Dread's Skyrim Build (a STEP build)

[dreadflopp]

@kewiz
Glad you found this mod list, I'll try to answer your questions:

1. I've used this setup before. I moved to cbbe because i wanted too use some armors that weren't compatible with UNP. Since you don't want to do that, this is a great option.

3. I think these mods should be compatible with the mods you listed in 2). Alchemy Potions and Food Ajustments may conflict with SimonMagus mods. I'll take a look for you, I will have some time to do that tomorrow.

[kewiz]

I just saw you include Obscure College of Winterhold, sorry I missed that. With Alchemy & Food Adjustments, there's a 'no food' option in the installer. That way it shouldn't get in the way of any Frozen North food changes. If FleshFX and Reliquary of Myth is Ok then I'm good to go and there's always room to expand with mods in your list, thank you very much. One last thing, I guess it's not advised to run a Smash(all) Patch, especially since I have no clue how to edit it if wrong changes were forwarded, is this correct?

[MetalVez]

Hi guys!

Congratulations for the release of the guide on the Nexus. I really hope that this guide will get the recognition it deserves. The least I can do was endorse it and I did (I even think I was the first one to do so :P)
I've recently added a few mods to my list, but I was also wondering if you still have some plans to add mods that would change the appearance of the NPCs (I remember that you speak of Diversity a few months ago). I just saw that Cathedral Player and NPC Overhaul - HMB II now have a CBBE patch and the main file is now including the facegen for vanilla NPCs. We will still need the facegen for mods like OBIS and JK but in the optional files of HMB II there is one named "FaceGen Output for Random Mods" which have some of the needed facegen patches and there is also another mod for those patches, named "Cathedral Player and NPC Overhaul - Facegen Patches"

Here are a few suggestions that I've found recently that catches my interest and that might be incorporated in the guide if you want:
- Scramble bugs: A collection of engine bug fixes and patches made possible by the .NET Script Framework.
- Horse stamina HUD: It displays your horse's stamina in the HUD when riding a horse. Pretty simple but I like it.
- Dovah Sonaak - Dragon Priest Masks SE: A really good retexture for the Dragon priest masks. It also has a patch for Improved closefaced helmets and Frankly HD Miraak. I'm using this instead of the Dragon Masks Retextured SE.
- Dumner Settlements of Solstheim : As I said a while ago, I'm really a fan of the Solstheim area, and it's a sad thing that it feels so empty in the vanilla game. This mod overhaul both Raven Rock and Tel Mithryn. The changes are really lore-friendly and it is more lightweight than Quaint Raven Rock (which is the other possible option in my opinion). In fact, pretty much every mod made by this author worth taking a look at.
- Rally's Solstheim AIO: Pretty much all those mods are already included in the guide, but there is now a single main file that includes all of them with a FOMOD.

- Open world loot (OWL): Open World Loot is a new mod that is both a loot and encounter zone overhaul. The better way to describe it, as stated on the mod page is: The goal of OWL is to provide an open world and immersive experience, let the player have a sense of progression as well as obtaining believable and balanced loots throughout your adventure and exploration. It does not delevel the world, but rather changes the Encounter zones and the loot and level list. From a gameplay point of view, I really find this interesting but I don't know if it would be a good alternative for Arena as it will surely need some patches for compatibility (And this guide is not using tools like Wrye bash for resolving the conflicts).
The mod author is also using the previous mod with those two, for a  vanilla plus playthrough. Those two can also be considered as two separate mods, without the inclusion of Owl:
 a) Armor Variants Expansion: Increase armor variety by adding new improved armors to vanilla categories (it is not a replacer). It can also benefit from the retextures mods like aMidianBorn Book of Silence SE or FrankFamily series
 b) Reforging - To the Masses: A newly released mod that adds around 300 vanilla-friendly melee weapons to the game. They can be found, looted from opponents, and forged if you have the appropriate blacksmithing skills. I've tried it for a quick run and I think it can easily replace the mod Heavy armory and still keep a lore-friendly look with the new weapons.
 
That's all for the suggestions I have for the moment, let me know what you think about it
Wish you all a great weekend!

Edited May 30, 2021 by MetalheadVez

[dreadflopp]

12 hours ago, kewiz said:

I just saw you include Obscure College of Winterhold, sorry I missed that. With Alchemy & Food Adjustments, there's a 'no food' option in the installer. That way it shouldn't get in the way of any Frozen North food changes. If FleshFX and Reliquary of Myth is Ok then I'm good to go and there's always room to expand with mods in your list, thank you very much. One last thing, I guess it's not advised to run a Smash(all) Patch, especially since I have no clue how to edit it if wrong changes were forwarded, is this correct?

FleshFX and Reliquary of Myth has no conflicts. Alchemy & Food Adjustments, without food, conflicts with Spooky Philter of the Phantom and with Crafting Skills Revamped. Bibliophile's Arcanaeum's Book Covers Skyrim sorting patch conflicts with my Book Covers Skyrim - USSEP patch. If you use Bibliophile's Arcanaeum, skip my patch, it does very minor corrections anyways. Bibliophile's Arcanaeum also conflicts with The Choice is yours and with Better Quest Objectives.

