User:Neovalen/Skyrim Revisited

From Step Mods | Change The Game
Skyrim Revisited

A STEP-based mod guide created and maintained by Neovalen.
Last Update: 19:33:21 14 December 2012 (UTC)

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Introduction

Skyrim Revisited is a STEP-based guide designed to keep up with the ever changing Skyrim DLC/Mod landscape. It will be updated with more frequency than STEP proper and decisions are based completely upon the creators personal choices. With that in mind, it may require tailoring it to the users specific CPU/GPU setup. Generally the most graphically intensive versions of all mods are used by default.
The system used for the creation of this guide is as follows:

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K @ 4.5Ghz
MOBO: Gigabyte G1.SNIPER 3
RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600Mhz
GPU: EVGA 670GTX Superclocked 4GB (SLI)

Should there be any questions or concerns, please feel free to message Neovalen on the Nexus or STEP forums.

Prerequisites

Software

Script Extenders

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Tools

For my mod install, I will be using Mod Organizer as the mod manager of choice. The reasons for doing so are listed below:
1. Profiles allows us to have multiple configurations set up per character/function and does so cleanly by NOT touching the Skyrim data folder or ini files.
2. Mod Downloading via NXM allows us to download mods directly into the tool using the "Download With Manager" button on the nexus web site.
3. Mod Version Tracking allows us to leverage the power of the nexus to track MAJOR mod updates. This is not a replacement for the track file option on the actual site for optionals!
4. NMM Installer Compatibility allows us to use Nexus Mod Manager installers.
5. BAIN Installer Compatibility allows us to use BAIN packages.
6. Manual Installation Option allows us to select the data folder in an archive manually, allowing us to fix path problems at install time.
7. Sort By Category allows us to easily sort through a mass number of mods easily.
8. Run Executables allows us to use tools such as BOSS, BUM, Wrye Bash, and TES5Edit without physically touching the data folder.

The primary function of this tool for the purposes of this guide is to create Bashed Patches which will merge the leveled lists of the various installed mods.

The primary function of this tool is to provide a default ordering between various mods and to help identify mods that require cleaning with TES5Edit.

The primary function of this tool is to assist BOSS with ordering mods not currently in the BOSS master list and to override any improper ordering.

The primary function of this tool is to clean dirty edits and UDRs from the .ESMs and .ESPs that Skyrim will be loading, including the game ESMs.

The primary function of this tool is to optimize and re-mip the vanilla and high res DLC textures. Selected mods may also fall into this category.

The First Steps / Setting Up The Environment

Run The Launcher

Simply start "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" through steam to open the launcher. If this is the first run, it will auto-detect the video card on the system and generate a default state ini file based on the systems hardware configuration.
Once this is done, do the following in order: 

Click "Options" to bring up the options dialog.
Click the [Ultra] button.
Set "Aspect Ratio" and "Resolution" via the drop down box. For most users this will be 16:9 Widescreen and 1920x1080.
Set "Antialiasing Level" to Off via the drop down box.
Set "Anisotropic Filtering" to Off via the drop down box.
Click the [OK] button to close the dialog and save.

Run The Game

The launcher should be displayed on the screen. Do the following in order: 

Click "Play" to start Skyrim.
Wait for the game to reach the main menu and select "New Game".
Allow the game to run until you can access the menu by pressing [ESC] on the keyboard. This should be after the SKYRIM logo has faded away.
In the game menu, select "Settings" then "Display".
Scroll down and mark an X next to "Dialogue Subtitles" and "General Subtitles" to enable them.
Press [ESC] to go back to the category selection menu and select "Gameplay".
Scroll down and remove the X next to "Save on Rest", "Save on Wait", and "Save on Travel".
Click the right arrow on the bar next to "Save on Character Menu" until it says "Disabled".
Press [ESC] until back at the main menu and exit the game.

These settings will be saved to the ini file by the game automatically upon exiting the settings menu. The reason for these settings are: 

Many characters added by mods do not have voiced dialog. - Subtitles must be enabled to view this content.
Autosaves and Quicksaves in Skryim are not generally safe. - They may cause CTDs when loading a new area and problems can arise with scripted mods. Use full saves manually instead.

Backup The Fresh INI Files

This step should be unnecessary but in an abundance of caution: 

Navigate to C:\Users\<Username>\Documents\My Games\Skyrim and save Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini to a backup folder.

This way you always have a fresh set of configured ini files ready to go.

Configuring The Graphics Driver / Modify INI

Start Mod Organizer. If this is the first run, a Profiles dialog box should appear. Do the following in order: 

Make sure "Automatic Archive Invalidation" is unchecked and the "Savegame Filter" text field is blank.
Click [Create] and type "Vanilla Skyrim" in the "Name" text box.
Do NOT check the box that says "Default Game Settings".

This creates a local Mod Organizer copy of the current ini files among other things. 

Close the dialog box by clicking [Close].
Verify that "Vanilla Skyrim" is the currently selected Profile at the top of the Mod Organizer window.
If it is not, then click the drop down box and select "Vanilla Skyrim".
Click the [Edit Ini] button on the title bar.

