No city overhaul mods work for me. Game crashes on start up.

[m0rrowind]

Hello guys!

 

This is my first time ever modding Skyrim, and everything seemed to be running okay except for when I tried to add a city overhaul mod into my game.

 

First I tried Dawn of Skyrim. I downloaded it through NMM and as soon as I tried to step into the city from Whiterun's Bannered Mare, my game crashed. I removed Dawn of Skyrim and everything loaded up fine. So I tried JKs Skyrim all in one download and did it through the NMM and this time I couldn't even get into the game, I froze and crashed at the entry loading screen. Im new to modding this game, so i've been watching videos by Gopher on Youtube trying to learn as much as I can before heavily modding this game.

 

I'm not sure what could be causing these crashes with specifically city overhaul mods but here is my load order with Jk's Skyrim installed:

 

 

0 0 Skyrim.esm

1 1 Update.esm

2 2 Dawnguard.esm

3 3 Dragonborn.esm

4 4 HearthFires.esm

5 5 Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch.esp

6 6 ApachiiHairFemales.esm

7 7 ApachiiHair.esm

8 8 Falskaar.esm

9 9 Wyrmstooth.esp

10 a Campfire.esm

11 b Lanterns Of Skyrim - All In One - Main.esm

12 c ClimatesOfTamriel.esm

13 d HighResTexturePack01.esp

14 e HighResTexturePack02.esp

15 f HighResTexturePack03.esp

16 10 Unofficial High Resolution Patch.esp

17 11 WSCO - OcciFemaleCBBE.esp

18 12 WSCO - OcciBetterMale.esp

19 13 WSCO - Better NPCs.esp

20 14 The Eyes Of Beauty - Elves Edition.esp

21 15 TheEyesOfBeauty.esp

22 16 Babette.esp

23 17 Hothtrooper44_Armor_Ecksstra.esp

24 18 Hothtrooper44_ArmorCompilation.esp

25 19 TrueStorms.esp

26 1a TrueStorms-RLO.esp

27 1b RaceMenu.esp

28 1c RaceMenuPlugin.esp

29 1d CalienteVanillaArmorTweaks.esp

30 1e Book Covers Skyrim.esp

31 1f SFO - Dragonborn.esp

32 20 Skyrim Flora Overhaul.esp

33 21 SkyUI.esp

34 22 dD - Enhanced Blood Main.esp

35 23 dD-Dragonborn-Dawnguard-EBT Patch.esp

36 24 Footprints.esp

37 25 SMIM-Merged-All.esp

38 26 Immersive Weapons.esp

39 27 Chesko_WearableLantern.esp

40 28 Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul.esp

41 29 Dr_Bandolier.esp

42 2a Cloaks.esp

43 2b The Dance of Death - Ultimate Edition.esp

44 2c Cloaks - Dawnguard.esp

45 2d 1nivWICCloaks.esp

46 2e 1nivWICSkyCloaksPatch.esp

47 2f Convenient Horses.esp

48 30 Skyrim Immersive Creatures.esp

49 31 Skyrim Immersive Creatures - DLC2.esp

50 32 Helgen Reborn.esp

51 33 Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Major City Interiors.esp

52 34 Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Major City Exteriors.esp

53 35 Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Minor Cities and Town Interiors.esp

54 36 Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Dawnguard Interiors.esp

55 37 Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Dungeons.esp

56 38 Breezehome_Fully_Upgradable.esp

57 39 HoldBorderBanners.esp

58 3a ClimatesOfTamriel-Dawnguard-Patch.esp

59 3b ClimatesOfTamriel-Dragonborn-Patch.esp

60 3c 3DNPC.esp

61 3d RealisticWaterTwo.esp

62 3e RealisticWaterTwo - Legendary.esp

63 3f RealisticWaterTwo - Waves - Wyrmstooth.esp

64 40 RealisticWaterTwo - Waves - Falskaar.esp

65 41 Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp

66 42 Dovah Vault.esp

67 43 ElisShackPro.esp

68 44 beginnersshack.esp

69 45 Swamp House.esp

70 46 Routa Non-Stormcloak.esp

71 47 TheRookery.esp

72 48 CanalHome.esp

73 49 ThiefsHideout.esp

74 4a Thornrock.esp

75 4b Lillehus.esp

76 4c EliProudspireOverhaul.esp

77 4d RavenNest_1.2.esp

78 4e Apocalypse - The Spell Package.esp

79 4f WetandCold.esp

80 50 WetandCold - Ashes.esp

81 51 immersive roads.esp

82 52 fallentreebridges.esp

83 53 Farm Animals_HF.esp

84 54 JKs Skyrim.esp

85 55 SoS - Civilization.esp

86 56 SoS - The Dungeons.esp

87 57 SoS - The Wilds.esp

I use LOOT and TES5Edit to clean my files and mods.. but like I said i'm new to this so i'm sure I could have made a rookie mistake. Any help would be great!

