rattlehead5000

I really like the idea behind this mod.

Yeah, the modding community is amazing.

As long as it's a quad core, your CPU will be fine. I'm using the older Sandy Bridge 2500k with a Radeon 7950 3Gb card 8gb Ram and performance has never been an issue at max settings with lots of graphical mods. Certain ENB's (notably the ones using older binaries) do cause some hiccups and slowdown though.

As far as I'm aware, the Potema quest is notoriously buggy. I luckily never had issues, but plenty did.

It's not just Serana this happens to. If I make any of my followers a werewolf, the same thing happens.. I'm also using AFT. Your explanation makes sense though, because most of my followers have been given a makeover of some sort. I'll try your suggestion.

I strongly suspect it's a combination of Lush Trees & Grass and Skyrim Bigger Trees. Those two mods murdered the framerate* on my PC, which although not as powerful as yours, is not weak either. (AMD 7950 overclocked, 2500k overclocked) *I was getting sometimes only 7-10 FPS in certain parts of the game with these mods and Realvision Full installed. Once I dropped these two mods, my framerate improved massively.

aMidianBorn Book of Silence replaces all vanilla armour textures with lovely hi-res textures. I'm using it and it's absolutely brilliant. Most of the vanilla weapons are also done by now.

Epic achievement achieved then, haha.

It's your game so play it how you want. Generally I don't cheat. I do sometimes just wait 48 hours or so before going back to a merchant. Technically, I should go and sleep and return to the merchant without doing this, but it's such a bother sometimes. Otherwise, no. I don't fast travel and if a companion dies (all my companions are set to killable status thanks to AFT) then they stay dead. It's a bit heartbreaking sometimes though, and more than once I have considered reloading a game because a companion died. I did this once with Vilja because well...I couldn't stand to not have her around. Some other followers that I've downloaded haven't even lasted a day before dying, so it's kinda not cool sometimes. But, that is the way I've chosen to play my game. I find restricting myself with immersion or realism mods or mods that make creatures harder more fun, to be honest. If a companion is struggling in a fight I know I have to heal them or they could die. It's a challenge and it adds depth to my game.

At the moment, it's because of our amazing modding community. Mods have transformed my game and have kept me interested. But in any event, I played vanilla Skyrim on Xbox for 300 hours before getting the superior PC version, and I spent another 350 hours again on the vanilla game for PC. As said, it's the almost unlimited freedom you have to play the game your way. So few games offer this, and even fewer get it right. There is a lot wrong with vanilla Skyrim sure, but even so the sheer amount of possibilities, the random and often funny encounters, the immersive world...it's something that lives and breathes. Having completed my 3rd playthrough last year with a modded Skyrim, I thought I was done with the game and moved on to other games. Then for some reason I decided to check out Skyrim again, downloaded the DLC and of course lots of mods, got hooked all over again and here I am. :) But without the modding community, I probably would never have come back to the vanilla game again to be honest.

Apocalypse is a fantastic mod. I highly suggest using it.

Personally I can't do without Skyrim Immersive Creatures in my game. For me, the #1 monster mod. But as said, be prepared to die more often as well. Awesome mod though. It does require Dawnguard I think, so check it out first. SkyUi and IHud are also for me not even optional...they have to be in there. SFO* as well. WATER or Realistic Water Two, depending on preference. Using just these mods will make a big difference to your game. You can also add a follower mod if you want, and something like Convenient Horses, which is another mod that I rate very highly. *I use the LIte version personally.

I must be honest, since dropping those three mods, my stability did improve. By no means are those mods bad or buggy, in fact Frostfall and RnD are absolutely fantastic mods and it was literally heartbreaking to drop them because they added so much to my game, but my common sense told me that mods that continually monitor the state of the player and impact on the player must be at least somewhat taxing on the system, especially when a whole lot of other mods are used as well. This is no fault of the modders at all, since they cannot possibly know what your software environment is like. On their own, I'm pretty sure these mods are pretty stable. But even after dropping them, I still get occasional CTD. Like I said, I've basically resigned myself to it and given up trying to remove them completely. My CTDs are always in the worldspace and never in cells though, so it's tolerable.

