pack A Real Explorer's Guide to Skyrim

[CJ2311]

It's not compatible with Moon and Star's background (and navmesh/terrain) sadly, that mod adds a dunmer village called Little Vivec there. (with extremely good voice acting for the NPCs too)

[Kuldebar]

I was just looking at the mod page for it...but I have doubts. I understand the attraction though...new shiny, :p

 

It replaces a well done mod with few moving parts with a more complex, quest related mod. Hmmm....also, it's bad form to plant a town/village where there already is a well popular &  established one.

 

It's too bloody new:

Bug fixes:- Crash to desktop on fast travel related to the Dwemer ruin fixed- Belvadyr's quest turn-in fixed- Selyse's quest turn in fixed- Main quest bugs when choosing the maximum reward from Mandyn or using the back path fixed- SEQ file repacked properly. NPCs should talk to you without having to reload a save- Tweaked Moss Creek Camp to be fully compatible with Helgen Reborn- Various small tweaks and fixes

Edited March 25, 2014 by Kuldebar

[Nearox]

Well we tested it as well as another user. The decision to let go of Aurora Village wasn't a light one. Nevertheless I am definitely favoring Moons and Stars over Aurora Village. I think the scenery is nicer; has 9 custom voiced NPCs; immersive quests that send you all over Skyrim; multiple locations; beatiful dungeon; lore justification (not gonna spoil anything here).

 

Most of the few small bugs have already been fixed. They are too be expected when a mod is newly launched and a large amount of users is trying it out. 

 

That said you can always opt to go for Aurora Village instead of this mod. Though after this video it was hard for me not to install Moons and Stars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsymy_PSIO4

Edited March 25, 2014 by Nearox

[Kuldebar]

Well, in a perfect world the Aurora, the Moon and the Star all belong in the same sky together.

[Dakkon]

Thanks and hooraj about new quest mods!

 

@Dakkon: Yeah I meant cleaning the ITMs/UDRs.Also, update very soon with a few more quest mods.

[Nearox]

Notes for cleanign are now added for the new mods.

 

Make sure, as it says in the pre-requsites section, that you do not clean any mods that do not have such directions. Quite a few mods are intentionally 'dirty' and won't function normally without them. I'm waiting for a response from CJ about cleaning Shadows of Mermesis as it has only 1 ITM and I can't determine myself if it is intentional. 

 

EDIT: Downgrading Moon and Star to 1.00 as the author has disabled 1.01 after reporting issues.

Edited March 26, 2014 by Nearox

[keithinhanoi]

Another impressive update to the now formidable list of mods for this pack. My impression that things were slowing down was clearly mistaken.

 

However, I'm with Kuldebar in that although Moon and Star looks pretty fantastic, I'm hesitant to install until I've seen a "period of stability" where no issues are reported for a week or two, and it seems the dust has cleared on the initial release.

 

I'm nowhere ready to start my new play through - still trying to eek out enough performance so I can use some ENB features -  so I'll see where things are when I'm ready to go.

 

I do have a question for CJ & Nearox though - How many of these quest mods add new / notable dungeons?

 

I ask because I am trying not to read too much in advance about these mods in order to avoid spoilers, but as an adventuring-type, I do love me a good bit of dungeon-diving.

 

TIA

[CJ2311]

Make sure, as it says in the pre-requsites section, that you do not clean any mods that do not have such directions. Quite a few mods are intentionally 'dirty' and won't function normally without them.

There are no mods in REGS that will break if you clean them at the moment. Only exception is the REGS patches that might have a couple ITM records to cancel out unwanted wild edits to certain mods. (I'm looking at you, 3DNPC) 

I do have a question for CJ & Nearox though - How many of these quest mods add new / notable dungeons?I ask because I am trying not to read too much in advance about these mods in order to avoid spoilers, but as an adventuring-type, I do love me a good bit of dungeon-diving.

