Shadriss

I'm pretty sure if you do the install from the 'update' button inside MO2, custom settings remain... at least, it has for me every time. Yeah... I'm sure she was 'cool' with it, given the local temperatures in Skyrim. Even so... I'm pretty sure her 'inner self' was wanting to rip someone's heart out.

I'll be honest - I don't see anything wrong with your ingame screenshot - looks just like every game I've ever played. *shrug*

So, when I deal with merges... after creating the merges, I go into the information screen for the providing mod and look at the "Optional ESP" tab. If you move them up to optional, they will vanish from the Right Pane but will still be available to bring back if you need them for a new merge later. This prevents the problem you are looking at of, in essence, having the same data twice. Takes a few more clicks, but it's a pretty good practice, I think. I've noticed this as well, but it's fairly minimal honestly, and I've yet to see anything that isn't vanilla (or a complete and total overhaul with nothing else added to it) that doesn't have this problem. Also - how did Aela get like that, and did she kill the guy who did it to her yet?

As I said - it was a shot in the dark. I just couldn't think of anything else that it might be. Wish it had worked out better.

As a quick guess, these would be why we clean the original master files (excepting Skyrim.ESM itself). One of the steps is to un-delete and remove references, which is what looks like would need to happen here. So, in short, yes - if you haven't cleaned them, I would expect to see errors.

Possible mod conflict in game - I suspect Convenient Horses and Shields of the Holds. Images here and here. Looks like a bad texture alignment of some kind. Not sure if there's a direct conflict somehow, or if this is just Shields... any ideas? EDIT: Have seen it for shields for Riften and the horse armor for Whiterun... Solitude shields appear to be fine, and haven't checked all the others yet.

@Lexy - I know you've been going through Trello stuff today, and I do have one question/request with regards to it. When you move mod to 'accepted and will be added to guide', could you also give a preliminary placement in the load order for those who want to get ahead of the game? If not, no problem... just so tempting to drop stuff in, but don't want to do it without some idea of where it's gonna be.

SO after messing around more, I think I see the culprit. I've updated my Imgur album for this with two shots of Dragons Reach... the first is pretty close to the first one I posted, the second is with the ENB (The one that is recommended by this guide) turned off. The difference is almost literally night and day. It seems I may have to be far more drastic in the changes to the base settings than I have been to this point, or I need to find a new ENB that doesn't darken as badly as this one does.

WRT the ELE_SSE file - are the ELE image space and templates supposed to be empty records? I looked at both the ELE Merged and the original ELE_SSE file I have, and those records, when looked at, are completely blank...

As far as I know, it is correctly installed... not like this is my first time at this rodeo. All mods installed as instructed in the guide... so unless there was something I missed somewhere, and it was just assumed you’d do it without instructions, then yes. If yo have ideas, then PLEASE share. This is what I’ve been playing in for months now.

I hesitate to throw this in, but it also occurs to me (and really, this should be this way by default, but its one more thing to check) that perhaps, somehow, your display is set to 16 bit color instead of 32? That would also, potentially, create color banding like that.

What you are showing is about infinitely brighter than anything I have. I'll grab some shots of Dragons Reach tonight and post - I think you'll see what I'm talking about. Gamma is set at 1.00 with the recommendations in the ENB already brightened. Anyhow, I'll grab those tonight. If what you posted was what I had, I wouldn't be complaining at all - most places (including most of Dragons Reach) is almost pitch black. EDIT: Shots from my setup of Dragon's Reach, Bleak Falls Barrow, and The Blue Palace. Didn't do a shot of the end of Helgen, but it wouldn't matter because it's about pitch black in the area that the original shot shows in the album you linked to me. After I took those shots, I did another calibration of my monitor - just to be certain. My gamma was actually high... those scenes would appear even darker now.

As a general statement, unless you are told to clean them, don't - some mods do this deliberately. The problem with adding a mod like you suggest early in your post is that A) We already have one that does this (Quick Light), and B) That light is visible to other entities in the area... in essence, I have to give up all aspects of stealth if I want to see. If Nighteye worked with ENBs well (it's better, but still not working well) then there might be an argument to be made there, but as things stand, the entire concept of my usual build (stealth archer) is obviated by the inability to see. I like realism in my games, but not at the expense of gameplay - if the NPCs were restricted the same way I am, that's fine. In this case, they aren't, and this darkness is debilitiating ourselves for the sake of realism. I was using Vividian at the time, so yes. The only times I ever saw interiors this dark was when messing with ELFX, and as much as I liked some of it's effects, I always ended up removing them for the same reasons I just mentioned. At least in my STEP setup, even with all the additional mods I added in to the main lineup, it was all somewhat brighter. I'm happy that someone mentioned Arkenthang(?), as that is one of MANY areas that have that issue. Again, I like atmosphere and effects - but not at the expense of being almost unable to play as I wish to. Monitor and lighting set-ups vary from person to person, and I get that... and as last time this came up, if it means I deviate from the guide to find a custom solution to this, I will... it'll be my first time removing masters from the CRs, so hopefully I don't mess that up too much, but that's on me, not Lexy or anyone else. I just want to make sure, before I start messing with things, that I am messing with the right things.

