Kelmych

You're fine. This question comes up periodically and we explain our position and rationale. Like with many other mods removed from Nexus we don't know why it was done. Perhaps the author will at some point contact Nexus and allow it to be taken over by them. Fortunately it does not provide very many FO3 textures when following the FO3 guide, and since it is not longer available it will be removed from the guide.

DDSopt can be used to reduce the size of the textures in SRO. The highest level folder is "textures" which is what DDSopt expects. The bigger issue is whether you actually need to reduce the texture sizes, or at least reduce very many of them. (e.g., only reduce the 4K textures). A lot depends on what other mods you are using with 2K landscape and architecture textures.

We don’t include any links to mods that the mod author hasn’t approved since this violates the mod author’s rights. It also violates the terms of use of the Nexus if the mod was originally downloaded from the Nexus. The Nexus has been trying to get mod authors who no longer want to maintain a mod to give the rights to the Nexus and they will make arrangements to maintain it so it doesn’t get removed from the Nexus.

I wanted you to check whether the merged plugin shows the plugins that were merged as masters in the merged plugin. Have you tried merging just two plugins to see what happens in a simple case. Also, you haven't provided any specific examples of what you are merging; it would help to see this. If, for example, you are merging a plugin that is a master for other plugins not included in the merge then there will be problems.

After you create the merged plugin using Merge Plugins try looking at the plugin with TES5Edit. Include the plugin in an MO profile and then start TES5Edit with Mod Organizer (I'm assuming you have setup TES5Edit as an executable in MO) and select only the new merged plugin. You can look at the file header record and it will show all of the master files for the plugin. After merging plugins the new merged plugin should not include in the list of Masters any of the plugins that were merged.

I usually use manual download for all mods myself, and I use the Nexus tracking center to alert me when updates are available. NMM and MO aren't as reliable for downloads as for other tasks. The external installer isn't about downloading, it is an alternative FOMOD installer. Currently MO can handle all of the installs without an external FOMOD installer. In the MO settings (crossed tools icon) select plugins and then select Fomod Installer and make sure that enabled is true and prefer is true.

I don't think there is a way to do what you want in either MO1 or MO2.

The answer isn't always the same. With some merges Copy General Assets would include resources that should not be copied (since some of the resources in the mods being merged are not part of the merged mod), while for other merges it is useful to check this box since all of the resources in the mods being merged will be part of the merged mod. In cases when it is not ticked there are usually instructions after the initial merge instructions on which resources to copy to the merged mod.

Since it seems Adonis isn't providing these updates any longer they will be removed from the guide.

The links for these retextures point to MediaFire. That’s the only place they are available. Adonis isn’t the keeper of these

The first playthroughs of FO3 I did years ago had a lot of stability problems. I have had far fewer problems in the games using the mods and utilities in the CPD guide.

TTW includes a lot of FNV so you might prefer the CPD guide since it’s FO3 only. For now don’t clean Bethesda ESMs since more info on this will be added soon. Reading the TTW guide might provide useful info even if you aren’t using it.

The biggest issue will be testing stability since it is affected by many things and isn’t easy to measure. Performance testing is fairly straightforward. I don’t have any performance problems with FO3 soI leave the heap off for better stability.

Fallout Stutter Remover has been a great help reducing problems with the Fallout 3 game engine (and Fallout NV and Oblivion) but several users have recently reported problems with some of the recommended settings for the associated INI file. iDefaultMode = 3 (under Critical Sections) Audley mentioned recently when using the new Fall Creators Update for Win 10 that setting this parameter to any value other than 1 caused constant crashes GeneralJohn reported recently in a Fallout 3 Nexus FSR post that setting this parameter with the Fall Creator's Update to any value other than 1 caused freezes bHookLightCriticalSections = 1 (under Master) Gopher's suggestion is to set this to 0 Audley previously mentioned in the STEP guide form that setting this to 0 caused a drastic reduction in FPS on his system bReplaceHeap = 0 (under Master) NVSR creator's recommendation is to use 1, but it's a tradeoff between performance and stability fMaximumFPS = 0 (Under FPS_Management) In the Fallout 3 FSR Nexus page Loveblanket mentioned the possibility of setting this to 30 to reduce FPS and allow using higher resolution textures on his system (I'm not sure whether other users will find this useful). iHeapSize = 250 (under Heap) In the Fallout 3 FSR Nexus page Loveblanket mentioned the possibility of setting this to a larger value (between 250 and 450) to accommodate the increased memory provided by the LAA fix. This assumes, of course, that the heap is enabled. The FO3 guide will be updated for at least the iDefaultMode comments. It would help if other users test this and other FSR parameters mentioned that seem useful to change.

I'm glad you found it so quickly.

I'll look at Winterhold - Expanded Ruins and see what happens in my game.

When DDSopt input directory or output directory is set to a very large folder you need to wait for it to fully load the folder before making changes. It might take more than an hour. I'm not sure what registry keys have the input and output directories. You could search for them in the registry I expect, but I usually just let DDSopt run until it finally loads the full folder and I then change it to the correct one.

I haven't heard of this happening before. Did you try loading some previous saves to see if this also happens with them?

REGS is intended to be compatible with STEP Extended, and I'm not sure "Great Forest of Whiterun Hold" is compatible with the mods in STEP Extended that affect the landscape. The Nexus page doesn't mention whether it is compatible with a number of REGS mods (e.g., Inns and Taverns, Settlements Expanded, Better Fast Travel) that add or change buildings or small land areas in the Tundra regions.

The Solsthein expansion has a different esp so people who don't have the DLC can still use Vilja. They can likely be merged together, but I didn't check for this when I was using Vilja (with Skyrim but not with SRLE LOTD).

You did install (left pane of MO) DarNified UI (needed so the FWE FOMOD works correctly) before FWE, and then installed DarnUI Support for FWE later in the installation as per the guide, right? The version of DarNifiedUIF3.esp from DarnUI Support for FWE will be the one that is used in the game (it will be in the right pane of MO).

Red Exclamation marks indicate that a model (mesh file) is missing. This can happen if the some of the mesh files don't get loaded correctly during installation. There are not very many mods that change the Springvale playground. Did you try using the console and clicking on the exclamation mark to see which mod owns the missing model; the first two characters of the 8 character FormID are the plugin index for the mod that owns the model? It can be tricky sometimes when clicking on the exclamation point since it is so big and clicking on some parts of it doesn't provide the proper information about the model.

Wrye Bash, unlike Mod Organizer, does not support profiles of mods. Personally I use the Nexus tracking center to see when mods are updated and I manually download the update.

What kind of system and graphics card are you using?

The FWE FOMOD script for FO3 has always seemed a little unstable. I haven't tried installing it in Windows 10, and I don't have the Creators Update yet.