Harpalus

Ah, apologies then. I'll change my vote accordingly.

I tend to just place this near the absolute bottom of my load order. It seems like 9 times out of 10, if it conflicts with something then ELE is just being overwritten with the default lighting with no other changes. I find it much easier to just keep one ELE patch with the various overwritten records from other mods patched than letting LOOT sort it and try to add ELE patches for individual mods. As a side note, I voted for this mod's inclusion into STEP in the Relighting Skyrim thread, as did TechAngel85 (for the Interior Lighting Module only). Perhaps this thread should be marked testing? Despite the name, this mod doesn't require ENB and seemed to work well without it (I haven't tested this lately: I'm back to using an ENB). EDIT: Voting for Interior Lighting version.

Erso's Enhanced Enemy AI tweaks almost identical settings as Combat Evolved. I believe Enhanced Enemy AI only has 5 odd records that don't conflict with Combat Evolved. I've only tested Combat Evolved. Run one of the two, not both. Frankly, any claims that they work well together are placebos. I've never used Animal Tweaks, but it's made by the same author as Combat Evolved and so it likely "does what it says on the tin". You might want to check your load order for conflicts after you've installed it. It probably conflicts with SIC and High Level Enemies, but I'm not certain without checking. As a last recommendation, if you want to keep yourself from "backpedalling" during combat, then I also recommend the very small Backup Movement Speed Reduction. It has very minor enemy movement speed conflicts with Ultimate Combat which can be safely ignored. (I load Movement Speed Reduction after Ultimate Combat). I consider backpedalling to be one of the most common combat exploits after health potion abuse, so this one's never leaving my load order.

I just checked, and the two don't have a single conflict of any kind.

I know this isn't quite the answer you were hoping to hear, but I recommend against Revenge of the Enemies. It's not a bad mod, but it's quite "messy". It heavily conflicts with High Level Enemies and conflicts thematically with OBIS (I use both of those), and most of what's not conflicting is comparatively unimportant. As the OBIS mod author points out, even when it's deconflicted it will simply make generic bandits more powerful and interesting than OBIS's custom bandits. Honestly, with High Level Enemies, OBIS, and a good combat mod installed, the enemies will be quite challenging already. I suspect you won't notice the absence of Revenge of the Enemies. If you still want more challenge, then Combat Evolved is a good, lightweight pick. (It really does make combat much harder.) I'm not dreadflopp, but I do recommend Ultimate Combat. This largely comes down to Deadly Combat or Ultimate Combat as nothing comparable has been released lately and most of the alternatives are either not quite as polished or are not particularly lightweight, and thus not a great choice for a mod pack or load order with many mods in it. (Duke Patricks is an example of the latter.) For these reasons, I suspect that if dreadflopp changes things it will be a switch to Deadly Combat. The comparison is complex enough that I suggest that you read their respective mod pages and look up Youtube reviews. If you want to use Action Combat, you'll find that it works better alongside Ultimate Combat than Deadly Combat.

STEP Optimized Vanilla Textures is just what it implies: the vanilla Skyrim textures optimized to have smaller file sizes while still looking the same. It helps reduce VRAM usage, and there's no reason not to use them unless you're hurting for hard drive space (in which case you can follow the STEP guide to optimize them yourself, and pack them back into the original BSAs). It looks like your setup will be good enough to run most ENB presets, so I don't see how anybody can possibly make a suggestion that works well for most people. They all look different, and many of them look beautiful in different ways. My preference is Grim and Somber Vaermina, but it looks very different from vanilla Skyrim and won't be for everyone. ENB recommendations are highly subjective, especially if you're not simply looking for the "ENB with the best performance".

Lately I've been playing Risk of Rain, Bahamut Lagoon, and Zelda: Oracle of Seasons/Ages.

Sorry. It's Civil War Aftermath, by Korodic. I wonder how many more mods I enjoy I'll discover hidden in the next few days. This is getting depressing.

