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v2.0 is now live! I will also have a new video on the mod page soon to demo the new heavy storms. Many FormIDs have changed for the extra non-vanilla weathers, so any 3rd-party patches may need to be rebuilt.

Seems I should edit the title of this discussion because it looks like I will be using the Step CR Patch. I think I've managed to remove the need for the most of the Creations leaving just Survival and Saint's & Seducers. At Your Own Pace - College of Winterhold, Vrokii - Minimalistic Perks of Skyrim and Odin - Skyrim Magic Overhaul have also been cleaned from the patch after going through looking through it closely. Fingers crossed it'll hold up! I was planning to clean more but I learnt more about Atlas Map Markers so with the settings and a patch came to a way to use it. I also saw that with Alternate Start there is still an option to begin the game on the Wagon into Helgen... so if that's the case why am I trying to work to remove it just so I can start my next game that way? So far almost everything is Step Guide v2.3, except for a few skipped mods and none of the optional choices, and I loaded the game everything seems to be working. It is before Step 5 so there is no grass cache but everything looks good. I think the next steps before that are to now finish setting out the mods I'm going to use that come from outside the Step Guide, when that's all set up and my collection of Step Apocrypha is done and working together nicely I'll move on to Step 5.

Relationship Dialogue Overhaul Lite added an optional AI Overhaul Patch

No problem, That is why STEP is here. It is not only a modding guide for various games, but a repository of knowledge on what is needed to do it. Without the participation of the community it will never expand on that knowledge. All users from beginners to experts are treated a equals and with respect and welcome to ask questions no matter how simple or complex they are.

I've created a MO2 plugin to band-aid this issue. Thanks for information provided here. Plugin just redirects anything that goes to Documents/Skyrim.INI back to Documents/Skyrim Special Edition via MO2 VFS, it's not a real fix but enough to satisfy my OCD for now. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/144932

I really like Pandora compared to Nemesis. I belive Pandora will be the new standard.

Thanks for all the work in the guide, just wanted to mention that im following the changelog to update to 2.3 and noticed that "Moon and Star - CC Consistency and Immersion" and "Moon and Star - Cleaned Fixed and ESMed" are not in the changelog for Patches

