Harpalus

I played with this mod for a bit and liked it, but that sounds bad. Or does this not happen very often?

I vote no as well, but I dislike both textures. It looks like poor craftmanship, which is worse to me than the original low resolution. I'm especially hesitant because I think that it should be a pretty clear upgrade if it's being recommended for just one texture. (As is the case with HD Misc).

I personally didn't find this mod necessary. It did bother me a little that the rain drops were being applied indiscriminately, and I also dislike having esp files/scripts/mcm menus in my installation that don't do much (even if I trust isoku). It seems I'm in the minority here, however.

Based on the above screens, I actually prefer Rustic Potions and Poisons. (I have no idea if my opinion counts here, though?))

I use 6144. I have a 64 bit system, 6GB of RAM, and 3GB of VRAM. So (6+3-2) * 1024=7168, which is the recommended value for my system according to STEP's formula. However, I was getting warning messages stating that Windows was running out of memory, so I subtracted another GB (7168-1024=6144) to solve that problem. You subtract 2048, not your VRAM size (although in your case they're the same value). Your sound card has nothing to do with this value. Use RAM + VRAM - 2048 and see if that works for you. I don't know what value that should be because you didn't state how much RAM you had. In Windows 8 you can find out how much RAM you have by searching for "PC Info" on the Start screen.

Whenever I follow STEP, I never install it because it has this warning beside it:

I know you didn't mention Terrain Bump. The installer includes it though, which will need to be taken into account when they update the STEP guide. I didn't need to check, actually, as I just recently reinstalled Skyrim and had the same confusion that you did.

The installer includes Terrain Bump, but not all of it. The dirtcliffs, mountains, and roads folders in textures/landscape are all missing from Terrain Bump, for example. Fortunately the original mod page is still up, so it's not presently a problem for STEP. Or am I confusing two different identically named mods here?

I'm surprised this isn't already in STEP. The default animation is unnecessarily long. It's an odd choice on Bethesda's part here, making your character groggily stand up. Realistic, perhaps, but I just don't buy that I can shrug off a two-handed battle-axe hit to the face without so much as a flinch or a cut, yet somehow take this long to get up. As mentioned, it's even more important with some mods that overhaul combat installed, some of which make you fall down more often.

I quite like the Bethesda Performance Textures. I use just about all of them. I don't even have a particularly weak graphics card: I just think that the textures are quite good, and so far every time I've compared one of them to a different mod's textures I either like Gamwich's textures more, or I like them equally (in which case I prefer the option that uses less VRAM). I think this texture series would be a good choice for STEP, personally - it also simplified the texture list from STEP Extended somewhat. It also covers some textures that even STEP Extended doesn't touch (like the Dragon Priest masks).

I don't post often, but I do rely on STEP often and fix conflicts pretty obsessively. I've played with Requiem, SkyRe, and now PerMa for a while, but I always find that they're large, a little bloated, and poorly thought out in places, even if they're all good in other respects. Requiem has a great early game but conflicts with almost everything, has forgettable perk trees, and a broken endgame (the standard advice is to "start a new character". I think this is poor game design), and SkyRe and PerMa try to do too much for my taste. So far I like PerMa best of the three, but I prefer a more lightweight approach that focuses less on new spells and more on core gameplay. You mentioned wanting "more perks": I think a better approach is to tweak the community uncapper to slow down leveling. I've never tried it, but SkyXP (modified to give less experience) might be a solution. I recommend one of these three perk trees: all of them are lightweight and have few conflicts with other mods. All three are very stable, and the first two in particular have few conflicts to resolve in many setups. Skydie won't let you get a new perk without going to sleep first, which I enjoy - it makes me appreciate getting perks more. SPERG is the most popular one. I don't mind it and it has some neat features. I find that it often relies on "gimmicks", however. In trying to make every perk feel unique, I think that it often ends up with perks that are either of limited situational value, or are only tangentially related to the perk tree (and school of magic) that they're located in. I quite like some of the gameplay, though: destroying armor with two handed attacks is just plain fun. SPERG doesn't often conflict with much, and usually you'll be fine if you just place it low in your load order. (This applies equally to all three of these). Check for conflicts anyways, of course.TTRSO is my preferred perk tree, and it receives surprisingly little attention. It's very well thought out and well balanced. The Restoration tree, for example: SPERG wastes perks here on buffing allies (how is that related to the in-game Restoration magic?) and instant kills of low level undead (which I usually kill almost instantly anyways). TTRSO has perks that make all healing magic harm undead and make necromantic healin harm living things, which I think fits in better with the lore and opens up new ways to use existing spells. It neatly fixes some gameplay exploits (such as free magic through enchanting), and makes new playstyles possible (like playing a staff only character). Almost every other gameplay overhaul simply ignores staffs, meaning most people just don't use them often. I like that TTRSO tries to fix things like that instead of adding in new gimmicks and unnecessary spells.I used SkyRealism - Perk Trees for a while. It deviates the least from the vanilla perks and feels like an improved, rearranged set of vanilla perk trees. It balances Smithing and crafting by making them larger perk sinks, for example, and the perk trees are fairly well laid out. This one requires the most attention of the three, however: it's not updated at all, so you'll need to forward some UKSP changes and some Weapon and Armor Fixes changes. It also has a few small bugs, and gets even less attention than TTRSO - two of the last comments were both made by me four months ago. Once you fix things up though it will have few conflicts with non-perk mods (if any).Hopefully that helps! I actually started writing a lengthy comparative review of SPERG and TTRSO -- I finished the magic trees, but I haven't finished it because I doubt there would be much interest in it. I highly recommend ensuring your load order is conflict free with Tes5Edit: it won't help with bugs caused by the mod itself, but you'd be unpleasantly surprised by how many mods reintroduce vanilla bugs by not forwarding UKSP changes, for example. Even wonderful, clean mods can end up looking comparatively bad if the mod author stops updating them, as then the new UKSP changes aren't merged.

