Kelmych

Before you run Wyre Bash there should be a "bashed patch, Skyrim.esp" or a "bashed patch, 0.esp'' in the right pane of Mod Organizer. If there isn't, close Mod Organizer then go to the Mod Organizer\mods\ folder and add a new folder named "bashed patch". Copy the "bashed patch, Skyrim.esp" file (which is a blank bashed patch) located in Skyrim\Mopy\templates\Skyrim\ into this new folder. Start MO and activate this mod and you should see "bashed patch, Skyrim.esp" in the left pane of MO. Then you can start Wyre Bash.

Apparently the author of Expanded Towns and Cities let her Photobucket subscription lapse, and unfortunately she put a lot of the useful information in the pictures vs. text. The text by itself is still one of the most complete descriptions of the steps that need to be followed. I avoided adding the details of how to do this in complex cases to the REGS guide since there are so few patches that contain NAVI records and even the step in simpler cases of opening a plugin in the Creation Kit and then saving it is uncomfortable for many users. Few mods are compatible with Open Cities, and the full set of mods in REGS isn't compatible with Open cities. Hopefully the patches you have work with the updated versions of some of these mods. For the mods you want check to see which of the individual patch plugins you want to merge include NAVI records. If there are no more than one then after the merge you don't need the complex procedure, no matter how many master files there are. If you have multiple masters and multiple plugins being merged with NAVI records, then the complex procedure is needed. Briefly, before you open the Creation Kit you need to: determine the desired plugin order of the non-vanilla masters;open Wyre Bash;use Wyre Bash to change the time of each plugin that is a master (in the middle right window of WB), saving each modified plugin with the "save" button in the same window. The times need to be in the desired plugin order since the CK uses the plugin time to determine plugin order;use Wyre Bash to "esmify" each of the master plugins that is currently an esp (using right click on mod in left pane). Then you open the CK, select the merged plugin, make it active, and when the error messages stop save the plugin and exit. Then you need to undo the "esmification" of plugins and, if desired, put the mod times back to their original time Alternatively you can merge only the plugins that have no NAVI records and leave the ones with NAVI records out of the merge. I often do this if there are only a few with NAVI records.

The main STEP guide focuses on changes that remain fairly close to vanilla. You might want to look at the STEP guides and packs on the site which can include mods that aren't necessarily as close to vanilla. For example, look at the SRLE Extended LOTD and SRLE LOTD Reqtified guides which include some of the mods you mentioned.

First the basic guidelines. The REGS pack pages cover some of this but it can be fairly complicated, so I'm not surprised you might be confused. If you merge patch files vs. full mods then there is rarely a problem, by the way. If you merge plugins and none of the plugins have their own NAVI record, or if only one of the plugins has a NAVI record, you don't need to do anything additional after the merge.If you merge plugins and there are NAVI records in more than one of the plugins but all the plugins have the same master file (ignoring the vanilla master files) and that master file is an ESM plugin, and you have unpacked any BSAs for the master file (e.g., merging the modular town/settlement files in ETaC) then after merging with "Merge Plugins" is complete open TES5Edit with only the merged plugin checked and check for errors then delete the NAVI record and save the resulting merged plugin. Then open the creation kit, set the merged plugin as the active file, and when the error messages finish save the plugin and exit. Done! Any other case is complicated. Hopefully I explained this right. For the compatibility plugins you merged do more than one of them have a NAVI record? If there are no NAVI records in the compatibility patches you don't need to do anything; the complex procedure is only for fixing the NAVI record of the merged plugin. If so, since you mention multiple masters, then unfortunately you may need to follow the procedure described here . Provide more detail about what you are merging and I can provide more specific guidance.

With Mod Organizer 1 or 2 you should never extract mods into the Data folder. They are extracted into the Mod Organizer\downloads folder (or the equivalent MO 2 folder); they are placed there during installation. Did you follow the initial steps in the STEP guide?

You can create manual patches and the FO3Edit tools used to help build a merged patch can be helpful when building manual patches. I suggest only using manual patches after creating a bashed patch and using FO3Edit to see what is missing. A Merged Patch that doesn't provide conflict resolution is a lot less useful than a bashed patch, so you will not see Merged Patches recommended often on the STEP site.

I have a question before I can answer several of your questions. You use the term "Merge Patch" as if there were a mod or plugin that is identified as a "Merge Patch". I am not aware of any use of this term by Wrye Flash or Mod Organizer. What do you mean by the term? Wrye Flash does not create a separate "merge patch". When it merges compatibility patches they are included in the bashed patch. Wrye Flash uses the term "Merge Patches" where "Merge" is a verb. This feature allows merging multiple "compatibility patches" into the bashed patch. I understand your reasoning for not wanting to use it, but the benefits are significant. Plugin count is limited in Bethesda games and it helps to reduce the number of plugins needed. In Wrye Flash any plugin that can be merged is shown in green. If the compatibility plugin is merged there is a "+" sign in the box for the plugin. If you don't wan't to use the "Merge Plugins" feature uncheck this box.

The game engine itself contributes some stuttering. I've noticed occasional stuttering as the game loads a new cell even when the CPU and RAM usage are low, and the graphics card (GTX 1080Ti) is at about 30% usage and the VRAM usage is 100s of MB below 4Gb. It's most noticeable when I am going fast such as with horse travel.

Sometime in the last hour it improved significantly and I haven't had any problems since then.

Thanks for the update. The issue will be added to the guide. MO and the Bethesda game engines have frequently had problems with programs that try to "manage" or "observe" them.

Lately the wiki is getting fairly high usage at various times of day which causes this. The STEP team has been working for a while on getting a replacement for the hosting service with more capacity. You will see a lot of messages about this in the forums.