The following time-saving procedure allows for adding new worldspaces to an existing grass cache, or for updating the current grass cache of specific worldspaces, without re-generating the cache of all worldspaces from scratch, which as we all know can be a very time-consuming process. This is not a guide about precaching grass from scratch with NGIO. It is assumed you have already precached grass with NGIO successfully at least once, and know how to repeat the operation. The procedure assumes Mod Organizer 2 is used as the mod manager. IMPORTANT: Grass Cache Helper NG is required for Skyrim SE/AE 1.6.x players. The existing grass cache must have been generated with Grass Cache Helper NG activated, and it must remain activated at all times for incremental precaching, and for playing. Step 1: Note the Editor ID of the worldspace(s) you want to add or update. Figuring out which worldspace(s) and their Editor ID is a task left up to the reader. See some suggestions at the end about finding out this information. Step 2: EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. Disable your existing grass cache mod[1] on the left side of MO2. Failure to do so will wipe out the entire grass cache during the later steps, which will then need to be exhaustively re-generated from scratch, which would make this tip completely pointless. Step 3: Edit NGIO configuration and specify the list of worldspaces to add or update. The NGIO configuration file is [..]\NetScriptFramework\Plugins\GrassControl.config.txt. Edit it with a text editor. You may want to make a backup copy of that file before editing it. Search for 'OnlyPregenerateWorldSpaces' or scroll down until you see it. Then comment out the line by prepending it with a # character. Add a new line like this, containing the Editor IDs you gathered in Step 1: OnlyPregenerateWorldSpaces = "Worldspace1EditorID;Worldspace2EditorID;Worldspace3EditorID" The list of worldspace(s) to add or update must be enclosed in double quotes, multiple Editor IDs separated by semicolon. Example showing the result of editing and specifying only one worldspace: Step 4: Launch the NGIO precaching process from MO2 as usual. You may need to make preparations[2] specific to your mod setup before launching the process. The process should only take a few minutes[3], more or less depending on the number and size of specified worldspaces. Wait until it completes successfully. Step 5: Move the grass folder from MO2's Overwrite folder to your existing grass cache mod. If you are updating the grass cache of worldspace(s), you will be prompted to confirm replacing the existing cache files with the new ones. Step 6: Undo the NGIO configuration changes you made in Step 3. If you made a backup copy of GrassControl.config.txt as suggested, simply restore it. If you added new worldspace(s), don't forget to edit GrassControl.config.txt and append their Editor ID to the existing OnlyPregenerateWorldSpaces line. Otherwise they'll be missing the next time you re-generate the entire grass cache from scratch. Step 7: Re-enable your grass cache mod on the left side of MO2. That's it. Enjoy[4] your updated or added grass. Notes [1] Your existing grass cache mod is the mod containing the grass folder, not the mod containing NGIO (inside a NetScriptFramework folder). If you have merged both mods, then you're doing it wrong. Split them into two separate mods. [2] Preparations such as reducing Skyrim's display resolution, disabling mods that may interfere with the precaching process, switching environments/profiles... Anything that had to be done when generating from scratch. [3] If you're updating Tamriel (Skyrim's main worldspace), the largest of all worldspaces, it will take quite a while, but it will still be faster to process it individually than processing all worldspaces in the entire load order. [4] You're not yet completely done if you use the grass cache for grass LODs. You'll need to (re-)generate LODs with DynDOLOD for the specific worldspace(s) you added or updated. Refer to the official DynDOLOD documentation for details: Updating or Updating. How to find out the Editor ID of worldspace(s) with grass Method 1: Recommended when adding new worldspace(s) for its accuracy. Requires xEdit, basic knowledge of its operation, and Worldspaces with Grass SSEEdit Script for No Grass In Objects. Install 'Worldspaces with Grass SSEEdit Script for No Grass In Objects' as instructed on its mod page. Load up in xEdit the plugins of the mods adding new lands, as well as any grass/landscape mod plugins. Omit other plugins. Run the 'List worldspaces with grass' script. When it's done, copy the resulting list and paste it to some place where you can edit it. Remove all vanilla worldspaces from the list. The remaining worldspaces are the new ones with grass. Example with Wyrmstooth: AlftandWorld;Blackreach;BloatedMansGrottoWorld;BluePalaceWingWorld;DarkwaterWorld;DeepwoodRedoubtWorld;Dimfrost;EastEmpireWarehouse;FallowstoneCaveWorldEnd;FallowstoneCaveWorldStart;FrostmereCryptWorld;JaphetsFollyWorld;KarthspireRedoubtWorld;KatariahWorld;LabyrinthianWorld03;LabyrinthianWorld04;MarkarthWorld;RedEagleRedoubtWorld;RiftenWorld;ShadowgreenCavernWorld;SkuldafnWorld;SolitudeWorld;Sovngarde;Tamriel;WhiterunDragonsreachWorld;WhiterunWorld;WindhelmPitWorldspace;WindhelmWorld;WyrmstoothWorld Method 2: Suitable when adding or updating worldspace(s). Physically go to the place in-game where there is already grass to be updated or where there should be grass to be added. Use fast-travel, coc or cow console commands, whatever works to get there. Open the (More Informative) Console and press the Tab key until the Worldspace & Cell information card is displayed. Ctrl+Click the 'World Space' field in the information card, to display more details. Note the Editor ID. See following screenshot for illustration: Method 3: When adding new worldspace(s), less accurate than Method 1. Requires xEdit and basic knowledge of its operation. Load up the plugin of the mod adding new lands in xEdit. Expand the Worldspace node. Select a new worldspace entry (i.e. not vanilla), and check the 'DATA - Flags (sorted)' section on the right panel. If it contains 'No Grass' then skip it, go to step 6. Otherwise note its Editor ID. Repeat from step 3 for each new worldspace entry. Illustrated example showing the first two worldspaces from Beyond Reach:

Having played many many hours with this mod without any issues after dumping FIZZLE, I'd strongly recommend it. It's very lightweight compared to FIZZLE, as its script runs only when casting spells vs. FIZZLE's cloak spell script which runs "constantly". It doesn't have the various compatibility and performance issues carried by cloak spell-based distribution to NPCs. Its user experience for new users is also superior to FIZZLE: a spellcasting failure is indicated by a "puff" of colored smoke (different color depending on spell type) around the player (or the NPC), which is easily noticeable even in first-person view. Whereas with FIZZLE a failure is indicated by a small audio "click" and nothing else happens. I found that FIZZLE feedback quite confusing and it was difficult to notice what was happening when I started playing with FIZZLE. It has its own formula for calculating the chances of success/failure which is not the same as FIZZLE's so the experience may feel different at first for users accustomed to FIZZLE. But the idea is the same: trying to cast higher level spells than skill levels may fail, the chances of failure increasing the higher the level difference. I was using a different mod than EEOS in my playthroughs to distribute spells to NPCs so I can't speak to how well this mod works with EEOS in regards to NPCs trying and failing or succeeding to cast spells in a pure STEP setup. Note: I'm not currently playing or even running Skyrim these days, haven't been for the past 6 months or so, and don't intend to return to it for quite a while, if ever. I just thought I'd chime in in favor of this mod, which is quite underrated IMHO. There are not many mods that do this kind of thing it seems. Last I checked there were 3 mods: FIZZLE, this one and another one that I don't remember. This mod also exists in a "full featured" version by the same MA, with more options and features, and a much more "sophisticated" behavior (not recommended for STEP). My 2 cents, hope they help. Cheers.

Great work on getting that updated!

Good day good STEP-people! So we had a game update and there will be some problem follow the guide as is. - SKSE is updated. According to ianpatt on Nexus SKSE page BGS will update the game again soon so no hurry updating/reinstalling stuff. - The game update has caused some issues with SkyUI (same post on Nexus SKSE page as above) I am in the middle off an actuall playtrough so i will wait with the updates.