One of the city mods (Solitude) was causing a little issue with your Town Crier, because a bench had been placed where he normally stands. It was no biggie though, and after many awkward animations (and a bit of amusement on my part) the crier usually managed to stand on the bench and do his thing. Love your mod by the way. :)

I totally understand your frustration...been there plenty myself. :smile: Frankly, I have no real words of encouragement though. Every time I thought I had hit upon a winning combination of mods, I've had to experienced one CTD after another. Just a while back I had 18 hours of playtime on a new playthrough and only one CTD, which I thought was pretty good. Next night, without changing a thing, I had several CTDs in a row, which was unbearable. I was basically on the verge of giving it up altogether, because I had tried everything to get a stable game and yet it was still not stable, despite me being so very careful with my mods, the load order, downsizing to 1k textures, the lot. I had followed everything to the absolute letter yet to my despair eventually the game I thought was stable was proved to be definitely not. So now I've gone back to my 2k textures, even 4k in some places, gone and reinstalled a bunch of mods (99 so far) and resigned myself to a CTD now and then. Honestly, my game is no less stable now than it was with the smaller textures and far fewer mods. I can't explain it and have given up trying to. I just got to sick of testing, testing and testing my stability again and again only to find many, many hours later that the game's just not stable. So now I'm actually playing the game and I expect a CTD every now and then. It's the priice I'm willing to accept for lovely hi-res textures and a whole bunch of cool mods.

It's better than it used to be, but it's not entirely stable. I have had 4 CTD's in about 18 hours of play. I can live with that. I used to get CTD's every 10 minutes or so... I don't think there is such a thing as an entirely stable Skyrim...even my friend's Xbox version has crashed a few times...it happens. The engine is just buggy by nature I guess. To reiterate what was said above, I just read very carefully the mod description and compatibility issues it may have, I also read the comments page (not all of it, but a few pages) just to get a feel about what people are saying about the mod, I add the mod page to my favourites for easy reference, and I lurk quite a bit on the STEP forums, because those guys know their stuff and I've learned quite a bit from reading their posts. Also, BOSS is a must for load order. You can use your own discretion at times, but generally I leave BOSS to do it's thing. I'm still not convinced about NMM to be honest. I've been a manual installer for ages but started using NMM because my left mouse button is wonky and dragging and dropping is a pain. But NMM is good, but not faultless. It's okay I guess. I still prefer a manual install, but that's just me. I've gotten my game to a point where it's pretty decent, stability-wise. (touch wood.) I have made a backup of my entire game folder with a text file stating what mods I've got running with it, just in case. I have also backed up my saved games and my skyrimprefs.ini file, because I might not remember exactly what all tweaks I have made if I have to reinstall my game. From this point on, if I install some mods, I play the game for a few days at least to check if everything is stable before adding more mods. I also back up my entire game folder as a precaution before installing more than one mod, especially if they contain scripts. Speaking of scripted mods, I definitely think I was just using a combination of too many scripted mods, too many mods that increased the spawn rate of monsters, and too many hi-res texture mods, and that's why I was crashing so often. Now I'm much more wary to install a big ambitious, heavily scripted mod, or a super-duper hi-res texture pack. For now, I'm using just the official DLC textures, WATER and SFO LIte. I'm at work so I can't remember all the mods I have installed or the load order, but basically it's: All unofficial patches for Skyrim and DLC CoT nights RLO (major cities, minor cities and towns etc.) Realistic Needs & Diseases Vilja Skyrim Immersive Creatures Amazing Follower Tweaks Immersive Armors Immersive Weapons ACE (all modules except BYOG and Magic) SkyUi iHUD II TAVE Solitude Beautiful Whiterun SignTowns Deadly Dragons Deadly Monsters Inconsequential NPCs Trade & Barter ApachiiHair for Males Also a couple of makeovers for followers, UNP, superior lore-friendly hair and a couple of other cosmetic mods. I also have ENB Boost as a precaution more than anything. I do want to add a few more mods, but I'm going to be very cautious about it. One or two at a time and then play/test for a few days before adding more. Mostly these will be mods that contain no scripts like Immersive Patrols, OBIS, Get Snowy and a few others...but one step at a time. Also, Frostfall. Man, I miss that mod. It's so brilliant. I'd really like that and Convenient Horses back, but we'll see. Oh, and Inigo and Interesting NPCs. But hang on...wait...I'm being greedy aren't I? :smile: That got me into trouble last time. It's a balancing act at the end of the day I guess. Right now even if I don't add any other mods I've got a pretty darn good game to play, but the temptation to add just a few more mods is always there.

