Nearox

By the way with regards to RWT/WATER: Does STEP get a version bump to 2.2.8 as soon as the patch is ready, or do we wait for other mod testing to be done? If it is the case that STEP goes to 2.2.8 because of the patch, then we wouldn't need to patch for WATER at all.Â

It's a compilation, but some artists made this music explciitly for use with skyrim I think. At least thatt's what I understood from somewhere in the description.

If needed, you can find a temporary workaround here https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Mod_Organizer#tab=Advanced_2

With the mod Bandolier

Skip to 1:40 for some video of EWP. [video=youtube]

Enchanting Awakened will also be added to the pack during the next update.

Yep RWT is already present in my STEP core & extended profiles :)

Before Safey Load, I used to run with 1k textures/ 1k normals in exteriors. Game was stable but if I added just 1 expansionary mod (e.g. Immersive Settlements) the game would crash or freeze all the time within minutes. Now, using Safety Load, I have thrown every texture pack I could at the game at 2k resolution / 2k normals. I also added over 20 city, town and village mods like EtaC, Solitude Docks District, Complete Solitude, Whiterun Outskirts Market, beautiful whiterun, dawn of whiterun, dawn of windhelm etc etc). Every city has an expansion. On top of that, I installed npc mods like Interesting NPCs (2 gigabyte worth of data), Inconsequential NPCs, Populated Towns and Villages. I also ran W&C, SkyRe and Frostfall. I haven't had any ctd/freeze/ils at all, and I've done serious testing today. The only issues I had earlier were when opening menu/inventory but that was on a highlevel savegame where I had hundreds of items (using bandolier stuff my carryweight was over 800). Somehow I just can't believe it. It is so seemingly stable that I cannot help but wonder when this thing will ever break... Since I installed Safety Load - the day it was uploaded at Nexus - I basically haven';t crashed a single time (apart from the inventory crashes).

Great work! I'll get on it tomorrow :)

Yeah load order (the esp order), not the install order :)

New version: 0.3 - Reduced Rocks specular strength by 50%. The new version  makes them less dark and less shiny. It's still WIP apparently but I tried 0.3 ingame and it looks more natural. Also, they don't look good on screens... in-game the wet effect is pretty nice. Just try it under the bridge when you type "coc whiterun".

Nice find :)

@Neo, ahh I see. I've used AOF for quite some time but really looking for something new. Just can't really wrap my head around making a choice. Currently also liking Alternative Rock and Mountains and watery rock combined with Enhanced Wetnnes and Puddles, might play with that for 2 days. Problem generally is that I find the mountains too noticeable. I.e. most of the mountain mods they don't blend in too well with the rest of the environment. This might be because all the mountaints essentially rely on 2 textures only. If it were more there might have been more diversity. @Mothergoose. Yeah IVM is in my step install but I only have them in there because they are part of step core, which i strictly adhere to for testing purposes :P They are not bad tbh but nothing special either.Â

https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/46915/? By Anamorfus (author of ELFX). I can't copy the description on tablet for some reason... Will add that later. Edit: I know tech... :P Mod description They might not fit in too well with vanilla mountains/rocks though. I didn't find them particularly appealing at the pictures either. The dark wet contrast with the grey of vanilla is too much. In-game I found them to match up much better with modded mountain slabs. I tried them with Vivid Landscapes - Rocking Stones and Mountains Parallax, AOF & Alternative Rock and Mountains 4K_2K_1K and watery Rock. Especially with Alternative Mountains, which already have a slightly more wet look than default, they fit in well. It is also dependent on which lightning mod/enb/sweetfx you use, as either of them can increase or reduce the shiny effect.Â

One major issue I have with FMR is that is has its own spell levelling system. I don;t know if the SkyRe patch means that the spell strengths are now influenced by SkyRe perks but still use the levelling system of FMR, OR that the spells are now only influenced by SkyRe and do not use the system by FMR. Moreover, the FMR system means that you must use a certain spell a lot before it ebcomes powerful. While it may be slightly more realistic, it essentialyl means that most people are going to have less choice at high level, thereby not optimally using all the spells of the mod. I will need to investigate it more though. The plan is to add 1 spell package to VEGA, and at the moment I lean very strongly towards apocalypse. Hey, thanks Smile for trying the combo out. I've actually been using your lighting pack in my own heavy modded skyrim and it works absolutely fantastic :) So no reason it won't work with vega + step :P.Â