The base name for the program called TES5Edit is xEdit. The same program is used for multiple Bethesda games and can be renamed (e.g., TES4Edit) for use with other games. It is a little harder to merge plugins that include navmesh records (the modular ETaC files); unfortunately the Creation Kit is the only way I know of to fix the navmesh record when this is done. It's use is simple in this case since you just open the plugin with Creation Kit and then save it and close the program, but the Creation Kit in general is always daunting. Many of the REGS mods can just be added to a SRLE Extended LOTD build, or are already included.

Replacing some of the location mods in SRLE LOTD with some mods in REGS (e.g., replacing some of the Arthmoor Village mods with Expanded Towns and Cities) or adding some REGS location mods not in SRLE LOTD (e.g., the city mods) shouldn't require a lot of work in Conflict Resolution. This requires a little expertise with xEdit to look at the conflict resolution patches. Some of the Merges in SRLE LOTD (e.g., Blowing in the Wind, No Snow Under the Roof, Farmhouse Chimneys) would need to be redone to use some different location-mod-related patches. The locations affected by REGS mods, including the location mods being reviewed and considered, can be seen here.

As I said in my post, Linen Wrap is a base Skyrim item; you can tell this since the FormID starts with "00". Currently you can find it in dungeons and use it in crafting other items that include it in the crafting recipe. but you can't create it. What I also said was that it isn't part of (i.e., able to be created by) CCOR. You could ask Kryptopyr to add a "break-down" recipe using other clothing, as Tech suggests; she has been fairly busy with other mods lately by the way. Meanwhile you could create a new small and fairly simple mod that adds a few recipes to create it from some existing clothing types. This mod would not be a patch to CCOR since the recipes would need new constructible object FormIDs.

Linen Wrap is a Skyrim item but crafting it isn't part of CCOR or the base Skyrim plugin. You would need to create a new small mod that allows creating linen wrap (vs. finding it in dungeons) as a constructible object, much like Skyrim does to create leather strips from leather, and perhaps also then using it to create additional items of clothing, etc.

Wyrmstooh isn't available at any reputable site unfortunately. Hopefully sometime The Nexus convinces the author to allow them to reinstate it as they have done for some other mods where the author no longer maintains the mod. CR is conflict resolution. I'll need to look when I'm home to answer your other question

Originally REGS was compatible with SRLE, but in the recent updates this wasn't addressed since following this guide different city and town mods are used. I use a lot of the mods in this LOTD guide myself, along with the location mods in REGS. The REGS guide doesn't cover lighting patches (except for one change to Relihting Skyrim). You can use the lighting changes in this guide instead. If you leave out most of Arthmoors village mods that conflict with REGS there shouldn't be a lot of issues except perhaps with some patches from this guide; I haven't looked at this myself yet; it might not be very difficult. Nightingale Hall Redone mod might need to be removed from the list. You can do the merges the way this guide does them that includes the main esp; just make sure to include the right sets of location-based patches.

The spreadsheet for REGS location mods has been updated.

Thanks for the comments. I saw some posts on Nexus about Stendarrs Beacon being incompatible with Interesting NPCs, so it might not be a good addition. Like you I was surprised to see the recent efforts on TES Arena - Skyrim Frontier. It has 10K+ endorsements and some recent additions, and seems to be compatible with the mods in the guide. I was avoiding Darkwater Crossing since ICAIO has full scripting there. Arthmoor's mod is supposed to be compatible with ICAIO there, but I don't know what level of compatibility it achieves beyond basic since Arthmoor's mod adds scripts for the NPCs. I was also planning to add "Books of Skyrim" since ICAIO has only basic scripting in Solitude and it shouldn't cause any problems. I left the REGS version of Nernies mod and the Understone Keep mod since it doesn't seem like they should interfere with ICAIO. Quest mods are hard to select since I haven't used most of the ones being recommended for addition.

Any suggestions or comments on mods on or not on the list I created would be helpful, especially from you since you created the pack. So far the only major change was to emphasize ICAIO compatibility and to add a few popular enhancement mods.

Several mods for small vanilla or cut content locations have been added to the guide, and several more of these are being reviewed. These mods seem to work well and increase immersion without affecting other mods. There haven't been many comments in the pack thread or elsewhere in the STEP forums on the larger mods like "Settlements Expanded", "Beyond Skyrim: Bruma", the 3 border area mods ("Folkstead", Haafstead", and "Nyhus"), or "Legendary Cities - TES Arena - Skyrim Frontier Fortress" that affect larger areas and may have some conflicts (although few have been reported in the Nexus threads for these mods).

If there are any problems with the batch scripts, or if you have suggestions for changes in the scripts or the instructions, let me know. It's hard to determine which mods benefit from DDSopt optimization.

The changelog includes the result of such changes but not the detailed reasons. Details such as screenshot comparisons are in the forums. Sometimes they are in the thread for the individual mod but often they are in threads about the mod that is replacing them or in threads comparing a set of mods (this is usually the case for mods in the Conflicting Graphics section of the guide). You can search the forums for these comparisons; for example using advanced search look for "Skyrim HD" including the quotes. SRO was originally chosen rather most of the textures in Skyrim HD several years ago, but SRO was removed from Nexus and some textures from Skyrim HD were added back to the guide. Now that an improved version of SRO is available on a reputable site it was added back to the STEP guide since a comparison review of these SRO textures vs. some of the other mods with conflicting textures preferred the SRO ones, and as a result some mods were removed from the guide.

I hope my response is useful

Mod Organizer uses the version of the skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini files in the Mod Organizer\profiles\currentprofile folder (where currentprofile is whichever profile is being used). The enblocal.ini file is in the Skyrim folder and does not change between profiles. By the way, did you use Bethini to setup the ini files?