zombiecurse

Alright, so this is where I'm at with this: Installed Step Core (also Enhanced Blood, Oblivion Gates, Sweet Mother and Dark Brotherhood Tenets Restored from STEP Extended) - seems stable. I took out Skyrim Flora Overhaul and HD trees to boost up fps a bit. Integrated Realvision ENB Guide into STEP Core. Mostly just put retexture packs in what I thought was the proper order in the CORE load order. Installed the weatherpacks recommended by Realvision ENB as well - seems stable after testing, although i do have a few semi-transparent meshes/textures for some reason (signs, the occasional tree) Installed Real Explorer's Guide - Seems stable, flickering/transparent meshes and textures persists, but I don't see that as a really big deal Installed my own personal choice mods - These were mostly spell, armor and housing mods. Most of them seem to be okay, although I note that a few of my personal choices for housing mods seem to have .nif conflicts with some of the REGS mods for things like books, candles, pottery, that kind of crap. Off the top of my head, Immersive Winterhold College seemed to use a lot of the same files as a lot of my personal housing mods. Not sure why this is, maybe someone could explain it to me? Doesn't seem to be causing any issues though. I'm going to provide a full load order later tonight, but just to list off a few here: Halls of Dovahndor, Castle Volkihar Redux (Steam), Apocalypse Spells, Aurora Doomstone, Thunderchild, Dragonsoul Relinquishment, Forgotten Magic Redone, Mighty Magick, Deadly Dragons, Midas Magic Evolved, Snake Pit (housing), Darkwater Den (housing), Bigger Badder Lich King Armor . . . This all seemed stable.Now my last step is going to be to incorporate some enemy difficulty scaling on top of this. I see there's a gameplay overhaul pack, but I don't want to use everything in there, and even if I did I just don't have the space at this point (255 mod limit). What I do want to do is incorporate the following into my game: High Level Enemies - Skyrim Immersive Creatures EditionSkyrim Immersive Creatures - Revenge of the Enemies VersionRevenge of the EnemiesI also want to use ASIS to spread the spells I've added (mostly from Apocalypse, a little too scared to add Forgotten Magic or Midas Magic Evolved to NPCs at this point) to the npcs, as well as increase their spawn rates and let them use potions (not sure if this is necessary with the additional three mods listed above, going to research further). I'm using the ASIS improved inis with this, along with the edited inis from the gameplay overhaul pack found here on the STEP site to incorporate any necessary inclusions or exlusions from the three mods listed above into the asis patch. I didn't install any of the patches from the gameplay overhaul pack because I wasn't using any of the other mods from that pack besides the three listed above. I loaded up everything and did a runthrough of the beginning of the game. Enemies seemed a little more difficult. Not too much, but I'm guessing this is because those beginner enemies are just easy by nature so you can get out of the cave. Everything seemed good until I exited the "escape from Helgen" cave. Instant CTD. I'm going to muck around with it some more tonight, but thought I'd see if anyone had any thoughts. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Right, but I don't see anything in there specifically about making those four mods work with each other or if any of those patches are even necessary for that. The only mods I'm really using from that pack would be High Level Enemies SIC Edition, SIC Evenge of the Enemies version, and Revenge of the Enemies. I don't see OBIS in there (was thinking about using OBIS Redone). So I guess I'm not understanding whether I need these patches if I'm just installing a few of these. I don't have STEP Extended, just STEP core and a literally three or four STEP Extended mods. I do have the entire REGS pack though. I also have Cloaks of Skyrim. So if I'm using Cloaks of Skyrim, Step, High Level Enemies and Revenge of the Enemies, do I need all the patches provided from that dropbox link? Do I need the High Level Enemies - SIC patch? Like I said, I'm only using a few of these and I'm not certain I need the patches. Honestly not trying to be difficult or obtuse here. I've done a significant amount of research on this, just looking for a little bit more explanation on how to work this all out without screwing up my game.