Illustrated practical demonstration of the engine's handling of temporary references in ESM vs. ESP plugins For mod authors and advanced mod users. TLDR: Skip to the Summary section further down. Part 1: The initial (vanilla) state We're in Markarth, in front of the stables. Let's look at a few objects: the door, a handcart, and a hay bale: Notice the console shows a Textures field for all the references. This indicates the textures are loaded and the object is rendered. The door is a persistent reference because it's used with navmeshes for NPCs, among other things. The other objects are temporary references. The door is only interesting as a point of temporary/persistent comparison later on. Part 2: The demonstration plugin Now let's make a simple plugin for an hypothetical mod. We're going to permanently disable the handcart, make the hay bale bigger, and place a new small hay bale: So the plugin overrides two vanilla references and adds a new reference. We've also given each reference an Editor ID to more easily look them up. Let's go take a look at the changes in-game with our new plugin enabled. The handcart is disabled and no longer visible, the existing hay bale has grown in size, and there is a new small hay bale not far from it: For the next tests, we'll be moving to Winterhold, far, far away at the opposite end of the map. In Winterhold, the cells we were in in Markarth (i.e. the active grid) won't be active any more. Part 3: Engine handling with an ESM plugin The demonstration plugin is ESM-flagged. This is how Bethesda intended things to be based on how the engine is designed and behaves in Skyrim SE. Let's look at our references from Winterhold. First the door. The door is still there, despite it being in Markarth and us in Wintherhold, as expected since it's a persistent reference. But note the Textures field is no longer present, meaning the door while still being loaded in the game, is no longer rendered. It all makes sense. As for all the other references, they can't be found. They're no longer loaded in the game at all. It all makes sense again, since they're temporary in a cell outside Markarth and we're in Winterhold: Part 4: Engine handling with an ESP plugin We remove the ESM flag from the demonstration plugin. This is how 99% of all mods made and released by mod authors are. Let's again look at our references from Winterhold: Surprise! They're all found. They're all loaded (but not rendered, as they have no Textures field). They're essentially treated like persistent references by the engine. Note that even though the handcart is permanently disabled, it's still loaded. An object that will never ever seen in-game is wasting engine resources. Also note that the hay bale originally defined in Skyrim.esm, but has been overridden by our plugin, is now always loaded. The hay bale is now wasting engine resources. We can even go into the Jar's Longhouse, an interior cell, and they're still there: Summary The Skyrim SE engine is designed to handle (object or actor) references in ESM plugins, not in ESP plugins. References in ESP plugins still "work" but not as intended by Bethesda. Temporary references in ESP plugins essentially behave like persistent references: always loaded in the game, available and reachable globally from anywhere. All temporary references in ESP plugins, whether they are overriding existing temporary references, or newly added references, are affected. Temporary references in ESP plugins contribute to the total amount of loaded references, which has a hard limit. Even though temporary references in ESP plugins don't waste rendering resources, they still consume engine resources, mainly memory. Miscellaneous Notes ESP plugins are bad not only because they're wasteful, but they also hide all the bugs in mods. Since all the references, temporary or persistent, are always loaded, there is no longer a meaningful distinction between persistent and temporary. A temporary reference may be used in the wrong context, it's all fine, it doesn't matter as it's always loaded, it always can be found. The same plugin would be a CTD crashfest if it were ESM, or some things wouldn't work correctly. All Creation Club modules, from the simplest gimmick to the largest content, are released by Bethesda as ESM plugins (.esl is the "light" version of .esm), for a simple reason: it's how plugins are expected to be in Skyrim SE. People can be confused by the term ESM which is commonly associated with game masters, i.e. the core game files (Skyrim.esm, Update.esm, etc.). And so they think it doesn't make sense for a mod or a patch to be ESM, to be a master. The two concepts must be disassociated. Game masters are the core game files, yes. But ESM is something else, it's just a small flag that has no relation with the nature or purpose of the plugin, but has big implications for the engine. Again, Creation Club modules are not core game files, they're Bethesda-approved mods, and yet they are all ESM. There is no downside to plugins being ESM, while ESP plugins exhibit proven disadvantages and deficiencies. Technically, ESM vs. ESP only matters for plugins that add new references or modify existing references. Those that don't can be ESP. Large references are not related to temporary or persistent references. They're a separate feature that is only available, and that is no coincidence, in ESM plugins. ESP plugins that override large references cause visual bugs, which is another reason ESP plugins are a bad idea. In our demonstration above, we only used static object references. The increased resource usage and waste caused by ESP plugins is worse with temporary NPC references (ACHR), because the engine must periodically evaluate and process their AI packages in case they might need to travel somewhere, or do something on a schedule. The engine is optimized to prioritize and refresh the most often the NPCs closest to the player, but it still must check all loaded NPCs from time to time. It's too late now to do anything about it. There's too much legacy with 99% of all existing mods using ESP plugins. Making existing ESP plugins into ESM can be trivial or extremely difficult. Even if some ESP plugins can be made ESM, there is the issue of sort orders and dependencies, particularly with automated sorting tools such as LOOT. This may require that other plugins be made ESM in order to satisfy the dependencies or sorting metarules. Nevertheless, certain kinds of mods which only deal with static (STAT/TREE/FLORA) or moveable static objects (MSTT) - such as tree mods; or landscape clutter mods - can and should be made ESM as they typically add or touch thousands of temporary references. Persistent Location There exists a sparely documented reference attribute named 'Persistent Location' which is extensively used by Bethesda in the vanilla plugins, but is apparently ignored or unknown by mod authors. It seems to be used exclusively with NPC references, so may only be intended to be used with them. It allows a temporary ACHR to become "temporarily" persistent as long as the player is in the specified location. As a reminder, a location (LCTN record) is a "tag" that is applied to specific cells, which together belong to, and form, a geographic location. The Persistent Location is an optimization feature: it avoids making an NPC reference persistent, which creates some overhead for the engine as discussed above, and instead keeps it as a temporary reference while allowing for some advanced NPC behavior across multiple cells, even across interior/exterior cells, while the player is in the geographic location. For example, Adisla, a farmer working at the Hlaalu farm near Windhelm: This minor NPC has advanced AI packages to make her sleep and eat inside, work and wander outside, on a specific schedule. She also has dialogue scenes with other NPCs on the farm. These features require her to be persistent. However her reference is temporary. But the Persistent Location attribute makes her persistent only when the player is in the Hlaalu Farm. Once the player exits the location the reference becomes temporary again, and completely unloads when the player moves further away. Obviously this is only meaningful in ESM plugins. It's completely useless in ESP plugins, since all temporary references are always and everywhere pseudo-persistent.

