Telyn

You and I seem to have similar pasts. I too modded Oblivion to an insane degree. Just got Skyrim, and did so mainly because after a couple of really chaotic years in which I didn't play Oblivion, and had a hard drive failure from which recovered all my files but not the directory structure...I couldn't face trying to fix/redo/remember my old Oblivion game and modding techniques. Like you, I was missing certain mods I had before. What I did was run keyword searches on terms related to the mods I loved before. One of those was Get Wet. So I searched on wet. Turns out there is a similar mod here that has even more features and I love it. So for you, maybe search on Archery. I also looked at the top endorsed files in the categories that interest me most. Then I started with the mods I was absolutely sure I would want which recommend that you start a new game in order to use them. Figured I could add more later without making a new character, and I have. What this did was give me my first few levels mostly vanilla but without some things that annoyed me in Oblivion and would surely annoy me in Skyrim too. Around level 5 or so I started adding the fun stuff. So far it has worked out great. Nexus Mod Manager is currently disabled from accessing the database due to issues with a huge upgrade Nexus just performed, so you will need to download mods manually and then add them to NMM yourself. It has a very nice interface with a button on the left that lets you add from a file. Yes, Bash is still needed, especially if you like armor and weapon mods or anything else that changes the leveled lists. A tip: Avoid very old mods that do anything but replace textures as much as you can. The reason is that many of them were made before the Creation Kit came out and some of them are problematic and potentially save game corrupting when used with the current version of Skyrim. So I am sticking to mods that are current and supported by either the modder or at least active dedicated fans of that mod. I haven't regretted modding right away, and I didn't regret it in Oblivion either. For me modding is always more fun than the vanilla story anyway. I mod everything I can. I mod my operating system. I mod all the games I have which can legally be modded. I overclock my computer. It is lucky for the world I never had the chance to become a mad scientist. If that sounds familiar, you probably would find vanilla a bit frustrating. I don't think you are obligated to "see the game as intended" first. This game was designed to be modded. It is not an insult to Bethesda if you do that. My guess is you probably actively seek out games you can mod. If so...go to it and good luck!

Hope it works for you! I haven't tried it myself. I have a follower but I am overprotective of him. He doesn't seem to have a lot of fighting skills. He's one of those storytelling type NPCs added by a mod. We went hunting together once and he got lost right when a dragon turned up. I looked and looked for him, and was miserable thinking I got him killed. Then I fast travelled and he was standing outside my home. I said erm...I need you do something for me. Stay right here by the dinner table until I get back, ok? I only let him out for shopping trips now. He doesn't seem to mind. He'd rather talk about his tragic past anyway.

Am sure your team has tried testing this, but just in case, is it possible the search for updates and/or the retrieval of missing file info combined with the merging of the databases is causing the "attacks" by NMM? Wild guess, have not seen your code and am not an expert. Just racking my brains to think why this happened now and why NMM might be causing this issue when it didn't before.

There's a mod called Summon Followers that seems to do what you need. It's here on Nexus but I am having trouble posting the link tonight. It does have support for UFO.

I had that same issue with SUM and if I remember, I believe there was a setting in either SUM or AV that will let you go without running BOSS. I think what I did though was just go through the warnings and tell it to run anyway. Unfortunately I had other issues with some of the packs so I am not using AV right now. I do remember you can process in SUM without running BOSS from within SUM if you ignore the warnings and tell it that yes, you do want to continue. I think it shouldn't cause a problem because the reason SUM wants to run BOSS is to make sure your load order is correct first. If you run BOSS first, the load order will be correct and if SUM needs to fetch it, it presumably can. Sorry not to be able to be more specific. I ran out of time and energy to figure out which pack or packs caused me problems and set all that aside for now. Hope it helps, though. If it doesn't work, my apologies for wasting your time. Good luck.

