls die of acute explosive constipation it would be too kind.

 

Despite this... his are the mods that I am always most concerned about shoving into my load order. They will rape your framerate and your scripts so badly compared to what they add in effect to your enjoyment of the game... it is something you really need to consider. If you want to run Wet & Cold first make sure that you NEVER have sex outdoors, even in Campfire tents, do not run Frostfall, Aroused or any other mod that updates a lot, change Schlongs of Skyrim for Light version, and get rid of every scripted combat mod you have, every one of the Epic Gameplay Overhauls (Dragon Combat, Ciivl War etc), every cloak mod, even lightweight shit like Vigor and Weapon and Armor Attributes. Wet & Cold will just eat that shit up, consuming all resources in situations where these mods would be needed. Reduce your amount of NPCs, uninstall Inconsequential NPCs (Interesting is okay, too few NPCs to matter), Wenches mods and other NPC-adding mods that are active outside, uninstall any mod that adds big battles to the game, and do not do the vanilla Civil War storyline beyond the musts (basically getting the Jagged Crown, for that Shout), and so on. If you need to use any of these mods, or they will add more enjoyment to your game (a near guarantee) get rid of Wet & Cold. It's a beautiful, wonderful mod when it works, and especially with these settings your game looks so much more alive wtih fierce rain and thunderstorms chasing NPCs into inns and their homes, adding heavy fur cloaks to people in cold areas and snow shaders everywhere. It's gorgeous, and perfect for immersion, but if you need to use any of the above mods, it's something you will have to go without.

 

Now what are your alternatives? Well another mod that is also very heavy if a lot less so but also contains a lot more gameplay effects is Frostfall. That will put the Wet & Cold shaders (as in the actual shaders made by isoku) on your character, without bothering with NPCs, if you use Frostfall and do not care about NPCs getting wet or heading indoors or dressing up then you do not need W&C anyway. And alternatley for a mod without any impact at all on your system and that you can use for NPCs alongside Frostfall without overlap or erros, but not nearly as impactful on your resources, use Get Snowwy, this BRILLIANT mod puts cold shaders (again same ones as in W&C, just tweaked slightly) on your character as well as NPCs when it's cold or snowing through no scripts at all, meaning it will always work even when another mod is stackdumping badly and you have 0.5 fps. It's not nearly as realistic as the others however, NPCs do not really care that they look like they are freezing to death, and the shader vanishes nearly instantly when you go indoors. Also make sure to get the Dragonborn Ashstorm patch. I just really wish there was a Get Wet mod as well.

[Old Book]

 

That's very interesting, thanks for that. You should post that on those mods Nexus page.

 

I have no issues with Immersive Armors with mods like Falskaar, Spectraverse, Dwemertech, Wyrmstooth, Helgen Reborn, Moonpath, etc, and these are the most famous "DLC sized mods". Most likely Rigmor directly conflicts with IA, by using a similar script to change an NPCs outfit or other settings, IA then wants to change the same NPC and your game crash as the two scripts clash together for hot steamy sex. Or possibly a heated argument. Open Rigmor in TES5edit and see what NPCs it change, if it it's any vanilla ones that's probably your issue.

 

Are you using the Latest version of Immersive armros (updated recently) or the previous one, and if the current did you update mid play?

I'm using the latest version, but I'm fairly sure I had it installed before my Rigmor play through. Rigmor alters Angie (the bow woman hiding in a camp above Falkreath), and has an interesting bug when Immersive armors is running where Angie gives Rigmor what's supposed to be leather armor and it becomes the Paladin armor instead. I should have realized it was bugging out then. I'll check TESV Edit for more. 

 

The most reasonable next step is to save the game at the end of Rigmor's quest (already done), remove Rigmor from my load order, and put Immersive Armors back in. Rebuilding the patches isn't a big deal. It risks making the save game even more unstable, but that's how almost all of my characters meet their ends.

[Sacremas]

I'm thinking a big quest mod like Rigmor will have a lot more impact being removed from your game than Immersive armors.

