Lord Garon

(BEGIN Wall-o-Images Four) I installed a Kingston 120GB SSD a couple days ago (it was on sale at Microcenter for $60.00) and put a new Win7 install on it. Pretty nice, the machine boots in about 7 seconds. Moved some busy folders off the SSD and on to a platter drive and decided to re-do the HDD drives, including my Skyrim setups. Jumped straight to what I'd been thinking of doing with the setups. I still have 6 each of the 3 main Skyrim storage locations, but now a directory symlink target address selects the desired active setups. My batch file just deletes and re-creates the symlinks with different target addresses to switch setups. Thought I'd post an Explorer picture to break the monotony and show what I'm rambling on about. First, a capture of the SteamApps\common directory: http://static-1.nexusmods.com/15/images/110/1545930-1414473521.png The folder panel shows the six SETUP directories, the common file and data store directories, and the script folder where the create and switch batch files live. Notice the re-direct arrow on the Skyrim symlink. Its pointing at SETUP2 at the moment. On the right panel are the contents of SETUP2, which is being cleaned up for a new mod load (Gotta push that new i5). The Skyrim Mods folder holds BASH installers (mod archive zip files) and mod info for this setup and automatically switches with the setup. I highlighted a couple SKSE file symlinks; they point to the real files living in the CommonGameFiles folder. Note that they show 0 bytes in size. Moving stuff to the Common folders cuts a vanilla+DLC SETUP folder from over 13GB to less than 1GB each; most of that size drop is from moving vanilla+DLC bsa files. That's with no other mods, of course. I think the STEP REGS pack (SETUP4) is the biggest; just over 60GB, with a lot of stuff moved out. I just now finished "translating" my VBS hta switch script to a cmd.exe batch file. My poor coding skills are available for your entertainment in the spoiler tag below. (END Wall-o-Text Four)

(BEGIN Wall-o-Text Three) It's more complicated than it seems, or, Why they invented Mod Organizer: Its almost a miracle that we can mod Skyrim to the extent we can. Steam tries its best to thwart piracy and necessarily interferes with modding in the process. Skyrim itself is full of quirks and odd behaviors. Windows, the World's Greatest Kludge (look it up), throws obstacles at us at every turn. It took me years to get a stable, consistent, modded Skyrim working how I wanted it to, which was just to simply work. On the face of it, making some directory copies and renaming them to have multiple game setups seems to be a fairly easy task. In some ways it is. I went months with three simple game setups and had no issues at all, that is, no issues that weren't expected. However, there's considerable inefficiencies in doing the copy/rename process. I want to mention some basic problems I ran into at this point, not to dissuade people, but as a partial explanation as to why I ended up where I did and why Mod Organizer Profiles are a much better way to do this kind of thing. Unless you're OCD like me, and simply HAVE to do it your way. The first issue I hit was the Registry. It stores Skyrim install info. Ah Ha!, I thought, easy enough to just switch a registry entry and have multiple base game installs. Nope. The launcher resets that entry every time its run. Well, I launch with SKSE, maybe that's not so bad. Oh oh, Skyrim won't run from a User account; Steam says it needs more permissions to correct things (the registry entry). A can of worms is coming; giving Steam more permissions defeats the purpose of User account permissions (not able to change too much stuff). Put the registry entry back to default and Steam lets things run. That throbbing in my skull is a dull ache. Oh well, file duplication across the SETUPS is getting out of hand now and I need to work on that any way. Decide to move some core files to their own directory and point to them in the SETUP folders with symlinks. Perfect! Saving a lot of space. Now I'll move common data files (mods) out to a common mods directory and link to them. CTD on load. What the heck? Okay, I have BSA files in RAMDISK and on a flash drive already, maybe its the esp or esm files? Sure enough, symlinking a plugin crashes Skyrim. Much flailing until I discover that a file hardlink works, but a softlink doesn't; Skyrim accesses plugins differently than bsa files. Whooda thunk. Man, my head is really pounding now. Okay, Loot only remembers metadata changes for one setup, let's work on that. Alrighty, Loot keeps that info in an AppData folder in a yaml (!?) file. But the frickin report files I have to remember are in the main Loot folder. Should I make more symlinks, or switch the entire AppData Loot folder. Maybe I'll move the folder into the Skyrim AppData folder so it switches automatically. Maybe I'll move ALL Loot files to a Skyrim folder. Hell, it'd be just as easy to have six Loot installations inside six different Skyrim setup folders. Then I could move common Loot files to my common core files directory... But, I could do that with one Loot install. Cripes, I can't think with this headache. Think I'll go look at some Star Citizen ships and relax for a while. Moral of the story: I had a sudden realization as to the impetus behind Mod Organizer. MO does this stuff "automagically" and now I understand why. I still don't understand MO, but I understand why they built some of it. Well, 413,687 can play at this game; I'll automate MY setups with a script. That'll make things a lot quicker, at least. And get rid of all those tupos typos I make. A multiple setup Skyrim with heavily modded games requires some automated support. The preceding is all true, but PALES in comparison to maintaining, updating, and organizing 470 mods across four actual gaming setups (two setups are for testing). Upcoming Walls-o-Text will contain some batch scripts for helping with this stuff. In reality, my current scripts are either VBS or Powershell scripts, but I don't understand either well enough to talk about them. I should be able to hack a couple useful batch files together, though. Next time, back on track. (END Wall-o-Text Three)

