Fistandilius

To the left of the barred door is a passage to the library where you will find another hallway leading to the ritual chamber eventually.

If I went through some complicated puzzle to release someone that was apparently asleep in a tomb in the middle of a mountain and claimed she'd been asleep for centuries, I think I'd be slightly curious and my first impulse would be more like, "What the hell?" than, "KILL!!" But that's just me. I can't believe you guys are complaining about those issues. How about the fact that I put 1000 hours into Skyrim and then Dawnguard comes along and suddenly there's massive landscape changes, a castle that shows up in the middle of nowhere, a crack in a mountain that leads to a castle that everyone just knows has been abandoned there for centuries even though you apparently couldn't get to it before now.... I mean come on Bethesda. Not to mention 2 seconds after I loaded the DLC a guard walked up to me and said, "join the dawnguard".

This is why you don't install 6-8 mods at one time. You do one at a time and make sure they work first. I would suggest posting your mod list and hoping someone here recognizes a mod conflict, or else go back and remove those 6-8 mods and start over one by one.

Did you look at the date of that post? It's 2012. I'm not sure how accurate that is. But if Tamb0 is saying that your world space is too big for an .esp, you might want to consider that before going much further. Also, it's obviously possible to edit an .esm via a plugin because otherwise exterior cells in the Skyrim world space wouldn't be possible. Oh, and fyi, I've read the moderators don't like talking about that site you linked because I guess they allow ported material.

I believe there is a special bone in the skeleton that represents a weapon. You have to use nifskope to use the bone to the position you want. There was a thread about this recently about repositioning the bow on the back of the character. Ghosu is the man who had the answers. You can try to contact him. As far as one specific item only..... I just don't know if that's possible. You might be able to use the CK and nifskope to trick the game into thinking it's a two handed sword when sheathed. I think I read about something like this in the thread about making two handed weapons into one handers... I think Stemin was the author, but he's banned now so you can't ask him about it. You might be able to find the thread with a search.

The creation kit won't let you edit .esm files?

I'm going to attempt to summarize my response quickly here without touching on the mass of text you left (no offense). I'm trying to answer your question, but we're way off topic at this point and it's probably going to get locked. The reason you both were confused about my skse analogy is because you both read too much into it. It was simply an example. The analogy was supposed to have been clearly an analogy when I summarized it by saying, "So I guess my point is, it's not just the tools you use, it's how you use them." As far as your confusion over my stance on SKSE. I have not used SKSE. It may be a perfect program. I choose not to use it because I know what it's SUPPOSED to do. I might describe this poorly, but basically it takes the list of..... we used to call them functions when I programmed on MUDs back in the day.... that Bethesda has available and it adds new ones that are able to do things you couldn't otherwise do. Do I have that right? Regardless. Why do I think that mods using SKSE are more likely to be buggy? Because granted, there are people out there who know exactly what they're doing when it comes to scripts, but there are a whole lot MORE people out there who don't know what they're doing. Added to that is the fact that people who know exactly what they're doing are still not perfect. They make mistakes. They use one function when they could use another one more efficiently. Etc. The bottom line is, more scripts equals more room for error. SKSE is typically used by mods that require heavy scripting. It's as simple as that. Granted there are some great looking mods out there that are probably very cool, but I choose not to have the headache of possibly breaking my game due to someone making a mistake or simply making a mod not compatible with something I'm already using. Not to mention the extra hassle of having to install SKSE in the first place. By saying, "I choose not to use SKSE." I'm not putting the program down, or defending it. I'm just choosing not to use it. You guys automatically made an assumption that because I chose not to use it, I think the program is faulty or bad. That is not the case. One doesn't have to have anything to do with the other.

