Guide Talk:Skyrim Installation

Skyrim's first DLC is a free High Resolution Texture Pack (HRDLC). It upgrades most of the weapons, armor, and clothes as well as the cities of Whiterun, Markarth, Solitude and Windhelm in the game from 512k to 1024-2048k. There are some other textures upgrades as well but they are scattered throughout the game, notably there are almost no landscape textures. The DLC was released with several unnecessary and buggy files, some files were also placed in incorrect locations or given incorrect names. These problems are easily remedied and it is highly recommended to use the DLC if you have 1.5GB or greater VRAM. I will guide you through the installation and fixes. Those with less than 1.5GB VRAM should not use the DLC (if you have 1GB and are not installing STEP you will be fine to install) and can skip to step 9 below.

1. In Steam select Skyrim, right click and select properties, select the DLC tab and click the "view available downloadable content for this game" link. Select Skyrim High Resolution Texture Pack and click "add to cart" and it will download and install.
2. Download and install BSAopt - Bethesda Archive Management and Optimization (make sure to set the game to Skyrim and read the documentation) and use it to extract each of the 2 bsa's you just downloaded to their own directories adjacent to one another (e.g., c:\HRDLC1 & c:\HRDLC2).

Alternatively, bsa's can be extracted using DDSopt (make sure to set the game to Skyrim), which includes BSAopt functionality as well as many other features. More on using DDSopt to extract and repack bsa's can be referenced in the DDSopt Guide.

3. Download the HD Textures DLC Fix Loose Files Version, and extract it to its own directory along side the two HRDLC directories created in the previous step (e.g., HRDLC_fix).

steps deleted rewrite required

4. Now, delete the directory to which you extracted the DlC Fix.
5. For the diehards among you that also have 1.5GB+ VRAM an optional step is to use DDSopt to optimize all of the textures (e.g., c:\HRDLC1 & c:\HRDLC2) before repacking them (a 3-5+ hour process). Refer to DDSopt Guide. Complete the configuration and optimization sections substituting the two HRDLC directories as appropriate.
6. Finally, choose one of the following three options:
   • If you are using a mod manager, you can deactivate the ESPs and create one or more compressed archives using 7zip
   • Using BSAopt (or DDSopt), recompress the two remaining directories (e.g., c:\HRDLC1 & c:\HRDLC2) back into HighResTexturePack01.bsa and HighResTexturePack02.bsa, respectively (CAUTION: make backups of these, because Steam can overwrite! Also, be certain that the directory structures within each BSA match the textures\ directory structure under the skyrim\Data directory)
     1. Start BSAOpt (pick the correct version, x32 or x64), and check if in the Game menu Skyrim has been set as option (this option might have reset which will generate CTD causing .bsa output files)
     2. Click the top right Browse button
     3. In the pop up menu, select the directory you want to pack (HRDLC1 or HRDLC2)
     4. Click the Use Folder button
     5. Check if the directory tree that is listed in the top section of BSAOpt lists the structure (..\, textures and then the sub-files). Anything else is wrong and you need to reselect your input directory
     6. Click the bottom right "Browse" button
     7. In the File name section select and overwrite "out" with HighResTexturePack01 or HighResTexturePack02
     8. Check if the "Save as type" section is set as the Bethesda Softworks Archive (*.bsa)
     9. Click the Save button
     10. Click the Pack button
     11. Repeat the process for the other directory (HRDLC1 or HRDLC2) that needs to be packed
     12. Delete the HRDLC1 and HRDLC2 directories
   • Deposit the textures folders within your skyrim\Data directory (Not recommended, if you do make sure you have a vanilla backup for when you want to uninstall).
7. If you have less than 1.5GB of VRAM and skipped the optional DDSopt optimizations then installing the Bethesda Hi-Res DLC Optimized will free up more VRAM and increase your fps.