(BEGIN Wall-o-Text Two) Specifics on Proposed Solution One: Base vanilla Skyrim maintains game information in three (primary) storage locations: ...\Steam\SteamApps\common\Skyrim. This is the base game file and data location. The ellipsis (...) refers to the Drive and install location on your machine. This entire PATH is stored in the registry so that Steam and other programs can locate the game, and that becomes a major PITA later on. %LOCALAPPDATA%\Skyrim. First, the percent signs delimit an environment variable name, a system variable in this case, whose contents contain the actual path portion prior to \Skyrim. If you don't understand this concept, this thread will be difficult to follow and I wouldn't recommend doing the things I'm promoting without understanding this concept. This is the AppData folder location where loadorder.txt (sorted mod list) and plugins.txt (active game mod list) are kept. Typically, the full pathname resembles %HOMEDRIVE%\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Skyrim. The actual location will be determined by the name of your logon account, %USERNAME%, and the drive ID containing Windows user profiles, %HOMEDRIVE%. %USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Games\Skyrim. If you moved "My Documents", off of an SSD for example, you may have "Documents" instead of "My Documents". ("My Documents" is just an earlier Windows version compatibility junction pointing to "Documents" in Win7.) This location contains ini files and savegames (in a vanilla game). NOTE: each of the above PATHNAMES ends in "Skyrim". We will use this fact next. My initial SETUPS went like this: 1. Make copies of each of the three "Skyrim" folders above. I named the first set of folder copies SETUP2, but it doesn't matter what you name them. 2. When I wanted to switch game setups, I would just re-name the three Skyrim directories to SETUP1 and the SETUP2 directories to Skyrim. Presto! A setup switch. This makes two identical game SETUPS at first. You can then just change either game the way you want; add mods, remove them all and start over, change ini settings, install a new ENB, etc. When you switch to the other game setup, all your changes will remain in the other folders, safe and secure. That is, as long as you make the changes manually. If you use a mod manager like NMM, say, to do the mod changes, it will remember the status and changes you made the last time it was run. If you switch setups, NMM remembers what was in the "other" game, not the current one. I feel a slight throbbing in the back of my skull. Renaming directories (folders) is the basic idea in having multiple game setups, but the problem with mod managers and other utility programs "remembering" one game setup at a time gets real old, real fast. Especially if you have a lot of mods and really NEED a mod manager. We'll look at that later. (END Wall-o-Text Two)

This topic is a continuation of a Skyrim-General Discussions thread where, in retrospect, I provided some ill-considered advice. I would like to continue it here, with the following disclaimer: WARNING: The advice in this thread has the potential to destroy your game completely, mess up your operating system file structure, and cause the Sun to stop rising in the morning. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. If you've never backed up your game before changing something, now is the time to start. I am an OCD control freak regarding my computers. I don't tolerate, to the maximum extent possible, my machines doing something I don't like and/or don't understand. This thread explains the way that I created several (6) independent Skyrim game SETUPS on my Windows 7 64bit game machine. The Issue: I want several completely independent Skyrim game SETUPS in order to play different mod loads, to test mods, and to do strange things to Skyrim without affecting the other games. I want Steam and utility programs to see a standard game and operate normally when they run on any particular SETUP. (I capitalize SETUP because that's what I call an independent game installation.) I don't want to use a mod manager that I don't understand. The Main Problems: Several file locations are (seemingly) hard-coded into various components of Skyrim. Most utilities (Loot, etc) keep track of ONE Skyrim install and game. Windows 7 (NTFS file system) cannot create dynamic symlinks (more on that later). The Windows Registry. The Windows ACLs. Proposed Solution One: Multiple Skyrim directory locations are created with unique names to hold mods, savegames, and config info. Each location is renamed to the standard Skyrim directory name when a particular SETUP is desired. Problems with the Proposed Solution: With no utility programs, only a couple. Works fine. Simple directory re-naming, or a batch file doing the same thing, switches SETUPS easily. Main problem is file duplication. Each SETUP requires core game files and mod files used in every SETUP. For instance, all my game setups have common STEP mods, SKSE, and a couple use the same ENB. Eats up disk space after a while. Utility programs (mod managers, Loot, etc) cause a BIG headache. Consider a mod manger (mm); you install mods (mm remembers), activate/deactivate mods (mm remembers), and sort the load order (Loot remembers). Everything is fine until you switch SETUPS. Then what the mm and Loot remember are not related the new SETUP. The problem is getting each utility program to remember each game SETUP, as well. (END Wall-o-Text One)