You don't know much about car stereo's then. You're not going to install an aftermarket radio without adding a pigtail adapter, and probably a dashboard sleeve. Of course best buy will probably have those in stock for you at an extra cost. Or did you even buy the radio at best buy or did you just have them install it? See? Everything is complicated if you don't have all the details. No, I'm not. But the process is the same. Whether you download it from Steam and check it out, or NMM loads it in a temporary directory, one way or another you're downloading the files to check them out. You may not physically see it on your hard drive, but one way or another you have to get the files off the server to view them. In the case of steam you have to manually delete them if you aren't happy with what you got. I can't speak for NMM. I'm not trying to obscure the point. I'm telling you that you don't have to keep the files or use them. Yes, it takes extra steps. We already established that. I never once said Steam was better than NMM or Mod Organizer or whatever you're using. I never said it was easier. I said the mods themselves were simpler and easier to manually uninstall. They are far less likely, IMO to screw up your setup because you can only have an .esm, .esp, or .bsa. You don't have any batch files, you don't have any special loaders the mod author wrote, or any of the other weird obscure things that you randomly run across on the nexus. You guys keep acting like these things don't happen. The unofficial oblivion patch had a front loader program on it that would run about 1000 scripts and you had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. That's just one example. Those are the mods you used! What about the people who were on the Nexus here complaining every day after a DLC or an update came out? You repeated my "hold your hand" phrase over and over again as if you found it offensive. I don't see how you can deny that Boss or Wrye Bash or whatever you're using doesn't require less attention than Steam does, because as you keep pointing out, Steam doesn't do ANYTHING with your load order or your files except put them in the directory and add them to the list. That was my point. And I never even said I LIKED Steam. This whole thing started because Shadey pointed out in two separate threads that Steam should not be used, and I asked him/her why because there was no reason given. All I'm saying is Steam is a service that is there to be used and if you know how it behaves, then there's no reason not to use it. Again, I don't know where you got the idea that I'm saying Steam is a mod manager. I didn't compare it to NMM to begin with, because I don't use NMM and I don't know a thing about how it specifically operates. I can't confirm or deny whether or not steam deletes the files if they're removed from the workshop because all my mods are still there. I've never bothered to look and see if they're still on the workshop because I already have them. I personally think that's not the case because I doubt steam keeps track of your mods once they're installed and unsubscribed, but I could be wrong. It seems like wasted server space to me to save that data. But then if you consider what Xander said about Steam not letting you update just one mod if you have 30 unsubscribed, then I guess somewhere it does keep track. All I'm saying is I wouldn't tell a new user to stay away from Steam, I would explain to them how it works. It literally takes about 5 minutes. It's not a difficult process. I don't know why it's such a big deal to mod users to begin with. I guess everything is supposed to be automated now and if you have to go and manually take a few steps, it's a big deal. Is it the fact that Steam doesn't tell you what it's doing that bothers you? I personally don't feel too bad for these newbies you're defending that just go and use something without even trying to figure out what it does, how it works, and what you need to know about it to make it work. This is why I don't use apple products. I want to know how my stuff works. But then that was the point of these two threads. Newbies who were smart enough to ask first: "What should I do?" But again... I'm not going through steam and subscribing to 30 mods at one time. I install one mod at a time, I run it, I play with it for a while to be sure everything is stable, and then I might install another mod. At best I'll subscribe to a few steam mods and remove them from my data list and try them one at a time. That literally takes seconds. It's no big deal.

But your logic here is not sound. Any mod can introduce instability if it is a poorly made mod. An error record, a faulty mesh or texture, bad scripts. This occurs with or without SKSE. So if you acknowledge that SKSE is not the cause of game instability, but rather poorly made mods, then it doesn't make sense to me how you could claim SKSE mods constitute a disproportionate number of mods that "introduce game instabilities" that would be "far less likely to occur by using the basic scripts available", when 1) the logic of your acknowledgement would dictate that this cannot be inferred, and 2) there's absolute no concrete data to even suggest this is the case. I can't help but have the feeling that you've gotten the bulk of your Skyrim modding information from the Steam forums, a notorious breeding ground of ignorance. Those forums are the same places where foolish Skyrim modding myths continue to be perpetuated, like claims that 'BOSS will mess up your load order' or 'plugin cleaning will corrupt your save game'.... I don't use the steam forums. I don't even know if you can use your steam account sign on or if you need a separate login for the forum. Regardless, you couldn't have read my response to Xander because you missed the point of that analogy as well. You don't have to agree with me about SKSE. That wasn't the point of what I was saying. Go back and read my reply to Xander.

