GrantSP

Thanks. That was getting to me too.

...repeatable? EDIT: Well that was a bit of a let down. Perhaps it may be designed that way but I can easily defeat Karstaag by running to the opposite end of his throne room and stand on those rocks. From this vantage point I can pepper him with flaming arrows and Fireball spells. I did this first to get away from the Mounted Riekling, man I hate those things. From there I can shoot at them and they can't reach me. With Karstaag though, he doesn't even bother to come close. He summons a few Ice Wraiths and they too just stay near the throne. I reckon it may be designed that way, he is pretty powerful. Still, a bit of a let down to have a boss fight that wasn't, well, a fight!

Okay, so I'm still making my way through my first playthrough and I have been in Solstheim for a while now. While I was waiting for another message from Ralis I wandered up north to around Castle Karstaag. Anyway, I found a back entrance through the caverns and fought my way through the reikling horde and found a throne in a back room. Ahh, I thought, what does that do? <click> and Boom!! smashed across the room. After what seemed like an eternity I could stand and I looked back at what hit me. WTH! a damn ghostly giant smashing me across the place. Although I was killed outright within about three hits, this was one of the best experiences I've had so far. I had no specific quest telling me to enter this castle or any information about what to find, just a locked door and a back entrance that invited me in. Brilliant. Why aren't there more experiences like this? When I know what is supposed to be in a place I can prepare but stumbling upon this was THE BEST fun ever. Anyone else think we need more fights/locations that aren't specifically tied to quests or that give details beforehand?

I'd say it is a case of you are not yet familiar with the MO interface. Plugins, things like *.esp or &.esm, are shown in the 'right-hand' pane and the mod they are from are shown in the 'left-hand' pane. Mods contain everything else that the mod needs, in this case, meshes. So you have just installed the 'Improved Closefaced Helmets (Legendary Edition)' from Nexus and it appears in the 'right-hand' pane. If you activate that mod, or put the checkmark next to it, the plugin becomes active in the 'right-hand' pane. You can either dectivate that plugin in the 'right-hand' pane or remove it from the mod as the instructions are describing. So, with your mouse cursor on the mod's name, either 'right-click --> Information...' or 'double-click' and select the 'Optional ESPs' tab in the window that appears. There you can move the esp from the bottom window to the top to make it...optional. If you do that then the esp that comes with the mod isn't loaded but the meshes are still available. There are in fact a number of ways to accomplish this but the steps described are the easiest and most common. The MO wiki describes all these details about the program and the newer concepts that it uses to do what it does. I strongly suggest you have a look through it and maybe watch the videos that accompany it.

When you use MO to start your game, which executable is active in the drop-down box, the one next to the "Run" button. You will need to manually add the 4GB patch executable to that list, but be careful, after adding a new executable the drop-down list reverts to show the first listing, usually it is the SKSE. So assuming you have installed and configured the 4GB patch, add it to MO and ensure it is selected and then hit "Run".

hmm... It's so hard to avoid subjective opinion and come to real conclusions. I'm with you on the fences, they look really good but the thatching is just too jarring in my opinion, but not having much experience with thatched roofing, who am I to say. The timbers are, different, but are they better? The flooring pavers though just look wrong. They look too rough and not worn down with all the feet marching up and down on them for who knows how long. The vanilla ones are flat and smooth as I would expect them to be. 2 cents given.

This is exactly the right view to take. Couldn't agree more whole-heartedly. Far too often users just blindly follow step-by-step guides without knowing WHY it is done that way. Installing mods SHOULD be a learning experience, in my view, and STEP provides that as it is now.

Yeah sure, why not? It has been a loooong time since I modded Oblivion so maybe a collaboration? Set up a placeholder page here. I will eventually link it to the main page in the section 'Welcome' -- 'Features' where it lists the supported games. If I/we get adventurous we can do the other games likewise.

If the registry settings that point to the Skyrim installation are the same you shouldn't have any difficulties. MO looks there to get the Skyrim information but everything else, mods, downloads, profiles, etc. are stored in folders under the Mod Organizer folder. Of course any tools you may have added to the MO GUI will need to be in the same paths or you will need to redo those links in the 'Executables' window. I would though suggest you separate your MO mods & downloads folders from under the Steam folder. Perhaps to a dedicated folder away from any Windows controlled folders. That way you head off any UAC issues that can arise if Windows has full control. You can install MO to anywhere and then move your existing mods, downloads, profiles folders to the new location. There are no path specific references in those files/folders. That way all you have previously done will be intact. EDIT: Ninja'd by Greg

Nice work. I just tried it and the whole process took according to TESLODGen:

Yeah I think this process may be a bit counter-intuitive. The exclusions option is telling BitDefender which executables not to bother checking. So since the problem is actually the MO modified TESV.exe, maybe telling it to exclude that will do the trick.

@hishutup Well done, I didn't know that console command did that. Now I have an extensive list of the settings for Skyrim. It's about 45Kb compared to 1 or 2 so it covers a lot of settings. Now onto a bit of research. I think I can drop this thread until I have some valuable information, as opposed to, 'curious but not helpful', information. Thanks.