Depends greatly on what mods are available for automation - and as Nexus (AFAIK) has never and will never allow for automated downloading through third party programs... I'm not sure how viable this really is. There are some sites that have sorta-kinda work arounds (STEP has been looking at ModPicker, i think it is, for example) for a while, and I think is intending to use either it or something similar. Possible for Lexy's Guide... but given how much work it is to set up, not sure if it's gonna be a thing here. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (Thank you!)

Interesting... and totally without use for people who, like me, never play in third person (horse riding excepted).

No issues - I wasn't exactly clear the first time around. See, I kind of suspected that ELE wasn't what was making things dark - and that's what I said at the time. I was (somewhat forcefully) told otherwise, that ELFX wasn't the culprit and that ELE was. And yet, if ELE Lite is what both setups used, as well as RS, then that has to leave ELFX as the major darkening agent... unless maybe Claralux is doing it somehow, which I'm not sure it is... not if I understand what it does, which I may not. I feel like I'm going back to an old argument, but simply messing with ENB settings doesn't cut it for how dark these spaces are - to make them playable, the gamma and brightness have to go up so high that the whole screen is essentially gray-screened... certainly not a desired position. I get that some people want it that dark - that's fine, it's to their taste. Heck, some want it even darker (how do you make black blacker?). I simply wonder how the reverse could be done - move back toward the vanilla settings without quite getting to that point - somewhat darker and more atmospheric without having undue influence on the gameplay. If both the NPCs and myself were operating under the same constraints (I can't see them because it's dark, and the reverse as well), then it could be workable. As it is now, I rarely see anything until it's already attacked me and I've turned on Quick Light. Not fun, not easily survivable, and very frustrating. *sigh* So since this is still ELE Lite, I have to look at ELFX removal as a possibility again, or possibly messing with / removing Claralux (which I don't want to really... the bug effects around the lanterns are pretty sweet.)

Thanks, Greg, but I've never really looked at either - I simply installed them when directed in guides. There's a whole sequence of posts from earlier in this thread where I showed my ignorance on this subject. Here's why I ask: In the STEP guide, we've always used ELE Lite, where this one uses Full ELE (as I understand it). In the STEP guide, lighting was never overly dark, in this one it's near full-dark in a lot of places. The only time I had ever had lighting like this in STEP was when I used ELFX Enhancer, which is why I always thought the deep shadows were caused by that. So, those things being true, I'm assuming ELE Lite does not drop the lighting values as far as the full version (hence 'lite'), but my assumptions WRT lighting mods have been very off base in the past. Hence, the question - if it is mostly just the higher lighting values, I'd want to look into maybe swapping the Lite version in for the full... especially with the several mentions (recently and not) of how dark some areas are in this guide and how it adversely affects gameplay in places. So, again...

Since ELE has come up again, what is the difference between ELE and ELE Lite? Slightly less dark perhaps?

Well... not to sound like a jerk or anything, but if all of Neo's links are dead, and he hasn't said a word on this in a long time... finding another guide or creating your own CR patch would seem the only two viable alternatives.

Yeah, that's been there the whole time as well, though I don't use it near as much. Seeing a texture that way isn't always helpful... personally, I like to see it in use in game before I make a decision on it, as the way they map onto the meshes can alter the way the texture looks significantly. I just use the tool to be sure the "right" texture wins in the end.

Out of curiosity... is this an LE or an SE lineup? I've played with iNeed for years, and DynDOLOD for almost as long as it's been availiable, and never seen that error message. AFAIK the iNeed - Extended hasn't been transferred over to SE... if this is an SE lineup and you ported the file yourself, there might have been a problem there. Or, possibly, that it's an LE lineup you're trying to run with the SE version of TexGen and DynDOLOD. I know - seems like things nobody should mess up, but there's a reason tech support starts with the stupid things ("Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again..."), so just for the sake of completionism, stick with me. Regardless - the first question needs to be what version of Skyrim, as different limitations apply and different versions of the tools are required.

*blink* Seriously? That's been a thing since MO1 - I thought that's how you were doing it the whole time, or I'd have let you know. Works with not just textures, but ANY file that conflicts between mods - the lightning bolt in the flag (left pane) marks those conflicts - a red minus if it looses to another mod, a green plus if it wins over another mod. The couple times I mentioned texture conflicts in earlier posts were because of that check. Sorry to beat it in... just real surprised you didn't know. And yes - BSAs don't get that treatment in MO2, since it doesn't do the Archive Management... not positive, but I think MO1 could.

Excellent. SMITHERS! DOWNLOAD ME THAT FILE!

Swings? Ugh... been there done that, and you have my sympathies. Still... call me greedy... I like updates. :)

Well, however this turns out in the end, I'm sure it'll be a heck of a guide. As for your minions (children) - isn't that why we have locks on doors? :)