MosAnted

I've found out the culprit: I have TES Mod Manager installed for BSA browsing/extracting, and it had a "ghost inactive plugins" feature enabled, so it hid plugins whenever I ran it to browse a bsa.

The Master can be changed without issues using Wrye Bash or TES5Edit, or the 101bugs plugin be renamed. There's nothing in the .esp actually dependant on that particular master (it just edits the ingredient effect magnitudes).

101 Bugs Effect Patch (by Zaerosz) For those who, like me, found the extra alchemy ingredients added by 83 willows' 101bugs HD overpowered, this small mod nerfs their effect to vanilla or near-vanilla levels. Note: The Master is listed as 101Bugs High-Red High-Spawn version, but it's possible to either rename the esp or change the master in WB and the game seems to load without issues.

Thing is i'm not actually running WB when it happens.

As the title says, twice already I try to start Skyrim only to crash to desktop. When I open MO again, I see Master files missing (Dawnguard the first time, both Dwnguard and Dragonborn the latest). Browsing through the Skyrim/Data folder I find both plugins and bsa's with a .ghost extension. I know WB has this function, but I haven't run it lately. Both times it's happened right after building a pack with Skyrim Mod Combiner, but AFAIK SMC doesn't touch the game's Master plugins at all. Edit: And now it's deleted Dawnguard.esm

(Can't figure out how to make a proper gallery, if you do please let me know) I set out to test the different AF options. These photos were all taken using the the presets fro myour guide for Skyrim, SkyrimPrefs, enblocal, and enbseries .ini's, as well as your SweetFX presets. 1- AF disabled 2- AF 8x enabled in enblocal, UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics = true 3- AF 8x enabled in enblocal, UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics = false 4- AF 8x enabled in driver, UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics = true In my experience, AF works just as well wether enabled from enblocal or forced through the driver, and wether the ENB graphics are disabled or not makes no difference. Also I cannot really find any noticeable difference between enb AF and driver AF. Speaking of SweetFX, you mentioned having tried some presets. I was looking through some of the available ones in the nexus and some seem very appealing. What were your thoughts of the ones you tried, and why did you end up setting in the settings recommended in the guide?

Okm i'll give it a try! I've spent the past few days getting Skyrim Mod combiner set up to see how it looks/performs, but I'll be testing this on my STEP Extended install. One more thing: I'm at the "SweetFX" part of your guide, and I'm a bit lost. The instructions say to "Extract 03.With SMAA only to a temporary folder" Yet the download from https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23364/? lacks any such directory

This mod has been reported to cause Savegame bloat and corruption. It's recommended to instead use Darnified UI's collapsible categories feature instead.

You mention forcing AF in the gpu driver, but you keep ForceAnisotropy=true in enblocal.ini. AFAIK only one should be enabled. Which one should be used?

Was going through you .ini files and found this on the SkyrimPrefs.ini: iWaterReflectHeight and iWaterReflectWidth are duplicated.

Hey Silvermane, just wanted to ask how you've been finding the Civil War Overhaul? I've been wanting to try it myself but the sheer size of the mod makes me wary.

I'm not 100% sure but I think the extra AMB Iron armor textures (the engraved ones) were added in the latest update of the Content AddOn as an additional Iron Armor variant, so it might not be necessary to install the separately anymore.

No problem! Since I'm in a similar boat (starting from STEP Extended and moving own to a more personalized modlist) your list is helping, and I think it's just as fair to help you back! One more thing: I notice you are using both Gemling Queen Dragon Claws and Ruins Clutter Improved v 2.8, but on the nexus page for GQDC it says it's not compatible with the v2.8 version of Ruins Clutter Improved, so the solution is either to drop Gemling Queen DC, or to use the STEP solution: Install Ruins Clutter sans Dragon Claws.

I was checking out the Axe & Pickaxe rebalance. The Damage increase ends up making them stronger than about 60% of the base game weapons. It increases their base damage to 15. For reference, the Elven War Axe does 15 damage as well. Also it overrides changes from WAF Remade. I'd recomment using the "weight change only" plugin and then manually making a compatibility patch in TES5Edit.

There's a bugfix patch for Hypothermia here that you might want to consider.

I hope you don't think I'm challenging your choices, but I find it easier to make a decision myself after discussion with differing points of view. I noticed you removed "Revenge of the Enemies" back in Steppin Out. What did you end up using to improve enemy AI? Also, why did you chose to go with Hypothermia instead of using the "Light" preset from Frostfall?

Thanks for the list. I was directed to your threads after further modding of my STEP Extended install, and after isntalling a multi-follower mod (EFF in my case) and finding out it made the game too easy, I was looking to balancing out the scales without making the game crazy-hardcore and frustrating. I realize Ambitious Skyrim and STEP Extended are very different, but having a list of parts in which they differ/conflict is useful as personally I find myself disagreeing with several of your design choices. With this I can more easily see ways to tweak my install to customize it more to my liking ,and most importantly I find your insight into ASIS and enemy AI both in this and Steppin Out very useful.

Do you have any thoughts/advice on incorporating changes into a STEP Extended install? I was looking through your old "Steppin out" guide but this one seems to be a more radical change.

I see. Do you install the full or the loremonger edition of DD?

Leto, I noticed on the Steam discussion you mention adding Ultimate Dragons because Deadly Dragons made dragons too OP, but you're using both. How is the interaction between both makes dragons better/not as OP compared to solely using DD?

Beautiful Skyrim - HD Clutter and Furniture While looking for a better retexture for bone clutter than Better Bones I came across this. Seems to cover a lot of things that aren't covered by current STEP, so i think it's worth taking a look at.

Bug report: Just upgraded from 1.2.18 to 1.3.2, whenever I try to use the "search by name" function on the left pane, MO crashes.

Edit: nvm I was mistaken

I don't think they're SKSE-phobic, but that they don't want to add a SKSE requirement to the unofficial patches because there are people who don't use it.

I'd like to bring attention back to this one as a replacement for the current STEP choice. I found Better Bones to be way too grainy and "noisy", also noticed it overwrote Book of Silence's Skeletons. I would suggest downloading the "bones" pack and leaving aMidianBorn BoS for Skeleton textures, and to hide the "bloodybones.dds" and "bloodybones_n.dds" files in MO as they overwrite SMIM's version which is IMO better.