Greg

Ultimately this is your decision. As TechAngel85 says, checking the SMIM option just enables you to select other mods like Better Dynamic Snow that you wouldn't otherwise listed as an option.

Any recommendations on how to create a good balance given the player's base abilities when combined with bonuses from some of the stones? I'm thinking something like a wood elf character with a bonus from either the Warrior Stone or the Lover Stone might level archery fairly quickly. I'm assuming the same may be true of a Nord character in one-handed abilities. I like the concept you're presenting in which the experience boost is scaled from the lower levels to prevent the character from becoming overpowered too quickly, but I'm wondering whether this should reach a certain peak and remain flat (like you have at 50=1.25 with no further bonuses) or peak and scale slowly back down (50=1.25, 60=1.2, 70=1.1, 75=1.05, ...)?

If I remember correctly, I think WATER used to be a separate mod that has been merged into The Ruffled Feather. In this case, I think you want to uncheck both SMIM and WATER because neither of these two are installed when you select the STEP option.

If you are using Mod Organizer, SKSE.ini should not be in the Skyrim directory and this is most likely the cause of your problem. The SKSE.ini file should be in the SKSE mod like this:

Ignore the red warning from ENBoost. This is just an informational message saying the graphics features of ENBoost have been disabled, and this is is correct for STEP. Run Skyrim again and wait a few minutes after that red message shows up to see what happens.

I think Neb is correct... the ini file is in the SKSE folder in a mod named SKSE. It is confusing, but it looks correct to me as well.

You can ignore the red warning text from ENBoost. This is just saying you have UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=false in enblocal.ini, and this is the correct setting for STEP since STEP doesn't use the graphics features in ENBoost.

The 980 TI is a bit faster than than 980 but I'm not convinced it's a sufficient speed increase to justify the cost and I doubt it will have any effect on your specific issue. Offhand, your hardware specs look really good so you theoretically shouldn't have any slowdowns when crossing into new territories or exiting buildings. How would you describe these slowdowns? Is it like a stuttering effect or does the game just seem sluggish for a while? If I go back to look at the original Skyrim Performance Monitor chart you posted, you have very little disk activity and the CPU isn't heavily loaded either. I wonder what this looks like when the game slows down for you? It might help if you could post your skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini here in spoiler tags as well to see if something odd is going on here. Your enblocal.ini settings are very close to mine. The only significant differences I can see is that you have EnableEdgeAA=true and EnableSubPixelAA=true and I have both these set to false. Offhand, I don't think these two settings have much of an impact on performance and certainly wouldn't cause a lag crossing zones.

Spiders... yech. I developed a big aversion to spiders when I was about 5 or 6. We lived in the country and one of my neighbors grabbed me from behind and planted me face first into a huge spider web with a rather large black spider. I think about that incident every time I see a spider.

The reason it doesn't work is because neither Dropbox nor SkyDrive/OneDrive allow embedding images. Both require users to access files via the website or the app, so you might consider switching over to copy.com.

1. Just select everything in the Overwrite folder and drag that group to over and drop it onto the STEP Core Bashed Patch. Make sure the Overwrite folder is empty before you run Wrye Bash to create or recreate the bashed patch.

Also be aware that some ENB presets may require specific lighting mods, so you may need to install STEP Extended without the lighting mods and lighting patches.

Correct, you do not need the STEP Optimized Textures if you have already optimized the HRDLC. You're also correct that this won't overwrite your optimized textures so you don't need to worry about this part either.

I think the only reason Skyrim Performance Monitor wants access to the skyrim.ini file is so it can set the "Disable the 'Bethesda Game Studios' Start Video" option if it's checked and perhaps the video card option. I don't use either of these options so I pointed it to Documents/My Games/Skyrim/SkyrimPrefs.ini.

Which video card are you currently using?

Thanks to the gracious help from Kryptopyr, I completed the Dragonborn Starts After section and I really like the Timing Unknown option because it gives the Dragonborn quest a feel of randomness so the player doesn't know when the Dragonborn quest will begin.

This depends on how you install the mod. If you click Download with Manager on Nexus, it should give the SMIM Compatibility Patch the same name as Vivid Landscapes - Tundra Moss Revised and ask if you want to merge or replace. If you installed it manually, Mod Organizer picks the name of the mod based on the name of the file so it defaults to SMIM Compatibility Patch and installs it as a new mod if you don't manually enter the name of the mod. As an alternative, you can install the SMIM Compatibility Patch normally and in the first dialog that pops up enter "Vivid Landscapes - Tundra Moss Revised" as the name of the mod (in the textbox at the top of the dialog) and Mod Organizer will then ask if you want to merge.

This is your choice and depends on the capabilities of your computer. The STEP recommendations is to use the medium quality or 1K variants in most cases since these can be used by the majority of users with mid-range gaming rigs (video cards with 2GB VRAM). If you have a higher-range gaming rig with 3GB or 4GB VRAM, a 64-bit operating system, and 8GB or more RAM you may be able to use the high quality or 2K variants but you'll most likely have to increase DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB=768 to DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB=1024 in SKSE.ini since the higher quality options require memory. If there's any doubt, always use the baseline recommendations in the guide.

No, that's not quite right. You install the mods in the left and this includes everything in the mod -- plugins, BSAs, and loose files. The right pane is divided into tabs that show the load order (for the plugins and masters), archives, and data (a combined view of all files from all active mods in the Data folder). Basically the right pane just represents different ways to see the mods that are installed in the left pane. The Fuz Ro D'oh.ini file needs to be edited manually. To do this: While in Mod Organizer, right-click the Fuz Ro Doh mod on the left-hand side Select the menu option Open in explorer Within the new window, navigate into the SKSE\Plugins folder Right-click within the folder and select the menu option New > Text Document Name the file Fuz Ro D'oh.ini (make sure you are showing File Extensions - click here to see how) Open the new file and copy the below contents, pasting them into the file [General]WordsPerSecondSilence=2 Save and close the file

You should disable Papyrus logging because it has been known to cause issues when playing and I've never seen anything in the Papyrus log that helps troubleshoothing issues related to crashes. Is the log you posted from when the game crashed? The reason I ask is because I expected to see somewhat more than 302 peak based on some of the additional mods in your load order.

Some of the older mods on Nexus haven't been updated to use the new Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch, so you'll need to run the USLEEP Swap Masters Script in TES5Edit if you want to use these mods.

You don't need to unpack the BSAs, but there's no difference between BSAs and loose files when using Mod Organizer so I wouldn't worry about it.

Is the Better Weapon Swing Sounds mod checked in the left pane? If it is, right click Better Weapon Swing Sounds in the right pane, click Information, click the Filetree tab, and verify BWS.bsa is showing. If you don't see BWS.bsa in the file tree, you may need to reinstall the mod.

This is the first time I used FISS and it is incredibly easy. All I had to was click Load Preset in Timing is Everything, click a box to begin loading the settings, and then click a box that indicated loading was complete.

This is a long-standing Windows bug that goes back to least the Windows 95/98 days. It initially began as a battle to prevent applications in the background from stealing focus from the application in the foreground without the user's consent (e.g. it was very common for an application to pop itself to the foreground thereby stealing keyboard and mouse focus away from the user), but Microsoft has jimmied the system so badly that even normal focus fails to work properly. It's so bad that it's very common for a user to open an application and be unable to find said application because it's sitting behind a ton of other windows. This bug has existed for so long that I've given up hope that Microsoft will ever get it right.