Pretendeavor

Yeah I guess that makes sense. It just surprised me, I don't really feel like going through TES5Edit to check if things are still as they are supposed to be concerning the mods from SRLE. But I probably will do so anyway to ease my mind :p I wonder if you get the EXACT same load order if you have the exact same plugins/rules as the guide. I don't have a base SRLE MO profile without anything added anymore so I can't test it. But I feel that for some plugins it doesn't matter that much if they're placed a little lower/higher than on the list Neo just posted.. I don't know anything about LOOT's sorting algorithms but perhaps that would explain difference that minos55 is reporting? Or am I completely wrong on this Hi, I believe this is correct yes!

Haha wow that load order is so different from mine. It placed RW2 way down for example.. I just finished digging through it in TES5Edit looking for records to patch. I should mention that I use REGS too as well as a couple of plugins not included in SRLE. Btw, is there any easy way for a 'Before'-rule in LOOT? I'm struggling with the global priorities and don't want to use the 'after' rule in some cases..

Hm for me Guardanimations.esp isn't placed after GuardAnimationsGDO.esp. CCOR also doesn't overwrite BCS nor BCS - Lost Library

Just the waterfalls would be reason enough to consider making this work alongside RW2 and COT. @Darkside, what exactly did you remove? I deleted most records that conflicted with COT or RW2 and didn't let it overwrite any RW2 textures or meshes (if there were any, I can't remember). Kept the worldspace edits, but not sure how much they will conflict. So far I've only seen like 3 waterfalls since then but my god they are stunning indeed!

I've actually had this happen with some snow in Dawnstar. Purple cubes everywhere :p I think it stopped after stepping under shelter. I then decided to rebuild the patch and haven't seen it since. I did not try looking for it either, so I might not actually be fixed but yeah. If I see it again I guess I'll also try using that replacer I guess.

I'm also in an eternal struggle against stutter and lag spikes, but at the same time don't want to back down on 2k textures. I also have a reasonable i5, a GTX 970, 8GB RAM and a SSD. I guess you just can't have it all in Skyrim :p The only way I found to really reduce most of the stutter is to set EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=true in enblocal.ini but that way enbhost isn't migrating memory (I think) and at some point Skyrim will just crash. With all the 'correct' enblocal settings I don't crash, but stutter in many areas like JK's ETaC's towns, and for example Solitude's docks. No 15 seconds spikes, but in those areas I can never turn the camera 360 degrees without lagging a couple of times. I think I tried every single combination of enblocal settings by now. I feel your pain -sigh-

I would like to note here that fShadowDistance seems to be a major factor in FPS drops and stutters in high-clutter areas like the cities and towns from ETaC and JKs series (and perhaps the Dawn of xx series, but haven't tested that myself). Reducing fShadowDistance greatly reduces (CPU?) processing in towns like this, where my FPS could drop as low as 20-25 with fShadowDistance set at 8000 in certain areas where otherwise I can easily get 40-60 FPS in exteriors, depending on ENB settings. In these areas GPU usage (an OCed GTX 970) sits at about 50%, indicating a bottleneck elsewhere. I found that overclocking my i5 3570k from 3.5 to 4.3 Ghz gave me a couple of frames. Although it isn't the newest processor on the market, I consider it still very capable and I feel that Skyrim just isn't well optimized enough to handle the amount of clutter/shadows that are added by mods like this. On a side note, I also overclocked my RAM from 1600 to 1866 Mhz. All over the internet people claim that this doesn't make much of a difference in most games, but I can confirm a slight increase in FPS (2-4) in 'bad areas', like standing in front of the main gate in (JK's) Whiterun and looking at the carts/market area. I can imagine 2133++ Mhz RAM with tight timings really making a difference in these towns, but don't quote me on that. Anyway, Setting it at 3500-4000 does a decent job of increasing FPS in those areas while still retaining a decent 'pop-in distance', but setting it as low as 3000 or even lower can almost double your FPS in certain areas at the cost of a noticable shadow pop in. I tested this in several spots in Whiterun (main gate, dragonsreach, skyforge) and in Solitude (main gate), standing still and having the camera at an angle where the FPS was lowest, not moving the camera after that. I chose those spots because even on a MO profile that just had JK's Cities, no texture replacers and ENB disabled, with fShadowDistance at 8000 it still managed to drop the FPS to 40 or 50 something, I can't remember exactly. For Whiterun at least, I didn't do this in Solitude. Other than that my ini settings are pretty much the same as the ultra profile. I can't think of tweaks that could have influenced the test at that moment, although it has been a while since I did this. I did use the grass settings from Verdant - A Skyrim Grass Plugin at the time I think. I found my 'sweet spot' (performance increase vs pop in decrease) to be somewhere around 3200-3600. Before messing around with fShadowDistance I had already tried tweaking other settings mentioned in this topic but none of these settings had nearly as much of an impact in those towns. I should also mention that I couldn't very well determine its influence on general smoothness/sudden FPS drops when walking around in cities. I felt it had improved a little, but these things depend too much on the resolution you play on/texture replacements/VRAM/enblocal.ini tailoring/general ENB quality etc. So yeah, in conclusion, you probably shouldn't just write off this settings as 'personal preference' if you're using popular city overhauls as these. Without these mods it might be perfectly fine to set it as high as 8000 and not encounter many problems, though. The general consensus seems to be a setting of around ~3500 already but I figured I should post my findings here as well, even though they're intended for performance related purposes and not necessarily for getting the optimal shadow resolution quality. As for the actual optimization.. One variable I don't see being mentioned very often is ShadowBlurRange under the [sHADOW] ENB settings.. I personally don't care much anymore for the optimal shadows in this game (mostly because I gave up the hope of ever achieving the perfect setting), but I like a relatively low setting of iBlurDeferredShadowMask (3-5) combined with ShadowBlurRange of ~7.0

