dunc001

Also, how do I troubleshoot missing objects? If I stand on the shoreline below Katla's Farm and look up at Solitude towards the Blue Palace I can see the roof of a tower and two windows floating in mid air because the main tower walls are missing.

Great to see you doing this Darth, I'm pretty sure you'll find you end up with a more 'mature' build with much more integration across questlines, etc. I'm on the third revision on my build now, just removing some of the stuff I threw in along the way and trying to get FPS up to an acceptable level in areas of heavy detail, but I absolutely love the scope of LotD and what it encompasses. You need to be very aware (as I have found out to my detriment several times) of how merging obvious things together can break some of the auto-patching in LotD. It looks for certain esp names and activates additional displays etc depending on what it finds in your load order. I have merged things like the two kohnarik accoutrement esps together before I realised that so had to rename the merge back to the the original main file name (which then also broke the AAE KA plugin as it looks for both KA esps as masters!). Lots of messing around on my build to keep it all working but that's my fault for trying to squeeze so much in! And I wouldn't worry too much about string count if you're using Crash Fixes, although I have run Restringer on most of the big mods I have including LotD and the reduction is pretty amazing. I like the idea of MLU Simplified too, have just been reading up on it, and I'd agree on AAE although speak to Astakos about his views on the AAE patches as he's not overly impressed! On the Combat/Dragons/Enemies stuff I guess it depends what you're aiming for with this build - is it a difficulty build, or an expanded quests build, or a bit of both?

Hi and apologies in advance for the noob question. I have only ever run DynDOLOD in full before, never selectively. If I am experimenting with different tree mods is there a way I can rerun DynDOLOD just to regenerate the tree lods when I change from one mod to another?

Rerun FNIS? Or maybe get drunk and see if that fixes it

A question about Restringer because I am intending using it on a few of the heavy mods in my stupid build once I'm finished play testing and before I actually start a playthrough. When it says use on endpoint mods only, ie mods which have no other mods depending on them, does that exclude any of the main ones if used in conjunction with compatibility patches? For example Legacy of the Dragonborn is a prime candidate for restringing, but is it safe to do when I'm also using 6 patches and my CR which look to it as a master? Or is it only if another mod is dependent on it's scripted functions?

Ah I see, Mod Combiner. No, I'm happy I have pretty much everything covered. What I really do think would be useful however would be an integrated side by side dds viewer in MO to allow you to compare the various versions of each texture from the packs in your load order and choose which one you prefer. I've been trying to come up with an external solution using something like Dupe Guru Images to search my entire MO mods directory for dupes by name only and view them side by side but as far as I can tell there is no dupe/compare software that can do this with a side by side view and dds support. Ideally in MO it would be open the mod in the left pane, click the conflicts tab, select any of the conflicted textures, click 'View alternative textures', select from a side by side view which you want to use, and the others would then be flagged .mohidden. Hey ho, can but dream...

It's a stupid amount of work and I'm not there yet with the CR. Astakos is just pointing out to me how novice my attempts at CR are (I thought I was doing pretty well!) but I'm now receiving an education in how to use CK to actually create a real patch rather than just trying to resolve conflicts at xEdit level. Oh how little I actually know... Anyhoo, the first attempt didn't flag up many serious issues so I'm guessing I didn't do too badly with my ham-fisted efforts :P My PC is obviously not as good as I thought! I figured that given the game is five years old my i5 4440 3.2Ghz/16Gb/2x250SSD/GTX970 would be up to the job - oh how naive! That's why I'm having to revert back to many 2k1k textures, smaller trees, etc to try and improve stable FPS. Seems to be working though. Visuals, whilst nice, aren't the main aim for me - gameplay changes, new locations and worldspaces and new questlines is the core driver. If the gameplay is good I can live without 4k mushrooms... I've followed all of the most up to date ENB/ini guides, tweaked my PC, etc so I'm pretty sure I haven't missed anything. Still have't finally settled on an ENB for the playthrough yet. What is the SMC mod?

Modwat:ch updated CR on CLARALUX/ELFX/RLS took me about three hours last night - soooo many lights! All done now and on to the easier stuff tonight. Should be play testing before the weekend...

Likewise, I was actually going to tweet Chesko and see if he'd hint at how long for RS before I start trying to figure out how to add the VW weathers to the list of recognised weathers. So HTML is working so far using some jquery stuff:

Can anyone give me some instruction on how to create an expandable tree in a Google Doc please? I want to create an expandable merge list. So list of mods with a + sign beside each, click to expand and view mods contained in the merge (with notes/comments/links). Never done it before so no idea how Or if I can't do it in Docs maybe in HTML or a simple web page?

It's not compatible in that it won't recognise all the weathers, despite the OP stating it's fully compatible with every weather mod you could ever add! I'm going to see what it's like, might even look in to patching out of I can figure out the code. Otherwise I might ditch VW for CoT.

