Kelmych

Thanks, I hadn't seen this yet. I'm not sure where this should be in mod priority, and then which meshes and textures (if any) should be hidden. It has a lot of conflicts with NMC's FO3 DLC textures from NMCs New Vegas textures, with Flora Overhaul Forested Edition (not surprising since it replaces grasses), and with Collision Meshes FO3. Have you or other users had a chance to compare these? You mentioned previously you wanted a different look to some of the Flora than Vurt's mod, so is this the one you prefer? It also makes a lot of landscape-related parameter changes in the plugins included with the mod. Vurt has some recommended INI settings for use with Flora Overhaul. Does the UHQ mod need different INI settings?

Not in Wrye Bash, but the plugin view (right pane) of Mod Organizer provides this.

I'm not sure why my experience is different than that of GamerPoets. I did initially setup my system using BethINI for INI paramerters (I then added changes mentioned in the FO3 guide and some of the changes that GamerPoets recommends in his Fallout 3 My Way videos), and my graphics card using Nvidia Inspector and the recommended Skyrim settings here. I am not sure how these affect FSR.

Whenever a mod is part of a merge all BSAs need to be unpacked. The instructions in the main guide page for Gray Cowl of Nocturnal Alikr Flora Overhaul say to unpack the BSA; if this wasn't clear what text do you suggest? A reminder about unpacking BSAs can be added on the Merge page if that would help. The instructions for cleaning imply that manual cleaning is needed (vs. using full TES5Edit cleaning). Initially proceed as if full cleaning is needed using TES5Edit to remove ITMs for the plugin. DON'T save the cleaned plugin. Instead note the FormIDs (8 character identifiers) of the four ITMs noted by TES5Edit and then close TES5edit making sure that the save plugin box is not checked. Restart TES5Edit, select the plugin, and then manually remove three of the plugin records leaving the xx00F46F plugin where xx is the plugin ID in TES5Edit. Close TES5Edit, this time saving the plugin. It is now propely cleaned. Some ITMs are not errors; they are intentionally added by a mod.

As I mentioned, the fix is described in several of the posts on the Better Fast Travel - Carriages and Ships - Overhauled Nexus page. The post on November 8 from ribbs23 provides a detailed description (in the spoiler field) of how to fix the problem. This post is currently near the top of the first page of posts for the mod. It is a manual patch that you need to build with xEdit (TES5Edit). If you still have questions let us know.

The new version 14.3 ETaC modular patches still includes the EWDR patch. The FOMOD for the ETaC modular patches isn't reliable so the next update for the REGS guide will use manual installation of the patches. You can always get it from the ETaC modular patch archive file and manually add it to the installed mod; it's just a plugin. ICAIO has also been updated. The new version requires a small manual patch in Better Fast Travel. This will be in the guide update; you can find it now in the posts on the Better Fast Travel Nexus page.

I tried setting the heap management as you suggest, along with using the FSR settings on your Nexus page. FO3 crashes consistently for me when I try this. Using Win 10 Creators Update with FSR disabled I have infrequent FO3 crashes.

This will be added to the guide. Only a few mods in the guide have had changes recently, but an update will be made soon.

You can find some of this in GamerPoets video on INI tweaking. I'll do some comparisons between the two INI files with the Steam and GOD versions and see what I find on the differences.

I recently changed FO3 to use the GOG FO3 GOTY version vs. the Steam GOTY version. I use Windows 10 and it was updated a little while ago with the Fall Creators Update. I am using INI files based on the values that BethINI sets for FO3, the additions in the FO3 guide, and some of the INI recommendations in the recent GamerPoets video on INI changes. I'm not using ENBoost since ideally I shouldn't need it with the gaming system I am using. I have a problem with FSR. If I leave it out I don't have any stability problems. If I include it I typically get crashes after ten minutes or less playing FO3. I started with the Roy Batty FSR INI file that GamerPoets included in the Fallout 3 My Way Nexus page. I changed iDefaultMode (under Critical Sections) to 1 and I still have the same problems. I tried several different sets of Fallout.ini and FalloutPrefs.ini parameters, running with and without ENBoost, but the stability problem doesn't change. Any suggestions?