You may have noticed this mod displays a popup banner in the center of the main menu screen while the game starts, and a popup progress bar in the top-right corner of the screen while it loads animations, both using very bright coloring and style reminiscent of 1980s personal computers. I dislike both. What if every SKSE mod displayed its own banner on the screen, it would be a mess. They can be turned off by editing settings in [...]\SKSE\Plugins\OpenAnimationReplacer.ini: To turn off the popup banner, set bShowWelcomeBanner to false: bShowWelcomeBanner = false To turn off the popup progress bar, set bEnableAnimationQueueProgressBar to false: bEnableAnimationQueueProgressBar = false I'd recommend to leave them on (the default) initially, so you can see the mod is starting up properly. Once you've seen them a dozen times and you've had enough, you may want to turn them off.

The main theme in Fallout: New Vegas is letting go. And I have to let go. We are expecting our second child any day now and once the baby gets born I won't have the time to play and curate for quite some time. I can't say how long it will take, I can't even say if I'll make a comeback as a curator, but I know I would like to get back to it one day. On the practical side of things, the guide is currently still in working condition and would probably manage to stay in working order for 3 months or so. If someone wants to take it from here, they are free to do so. After all, that is the way Step modding works. I will keep reading the Feedback thread and providing advice when I can, but I can't make any promises on regularity. I don't want to saound too melodramatic. This is not goodbye, just a call for would-be curators willing to step in. Step is a great community and the FNV Guide has helped me get through taxing times, giving me something to do through the occasional bouts of insomnia. I want to thank the admins for giving me this opportunity (and encouraging my hobby), the guide users for the effort of installing ~300 mods (I hoipe it was worth it) and I hope that someday I will be able to contribute again. P.S. Should have given a longer notice, but I'm hooked up on gaming and was delaying the inevitable in self-denial.

I originally included these notes in my previous post under a spoiler tag, but I'll put them here without as I think they were missed (they included that bit about Bthardamz). In the Tool Setup table, xEdit.exe and xEditQuickAutoClean.exe should be named SSEEdit.exe and SSEEditQuickAutoClean. The collapsible here does refer to them by their original names, as does the System Setup Guide. If they should be renamed, the filename should be changed in both places. SPID no longer has a separate AE file, but instead, a FOMOD. May want to do a FOMOD table like you do for other mods with FOMODs (though it's an easy install, tbh--just the one choice of your game version). Same goes for Simple Offence Suppression. I recall the original version of the guide having instructions for adding mods from .zip, instead of Nexus. I know how to do this, but someone who doesn't might be confused when running into Skyrim Realistic Overhaul, Skyrim Redesigned WIP, and Arthmoor's mods. If these are elsewhere or I've overlooked them, ignore! Enhanced Vanilla Trees' FOMOD collapsible is missing the "Greener Pines" section of the custom FOMOD. Glacier LOD Meshes should have a note on it, like the other Skyrim LE mods, that it is compatible and the warning can be ignored. Reverb Interior Sounds Expansion does not ask me about Skyrim VR--unsure if FOMOD was updated or what. For Tempered Skins for Males, we're free to choose whatever we like. After choosing underwear option A2 however, the files I'm supposed to hide for underwear are not present. Will report back if this breaks something. Butterflies Unchained still lists the CACO patch as necessary--may want to note that it's unnecessary if you haven't installed CACO now that it's optional. Same thing goes for the Kryptopyrs Patch Hub--many of these are for CACO or CCOR or TCIY specifically and aren't necessary if those aren't installed. Could use some organization to reflect this. Same for Vokrii patch--unnecessary if you don't have CACO. It's clear to me, reading the ENBSeries collapsible, that the Step ENB preset files from Nexus should go straight into the root folder, but you may want to say this specifically. (Note from later: the guide does get to this, but it's at the end of the section, in the collapsible for the Post-Processing patch. Maybe have the files placed when the ENB preset is downloaded originally, in the ENBSeries collapsible itself?) All mods added! List of things that are currently listed as "redundant" in case that's helpful: the three DLCs, Majestic Mountains Double-Sided Patch, Battle Ready Candlelight Fixes, Rudy HQ - Bthardamz. Can provide overwrite reports if needed. Items that needed xEdit quick cleaning: SmoothShores.esp, imp_helm_legend.esp

Some notes: CACO has been updated for 1.6.640. Alandtse has developed an alternative to Crash Logger here, also supporting 1.6.640. I was thinking about downgrading to 1.6.353, but I worry that with the majority of these DLL-based mods updated, some will only have 1.6.640 versions available, so I will continue waiting. Thanks for maintaining this list!

