Kelmych

This section of the DDSopt guide (and the quickstart portion of the guide) has information and recommendations on selecting STEP mods for texture optimization. The number of mods for which optimization is suggested is less than half, and does not include any of the large texture replacement mods. After doing the basic texture optimization, you might want to use reduced size normal maps for some of the textures as discussed in this section of DDSopt guide.

Unfortunately, clean saves don't help with a number of the problems with save games. Arthmoor, the lead of the Unofficial Skyrim patch group, recently commented that he no longer recommends doing this in all cases since it can cause problems with some quests and can cause problems with some mods.

Yeh maybe that doesn't work anymore due to a patch or something. Either way, my papyrus log file has loads of stuff in it. This is my first time running through this process but I feel fairly sure it wouldn't be saying all that stuff if this process worked properly :/ Hopefully someone will know what's gone wrong here seeing as running through the process again didn't seem to work. Cheers. The dispelallspells command in console mode does what it is supposed to do. If you don't have any temporary spells active then it does nothing, as you would expect. Before using the command open the magic menu and choose the rightmost icon. This shows all current effects including permanent and temporary ones. Temporary ones have a time limit as shown in one of the columns of this menu. If there are any temporary spells effects, then when you use the dispelallspells console command and return to this menu, you will see that the temporary spell effects are gone.

In the BAIN Installers tab of the guide, step 6 of ""Obtain the Mods" includes renaming the mods so the mod name starts with associated STEP guide section identifier. A single group of mods is all the mods that are part of one section of the STEP guide (e.g., Fixes), and if you follow the Wrye Bash guide approach all mods in that section of the STEP guide should be renamed to have the section identifier at the beginning of the mod name (e.g., the mod name would start with "D_" if the mod is in the Fixes section (2D)). When Figure 8 was created the STEP guide sections had different identifiers than they do now. We need to replace Figure 8 with an example that uses the current identifiers. The most important thing is to assign the Wrye Bash Installation order number in such a way that when you click the Order column in the Installation Tab the mods are ordered in the same sequence as they are in the STEP guide.

Clicking on the "?" icon at the bottom of Wrye Bash brings up the WB General readme file in a browser window. If you go to a little above the bottom of the page you can select the Advanced Readme; this has descriptions for the contents of each of the tabs (e.g., Missing, Skipped) in the installer window. These are also described in the STEP WB guide. The Advanced Readme also has a difficult to understand discussion of files and folders WB reads or ignores. If an Installation tab checkbox is red then at least one associated file in the Data directory was changed by a user after WB installed the mod, and the change was not done using WB. WB doesn't know whether this is proper or not. An example is when a mod has an ini file that a user can edit; if the user edits it the associated WB checkbox turns red.

I assume you started a new game when you changed UGrids; it is possible to do some additional steps when you change ugrids which allow you to continue, but it doesn't always work. Just because you see what appears to be an error in the Papyrus log doesn't mean there is an actual error that causes game problems. Unfortunately, Papyrus logs aren't a reliable way to trace problems such as the one you have. You would be better off using tools like GPU-Z and Skyrim Performance Monitor to see what is happening. You might want to scan the posts on the Support and Troubleshooting thread to see if you can find problems similar to yours discussed.

I have also wondered which of the follower support mods is more stable and more useful.

This topic is more relevant to the Skyrim thread as STEP itself doesn't have any mods for additional followers.

Since Bethesda announced that it is moving the development team to another project, the likelihood of an answer has decreased.

I don't see how having AF settings in 3 places changes RAM use; two of these settings are used to let Skyrim and the ENB know what is happening. It is actually happening in the video card and there is only one AF process.

I forgot to mention that there is also a small conflict with the aMidianBorn wolf armor and skyforge weapons esp which introduces a new model for Skyforge weapons. Once the determination of how to handle the various weapon "material" keyword conflicts is finished, it should be easy to create (or integrate) a patch for this.