It's really up to you, but the Explorer's Guide is good and offers a lot of new content. I hadn't noticed the Companions pack before, but it's just one mod and is likely to be compatible with the Explorer's Guide. You'll need to check it after to make sure. Packs aren't guaranteed to be compatible with each other, and I'm not certain how much of the War Ensemble will work with the Explorer's Guide. I've never had a problem with Civil War Overhaul, but lots of people seem wary of it, particularly in large load orders. Your milage may vary, but it's a fantastic mod. Immersive Patrols is a good match for it if you prefer combat to exploration when you're wandering around Skyrim on foot. (I never fast travel and tend to avoid mods that add random encounters in the wild). I'm not familiar with the others. I would have recommended Civil War Aftermath, but its not available anymore. Check for conflicts with TES5Edit afterwards, as I don't know how well they work with the Explorer's Guide. The Explorer's Guide is very large: if you install the entire thing you may want to hold off on adding in much more, because there's bound to be compatibility issues with many mods.

Another one bites the dust... even more fallout from the paid mod disaster. I was just about to recommend this mod to a user. Underrated mod that allows you to "clean up" the Imperial/Stormcloak camps following the civil war.

I'm not sure the Dark Brotherhood needs a mod. It's my favourite large questline, actually. As a bonus you can destroy them, which is more than the Thieves Guild can say without a mod. Things do move somewhat quickly, but your rapid promotion makes a great deal more sense than in the other guilds, mainly due to If there was any change, I'd say that requiring more assassination quests would be nice.

Never thought I'd see a Lover's Lab mod proposed for STEP inclusion. (Well, a clean version of one). Isn't this unvoiced? I don't know STEP policy on unvoiced dialogue, so can't say one way or the other. I haven't used it but it sounds like a good way to improve the Mage's College questline in a minimally invasive way. Hopefully it does indeed work with Not So Fast.

You're getting a better framerate than I get under those conditions (with my own set of mods), so I think that everything looks stable. You can definitely afford to bring in a Pack or some more mods, from the looks of things. If you only installed STEP Core or Extended, then your game should be stable already. Whether you install a pack or not is up to you. I recommend it, but if you just want to play "almost vanilla Skyrim", then you should be fine as you are. There's no need to check in TES5Edit if you're running pure STEP, or running only STEP with a Pack installed: I was operating under the assumption that you had mods added to your load order in addition to what STEP recommends. It's not a bad idea to install a Pack. It's just different. Packs exist because they deviate from how Skyrim plays or feels in various ways. Core/Extended STEP sticks close to Skyrim's look and gameplay, Packs often do not. How far you want to take Skyrim is up to you. I use almost-vanilla perk trees lately because of this excellent character building site.

I added Relighting Skyrim back into my load order some time ago and I withdraw my previous compatibility concerns. I think that this belongs in STEP Core, along with ELE.

