Farlo

My god, as if Skyrim wasn't buggy enough :P As much as I want another TES game I really hope they take a few years off and rewrite the engine entirely, you can only build on top of 2002-era technology for so long before it just turns into crap. At this point it's almost as bad as the CoD games using the same engine since CoD2... it's not, the Creation Engine has some massive improvements over Gamebryo, but you can tell most of it's the same. EDIT: mfw when the Gamebryo engine powers stuff like Rift and Epic Mickey...

Good to hear! Go enjoy the game before v1.9 breaks everything!

I don't think any of those have MCM options. You can test Non-Essential Children by giving one of the little buggers in Whiterun a few taps on the head with your greatsword or use the targetted console command "kill" if you'd rather not bludgeon children. If the mod's enabled they should die, if not then they'll take a knee and get back up. The Choice is Yours can be checked by talking to a guard until he mentions one one of the factions. If hearing the rumor makes it appear in your quest log then it's not working. Ars Metallica can be checked by visiting a forge. If there's an option to smelt arrows then the mod's working. Unfortunately I can't think of a simple check for Paarthunax, you'll have to wait and find out for that one :P

Dragon Priest:        Vanilla       Dragon Priest Retexture These ones I'm not crazy about. I like the idea of fixing the rather bland armor, but it seems like all the author did was raise the contrast and saturation on the texture. The close-up shot looks even worse than Vanilla IMO, how can you claim that's a 4k texture? Looks like we get to wait for Cabal to get around to this one. Staff: The mod was definitely installed when I took this, doesn't look like anything was done here. Dagger: Once again, aiming for an older, more rusted color would be fantastic, but this mod doesn't really do it well.

Dragon Priest:        Vanilla       Dragon Priest Retexture These ones I'm not crazy about. I like the idea of fixing the rather bland armor, but it seems like all the author did was raise the contrast and saturation on the texture. The close-up shot looks even worse than Vanilla IMO, how can you claim that's a 4k texture? Looks like we get to wait for Cabal to get around to this one. Staff: The mod was definitely installed when I took this, doesn't look like anything was done here. Dagger: Once again, aiming for an older, more rusted color would be fantastic, but this mod doesn't really do it well.

Ice Wraith:          Vanilla          Ice Wraith Retexture Do you know how hard it is to get one of these to stand still!? There really needs to be some kind of "reload textures" command... Anyways, I'm not sure how an Ice Wraith should look, but I like the improvement. EDIT: This mod does not make the wraiths any darker, it makes them more transparent and since the background is black they look darker. I'm going to add a grey room to Review Studio at some point tonight, just have to figure out the CK's lighting system.

Ice Wraith:          Vanilla          Ice Wraith Retexture Do you know how hard it is to get one of these to stand still!? There really needs to be some kind of "reload textures" command... Anyways, I'm not sure how an Ice Wraith should look, but I like the improvement. EDIT: This mod does not make the wraiths any darker, it makes them more transparent and since the background is black they look darker. I'm going to add a grey room to Review Studio at some point tonight, just have to figure out the CK's lighting system.

The guide should direct you to the Steam Workshop, you can get it there.

Quality over quantity (yes it works both way :P), if you think it's a possible candidate for STEP then by all means post it.

Giving this a bump as well, some comparisons against Golden Gods Shrines would be nice.

I agree that Dragons are fleshy in their physical form, but what about after you absorb their soul? Does magic pick the bones entirely clean? Bethesda seems to think so (or they were just lazy). I kind of like the bloody version as well, even if it does look rather fake, but we have to recommend the "No flesh" version if we're staying true to Vanilla.

Vampire Armors by Messias Mummo Obviously using the Replacer version and I don't think we need any of the optional files. Not sure how they stack up against Vanilla since I haven't played Dawnguard yet, but Neovalen uses them in SR so they can't be too awful :P

I'm going to mark these for testing. The Ice Wraith file doesn't conflict with anything and the Dragon Priest stuff only conflicts with the HRDLC and Skyrim HD. I kind of wish they were uploaded separately since they span two STEP sections. (Assuming they're accepted) for our purposes I think we'll make two separate mod pages that just link to the same place.