[iXenite]

I think it might be your house mods. JK's Skyrim overhauls do not like mods that edit any of the major cities, towns or villages in the game.

 

Quote from the mod page in regards to mods that are not compatible with JK's Skyrim:

 

"Mods that change the Skyrim's 5 major cities (Whiterun, Windhelm, Solitude, Markarth and Riften) the towns of Riverwood, Dragonbridge, Ivarstead and Rorikstead, and the small open cities of Falkreath, Morthal, Dawnstar and Winterhold. (with the exception of texture mods)"

 

Source:

Jk's Skyrim:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/61035/?

[Jannifer]

Actually, most of those mods are Elianora's mods, and she's very careful about where she puts her player homes. Try moving JK's Skyrim above the house mods and see if that helps. If it doesn't, then you simply may have found your rig's limitations when it comes to modding the game. You don't mention what your specs are, so I'm not sure about that. However, if your computer only meets the minimum requirements for running Skyrim, then you will have crashing problems when you install mods that add new things, such as plants and people, or add high resolution textures.

 

Also, it's very important to understand that not all mods should be cleaned with TES5Edit. LOOT will throw a "dirty edits" warning on mods which add certain things, such as new spawn points. That warning is a false positive. Experienced modders clean their files before they upload, so keep that in mind.

[amakachao]

Because of Immersive Citizens AI Overhaul I have learned not to always trust LOOT. Sometime Loot leaves things where you put them because it doesn't know any better. I bet if you manually moved Alternate Start to the bottom of the load order and ran LOOT it wouldn't move it up to the top again. See, the only way for LOOT to know better is for every mod author to submit metadata documentation about dependencies and such. Also on that page I linked, it lists some city overhauls like JK's Skyrim as incompatible. But if you keep reading that page, the author is working on it.

 

Personally I've had to teach LOOT with User applied Metadata. Some mods quite clearly say in their descriptions that they are dependent on (aka must go below) an .ESM but LOOT was putting the file above the masterfile until I taught it the correct way.

 

It is recommended to put Alternate Start and Immersive Citizens near the bottom of the load order but here is some advice from a veteran modder:

In a post from 22 January on the "Immersive Citizens AI Overhaul" mod page

deane9850 wrote: This is something I developed a habit of since Morrowind.. While I dont suggest to everyone, it has served me well.. of course, xEdit requires to determines the optimum solution or if patch requires at all to solve conflicts.

Group
a) esm
b) Mods that wants to load as early as possible here.. Relighting Skyrim/Better Dynamic Snow/WAF/CCF
c) UI mods.. iHud/SkyUI belongs here
d) General mods.. Dialogue mods/Scripting mods like hypothermia/hair mod/armor mod/house..
e) Quest mods.. Falskaar/Wrymtooth/Paathunax Dilemma/Gildergreen Regrown/Notice Board
f) Face Overhauls.. Bijin
g) Custom Followers with own follower framework .. Inigo/Auryln/Anduniel
h) Multi follower framework .. Only 1 entry .. AFT/UFO/EFF/SMF/FM/FLP
i) Barbie dolls follower .. Custom follower with vanilla system
j) Requiem + Bugsmasher
k) Requiem patches
l) Things that needs to load after Requiem .. This mod/Alternate Start/ELE/Purity
m) Wrye Batch (custom tweak)
n) Skyproc .. I only uses 3.. Automatic Variant/Requiem/EBD .. EBD needs to load last since it touches NPCs.. and capable of carrying all Requiem the indifferent changes.. but Requiem fails to carry EBD's changes.

 

 

I don't use WyreBash, Requiem or SkyProc but the rest of the advice is still true.

 

Just from your list I can't tell. You seem to be doing the troubleshooting steps correctly, watching videos and what not.

 

I recommend paying attention to INSTALL order not just Load Order. Some mods must override others during installation. I also had to get familiar with making patches using Tes5edit to resolve conflicts. Cleaning with Tes5edit can be just as dangerous as leaving the "dirt". Mostly I use it to inform when I should move a mod up or down to resolve conflicts.

 

It may boil down to picking the mods you can't live without and then carefully adding from there. Many mod pages have links to compatible/ recommended mods so for example you might end up going with Purity rather than the Ruffled Feather or you might have to make a Cloaks of Skyrim/USLEEP patch manually so that your Forsworn Briarhearts aren't missing their "chest holes". Lots of little things... You may have to commit to a play-style and only have active mods per character. For example, if you aren't playing a mage, disable all the magic mods for this play-through. Some mods may suggest applying ini changes like for SKSE ini that help with Memory and Invalid Registrations... It's a slow process.

 

Usually crashing upon loading the game indicates a missing masterfile. Are any of the mods using USKP as a masterfile but need to be updated to USLEEP? Try the swap masters script - follow these directions to find out if any mods are using USKP and if so, how to change them to USLEEP.

 

You can do it though, you have the tools and you are gaining the know how. Good luck.

Edited March 15, 2016 by amakachao