The GOG version of Fallout 3 uses a different set of default values for Fallout_default.ini and FalloutPrefs.ini. There are also different INI default files for the other 2 Bethesda games that GOG supports, Oblivion and Fallout New Vegas. These INI files are typically setup for a somewhat more capable system than the INI values found in the Steam version.

Having GeForce Experience or other similar programs running in the background often creates problems - typically CTDs - with Bethesda games, by the way.

You may be able to make changes using FNVEdit to change the record in the plugin that includes the nif file name, depending on how significant the change is. If you are just changing a texture without changing the nif then you may be able to change the texture file in the mod file and then reinstall the mod or you can make a file with the new textures and then install this file with MO and merge it with the original file; this will replace the revised textures with the new ones.

Vividian Extended weathers provides some additions that are still close to the weathers in vanilla Skyrim. The STEP pack goal is to provide enhancements that remain fairly close to vanilla. Other weather mods like Vivid Weathers and CoT make major changes to Skyrim weather. They can, however, be added to a STEP build without a lot of effort.

I use Vivid Weathers and I had to remove the records in the STEP Extended patch for Vividian Extended weathers (there are only a few such records). You will likely need to do something similar to use CoT.

The FO3 guide currently includes 6 texture mods from QuazarX: Robots HD Revolution and one for each DLC. The NMC Texture Pack page says it does not cover the DLC. When I look at these 6 QuazarX mods with Mod Organizer there aren't any texture file conflicts with the NMC Texture pack.

Running MO as an administrator can cause problems; it isn't designed to be run with administrative privileges. The folders with Mod Organizer, Steam, and the various game folders need to be set so everyone has full access.

It only covers the main map. Are there other mods that cover the DLC maps; I'm not aware of any?

The guide is being updated, including the INI section, and this will be fixed. This section will also point to the INI video recently created by GamerPoets who did extensive comparisons of some of the INI values and created new recommendations for many of the FO3 parameters.

A pack is a collection of mods that can be added to an existing load of STEP Core or Extended (some packs work with both, some require Extended). Packs expect STEP to be installed. Since the creation and maintenance of packs is a volunteer activity the packs are typically in different degrees of maintenance. Packs are rarely discontinued, but they are not always maintained regularly. You can usually tell be reading the last page or so of the pack thread (in the Packs forum) how recently the pack was maintained. Packs are intended for users with some experience in modding Skyrim, and often experienced users can work with packs that have small to moderate problems. Pack descriptions don't typically have a lot of material on compatibility with other packs. Usually you can post questions in a pack thread about compatibility with other packs that interest you, and you will often but not always get answers since it depends how familiar users are with the pack. I currently maintain the A Real Explorer's Guide to Skyrim (REGS) pack and at the beginning of the pack description are comments on the purpose of the pack and compatibility with other packs and guides. There are also guides for Skyrim (see the Modding Guides forum). These are not completely compatible with the STEP guide, and are also aimed at more experienced modders.

You certainly added some great new videos. The guide needs to be revised to note this, and to point to some of the specific videos like the removing navmeshes and INI files vdieos. Should some of the video references to GamerPoets videos in the guide be changed to reference the recent videos?

We are all hoping that the new Nexus effort to avoid losing mods hosted on their site will be successful; we all hate to lose good mods.

The only way to reduce the size of the textures with DDSopt (or other related programs) is to use the optimization process with the configuration parameters set to reduce texture sizes. That's why we recommend doing as little texture size reduction as possible with high quality texture mods.

There is a big problem with posting any links to mods using sites that are not approved by the mod author. Preserving author rights is important. In addition, if the mods were taken from the Nexus, hosting these mods on another site violates the terms of usage of the Nexus (unless the mod author allows hosting the mod on the other site). It's unfortunate when mods are removed by the author from the Nexus or other hosting site, but STEP does not allow posting links to sites for mod downloading except those approved by the mod author. The Nexus has been trying to contact mod authors who want to remove their mods to get permission to allow the Nexus to take over maintenance of the mod so the community will not lose the mod.