[Sacremas]

 

People who know and care about defensive design, bug mitigation strategies, quality of content in general and are willing to support their work are not making mods, but developing real software for a living.

A significant part of the mod creator community are self-important insecure kids who want internet fame and think they are hot shit because they can type some values into the CK. They do not care about their users, they just want to release something flashy so people will suck their dick.

Mod creators who don't even know why a while loop is bad, implement a fail deadly method of preventing save bloat and then don't bother to test it to make sure it actually works, or know about a memory corruption bug and then fucking don't fix it should not be allowed in this scene.

Players should be able to install any reasonable combination of mods without having to worry about some IED in one of their mods, then told it's their fault because "mods are free".

 

And this is just one of the reasons why EnaiSiaion is one of my favorite mod authors ever. Hell I think he may be one of my favorite developers ever, because the guy actually makes professional level stuff in an amateur buisness for free.

[Weyban]

Yoo, what's with the generalizations? Since the Oblivion days where I joined the community I rarely met those "insecure kids" who want people to "suck their dick" =/

 

I think the other way around - modders should be able to make any mod they want to make and put it up there BECAUSE mods are free, and with the help of the community turn their mods into the best they can be. That's why we all went so aggressively against paid mods, right? Because we're this group of people that wants to help each other make their game awesome without worrying about things like legal competition and conflicts of interest?

 

Mod makers aren't some service slaves who are begging to enter the scene so they can be part of some cool kids club, they just upload a file and get into a discourse with the people that see it. If we start kicking out mod makers who don't live up to any one person's standards of quality, well I'll be quite honest I don't want to be part of that kind of callous, product-oriented group xD. It's about improving the game through feedback and discussions, or have I understood this community wrong?

 

PS: Enai is a freaking god who deserves to be worshiped! I think I have almost all of his mods installed oO

 

EDIT: By the way, that Demoniac skin is... amazing. You know how you previously told me to get rid of EEO? Now I'm comfortable doing it. I mean it would still be nice if I could have the EEO meshes, but I'm not sure if those would look good standalone. What's your favorite Demoniac setup, then?

[Sacremas]

Yoo, what's with the generalizations? Since the Oblivion days where I joined the community I rarely met those "insecure kids" who want people to "suck their dick" =/

 

I think the other way around - modders should be able to make any mod they want to make and put it up there BECAUSE mods are free, and with the help of the community turn their mods into the best they can be. That's why we all went so aggressively against paid mods, right? Because we're this group of people that wants to help each other make their game awesome without worrying about things like legal competition and conflicts of interest?

 

Mod makers aren't some service slaves who are begging to enter the scene so they can be part of some cool kids club, they just upload a file and get into a discourse with the people that see it. If we start kicking out mod makers who don't live up to any one person's standards of quality, well I'll be quite honest I don't want to be part of that kind of callous, product-oriented group xD. It's about improving the game through feedback and discussions, or have I understood this community wrong?

 

PS: Enai is a freaking god who deserves to be worshiped! I think I have almost all of his mods installed oO

 

Well sure, but then what about a disclaimer that shows up on the Nexus if a mod contains a single script, that says "Warning: Using this mod has a reasonable chance to hurt your game because this author do not know how to script properly yet, and this mod is a work in progress, use at your own risk" and only way to remove it was to prove you actually could script properly? A very large section of my 3200 hours of gametime would have been spent doing something else but repeating everything I did in every preious game that died if not for those IED scripts those kids wanting to look cool left behind in their mods. Enai is just speaking out of frustration of probably finding so many faults in other people's mods he doens't trust any mods any more (he does not trust skyprocs for one) as well as having probably said a few hundred times that whatever bug a user was posting about on his mods came from another mod's fuckup.

[Sacremas]

EDIT: By the way, that Demoniac skin is... amazing. You know how you previously told me to get rid of EEO? Now I'm comfortable doing it. I mean it would still be nice if I could have the EEO meshes, but I'm not sure if those would look good standalone. What's your favorite Demoniac setup, then?

