Shadriss

Just a quick word on the WB link issues the past few days: We have confirmed that WB is gearing up for a full public release. The links we were using previously were all for 'nightly' builds that hadn't been getting updated frequently, so it wasn't a big deal to change them as it happened. That changed about five days ago, and we have seen version changes as many as six times in a single day. Discord user Evertiro, one of the Help Desk Minions, happens to keep copies of all the WB versions he uses, and has made a version available through one of his own sites to make things easier on us in the meantime. As of last night, both the STEP and Nexus Guides should have the correct link and should work as intended. Big kudos to him for helping us out on this. Thanks also to all of you for you patience while we worked this out. It was as much a pain for us as for you - believe me. ;) While I'm here, just as a general thing, note that a number of mods have updated since the last Guide Update in July. Most of these can be updated with no issues, but the instructions on the guide may not match what shows up in a FOMOD. For those, we do have instruction sets pinned in the Discord channels for those who need them - a discord search should lead you to those in short order. Last I heard, Lexy said the earliest that a guide update will likely happen is September 5, and it may be the following Monday before any update occurs, depending on how easy it is. Your patience for all of this is, as I said earlier, greatly appreciated. Now go play the game, dangit.

It can be safely deleted or ignored. It's only used by WB and not Skyrim itself. If you delete it, it obviously will be recreated next time you use it, but otherwise, there's no reason to mess with it.

It's not a direct conflict that would show in normal xEdit, as I understand it... it's some kind of formlist issue, IIRC. As I recommended to the other - go onto the Discord server, and in the #in-game-help channel, ask there - there's usually a good number of people there (including Sir Jesto, ImRevalation, ra2Phoenix, and others) who would have some kind of info on this. Simply, I've heard of it, but never experienced it, so...

It shouldn't be doing that at all - certainly, I've never seen iNeed do that. Good ting too... I get enough of canine meat as it is. I'd ask on the Dicsord - I think I've heard of similar happening with some builds, but it's not something we see often, so I'm not rightly sure what the problem there is.

Just so you hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak: As Berndaroy has said, the contents of the guide should still be identical. The Nexus Guide got a general facelift in it's appearance on two pages, had it's pages reorganized, and had several instruction sets rewritten to be as clear as I know how to make them. Both guides are still "Official", and "Best" is a relative term, though I (go figure) prefer the Nexus version. The STEP guide will receive the same treatment eventually. As you are likely aware, there is a major revamp to the STEP Site happening sometime in the near future... this site revamp will have a large impact on guides hosted here, and until we know how those changes will work, we will not be making huge changes to the STEP version. Once we know what's going to be involved, we'll get STEP changed over to the new STEP format and implement the clarity changes at the same time. My recommendations for the moment are to keep using whichever version you have been using. If that's the STEP version, stick with it. If you try STEP and have issues, try the Nexus ones to see if it's clearer. Again, and to be clear: There is no content difference between the two guides, only formatting and clarity differences.

I'm updating the Nexus Guide with the new link.

There has been a major facelift and format update to the Nexus Version of the guide. The link to the first page has not changed and can be reached as normal. If you had direct links to any other page, those will no longer work, as the page addresses will have changed with this update. The biggest changes you'll see initially are as follows: 1) The guide pages are reordered, and are meant to be followed in the new order. 2) The Prerequisites Page will now be the first page you load into. 3) All instructions on the Prerequisites Page have been rewritten and verified against the current versions of the tools. 4) The Merges Page has been rewritten, and is current as of the time of this change. The format of the merges has changed visually on the page, but has not changed the content of the merges. 5) Links to various parts of the guide have been redone, and will point to new page locations in some cases. The other pages will receive updates in place, as this is mostly a formatting and clarity rewrite. This initial change requires that the pages be reordered, hence the 'downtime', but alterations later on will be pretty invisible. The content of the guide is NOT changing - only the format of the information. The instructions have been... for lack of a better term... "De-Lexyfied" so that it is clearer and easier to follow. If you find any issues, I ask that you post them in the Guide Editing channel of Lexy's Discord Server so I can act on them as quickly as possible. Problems posted here may go unnoticed by me for a few days... I'll see them eventually, but I don't check here first. -Shadriss, Sorta-Kinda-Official-Guide Editor

The process should be as follows: 1) Highlight the mod on the left pane. You should see file records and the like in the right. 2) Locate the Records Flag entry. 3) Right-Click IN THE ENTRY FIELD TO THE RIGHT of the record name, not the record name itself. 4) In the right-click meny, you'll see the edit option. Most of the time, the reason people can't change flags is because they are right-clicking in the wrong place. It needs to be in the actual record's field (IE, the space next to it), and not on the name of the record itself.