Na, I really didn't mean you :) Reading my post again, I see that it can easily be understood that way. What I meant to say is that you are pouring your free time into the STEP project. For others to make passive aggressive statements about how you should best use that time seems inappropriate. Besides, it is also really counter productive. No one obligates you to contribute in a way you do not want to, that's how the Skyrim community works (*hopefully, *mostly, ect. ). You probably contributing to STEP because you are having fun sharing your expertise in the current modding process and building with others. That alone seems like a really good reason to keep things the way they are.

I've updated the mod with some additional customizable settings for the plume.

Hi, Hackfield here! First and foremost, thank you for accepting my mod, it's a huge honor to have a place in the list that taught me how to mod my game back in 2013. Second, a couple of news: I'll soon release version 0.9 of the mod, including the ability to set Confidence and Aggressiveness of owned horses in the MCM (defaults will be Cautious and Unaggressive, just like in vanilla) Also, in version 0.9, I'll be finally adding the ability for horses to equip given saddles. Nothing fancy tho, horses will equip the last saddle you place in their inventory, kinda like what followers do if you give them a better gear than what they have. This feature will require Keyword Item Distributor and Papyrus Extender to work, however, they're completely optional, in the case someone is not interested in saddles, they can just skip these two requirements and the mod will work as usual. I'm always open to feedback and suggestions, and thanks again for considering my little mod.

Keep it simple: just move the XPMSE.esp plugin to 'Optional' on MO2's 'Optional ESPs' tab. No need to hide anything but the plugin, which MO2's Optional conveniently does. The plugin starts hidden quests to set up the MCM and the whole cloak spell thingamajig, which run scripts. Without the plugin, the scripts and MCM interface resources are completely harmless and can stay where they are. If users want to use these features, they can just move the plugin back from 'Optional', without unhiding anything. That's it.

Starting with DynDOLOD Alpha-59 I updated the waterfall rule for Skyrim Special Edition so there is a static LOD model in object LOD Level 4 already. They are slightly moved down and back so it shouldn't z-fight with the full / dynamic LOD models.

What the rules does is use the full model (in this case from EmbersXD) for LOD instead of the usual dynamic LOD model included in DynDOLOD Resources, since that is for the vanilla model and doesn't match well. Typically there is no need to switch from the full model to the same full model used for LOD, so that is why the rule uses "Replace", to use the "LOD" reference continuously. For now, change the rule from "Replace" to "Unchanged", so the original reference is used in the active cells and the LOD reference in the LOD area. See https://dyndolod.info/Help/Mesh-Mask-Reference-Rules. I will see if I can add support for FireHurts to automatically create a proper JSON file for it if a new base record added is added in the DynDOLOD plugins. Check the changelog of the next couple alpha release for support. Then you can use the EmbersXD rule with "Replace" again.

MO2s Associate with "Download with manager" link is in settings, Nexus tab and in the middle right of the page. This will then direct the Nexus download with manager link to use MO2. This may cause a bit of frustration if you actively use both mod managers as it is there can be only one at a time.

This is an issue with cross game category mapping. The mod categories of SkyrimLE do not match with those of SkyrimSE. This mod is in the "Audio - SFX, Music, and Voice" which has 61 assigned to the category, whick MO2 uses to map them. SkyrimSE does not have any category with that index. I was able to reproduce the problem you described above. When you get to this dialog: You press "Stop & configure" and get this next dialog: You select the audio name and click OK to assign the category, but this is not the purpose of this interaction. It is to import the game categories from the current game managed by MO2. A better option is to just press the "Proceed" button as seen in the first image, install the mod and assign the category from the mods configuration page. If you are going to do this a lot on this install you can also make your own custom category in MO2 settings, Configure Mod Categories.

For finding a botched mod, do a boolean search. Start by disabling the bottom half of your mods and running again. If it works, enable half of the mods you disabled. If it doesn't, disable half of your remaining mods. It should take nine searches to narrow yourself down to a single culprit mod. Do note that the boolean search is less useful if there is more than one mod causing a problem. But it did allow me to find my botched TK children install in less than ten minutes.

The main page: https://stepmodifications.org/wiki/Main_Page Has been hacked. Repeated text copy about TEMU discounts.