Well, I'd rather get the PC version running, but I haven't gotten a response on that thread yet and I'm not sure where else to ask. It would be interesting to see if anyone has used services like swapfu or goozex for new games. I've never used these services at all. I mean these are $20 bargain titles, but there are a bunch of greatest hits in that price range and a direct swap would be ideal to me since there are quite a few games in that price range I would like to get anyways. I know Gamestop will give me a crap deal. End game is to just put them on Ebay.

Well, right now all of them since Nexus is down for maintenance, but off the top of my head, Legendary Creatures was fun, and I like grimreaper hoods. Also, I don't know if this is still the case but at one time when I subscribed to them you could only get the Thalmor series off of Steam. There's like 4 or 5 in the set, but one or two are player houses I think. There's one called Frontier to Cyradiil, one called Aldmeri Domain... I think there's the Snake Pit, which is a dark brotherhood styled player home, and one called the Hawk's Nest or something like that. Sorry I can't think of them off the top of my head. I think Sea of Ghosts might be Steam only now.... and the same author did Realms of the Daedra, but I haven't played that one. It conflicted with Agents of Righteous might (which is on Nexus)

That's exactly what happened to me. I bought Dishonored + DLC's and Alice off Steam during the Winter sale and got Alice and the PS3 version of Dishonored for Xmas. I'm tempted to keep dishonored because I can't seem to get the steam version to run, but leary of Bethesda's track record on ps3 titles as well.

The only real advice I can give you is to find a really experienced guy with nifskope like ghosu or contact someone who has an npc mod like the monster mod or the super mario bros conversion that has done a lot of extensive mesh editing to npc's, because there are tutorials out there for armors and weapons like you said, but the information about getting new meshes for npc's is very little. There is one 2 sets of videos on youtube that I found... One is by a female who exports her mesh to an .obj, loads it into mudbox and tweaks it, then puts it back into the .nif by importing it. All done with nifskope. The other is a set of 2 videos and basically it comes down to editing an existing mesh with no skeleton, and then loading the original mesh and skeleton and skinwrapping the new mesh to the old one. I tried the second method and it didn't work for me. The nif exporter for 3ds max created a bunch of bones that don't exist and renamed some others. I don't know how to use mudbox so I don't know how to try the other method.

I understand what you're getting at, I really do. It really is a system where if you don't know how it works it can make your game a mess. But that's more or less what I'm saying. If you tell people how it works, then there isn't anything to make a mess of. Even the guys here that are saying they use NMM are saying they can download a steam mod, and put it in NMM, so there are ways to make the system work no matter how you choose to use it. By just saying, "Steam sucks don't use it." You're avoiding the issues and leaving the door closed to some mod authors who won't use Nexus or don't even know about it. And I never played a bethesda game before Skyrim this year, so I learned this stuff by doing it and researching it. Anyone else can do the same. I bought Oblivion AFTER skyrim, the same with Morrowind. I still haven't hardly touched new vegas and I don't have fallout 3 yet. I learned how mods work by trying to read up on them and messing with the creation kit. Ironically I probably use less mods than the majority of people here in the mod related forum, but I spend the most time here because I'm more or less constantly learning more or trying to help someone else.

You want a mod called alternate start. You can choose your start prior to starting the game, or pick random. If you DO choose to go back to helgen, it gets a little buggy at times. Make sure you read the readme.

This is where your confusion is. He's not using a heightmap. He's using the CK kit's landscape editor, which means he won't have a heightmap until he's done with his landscape editing. What he probably CAN do, is finish his landscaping in the CK, and then export his heightmap, and then do what you suggest to make a color map. EDIT: You posted while I was in the messager. You obviously see he's using the Ck. If he exports a heightmap from the CK can he make a color map like you suggested?