^^ I don't believe those batch files will work. EDIT: Sorry, chevyowner, your mklink commands do work. I had never used a full pathname for the link name before. In fact, it makes link creation much easier. Thanks for the info. For one thing, the mklink parameters refer to: %1=Created link NAME, not a PATH %2=Link target path The links are created in the current cmd.exe working directory, ie, you must CD the shell to the location where the link is to be created before executing a mklink command. It is far less confusing, and much safer, to simply rename duplicated directories in their original locations than it is to manipulate symlinks/junctions. In fact, I'm sorry I ever mentioned this technique at all and no longer recommend doing it. Please, in the name of the Sacred Cow of Skyrim, use Mod Organizer to generate additional game profiles.

Where did you get this information? bInvalidateOlderFiles=1 is the game default and it's what makes the load order scheme work! Without that the files would be loaded with the first instance winning which is the reverse of load order. I've heard that Mod Organizer may be changing that setting to support it's own method for ordering the resources from BSA files, but that would be a special case and it would still cause problems if the install order and load order aren't synchronized properly. You're correct, that is the default entry. I should have said to simply remove the entry from the ini file and leave the default value alone. Sorry for the confusion. However, note that bInvalidateOlderFiles=1 does not actually perform its original function in Skyrim; the last loaded bsa, or a loose file, takes precedence, regardless of their age (timestamp). @OP: In Skyrim, a patch to the Creation Engine changed the loading of game data files from the way they were loaded in previous Elder Scrolls games (Oblivion); by timestamp. Archive Invalidation was a method used to resolve timestamp related load issues. Current Skyrim load order works by allowing later loading data files, bsa files vs loose files especially, to have precedence over earlier loading data files, with loose files taking ultimate precedence, no matter the timestamp on them. Game data (mods) listed later in the file plugins.txt takes precedence, or replaces, earlier loading data in the load stream. As cdcooley says, there is some other issue. Just leave the bInvalidateOlderFiles entry out of your ini file while troubleshooting; Load Order and loose files will properly determine what is used in-game.

If you're accurate in renaming the [username]\AppData\Local\Skyrim folder (where loadorder.txt and plugins.txt reside), it's probably an NMM config/status file which tracks the state of NMM. That is, a file(s) which reflects what NMM believes to be "true", not what you want it to believe. Its one of the pitfalls I mentioned; utilities maintain their own status files. You could fire up NMM, disable a couple mods for testing, close it, and look for files that were just modified. Those files will need to be renamed, as well. My setups are NOT the most efficient way to do this kind of thing. On the plus side (for me), each of my setups are "independent" from the others in so far as the system and utilities "see" a standard install directory tree and the install registry entries remain valid. Independence eliminates unintended/unknown side effects from a mod manager which does "profiles". Beating up on MO a little, I don't have to worry about which ini needs to be edited or what to do with overwrite folders, etc.; each setup is it's own, standard game. Once working, other utilities, TES5Edit and Loot for instance, also "see" each setup as a standard game and I just run them normally; no need to add them as executables to a mod manager. On the minus side; your experience. It can be a hassle to determine what needs to be "maintained" between the setups. In general, if a utility maintains its state from one invocation to the next (Loot, for example), it has either files or directories which also have to be switched upon a game setup switch. (Unless it maintains state info in the registry, which my texture optimization programs seem to do.) I don't understand NMM well enough to tell you what to change or do. IF you can select mod info storage locations, as a previous post indicated, you can simply point those locations to a sub-directory within a standard game location, ie, SteamApps\common\Skyrim\[NMMmodinfo] or MY Games\Skyrim\[NMMmodinfo], and they will automatically switch when the game directories are switched. I do that with BASH. Steam and Skyrim are both very forgiving regarding EXTRA directories/files in the game directory trees. Steam will not touch, for example, any files or directories that are not contained in its vanilla install archives. You can Verify Cache or even reinstall Skyrim without affecting added files (mods) or directories. (This actually causes problems when troubleshooting; re-installing Skyrim does not completely wipe out the previous game, as you might suspect. Anything ADDED will still be there after a re-install unless you purposely delete them beforehand.) EDIT: Watch out for savegames on a re-install. I believe Steam WILL clear existing savegames.

