pack A Real Explorer's Guide to Skyrim

[CJ2311]

Yeah, they aren't getting SMiMed.

 

Weird, only Falkreath, Dawnstar and Winterhold are supposed to have custom meshes (in order to get the custom textures to work). There is one custom mesh used in Riverwood which is called farmhouse02norope.nif, but as the name says, it doesn't have a rope at all, neither 2D or 3D. :P

 

@Nearox: I've given up on that a looooong while ago. xD

[Asyrin]

Fantastic Pack and absolutely required in all my playthroughs.

 

Quick question though: I noticed Dwemerverse was not included in the pack but the more recent Specrteverse is. Is there compatibility issues? Any other reason?

 

Thanks again for all the hard work!

[statmonster]

For following the REGS guide, you should probably just make sure that anywhere it specifically says what order things should go, make sure the LOOT order complies with that and make adjustments if necessary. Anything else is probably fairly safe to let LOOT sort it however it will. But something to keep in mind...right now LOOT, in my opinion, does require a little more knowledge on the part of the user to make sure things are ordered correctly. It infers the proper load order based on the actual contents of the mods, and it generally does a good job of putting things in a decent order. But, there are two situations where things sometimes break down... (there is also a possibility of a technical issue that LOOT misses, but this is not all that common).First is where a compatibility patch assumes that the original mods will be in a specific order...LOOT may not necessarily order it that way. One example of this is the ETaC - Winterhold & EWDR patch. There are a number of overlapping records between the two that are not addressed in the compatibility patch. It is assumed (I think) that ETaC will be first, then EWDR, and the patch addresses cases where the ETaC records are preferable over EWDR. But, if LOOT put those in the other order, then you would have very different results.Second is when two mods have overlapping edits and the order is arbitrary from a technical standpoint (as-in, either way will not cause any errors), but one order may be preferable for some non-technical reason (aesthetics, cohesion, etc.). An example here is ELFX and RCRN. These will technically work no matter which order you put them, but it looks better if you put ELFX after RCRN.Because the LOOT order can change based on what is in your load order, with the absence of any other rules to dictate the order, these sorts of situations may go one way for one person, and a different way for a different person. So, it is important with LOOT that you do some sanity checking and make sure the order makes sense. If something seems out of line, you can download the BOSS masterlist as a text file and look at how it ordered things. It is also really helpful if you can look at a compatibility patch in TES5Edit and understand what it is doing to make things compatible, and understand what assumptions it makes about the original mods.Edit: Now that I think of it, I may have been wrong about LOOT requiring more knowledge. BOSS was even less trustworthy than LOOT...

It is because of these issues that I am holding off on LOOT. For now BOSS plus BUM seems to give a more dependable result. In fact it strikes me that ultimately LOOT will need something similar to BOSS's Masterlist to encapsulate the accumulated wisdom of how to proceed in these cases where LOOT's technical rules result in ambiguous results. (This is all based on my intuitive understanding of what LOOT does and not any deep analysis if it's code - so maybe I'm completely wrong...)

I think it would probably be okay to keep going on your current game. I don't know of anything in REGS that involves changes to scripts that run on starting a new game. It's worth a shot anyway...

Probably ok to keep going, but I would still suggest you start over. You are only 8 hours into the game and it would suck to start having issues when you get to 50 hours... I'm probably too cautious/paranoid here but... It only takes a smallish probability of an issue for the cost-benefit of starting over to win out when you are so near the beginning. Edited May 26, 2014 by statmonster

[noobzor]

It is because of these issues that I am holding off on LOOT. For now BOSS plus BUM seems to give a more dependable result. In fact it strikes me that ultimately LOOT will need something similar to BOSS's Masterlist to encapsulate the accumulated wisdom of how to proceed in these cases where LOOT's technical rules result in ambiguous results. 

LOOT does have the same concept, but instead of having a pretty much set list of everything, it just has smaller-scale rules that say something like, "X comes after Y," in order to resolve issues between two specific mods.  Right now, that list of rules is pretty slim, but it is continuing to improve.  All of the mechanisms are there for you to define your own user rules, and even to submit those rules to be included in the "masterlist".

 

Honestly, when I was using BOSS, I had to create far more user rules than I do with LOOT.  I had somewhere in the range of 30 to 40 with BOSS, and only 3 with LOOT.

