Darklocq

All noted. The key question is whether 3.0.0 does in fact work as-is. I would think that 99.9% of it works, but those two cannot-resolve errors are likely to do SOMETHING at some point. I don't know if it would be a big red missing-mesh icon, just something not visibly appearing, or a CTD, or what. My thoughts all along have been that the CR patch file could be replaced (with the fixed one I posted a Mega link to), and its Nexus version number incremented as a minor hotfix, without adjusting the STEP version number at all, since nothing substantive changed. If that's not "how it works", then I would think it's v3.0.1, not 3.1.0, for that lack-of-substantive-change reason. After this question is sorted, I'll start working first on instructional fixes to the current instructions, without changes in mod recommendations; then improved-version mod recommendations; only after that any more substantive change proposals]. Also with an eye to reducing the dependency complexity of the CR Patch (which also has a big impact on what people can merge to save mod slots; e.g., I see that one dependency of it right now is a mod and another is a patch for that mod, so it's kind of a double-whammy). I'm also in process of building my own game out (I'm now at the merging like mad stage, since my STEP build works, after adding Falskaar, Wyrmstooth, and a bunch of other goodies. I have yet to add in most of my gear, follower, and quest mods. And I'll want to actually play it a bit. Almost forgot that's why I was doing this build. Ha ha. If the Nexus CR Patch download won't be replaced until there's a bigger change, then I'll start on the fixing-the-current-instructions material sooner than later.

Update: I got original-author permission for the Non-Essential Children patch, for Simple Children + Better Quest Objectives. So NEC will no longer need to be hard-coded as a master in a future version of the CR patch. (I"m glad of that myself; I don't want NEC, since I have no desire to pickpocket kids or step over their corpses; it was among the least important mods added to STEP.) Still waiting to hear from author of Non Essential Children Reworked, though that's a trivial re-mod of a trivial mod, so it won't hold up anything.

I think we're talking about two different things. I was talking about the unresolveable references in the CR patch; I was told that would necessitate a hotfix posted to the Nexus page, and a version increment, and I should hold off changing anything until after that. So have been thus holding. :-)

Any timeline for the 3.0.1 or 3.1.0 hotfix? I'm still holding off any updates (changed FOMOD options, etc.) until after that. No hurry (I've been busy making patches for stuff like "Unofficial Skyrim City Patch Reawakened" and "Immersive Content - Realistic Outdoor Lights"). Just want to plan ahead for it.

So it should forward in the upper part AND keep the chef clothes in the lower part, or just the former?

On Masque mods: The new one is the old one plus a Khajiit version; the Argonian part of it's identical to the old one. This one's mergeable into the CP at the ESP level. because it's literally nothing but an ARMO tweak and two ARMAs. It'd be one of those where the instructions are to install the original mod then hide one file (its ESP). If that's not permissible (despite doing this with other mods), then switching to the new one without integrating its ESP's three lines into the CP would still be desirable. The children one: It's the same as the original mod but with an improvement (something the original missed - if the kids are mortal after all, then vampires would be able to feed on them). The glitch in both of them that I patched is just keyword-related, but permissions are pending. I don't mean to inject Mod A vs. Mod B as choices in the guide. Rather, if something doesn't need to be a hard dependency for the CP because it can be resolved by patching the original mod, then that keeps the CP simpler and also sometimes has the side effect of increasing end-user choice, whether they know that or not. For EBT, the guide would still recommend the Lite version. It just wouldn't have a CP that unintuitively fails to load if someone installs the Full version. Or in some cases, like merging the Argonian masque ESP's trivial changes, it does hard-code something (things one wouldn't object to - no one wants to force Argonians to have human-shaped heads), just more efficiently and without creating an ESP/ESM master dependency. In my case, I wanted to use the full version of Enhanced Blood Textures and was not able, and that seemed weird so I resolved it, while with the Argonian thing, it was more practical, "Why am I being forced to spend an ESP slot on something I'll never use unless I play as Argonian? And why can't I switch to this better version with Khajiit, since that's what I actually DO want?" I'm drawing a distinction between injecting explicit user choice (which, yeah, might kind of fork the guide into different directions) versus just not artificially hard-limiting choice. Most of STEP is replaceable, but not (without know-how and effort) the CP dependencies. I certainly understand not making a dozen competing patches for different setups; wasn't going in that direction! I get the concern, though. On the CR stuff where it's doing leveled list changes that don't correspond to any masters: I'll get some details next time I look at it. And it's not high-priority anyway; updating the current instructions is. Actually, I remember where one is and will just screenshot it: The CP is patching the stealth skills mod consistently to conform to CACO changes (even over those of CCF), but then all of a sudden it deleted three items all the masters want to keep, and then it injects Chef clothes out of nowhere. Why does it want a cook's outfit included so badly here and at the expense of regular stuff? Heh. If not for a few bits like this it would be very easy to make a Stealth Skills Rebalanced + CACO patch, for Nexus, that obviated any need for the CP to try to patch between them. Assuming there's not such a patch already, which there might be.