 

EEO Meshes would look great with that skin, much better than elves do now (I had to severely deform my high elf's head with scult to make piercings and earrings stick to her instead of hovering in the air, and she's still way too angular) but to use them you would need to use a ESP plugin that would ruin race records and mess with vampires and need custom races fixes. Might as wlel then install an entirely new elf type, like Moonshadow Elves, and hope someone like the Bijin author fixes NPCs for you.

 

Demoniac I change all the time. Currently I am set up with SG, light athletic, second option on the sweat/goosebumps, all face options including Fair Skin face. I'm liking it, I liked the blended new skins better, but that doesn't work AT ALL with SOS for UNP, horrible seams and discolorations and no one's made patches for those skins because they are too new. If I could I would use the SG-Mature blend, same one Bijin is using, and what I will change to on my next play as soon as V15 Dragonborn Gallery and V3 of Heeroe's HDT Pussy with SOS Light support is released. I might wait and see what goes on with SwordFall, but most likely that's a long way off, apparenty Enai has very lttile capcity for modding these days, and he's going to publish a "final" version of Apocalypse (final except for bugfixes that is), after that no more new Apoc spells ever, due to all the compatibilty patches for it.

[Weyban]

Damn I didn't even know that disclaimer exists xD Right, I've also often had repeats because of mod fuck ups; mostly due to not modding the game properly (see your Modding Guide to fix that very problem ) I can get behind the lack of trust part, especially if I put myself in Enai's shoes...

 

I mean, our job is similar to that of Sisyphos, we'll just (maybe) never be able to get a perfectly modded game together if we want to keep adding in new shit, which is why we try to fix and patch and combine and overhaul, w/e. Enai's frustrations are so understandable if you look at the comments he receives, and I'm not really sure what it is that does it. For one he's not scared to implement things many people will have to get used to or which are controversial (Green Pact in Imperious, Powers gained through Perks just to name a few things that are untraditional), but the way he responds to people is also sometimes kinda... insulting? I find his responses hilarious, but I'm also the kind of person who couldn't be offended if the whole Internet revolved around bashing me so there's bound to be people that will get angry if they see Enai make sick memes out of his replies.

 

Enais mods are also top tier quality, and there are people out there who use them and have no idea what they could realistically conflict with - like me... (which is why educating the users becomes so important, Gopher/Sacremas/Neovalen, etc.) So if there's this wave of people that goes and tells this guy "fix x because u break it", I think I'd also get angry at all those mod makers that cause waves of irritated users to flood my way xD

 

EDIT: On the topic of pretty faces - That part of the face between jaw and chin... Is there a slider in RaceMenu to enlarge/widen the part ? Cheek Shape doesn't quite do it.

[Old Book]

Having fun making merges with Merge Plugins Standalone. It really is easier than the Merge Plugins Script for TES Edit, once you get your head around it. Got my load order down to 223 plugins by merging various patches. It might be time to make the Voiced Asian Followers multi merge I've been thinking of. 

 

[Vortec]

BTW your link to UKC Utilities download isn't working. Has he taken it down? I Tried all your links there all broken.

[Sacremas]

Yeah I know, that's because Mega changed it's policies and how download links work, UKC's stuff is likewise offline. Fixing the link is all that's needed, I might do that.

 

Honestly you shouldn't use UKC Utilities ebcause it has hasn't been updated in months but SkyTweak certainly has, on my next play I intend to abandon Utilities and go back to using the ones I need in the pack separately of the newest versions. For me That is said SKyTweak, A Matter of TIme, Auto Unequip Arrows, Grimy Utilities and Timing is Everything. I'm also adding in probably The Choice is Yours. Merging scripted mods with a script is really not a good idea, the scripts need to be changed in the process, so most likely we'll be using them separately from now on.

[VenomousDuck]

I gave Demoniac skin textures and Rustic clothing a try based on your suggestion. Both of those mods are excellent and I just wanted to say thanks for doing this guide. I have found quite a few good mods to add to my game reading it.