Maybe you'd like to consider using 'Skyrim Character Sheet', which provides also faction information and more in a custom, SKSE-configurable ingame window.

Using 'Flawed Varla Stones', which were one of the concerns when playing with GIST, are also working fine with YASTM, they are now stackable, separate as they should when one is in use, and re-stack again when all are in the same state.

bump for STEP CR

Hiding that file was not in previously there and it safe to go ahead and do now with the updated EBOQ patches provided. I do not see a issue to use those with a ongoing character.

For the last maby 5-6 years i almost never get further than maby L20 ingame before i rebuild my load order. I play MO2 more than Skyrim. THIS is a good place to put additional guides (addons) for Step Guide. To have different animation/combat directly within the guide will be to messy i think. People already confused by the different Step Patches and the different Post Processing options. But if we do add more animations in the Step Guide, it would be convenient to be very clear what mods adds new animations, and what mods just fixes vanilla.

We need to make one small additional change to the STEP - CR or STEP - Lighting and Weather CR (not sure which this would be for) If you load xEdit and look at SightlessNavFix.esp and conflict check to that file only you will see the lighting mod Ambiance loads before it. The XCLL lighting data you want from Ambiance for FormID 00025195 - Abandoned Cave will lose to SightlessNavFix.esp (Navigator Navmesh Fixes) gaining back the default Skyrim colorspace values.

This should be marked as accepted

shouldn't this be marked as accepted?

MO2 updated to 2.5.0 Changelog: https://github.com/ModOrganizer2/modorganizer/releases

With the addition of 'Immersive Equipment Displays' to the guide you now seem to have two opposing concepts of display, at least when it comes to quivers/bolts. While 'IED' wants to show everything equipped and favorited, 'Unequip Quiver SE' wants to hide quivers/bolts or only show them in certain conditions. In testing both mods together they worked fine, but depending on conditions akwardly contradicted each other, so I eventually ended up deactivating 'Unequip Quiver SE'. It seems that if a user wants to set all the main conditions of hiding quivers/bolts 'Unequip Quiver SE' does, they can also do so now via setting manually conditions in 'IED' alone, as explained in 'Immersive Equipment Displays - Tutorials and presets', making 'Unequip Quiver SE' redundant in the long run? (There is also a preset available to disable the quiver when a bow or crossbow is not equipped/displayed).

Section 20-Patches, penultimate item: Step Patch - Conflict Resolution. Expanding it or following the Wiki link shows the following text (relevant bit highlighted in green): You're not making any sense: Files are there but you can't find them? You found the file but it's not the right one - which file? Please read carefully and follow these 3 simple steps: Go to https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/31054/?tab=files. Download the file named 'Step Grass'. It's listed on that page, at the very bottom of the page. Install 'Step Grass' as a separate mod and enable in MO2.

Higher values for optimize unseen typically means more vertices/triangles are used for the coastlines, which means less triangles for above ground. What really changes the number of triangles is combing submerged triangles, which happens with when optimize unseen is not off. With graphics cards from the past decade or so, triangle count does not matter as much anymore. Draw calls are unaffected. Moving vertices under water of triangles that cross the water plane causes the triangles to be steeper. This makes the coastlines look geometric. The higher the value, the actual shore line is moved inland to the edge of triangles that are completely above ground. That makes for ugly coastlines close up, that do not align well with the full terrain at the edge and the shift when full terrain replaces it when the cells attach can be visible. With higher optimize unseen values for LOD Level 4, submerged triangles under water are of deleted, leaving holes in the under water terrain. Just combining under water terrain triangles without dropping them or only by a small mount, can make shallow terrain under water worse, since the combined triangles are the height of the under water vertices close to the coast, meaning the surface of the remaining large triangles are not as deep as the original terrain. The entire area in a LOD mesh has a finite number of max 65536 triangles which in this case typically require about half of that number of vertices, the artificial limit of 32768 set by LODGen. For LOD Level 4 it means it is possible to fit the entire full terrain resolution, e.g. quality -1. For the higher LOD levels it means that vertices have to be optimized away. If more vertices are used for coastlines, it means less vertices for the above water terrain, hence the combining of underwater triangles. Quality 2: off, on, 550 The noticeable shift between off/on and 550 is similar to the shift between full terrain and LOD when cells attach/detach. If performance is of concern then "on" already removes the majority of triangles. If that causes more z-fighting, then dropping the under water vertices helps at the expense of geometric non matching coastlines. Since it seems nobody reported issues with the missing terrain, I guess the murky underwater covers that up in most load orders.