Ah, I saw the same thing happen with FixAliasedTextures and EnableSubpixelAA yesterday and thought I was going crazy. I'm not using Vividian ENB but did have those notes added in enblocal.ini. Removing them fixed it. I found it weird that I never noticed this until yesterday, but now that you posted this I wonder if it has to do with a recent ENB update? (as in, recent d3d9.dll updates) Btw if there is anyone with a load order based on SRLE+REGS, can you tell me how switching to LOOT affected your load order? I'm still hesitating..

Ah, I was under the impression you were confused about the MO merge option, my bad. Yeah you're right about it getting messy if you do that with all optionals. I only do it with a couple of mods, so I can revert back to the original files more easily. It also depends on the size of the files.. Like I delete a lot of texture files that get overwritten (sometimes multiple times) to save up some precious SSD space.

In general they are called "optionals" because they are separate downloads mostly found under the Optional and Misc sections on the Nexus page of the mod in question. If they are listed in the guide that means they are needed! About the EFF replacement file, you should indeed select 'merge' when prompted by MO. If you select 'replace' it will delete all previously installed EFF files. You just want the replacement file to .. well.. replace only the files it is supposed to replace, and the 'merge' option will do that. You could also install it as a new mod (and call it like 'EFF Replacement File') and place it below the main EFF mod if that is what you prefer. That way it will still overrule the main EFF files that it is supposed to replace (as seen in the 'Conflicts' tab if you right-click the mod and select 'Information'), but the overruled files will still exist in the main EFF folder. I actually do this a lot, it helps me organize my mod list. But to each their own. An example of a situation where this can be useful is Race Menu. The main file has been updated several times in the past few months, but its optional file stays at v2-5-0. Instead of 'merging' the optional file with the main file every time it gets updated, I put the optional file in its own folder. This prevents me from being stupid and forgetting to reinstall it. (plus that way I don't have to un-hide and find the optional file in the MO downloads tab every time.. -lazy- )

I think I recall seeing something in this thread about odd light flashes being caused by certain textures/meshes + ENB. It was speculated it had something to do with smelters. For example in Dawnstar, the odd flashing would occur whenever it popped into view from a certain distance. I'm not sure if people ever found a solution to it but I found it to be very annoying and started to disable meshes that have something to do with the smelters in an attempt to find the culprit. I've found that hiding SMIM's "../meshes/furniture/smeltermarker.nif" solves the flashing issue. I'm not sure what you'd be missing out on by disabling this, but to my eyes the smelters still look good (tested with both Skyrim Realistic Overhaul and SkySight Smelter Ultra HD's textures). As for the odd flashes that happen (for me) in front Solitude's main gate, I haven't found out what is causing those.. Oh and a heads up for people using Zerwas' 'Skyrim 2015 Shaders', his smeltermarker.nif also has this issue, so I had to hide/remove that one too.

Well it isn't Neo who made those changes, not sure if there has been any communication whatsoever between him and the guy who did make them

Ah, thanks for explaining. Since I built my load order on SRLE with its own dedicated conflict resolution page, I'm used to checking out possible conflicts myself. This is probably why step 10 confused me and some others users.. Perhaps it needs rephrasing (Nozzer66's explanation above?) I agree with you that asking to make a Merged Patch is probably superior; I do have to admit that I ignore a lot of conflicts I'm not sure how to solve. I think I'll give it a try too and see what it does to those. Hopefully it doesn't try changing too much from the SR Conflict Resolution esp

What does this TES5Edit Merged Patch actually do? I don't really use perkus maximus but I stumbled on this thread. I don't really see why it is a must-have step in here. Is it instructed by PerMa? Because I don't recall ever seeing this in SRLE.. Is it wrong to suggest that people skip the Merged Patch step? It seems to cause a lot of confusion.