[Sacremas]

I gave Demoniac skin textures and Rustic clothing a try based on your suggestion. Both of those mods are excellent and I just wanted to say thanks for doing this guide. I have found quite a few good mods to add to my game reading it.

 

No problem. Are you using Tamriel Reloaded HD? If not that's the mod that will give you a largest impact, FPS as well if you were using a lot of small ones + beth high res.

[Mimirue17]

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.

you were spot on here Old Book.   Probably the best voiced mod I have played so far.   I also wanted to throw my computer out the window at the Whiterun battle, had to strip the load order down to nothing, and even then had to console command through it.   Not sure if I am going to keep it for use as a follower though, seems to seriously bloat the saves as load times are much worse with it in.   Would also suggest people give it a try, was a fun three days worth of playing.   Would also suggest to play it as vanilla as possible, no tweaks, no followers, no boosts.   It is quite challenging as is if you do not make yourself god at level 3 with cheats.   And good luck with the 17th questline, your computer will hate you and vice versa.

[Sacremas]

 

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.

you were spot on here Old Book.   Probably the best voiced mod I have played so far.   I also wanted to throw my computer out the window at the Whiterun battle, had to strip the load order down to nothing, and even then had to console command through it.   Not sure if I am going to keep it for use as a follower though, seems to seriously bloat the saves as load times are much worse with it in.   Would also suggest people give it a try, was a fun three days worth of playing.   Would also suggest to play it as vanilla as possible, no tweaks, no followers, no boosts.   It is quite challenging as is if you do not make yourself god at level 3 with cheats.   And good luck with the 17th questline, your computer will hate you and vice versa.

 

 

I use mods a lot to decrease my godhood actually. After 3200 hours of play in this game, I know it's every secret, and I have to put in mods that nerf vanilla items and mechanics like fortify crafting as well as make enemies a lot smarter and more powerful to make things interesting.

[Old Book]

I have the feeling that SkyTweak should be a one stop shop to fix godhood. You can boost enemy damage, slow your experience gain, nerf your own attacks, etc. But I prefer using Morrowloot Ultimate plus combat and enemy mods to boost the challenge. Something about letting the balance be partially set by someone else. 

[Sacremas]

No I use SkyTweak to a large amount for this to reduce my output. I also use it to decrease leveling of things that level too fast, and everything in general once I pass skill 50 on it (takes a very long while to reach that 255/150 max effect cap I have), which by itself helps a lot. I also use that reverse to get rid of the damn crafting grind, I hate making like 20 poitions for one Alchemy skill point but reach max enchanting in the first half hour because Enchantment has a 100 (or was it 1000) times faster level mult than Alchemy by vanilla. Some skills that you have to grind like hell or even cheat at to level to keep them competitive like pick pocket, illusion and restoration I likewise up.

 

On recent few plays I have abandoned MLU for now. There are just too many weapon and armor mods I want to use that hasn't been patched yet, even Immersive Weapons have not been patched yet. I might return to it in the future, but for now there are too many glaring consistencies in the game unless you specifically only want to play with MLU and it's patched mods, and mods like Weapon and Armor Attributes and Vigor has a tendency to break that balance even then over it's knee.

 

It was annoying that neither CACO nor Ordinator took care of the crafting grind (brew fortify enchanting potion, drink, make fortify alchemy gear, repeat as needed, make fortify smithing smithing gear and poke someone in the toe for 100.000 damage with an iron dagger), but either Vigor or Weapon and Armor attributes has an option to enable a nerf on that and make fortify crafting skill effects much weaker. Ordinator holds a slight cap as well in that there is a maximum enchantment magnitude you can have, so that combined takes care of it. And I'm fully aware of how silly it is I have to make mods stop me from spending hours grinding an exploit.

 

My upcoming Nord berserker play will be interesting, as I'm going to disable his magic skills including enchanting and magicka entirely. That should offer a bit more challenge and simply disable the temptation to turn everyone into an archmage for the utility spells and combat spells and render alchemy useless. I'm waiting for v15 of Dragonborn Gallery and v3 of HeroedeLeyenda's HDT Vag (whith SOS light support) for that however.

