NOT a pirate ... need to get creation kit

[m3dicat3d]

So I'm no mega poster, but I've been on site for a few years now and have come to appreciate the expertise and advice by LL members, and thought I'd ask this here.

 

After a horrible mess of a few hours of trying to get steam to install the creation kit last night, I was at an utter loss as it just would not do so. I have my Skyrim on a separate ssd drive (F) and tried installing to different librairies, including the one steam defaulted to and the F install drive, and even deleted all the steam files/folders except for steamapps, steam exe., and user data to get steam to "repair" itself (in the horror of those events, steam somehow still managed to delete my steam apps folder too, meaning, bye-bye Skyrim game   thank god I have a fresh install copy backed up).  I got the missing steam_api.dll errors etc as my closest sign of maybe installing it. Anyways, it was an aggravating experience with no success.

 

So I started looking for alternate downloads that weren't steam based. I did find them, and from the comments I read, it seemed that "pirate" was the term I saw a lot regarding the non-steam copy of the creation kit and its target base. 

 

I certainly have a legal copy of Skyrim (two if you consider my xbox 360 copy before I entered the PC world of gaming) so I'm wondering if the "non-steam" creation kit version will still work for me if I decide to try it (after scanning for viruses of course).

 

I'd like to try my hand at armor modding in the coming months, and while I can get blender and nifskope just fine, something tells me I'll be needing that elusive creation kit too.

 

Any thoughts from someone who has used this non-steam version (or hell, even how to get the steam copy to properly install for that fact!) would be very much appreciated.

 

Thanks!

[Vaelorian]

There are no legal "non-steam" versions of Skyrim, the CK or anything related to the two.

 

If you choose to install one, you run the risk of viruses and whatnot. True, it is small, but it is there.

 

Will it work? Depends on how it was cracked, and that would vary from file to file.

 

Hopefully someone who has more experience installing the CK can help you getting it to work; for me, it was a simple double-click -> done process.

[Veladarius]

From what I see of the CK it uses a number of Skyrim files including bsa's, you may want to try copying your Skyrim folder to where you want to install the CK then install it.

[Content Consumer]

Depending on what you want to do, TES5Edit is also a good utility. It doesn't have all the functionality of the CK, but AFAIK it does allow you to add new items (such as armor) into the game.

 

EDIT: I've never actually used it for that kind of thing. I've just been told it is capable of doing stuff like that. Good luck!

[azmodan22]

exactly as Veladrius said, CK uses Skyrims libraries, therefore it needs to be installed in Skyrim folder. If you try to install it in another folder it will propably not work. Steam version or otherwise.

I have been using a non-steam version of CK without problems if this is troubling you. However if you are going to download it outside of steam you must be certain the the source is reliable and that it actually works.  

[Anatriax]

EVERY time I have installed CK it wanted to install default directly into Skyrim's directory as detected by Steam. If Steam isn't auto-detecting your Skyrim directory, validtate your files. 

If Steam won't validate your files, there's something seriously wrong, and you need to post on the Steam Discussion threads. 

[Veladarius]

EVERY time I have installed CK it wanted to install default directly into Skyrim's directory as detected by Steam. If Steam isn't auto-detecting your Skyrim directory, validtate your files. 

 

If Steam won't validate your files, there's something seriously wrong, and you need to post on the Steam Discussion threads. 

 

They are trying to install the CK in a location other than the normal Skyrim directory is, likely to save space on their SSD.

[m3dicat3d]

Yeah, trying to install CK on a separate ssd that I bought and use for Skyrim only. I'm going to delete and reinstall steam altogether for now and try to reinstall it to my F drive (as I don't play anything else but Skyrim anyhow and I have to use a fresh install anyways) and see if I can get some resolution from that.

 

Thanks so much for all of the very speedy and useful replies, I was right to post my problem to the LL community.

 

Will report back for the sake of following up.

[m3dicat3d]

Well, that seemed to do it. Considering I lost my current install of Skyrim during last night's debacle (which I feel I am taking rather well, though I still would like to see a mod with GabeN's head on a pike, thus giving me a reason to install the Alive peeing mod) I can now move forward with trying my hand at learning how to make some armor mods and learn some cool tools like nifskope and blender in the process.

 

Again, thanks for the input!

[Anatriax]

Well, that seemed to do it. Considering I lost my current install of Skyrim during last night's debacle (which I feel I am taking rather well, though I still would like to see a mod with GabeN's head on a pike, thus giving me a reason to install the Alive peeing mod) I can now move forward with trying my hand at learning how to make some armor mods and learn some cool tools like nifskope and blender in the process.

 

Again, thanks for the input!

 

You shouldn't have had to lose your Skyrim install. Just copy/paste it to a data drive, uninstall Steam, Copy and paste skyrim back to the steam directory you want it installed to %\steamapps\common then go to steam and tell it to install. It will grab any cleaned .esm and .esp files that come with default skyrim, and then any thing else that may have been changed from vanilla (shouldn't be much at all)

 

10 minutes Skyrim should be up and running again with no issues, just the way you had it previously installed (Make sure to use MO to backup mod and plugin list BEFORE moving, and to restore the back up AFTER moving it back)

[m3dicat3d]

Thanks so much, but it was the current version of my modded game that I lost (my first pure mage paly through, but only at lvl 28, so I can live with it, and I use NMM, I haven't moved to MO though, I know, noobish of me). I have my cleaned files and the fresh install backed up to another drive, so if you get this in time, I would hate for you to go through the trouble. I've had the game up and running for about ten min now and just going through the mod install process again. In any event though, MANY thanks to you