I can confirm that the file I just downloaded from Kent server via NMM does not have version information, and is listed as unassigned category. Getting missing mod info did not work, either. Nor did checking for new versions. Restarting NMM also did not get this info. Folks, yes, there is a big transition going on here. Some of it is not yet complete. It is totally understandable that people are frustrated, but the best thing we can do is try to help their team by providing as much detail as possible so they can fix everything. If you are having a problem, it will help them if you say what you have already tried and tested. Just saying I can't download doesn't give them many clues about why you can't download or what might be causing that when other people are saying they can download, if that makes sense. For example, if the people who can download are downloading manually and the people who aren't are using NMM, that would be helpful for them to know. It is also helpful for them to know if you are *not* having the issues other people are reporting or if you have found a workaround. If you explain precisely what you are doing that is working, it may provide also clues to them what is going wrong for other people. For those of you who are new, the site does not usually have the kinds of issues you are seeing right now. There has been a huge change made which will allow this site to support all moddable games, not just a few. The issues you are seeing are temporary and due to this massive upgrade, which is ongoing. I've been here a long time off and on. I can tell you that when things do go wrong here, the Nexus team works really hard and fixes problems as soon as they possibly can. If I had to guess, I would say from past experience they might need another day or two. What most sites would probably do is take the site down entirely for several days and only allow their own staff to test the changes. That would have made it much harder to find and fix problems and it would have caused a great number of people to panic and assume that the Nexus was dead. This way is better. It really is. There are features that currently do not work, but we still have access to the forums and chats. Lots of people are posting good information. Some bugs have already been fixed. We as users can help provide the information they need to get everything working.

Downloading issues: If you are having issues downloading files manually, make sure that the server you are trying to download from is not listed as synching that file. It cannot give you the file until it has obtained it and right now synching seems to be a it slow. Your safest bet right now is to get files from the Kent server if you have that option. All the mods are stored there and it is the primary source. If you are premium you can use the Kent server but when I last checked there were a lot of people using Kent, so it may be a bit of a wait. I did just download a new file Skyrim mod directly from Kent manually, without any issues. I also managed to download the same file in NMM but it took awhile to download and guess which server provided it? Yep. Kent. Those of you who cannot use the Kent server may need to wait until the other servers are done synching, but at least you can check the status by starting a manual download to see which servers are synching, and whether there is anyone on various servers. Then you can just cancel out. If nobody is using a server, chances are that server is not currently available. I think most of them are currently engaged in synching with the Kent server.

Whatever was changed has fixed the add and update dates. They no longer claim all mods were uploaded and updated in 1969. :smile: Thanks so much for fixing that one! It sounds like a harmless bug but for Skyrim players it is really important to know whether a mod was from before the release of the CK. I'm so impressed at how much has been fixed already. This rollout represents a massive change, and even big name sites almost always have issues when making changes this large. Update: More good news. NMM now recognizes that I am premium and is no longer suggesting I upgrade to a membership. In addition, broken link downloads have been neatly removed from the download manager and the mods which I did manage to download during this time have their proper install dates. Missing information from files updated automatically and correctly. That little go premium happy face was kinda cute actually. I almost miss it. lol For those still having issues logging in to NMM: My NMM did give an error, but it seems to do an automatic retry. The login window flashed twice, and gave two error messages, but when I just waited patiently it did log me in on the 3rd try. So if this happens to you, don't panic. If you wait it will likely resolve itself like mine did. Mine did manage to resolve the login issue within a minute or two. I know that can seem like ages but just let it do its thing and don't quit NMM until you are absolutely sure it is stuck. Also be aware that it takes some time after it manages to log in to process your downloads. It is getting the missing info from the files and if you have downloaded a lot of files in the past, this could take 5 minutes or even more. Again, give it time. It's probably not stuck on the loading logo; it is just busy and won't respond until it is done. NMM had that issue before this. It's just taking a bit longer right now. If you are still seeing animation on the NMM login that is a good sign that NMM has probably not frozen. Also if you have left NMM open during this time because you were concerned you might not be able to log back in, do try quitting it and restarting it. Hopefully that will fix the premium issue for some of you. It did for me.