That's also what I suggest for STEP. I've made a small patch for my game to handle the incompatibilities since there are only a few regions in Solstheim, but a patch like this depends on which combination of weather mods is being used.

I like a lot of what this mod does. ACE Speech is similar to part of what the mod does, but this mod to me is more complete. Another appealing aspect of it is that it is compatible with a number of other economic mods. I'm not sure that it should be in the current STEP list since it does change gameplay, but it seems to me to be one that should be in one of the initial gameplay packs that STEP adds.

I took an initial look at this mod. It has a conflict with the Improved Closefaced Helmets STEP mod since it doesn't carry the helmet models forward; if it is loaded before the ICH mod it will not cause problems but some of the useful changes that this new mod provides for the helmets will then require a small compatibility patch. It has a large set of conflicts with Guard Dialog Overhaul. The whole Faction armor approach that it introduces seems somewhat similar (and thus incompatible) to the SPIKE approach used by GDO although I'm not very familiar with either. Both use different Keywords and there aren't any patchers currently available that can handle combining these properly (we need the new Skyrim equivalent of Wrye but there doesn't seem to be anyone who can do this that isn't deeply involved in other utilities :facepalm: ). A compatibility patch for these two looks to me like it will take a fair amount of work, but it would be best to ask kryptopyr about this. My Wrye Bash is adding some strange keywords in the bashed patch to the ammunition records that this mod changes; I need to figure out why.

I agree that the other recommendations in the list should be looked at and most (if not all) of them included in STEP. I'm not quite as convinced as you are about this mod since HRDLC already includes one version of recoloring. I think it it's a good option for those who feel that book cover colors should be less saturated, but I'm not sure that this is a universal opinion. If everyone else feels it's better, however, we should include it. To me spell tomes are a lot more special than most books and more attention and effort would have been spent on them.

I recently provided a set of screenshots that included 3 HD Ivy variants and vanilla; do you need some additional ones?

Unique Region Names does not use weather information (version 4 of the mod did but it was withdrawn), and there are no conflicts with CoT or any other mod that I run (I checked with TES5Edit). The separate Dragonborn addon mod, however, does use weather information and there are conflicts between this addon and most weather mods including CoT and Wet and Cold - Ashes. It is possible to build a patch to fix this. I haven't looked yet at whether this addon could be changed to use the same approach as the main mod thus eliminating conflicts.

I plan to add this mod (and the text below) to the Mod Suggestions, but I wanted to create some examples first since there are no good examples that use the new SkyUI interface. While it is a very powerful and capable mod, it is hard to describe its use without examples . There is a good video that is very controller UI oriented but nonetheless useful, but ... This is what I do; clearly you want to use some different key choices and you can, but you'll have to determine how to do it. I used "Interface Hard Coded Key Tweaks" with the "Numpad Bindable" selection vs. the usual STEP recommended "Standard Tweaks" so I could have the numpad keys for this mod; you may want a different customized setup for this. If I hadn't done this then CFM would have grabbed both sets of number keys. In addition, as mentioned in the description page of the mod, you need to edit two lines in the file in the controlmap.txt file that comes with the Numpad Bindable version of the mod (or any other custom controlmap.txt file that you use): Replace the current version of these lines with: Left Attack/Block 0x70 0x1 0x0009 0 1 1 0x10 Right Attack/Block 0x79 0x0 0x000a 0 1 1 0x10 In any case, I strongly advise that you do NOT try to use as hotkeys for this mod any standard keys that Skyrim itself uses or another active mod uses. The mod allows this, but it does not work reliably as discussed on the Nexus form for this mod. Now to answer specific questions: 1. IMO you don't need change the vanilla hotkeys and you can leave the Categorized Favorites Menu mod installed as before. Use different hotkeys for this mod. I use the numpad keys and other keys for this mod vs. the normal keyboard number keys which are used for CFM; you can choose whatever keys you want as hotkeys but I suggest NOT using 1 through = and leaving these for CFM and other mods. There are a lot of punctuation keys and some ancillary keys that are not being used by Skyrim or Skyrim mods. You can eliminate CFM and try using all the keys for this mod, but I don't recommend this as CFM has very useful capabilities that this mod doesn't. 3. It's a lot easier to use the new MCM menu (added by SkyUI) for More Hotkeys Please to setup the keys in the mod. You can use the old approach as described in the video but it is a lot harder (as you have noticed) than setup using the new MCM menu. You can choose any keys you want, just make sure they are not ones you are using for other purposes. 2. I'm assuming you mean the Destruction choice in spells in the MCM menu. As mentioned in the description, some spells and all the shouts are not automatically included when you click the menu choice to add spells. To add these additional spells, shouts, etc. go to the normal Magic menu and select the spell or shout. This will add it to the spell list. Another spell that I noticed isn't automatically added is the Heal spell in Restoration. You also need to do this for each shout. Once you have done this and saved the game the additional spells and shouts will be remembered.