Will do. I figured this would take priority over other stuff (unless I'm somehow mistaken about it). I-i-interesting. I'd been about to commit to "Ultrawidescreen Fixes for Skyrim LE", but "Flawless Widescreen" on the SE side certainly seemed less klugey. I gotta check out for a while. Will be back within a day, I'm sure. Edit: Oh, Flawless WS is that external program; I was thinking of Complete Widescreen Fix SE and/or TrueBy9.

That was my understanding, based on the Versioning page (and what's been said here to date). I mustn't bite off more than I can chew on day one! "Under-promise, over-deliver" and all 'at. But that copy-to-fork-and-increment was already what I'd figured on doing if it came time for a 3.0.1. I've been into Skyrim for years and keep coming back to it, and I have SE but don't plan to use it any time soon, since a bunch of mods I dig aren't ported to it yet. I'll be around. Even if I become not-around for a while (real life can intervene with stuff like cross-country moves - ya never know), I'll come back. I don't do ESO, and I'm not waiting with bated breath for TESVI (it's going to be a buggy mess, of course, so it won't be any good for a year or so after release, LOL).

I like the sound of Curator, too. As for the overall vision, I get it. My goal hasn't been to remake 3.x in my own image with my pet mods, but fix up stuff. My pet mods belong in a user "unofficial guide". Like my ongoing project-of-sorts to make Ethereal Elven Overhaul viable again. Maybe something on modern follower management with FLP. To the extent "new mods" would be added to 3.x, I figure they would just be like-for-like upgrades (e.g. "Non Essential Children Reworked" in place of "Non-Essential Children"), and maybe some easy-to-merge quality of life fixes like "Muffle Your Dog" quiet version (to stop dog drowning out your quest-giver). I'll need to go over again the list of mods that the CR Patch makes unnecessary. Oh! One worth-including thing would be 21:9 ultra-wide, which is very common now. I'm embarking on that myself, so when I get it worked out I'll be able to write up all the wrinkles.

Taking that in order: I'd already read the versioning page, and have lurked some related threads (not sure they're the more internal ones - I don't think I tried to post in any of them). Unofficial guide: already had one or another planned, but low-priority. NSFW: probably not (I've never installed SexLab), but I can see doing a page on how to adapt some of it to SFW use (e.g. you might have to wander onto LL to get something). On another site, I actually wrote something about what LL is good for if you're not into sex mods. I've been reading up on Semantic MW anyway; I'm in the user guide in another tab. Transclusion and WLH: Yeah, I make a lot of use of that stuff on WP and other wikis. Good to know about the templates-and-transclusion issues. My normal habit is to create convenience templates for markup and such, but now I know that's not the way here. Headings and ToC: noted. Ready to start: probably in a day; no hurry. I need a nap anyway, ha ha. Consensus on change: Right; I already understood that's how it worked. I'm more into "let's not make this mod mandatory if we don't have to" than "we should make this super-awesome mod mandatory".

I'll pore over all this after some coffee. I'm fine with whatever role you want to assign, and method to follow. A quick update (I'm in the midst of patch posting and such). * There's a pair of errors in the STEP CR Patch, I'm not sure if potentially CTD-causing. A headgear item has two "Error: Could not be resolved". It's 'DBArmorHelmetWorn "Shrouded Masked Cowl" [ARMO:00105969]', seemingly two custom-race heads from someone's personal game). I've patched those out and this is probably worth a hotfix at the Nexus without incrementing anything other than the file's version number: https://mega.nz/file/dBh2xbJL#QRyrDPK3b3PBXxyRA6bm-nArxqxM_f-jiRbC29cQ2f8 I can't think of a good reason for those to be in there. What other heads are there to deal with for a helmet/hood than humanoid, Argonian, and Khajiit? I'm thinking it was probably Citrus or Demonica or something. * Worth an incremented-version consideration: Some mods that end up being masters for the CR probably shouldn't be, either because they don't pertain to many players or they're things people might object to. ** I've already patched out "Masque of Argonian Vile": https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/108061/ and eliminated it as a master (not in the hotfix file above; that ONLY removed the unresolvables). There's a better mod for this anyway, that also does Khajiit, and it needs no patching. Better yet, the ESP (in either of these cases) can be entirely eliminated! I've already produced a CR that does this. ** Next, I patched out "Enhanced Blood Textures Lite": https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/108063 - one can now use the Full version if one wants to (at the cost of at least 1 more ESP slot). Made a new CR that merges this with the tweak above. ** Still pending permissions: I patched out "Non-essential Children" and made a new-new CR that doesn't have it as a master. It can be swapped with the improved "Non Essential Children Reworked", though both actually had a bug in them which I also fixed. Both have restrictive permissions, but still-around authors, so I've written to both of them. ** Not having "Stealth Skills Rebalanced" be a CR master would also be desirable, but there's some weirdness going on there that needs closer examination (CR is imposing changes not found in ANY of its masters, to trivial stuff like what low-end clothing is in some leveled lists). Not sure if that's an error (like leftovers from STEP LE 2.x), or if some tool was used that merged LLs without making master dependencies. ** There're probably other mods that're CR masters that can be patched out like this with replacement ESPs. These patches I'm generating will be useful for some non-STEP people, too. That was just in the course of trying to reduce my own ESP load, and doesn't really relate to the "this FOMOD has changed" and "there's a typo here" kind of stuff to tweak in 3.0.0.