Hm, all four of those look pretty decent. I took a look at the Overhaul pack page, but didn't see any specific info on using TES5Edit to patch them. Is there anything specific you need to do? Also, I tracked down: OBIS HLE SIC Edition Revenge of the Enemies But I couldn't find anything for Skyrim Immersive Creatures - Revenge of the Enemies version. Is this an option that you just pick when you install it?

Not sure if this guy is paying attention to this thread anymore, but I'm wondering if anyone else has used ASIS with this? I'm using STEP Core (with a lot of mods from Realvision ENB install guide integrated in), along with the Real Explorer's Guide and a number of other more minor mods stacked on top (player houses, armor, spell mods, deadly dragons, etc.) I'd really like for NPCs to be able to use some of the spells from the mods I've installed, but I don't want to blow up my game. These improved ASIS inis look promising, but I'm just wondering if anyone else has tried ASIS and maybe the improved inis on top of STEP Core and REG? Out of the personal preference mods I've installed, I'm specifically worried about it conflicting with Mighty Magick. As a bit of a segue, also wondering if anyone else has used Mighty Magick with ASIS, and if they could tell me how much the perk and spell changes extend to NPCs? My gut feeling is that I don't need to use the ASIS auto-perk feature as Mighty Magick is basically just altering perks that NPCs already have. Also thinking I don't need to put it in the spell inclusions as it mostly modifies spells npcs already have, and I don't want them to be randomly using player-centric non-combat spells just because they slipped through the filter somewhere (e.g., storage spells, mark and recall spells, etc.). Anyone have any thoughts on this?

So I would need to manually rearrange the plugin order on the right side? Hm, I don't know if I want to do that. If they were close to each other in the mod order I wouldn't worry about it, but they're like fifty mods away from each other in both cases . . .

Thanks everyone for the replies. I have (believe it or not) a couple additional questions: 1) Priority Order - Which one is more important in MO, the one in the left pane or the one in the right pane (the plugins list)? The "Left Pane" tab in the MO guide makes it sound like the left pane priority is the most important, but I want to verify. My priority in the left pane is much different from the priority BOSS sets for the plugins in the right pane. For example, I want to use Thunderchild and Dragon Souls Relinquished together. Thunderchild's author says that Dragon Souls Relinquished (DSR) needs to be loaded after Thunderchild for it to work properly. I loaded DSR after Thunderchild in my left pane, but BOSS prioritizes Thunderchild wayyyyyyy after DSR in the right pane (DSR sits around 40, Thunderchild is sitting up around 115). Do I need to manually change my boss order in the right pane, or has the left pane magically taken care of this for me somehow? 2) Similarly, I'm using Oblivion Gates from STEP Core and More Immersive Dawnguard Entrance from STEP REG. The note in the STEP REG guide says that I should place Oblivion Gates before More Immersive Dawnguard Entrance. Does this just mean in the left pane, or do I need to force that load order over in the right pane under plugins as well? Another instance where BOSS is giving me one thing and STEP is telling me another.

Alright, so I think I'm getting the hang of this . . . I've installed the entire STEP CORE pack. It took a lot of time and I had to go over and double-check I had done everything right, but I'm seeing how this is such a powerful tool as it looks like it doesn't actually overwrite files, it just uses the one that takes precedence in the load order. I can see how that would be a big advantage compared to NMM. I've tested out my STEP CORE install and it seems to be working well. There's a number of overwrite tags on things, but I installed all the mods in the exact order that it said to, so I think I'm good. I do have a few questions: 1) It says I can disable HighresTexturePack.esps 1 - 3 as long as I have them checked in the archive. Same with Unofficial High Resolution Patch and Better Weapon Swing Sounds. Is this correct? 2) For RealwaterTwo, I did install the Falskaar and Wyrmstooth options as I'm going to be installing Explorer's Guide pack soon. I can just enable these mods in the plugins window on the right after I install these, correct? The esps give me warnings right now as the master isn't available, so I've just been disabling them (again, I see why this tool is so helpful). 3) If I want to install a pack on top of a STEP CORE build, am I going to be creating a new profile and filling it with JUST the mods from that pack (e.g., Explorer's Guide), or am I going to just install all the pack mods after the STEP CORE mods in the original STEP CORE profile? A little confused on this one. I'm guessing maybe I create a new profile, enable all my STEP CORE mods, and then install all the pack mods on top? Something like this? 4) A little confused about what to do with ENB. I followed the ENBoost directions here. My understanding is that in doing so, I enabled the ENBoost feature while disabling all the graphical improvements. I'm assuming that to enable the graphical improvements, I basically just have to reverse the directions given in that link and then follow the guide for whatever ENB I'm installing. 5 Finally, I'm curious about installing mods from the Steam workshop. For the pack mods, I'm just going to wrap the .bsas up like suggested here. However, there are some other mods that I would like to use that aren't really part of any pack. Is the recommendation to take the extra step to incorporate Steam mods into MMO there just because it keeps the data folders clean, or is there some other vital reason that it says to do this? I'm all for keeping my data folders clean, but I don't mind if there's a few loose mods hanging out in there. Would also make it easier to keep track of updates through Steam, as I'm not always on top of that. I know that's a lot of questions. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