I think you're definitely suffering from script lag. I use the Vilja mod myself and have never had an issue with it. But of course, I'm using much less mods than you. Check out Chesko's troubleshooting guide for his Frostfall mod (I know you are not using Frostfall, but look at specifically his suggestions for papyrus tweaks about halfway down the page. I have not used this tweak myself, but maybe it can help you. https://sites.google.com/site/skyrimsurvivorseries/frostfall/troubleshooting

Let us know how it goes.

It's a difficult choice, isn't it? I voted TES of course, but GTA has been a great series too.

Check my reply in this thread: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1009056-terrible-grass/ This is exactly what was happening to me.

I just think CTDs are going to happen now and then. I played 13 hours with a new character and no CTD. Then I got two in 5 minutes with no new mods installed and Skyrim Performance Monitor saying I was still well in the 'safe' zone. I just don't know man...what can you say? But I agree that too many scripted mods aren't a great idea. I've learned that the hard way. That, and too many hi-res texture packs. Since going back to the official hi-res DLC and fewer scripted mods, my game is much, much more stable. Also, there are a couple of mods there (not saying which because I don't want to make it sound like they're bad mods) that are known to be problematic. Just google search a bit and see which mods consistently cause problems for people.

I don't know if this will help, but I made the mistake of first trying one type of SFO (I think it was the full version) then uninstalled that with NMM and installed the light version and also Overgrown on top of that. Thing is, when I got back into my game my trees looked dreadful. Not all, but some. I found out that NMM did not fully uninstall the previous SFO version...I had leftover dds files in there that did not belong. I manually went through each texture and mesh and deleted the files NMM should have but did not...and then manually installed the lite version with Overgrown. So maybe if you have installed one version on top of another, this could be your problem?

I don't think you need FNIS for SiC though...I have SiC installed and have never seen the dreaded T pose, and I don't use FNIS. I have had that T pose when different mods are installed together, like SkymoMod and OBIS...exactly as you described...some chars are naked, headless and in a T pose. FNIS did sort out a problem I had when my own character went into the T pose though, so give it a try.

I personally like Realvision ENB Performance version. Full version chops my framerate by half (I get about 30-35) but the Performance version is pretty light and I still get 60 fps. I do leave DoF off though, otherwise I lose about 10-15 frames. It still looks very nice, imo. I can't play the game with ENB though. That's just a personal thing with me because I don't think the Skyrim world was supposed to look 'pretty.' I think it looks plenty good, but more realistic, with just some nice textures and something like CoT on top. Personally I use 2K textures (LITE) SFO (LITE) WATER and AOF detailed mountains. I also have tried (and like) Serious HD and Realistic Water Two. I've got a love/hate relationship with Skyrim Bigger Trees. It looks amazing at times and (to me) a bit silly at other times. Performance hit is really noticeable as well. ENB is really just for screenshots in my case.

I've let the program generate new .ini files for me, but it hasn't helped at all. In fact, despite a fresh install and a new game, things are actually getting worse. :sad: Okay, I have installed all the DLC in the meantime, but still. ) I'm using Skyrim Performance Monitor, and I'm well under the 3.1Gb cap...the most I've seen is 2.6Gb in RAM. I had an infinite loading screen in Markarth trying to exit, but I believe that to be a problem with SFO. I'm going to try the smaller 2048 LOD version tonight. But I'm getting CTD when I didn't have them before, and randomly and ones I can't replicate. For instance, giving my follower arrows in the Ratway it crashed, riding toward Solitude it crashed, fighting a Spriggan near Falkreath it crashed, exiting the Bannered Mare it crashed....and so on. I monitor my RAM usage like a hawk and it's usually about 2.3Gb on average, so I should be in the safe zone? I don't understand it. I have all the unofficial patches for Skyrim and the DLC, I use Boss to sort my load order, I've created a bashed patch and have it at the bottom of my load order, my game is of course fully up to date. I have not messed with ugrids or my config files, I don't run any ENB...? The one thing I have not tried is cleaning my mods, but unless all the DLC introduced a bunch of new bugs, I'm pretty clueless as to what's causing it. I have a bunch of mods, but the main ones are: Frostfall (up to date) Realistic Needs & Diseases (up to date) Convenient Horses (up to date) Skyrim Immersive Creatures (up to date) SFO 1.8 Summer Edition 2K Texture pack (Using the Lite version) CoT Amazing Follower Tweaks (up to date) Those are the major ones. I'm not including body replacers or smaller texture replacers because I don't think they're in any way part of the problem. Anyway, yeah. At this rate I'll soon just stop modding and play the vanilla game again. I'm glad that your problems are solved though. :)