Archive Invalidation (bInvalidateOlderFiles) is not supposed to be used in Skyrim; it is a relic of older games and the Gamebryo engine. Skyrim uses Load Order to determine game file priorities. Put it back to "0". I have no idea what the Real Vision installer does, but a sure way to break things in Skyrim is by adding a lot of stuff all at once. If I were you, I would: Go back to a vanilla game install, including ini files (important for SkyUI). Install SKSE using the installer version. Add the skse.ini mempatch changes. Make sure game launches from SKSE. In-game, hit escape and look at lower left of menu screen; should indicate game and SKSE versions. Install the 262 enbseries. Set your ini files for ENB. Fire up Skyrim again and make sure the enbseries is working (messages in upper left of screen on game load) and that your FPS does not tank. It may go down a little from default enbseries config. Install SkyUI and make sure it is working. Will be obvious on inventory screens. (Install RLO, make sure it works. Not sure if the Real Vision installer does this or not.) Install Real Vision, full or performance. Full will hit your FPS badly. You may want the Performance version (I used that one a while back). Add other recommended mods one-at-a-time until your machine stops. :wink: Doing things one-at-a-time is a pain, but you will KNOW when something breaks and we will know what caused it and the state of your game for further troubleshooting. PS: 10FPS with a full ENB and lots of eye-candy mods is NOT unusual on mid-range rigs. You NEED the recommended Real Vision hardware for a reason.

I disagree with the dual-core analysis; a sufficient dual-core (good enough IPC and clock speed) will have no problem with Skyrim. I originally built my budget machine after watching Skyrim run on an i7 and a couple i3's. Both those Core processors were underutilized consistently in Skyrim, even with mid-level graphics. Windows has no problem supporting the "high use" Skyrim threads on two cores. I mean, it was designed (programmatically) for using two cores in a three core XBox. Disabling HT in a Core i3 actually improved Skyrim performance slightly. It seems the performance hit from Hyper Threading a single physical core into 2 Hyper Threaded "cores" is greater than the hit from Windows thread scheduling overhead, at least for threads spawned by a game that is not multi-threaded by design. Now, Intel would not HT their processors if this were true in all cases, but I think HT only really works well when you compare parallel thread execution and one thread is not dependent upon the other. I think the Skyrim threads are more procedural in that respect. Pentiums, in general, do very well in Skyrim benchmarks compared to many multi-core processors with lower IPC. Its the same basic reason a mid-range i5 typically outperforms high-end AMD processors with more cores and higher clock speeds in Skyrim; its not how many threads you can run, its how fast you can run a couple threads. The G3220 has very high IPC; just what you need in Skyrim. Am I an Intel fanboi? No, but you simply can't deny the cost/performance ratio of these modern $50.00 Pentiums; amazing performance for the cost. Full disclosure - the two budget builds I do for other people are 70% FX-6xxx and 30% Core i3. People do things other than play Skyrim. I don't know what, but they do. :wink:

Any of them. The primary skills needed are "people", not "technical". The writer wants everything in the mod, the scripter and level designer will fight, the level designer and modeler will fight, the voice actors won't understand criticisms, and the Team Lead has to keep everyone happy, while drinking heavily. :tongue:

I just got done upgrading a very similar machine that I built to play Skyrim on a budget. I had a G2030 Pentium and an HD 7770. I optimized HD textures down to 1kx1k, have a custom ENB for shadows and lighting (I highly recommend an ENB in boost mode for any modding), many, many STEP mods, and the little rig that could ran 30-60FPS (avg ~40-45FPS) outdoors at 1080p. Relatively speaking, the 750ti should do much better; either with frame rates, or higher res textures. The G3220 is almost perfect for Skyrim (with little else running). Keep the texture load down and you should have a good time in Skyrim.

