pack A Real Explorer's Guide to Skyrim

[thaiusmle]

I just would like to clarify further

You guys also have REGS Patch - ELFX Exteriors.esp. Are we suppose to activate the ELFX Exteriors.esp? As you mention above ELFX Exterior is Incompatible.

Thank you very much for a great guide. I may be the only one that confused.

[CJ2311]

As the description of the ELFX patch (in the fomod installer) says, that patch is a tentative fix for the issues encountered by people who are not using Lanterns of Skyrim and are willing to deal with floating lights and such.

[statmonster]

Eh, you guys nuked my monthly bandwidth on box.net.Setting up dropbox mirrors at the moment. EDIT: Changed the links to dropbox, should be fine now

Thanks. I appreciate it!

[CJ2311]

No problemo.

BTW, the author of Moon and Star just released a compatibility patch for Undeath. I won't be including Undeath in the pack for the reasons I stated before (too many gameplay changes) but for those interested in trying the mod nonetheless, it is compatible with the rest of REGS. Just a PSA there :)

[TeleToko]

Many months ago I tried to build a Skyrim similar to this, but since those were the pre-Sheson days it turned out to be a horrible nightmare littered with CTD's. Skyrim faded away to make room for other games and projects and many moons passed until I recently by accident read about some magical memory patch which fixed Skyrims memory problems. I was sceptical about yet another CTD fixer but after reading a bit more I decided to reinstall Skyrim and give it a go to see what would happen.

 

Two weeks later and all I can say is that it is indeed magic and Sheson truly deserves every firstborn. No longer do I fear my memorycounter creeping towards 3.1Gb. Riverwood, Whiterun, the Ritual Stone and all those other places where I could pinpoint the spot where I would probably CTD now at worst give a slight stutter. Amazing.

 

Reinvigorated I started on building a new Skyrim and to my delight I found REGS which includes a lot of the stuff I still had stashed in my archives. Many hours have passed in TES5Edit merging and patching mods and now my MO shows some 450 installed mods, 255 esp's with tons of new lands and added npc's, and I can still pass both the flying and the running test. Oh and uGrids=7 to boot. I am both amazed and proud :)

 

Anyway enough with the personal anecdotes, I came here to give a big kudos to CJ and Nearox for their excellent work on this pack! It has turned out to be quite the selection and my only complaint would be you guys are adding so much great stuff that I'm running out of esp slots and I don't know what to merge anymore. 

 

I was also wondering if these two mods were ever considered for REGS, I'm running them in my own setup:

 

- Syerscote: small settlement pretty much underneath the Blue Palace, with a questline concerning the Civil War allegiance of the settlement, merchants and voiced npc's and a purchasable and upgradable playerhome. From the guy who made the Gypsy Caravan and who is working on Rochebere (though that has been in development for a very long time now). It does not directly conflict with REGS but I found performance/fps dropping a bit when nearby, likely due to all the other additions around Solitude. Also the interiors can be a bit dark with some ENB's. Still a nice little village with it's own unique style.

 

 

 

- Corners of Skyrim: This is an all time favorite of mine, the little sites it adds around Skyrim have so much character and they are each so unique. Like almost all mods of this type this one needs TES5 cleaning too, but it comes with 5 free deleted navmeshes as a bonus! Very easy to fix though and certainly worth it as far as I'm concerned.

 

 

 

Two more remarks concerning REGS.

- While 'And the Realms of Daedra' is an excellent questmod it was made before any of the DLC's for Skyrim were released. Ironically two of the three realms you visit in the mod were later covered in the DLC's (Hircine in DG/Apocrypha in DB). The lack of consistency in voices and story and the completely different environments for something that represents the same might put some people off.

- Personally I have removed all the map markers that already show up at the start of a new game and set them to reveal on discovery. Maybe this could be incorporated in the patches or the conflict resolution guide.