EDIT: removed post, outdated info + cba to keep up with the internet concerning the paid mods discussion

Might be the ENB, I personally prefer other ENBs even though it might mean incompatibilities with CoT and such. Maybe try tweaking the Subsurface Scattering section

Ah, looks like having the output folder on a different disk shouldn't matter indeed then. My install is mainly SR:LE+REGS but I've also added many additional mods, some of which are included in your packs.

Hm alright. There was nothing to overwrite though, the StorageUtilData folder at the location I chose was empty. It was the first time I ran the script. Maybe I should mention that I picked a location on my HDD, while MO and Skyrim are installed on my SSD. Not sure if that makes any difference whatsoever.

After running the Dyndolod script I noticed it put the folder skse > plugins > StorageUtilData in my MO overwrite folder. The rest of the output got correctly placed in the folder I chose, including a second StorageUtilData folder (an empty one). I just bunched the files together and installed it as a new mod in MO, but I didn't see anything about the overwrite folder mentioned in the guide. Is this supposed to happen or did I mess something up?

The lower shadow settings are mostly to counter lag and stutters in high-clutter exteriors that come with mods like JK's cities and ETaC I feel. I didn't notice much of a difference in my regular SRLE profile either. In the case of the new lods causing fps issues, I don't think lowering those shadow settings will help you get many frames back Btw Neo I've been wanting to ask you.. Do you notice much of a difference in VRAM related stutters or overall smoothness now that you upgraded to a 980? I'm aiming for a gameplay profile/enb atm that can average around 50 fps in exteriors with a single 970 (except for towns), but I seem to be unable to play without major stutters no matter what settings I use in enblocal.ini. I've been playing around with many different other settings too trying to rule out possible causes but the only variable I can't really change right now is my gpu. I am going over that 3500 VRAM treshold at times because of additional mods like Verdant, ETaC and landscape texture replacers. It's just that I'm unsure if it's the 970 causing stutters at that point or if I'm just expecting too much of the game. So yeah, I was wondering about your experiences.

Can't you like use the console for such things. I guess it's breaking immersion but it's better than the game breaking I'd say. I'm not sure how to do it but a quick google search resulted in this wiki page and the console command SetStage <quest id> <stage value>. Quest ID appears to be MS08 and you can find the stage values at the bottom of the page. I never really did this myself so someone correct me if this is wrong

It really depends on what city you're in and at what angle you're looking at things too. Sure, you might get 60 fps in some spots (depending on your enb) but I'm just trying to say that you shouldn't expect miracles. I can only say that I was disappointed after overclocking my i5 and upgrading to a 970 and still seeing the lowish FPS in parts of JK's cities :p But yeah, it's your money and you should definitely see an improvement at least About the RAM, I wonder how much of a difference it makes. I played around with overclocking mine a bit (I think I might have the same as CJ) and for example the difference between 1600Mhz vs 1866Mhz was like 2 FPS in the CPU heavy areas. Timings on the 1866 OC weren't that tight but I considered the difference negligible. I've considered upgrading to a tightly timed 2133Mhz set but I'm not sure they're worth the money Also, I might try out the Ivy thing.. thanks for that Lonewolf.

Yeah it varies a lot even with that 'tweak', it just dips to 30 instead of <20 in the worst places for me now. I also get drops when running around but that's probably because I can be a bit overambitious when it comes to high res texture replacers. I have a i5 3570k and overclocked it from 3,5 to 4,3Ghz. Not the newest processor on the market but I consider it very capable still.. I'm not sure buying a newer i5/i7 will solve the fps issues, it will probably get you a couple of frames but if it's just for Skyrim.. well it's a lot of cash.

I have a 970 too and if you monitor its usage at those spots where the FPS is 20-30, you will notice your GPU sitting at like 40% usage or something. Processor seems to be bottlenecking here. I got a few frames by overclocking it and 1 or 2 frames more by OCing RAM but it's mostly a shadow issue in JK's towns (and ETaC's villages). I've mentioned it before I think but turning down fShadowDistance to 3000-3500 really does wonders for your FPS, you go from like 20 to 35-40. You will have to live with shadow pop in though.

Yup I added the above rule too, which places ETaC - Complete relatively late in the load order, and I used to just BUM rule most (if not all) patches after ETaC - Complete. Just make sure all masters are loaded before it. Right now I have them all merged into a single patch (how to do that was recently discussed in the Explorer's Guide forums) and loaded it after Atlas - Compass Tweaks.esp because for me Atlas was the last loaded master file of the merged patch. I haven't thoroughly tested things in game but the game loads and I have yet to encounter serious problems..