Some confusion about the guide for a new user - could someone clear this up?

[Eris_Freya]

I apologise if any of these questions have been answered before, or if I'm posting this in the wrong place. 

I bought Skyrim last week, but I still haven't played it, as I'm hoping to have everything set up before I jump in.

I keep seeing "STEP:CORE" and "STEP:EXTENDED", and notes for those using either build, but it's not clear exactly what "STEP:EXTENDED" is. 

There are many times throughout the guide we are given detailed instructions, but it is difficult to discern requirements from recommendations, as they always begin with "STEP Recommends:". 

We are told to install certain optional files, or to install older, lower res versions, but reasons behind this are rarely addressed - "Serious hd retexture Skyrim LANDSCAPE 2K 3.0 beta" and "SHD FULL - Landscape" seem a lot more enticing than the "1024p" and "lite" versions. 

 

I'm half way through the step guide, but before I go any further, I'd like to know what my options are - what mods will conflict, and may I substitute any of them (especially concerning the "landscape and environment" section). By the end of this, I'm hoping to jump in and play for a few hours with most of the texture and graphic overhauls disabled, then enable them all to better experience the "HOLY CRAP amazeballs!" feeling often evoked by /r/SkyrimPorn/. I have quite a beefy rig, so I'd like to max out everything, simply because I can - so I would appreciate any recommendations. 

Edited August 22, 2015 by Eris_Freya

[Nozzer66]

It's been asked and answered before several times. 

 

When you look at the list of mods on the STEP page, you'll see some have a green bar next to them, some don't. 

 

The ones with the Green Bar are the CORE mods. The other ones are the EXTENDED mods. To install STEP Extended, you install everything. For STEP Core you just install the ones with the green bar beside them. 

 

It's actually shown in the guide in the Mod Tables Legend section.

 

Regards the texture mods, they are essentially recommended at the level they are to fit a certain level of computer. If you have a rock-crushing machine with a 6GB video card, RAM out the wazoo and a huge monitor, feel free to use bigger textures. Most people don't, and thus STEP recommends often more middle of the road suggestions.

 

Substitute and add anything you like texture wise, Up to you. 

 

 

Regards you idea of playing for a while with stuff disabled... I'd just fire the game up Vanilla, completely unmodded first. See how that looks, and THEN fire up the modded version. That's dead easy to do with profiles in Mod Organizer.

Edited August 22, 2015 by Nozzer66

[Eris_Freya]

 

The ones with the Green Bar are the CORE mods. The other ones are the EXTENDED mods. To install STEP Extended, you install everything. For STEP Core you just install the ones with the green bar beside them. 

 

It's actually shown in the guide in the Mod Tables Legend section.

It was clear all mods with a green bar were "CORE" mods, but I must've misinterpreted "Mods that are not Core mods in the STEP Guide collectively known as STEP:Extended." 

As for textures, would there not be any clashes? 

[Nozzer66]

Doesn't matter if you have multiple textures for a particular object. Whatever one loads last is what gets used. You can use Mod Organizer's 'hide' function to change this though.

 

Easier to show via an example.

 

Mod X is a mod that re-textures all the bottles and bottle labels in Skyrim. Mod Y does the same thing, but its label textures are better than Mod X's. If you wanted Mod Y's labels and Mod X's bottle textures you could load Mod X after Mod Y, then go and hide JUST the label texture files of Mod X in MO. This would allow Mod Y's label textures to 'win'. And thus you'd get Mod X's good bottles with Mod Y's better labels and have the best of both worlds.

 

If you were to double click on a mod and look at the 'conflicts' tab of most mods you'd be able to see files where another mod is 'overwriting' the original mod's files. If you're OK with that, fine, game on. 

 

In our example above, if you double clicked Mod Y in the left pane of MO and looked at the conflicts tab, you'd see that Mod X was 'overwriting' it. 

 

It's not truly a conflict in the truest sense of the word, though, as only the one lower on the list will show in game. It's just info being provided so you can, if desired, take action to ensure you get the files you want.

Edited August 22, 2015 by Nozzer66