Greg

I sometimes get the feeling I'm swimming upstream against a tsunami, but I don't like the term either. I refer to them as Skyrim and Skyrim Special Edition, but I'm over the hill and dislike acronyms because I think acronyms are a hindrance to clear communication. When someone writes CRF I always have to stop to think for a few minutes which of the many variations1 of CRF is being referred to in this context. 1 https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/CRF

I always use the portable version of Mod Organizer (instead of the installer) so I can extract the ZIP file in any folder for a second or third or fourth instance of Mod Organizer. I currently have three instances of Mod Organizer for Skyrim (STEP Extended, STEP Extended test, and my playthrough with a few mods on top of STEP Extended) and another instance for Fallout New Vegas.

Is there a specific reason you want a profile for STEP Core and another profile for STEP Extended? It is feasible, but doing so might be a bit confusing to a new user because some mods (notably STEP Compilation, Bashed Patch, Dual Sheath Redux output, FNIS output, and DynDoLOD output, and any mods that have different installation steps for Core/Extended) must be completely separate mods in both profiles and you can't mix them. This means you'll end up with a STEP Core Compilation mod in the STEP Core profile containing the STEP Core patches and a STEP Extended Compilation mod in the STEP Extended profile containing the STEP Extended patches. Where it gets confusing is that Mod Organizer shows both STEP Core Compilation and STEP Extended Compilation in both profiles so you have to ensure STEP Core Compilation is active in STEP Core and inactive in STEP Extended and STEP Extended Compilation is inactive in STEP Core and active in STEP Extended.

Have you set configured enblocal.ini and skse.ini according to the instructions in the guide? If this doesn't solve the problem, you may need to install the latest DirectX 9 End-User Runtimes (June 2010).

Did you delete the files DynDOLOD created before you ran it again?

Unfortunately you can't simply plop 50 mods into a Bethesda game and expect everything to work perfectly out of the box. In an extremely simple case, you may add a mod that reduces the damage of a sword to 25 and then add another mod later sets the damage of this sword back to the original 35. In this very simple case, you have to figure out which of the two you really want to use in the game. In an very complex case, you may want to add a couple of landscape expansion mods but they conflict with each other -- grass where it shouldn't be, bushes in the middle of walls, etc. Some conflicts may be minor, some may pose ugly landscape or architecture changes, and some may break quests. You can find some videos on conflict resolution on YouTube. For what it's worth, Vurt's stress test isn't a reliable way to test the game. At best it's inconclusive and at worst it's hammering the Papyrus and rendering engine so heavily that it can cause Skyrim to crash.

Back out to a pure STEP Extended profile without any additional mods and get this working and stable before doing anything else. If you want to add any mods on top of STEP Extended, I suggest doing it one mod at a time, using TES5Edit with each mod to determine if you need to resolve any conflicts, and testing in game before adding the next mod.

Using BethINI to establish known working and optimized ini files is a really good place to start. Once that's done, copy the original enblocal.ini from the enbseries_skyrim_*.zip you downloaded and installed and customize it according to the STEP 2.10.0 guide. If you are using an ENB preset, you can go through its documentation to determine what other settings in enblocal.ini may need to be tweaked, although I might be tempted to back out the ENB preset temporarily to get the baseline working first and then add in the ENB preset later. I say this because it rules out one more possible thing that can go wrong.

What Tech says...

XX is the load order of the mod in question and you can see this in the Mod Index column in the right pane in Mod Organizer. For example, Skyrim.esm should be 00, Update.ems should be 01, and so forth.

Just to cover all the bases while TechAngel straightens out the normal version of the STEP Compilation, did you hide these three textures in the Re-Defined Dungeons mod? Textures/Dungeons/Candles01.dds Textures/Dungeons/Candles01_n.dds Textures/Dungeons/Candles01_g.dds

You can find the gory detail in the Skyrim Configuration Settings Guide. DoubleYou spent a significant amount of time investigating and documenting all the settings in skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini.

Some people have mentioned this as a potential issue with Ruins Clutter Improved, but I think it's more likely something in the guide wasn't installed quite right since you are the only one reporting this issue. You might start by running BethINI just to make sure your INI settings are correct and then reinstall Static Mesh Improvement Mod per the instructions in the guide. Unfortunately I don't know offhand which mod is providing this specific portion of the candle effect for the glazed candles (although it's probably in the STEP Compilation so reinstall it as well and make sure it installs the appropriate Core or Extended patch).

Did you uncheck "Have MO manage archives" and ensure all BSAs files are checked in the Archives tab (in the right pane) before running DynDOLOD? Did you also re-enable (check) the dummy plugins in the Plugins tab (in the right pane) before running DynDOLOD?

I'm not seeing any conflicts between Dual Sheath Redux 17.3. and Dragonbone Mastery 2.1.1. I do see 10 files in Dragonbone Mastery and 64 files in Dual Sheath Redux that are override by LeanWolf's Better Shaped Weapons 2.0.9.

https://wiki.step-project.com/STEP:2.10.0#2.B._Clean_the_Update_ESM

If I remember correctly, you can run nxmhandler.exe in the Mod Organizer folder to add the entries to registry to get the nxm links working.

In the future, report any issues with the guide in the STEP v2.10.0 Official Bug Reports topic. This issue was reported earlier today and has already been fixed.

If you are using SKSE, double check the memory settings in SKSE.ini in your Mod Organizer profile. You might also run BethINI to establish known good settings in skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini.

It might seem to be a bit weird because SMIM has an extremely large number of options on the second page. If you look at it logically when you first install SMIM you select Original Skyrim 2011: Custom and click Next. Then you go down the endless list of options in the second tab and click Next. Finally you have to have to go back to the top of the browser window to get the one options on the last page. All the options are in the correct order when I installed.

Did you reapply your changes to the [MEMORY] section in enblocal.ini? There may be other settings in enblocal.ini you need to vet carefully as well. Unfortunately, you can't just take a random enblocal.ini and drop it in the Skyrim folder like that.

Assuming you changed only the INI files, run BethINI to get a stable skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini. Once this is complete, restore enblocal.ini and enbseries.ini from the the original archives and configure these per the guide. If you modified skse.ini, resset it back to the settings from the guide as well. Finally, start a new game to get everything starting fresh. If you want to tinker with the INI files in the future, do it one setting at a time and document what you changed so you can restore it to the original values. Some values or combinations of values will cause Skyrim to evaporate down a blackhole. If you still have problems, go back to a pure vanilla game without any mods to verify this works.

I searched Nexus and I don't see any mods from Cabal that include the ebony weapons, although I have not downloaded all of them to search the meshes and textures.

I wonder if this is just an oddity with Wrye Bash because it shows a bunch of records that need to be cleaned with my cleaned DLCs as well.

Or perhaps Skyrim Unbound, which is another alternate start mod that includes an MCM.