This was my understanding as well. I haven't gone EXTREMELY indepth with the bashed patch, but I do use it and my list generally consists of unofficial skyrim patch, deadly dragons, immersive armors, and a few other mods. It was my understanding that you only needed to add relev and delev tags if the mod added new NPCs or items (or whatever else) to an existing list and it conflicted with another mod that did the same. When I've built my bashed patches before, it has just automatically applied the relev and delev tags to the mods that need them.

You would need to add a Relev tag to the merged armor .esp file even if the original armor mods didn't require it? Why?

Alright, that's good to know. But, if I did want to create an esp that combined all the files for say, all my armor mods into one, this would be possible through the TES5edit automerge script, correct? For example, I'm a big fan of Zerofrost's work. If I wanted to take his Contractor Armor, Nosferatu Armor and Evil Mastermind Armor mods and combine the .esp files from all these into one, would this be possible through the automerge script in TES5edit?

Right, so some texture mods may not have .esp files, correct? Like, 255 is the limit for esp files is basically what you're saying?

So, considering the amount of mods I'm looking at installing here . . . how do you guys keep all of this under the 255 limit? Like, what type of mods are generally safe to merge together? I note that here in this thread it notes that most armor mods and weapon mods should be mergeable, so that would definitely be good if I could just put all of those under one file. I also note that in the guide here on this site that immersive patrols is generally mergeable. Is the prevailing wisdom on this to err on the side of caution and merge smaller mods, while staying away from merging the big overhauls and script-heavy stuff?

Thanks for the replies everyone. I think Run for Your Lives may have fixed the DD problem, but not too sure. Not too concerned about it. I was really glad to find the Explorer's Guide pack, btw. I had a lot of those mods installed, but wasn't sure if they would conflict with Enhanced Towns and Villages and all that kind of stuff. As I said above, my plan is to install the core pack and the explorer's guide pack, then an ENB, and then carefully install the vampire, werewolf and spell mods on top of it. Also planning on putting some player houses in there (Snake Pit, Dovahndor, Hassildor, etc.).

First, I apologize if this isn't the right forum to post this in. I just got here . . . I just have a few initial questions here before I get started on STEP. I had been using the REALVISION ENB mod order list before I found STEP, and I noticed that when using Skyrim Flora Overhaul and its dependents (Grass on Steroids, Lush Trees and Grass) along with TreesHD, my game slowed down quite a bit when out in the wilderness. I disabled these mods and the game sped up quite a bit. I'm wondering if I can leave Skyrim Flora OVerhaul and TreesHD out of the core STEP install and still use the core patch, or if something bad will happen if I do this? My plan is to use the core STEP setup, an ENB, and the Explorer's Guide pack, along with some of the more popular Vampire and Werewolf mods (Better Vampires, Moonlight Tales, etc.). Is anyone using any of these and have you experienced any major conflicts? Also, does anyone have any issues using some of the more popular spell mods (Thunderchild, Apocalypse, Midas Magic Evolved) on top of the core setup and the Explorer's Guide setup? What about Deadly Dragons?