I'm going to mark these for testing. The Ice Wraith file doesn't conflict with anything and the Dragon Priest stuff only conflicts with the HRDLC and Skyrim HD. I kind of wish they were uploaded separately since they span two STEP sections. (Assuming they're accepted) for our purposes I think we'll make two separate mod pages that just link to the same place.

Thanks for the clarification, I was basing that statement off of the "CTD at 3.1GB" thread (only skimmed the thread) and assumed it was something to do with the architecture. Either way the point still applies, since Skyrim won't/can't use more than 3.1GB without crashing then the bare minimum you'd need is that plus whatever overhead your OS and other applications need.Â

Actually starting out with everything installed might give you a better representation of how one mod will affect your overall FPS once everything's installed. Using this method it's just a matter of keeping track of which mods have different resolution options and decided which textures you'd rather sacrifice for others.

I could be wrong about the RAM, that's just what I remember when I was looking at buying some for a friend, there are others around here much more knowledgeable in that department than I. Unfortunately with Skyrim you're unlikely to ever stop all the CTDs, but you can minimize them pretty well. WB is perfect for testing different versions of a mod, just install one at a time and test your performance with each one to find a balance. For monitoring I suggest either MSI Afterburner or Skyrim Performance Monitor (Google them, too lazy to grab links). STEP provides a ton of documentation to help you understand the best choices for your rig, but ultimately it's too variable for us to offer one boilerplate solution for everybody.

So I was partially right :P Thanks for posting the exact solution.

I agree that we should be using the basic version. He also recommends setting iMinGrassSize in Skyrim.ini to 40 instead of 20 for better performance, some comparisons of this would be nice so we can possibly include it in the guide.

I still don't see why they don't hire Arthmoor and just incorporate the Unofficial Patches into the base game, I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of these are already in those mods.

I run everything at 1024 with a 6870 1GB and get 30-45 FPS outside, so you should have no problems using higher resolutions for some of the bigger landscape mods (section F and G). Since Skyrim's a 32-bit program it can only use ~3.2GB of RAM, you just need that plus whatever overhead your OS needs (a couple GB to be safe). 8GB is plenty for Skyrim, although from what I've seen a single stick is generally faster than 2. If your system can handle the old HRDLC it can handle the new one. You should be using it no matter what, those instructions are meant to say that if you have more than 1.5GB of VRAM you can ignore the HRDLC Optimized. If you're using MO then BCFs are useless to you. BCFs are used in WB to automatically format a mod in a specific format. Drop the BCF in "\Skyrim Mods\Bash Installers\Bain Converters\", right-click the mod in the Installers tab, go to Conversions -> Apply and select the matching option.

That depends on the mod. See our BSA Guide for instructions on how to tell whether an ESP is needed. I've found that ESPs <1KB are usually just there as BSA activators, but I wouldn't trust that 100%. If you come across any others that aren't in that list, please add them to it, thanks!

Not as far as I know, I haven't even found an "Activate all" button. Submit it as a request to the WB team.

Haha, gotta love those brainfart moments. Everything should work fine if installed through WB. As far as Skyrim itself is concerned, it doesn't matter how the files get into the Data folder as long as they do. Yeah, basically just install the mods you want, how you want and then you can just activate everything in the Mods tab of WB, run BOSS, and you should be good to go.

There's a difference between installing the mod: placing the files in the Skyrim directory; and activating it: telling Skyrim to use the ESP. The former is done in the Installers tab in WB while the latter is done in the Mods tab (not sure how the UI works in NMM). If you're referring to activating a mod, then that's expected. Skyrim only looks at one file when determining what ESPs to use, so if you activate a mod in NMM, WB will see that it's activated and say so (with the green tick); in this regard all the mod managers will "be on the same page" as it were. The incompatibility comes in when you're installing the mods, that's where each of the mod managers has their own approach and won't know what the others are doing. It sounds like you installed the mod through WB but never activated it until you did in NMM.