The tags listed in the guide are in addition to any that already appear. Yes, he has. I haven't heard a verdict of 'safe to update' from any of the Devs on Discord yet, so I'd wait for the moment. Worst case, it will be addressed and taken care of when Lexy gets back in September. For the moment, unless something huge happens, the Guide will be more or less static (content-wise) for the next several weeks.

Best way to address this, honestly, is to join in the Discord and visit either @modahaulics_anonymous or #non_guide_mods... should be able to get the help you need from either.

Are you running bodyslide via MO?

It's not MO2 that is the problem - it was Wrye Bash and how it works with MO2. The short version is that WB updated in a way that needed the newer Windows version, and likely didn't realize at the time what had happened. That Windows update (and, from what now understand, all to follow) are no longer forced updates unless the system determines it is required somewhere in the background. Hence, not everyone got the 1809 update. The 2 hour install of Windows... well, that's on MS and their file sizes, I guess.

Best place to check for that, at least for the next few weeks, is with the Devs and Moderators on Lexy's discord - as mentioned, she's a bit burned out on Skyrim, and will be taking several weeks off from guide updates. They will help out on that front, and can provide better recommendations that asking here, given most of them don't check this thread anymore. I think, actually, that myself and Lexy are pretty much the only ones that do... though Bern is generally a good source of info as well.

Similar to the recent question regarding skin textures for men, the general answer is that, if you want to use that mod you can... BUT. All NPC Textures and whatnot in this guide have a unified CR patch that is used, and it expects certain records to be there - and they won't with the differing mod. This mean that you would have to do any alterations to that patch or create one for yourself. This bug has, to my knowledge, been infrequently reported, and we have a fix posted for it in the Discord... I don't have that available to me at the moment. With that said, I think you'd be better off using the file listed and looking up the fix I just mentioned than trying to use a different file that may or may not work with our setup. I'd think, though, that if it were seen a bunch in our setup, we'd have done something about it by now.

You are a Windows 10 User. You are using a Windows Update that is prior to the 1809 version. You need to force update your Windows installation to 1809 or greater, which can be done using the Windows Update Assistant. If you google that, you should be able to find the links you need... I don't have them handy at work. ;)

It got more thorough while you were typing your reply. ;)

More likely, the mods you are using already have that SKSE data, and MO2 is just outputting them to those mod locations.

Once upon a time, Hunterborn WAS in the guide. It was removed due to guide-user feedback in Discord. Primary complaints: 1) Too time intensive for its results. While it does help supplement some of the Survival-type mods, it took way more time than it needed to in an already very intensive guide setup. Example of this: You kill a deer. Yay. You skin the deer. It is now late evening in-game, and it was mid morning when you started. Because of iNeed, you now no longer have time to get to where you were actually trying to get because you will be tired (and have a debuff) long before you get there. You are also starving (cause you can't eat during that skinning animation and time burn) and parched (same with drinking). You turn around, or set up a camp, or whatever. When you wake up, the first thing you see is another deer... Sure, you COULD ignore it... but you get XP for killing things now. Deer dies. And now if you don't skin this one, it's wasted resources. Another day wasted. Rinse, repeat. Yes, you can turn off those time requirements. Which turns it back into the original vanilla process with extra button presses that are no longer really helpful. 2) Added nothing to the Dragonborn Museum... if it had, that would likely have trumped reason one. 3) Lexy decided she didn't want it anymore, which trumps all other reasons. This is still, primarily, her set of 'favorites'. It also allowed us to free up some file slots for other things that were deemed more desirable at the time. That said, it wouldn't take much to get it into your own version of the guide, assuming you make use of all appropriate patches. Altering or creating a CR patch to accommodate this would be entirely on you, of course.