[Mimirue17]

Sacremas, you use alot of texture files in your merged patches so you might know.   I am trying to replace Rigmor with cbbe hdt meshes and demonicia textures but keep her scars.   The head is fine, but I can't seem to find the correct body texture file to keep the scars.   Everything else works great, she looks great with hdt bounce, just no scars.   if not possible will just ditch the scars, she looks so much better with this combo would be worth it.

 

Thanks

[Sacremas]

The scars are part of the skin, especially edited into her. You would have to redraw them, and it's a near certainty that her face would be ruined as well and would need a new facegen. Don't they have both UNP and CBBE versions of the skin up? After that just swap meshes.

 

If you want to use the skin she has but make it another mesh, ask what skin they used, then you will have to use photoshop to cut out the sections with the scars, and put into a Demonica version of the same skin, including her face textures, and then blend.

 

I*m sorry when it comes to managing textures and blending and such I am an utter noob, I have never done any of that (sucessfully). This is as far as I can help you with this, all I can say is that it's not as simple as merely moving meshes and textures over, and you are better off asking the author to do it.

 

Blending the hdt vagina should work the same as blending it into another body if that's what you want.

[Mimirue17]

The scars are part of the skin, especially edited into her. You would have to redraw them, and it's a near certainty that her face would be ruined as well and would need a new facegen. Don't they have both UNP and CBBE versions of the skin up? After that just swap meshes.

 

If you want to use the skin she has but make it another mesh, ask what skin they used, then you will have to use photoshop to cut out the sections with the scars, and put into a Demonica version of the same skin, including her face textures, and then blend.

 

I*m sorry when it comes to managing textures and blending and such I am an utter noob, I have never done any of that (sucessfully). This is as far as I can help you with this, all I can say is that it's not as simple as merely moving meshes and textures over, and you are better off asking the author to do it.

 

Blending the hdt vagina should work the same as blending it into another body if that's what you want.

thanks for the info.  I have a 3d buddy and will pass along both sets of files and see what he can do with them.   Her face still has the scars so she looks the same in armor just nicer.   Her body looks so much better with the demonica textures with sporty that I will just imagine she got the scars 'fixed' heck you are the dragonborn, you know people right?  

   I did find it more enjoyable to play through killing the first dragon, then going and starting the questline for Rigmor.   At least then you would know your the  dragonborn and why everyone keeps calling you that.   Would love to figure out how to get that massive battle to work for the 17th quest, it just kills the skyrim engine, would have been a perfect spot for a cutscene if it was on PS4 or such.   Started a new playthrough of it with some different things this time, and put enb and textures in this time (ran it pretty empty last time).   Trying the Tamriel ENB (fantasy) along with Cot, TRHD, RLO and Realistic Water 2.   Game looks really nice so far.

[Mimirue17]

ok new bug.  Was trying to rebuild the default profile so I can build copies to start new adventures.   Everything seems to work until I enter a mine or dungeon, then ctd everytime.   here is the Papryus log, which does not seem to show much of a reason.   Also included the load order from profiles.   Pretty light load actually, so not sure whats causing this.   Maybe dungeon texture or lighting conflict?  going in and out of buildings is no problem or going into say whiterun and out works fine.   Everything loads in tes5edit.

 

Papyrus.0.log

loadorder.txt

[Sacremas]

Try first before messing with load order (whcih doesn't tell me much if it's a mesh that's missing) to just wait for a month ingame (Console "set timescale to 10000", wait 5 mins, then set it to what you prefer, save) then go try it again. Yes this usually fixes this when it in theory shouldn't.

[Old Book]

I've been meaning to ask, can the Reset World function in mods like Deadly Dragons or Immersive Creatures be used in place of waiting 30 days? 

[Sacremas]

Good question, I have no idea. I thought those were resets as far as those mods are concerned, like Apocalypse's repopulate vendor lists ability.