Ok, leaving aside the 'reading the ini settings inside the VFS' bit. Is there a method, other than disassembling the exe, to see what are the settings that each game engine CAN use? I am loathe to go trawling the web for every 'recommended' ini and comparing them, all I want to see is the setting, I'm not to fussed just now about the values, other than if they are default or not. Or, if I am 'barking up the wrong tree', could someone come and put me out of my misery? If this really isn't needed and the settings generally accepted are all we need to know, I wouldn't mind if I was slapped down and told to forget it.

The 'DistantLOD' inside the "Overwrite" folder is the correct way MO works. If there isn't a folder or file inside the VFS when a tool operates, the resulting generated files/folders are placed into the temporary mod folder called "Overwrite". Simply right-click and 'Create mod', then activate that mod in MO. The *.LOD files will then be placed into the VFS ready for use in the game. As for the 'memory leak', have a look at this bug report posted on the bug tracker. It may clear some things up. @hishutup is very active here and may provide some more details about that issue.

BitDefender does have an option to exclude certain executables or folders from its checking. Documentation for those unsure how to set it up can be found on their website. Maybe another stickied post on the Nexus, or at least another line to an existing, to say check ALL AV packages for over-zealous activity?

And did MO start correctly? Did you notice any difference with mods working? That second ini is closer to what mine looks like. I did install MO some time ago and just updated the install, not with a complete reinstall of a later version. It possible that Tannin has made some changes to the ini settings though I can't imagine why. I have MO for all the supported games and none of the ModOrganizer.ini files list the default game executables or their script extender loaders.

Fresh goodness! I can't wait.

Do you have any large downloads queued in the downloads tab? Or do you use it for games other than Skyrim? If you have MO open for one game, and try to download a mod for another, it will say it doesn't like it as there is already a running instance of MO.

Huh! Sorry but I can't agree with that. 'Crap' is a subjective term and there are many tests that could be shown to highlight its success rate, along with a number that show failures. As to its development being stopped. It may have another name change to merge the product lines but it isn't going to stop anytime soon. At any rate this isn't a 'which AV is better thread' I was just curious if anyone here had the same results that a number of users were reporting. Oh, I chuckled at: "but I only visit a moderate amount shady websites". Searching for that special mod with physics enabled breasts were you?

Have a look at the answer I gave on the Nexus site. I think there may be issues with the version of Windows you are using.

@NomenNescio What version of MO are you using? I'm curious about your ModOrganizer.ini. In it you have settings for both the Skyrim Launcher and the Skyrim game. These shouldn't need setting by you as they are automatically set by MO. When you look at the 'Add executables' dialog, the launcher, game and the Creation Kit (if installed) will show as greyed-out, whereas all the user set options are black and bold. Was there some issue with your initial setup that caused you to add them? It may be that you are running an instance of Skyrim in side MO that isn't recognizing ANY mods by doing it this way. Try removing those settings by editing it in Notepad. The UI should recognize the game based on registry settings and fill in the game executables for you. If that doesn't work then perhaps you have moved Skyrim after installation and the registry isn't pointing to the current location.

The mod is packaged incorrectly and all that is needed is to select the 'Manual' option when installing, then with the file opened, the text at the bottom of the dialog will say, No game date top level, right-click on the Data folder below <data> and select 'Set data directory'. The text at the bottom of the dialog will change to say Looks Good, and the mod will be installed.

Yeah slight misunderstanding. In light of the 'vSync' discussion, it occurred to me that with multiple ini files all being loaded, as described in the OP, it could become problematic changing one when another makes a change that overwrites that change. If I'm understanding it now, the Skyrim engine, and i suppose any of the games: Oblivion, Fallout, etc., have a set list of definitions that can be defined by an ini. Some take values, some are boolean, but the biggest thing I have now learnt is if a setting is missing the engine uses the default and we need to know what the default is. This becomes even more of an issue when we add dll extensions to the engine that take over aspects of the program and these new extensions have the same settings, ie. ENBSeries. So since the ini settings we use for Skyrim and SkyrimPrefs are pretty minimal in MO, and we can add on to them ini tweaks. On top of that we may be running an ENB it would be good to see how all these settings are cared for and in which order the engine reads them, if that matters. What I think would be good is to have a complete list of all the settings that the game engines use, plus the extensions that go with them, and have clearly defined what the DEFAULT settings are. Then we need to know if deleting that line keeps the default setting or turns it off. I know there are many settings in Skyrim that aren't generally set but if you know of them you can tweak the game. A couple of easy ones are to do with the console. By default my Skyrim.ini didn't show any [Menu] settings but you can easily add some that change how the console appears. This way we can be certain that memory management settings should be set in SKSE's ini and graphics settings go in ENB's for example. Also if someone could clearly tell me why the Skyrimprefs.ini exists? What is its purpose? Why is it seperate to Skyrim.ini?

Try putting it in the 'Arguments' field and not the 'Binary' field.

Thank you. I will keep an eye out for that. Weirdness indeed.