I'm definitely comfortable with geekier wiki editing. I'd already broached the idea with another of the admins. I'm a 15+ year veteran of en.wikipedia (where I'm a TemplateEditor, PageMover, etc.; not an admin - that job is mostly politicized psychodrama at a site that large). All in: Yeah, the "approximately 2 days" STEP 3.0.0 setup was about a month for me! I was taking extensive notes, like every single patch available in a FOMOD and on its download page, where typos are, what mods recommended have actually been abandoned and replaced by new versions at different Nexus mod ID numbers (at least three, and I'm responsible for one or another of them), places where the advice in the guide seems inconsistent, mods STEP recommends which were never updated for USLEP (so I went and patched them), etc., etc., etc. Some of what I've been up to will make it into a user-level guide page instead, and isn't main STEP Guide material - things like integrating Ethereal Elven Overhaul (wrote new patches for that, too). So, yeah, put my OCD to work here. >;-) I'm not a primadonna, self-promotional modder; I mostly write patches, with as few restrictions as possible under the Nexus circumstances, and give away most of the donation points or mod rewards or whatever Nexus calls them now. I'm aware this site uses some particular and complex MediaWiki packages, and promise to pore over their documentation before wading into any code I don't understand. I think the most complex thing I have in mind would be tracing a transclusion chain of templates and modules to find where ever some particular text "lived" to update it there. I also wouldn't make any substantive changes (like which mods are recommended, etc.) without vetting it, of course. I'd already been lurking in some of the STEP LE 2.x vetting threads for a couple of years, actually (like the debate about Skyrim Realistic Overhaul and what to piecemeal replace it with, before it suddenly came back). Some "résumé" points: * Latest patching work: Unofficial Skyrim City Patch (USCP) Reawakened * Directly STEP-relevant: AI Overhaul for USLEP * Ditto: Waterbreathing Breathless Emerge for USLEP * I was also the most extensive mod tester for OpenMW, but my user page at their wiki isn't up right now; they're overhauling the entire wiki since a month or two ago. Edit: I found where it was moved to. Includes my Morrowind and OpenMW companion/follower guide.

PPS: I'm documenting these instructional glitches as I go, so I'll bring them up later. I.e., I know exactly which FOMODs have changed to no longer match STEP instructions, etc.

PS: > Also, the mod page already specifies that patches are included in the CR patch, so .... But this particular game guide is no longer being [very] actively maintained while many mods are. STEP SLE 3.0.0 is already wrong about several FOMODs and the options in them, for example. There is no guarantee that the patches STEP was aware of last time that particular part of the guide was revised still match the options available in any given FOMOD. Just stating upfront that the patches for thus-and-such, specifically, are already included in the STEP CR Patch is a better bet than forcing the user into assumptions and guesswork, and that will become more true over time. Given that the detailed instructional verbiage is already collapse-boxed, it won't do anything to "bloat" the guide, and is likely to head off confusions (and further threads like this one). I've found about 5 other places where 3.0.0 is forcing the user to assume that a FOMOD or downloads-page patch is probably already in the CR Patch (if they're really much aware of the CR patch yet, which is mostly later in the guide).

Thank you. They are not clear. There's a major meaning difference between "select nothing" (take no action to select anything) and "deselect everything" (or "make sure no options are selected" and various other ways to phrase this), since options are apt to be selected already without any user action. I.e. "You literally 'select nothing'" still results in items being pre-selected not by you. :-) I've done technical writing (mostly documentation) for a living, so I think about these things. Never underestimate the ability of end users to misinterpret! LOL