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Yes - those horses do look really good. Perhaps the best I've seen so far from screenshots. EDIT: Let us know what you think Neovalen.

So let me get this straight - after the STEP 2.2.9.1 guide is officially released and instructions are put out for the DynDOLOD mod in the guide, all of the other LOD mods will be removed from the guide in favor of this mod, since this mod dynamically will create custom LODs for any unique object with a unique texture in any load order - so other LODs from other mods are no longer really of any use?

Sounds like I should just wait for the Grasias Fixas part to eventually be included in STEP... I couldn't find any info on the Red Mountain Particle Plume in the STEP forums, and I'd have issues trying to test it because I don't even know where to find this visual in Skyrim... If it's in Solsteim, well,... I've never actually been there in this Elder Scrolls game, and don't know how to teleport there using the console commands.

Better Dynamic Snow Added SMIM option for main files - Users that also use SMIM should reinstall with the new option. - This removes any need of managing asset conflicts between BDS and SMIM and also allows more freedom with mod order (not to be confused with plugin order). This is nice, prior to this I was installing the RF two times. One time with STEP options. The other time with only BDS selected. The reason I had to do this was to keep the BDS files loaded before SMIM, but keep the STEP portion in its proper spot. Now that's not necessary. I still need to install it twice, but now I can just merge the second installation into the first and put it all into the proper STEP load order location. I noticed a completely new mod included in the package - "Grasias Fixas". Who here has decided to make use of this mod, and why? Also, what about the "Red Mountain Particle Plume" - is that one worth installing? I ask this because neither are said to be part of STEP.

Hmm. Without looking at it, but remembering what a lot of water mods do (RWT included)... I imagine that actually removing RWT from the patch would be difficult and require a lot of TES5Editing. I'm talking about Worldspace edits - not fun to do and not easy, because they are so damned tedious being that there are a lot of them. That might be a lot of work, but maybe I'm wrong. You could always try installing Purity on top of STEP and use a custom patch to resolve anything that needs resolving. I'll tell you what though - I experimented with the notion of doing what you are asking about. I tried to take the easy way out and left the "Pure Water" (one of the parent mods of Purity) edits in, allowing it to overwrite my installation of RWT and the STEP Patch. The results were less than ideal for me. I don't know if it was due to the inability of simply installing Purity afterwards and having everything be properly overwritten, or if Purity's water is just not as well done as RWT. The place I went to see the difference between the two - down from Helgen towards Riverwood at the Warrior/Thief/Mage stones overlooking the lake/river. The surface of the water did not blend well when I left Purity's water intact. On the other hand, the surface of the water looked great when I circumsized the Pure Water portions of Purity out and left it all to RWT. But all of that may just be the results of improperly overwriting - I don't know.

It's better gameplay to need light sources and to feel that my character is hiding in an actually dark place when enemies are searching around and can't see me when I'm pretty much right next to them (but in the dark). It just feels beyond stupid when I am in a shadow within which everything is very easy to see and someone is walking all around next to me searching intently and saying things like, "did I hear something?" I don't even want to play the game when it's like that. Also, it feels beyond stupid when I'm in the middle of the forest in the middle of the night (without a light source) and I can actually see things around me when the sky is completely thickly clouded over and there's a downpouring rain storm. In that situation the only time I should see anything is when lightning occurs. It's less fun when dark is not dark. Kills "immersion" and makes it lame.

A shame, because my LED backlit monitor does blacks very well when I set my digital color format to YCbCr444 (instead of RGB) and drop my gamma from 1 to 0.90. It looks absolutely amazing. Realistic Lighting Overhaul Weather gets those nights looking fantastic for me, appropriately for all weathers. It just doesn't cover Solsteim. :( Not to mention it doesn't have the nice saturation effects that Purity has at times.

What I don't like - I think that nights should be darker. Basically, Realistic Lighting Overhaul Weathers got nights perfect. You have decent moonlight on a clear night and it is pretty much pitch black in a rain or snow storm. All the weathers in between accurately reflect the visibility. So there are nights where you don't need a torch, and others where you wouldn't be able to go out without one (unless you want to walk around aimlessly). I think Purity's nights are too bright. Laast seems to have tried to just make one version for the Steam Workshop, and so he averaged out the darkness from Pure Weather. In his latest version of Pure Weather, he had a bright night version and a realism version (which is dark). Too bad he didn't do similar with Purity...