The edit ini dialog box will appear. Follow the steps below based on the systems graphics card manufacturer.
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Nvidia Users

Download, Install, and run Nvidia Inspector then perform the following steps: 

Click the tool icon next to the Driver Version information box.
Wait for the dialog box to come up then in the profiles text box type "Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim".
In the lower window set "Anisotropic filtering mode" to "User-defined/Off".
In the lower window set "Anisotropic filtering setting" to "16x".
In the lower window set "Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias" to "Clamp".
If using SLI, also set "SLI compatibility bits (DX1x)" to "0x080116F5 (Battlefield 3, Medal of Honor: Warfighter)".
Click [Apply Changes] and exit the program.

This has enabled driver level Anistropic Filtering which is superior to the in game filtering. No INI file changes are required for an Nvidia graphics card.

ATI Users

Open the Catalyst Control Center that was installed with the ATI video drivers and configure as specified here then perform the following steps: 

Click the [SkyrimPrefs.ini] tab in Mod Organizer.
Change "iMaxAnisotropy=1" to "iMaxAnisotropy=16"

This will enable Anistropic Filtering through the game engine as it is not enabled via the driver as with an Nvidia card.

Configuring Mod Organizer

Close the modify ini dialog from the previous step and do the following: 

Click [Settings] in the title bar of the main Mod Organizer window.
In the resulting dialog, click the [Nexus] tab.
Check "Automatically Log-In to Nexus" and input a valid nexus username and password.
Check "Handle NXM Links" and "Prefer external browser" then click [OK].
Click [Executables] in the title bar of the main Mod Organizer window.

This brings up the executables dialog. Some tools come pre-configured by default such as Skyrim, Creation Kit, and SKSE. The goal of the next steps will be to configure all of the required tools through Mod Organizer. As an example we will set up BOSS: 

In the "Title" text box type "BOSS".
In the "Binary" text box type <BOSS Install Path>\BOSS.exe or select it using windows explorer by pressing the [...] button.
Do not select any of the optional check boxes.
Click the [+ Add] button

Additionally do this for all tools listed in the prerequisites section such as Wrye Bash, TES5Edit, and BUM.

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By default the load order in Mod Organizer is slightly scrambled. This can be fixed by running BOSS to do a quick sort. Do the following steps: 

Select "BOSS" from the drop down box under the "Start" heading.
Click the [Run] push button.

This loads BOSS through the Mod Organizer interface to sort the current ESMs/ESPs which for now only consist of the base game and DLCs. BOSS will display it's results in your default browser. In the Mod Organizer window the load order has been corrected to match the output from BOSS. "Skyrim.esm" and "Update.esm" are at the top of the load order, greyed and checked. To load all the DLC content along with the base game for the "Vanilla Skyrim" profile do the following: 

Check the boxes next to the DLC ESMs in the load order.

Creating A Skyrim Revisited Profile

Now that an established a clean "Vanilla Skyrim" profile has been created vanilla Skyrim may be run at any time with the click of a button. Next a new profile must be established that will contain "Skyrim Revisisted" and its collection of installed mods. Do the following: 

Click the [Profiles] icon at the top of the main Mod Organizer window.
Select "Vanilla Skyrim" by clicking on it then click [Copy].
In the resulting dialog, type "Skyrim Revisited" in the text box and hit [OK].

Mod Organizer has just created an exact copy of the "Vanilla Skyrim" profile (including ini files and load order) into a new profile named "Skyrim Revisisted". To select it as the current profile, do the following: 

Click [Close] to exit the window.
Click the drop down box labelled "Profile" and select "Skyrim Revisisted".

When copying a profile the load order is preserved but activation status is not. 

Recheck the DLCs in the load order window to activate them.

In the prerequisites, SKSE was installed without the required script files. This was done to preserve a pristine Skyrim data directory so that Skyrim may run vanilla at any time. Now they will be used as an example of how to add a mod to Mod Organizer. Do the following steps: 

Right click anywhere in the Mod window and select "Install Mod...".
Navigate to the SKSE archive and click [Open].
In the opened "Install Mods" dialog box replace the default text in the "Name" text box with "Skyrim Script Extender".

This name will be displayed in the mod window after installation. In the file tree, the contents of the archive with a list of check marks is displayed. 

Navigate to the "Data" directory inside the archive, right click and select "Set Data Directory".

Mod Oranizer will filter out all the archive contents except for that folder for installation. Note that there should be a green "Looks good" notification at the bottom left of the window. 

Click [OK].

The mod will now be displayed with an empty checkbox in the mod window. This mod is now installed to Mod Organizer but not yet enabled/visible to the game. Do the following: 

Right click the mod and select "Information...".
In the "Categories" tab, check the box next to "Patches" to add that category to this mod.
In the "Nexus Info" tab, set the version number to the installed SKSE version number but leave the Mod ID as -1.

This will set the proper version number and indicate that SKSE is not available on the Nexus. Any mods downloaded into Mod Organizer directly from the Nexus will have one or more of these fields automatically filled. Look at the file tree tab to see the contents of the directory that will be virtually placed inside the Skyrim/Data directory. There is a meta.ini file shown which Mod Organizer uses to store all the data for the mod. It will not be visible to the game when executed. 

