Bundy714

Thanks for the update Nearox, I can certainly understand real life commitments interfering. Adding more mods and making a stable pack can be very time consuming. I'll have another look at the core pack.  Â

Thanks for the answer EssArrBee. Looks like it's a little of both then, me adding mods mid game, AND me taking forever before finishing the main quest. I've deleted all my previous saves, but I'm pretty sure I was like level 50 or 60 something when I always seem to hit a wall. And yeah, sounds like good advice on the Civil War Overhaul. I think I'll skip it this time, and actually finish the game for once, and try the Civil War Overhaul on another play through.

Now that makes perfect sense to me. I think I drank entirely too much coffee this morning when I posted that, haha. It's a shame a question that long can be answered so concisely. I was in no way concise because I didn't want to be misunderstood. Thanks for the answer, that explains everything. Especially the part about if mods are posted elsewhere and SRO specifically.

First, lets be clear, I am not trying to buck tradition or change anything, I’m just trying to understand the how’s and why’s a tradition takes hold. Please don’t take this the wrong way, I know the tradition, follow it, and have never questioned it before. And NO, I am not trying to break tradition or get a mod that is no longer available, I just read a thread where this came up and it got me thinking, that’s all. The tradition I’m talking about is how we deal with mods that are no longer on the Nexus. I’ve long understood that some mods are no longer available and just accepted it. And I’ve never actually questioned why before, it’s just the way it is. I just don't understand it and since there are lots of mod authors here, maybe someone can explain it to me. Someone creates a mod, shares it with the public, and then for whatever reason, it gets banned, or removed, and if you got it before it disappeared, all is well. But if you lost it, or didn't download before it disappeared, you are S.O.L. Tradition says it's not allowed and frowned upon to share files that are no longer on the Nexus.....like you would be stealing them. How can you steal something that was given freely to anyone that wanted to download it? I've never understood that whole "I got it before it disappeared, but it would be wrong for me to share it with you" thing. I've come to accept it, but I still don't see what could possibly be "wrong" with it. How is it that the mod author would gladly share with 1000's of people, but now....it would be wrong for you to get the mod. Maybe I'm not looking at it right, but I just don't understand the logic. Mods disappear for lots of reasons. Some had content from other games….I can understand that one. Others got banned because the mod author said something inappropriate on the Nexus. Others because the mod author got angry at some troll comments under his mod and decided to remove it. Others just because real life or loss of interest in Skyrim made them choose to take it down. Or they just don’t want to support it any more. Either way……(and I’m just thinking here), if you got the mod before it went down, you happily continue to use it, and no one thinks you are doing anything wrong. BUT if you share a copy with someone else, common tradition says that is wrong as the mod author no longer wants to share, or maybe is unable to share because of being banned. So, I’m thinking, if the mod author no longer wants to share his mod, how can you use the mod (solely based on when and where you got it) without doing something wrong, but it would be wrong if I got a copy from you? Shouldn’t you also, delete the mod if the mod author no longer wants to share? Wouldn’t we both be wrong in using his mod? But no…..it all seems to depend on when you downloaded the mod….and if you kept a copy on your hard drive. I guess that’s my main source of confusion, the whole, I got it before it disappeared so I can freely use it without any sense of wrongdoing, but to give you a copy would be wrong. That’s what is hard to wrap my head around. And then there seem to be exceptions, like SRO. SRO is no longer on the Nexus, so tradition says it is off limits, yet it is still included in STEP, you just have to torrent it. So what makes it different? Can someone explain it to me? Especially the SRO "exception".

This pack looks very promising and interesting. I'd be interested to know if you were able to complete the game running Civil War Overhaul? That mod sounds great to me, but I've been burned by Skyrim so many times. It will run fine for a long time (100's of hours), then just get to a point where it suddenly becomes unplayable. To tell the truth, I have NEVER completed Skyrim, I've never even done the vanilla Civil War stuff. I put off choosing between Factions and do other quests and just enjoy the big open world with all the radiant quests and have a great time, until bam.....my game slowly becomes unplayable before I ever finish. I've never been in a hurry to finish (I kinda take that open world stuff seriously).....maybe I should just start a new game and ignore the radiant quests just so that I can finish the game for once in my life. Lately, I've noticed that common wisdom is for you to create a game with the mods you want and leave it alone. This is most likely the reason I've never finished the game. My setup will be running well, and some shiny new mod of the week, will tempt me, and I'll add it mid game because I can't leave well enough alone. This is probably why I can run for over a hundred hours with no problem and then the game will slowly start getting more and more unstable. I am going to try.....very hard.....to set up a new game and actually leave it alone. I don't know if I can do it, but I'm going to try. It's like an alcoholic putting down the bottle.....new mods tempt me soooo much. I tend to mod the game to the point of instability. I'm a mod addict. Maybe I need mod rehab. Hmmmm, that makes me wonder. Is it only the fact that I add mods mid game? Or will Skyrim inherently become unstable after hundreds of hours regardless of if I leave it alone? Maybe I should just muscle through the main quest as fast as I can before the instability starts? Do any of you take your sweet time playing Skyrim and have no problems? I play to relax after work, to escape from the stress of real life, so I've never been in a hurry to finish at all. Maybe that is my issue.

