Kelmych

I've had this happen with several spell types, not just flames. I've always thought it was because of sudden demand for graphics memory and GPU which my system was unable to deliver. For me, this happens more often when I am moving than when I'm stationary.

DDSopt recomputes and replaces (or adds if needed) all the mipmaps. The mipmaps it provides are very often better than those created by the tools used by mod authors.

If you are in the installers tab and click the order column, then you can use drag and drop to change the order of mods. You can't add new mods from outside the Bash Installers directory using WB, but if you use explorer to add it to the directory while WB is active it will show up in WB when it notices the change.

GrimyBunyip, if you send z929669 a PM on the nexus he will get you a Mod Author nameplate here on the STEP forums

Economics of Skyrim has Delev and Relev bash tags, and as I mentioned above the bashed patch preserved the changes EoS makes. I added the Delev and Relev bash tags to T&B, and the bashed patch didn't create any records that override the changes made by T&B. This would thus seem to be one solution to getting the correct bashed patch behavior with T&B. Since it was mentioned on the BOSS thread, I tried using the new BASH tags autodetection script in TES 3.0.29 . It said T&B should have a Delev tag. It didn't note that a Relev tag was needed; however, the Relev portion of the script doesn't check the LVLF (flag) records.

The other parts of SkyTweak seem more interesting to me than the hotkeys part.

I can't figure out what logic WB is using for the bashed patch with the changes that T&B makes. If you look at the changes that Economics of Skyrim makes (after T&B), you will see that the bashed patch preserves what EoS changed vs. putting back what was in Skyrim.esm. The EoS changes are very similar to the ones that T&B makes. But WB doesn't preserve the T&B changes. For now, the simplest way to fix it seems to be what WilliamImm suggests.

If BOSS hasn't gotten to a mod to determine load order and you can't find discussion of this in the Nexus thread on the mod or here on STEP forums, then you have to use TES5Edit to look at conflicts. Start up TES5Edit, say OK to all mods, then open the mod of interest and look at each line (record) with a red background. You can see which mods have conflicts and where the conflicts are. You then have to decide where the mod should load based on the conflicts.

You showed only the list of esp files, but if you are using STEP most of the texture files have no esp files so it is hard to konw what to recommend eliminating. In your list Water is one which adds VRAM use.

SLI doesn't change your VRAM since the memory is replicated in the two cards. SLI provides 2X GPU speed. You don't need the esp file any more for some BSAs, like the HRDLC, when you make an archive of loose files from the resources. The esp for these was only being used to register the BSAs. You can use a BSA or archive of loose files for the DLC BSAs. If you have extracted all the resources from other mods like STEP mods then you might want to also extract these and use them as an archive to prevent any potential problems. I happen to have problems in my game with the Dawnguard BSA if it is optimized and stored back as a BSA, so I use it as an archive.

I see the DBPotteryRestore line frequently in Papyrus logs even when I am not having problems.

I don't think so. The page file is on a hard drive or SSD, and I don't think changing the drive affects any RAM buffers used for it.

There have been several discussions and recommendations over the past month for mods that provide hotkeys and/or equipment sets. The SkyUI team has been discussing a potential of adding some capability to SkyUI, but they haven't been able to identify what would make sense for them to add. I wanted STEP users who have been looking at alternate mods to know about More Hotkeys Please. I've been testing More HotKeys Please for several weeks now and I have been very pleased with the functionality and flexibility it provides, as have others who mentioned this mod. I have looked at a number of the other hotkey-related mods that have been suggested, but I feel More Hotkeys Please is more powerful and useful. The main capabilities it has are: creation of a set of weapons/armor and spells that can be equipped using a single hot key (IMO it is more flexible and powerful than any of the mods that can be used to create "equipment sets".)creation of a sequence of spells (and potions) that can be autocast/used with a single hotkey (The autocast capability has significant flexibility (e.g., which hand/hands are used, re-equip previous equipment/spells in the hands being used after autocast completes).MCM UI for creating these hotkeys which can be single keys or a sequence (e.g., right control key followed by p), unlike some of the other hotkey mods. A hotkey can use any keyboard key that is not being used by vanilla or another mod.There is a good video on the Nexus site that shows some of the power of the mod, but since it is oriented to a console controller and was done before the new MCM menu was available, the UI shown isn't what keyboard/mouse users would use. Unfortunately there aren't any tutorials for using the MCM menu to create hotkeys so at the moment it takes some trial and error to learn how to do this. I still use Categorized Favorite Menus along with this mod. CFM provides a full screen UI for selecting a single spell, item, etc. and I still use it when I need this. But for the "equipment sets" capability (and spell  sequence autocast) I feel that More Hotkeys Please already has a better way to do this.