Do not us Mator Smash, I don't think it supports light plugins (.esl files or esp files with a esl flag). Even if it does, there is also no way of knowing the result of the patch without checking the result in xEdit.

[dreadflopp]

@MetalheadVez

Thanks! Yeah, an NPC appearance overhaul is on my todo list but is constantly being pushed down the list because of how much work it requires. The conflict resolution is pretty basic but it is a lot. Then comes the dark face bug, and facegen regeneration etc. Cathedral Player and NPC Overhaul - HMB II looks more of a compilation of texture/mesh mods than a appearance overhaul?

Scramble bugs - Will investigate, maybe propose it to be included in main STEP.

Horse stamina HUD - Looks great, I'll add it to the guide

Dovah Sonaak - Dragon Priest Masks SE - I like it, I don't know which I like best though, Dovah Sonaak or Dragon Masks Retextured. I like them both. What made you choose Dovah Sonaak?

Dumner Settlements of Solstheim - I'm not too familiar with Solstheim. I probably haven't played more than a couple of hours there. Might take your word for it and just add it to the guide...

Rally's Solstheim AIO - WIll add!

Open world loot - I love loot mods, and this one looks really good. I would have to rebuild very much of my leveled lists (I'm guessing here) to use this mod though. I'll take a look at the armor/weapon mods.

I am not looking to replace Heavy Armory. If everything goes well, I'll release my own version of it. It has open permissions. The version I'm planning will incorporate Heavy Armory, optionally rebalanced towards Animated Armoury (which will also get a rebalance patch), with animations from Animated Armoury and Skyrim Spear Mechanic built in. They all have open permissions and the animations will be applied using Dynamic Animation Replacer. The weapon categories will use the categories from SkyUI Weapons which will allow the UI to show (mostly) correct weapon types for all weapons. I want all new weapon types introduced by Heavy Armory and Animated Armoury to feel native.

Thanks for all suggestions, helps a lot!

[Greg]

1 hour ago, dreadflopp said:

Scramble bugs - Will investigate, maybe propose it to be included in main STEP.

See Scrambled Bugs topic.

[kewiz]

@dreadflopp

Thank you for checking it, really helps a lot. Arcanaeum is out then, it has too many conflicts and I'm going with your guide, which I'm still digging through and reading. There's a lot in there and kudos for putting this all together, it's really awesome. While I figure out how the new experience, leveling, skills, race, perks and class mods/tweaks work, two minor things at the start I don't quite understand:

In the fomod I can't opt out of the uncapper settings and both cap the skills again at 100 like vanilla. So, is the 'skill uncapper' mod even necessary, or is it needed to make the adjustments, slowing it down to match eg. slower experience? 

On a technical side, are all the DLL plugins (incl. Skill uncapper) loaded by SSE Engine Fixes (Part 2) ? I haven't seen anything else in the resources part.

Well then, thanks to you I'm spending a few more months with Skyrim again!

[dreadflopp]

3 hours ago, kewiz said:

@dreadflopp

In the fomod I can't opt out of the uncapper settings and both cap the skills again at 100 like vanilla. So, is the 'skill uncapper' mod even necessary, or is it needed to make the adjustments, slowing it down to match eg. slower experience?

That's a mistake, I'll fix it so you can opt out. Experience determines how fast your character levels, which I have slowed down to 50% using a patch. I could have slowed it down using Experience's ini file instead and lower the experience rewards from quests etc, but decided that the higher experience points from the ini felt more rewarding and that it was better to add a 0.5 multiplier to how much the experience points from Experience contributed to the player level.

Experience does not touch the skills or how fast they level, which is why the Uncapper is needed. My settings are very basic, and it is easy to edit the files installed with my patches to create your own ini settings. Just remember to move them to their own folder so you don't overwrite your changes when you update the patches. STEP has an excellent Uncapper guide: https://stepmodifications.org/wiki/Guide:Skyrim_-Community-_Uncapper
It is made for the legendary edition of Skyrim (not SE) but most if not all settings are identical. I'll make some versions of my Uncapper settings too, and will put them in the installer.

3 hours ago, kewiz said:

@dreadflopp

On a technical side, are all the DLL plugins (incl. Skill uncapper) loaded by SSE Engine Fixes (Part 2) ? I haven't seen anything else in the resources part.

It depends and I haven't looked at it in detail. I have used different dll loaders, depending on what the dll plugins that I used required. If I'm not mistaken, all dll plugins that I currently use are loaded by SKSE, which is in the Extenders category.

3 hours ago, kewiz said:

@dreadflopp

Well then, thanks to you I'm spending a few more months with Skyrim again!