Really excited about this pack, hope it's still being worked on and all is well. The warning not to use yet has me waiting for the testing results. I've been playing Fallout New Vegas waiting on a mature and stable pack that has everything I want in it, and this seems like the best bet. FNV is really a BIG step back from Skyrim and it's really hard to wait for some of that Skyrim eye candy.

AWESOME, thank you rootsrat and Luinithil. That's exactly what I needed to know. I kind of find it strange that I couldn't find anyone else asking this question. Maybe I'm the only one dumb enough to let it bother them. I have been loading a couple mods, then I'll let BOSS sort stuff and test....until I got to the situation that was bugging me, cause BOSS gives you an error message if you have a patch loaded BEFORE you've loaded the mod it's supposed to patch. Thanks again, now I'm back to installing mods without worrying about messing everything up by patching too early. Haha, I got an easy answer to my problem, so I'm off to continue loading STEP and the NEXUS is down, lmao. Par for the course. Hopefully it won't be down long.

I'm not new to mods and Skyrim, but I built a new PC and decided to follow STEP this time around. This is where I get confused, STEP says to install a long list of stuff in the order presented. My confusion is this......a lot of mods I'm told to install, have patches for other mods that are also in STEP. At the time of installation, I haven't installed those other mods yet because I'm doing things in the STEP prescribed order. So....do I load patches for mods that I don't have installed yet, or do I have to wait till later in the STEP process when I finally install them and then go back and get the patches? For example Weapons and Armor Fixes, and Even Better Quest Objectives both have long lists of patches for mods that will come later in the STEP installation. When do I do these patches? Bottom line is this, is it ok to load a patch for a mod BEFORE loading the mod? Because that is what STEP seems to be suggesting that I do. Will BOSS sort all this mess out for me? Or do I have to remember to go back and get patches AFTER I get to the mod in the STEP load order? Forgive me if this has been asked before, I can barely ask it coherently, so it's kind of hard to search for. STEP is a LONG process and I don't want to screw it up and have to start over.

Awesome, thanks Aiyen, that makes perfect sense now. So the Wiki is for those that want to get up and playing Skyrim as soon as possible without over burdening them with too much minute detail, and the SR guide is a more advanced and in depth guide. Now I understand why they can differ in their approach, as the Wiki would be good enough for the majority of the people who were just interested in playing a stable game and not caring too much about the why's and how's of making it stable. As for me, haha, I've spent more days reading and learning than playing. I enjoy playing, but enjoy learning just as much. I've spent the time since last post going over all of Sharlikran's video's, especially his Conflicts video. And I've downloaded the FNVEdit Training Manual and find it fascinating. Now I'm not so frustrated wondering why I was originally just taught how to fix "identical to master records" with TES5Edit, when it could do so much more. I had this whole "there's more to this than they are telling me" vibe going on, and now I understand why. It's not because people were deliberately keeping knowledge from me, it's because they were giving me the basic knowledge to get Skyrim playing without going into all the more advanced details. The advanced stuff is out there, you just have to look deeper to find it, and I'm thoroughly enjoying finding it. I'm the kind of guy that gets more excited about a good Creation Kit tutorial than I do in playing the game. The game is awesome, but if you master the tools, and the CK, the limits to what you can do are just unimaginable. And that knowledge and those possibilities call to me, haha. Guess that makes me a nerd. Now, I'm sure you didn't mean to come across as annoyed with my confusion and frustration, but that's how it originally sounded to me after I've been up all night (lack of sleep can make me kind of sensitive). As a matter of fact, I find your helpful responses to people's questions all over the site. So thank you for clearing that up for me, and I'm glad to know that my asking questions won't be considered as annoying. I guess it should have been obvious to me that the Wiki was just a basic guide to get people going and wasn't meant to be a thorough in depth look at the inner workings of the game engine. Lack of sleep had me thinking that people were hoarding secret knowledge from me, and I wanted that more advanced knowledge that they only gave you glimpses of, haha. I really need to get some sleep but it's hard to stop with so much to learn just waiting on you. I love this place, it's like a gold mine. Thanks for taking the time to get me started on the right track. And I apologize for being so verbose, but I get that way when something gets me excited.