Click [Close] to save and exit the window.

Note the version number next to the mod is now visible and black. The color annotates that it is a non-nexus mod and it's version cannot be confirmed. Mods that can be verified will be either Green (Current+) or Red (Out Of Date). 

Check the box next to the mod name.

This has activated the mod and when the game is executed through Mod Organizer, the contents of that directory are now visible to the Skyrim game the same as if they were in the Data directory. Any conflicts are handled by Mod Organizer in priority order (higher priority overwrites lower priority). Give this a try now: 

Select "SKSE" from the drop down box under the "Start" header and click [Run].

This will execute the game using the SKSE_Loader.exe. Mod Organizer window will close as SKSE is pre-configured to do so. The data directory is still being virtualized properly for the game to see it. 

Exit the game.

With this configuration Mod Organizer may swap between an SKSE enabled profile "Skyrim Revisited" and a non-SKSE vanilla profile "Vanilla Skyrim". If it is desired to play the game in a pristine vanilla form at any time simply select the "Vanilla Skyrim" profile then select and run "Skyrim" in the run drop down or run the game directly from Steam.

Clean The Bethesda ESMs

The next step to a stable and clean Skyrim run is to use TES5Edit to clean ITMs and UDRs. This improves compatibility between mods and lessens the chance of instability in Skyrim. The steps are as defined below: 

1. Select "TES5Edit" from the drop down box below the "Start" heading and click [Run].
2. The Master/Plugin selection window of TES5Edit should appear, right click and select "None".
3. Tick the check box next to Update.esm and click [OK] and wait for it to load with the message "Background Loader: finished" in the right pane.
4. Right click Update.esm and select "Apply Filter For Cleaning", wait for the message "[Filtering Done]" to appear on the right pane.
5. Right click Update.esm and select "Remove Identical To Master Records", wait for the message "[Removing Identical to Master records done]".
6. Right click Update.esm and select "Undelete and Disable References", wait for the message "[Undeleting and Disabling References done]". *Note: Ignore any messages about remaining Nav meshes.
7. Exit the program by clicking the [X] at the top right hand corner of the window, the "Save Changed Files" dialog box should appear.
8. Make sure Update.esm is checked and also that "Backup Plugins" is also checked then click [OK].

What this process has done is removed any improperly removed records or edited records that were identical to the base Skyrim.esm file. Do the same process for all of the DLC ESMs. Do NOT attempt to clean Skyrim.esm itself.

Once this is done an additional step is required when using Mod Organizer. Navigate to <Mod Organizer Path>/overwrite, here will be all of the Bethesda ESMs that were cleaned as well as a new folder named TES5Edit Backups. Mod Organizer while running TES5Edit identified files that were modified by the program and moved them into this directory and out of the Skyrim/Data directory to maintain a pristine install. Unfortunately in the case of modifying base game files, this is not desirable as the data directory is now missing the base ESMs. To fix this, do the following: 

1. Go into <Mod Organizer Path>/overwrite/TES5Edit Backups and copy all three backup files for the ESMs.
2. Go to <Skyrim Directory/Data and paste these files into the directory.
3. Rename the files back to the original names Update.esm, Dawnguard.esm and so on.

This process has restored the original files to allow the game to run in a pristine vanilla state via Steam. When a profile is run through Mod Organizer the contents of the overwrite folder will take over and it will use the cleaned versions of the base files. Since using the cleaned versions should not affect the game folders or functionality negatively in any way, they do not have to move into a mod folder like we did for the SKSE script files and will be used for ALL profiles including "Vanilla Skyrim".

Optimizing Vanilla and High Resolution DLC Textures

Open up the DDSOpt tool. In the "Ignore" drop down select "Don't process any of the known file-types at all". This configures DDSOpt to simply extract textures without optimizing them. Click the [Browse] button near the top of the window and select the Skyrim - Textures.bsa in your Skyrim/Data folder. It will take several moments for DDSOpt to skim and load the contents of the BSA. Once that is finished, click the [Browse] button near the bottom of the window and select a temporary directory where you wish to extract the textures. Now click the "Show Recursive" check box in the middle of the window. A list of files will appear. In the center bar, type *.png and then click [Apply]. Click the red X to deselect all the filtered files. Clear the center bar and hit [Apply] once again. Now click [Process] at the bottom right corner. DDSOpt will extract all the files not of type .png to your temporary directory. Do the same for the HighResTexturePack01.bsa and HighResTexturePack02.bsa into their own temporary directories.

After the extraction is complete for all three there should be a directory for each BSA. For example: 

C:\Working\Vanilla
C:\Working\HRDLC1
C:\Working HRDLC2

Due to Bethesda being lazy, an additional step is required before we can optimize properly. Follow the directions outlined here to fix various issues with the High Resolution Texture Pack DLC.

Let The Modding Begin!

In the previous section we created a profile named "Skyrim Revisisted", select it now. This is the profile that will be used for the remainder of the guide.

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