[Kuldebar]

 

Honestly, when I was using BOSS, I had to create far more user rules than I do with LOOT.  I had somewhere in the range of 30 to 40 with BOSS, and only 3 with LOOT.

Same here! With BOSS I had 29 User List Rules, with LOOT I have 2, and those are to hand the SPERG Override Patches for two of the Skill Trees.

[Sartho]

Should we update to the newest version of Inconsequential NPCs?

[phryxolydian]

 

Version 1.8a Extra lines for Cassia added. Solitude/Windhelm soldier patrons will now change outfits to reflect whichever side wins the Civil War. Revamped InconNPCs dead body cleanup setup. Compatibility Patch for the 'Cutting Room Floor' uploaded.

No reason not to..

[Asyrin]

Should we also use the patch or is this something covered by the REGS patches?

[CJ2311]

Fantastic Pack and absolutely required in all my playthroughs.Quick question though: I noticed Dwemerverse was not included in the pack but the more recent Specrteverse is. Is there compatibility issues? Any other reason?Thanks again for all the hard work!

Dwemerverse doesn't have any quests, it's just a magic mod, whereas this one has an entire quest, and a voiced one at that.

Should we update to the newest version of Inconsequential NPCs?

Just updated the instructions for InconNPCs, thanks for reminding me.

[phryxolydian]

Oh, I thought this patch was included in REGS - CRF.esp. K.. merging :)

[CJ2311]

In case anyone is interested, here's the ETaC - Wet and Cold Holidays patch (For modular and complete versions)

 

And here's the Better Fast Travel patch for version 3.7. I'm just posting them here because it'll take a while before ETaC 11.1 is released. (Silly people keep reporting small nitpicks, such as patches or the whole mod not working. seriously, who cares about things as trivial as a mod not working? )

[Kelmych]

Just updated the instructions for InconNPCs, thanks for reminding me.

I was looking at the CRF patch for Inconsequential NPCs with TES5Edit and I don't understand the purpose of a lot of what it edits. It reverts a lot of records added by CRF back to the Skyrim.esm version (e.g., XLSR Location Reference records, some faction ownership records, some object bounds records) for the temporary item and militia objects it edits. It changes a Navmesh record from the CRF version back to a USKP version. The plugin has the right date but the file name is version 1.0 vs. 1.1 (which could be inadvertent, of course).

[Lauren]

I noticed the version number oddity, but I read ripple's response here so as far as the actual contents, it sounds fine:

 

Both InconNPCs and CRF 'fixes' the empty Thalmor HQ building in Solitude. InconNPCs adds 2 Thalmor justiciars in plain cloth guise, who moves about the city and has some dialogue scenes with the city's inhabitants. It also adds 2 Thalmor guards to stand guard in front of the Thalmor HQ entrance. I also replaced the Solitude banners in the HQ building with Thalmor banners. CRF adds some respawning Thalmor soldiers and justiciars (I think about 5 or 6 in total) to the building, and also replaced the banners in the HQ builds with Thalmor banners. The InconNPCs changes to the Thalmor HQ were made a few months before CRF was released (otherwise, I don't think I would have bothered). 

 

In CRF, if the Stormcloaks win the Civil War, the Thalmor soldiers added by CRF will be automatically disabled, and Stormcloak guards will spawn inside the building instead. 

 

In InconNPCs, if the Stormcloaks win the Civil War, the Thalmor justiciars and sentries I added will retreat into the building and hole up there (the justiciars will no longer move about the city to intimidate people). If you visit the building after the Stormcloaks win the Civil War (with the aid of the Dragonborn), this is what will happen: 

 

What the InconNPCs - CRF patch does: basically, I've disabled the changes made by CRF to the Thalmor HQ setup, and reverted those changes back to vanilla/USKP state. So you won't have any of the respawning Thalmor/Stormcloaks from CRF, and you won't have duplicate banners. Instead, you'll just see the changes from InconNPCs. There are also some changes I reverted (because they were necessary for compatibility), not directly relevant to this and would take too long to explain, but this is the general 'gist' of it. 

 

[CJ2311]

Welp, good thing the forum software warned me before I posted so I was able to avoid being ninja'd.

[noobzor]

Yeah, I asked ripple about that because I was curious.  His reasons seemed sound to me, and I think he made good changes.