 

As for conflict resolution for folks who use ELE-interiors, I've found a great way to patch the worldspace is to merge the ELE-plugins, set the merged ELE-plugin as last in your load order, clean it against USKP etc, and use the fixed ELE esp as a canvas for all your world and cell edits. A huge amount of AOS-SoS-CoT-Water-Music-Location-Worldspace conflicts end with the ELE esp so it's much quicker to simply drag and drop in the ELE esp then it is to create a ton of overrides in a newly created conflict resolution esp. I found it to be much faster, just make sure you keep a backup of your fixed merged ELE file in case something goes wrong. That's my tip of the day!

 

Sorry for the wall of text, any spelling errors you may find are 100% intentional.

Edited March 28, 2014 by TeleToko

[calfurius]

Having a problem, you forgot to ADD REG Resources.esm AND the REG cities.esp to the patches at the bottom. This results in being unable to use the patches at all because they don't have the proper master loaded. (among other issues, seeing as REG cities is the main meat of this pack lol).

Edited March 28, 2014 by calfurius

[Kelmych]

As part of the new layout of the REGS guide, the REGS - Cities patch (which includes the 2 plugins you mentioned) was moved to an earlier part of the guide. It's in the Foundation subsection.

[calfurius]

aaaah thank you, I was getting really frustrated lol

[CJ2311]

 

Many months ago I tried to build a Skyrim similar to this, but since those were the pre-Sheson days it turned out to be a horrible nightmare littered with CTD's. Skyrim faded away to make room for other games and projects and many moons passed until I recently by accident read about some magical memory patch which fixed Skyrims memory problems. I was sceptical about yet another CTD fixer but after reading a bit more I decided to reinstall Skyrim and give it a go to see what would happen. Two weeks later and all I can say is that it is indeed magic and Sheson truly deserves every firstborn. No longer do I fear my memorycounter creeping towards 3.1Gb. Riverwood, Whiterun, the Ritual Stone and all those other places where I could pinpoint the spot where I would probably CTD now at worst give a slight stutter. Amazing. Reinvigorated I started on building a new Skyrim and to my delight I found REGS which includes a lot of the stuff I still had stashed in my archives. Many hours have passed in TES5Edit merging and patching mods and now my MO shows some 450 installed mods, 255 esp's with tons of new lands and added npc's, and I can still pass both the flying and the running test. Oh and uGrids=7 to boot. I am both amazed and proud :) Anyway enough with the personal anecdotes, I came here to give a big kudos to CJ and Nearox for their excellent work on this pack! It has turned out to be quite the selection and my only complaint would be you guys are adding so much great stuff that I'm running out of esp slots and I don't know what to merge anymore.

 

Thank your for the kind words, it's always great to know that people are finding this pack useful, it's the main reason behind making it after all  

- Syerscote

Yes, I did in fact try Syerscote, and while the quest was enjoyable, I'm afraid that it does not really belong in the pack, due to the terrain problems (loads of half buried objects, including the roads) and the textures that do not really fit in Skyrim imho.I am looking forward to the eventual release of Rochebere however (although sometimes I wonder if it's still being worked on...) 

- Corners of Skyrim

 This was also considered for inclusion in the guide, but the fact that it changes so many areas is a problem compatibility-wise (it actually has quite a few conflicting navmeshes with REGS - Cities, ETaC - Complete, and Oblivion Gates). Honestly, it seems too much of a hassle to get it to work, and would be easier to rebuild from the ground up. D: 

Two more remarks concerning REGS.- While 'And the Realms of Daedra' is an excellent questmod it was made before any of the DLC's for Skyrim were released. Ironically two of the three realms you visit in the mod were later covered in the DLC's (Hircine in DG/Apocrypha in DB). The lack of consistency in voices and story and the completely different environments for something that represents the same might put some people off.

 You don't actually visit the realm of Hircine in Dawnguard (unless I missed half of the DLC), and while yes, you do go to Apocrypha in DB, I like to just think that Herma Mora's realm is big and could have different looking places, just like Sheogorath's realm in Oblivion. :)

As for the map markers, I'm not even sure there are that many that show up by default. I do all my testing with tmm 1, so I never really looked at the map at the start... D: 

Having a problem, you forgot to ADD REG Resources.esm AND the REG cities.esp to the patches at the bottom. This results in being unable to use the patches at all because they don't have the proper master loaded. (among other issues, seeing as REG cities is the main meat of this pack lol).