I actually have 5 different game setups on my machine at the moment, without MO profiles. Three different game setups for different mod loads, a mod test setup, and an experimental setup. Basically, you just need to have 2 each of three directories; the My Games\Skyrim , the AppData\local\Skyrim, and the SteamApps\common\Skyrim (or SteamApps\common\Skyrim\Data, depending on ENBs, SKSE, etc). I started out by just renaming the directories to switch setups. Now I use symlinks and a batch file, but the idea is the same. There are pitfalls. Third party utilities (NMM, etc) maintain their own directories of mods and/or current config files which have to be tracked. I use Bash for modding and configured it to keep it's Skyrim Mods directory in the My Games\Skyrim folder so when I switch setups, it also switches Bash Installers data. Current config files are a problem if they're located with the utility program, that is, the utility loads them from its working directory (relative addresses). Symlinks to different config files or some file copying are needed in that case; one reason I have batch files do the setup switch. There are also storage inefficiencies because many files are duplicated for each setup (core vanilla files, ENB's, SKSE, etc). All my core files are symlinks (some hard, some soft!!!) in each setup and they point to one set of vanilla core files (in their own directory). Two game setups won't waste that much drive space and its easier to just copy the three mentioned directories and rename them to switch setups. I don't use NMM, so I don't know how to switch it's mod directories and config files. I do know it scatters stuff all over my drives, which, from a renamed directory or symlink perspective, is probably good news. I'm sure an NMM user can tell you where it stores info.

Good job. Might be time for a new PCI 3 motherboard. The graphs are a little confusing, though. PCI 3 has almost double the bandwidth of PCI 2. CPU use and average FPS are up, probably related. Why did GPU use go down when its processing more pixels, not less? I wonder what SPM measures to determine GPU percentage. If the 780 was I/O bottle-necked across the PCI 2 link (what it looks like to me), what the heck was it doing while at 100% in the PCI 2 slot? I wonder if SPM is measuring "wheel spinning" while the 780 is just waiting for data. Or, I guess the 780 could kick its clock speeds up while in a PCI 3 slot. Just seems funny to me. In any case, that's a good tip, and a good, real life promotion for a PCI 3 capable rig. Thanks for posting, Miles.

Take a look at this. (It doesn't matter that its for FNV; most basic operations are applicable to Skyrim.) You're trying to do something that requires a specific filter setting (from right-click-->Apply Filter) and you don't have that setting properly selected.

Better card: best idea ever. :thumbsup: Try looking around here for specs only. The higher numbered R7's are an upgrade. But, any R9 is in a completely different league and will run circles around the 7770. Many are listed online < $200. Just watch out for power requirements.

With, basically, no information on your computer or game setup, I'll take a stab in the dark... Make sure graphics settings are only ON in one place; the game, your ENB, or the video control panel. Test with vanilla ini files. If you have an ENB, hit Shift-F12 in-game and see if the issue resolves. Go to your video control panel and turn OFF non-basic processing, like transparency AA, etc. Disable any game booster/FPS/GPU/CPU monitor utilities (anything hooking the d3d9.dll).

I've got an ASUS HD 7770 2GB. A good card, but not great. One thing I learned quickly is that it certainly doesn't like "duplicate" video settings in-game and in the driver. I got the best performance with AA, AF turned OFF in-game and set to mid-range values in Catalyst Control Center. At least, make sure you don't have settings turned on in both places. Initially, I ran this card at 1080p with Hi Res DLC and mods, but it doesn't have the throughput for responsive game play. I set it up to have good game play by setting graphics to minimum, then tweaking up what graphics settings were most important to me. Try setting up minimum graphics (low preset) until you have a smooth game; reduce your screen resolution to the smallest size you can tolerate (frame buffers eat up large chunks of vram), turn off all game/driver video processing, put shadow quality at low, disable the HiRes DLC, and switch to low/medium res textures on any mods that have the option. If you don't know what is contributing to your stutter, you won't be able to "fix" it. There are some counter-intuitive things at work in the perception of graphics quality, and they vary with the display hardware (dot pitch, pixel response times, etc) and with the individual. Don't get stuck number chasing. Its not necessary to run at 4k screen size or have ultra resolution texture packs. Play with increasing your settings from minimum and only crank up those which "look good" to you. In general, video driver processing is faster, ie, leave AA off in-game and use CCC for anti-aliasing. After weeks of tweaking, I can run my current game with 173 mods at 1080p, a custom ENB (for shadow fixes), a little occasional stutter, smooth FPS variance from about 35-60FPS outdoors (no sudden jumps), and quick-enough game play. THE most effective thing I did was to optimize higher quality textures to 1kx1k and normals to 512x512. For instance, optimizing the HiRes DLC with DDSOpt looks better to me in-game than does optimizing vanilla textures. Now my poor little 7770 constantly runs at 99% GPU and maxed vram (which causes my remaining stutter). At 1280x1024, the game is completely smooth, looks pretty darn good, and is more responsive than vanilla. I go back and forth, depending on my mood. 4GB of ram might be hurting a little. Windows will page memory out to the disk normally and maxing vram will cause Windows to use system ram for video swap, further limiting ram for Windows and causing more page faults (slow). It can be a vicious circle. 8GB might help. So might eliminating any unneeded background processes.