Hey Neo - correct me if I'm wrong - you were using Vivid Landscapes - Rockign Stones and Mountains Parallax in SR:LE some time ago. I see it is not in there anymore. Any reason you took it out? It appears there is no other mountain specific mod in it. Does that mean you settled on SRO mountains? Just curious with regards to your preferrence :)

I also experienced a few menu crashes with it (though not many, maybe like 5 over the last 4 days). The problem went away when I disabled SkyUI... That must also be the reason why it never crashed on the crafting menu for me, since SkyUI doesn't touch that. I am using version 1.0 (aka the 'full' version, I don't want to disable Safety Load's game-freeze ability just to remove menu CTDs). Is there anyone else who uses these 2 mods in conjunction and experienced these menu issues that can confirm they went away when SkyUI got disabled?

Yeah I wouldn't want you to decide from a single video either ;) But it is the first one I found that has some kind of meaningful comparison. It's a start at least. AOS appears more noisy in the beginning. I am of the opinion that it is mainly because we have not been used to hearing Skyrim sound so detailed and clear for the last 2 years. AOS is a novel experience imo, which I found can be a bit disturbing at the start. After a couple of hours playing with it, and then going back to vanilla and sos, I thought AOS was the more natural one. But perhaps it all boils down to personal taste as well. This is especially the case for sound (and also music). One only needs to read the (silly) comments below any music video to see people arguing quite aggresively - sometimes to the point of deathwishes (let's hope it doesn't come to that here haha :P). Looking forward to your comparison tech :)

1) Skyre-USP patch: Not necessary and redundant by now. ASG-AWE-Skyre Patch: Not necessary because you should only use Smart Souls with USKP 2.0 and leave ASG out. I think the only issues AWE and Skyre have is that some AWE effects are not applied correctly. If you dont want to patch it yourself, make sure that AWE loads before Skyre in the esp load order to ensure your game works as it is supposed to. 2. I haven't used both together, but I would let Skyre/Unofficials Skyre overwrite EBT at any time and then see if it works. Especially since they alter the same scripts. Those scripts in the picture used to cause tons of papyrus bloat issues before unofficial skyre incorporated them (they were made by steve40). 3. At this stage you should really just fire up your game and do some test runs to see if it is stable in exteriors. Use console command 'player.setav speedmult 500' & 'tgm'. Then run around the map and enter every city briefly. If it doesnt crash or only crashes near the end you are probably stable enough for a decent playthrough - assuming no gamebreaking esp conflicts exist.

For anyone that wishes to add new music to STEP, this is the continuation of Fantasy Music Overhaul. Fantasy Soundtrack Project Description: Sticky @ comment section:

Review & comparison starts from about 0:45. It doesn't review every single sound ofc but gives a good general idea how they match up. AOS is the clear winner for me :)

Maybe Safety Load works for 10 levels and then corrupts every savegame on the nexus

I love Ewi's stuff. Is that SFO version optimized with DDSopt or what are you referring too? I tried yesterday to reduce all SFO regular 1.89 textures by 50% for testing purpose. There was no FPS gain in the most dense areas, only about a 30-50mb vram saving. Would be great if you can share it dk11!

Yeah such overhead also used to be largely unnoticable as well for me, but on older enb versions. I didn't use ENB for a month so I got a bit out of the running. But I have fiddled quite a bit with them before and I'm sure that I did disable everything. Parallax itself doesn't have any FPS loss, or at least it is less than 1 FPS on my system. Although I would like to use a newer enb due to the new fixes , using 0.119 has its advantages: There is full hardware AA support. The other disadvantage is that Boris started building in ENBoost functionality from 0.221 onwards, so I unfortnately don't have that. However in the last 3 days, using Safety Load, I have not crashed a single time - which is a personal record :P Would stil likle to use ENBoost on top of it, but since I'm testing a pack with parallax stuff and it is stable atm I guess I can leave it as it is for now. It's just so strange that I can't for the life of me figure out how to get it to work with the latest enb. Been like 2 hours of trial and error now, and the fps loss is still the same. I don't mind a 5 fps loss but 12 (or sometimes even 15) is unacceptable.Â

Hmm I downloaed 0.119 and also the parallax remastered enb config files. Now there's hardly any performance drop anywhere because all the effects are properly disabled. His config is made for enb 0.116 and upwards and hasn't been changed since. I suspect that newer ENB's have more functions which are enabled by default and which can only be disableb by tweaking the numbers instead of true/false parameters. Either way. Fixed now :P Thanks :)