statmonster

Thanks! Very helpful.

Ever since the AV update when I run SUM I get an error on AV which says "Failure gathering packages back to AV folders" (or something like that) when I run SUM. Other than that it seems to run OK and seems to play OK. Is anyone else getting an error like this? What's the cause? How can it be fixed? IS it doing any harm?

If you reduce the textures to 2048 the you reduce the normals (textures with a file name like *_n.dds) to 1024. See https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:DDSopt_%26_Texture_Overhauls#tab=Appendices

Entering Riverwood from Helgen often causes CTDs as the game is trying to load a lot of stuff. You probably need to try various tricks to increase your performance. Set your ini for better performance (move the various shadow settings down to 2048 or 1024 for example). Try optimizing your textures, reducing them to 2048 and half sizing your normals. Save after you fight the wolves but before sighting Riverwood.

I take it you are not using the various crash fixes for Sounds of Skyrim, no?

It might have, but I thought I checked the upload date and that didn't seem likely.

It would be nice if they were easier to spot if you were more skilled at at - maybe as your sneak progresses or perhaps even easier to spot if you are walking instead of running. But that might defeat the point of having no scripts, as well as make it pretty pointless at higher levels. An alternative might be a texture that was very shiny in bright light so if you are creeping around with a torch you would see it but if you are trying to sneak about if the dark it's not noticeable.

Yes, probably a skeleton on animation issue. Don't install any of these with the MO integrated FOMOD installer..

Solist - Sharlikran has some good videos on this how to use these tools. Follow links from TES5Edit to his web page and videos.

I think Neo might be looking at Sounds of Skyrim which I think covers some of these issues.

To follow on my post above .... I think SR has done a phenomenal job on the stability and visual appearances of Skyrim front (textures, meshes, animations, ENBs...), so I would like to see future emphasis directed towards game play - such as combat, sneaking and maybe magic modifications or overhauls, some follower modifications or additions, maybe some perk modifications and perhaps quest or location mods. Things like AV, SIC and Skytest cover non-human enemies pretty well though perhaps there is a bit that could be done to perk up (no pun intended) human enemies. OTOH, that's only my view; perhaps Neo does not share my view that these aspects of Skyrim modding could use a bit more attention at this stage in SR's development.

I agree. I think it does perhaps support some formalized testing of Duel to see what it actually does. My casual impression when playing it was that it works pretty well. There are a couple of things I really like about it (or think I do...): targets of archery usually try to take cover, blocking is generally pretty effective and additional stamina matters a lot on combat. It also seems (or I have been led to believe it is) pretty "light-weight" in that it doesn't cause lagging in combat. As for Ultimate Combat; the description looks interesting. I guess I am hesitant because these sorts of mods usually need some seasoning to iron out the bugs. It looks like it is incomplete, not dealing with archery, magic (understandable), and some creatures. Also the grammar makes it difficult to understand exactly what is meant in several cases. (i.e does "Marked for death becomes hard to effectiveness" mean that marked for death is ineffective against these target or has added effectiveness against them?)

I'd be more interested in seeing Oblivion than Fallout, even though I have the latter and not the former.

Has anyone ever used Sewers of Skyrim? ( https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/14351 )Â If so what do you think of it? Seems like an interesting extension which, hopefully doesn't conflict with much. Is it stable? Arthmoor apparently liked it enough to make a patch to his Open Cities mod.

I was watching Sharlikran's video on using TES5Edit to create a merged patch. Seemed pretty cool.

Has anyone used TES5Edit to create a merged patch? If so, how did it work out?

I believe it was used in a mod that has subsequently been removed or corrected by the mod author. I did it from top to bottom - but for that one just leave yourself a note to come back to the patch when you get to Ars Metallica, or you could just install Ars Metallica early. Given the modular nature of MO it doesn't really matter too much what order you do things in - you can just activate and deactivate mods, but it's probably easiest to go top to bottom to make sure you don;t skip anything. Also - I would strongly recommend you load up the game every few mods (especially ones you are editing) to make sure it works and you didn't make a mistake. It's easier to isolate the locations a mistake among a few mods than among a few hundred. You can still install things not compatible with NMM in MO. Download the file. Then click the button in the upper left corner of MO: "Intall a new mod from an archive". But for this one I would recommend a different process: 1. Open downloaded 1.51 file with 7z. 2. Choose the female body you want. 3. Rename it femalebody_1.dds. 4. Open the DIMONIZED UNP female body file in explorer by right clicking on the entry in MO and choosing "Open in explorer". 5. Close MO (for safety - may not be necessary). 6. Drop the renamed file (from 3 above) in the folder you opened (in 4 above). Say yes if it asks to replace/overwrite. (I can't remember if it will.) 7. Open up MO and you are good to go. P.S. It would be worthwhile to open up Skyrim at this point and make sure it turned out ok.

The obvious first step is to check that Ars Metallica and SkyTest are enabled... ... though I'm pretty sure you already checked that.

They pretty quickly get him down on his knees with my character behind him hacking at wolves circling around while I use him as a giant meat shield. But 8 extra pieces of leather helps!

I was wondering where that pack of wolves came from - they're pretty obnoxious for a level one character.

When you are just testing a lot of different mod alternatives or similar things I find it often easier to simply disable SUM and any mods relying on it prior to testing. Do all the testing and then re-enable the mods and SUM and make sure everything still works OK with it back on. It's much faster.

I'm getting a lot of crashing (CTD and freezes) trying to enter Riverwood. Of course it's always been a problem, but it well over 1/2 of my recent attempts to do so have resulted in a crash which seems higher than it was a few days ago. (Of course the sample sizes are small so ...) Not sure if it's SkyTest is just adding a lot of new animals there (cow, pig, many useless geese (these should at least have feathers, etc.) , rabbits in the river...) or what.

I wonder if all of Mystery Modder's work is being tarred with too thick a brush here. I'm not graphic artists but it seems to me that the Mushrooms (https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/29935/) and Shrines (https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/30932/) (to pick two mods of his that I use) involve more than than just "upscaling and sharpening" textures or the like - they both involve changes to coloration, etc. I have no idea whether the "upscaling and sharpening" was all that was used on the HD Torture Rack (I don't use this mod or have the technical background to understand the issues fully), but I don't think it's true that this is all he uses on all of his mods -at least if I understand it correctly. If this is what he uses on Mushrooms and Shrines then he seems to get pretty good results from these techniques in these cases at least. P.S. I'm not sure where Skunky123 ends and Mystery Modder starts - in the above post I have treated them as a whole - though both Mushrooms and Shrines are attributed to Mystery Modder.

I don't remember interesting NPCs adding a horse in Riverwood - but I haven't used it in a month or so so it might be new. EDIT: Interesting to see that it was UFO (below) - I wouldn't have figured it would add horses, unless you had a follower who rode one there maybe.

@rpscg Thanks for pointing this out! Going over to look at it now!