This post has some support questions but since it primarily about non-STEP mods it is more relevant to the Skyrim thread and should receive more replies there, so it is being moved. The Skyrim Revisited threads includes discussion of some of these mods, so I suggest looking there in addition to this thread. I use Immersive Patrols and like it. I have combined all of the esps into a single esp; the mod author says a version of this mod with a single esp will be available soon.

Even if the STEP files are renamed so they have the correct package installation order when viewed in package name order, as additional mods are added (e.g., Skyrim Revisited mod recommendations) there will always be a need to have some non-STEP mods included in the install order between STEP mods. I personally don't rename these mods, I just assign them to the correct spot in the install order.

You might want to include the cage in Langleys Wood Metal and Stone Textures Workshop in the comparison.

Yes, that seems correct as far as I can tell. They should be moved to Skyrim.ini . I did a Google search and almost all the references have these two parameters in Skyrim.ini, and they are are in Skyrim_default.ini .

If you want to make a file with combined normal resolution and reduced resolution textures with DDSopt, then I suggest that on the first pass you exclude all the normal maps and only process them in the 2nd pass. The example in the DDSopt guide is related but would need changes. On the first pass inintially select all the textures then instead of unselecting all the regular textures as in the example unselect the normal maps (similar to steps 4 & 5 in the example) then process the remaining textures. On the second pass use steps similar to the example to exclude the rest of the textures and process just the normal maps. That way you are not trying to overwrite textures that DDSopt already wrote in the output file.

I fixed this on the Wiki notes.

If you put all the resources back into BSAs then mod load order and installation order are locked together. Many of the STEP changes need to have these two be separate. Look at the "Loose Files vs. BSAs" sidebar on this section of the DDSopt guide.Â

In the troubleshooting thread today one of the posts mentioned that the STEP guide has ini tweaks for iShadowMapResolutionPrimary and iShadowMapResolutionSecondary in SkyrimPrefs.ini while Bethesda has these parameters in Skyrim.ini . I checked the default files in vanilla Skyrim and this seems to be true; SkyrimPrefs does have a parameter iShadowMapResolution but not the other two. Are these parameters ones which can be in either or does the STEP guide have them in the wrong file?

There is a changelog for each of the Unofficial Skyrim patches (base and DLC) referenced on the Nexus page description for each of the patches. It has a description of every change included. Reading this list, I noted that each release has a massive set of small changes that fix problems in the game ranging from gameplay to bad textures/meshes. I'm not familiar with any issues in the Dark Brotherhood quests, but if you just look at the totality of the scripts included in the Unofficial patches you can get an idea of how many quests are fixed by this patch. The Bethesda fixes cover a much smaller set of problems than those in the Unofficial patches. If you look at the UESP Skyrim Wiki and look at the quests and locations, you will see a list of bugs at the bottom of each page. The descriptions also mentions which quests/location bugs are fixed by either an official patch or an unofficial patch. The vast majority of bug fixes are from the unofficial patches.

We'll edit the guide to mention the problems with putting vanilla resources back into BSA format. There are some known problems, but some don't use the resources that are affected. It is probably safer to leave the resources as loose files as discussed in some recent posts.