There's no useful time recommendation here, because games can be unstable in many ways. If you can play for an hour or two of normal gameplay then you might be fine, but there's plenty of situations that might give you problems that won't manifest until you run into that situation. Some examples of what I mean, in relation to scripts: You can have too many combat scripts, and everything might appear fine until you get into a large battle. (Civil War Overhaul and Immersive Patrols come to mind). You can have excessively script load that only manifests in certain situations. For example, Fire and Ice Overhaul, Deadly Spell Impacts, and Burn Freeze Shock Effects together might cause problems in battles with many mages or dragons, even if things seem stable up until that point and each mod is great on its own. Textures are usually easy to diagnose: if you've been consistently using the same texture size (say, 2048x2048) for most textures, then you'll probably be able to handle Dwemer ruins if you've been running around Whiterun and Windhelm for an hour. Small objects need smaller textures, but my point is that if you've put some thought into what your video card can handle while installing mods and avoided silliness like 8K tree bark, then you should be fine. The FPS counter feature on your ENB is very useful (I would consider it critical) during testing. I don't use Convenient Horses, but it has a very useful script lag test that I use. (I just install the mod for the duration of my test). To try to be more helpful, I posted a series of quick tests that were added to the Modular Morrowloot Overhaul. Personally, I would consider your load order fairly stable if you pass all of them with a playable framerate. At the very least, it might help diagnose problems in your load order. They won't be for everyone, but they test some specific situations that have presented me with problems in the past. Not every test is useful, however. One "test" is to simply fly around using the console for a while and see if the game crashes. Not particularly useful information, because not only is the engine not built for it, but you won't be flying around in your game anyways. (Presumably). Don't forget about mod conflicts. I don't consider a load order stable, personally, until I've examined everything in TES5Edit and removed any obvious conflicts. (You don't need to be obsessive about this: just thoughtful). Finally, of course, don't uninstall any mods during a playthrough, use ENBoost and the SKSE memory patch, avoid unnecessarily large textures, avoid meshes with unnecessarily high vertex counts (hard to avoid though, because they rarely mention it), and remember that script limitations are a thing.

As I mentioned on the SNOW mod page, ramccoid's mods are all hidden with a message that implies they won't be coming back up again. ("I've had enough".) Posting this here because it may have to be removed from STEP now. (Unfortunate. I like this texture.)

I have no idea what happened, but this mod author has disappeared, taking all of their mods with them. This must have happened quite recently, because I downloaded one of ramccoid's textures just a few hours ago. ELECTRIFY's hidden mod page only says "I've had enough". I sincerely hope Nexus users weren't giving this mod author a hard time. I use and enjoy many of ramccoid's textures.

Personally, I think the answer to that partially depends on how much time you think you'll put into Skyrim. If you only want to play it through once or twice, then I agree with caiuscosades suggestions. Otherwise, I'd try playing through the game with just STEP Core or Extended prior to adding in many gameplay mods. Just my 2 cents.

Isoku's not the only big mod author transitioning. Chesko and Arthmoor also have paywall mods. Thanks for clarifying!

Even Arthmoor has a mod exclusively behind the Workshop paywall (Castle Volkihar Rebuilt). I'm surprised.

Lawsuit on what basis? SKSE is under the MIT license. The only restriction is that you can't remove the license notice. Even if it were under the GPL, selling derivatives of it would still be completely acceptable. I'm more curious about the various mod resources included with Wet & Cold. Hopefully he secured permission from the creators of those resources prior to selling the mod. (The cloaks, for example). On a pragmatic note, what about Wet & Cold - Ashes? Isoku's 2.0 changelog doesn't seem to mention it, so presumably the version on the Nexus remains the most current version.

Another option people might consider for reducing VRAM usage is Gamwich's One Mountain. The textures are optional.

Neither mod is really suitable for STEP, but I've been using Wooden Bows. It's arguably not as "realistic" as Real Bows but the bows fit in much better with the game and their respective armor sets.

I personally think STEP should avoid mods that are likely to conflict with many things, even if it is relatively simple to deconflict such things within STEP itself. If memory serves, adding Relighting Skyrim would dramatically add to the number of conflicts with the Explorer's Guide, for example. I could be wrong about all this, so perhaps people can correct me if I'm off-base? EDIT: Objection withdrawn.

Won't this cause issues with some STEP packs? I just uninstalled it recently because I had bad lighting issues with it and Expanded Towns and Cities, which is in the Explorer's Guide. I experienced odd lighting in some of the ETaC inns and bad flickering, even with ETaC's patch and STEP's ini line intended to address this problem. It was also generally a headache having to investigate the inevitable conflicts with any mod that edited vanilla interiors. I used this mod for a long time, but I'm concerned at the compatibility headaches for people that use STEP as a base, rather than as an end result. I am currently using ELE Lighting by itself, which has far fewer compatibility concerns. EDIT: Objection withdrawn.