Thanks, that's what I wanted to know. So what you are saying is if STEP recommends a mod, then I shouldn't worry about it needing any cleaning as it's already been tested and approved. And, I didn't get my info from "someone else on another forum", Neovalen is a STEP administrator and his Skyrim Revisited Guide is on this forum : https://wiki.step-project.com/User:Neovalen/Skyrim_Revisited I'm just trying to learn here, no need to get annoyed at me for not understanding everything. I thought the Wiki was to teach people that didn't know what they were doing (like me) but it seems to be more for people that already know what they are doing......although I wonder why they would even need a Wiki then. I had hoped to not have to just blindly do as the Wiki told me. You get the job done that way, but you don't learn anything. I hoped it would not only tell me what to do, but teach me why and how to do those things. I guess I wanted to much, I'll just follow instructions without trying to think too much about why in the future. Thanks for the help and the clarification.

Ahhh, looking at Neovalen's Skyrim Revisited page, I get this advice on how to clean Distant Detail HF edition: Distant Detail Hearthfire Edition Author: Kazoomie - Dovahsbane Version: 1.0 Warning-Logo.png Warning:This mod requires cleaning with TES5Edit. To resolve the problem(s), perform the following: Run TES5Edit. Select Distant DetailHF.esp then click [OK]. Right-click Distant DetailHF.esp in the left pane and select "Apply Filter For Cleaning". Right-click Distant DetailHF.esp and select "Remove Identical To Master Records". Right-click Distant DetailHF.esp and select "Undelete and Disable References". Click the [X] in the upper right hand corner, uncheck "Backup plugins", and click [OK]. Warning-Logo.png Warning:Post-cleaning, this mod should not alter any blocks. However, one wild edit is left in the Hearthfire Edition and should be removed. To resolve the problem(s), perform the following: Open TES5Edit. Select all Bethesda ESMs and Distant DetailHF.esp then click [OK]. Expand "Worldspace">"0000003C" and select the "Block 0,0" node then press [Delete] on the keyboard. Click the [X] in the upper right hand corner, uncheck "Backup plugins", and click [OK]. Warning-Logo.png Warning:This mod does not forward some fixes from the unofficial patches. To resolve the problem(s), perform the following: Open TES5Edit. Select Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp and Distant DetailHF.esp then click [OK]. Expand "Worldspace">"0000003C">"00000D74">"Persistant" under Distant DetailHF.esp and select the "0002BAED" node. Drag the "DATA - Position/Rotation" records from Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp to Distant DetailHF.esp. Repeat this for the "0004302E" and "0004836B" nodes.Click the [X] in the upper right hand corner, uncheck "Backup plugins", and click [OK]. Why no mention of all this cleaning on the STEP 2.2.5 Wiki page? That seems to be a much more detailed and involved cleaning than the easy cleaning I learned doing the Skyrim .esm's. All I learned about in the TESVedit tutorial was cleaning identical to master records, but this has you cleaning "wild edits" and correcting "a failure to forward fixes from the unofficial patches" problem. Obviously I have a lot to learn about cleaning mods, but still I am confused how this could be a CORE STEP mod when it needs a three step cleaning process, and why the STEP Wiki tells you absolutely nothing about it? And, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I'm just trying to understand. Are there a lot of other things that the STEP Wiki leaves out or just expects you to know? Maybe I'm supposed to ignore the STEP Wiki and use Neovalen's Skyrim Revisited Guide instead?

I'm not new to playing Skyrim with a lot of mods, but since I built a new PC and had to reinstall everything, I thought I'd install Skyrim using the STEP guidelines this time around, and it's things like this that confuse me. On one hand STEP teaches us to avoid and/or clean mods with errors in them as reported by BOSS. Then I see that Distant Detail HF edition is on the list of CORE recommended mods, yet everyone says Boss claims it has lots of errors. So, how did it get on the recommended Mods list with all those errors? Heck, this mod is even marked as CORE to the STEP experience. I haven't installed or cleaned it yet, so I don't know if it will cause CTD issues for me or not. I'm not far enough along in my STEP installation to have tried it yet, but just reading about it confuses me as to how it ever got on the CORE STEP recommended list with all the errors people are reporting. I just assumed that if a mod was on the STEP recommended list, then it was already clean, and we would only have to clean any mods that we installed that weren't on the STEP list. My whole reason for using STEP was to ensure I had as stable a game as possible, and here is a CORE mod with loads of errors being reported. What am I missing here?