There's a whole 'Lines Expansion' series from the same MA: Bandit Lines Expansion (this mod) Civil War Lines Expansion Forsworn and Thalmor Lines Expansion Vampire Lines Expansion If you like this mod you may want to give the others a try.

Bethesda did this for performance, memory usage reasons. Past the wall is basically just a bit of terrain that does not reach very far with very few references if any. You might notice just a single rock reference placed per cell because of engine reasons. The mod will make much better distance views from inside Markarth. We discussed this long before Special Edition came out. Enabling this used to have noticeable performance impact in Skyrim. Probably less so now. Creating a patch file for for DynDOLOD to set the flag instead of a plugin could probably make this compatible with everything.

No seem for me. Full STEP build (with ENB).

Correct. Same change applied to all 20 Sound Descriptor records in IHSS.esp.

Starting a list for all the mods in the current STEP guide, which are in need to be updated (or already are) to work with the current game version 1.6.640. I'm listing only relevant mods in each category (please correct me if i missed anything). For a more comprehensive view on SKSE dependencies please see https://modding.wiki/en/skyrim/users/skse-plugins

This might also be interesting in this context Yes I'm Sure NG 'Conversion of Yes I'm Sure to CLib-NG to create one .dll file that works in all Skyrim SE versions, including AE 1.6.629+.' (Author's description) CommonLibSSE - Next Gen (or NG)

I'll elaborate: I saw sheson's reasonable remark about third party mods and decided to test it in full-vanilla environment (so not even MO2 or SKSE). It turned out that xLODGen works flawlessly in that environment (I just manually launched it outside of MO2 to be sure and used default output to data folder). So I simply compared ACMOS on/off and Vanilla/xLODGen (4 variations total). Turned out it was ACMOS doing something to the textures so not to clutter this thread I went back to that mod's page and asked about it - turned out there's "A Clear Map Of Skyrim - Textures.bsa" which contains worldmapoverray_n.dds and worldmapoverraysnow_n.dds that seem to add this gritty look to textures. DoubleYou recommended I simply delete those files. To quickly test it I hid the archive in MO2 and it worked so I replied here to make it clear that it was my bad. Seems like that was actually the intended look I just didn't like it and thought it was bugged. And again I did read and follow every manual/instruction/guide and my xLODGen files DO override ACMOS as is required in said manuals/instructions/guides. I even posted the order in which my left pane ends just so this question does not arise. It's just that in ACMOS .bsa file those .dds textures are located directly inside the Textures folder while in xLODGen output folder that Texture folder only has subfolders. So xLODGen has nothing to override those files with. TLDR it had nothing to do with xLODGen

Never mind, seem to have fixed it. The original copy of Landscape Fixes I downloaded got corrupted or something. I redownloaded the mod and reinstalled and am no longer getting crashes. This thread can be marked as solved.

Sweet victory guys!!!! Everything is installed (except Oakwood) and LOOT is free of errors!!! I'm gonna finish off the tutorial and enjoy the oh so gorgeous Skyrim <3

It has been quiet from me for a while here in the forum. I'm still here and updating this build. I'm just letting you know that the site has been completely rebuilt and it now also has a nexus page. I don't think there are many users atm, but it's there for anyone that wants. STEP currently seems to adopt EnaiSiaion's suite of mods that alters magic, skill, races, abilities etc. This build uses SimonMagus suite instead, for anyone that is intrested in that. Thats it! Same link as usual: https://dreadflopp.github.io/dreadsskyrimbuild/

My LOD, and map, are gorgeous now. Wow... Thank you. I wish I had looked into xLODGen earlier. The coastlines are accurate. I can see islands I couldn't see before. There's no water z-fighting (Probably thanks to the optimize unseen setting being at the newbie-recommended 550 instead of on?). And of course the LOD is better everywhere else too, but the coastlines make the biggest difference to me. Just... thank you. I'm in awe. The thread is probably mostly filled with support questions... I'm leaving an appreciation comment for a change.