I like the Purity textures>landscape>river*.* textures and prefer over STEP's. Even though on one hand the ones in STEP cause the river beds to looks more like they belong in a mountainous area with pebble/stone mountain runoff beds, what sucks about the ones currently in STEP is that the textures try to put off the presentation that the river bed is mainly a bed of stones (and some of them fairly decent in size). The problem with this style is that the mesh of the ground (the actual surface bumpiness of it) does not match the texture and the end result is that it looks low quality and very flat despite the attempt to fool one into thinking it's not. Especially with the larger stones appearing on the texture just looking as flat as everything around it. Purity uses a much more sandy/muddy type of riverbed texture. It works better because it fits the smooth ground mesh much better. That's my opinion. EDIT: Purity's textures>landscape>grass looked good, but I decided to hide it anyway, just because I couldn't figure out if I actually thought it was better or worse than the version in STEP (which is from SFO). Since I didn't have a strong opinion, I just decided to go with the STEP status quo... EDIT2: I hid Purity's textures>sky>skystars.dds in favor of STEP's.

OK, did a little more tonight. I think the STEP tree textures look better (I did some screenshot comparisons)... so in Purity I hid textures>terrain (which includes a tree LOD); I also hid textures>landscape>trees (something with tree branches?). I did both at the same time so I can only attest to how I thought it looked with both enabled or both disabled. I also hid textures>landscape>dirtcliffs (I think Purity's may look a little too uniform in design, while STEP's looks more varied in design). Let me know if you disagree. I'll get through more tomorrow...

I thought something like that, but the explanation from Gamwich puts it very nicely into words.

I didn't look at them in the game much, but supposedly he added objects around the waterfalls using worldspace edits and put different god statues around some special waterfalls around skyrim. I deleted all of it without looking to see what it actually looked like. I just figure that there are enough shrines and statues around that I don't really want any more... For all I know he could have drastically made a bunch of the falls look nicer...

I notice in the Nexus mod page pics it looks like it has bits of dead flesh on it, versus the current mod in STEP which is clean bone.

"Oh Gamwich, rustic all over my face." (lol) But seriously, how does it compare to "Enhanced HD Dragon Bones"? That is in STEP.

There are many other texture conflicts, but I haven't gotten around to compare them. I could just delete/hide them all in Purity, but I'm wondering if any of them might actually be improvements over STEP (like I think the mountain rock textures were). Any input (I'm done for the night)?

OK, so I have been doing some testing and comparing. Here's what I've done so far and what I recommend (so far): Install Purity in MO TES5Edit: edit Purity.esp. Delete: Water, Static, and Worldspace>Tamriel. (I am hesitant to touch the Solsteim Woldspace edits due to the fact that they seem to have intentionally removed a region label that may be important for Purity's weather or lighting edits done in those areas of the game, plus in my load order those edits didn't seem to affect any other mods) MO: extract Purity.bsa in Purity mod to Purity mod directory. Delete Purity.bsa (or hide it if you like). Hide (or delete): textures>effects>(for now all but fxraindrops.dds, as the other textures are in conflict with RWT); textures>landscape>roads (while the new snowy icy roads look nice on their own or with the Purity snow textures, they don't work well with the STEP snow textures and those are preferred because...); textures>snow01.dds & snow02.dds (I don't think the new snow works well "AT ALL" with current STEP glacial mods so I say don't use them); textures>sky>sun.dds & sunglare.dds (purely your own judgement, but I have another preferred sun and sunglare mod that doesn't have that damned unnatural lens effect thing going on, which I HATE); texture>water (conflict with RWT) So far that is what I determined needs to be removed/hidden. I know there are more .esp edits to be done (or patches to be installed - AOS, or True Storms if you use that mod) and possibly some other texture/mesh removals/hides to do. I just haven't spent the time yet to compare Purity's to STEP's with all of them. I did compare the textures>landscape>mountains textures and I prefer Purity's to STEP's. The reason being that Purity's rocks in general look better. How do they look better? Just walk down from Helgen to just above the first waterfall on the way to Riverwood and look at that rock face - compare to STEP's. Look at a wet rock - compare to STEP's. Do I need to say more? OK, the only thing I don't like about Purity's rocks are that the LODs for them don't materialize as well as STEP's since the color of the detailed rock is darker than the LOD rock color. Will this be fixed when the Dynamic LOD mod gets added to STEP? I dunno, but maybe?... Please let me know what you figure out.

