godescalcus

Those folders will be created in the next few steps of the finishing line, when you run DynDOLOD. Maybe some note could be added there, or relinker be moved after xLODGen and DynDOLOD.

Beware, our Dark Lady doesn't like Lilly ;) I do think she's a good improvement on the junky courier. I wish the author did a simple courier replacer and hadn't added all that 2 in 1 follower crap. Bear in mind that you need to load the plugin after the CR merged plugin, because there are edits to the courier that will override her. No problem if you load it later. Also make sure that the smashed patch forwards the courier records correctly for lilly. It might not, because of the forced.all tag on the CR. FAIK you can load Lilly after the smashed patch, that's how I use her to save trouble, haven't found anything out of sorts yet.

YOU GUYS ARE GOING TO LOVE THIS! https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/12919?tab=description

Nothing's wrong with the shot, since we're talking about combining textures. I know that SRO works and even mentioned it in a subsequent post: "(on a more serious note this texture works very well with Luxor's ground, if one is not using Solitude HD at all the choice might be another. Both Noble and SRO work fine with a cobbled/stone/paved street texture, like those mods have it themselves)" I was looking for a manhole texture that looks well with Luxor's ground, and our current weather and ENB. I admit I'm always tempted to go back to SRO because it works, but precisely because other packs like Luxor's take the risk of not sticking to vanilla flavour, they come up with some surprising stuff that's worth the effort of ironing out some odd textures that may not work so well. Your shot makes me think that Luxor's manhole probably also looks better without weathers and ENB, with less of a polished metal shine. I'm also tempted to abandon weathers and ENB altogether... But never get around to doing it. The current version of Verdant as a grass mod is nothing short of spectacular - if you're using vanilla weathers and no ENB. Add those, and I've tried a few, and it looks much less impressive. I wish there were a simple way to make ENB effects pop on indoors, and off outdoors. Short of that, I think ENB adds enough that one can conform to not using those mods that don't work with it. Another mod I've been playing with is Enhanced Landscapes. It has an optional grass mod that's close to Unbelievable Grass 2, which is a long time favourite of mine. The grass looks very interesting because AceeQ took the trouble of repainting many areas with new ground textures that get grass with his mod, resulting in much more grass in the landscape and less bare ground. The down side (for me) is that those new ground textures themselves don't look so nice (even though you only see them through thick grass) and replacing them, since they're custom assets and not simple replacers, would mean copying and renaming stuff (like we do with SSoS and NSUTR). Not impossible, but more hassle.

Had he called them Rustic Manholes and they'd be in the guide for sure :P (on a more serious note this texture works very well with Luxor's ground, if one is not using Solitude HD at all the choice might be another. Both Noble and SRO work fine with a cobbled/stone/paved street texture, like those mods have it themselves).

Can you believe it - manholes MATTER! Here's a list - pick your poison. Solitude HD - - - - - - - - - - - Noble Skyrim - - - - - - - - - SRO / Vanilla - - - - - - - - - Manhole of Solitude 2k/2k (LOL just for fun... But I'll keep this one!) My opinion for all it's worth, regarding the subject of the most and least immersive Manholes: Solitude HD - sucks. Noble - good enough, doesn't blend that well with Solitude HD ground. SRO - worse than Noble and doesn't blend so well either. Solitude Manhole - a winner, for sure LOL From only guide textures I'd go with Noble again. Sorry, dammit - I meant the book that's placed on the shelf on the LEFT wall... LOL

As MK said. For those items and more, you can make replicas at the Library or at the Safehouse. Take a look at the Curator's book that's placed on a shelf on the right wall at the museum when you walk in. Best intro to LOTD.

