sirtechfan

Thanks, that's helpful. I'll just go with xEdit if I need to resolve any conflicts. Appreciate the guidance!

So no Bashed patch, then? I'm under the impression that Bashed patches are recommended for leveled lists specificially. I'm getting comfortable with CR using xEdit, but wanted to know if a Bashed patch was easier or even possible given the STEP patch already includes some leveled list modifications.

Since the Guide manages any leveled list conflicts with the STEP patch, if I add a mod that modifies leveled lists do I need to correct any conflicts manually or can I generate a Bashed patch to handle them? Both methods will be new for me to learn, but I wanted to know if a Bashed patch is even possible to use on top of the STEP patch. Thanks.

Edit: Removed this post. Moderators, feel free to delete. Thank you.

Awesome, thanks!

Can I move Cathedral LODs and Majestic Mountain LODs down to the end of the mod list near the LOD output mods, or will that mess up the LOD generation? I know we don't run LODs often, but I've been playing around with adding/removing some mods that require me to rerun LODs and I'm always forgetting to activate those two mods. If they were right above/below the LOD output mods it may help remind me to activate them.

Thank you!

According to the official mod description for Cathedral Plants, it states: If using Cathedral Landscapes, you'll want to delete the "plants" folder from that mod. The STEP Guide doesn't have us do that, so I'm curious why. The plant textures in Cathedral Landscapes mod are older than the ones in Cathedral Plants, so we are effectively "rolling back" to an earlier version of about half of the textures in Plants. Are the older textures superior? I know I can play around with the textures and see for myself, but everything in the STEP guide is done with a purpose so I just wanted to ask why it's being done this way to help me better understand the thought process. Thanks!

Blue with 2 cogs is right. That video has you set up SKSE differently than this guide (but both should work, technically). He's using an older version of SKSE in the video, so make sure you have the most current version of both the game and SKSE64. You also shouldn't be doing any of the steps past the 9:30 part of that video. Those are if you ever want to use older versions of the game. The current version of Skyrim Special Edition on Steam is 1.5.97. To match this, you should be using SKSE64 version 2_00_17. If not, it certainly will cause a crash.

I'll assume you are following the STEP guide and have done both parts to setup SKSE properly (manually placed the 3 named files into your root directory, and created a mod with the SKSE scripts folder in it). If not, try that first. If you have, make sure that Steam is running in the background before running SKSE through MO2. You should see the Steam icon when you select the Show hidden icons ^ on the right hand side of your Windows Task bar at the bottom of your monitor. You don't want to launch the game from Steam, but Steam still needs to be running for it to work.

Not sure if you figured this out on your own, but if you know how to remove a master plugin from a patch then you should be able to do it. While I personally haven't removed the crafting mods from my setup, I've removed a couple other ones and haven't seen an issue. If you remove CACO, you may want to look at a different mod that fixes the flora re-spawn bug. CACO had that built in. If you haven't removed masters from a patch before, this is my favorite video on the steps you need to take. Fair warning, you will need to use Wrye Bash and that tool isn't covered by this guide. It's pretty straight forward though in this case. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyxDZT49CfM&list=LLm_nE16c7Krz-PS3Sx1Zm3A&index=2&t=0s Your other option is to not use the STEP patch and then you can use whatever mods you want, but you'd need to build your own CR patch and add other mods that handle the fixes the STEP patch does. Unless you are skipping most of the STEP mods, I'd suggest you keep the STEP patch and remove mods as necessary.

True enough. I don't expect to do it a lot, but if I decide to add/remove an exterior object at some point I assume I'll need to rerun them, so checking/un-checking it like the other LOD mods seems easier to me than remembering to add it/remove it from the overwrite folder. My question was more about if there was a specific reason to do it this way for this guide or if the empty mod method would work (based on your answer, I think it does). Thanks again for the response!

Is there a specific reason this guide has us place it in/remove it from the Overwrite folder instead of creating an empty mod for it that we could activate/deactivate whenever we need to re-run SSELODGen? Both methods seem to achieve the same thing, which is to create a plugin to activate before generating the terrain LOD, but the empty mod option seems easier to manage long term. Am I misunderstanding something?

You can disregard. I added it to the Cathedral Weathers and Seasons mod and that seemed to do the trick. Thanks.

Which mod though? The main Cathedral Weathers and Seasons mod or the Cathedral Weathers MCM mod? Sorry if I'm not understanding something obvious. Thanks for your patience.