You're welcome

[dreadflopp]

@kewiz

I forgot to check Reliquary Of Myth, but I'll guide you through it. It looks interesting and I may add it to the guide. Use the attached patches and make sure that:

1. Reliquary of Myth.esp is loaded after imp_helm_legend.esp
2. Reliquary of Myth.esp is loaded after df_UnlimitedBookshelves-ImprovedClosefacedHelmets.esp
3. Reliquary of Myth.esp is loaded after CraftingRevamped.esp
4. df_ReliquaryOfMyth-DaedricVoices.esp is loaded after df_CraftingRevamped-DaedricVoices.esp
5. Tools of Kagrenac.esp is loaded after Reliquary of Myth.esp
6.  df_ReliquaryOfMyth-AudioOverhaulSkyrim.esp is loaded after df_AudioOverhaulSkyrim-CraftingRevamped.esp
7. df_AudioOverhaulSkyrim-ToolsOfKagrenac.esp is loaded after df_ReliquaryOfMyth-AudioOverhaulSkyrim.esp

The mod unique uniques conflicts with Reliquary of Myth in two weapons. Load the mod last whose weapons you want. The Staff of Shegorath conflicts too, load it after Reliquary of Myth if you want it.

df_ReliquaryOfMyth.7z

[dreadflopp]

I have updated the guide and switched out the old Animated Armoury and replaced it  with the new Animated Armoury - DAR version. This update was quite big under the hood, I had to make big updates to both the guide patches as well as the patches for my mod High-Level Loot Rarified. Make sure to update that mod too. Patches for the old Animated Armoury does not work with the new version since the formId's for whips has been changed between the versions.

[Haunted]

Hey Dread, Thanks for this guide, looks promising. I'm just about finished all the steps but am running into a problem with xLODGen. When I run it, the window comes up showing all the background loader steps, and then a little window pops up in front with a green progress bar that says "please wait", that bar disappears after half a second, then it says background loader finished and nothing else happens. No prompt to select worldspaces. 

My executables section Binary filed points to: xLODGenx64.exe

Arguments are:

-sse -o:“C:\Modding\Tools\xLODGen\xLODGen_Output" (i confirmed the path is correct by pasting it directly from file explorer)

I have no idea what I've done wrong and would appreciate any assistance. Let me know if you need any additional info for troubleshooting

[Haunted]

@dreadflopp

One other issue I'd like to run by you since it isnt clear in the guide (I've made it as far as the LOD step before running into the error in my previous post, but have scanned ahead and didnt see anything that would answer this question).

I'm looking through the list of plugins in MO2 and there are a fair number that aren't checked, even though I've followed every step in the guide. Most seem to be JK patches, but there are some others as well. Examples of unchecked plugins include:

BlackSacramentArmor.esl
JKs Skyrim_Rorikstead_Patch.esp
1nivWICSkyCloaksPatch.esp
Dragon War - Variants.esp
JKs Skyrim_Dawnstar_Patch.esp
JKs Skyrim_BOYD_Patch.esp
JKs Skyrim_Falkreath_Patch.esp
JKs Skyrim_Ivarstead_Patch.esp
CFTO-JK-Patch.esp
JKs Skyrim_Clockwork_Patch.esp
JKs Skyrim_Dragon Bridge_Patch.esp
JKs Skyrim_Cutting Room Floor_Patch.esp
JK's The Bannered Mare SPO Patch.esp
JKs Skyrim_Thunderchild_Patch.esp
JKs Skyrim_RWT_Patch.esp

Should these have been checked off manually at some point in the guide and I just missed it or should I leave them unchecked?

[Haunted]

I have done some troubleshooting and can add the following information to help:

I tried removing the -o:“C:\Modding\xLODGen\xLODGen_Output" argument from xLODGen in MO2 and tried running it. When I do it without the argument it opens the LOD Options window as expected. Not sure why this is. I made sure that the Tools folder, and even the output folder deeper within are excluded in Windows Defender. Anyways, I havent proceeded further with selecting options and running it because I wasnt sure where it would output the files and if it would make a mess of things. Let me know if you think you have a solution for my issue. I'm really excited to get playing and try out this mod list.

 

[Haunted]

18 hours ago, Haunted said:

I have done some troubleshooting and can add the following information to help:

I tried removing the -o:“C:\Modding\xLODGen\xLODGen_Output" argument from xLODGen in MO2 and tried running it. When I do it without the argument it opens the LOD Options window as expected. Not sure why this is. I made sure that the Tools folder, and even the output folder deeper within are excluded in Windows Defender. Anyways, I havent proceeded further with selecting options and running it because I wasnt sure where it would output the files and if it would make a mess of things. Let me know if you think you have a solution for my issue. I'm really excited to get playing and try out this mod list.

 

Okay update: it appears that changing the "C" in the output file path to a "c" did the trick. Even though I copied the path from file explorer and it defaulted to a capital C, xLODGen only liked a lower case c.

[dreadflopp]

14 hours ago, Haunted said:

Okay update: it appears that changing the "C" in the output file path to a "c" did the trick. Even though I copied the path from file explorer and it defaulted to a capital C, xLODGen only liked a lower case c.

Sorry for late answer here, I'm on vacation Glad you solved it, I'll definitely add to the guide that the c should be lowercase. Without the argument, xLodGen outputs to MOs overwrite folder.