Well you'll be happy to know that all the mods that were added add except one (And the Realms of Daedra) do indeed add dungeons. I wanted to add a few more that I played through before and enjoyed, but some of them conflicted severely with other mods, and others were not really adequate for the pack since they're not exactly what you'd call lore-friendly. Edited March 26, 2014 by CJ2311

[CJ2311]

I was just looking at the mod page for it...but I have doubts. I understand the attraction though...new shiny, :p It replaces a well done mod with few moving parts with a more complex, quest related mod. Hmmm....also, it's bad form to plant a town/village where there already is a well popular &  established one. It's too bloody new:

It's new, but it is supposed to have been tested by the authors. Bugs will occur even with some of the older mods, until people report them.I agree though, might have jumped on the hype wagon too soon, but there are some mods that you can just tell are going to be great from the start ::):Also Aurora isn't really a popular mod, so it's pretty easy to miss it actually.Anyway yeah, was just posting to say that those bugs were already fixed. :D Edited March 26, 2014 by CJ2311

[keithinhanoi]

There are no mods in REGS that will break if you clean them at the moment. Only exception is the REGS patches that might have a couple ITM records to cancel out unwanted wild edits to certain mods. (I'm looking at you, 3DNPC)

 

CJ, I'm really curious - when you mention wild edits in Interesting NPCs, are you referring to some object / NPC records in 3DPC.eps which set the Record Flag of PersistentReference QuestItem DisplaysInMainMenu?

 

What is that flag used for?

 

I'm wondering because I have up to now believed that I should be forwarding records to set that flag if a later mod gets rid of it in any particular records.

[CJ2311]

That flag means an item is used by a quest (or a script/behaviour at least) Removing them might break some quests. Problem is, it's a bit time-consuming to patch them all. anyway they're not wild edits, what I was referring to was cases where an item would be rotated by a couple degrees for no apparent reason or things of that nature.

 

Also as I said before, I'm far from being an expert, I just know to make patches, so you should ask that kind of questions to people who are not just tinkering like me

[keithinhanoi]

That flag means an item is used by a quest (or a script/behaviour at least) Removing them might break some quests. Problem is, it's a bit time-consuming to patch them all. anyway they're not wild edits, what I was referring to was cases where an item would be rotated by a couple degrees for no apparent reason or things of that nature.Also as I said before, I'm far from being an expert, I just know to make patches, so you should ask that kind of questions to people who are not just tinkering like me

Hmm, well I'll have to check into it then, because Interesting NPCs (and some other mods I use) add the PersistentReference QuestItem DisplaysInMainMenu record tag to quite a few existing vanilla objects / NPCs, so this could be for the purpose of scripted behavior of the added NPCs, I'm guessing. Best person to ask would be the author, Kris Takahashi. So I'll do that, because I'm worried that not forwarding that flag into my patches may "break" things a bit.

 

As for rotated or relocated items, I notice that they're often things that are also moved in the Unofficial Patches, so in other words, intentional repositioning of objects, perhaps to make sure an NPC doesn't trip on / bump into it during scripted actions. But yeah, there's no real way to know why, and even more frustrating is knowing whether the mod or the unofficial patch's re-positioning should be brought forward into a compatibility patch plug in.

 

I do see quite a lot of this with ELFX, for example, but in that case, the repositioning of lights is most definitely intentional (to get better shadowing / lighting effects, etc.), and as long as it isn't getting in the way of another mod's placed objects (or relocated buildings), I don't bring foward UxxP reposition to override ELFX's.

[CJ2311]

No need to ask him, here's the answer to that: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/557409-interesting-npcs/?p=9274980

 

Also yes, I do realize that some things are intentionally moved/rotated, but imagine if the USKP fixes a tree stump in riverwood, then ETaC moves that tree because it places a house there, but then another actually forwards the USKP change and you end up with a beautiful tree stump in front of Faendal house's door. I doubt he'd be too pleased with that :p

[Kuldebar]

Hey, I'm trying to track down an issue I am having with a building outside Windhelm linked to REGs -Cities.esp but for an asset from Nernies City and Village Expansion. Here's a screen shot. OK don't freak, I have some meshes marked in MO as hidden in this screenie in the effort of tracking down the issue. The black area around the Smithy door is what I am trying to resolve:

 

I guess I just need to find out the texture/mesh name. I use SMIM, PPR for Vanilla for the bulk of the game world but for Windhelm I use SRO and it's respective PPR. If I go straight vanilla, the issue goes away...trying to track down the file that messed up :/

Edited March 26, 2014 by Kuldebar

[CJ2311]

Yah it's a PPR issue, the dock doors and windhelm towers do that. The messed up nif files are listed in SR:LE for that mod.