I'd say no, probably too big an overhaul for the guide, too much to remove, too many patches, too much CR so not something for a solid guide like SRLE Extended

I'm about halfway through the additional CR on my second iteration of the build. After about 15 hours of testing the first build and making several adjustments along the way to get the FPS up to something half respectable it was proving pretty solid. Only a couple of issues with oddly placed items and idle markers. No ILS, very few CTDs mainly when I was testing texture packs and ENBs. However I decided to remove quite a few of the REGS mods (JK, ETaC, Nernies, ORS quests, and so on), add back in 3DNPC, downgrade some texture packs to 2k1k, add back in full ICAIO rather than Lite which I was running with ETaC. I had already added in Combat Fatigue and Diverse Dragons, and I have now added in Dawn of Skyrim, Better Docks (modular without Solitude), Better City Entrances (modular without Solitude) and given Solitude a major overhaul with a combination of Solitude Reborn, Solitude Expansion, Bathouse, Books of Skyrim, Blue Palace Nights, oh and Legacy of the Dragonborn :) I am REALLY excited to see what Solitude looks like and I'll be making sure Skyrim Unbound dumps me there as soon as I load up for the first time! The first build was perfectly playable (accepting the oddities of a massive load order) and I have all the MCM menus appearing and fully functioning correctly (some of the renamed merges and merge orders were causing problems). I learnt a lot from fixing it up and from my previous CR, so this time round I am pretty confident that the load order, mod choices and CR is going to make it even better. I'll update my modwat:ch tonight, and I'm going to create a Google Docs sheet detailing all of the merges but for now if anyone is interested here's a folder of screenshots showing what is in each of the 48 merges. In terms of FPS anywhere other than Riverwood it was running at mid 40s which I am pretty happy with, creeping up into the 50s occasionally in interiors. Riverwood was low 30s with frequent dropouts before I switched back to EVT small trees and no ETaC. String count really interestingly was 60553 after first load and 30 minutes of gameplay, and dropped slightly after that. I'm obviously using Crash Fixes with the preloader just in case, and I'm considering using Restringer on some of the bigger mods which are known to benefit - Rigmor/Beyond Reach/Darkend/LotD etc which are all in the build. Just for LOLs I threw in The Haven and managed a respectable 2-3FPS :P So it has now gone, along with Tumbajamba's Mounts which wouldn't stop following me around! The rabbit, chicken and bear however are still hanging on in there although I'm considering removing the ESSENTIAL flags from them so I can experience them each once and then they can fall in battle. And I couldn't resist adding in More Harry Potter Spells! Some other cool stuff - Sneak Tools arrows, the Black Arrows from Nock2Tip and Blackjack (love being able to knock people out now with this and/or Sneak Tools).

Exactly how I manage this too. Given that I now have 48 merges it is definitely the best way to keep track and be able to update as required. What I have done rather than create categories for each merge is just to create one new category in MO labeled 'Merged' which I allocate to all the mods included in a merge so casting a quick glance down my now enormous left pane I can see blocks of Merged mods and I know the one at the bottom of each Merged section will be the merged file (which will have one of the relevant categories applied ie Landscape and Environment). I also agree deleting the current merge is the best way before rebuilding it as despite Merge Plugins supposedly deleting everything when it rebuilds I regularly have 'legacy' files and .bak files in the new merge.

Agreed Ron, I have now added Legacy into my kitchen sink build and was very surprised last night just how little CR it took. It actually took me longer to scroll through the entire expanded plugin looking for conflicts than it took me to actually address them! They were mostly books, weapons and armour stuff with the odd few cell edits. But really nothing serious. I'd say it probably took me a couple of hours.

Yep, I went back to the standard size trees to help with my fps around Riverwood and noticed the improvement in the lead textures immediately. I think he basically just scaled the same textures for the large trees and they look awful.

The meters are configurable in the latest version of Frostfall - with checking your MCM settings

Use Mfg Console to figure out which two mods are providing the different textures, then either delete or disable whichever mod you don't want or just use MO to hide the texture you don't want to be used if you still want to use the rest of the mod.

Yes by PM (although he hasn't replied to my original message so not sure if he's paying attention)

OK, so Sheson replied to my post in the DynDOLOD thread HERE This confirms that the TexGen Output has to be activated in MO at the bottom of your load order BEFORE you run DynDOLOD.

Thanks for the clarification Sheson. I will cascade this to SRLEX and Neo

And Book Covers, and Book Covers Lost Library, and White Phial Replacer and...

Apologies moderators for the double post. I asked this in the SRLEX forum thread and it was suggested it would be better to ask here for a definitive answer so here goes: Wonder if anyone here can provide feedback on something for me. Here is the contents of a PM I sent to Neo yesterday (no reply as yet): Quote Any thoughts on whether I'm right or not? This is the GP video I am referring to and the installation instruction for MO users start at 16m 40s: I can't seem to get the video to show up here for some reason but you know which one I'm referring to I'm sure. My question is, is the SRLE DynDOLOD installation guide correct (ie run both TexGen and DynDOLOD before then moving both output folders into MO and activating them, or is the GP video correct in showing that the TexGen ouput needs to be activated in MO BEFORE running DynDOLOD?

Wonder if anyone here can provide feedback on something for me. Here is the contents of a PM I sent to Neo yesterday (no reply as yet): Any thoughts on whether I'm right or not? This is the GP video I am referring to and the installation instruction for MO users start at 16m 40s:

And is NLVA any more compatible in terms of using other ENBs? I really like the look of the Bleak/Unbleak and Grim & Sombre series but they aren't likely to play well with VW even if I follow the conversion guide.