Given the difficulty, is it possible to narrow down the issue through game testing? That is, Oversoon noticed that crouching eliminated the bug, and it does so in my game as well. Is that of any help at all? To me (a non-programmer), it "appears" that the dialog facial animation/voice generation itself is not bugged, else it would still be broken while sneaking. Its like the order of function calls is different (causing/eliminating some animation/voice delays) between normal mode dialog and crouched dialog. Just wondering if there's anything we can actually do to help narrow the problem down. Pardon my ignorance of programming.

It's your baby, but personally, I think there needs to be some verifications from more players that sneaking/crouching eliminates the bug, especially in a vanilla game. I'm setting up a vanilla install to do that now. IF an animation mod or some race/body/head/parts mod changes important game assets/files, the data we give any dll programmer will mean little, unless a consistent mod load is used. That's just my semi-ignorant opinion, nothing else. I'll test a vanilla setup ON MY UNIQUE COMPUTER (hell, it could even be caused by a CPU instruction set issue) and let you know what I find.

He just never leveled. I think he only used one of the initial perks, as well. I'll try to dig up the thread... EDIT: Can't find that old thread; I only get the last year when searching my own posts. I was complaining about the unnecessary difficulty built into Requiem (like having the town aggro you if you bumped into someone while running) and a Defender of Requiem pointed out the Level 1 thread to me. Ah well, take it, or leave it.

May I ask about your mods again? Do you have any animation or player/NPC skeleton replacers? I'm primarily interested in mods which require GenerateFNISforUsers to be run after installation. Those type mods impact the behavior (hkx) files and, obviously, impact animations, like the mouth moving while talking. They may also modify the skeleton(s) being animated. It could impact the observation of lip synchronization. I guess I should say that most people "in-the-know" (not me; I just forwarded your observation) believe this to be an "engine" bug and fixing it would require changes beyond what a mod is capable of doing. It would take something like an SKSE plugin. The problem is that no one knows what the primary suspect, an official game patch, changed to cause the lip-sync bug. Observations like yours may give some hints on what to look for.

Yeah, that's normal. A 1-shot archer hit is going to be your recurring nightmare, period. Your best bet is probably the forums linked on the Requiem mod page. There's lots of advice around on how to survive the hardcore role-playing mod Requiem. You could even Google for it. Good job just getting to level 8; most give up long before that. EDIT: I had to add this - there's an old thread around here somewhere which documents a guy's experience beating Requiem... at Level 1. He didn't even use all his initial perks! About the most unbelievable thing I've ever seen in Skyrim.

That's very interesting, I usually don't talk while sneaking and never noticed that. I'm gonna test your findings. Do you have any animation or player skeleton mods (mods that might require FNIS)? Do you use Mod Organizer? EDIT: Two 30 second tests - Well, there is certainly a difference in my game with Lydia. I also tested Amalee from 3DNPC and she was in-sync while sneaking as well. Oversoon, I'm gonna mention your observation on another forum and see if some modding techies get the same results.

You can manually set draw distances from the Launcher-->OPTIONS-->Advanced screen. Crank them up and see if it helps.

If it CTD's immediately, you can also try looking at the SKSE logs in your [username]\My Documents\My Games\Skyrim\SKSE folder. They might look like Greek, but any problems with loading something will stand out. You can also try simply loading all your mods in TES5Edit and see if it complains (very obvious). Skyrim also has a heap allocation (memory) bug that can cause CTD's. SKSE 1.7 fixes that bug IF you add the following to your Skyrim\Data\SKSE\skse.ini file. If you don't have one, just create it in Notepad and add the following lines: [Memory] DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB=768 ScrapHeapSizeMB=256 And often forgotten; did you re-run the reproccer/SUM after adding your last mods?