Yeah, I wish that Purity did not include the changes to water, waterfalls, and rocks and such things... I wish it just stuck to lighting and weather. The fact that it includes those other changes decreases its ability to be compatible with very customized mod selections. I haven't spent too much time examining the Purity mod yet, but do you think that some of those features (water, waterfall changes, rocks, etc) could be easy to strip out without suffering from strange visual repercussions from doing so?

My main exterior lighting and weathers mod solution is currently Realistic Lighting Overhaul. The main problem with that is that the author of that mod tapped out of modding early due to apparently major health and personal issues, and thus never got around to covering the DLCs (EDIT - I think I was wrong, it just doesn't cover the Dragonborn DLC weathers but does cover Dawnguard). It's a very unfortunate thing, because he did such a good job with what he did cover. In light of this situation, I would really like to either switch to an alternative mod for covering exterior lighting and weather that is all-inclusive (covering all DLC content in addition to core game)... or, I could keep what I have and add another mod that will cover what RLO currently (and probably never will) does not. Does anyone have advice on this matter? I am thinking of 1 of 2 options (maybe a third too): 1. I am thinking of possibly installing Purity instead of RLO (but that will lead me to have to do extensive review of my mod list and to have to reinstall mods that have Pure Weather/Purity installation options or patches). This option will lead to a LOT of work, unfortunately... 2. The alternative to this is to keep the RLO content (and maybe some other conflicting mods) that I already have installed have in place, but then install Purity on top of it. Then go into Mod Organizer and TES5Edit and delete all Purity records that conflict with the records of any other mods that I currently have installed. What would likely be left over would be Purity modifications for DLC content not covered by my current mod list. Does that plan make sense, or will it likely lead to strange visual inconsistencies that just don't look right? Any opinions on this matter would be very welcome. 3. I was thinking of possibly replacing RLO with ELFX exteriors mod and the weather beta mod since I use ELFX and ELFX Enhancer for interior lighting, but I don't like the current status/design of ELFX weathers (I think my reservations mainly stem from how it handles sunglare).

Thank you, Dhampyru. I appreciate the links. I'm not just trying to get instructions catered more towards STEP, but also trying to prompt someone with the knowhow to action. I've noticed that staff mod testing and progress towards 2.2.9.1 has really slowed down within the last few weeks - even before the paywall situation got people preoccupied. There are many mods that have been in testing for a long time without much discussion towards resolution.

Can we get some basic instructions for installing this mod into the 2.2.9.1 guide from someone who has properly installed this into STEP? I've been waiting to test this out to see how it works. The mod has been in the guide for a few weeks now, but no one put detailed info/instructions for it yet (and it looks like that kind of mod that needs some).

We don't even need compares - trust me, just add it. ;) I just compared myself in-game and it's definitely an improvement with no drawbacks. He provides 3 versions - lower res (1K), blended res (1-2K), and higher res (2K).

Teabag86 made this - Hunterborn Campfire Patch: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/64934/?tab=4&&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fcomments%2F%3Fmod_id%3D64934%26page%3D1%26sort%3DDESC%26pid%3D0%26thread_id%3D2784654&pUp=1

Anyone have installation instructions for a modified STEP setup for this mod? I'm thinking about possibly having it replace my current weather and exterior lighting mods. Does this mod have dark nights (hopefully nearly pitch black in certain weather conditions)? EDIT: noticed this Nexus link to - "Purity patch for Audio Overhaul Skyrim 2": https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65319/

I think you brought up a good idea - having armors not clip with the ears, but having clothing do it. I'd bet some people would be interested in that - either people who already use the mod and wish it was like that or people who have been tentative about using the mod because they thought it should be like that.

I love Gamwich's work.