That's where I think Lexy's right about it being impossible to please everyone with one definitive texture pack. So, the guide's approach is actually very "empowering" of the user for making it possible to tweak things very easily. We install packs that overwrite packs that overwrite packs. While it does take up drive space, if that's not a limiting factor, you can then easily tweak things by hiding/unhiding texture files. An example with the wooden beams in Solitude, mentioned before. Here is a sequence where the first image shows Solitude HD, in the second I "hid" six texture files from Solitude HD (swoodbeam*.dds, swoodcollumn*.dds) and thus have Noble Skyrim's textures, while in the third I also hid the same textures in Noble and end up with SRO's textures. While I tend to agree with what Xeraphim1 said before, that Noble textures seem sometimes too "good" (like the farmhouse textures), in the case of the city of Solitude I'd say Noble's go best with the capital city of Skyrim. Luxor's are too rough and coupled with the rough plaster on the walls, make Solitude look even more decrepit than Bravil, if you know what I mean. Replacing only the Luxor's wooden beams (swoodbeam*.dds, swoodcollumn*.dds) with Noble's makes a huge difference and the better wood still blends nicely with Luxor's plaster and stone wall textures. SRO's wodden frame looks strangely washed out in this case, so in my build I think I'll go with Noble for these. By the way, the city wall in the background is indeed SRO which, in that case, I think beats both Noble and Solitude HD (both alternatives). Edit: If you want to play around with SRO, I suggest adding right at the top of the left pane. SRO covers a lot of stuff like clutter, architecture, landscape, dungeons, and would overwrite other mods if placed further down.

Great news, that my favourite 3dNPC char... At least when I think my char needs some ego-pumping! Really well done follower, great story, great dialogue, great voicing! If there's a mod that improves the sound while keeping the voice acting, I raise my... flagon of mead!! LOL I don't... I mean I do! Include Wyrmstooth, that is. Don't know what you mean ;) I do agree on focusing any additions on the missing content from the museum and/or mods that have synergy with the ones that are already in, especially if they can be merged and don't involve too much CR.

Could it be that we install both those patches (and any that will eventually surface) and add an ICH merge, changing the merged plugin name to the same as the original ICH to maintain compatibility? Seems like a flexible alternative IF we confirm that the merge doesn't renumber the records - noting that, if they're mostly overrides, it's very likely that it doesn't.

You bet that works for me. Since LE I've been using my own Noble pack where I optimized and added all the separate packs except landscape. I was actually going with optimized textures plus noble for architecture, then added SRO with the pleasant surprise that the extra 10GB of texture material didn't hurt performance one bit. Really seems like a solid piece of work. In LE I used gamwich's for landscape, noble for architecture. Now Luxor's HD got me thinking. Many textures are really good and add not just detail, but interesting detail. I can really go with it if I have to, but then I do find it gains from weeding out a bit. Fortunately, so far nothing more complicated than hiding a few an letting the next mod win, be it Noble or SRO.

I also feel the Solitude HD textures add a lot of atmosphere to interiors, I love them, but outdoors need a little tweaking, especially the wooden beams. Letting Noble win there might be good but I haven't tried it yet. SRO is really worth a peek. I could play with it alone for a more vanilla feel and many, if not most of its textures hold their ground next to Luxor's when tweaking. I'm not a fan of the bright greens in the Reach and tried hiding those with good results. As I said I wouldn't bother y'all with the load of my texture tweaks but if we have room for that kind of discussion (on Discord for example) I can post some more screenshots there.

Thanks. Now I've opened another Pandora's box, I'm weeding out textures that don't look so good to me... Won't bother y'all with it except in cases that seem too striking. Here's a couple in Riften. The first is fallforestgrass01.dds / fallforesgrass01_n.dds, first pictcture is guide (Landscape Overhaul HD), second picture is with those textures hidded/removed, which brings up Skyrim Realistic Overhaul which I use as a base. Then the roof tiles from Riften HD (first pic) look pretty dull and make the crappy underlying meshes stand out. Removing/hiding riftenroofshingles01.dds, riftenroofshingles01_n.dds, riftenshinglesalpha01.dds and riftenshinglesalpha01_n.dds brings forth Noble Skyrim (second pic), which I think goes slightly better.

If that should make it in then I'd suggest all "for good guys" mods be tested. There are tons, I remember Namira, Molag Bal, Boethiah, Vaermina and even one that changes the Ebony Blade so you don't need to kill friendly NPCs to power the blade. Might go, with all needed patches, into their own optional section? RP-wise, I don't think a "good guy" character should be doing the DB at all :P

Lexy despite the note on RW2 about Keep it Clean, if you already have RW2 installed and merged, I suppose it won't hurt to leave it that way, as long as Keep it Clean Merged loads after it (and it does)? Also I suppose since you don't mention it, there's no need to remove Racemenu following the rollback of XP32? I remember it being mentioned that the update had racemenu compatibility included somehow.