I really like this perk solution. It makes the game feel refreshing again and in my opinion is quite minimalistic. I was using TTRSO, but even tha minimalistic perk tree changes gameplay more than this rebalanced perk tree does. (Also, it takes up an obscene amount of ESP slots and won't merge properly.) Some will probably take exception to the smithing and enchanting trees. For example, three perks are required to upgrade a specific type of equipment to Legendary status, and the first perk only allows you to create them. I completely agree with the reasoning, however. Skyrim is almost trivially easy with a minimal amount of perk investment in the crafting trees. I noticed that it had minor conflicts with Dragonborn/the Unofficial Dragonborn Patch, some minor conflicts with the USKP, and lots of conflicts with Weapon & Armour Fixes. Rather than complain about it and wait around hoping for a fix, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I've made a version of SkyRealism - Balanced Perk Trees (the balanced version) that remedies these issues. It requires Dawnguar, Dragonborn and Weapon & Armour Fixes. As I don't have permission from the mod authors I won't attach it, but I already offered on the appropriate Nexus thread to send it to them.

The installer allows you to install only the road improvements and exclude the new bridges.

Sorry for the bump, but this issue is still affecting me (I haven't touched Skyrim in some time) and I can't find any information on it. I have no idea why removing Alternate Start seemed to fix the issue last time, as I'm experiencing the issue both with and without it. I too have tried searching everywhere for advice, only to come up empty handed. I believe that something is causing parts of the mesh to turn invisible. It's not ENB, as the issue persists without ENB. It can't be a mesh issue, as it persists in a completely vanilla Skyrim installation. I'm forced to conclude this is an AMD issue. I'm not likely to buy another one of their cards again. I've noticed this issue across several versions of software, running on Windows 8.1. In addition to the texture issues, hair in general (ESPECIALLY one specific bosmer hair) "floats" a little. I've tried setting everything to "Application Controlled" in the CCC software, and this doesn't fix things. My card is an AMD Radeon HD 7900. I know that this isn't AMD tech support, but I'm wondering if anybody has a solution to this issue, as I'm not the only one that's experienced it. Many thanks in advance! EDIT: After some testing, I've noticed why I thought removing Alternate Start fixed the issue. With Alternate Start installed, the hair of the first male bosmer preset is floating noticably, as part of the mesh seems to be invisible. Without Alternate Start, the same mesh is translucent rather than invisible. I'm guessing that this is due to the very different lighting conditions.

Thank you kindly for offering to help. I'd stepped out for a moment, but it occured to me when I got back to attempt removing Alternate Start. I was avoiding the use of saved games during testing, so I'd kept it in to save myself the annoying cart ride that I can recite from memory. Looks like I'll be putting up with it again or trying out Random Alternate Start, as Alternate Start by Arthmoor was the culprit. It messes up hair for me, even on a completely vanilla installation. So don't I feel foolish. Didn't even think it might have been the culprit, as I generally trust Arthmoor mods and it didn't seem directly related to the problem. Thanks! (Note: never assume a mod isn't causing a problem for you.)

Created an account to try to troubleshoot this issue. It's driving me crazy. I installed Skyrim after a long hiatus, worked my way through the STEP project after finally giving it a try. (Not sure why I put things off this long, I've decided that I love STEP.) Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/Ynzp5Nn.jpg I also have an AMD card, and I updated the drivers recently. Things I have tried: I first blamed EEO, and ripped it out of the mod list entirely, to no avail, making backups along the way. Then went Xvision, then custom skeletons and supporting mods. Finally I tried: Taking away EVERY non-Bethesda .esp with the sole exception of Alternate Start, largely just to keep myself from going insane watching the damn starting sequence. I also renamed and moved the textures folder, the meshes folder, the SKSE folder....the problem persists with an (almost) completely vanilla install. I removed ENB completely, as I did see that fix floating around. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with this problem, as every ENB related file has been deleted. I went to Steam and reinstalled the game, as I'd cleaned the official files with TESEDIT as per STEP. I removed my ini files. I removed my custom game profile in AMD CCC. At this point I've given up. It's really frustrating for me, as I install everything very carefully and manually, and I've spent a good portion of the last two days testing Requiem, Frostfall, RND, removing mods, etc, only to run into this glitch that is apparently beyond my ability to solve. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! I take solice in the fact that I still have my mod setup backed up. EDIT: So now I'm beyond frustrated. I'd tear my hair out if I wasn't bald. I just used a driver cleaner tool from Guru3d to uninstall my current AMD driver in Windows 8.1 Safe Mode, cleaned the registry, restarted, bypassed the (apparently shitty?) auto-detect tool AMD provides and installed the newest drivers specific to my video card then launched Skyrim, expecting to come back and report success. Unfortunately, the issue persists. It's beyond me at this stage what the problem is. AMD cards can't be this shitty, but I believe that I've run out of places to check for problems. I've come back to blaming Skyrim again, but everything seems to be vanilla.