On an aside, I had to look it up... so: "Yeet is an exclamation of excitement, approval, surprise, or all-around energy, often as issued when doing a dance move or throwing something." I'm guessing the intent was to try to generate excitement, and because no one know what the heck that means, it missed the mark.

Your best option may be to join the MO2 Dev Discord... you should be able to do a search for the invite. That's a TAD bit beyond most of us to troubleshoot here, I think.

The only settings I would stick to as scripture with the guide setup is the Diverse Dragons MCM and the Immersive Armors MCM. For Diverse Dragons, the three dragons that are deactivated are impossible to kill... IIRC, it's because they all have health regen that is higher than a player's ability to hurt it. For Immersive Armors, the Barbarian Hero armor has some visual glitches that are pretty nasty, and so need turning off to prevent them being worn by NPCs. Pretty much anything else is personal preference - Animations and extra spawns are pretty much fair game. I'd be wary of the goblin spawns in SiC, however, as they have been reported to cause CTD on occasion.

On the correct folder: Right-Click Set as Data Folder

I'm not a techie, so I'm a bit unfamiliar with your PC specs as listed. Can you give me a rough idea of what performance range the CPU and GPU are in? Second, you are likely correct in that a single mod is causing the additional load times. Your current troubleshooting method is likely to best one for the moment. I'm not seeing anything that leaps out as a problem, so it may also be a mod interaction as well - you have some patches, but I'm not seeing an overall CR patch for your LO (Bashed doesn't count for this... especially if you are using the newest version that doesn't do any merging), and that means that some of the mods may not be playing well with each other.

No, although you would have to get appropriate versions of some of the mod patches to replace them... thinking mostly about No Grass In Caves and the Landscape fixes. We used to use a version of Vey before it vanished for a while, and I think I've heard rumblings of maybe going back, but for the moment, keep in mind that the change would not be supported in the Help Desks on Discord... though the non-guide-mods channel would likely be more than willing to assist. 1) As Lexy indicated, your version of WB is out of date - if the tags don't show in WB, it won't matter WHERE you set them, it won't use them. Update to the one linked on PreRequisites, and all should be well in that regard. So far as setting them in LOOT is concerned, I am aware that's a thing, but I wouldn't for the very reason this post was made - if it doesn't show in WB, it won't matter anyhow, so you might well miss an install problem by doing so. 2) There is enough to that question I could likely go on for quite some time. I can tell you what my personal practices are, but with a guide this large and expansive, adding things in can be dicey at times. As already mentioned, if it's just an SKSE plugin or script files or anything that does not use an ESP/EDM/ESL file, it should be safe to drop in where ever. For those that do use plugins, I place all my non-guide mods AFTER the main guide mod installs, but BEFORE the Finishing Line mods. I prefer not to mix guide- and non-guide mods unless it's required for the non-guide one to work, and then I ensure I've marked it as Non-Guide for easy identification later on. Once they're installed, I run the entire Finishing Line section again (as required)... usually that means Bash/Smash/zEdit, with the occassional DynDOLOD. You should only have to run the sections that pertain to the mods you install. Other than that, CR and placement is entirely on you. No real best practices - the only real practice is to drop it in, look at it, fix it if you want it to play well with others.

A question first - you say you imported her into EFF... the guide uses NFF. Are you not using NFF then? Two possibilities spring to mind, but neither are easy to work with. My first thought is a mesh problem, though I couldn't tell you which one or how to fix it - I only know that meshes can cause straight CTDs when loaded. The other thing is that it could be just a Random Act of Skyrim... I'm assuming that both crashes are 100% repeatable, and if that's the case, likely not the Random thing. Unfortunately, the only real way to find this kind of problem is the 50/50 split method of Troubleshooting. 1) Start by deactivating all Finishing Line mods, then trying to enter those areas. If they work, the problem lies in those files. 2) Deactivate merges one at a time to see if it's a merge problem. 3) If neither of those work, you'll basically just have to turn off half your files... if it works, the problem is in the half you just deactivated. Continue in that vein to narrow it down... as I said, there's no easy way to do this one. Neither location has a statue in them, no do they have goblin spawns, and those are the two most common things that cause CTD... so we're gonna have to do a bit of work, I'm afraid.