Lol.. That's an old video. I should just remove it from my signature! It doesn't even have the combat system for Darth's guide and the flora is my own screw up. Probably done a month after I started playing with the guide. I did use WB for all my LE builds, but using MO2 here.

Have you guys ever used Celestine the healer? I'm asking because I used her in LE and she seemed completely OP. She would buff you with like 8 spells instantly as soon as you got into combat, then fully heal you in less that 2 seconds no matter what your health was to begin with. Quite the companion for a tanker. All you really had to do is get a few seconds out of harm's way and she'd fully heal you. She also attacked but hardly, as I recall it she mostly kept out of trouble and doing what she did best. This was before even Darth's guide and I haven't tried Toccata, I admit, because I didn't want go so dependent on one follower LOL but from the talks here it seems she might be similarly OP? I wanted to know, from those who tried both, how they compare. Of course, Celestine had seriously irritating dialogue lines borrowed from the game's unused dialogue which had nothing to do with context or relationship, but you could switch those off in the MCM.

It's a drag that we have to go through the trouble but eventual fixing of mods that were improperly ported has been done as people become aware of the need for it. I'll risk saying that this build is stable, although not finished. The updating has come to the point that any build you finish, if up-to-date and done correctly, is a stable build that you can then play - and halt updating until you finish playing. I've played it in March/April, it was a very different build already but it held up and I had fun doing most of the quest lines without breaking until I felt the urge to come back to modding pad by level 40 or something. Issues may and do arise, but I haven't seen any game-breaking so far. The LE guide is stable and will give you a different flavour of things. I'd choose by the mod list.

ROTFL Berndaroy you made me rediscover this mod which has very recently been ported to SSE: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/18347 You even get wing options to choose from. BTW I don't know if the author thought about it but flying/levitating should be extremely relaxing and grant you Well Rested bonus for a good distance travelled! Don't even get me into mentioning the several flying carpet mods or the X-Wing for LE...

Don't think ELFX should load after ELE, if you did that you'd need to patch even more so that every interior cell gets ELE imagespace and lighting template carried. By its nature it seems more practical to always have ELE towards the bottom of the load order and patch other mods when necessary. Just load the tweak last in your load order, it may eventually get merged into the CR. This kind of tweaking can be a neverending quest, best done only in those places that have really annoying dark areas that should have some more light. Most other buildings in Solitude that I visited are dark, but ok. They're mostly smaller and the existing lights are enough. I do think Phoenix shifts a bit towards colder colors relative to ReEngaged. NVT looks better than ReE IMO. Less saturated, similar color choices.

Realized that ELE is overriding many of ELFX's lights with vanilla or close to vanilla parameters. I forwarded all of ELFX's lights and added a few more tweaks while testing The Bannered Mare. These pics are all Before (with ELE overrides) and After (with ELFX restored and a few lights added or changed):

This is what Lexy means with improving ELFX (I love how pretentious it sounds. Just like half the description pages on nexus :D ) Again original "per guide" and "added a candle" versions: Jump over to Discord, mod discussions channel and there's a link to a patch that you can dissect and add if you like it. I used a very basic candle bulb this time, no shadows or anything to avoid problems with lights going on and off. The step-by-step of doing this isn't lengthy, what took time was figuring it all out. It's basically finding the bulb you want to tweak and tweaking it! But you can't click on bulbs in game so a lot of guesswork and trial-and-error. The new candle was just duping records and fixing the placement coordinates (again trial and error). I can't for the sake of me do this on the CK so it was all xEdit.

I loved the "improving ELFX" bit!

Nope, one bulb is really one bulb. I didn't change the base bulb's record, only the reference that places it. Allows you to change the type of bulb and tweak a few basic parameters.

Seems like there's a third, which is to dig into ELFX and tweak it. A lot of trouble if done with xEdit, I swear. But I'm happy with the result I got (posted above). No need to change the guide, only one record edited (a light bulb). I think we all agree that the SRLE light combo still rules ;)