Actually, it's just that REGS - Cities is now available as one of the very first downloads, it's not a patch therefore it made no sense for it to be in the patches section.

 

 

 

As part of the new layout of the REGS guide, the REGS - Cities patch (which includes the 2 plugins you mentioned) was moved to an earlier part of the guide. It's in the Foundation subsection.

Thank you Kelmych :D

I had to go afk while writing the reply so I missed your post there.

Edited March 28, 2014 by CJ2311

[wain831]

There's no inconsistency, we do in fact mean ELFX Exteriors.The Enhancer works with REGS.There's 3 parts in ELFX:- Main module (Enhanced Lights and FX.esp, or something like that): redoes interior light sources. ==> Compatible with REGS if you use the required patches for mods such as College of Winterhold.- ELFX-Enhancer : Changes the imagespace of interiors to make them darker. ==> Compatible with everything in REGS.- ELFX-Exteriors : Adds light sources in exteriors. ==> Incompatible with a lot of landscape/city/quest mods, which is why we use Lanterns of Skyrim instead.EDIT: Also, for those interested in using Sky Haven Temple instead of the Sky Haven Temple - Merchants & More, I have updated the instructions on how to get that mod working with the paarthunax dilemna and follower mods. This is for advanced users only, no support will be given for people using this.

I noticed on in guide it says incompatible with EFLX exteriors at the beginning and under the LoS section it says incompatible with ELFX enhancer... I had assumed you meant both but this post contradicts that... Im using REGS on top of SRLE so I reinstalled EFLX without exteriors and added LoS, no enhancer with SRLE so I should be good right?

Another quick question.. haven't installed many mods from steam before so just want to make sure I didn't do something wrong. I noticed Amber guard only has a esp, no bsa. Is that right?

[CJ2311]

I noticed on in guide it says incompatible with EFLX exteriors at the beginning and under the LoS section it says incompatible with ELFX enhancer... I had assumed you meant both but this post contradicts that... Im using REGS on top of SRLE so I reinstalled EFLX without exteriors and added LoS, no enhancer with SRLE so I should be good right?Another quick question.. haven't installed many mods from steam before so just want to make sure I didn't do something wrong. I noticed Amber guard only has a esp, no bsa. Is that right?

Oooh sorry, I thought you were talking about the note at the top of the page. I'll fix that error now, the enhancer is fully compatible (but yeah ELE is better anyway )And yes, Amber Guard doesn't have a bsa :)

[wain831]

Hey CJ , I read the part that says don't clean if not stated...buuutt just want to be sure since this WIP. To clean or not to clean..BFT? (its the only one on my load order that BOSS is flagged). Oh and thanks for this awesome guide btw (SRLE/STEP support is great), I know its a lot of work and it is much appreciated. I was trying to do a similar install on top of SRLE about 4 months ago but I gave up.. too many conflicts I didn't know how to fix. The only thing this is missing IMHO is CWO and follower mods like Vilja/Hoth/Inigo. Do you think REGS/SRLE is compatible with the Immersive Survival pack? I would like to try that out as well, Hunterborn looks cool.

[CJ2311]

There's no note about not cleaning if not stated, although I suppose I should specify that "ignore boss warnings" only refers to actual warning (i.e. only deleted navmeshes)

Also, the reason why I didn't put cleaning instructions for BFT is because it's meant to be replaced when you use the BFT-MAS patch D:

 

EDIT: Gotta hate when you hit tab and up posting before you're done typing...

 

Concerning CWO and follower mods, I don't think they really belong in the pack. They don't have much to do with exploration, now do they?

There's no reason why Immersive Survival would not be compatible with REGS either. As a matter of fact I used to use Hunterborn before Immersive Armors got updated to v7 and they became somewhat incompatible.

Edited March 29, 2014 by CJ2311

[runsbuns]

I asume its not a problem, but just wanted to mention that if following the SR:LE guide and installing The Skyrim Distance Overhaul (S.D.O.),  REGS and Moon And Star overwrite 9 meshes from S.D.O.

[CJ2311]

Should be fine to let MAS overwrite those since they're just meshes, but I'll download SDO to see the difference tomorrow.