I tend to check upload dates because of the issue with pre-CK mods in Skyrim which have not been updated often causing problems. Every file I have looked at tonight had add and update set to the year 1969. In NMM the files I managed to download tonight have no install date. On 5 tries, I got 2 files. The other 3 had these NMM errors: 2 said server unreachable(probably just an overload) but one said file does not exist and I think it does because it is an option for a popular mod. I know you are aware of some broken links, but in case it helps, I think the problem may be that it is probably a very small file, possibly just an uncompressed txt. I have some vague memory that back in the Oblivion days we had both of these bugs briefly, the misdate, and a problem with very small files not being downloadable after a big site change. Am I mis-remembering? I am a lifetime member. NMM has a jaunty little happy face asking me to become premium but I can view supporter images. Was also able to use premium download server manually just now and I intentionally downloaded a tiny 63k file from the Czech Republic premium server to see if there is a small file problem (might need to be even smaller, think text and config type files were what bugged in the Oblivion era). It came through fine. Trying to download same file in NMM and it's not using premium only servers; it is also cycling through all the servers and finding all busy or unavailable but when looking at them in the manual download window and cancelling, there are 2 people on one it just had to "retry." I thought maybe file had not propagated but NMM finally got around to the Kent server and the Kent server just now gave the same error in NMM. I know that file is there since I just downloaded it manually. I would suggest that people having download issues consider manual installs if they are having troubles with NMM downloads today. In particular, have confirmed that premium members can use the premium only servers via manual download. And boy are they fast right now! Hope that helps.

This is a very difficult issue to weigh. It's important to remember that the modders here are incredibly generous. Most of them will probably never get a single donation after what is sometimes months of work. So I do understand their frustration when a user is annoying or abusive. On the other hand I think we all know there are some creators who despite their creativity are not particularly mature, especially when someone points out there is an error in their mod. There have even been a few creators who have had to be banned for misbehavior of various kinds, and a few of them had made rather famous mods. Good mods. So no matter what this site does, there are going to be some abuses, some problems. It's inevitable when we are talking about a huge community. People are complicated. I respect the decision which has been made here, and I do hope it will reduce modder burnout. I have seen mod descriptions wherein authors state they aren't going to update a mod until abusive comments are removed, for example. Now, some of those comments might not break any rules, mind you, and some individuals may be oversensitive, but it's still not good to see that happen. Everyone loses. As a user, though, I am still concerned that this new feature can potentially be used to prevent sincere and polite users from reporting serious bugs in the place other people considering downloading that mod are most likely to see these reports before they download. Most authors love to be told about bugs, and are very good about responding in the comments so everyone can see the response and what the author intends to do about it, what workarounds may exist, etc. But there was one fellow years ago who was convinced absolutely nothing was ever ever wrong with his mod and was very insulting to anyone who ever suggested something might need fixing. He's long gone, but some of you who have been modding a long time might remember one creator who even called highly respected fellow modders pretty much noobs and idiots. Fortunately I never downloaded anything by him but if he had been able to just silence the many people he was attacking, even more people would probably have trusted that person. It's a concern for me because the games we mod are very fragile before we even start modding them. That's why we need those fantastic unofficial patches. Having to do a clean reinstall, repatch, etc., etc is never fun, but it would be even less fun if it later emerged that the creator had been informed of a serious game breaking issue many times and simply hid it. Those of us who love to customize our games know that reinstalling comes with the territory sometimes, no matter how how well we research before modding them. Most authors know that once in awhile they will release a mod version that does have a bug or two, and they can handle that. That too just comes with the territory. But what holds this and similar communities together is deep mutual trust. Responsible creators must rely on users to inform them of problems and conflicts that did not show up during their testing so they can verify and fix. If people are afraid to report, it would harm them greatly. Users must rely on creators to be honest and frank about known issues because without that, we could lose the reputation we have here for being one of the very safest places to get mods. I hope we never lose that trust, whatever happens.