Unique Region Names changes the name of outdoor areas from the generic term Skyrim to a region name based on the holds, the minor hold capitals, and the Sea of Ghosts. For various reasons, the region names are roughly but not exactly the same as the ones on the Skyrim map. There are no known conflicts between this mod and other mods. Unique Region Names - Dragonborn is also available for regions in Solstheim. It uses regions based on Skyrim weather areas, and will likely have some conflicts with weather mods. It has a one conflict with the STEP mod Wet and Cold - Ashes; if you use this addon mod I suggest having it before Wet and Cold - Ashes in load order.

You didn't specifically mention video card settings, so I assume you followed the guidance in STEP 1B and 1C. These settings affect VRAM and GPU usage, and can have some effect on RAM. Steam has added has more options and flexibility for installation, by the way. Never-ending loading screens aren't the same as a true freeze where the game just stops for no apparent reason. You'll find discussion of the loading screen topic usually with words like "infinite loading screens". I've generally been able to fix these with changes to the ini files, but not always. The last time I saw discussion of problems similar to your problem with interaction with wildlife, etc. was with the RaceMenu mod prior to Skyrim 1.9 release. Are you using RaceMenu? I find Wrye Bash to be particularly helpful when I am trying alternate ini files. I took the STEP ini changes and made two files for them so I can add or remove them (and other ini edits) easily in the INI Edits tab in WB. You didn't mention which version of texture mods you typically installed (e.g., 2Kx2K or 1Kx1K) and whether you generally followed the STEP baseline or Extreme STEP path. When I have problems like yours I try uninstalling groups of mods until I find some differences in behavior. Wrye Bash makes it fairly easy to do install and uninstall groups of mods once they have been initially installed. The Conflicting Graphics section in STEP has the large texture mods; you might try doing this with portions (all or half, for example) of these.

The Morokei fix mod also allowed the mask to be changed to clothing; the USKP fix only adds the enchantment. For me masks have nothing to do with hoods, and I (and a lot of other users) feel that including a hood with a mask is an error for which a fix is appropriate.

The Unique Region Names mod has two Nexus URLs, one for the main mod and one for the Dragonborn addon. How should this be handled in the Mod page; I used the external URL for the addon but I'm not sure this is correct.

I'll make a mod page for it.

Cloth Mage-Focused Dragon Priest Masks changes the Morokei, Nahkriin, and Vokun dragon priest masks to clothing (vs. armor) which allows mages to use them along with Mage Armor spells. It also includes the enchantment fix for the Morokei mask (and the change to make it clothing) that is in the Morokei Mask Enchantment Fix mod in STEP. The difference is that it changes two more masks to clothing. There are two versions of the mod; the alternate esp allows a hood to be worn along with the mask unlike vanilla Skyrim. Personally it is difficult to see why a facial mask should preclude wearing a hood. I feel that for mage characters this new mod is a better one to use than the Morokei Mask Enchantment Fix mod. Both the older Morolei fix mod and this new mod are mergable with Wrye Bash, so the esp is merged into the bashed patch.