The point I made about SKSE had nothing to do with SKSE at all. I just used the example of why I don't use SKSE to illustrate the point that all software is a tool and its made to work a certain way and if you understand how it works you can use it, and you can't get upset if it doesn't do something it wasn't designed to do. I can certainly understand that. Like I said, the part you said about having 30 workshop mods and not being able to update them one at a time was something I didn't know about. I realize that I don't use mods the same way as most people. I install them minimally and manually. I bought stock Skyrim because I loved it. Not because I wanted to change it. I added mods when I exhausted the stock game and wanted more to do. I don't install a mod until I read about it, see what goes into it, read the comments and decide how destructive it can be to my game. I don't install more than one new mod at a time and I use it for a while until I'm certain everything is stable. But that doesn't make me wrong anymore than it makes you wrong for installing 300 mods and using NMM (if that's what you chose to do.) Well, I didn't think you were offended and that part wasn't directed at you personally. I just know how these back and forth types of discussions tend to end up with both parties being moderated and I'd rather just drop it and be thought as being wrong than continue and get myself in trouble. There's not too many boards I frequent where the moderators brag about their banhammer and I already had one thread locked today over something that had nothing to do with my post. As far as the other goes, Steam isn't perfect. I didn't mean to imply that it was. But nothing is, and I'm sure there are people who have their issues with NMM or Mod Organizer. I for one don't like to rely on a program deciding where all my things go and making decisions for me. Most mods are, but not all mods are in the form of simple scripts or textures to be put in the data directory more specifically when you're talking about utility type mods or programs.

And this is why you think I'm a troll. Because you don't see that what you're saying is an opinion. You can't use an absolute like "never" and expect to be right all the time. I'm telling you my mods are about 50/50 nexus and steam and I'm telling you I don't find them problematic. I know exactly what steps Steam takes, so if it does something I don't want it to, it was my fault for not doing something about it. Now if you don't like the way Steam does things, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with the majority of people not liking how Steam does things. That doesn't make Steam bad or wrong. Maybe it makes NMM better. But that's still no reason to boycott Steam mods. And the only way for new users to learn about steam mods is to tell them how it works. So if we just make an agreement to just not talk about Steam, who are we really helping? Steam isn't going anywhere, it's here to stay. It would take an awful lot to bankrupt steam, and there are new mods loaded every day, so it would take an awful lot to get them to stop hosting mods. So we might as well learn how it works and use it.

I think there's a way to set all the land to one texture instead of the stock brown, but if there's a way to paint by region, I don't know. Did you try reading the wiki article I suggested? I will give you this bit of knowledge I picked up from a youtube video. You can't use more than 4 or 5 landscape textures per cell, or else the texture becomes a washed out black mess. He would of course have to export his heightmap if he built the whole world using the landscape editor and not from a heightmap.

I think you misunderstood the analogy. Or at least overlooked it. In regards to the other stuff, I didn't know about the subscribing thing, but then I never had a reason why I didn't want to update my mods. And I have no interest in addressing the rest today as I have already apparently offended some people.

I didn't say I was a fan, and I didn't know we were having an argument. I don't know why the two of you are taking anything personally. I asked a question out of idle curiosity why you twice made a statement against steam without giving a reason. And the other guy was quite clearly bias against Steam to begin with and was listing a bunch of half truths and opinions. I don't personally have a problem with Steam and I see no reason to boycott it. I use very few mods, but the ones I do use are from both Steam and Nexus. I know how steam works, so if anything goes wrong with it, it's my fault for not checking my load order, unchecking the mod, or unsubscribing. You can't blame a piece of code for not working the way you want it to. Some mods are steam only. Yeah, it's great that I can download a mod from Nexus, put it exactly where I want it, and install it later when I'm ready to, but it doesn't work that way and some mods aren't on nexus. If it bothers you that much I'll drop it. I pretty much said everything there is to say anyways.

There was a post about this recently. You mean add things like trees and rocks and such? I don't remember the specifics, but you have to setup regions first and then there is some kind of option to autogenerate these things. Look for the title "Region" in the Creation Kit wiki.

It does no such thing. It's a simple tool to browse and download mods. If you buy a radio at best buy and they tell you it has free installation, that doesn't mean you're obligated to use it the way they installed it, or use it at all. The difference is, the radio probably comes with a warranty, whereas your video game does not. Because modding is a allowed and encouraged, not technically supported. Two different things. The only difference between Steam and Nexus, is when you download something from Nexus it puts it in a special directory. Steam puts it in the data directory. That is the ONLY difference. Skyrim is what loads the mods (not steam) into your data list. Anything put in the data directory is loaded into your data list if it is an esp, esm, or bsa. Also, you keep pointing out load order like you're obligated to run anything in your load order. You subscribe to it. You start Skyrim. It checks your subscriptions. Downloads the mod. You have a choice at this point to view your data list. You don't have to run the game. You can uncheck it. You can exit the loader. You can view the download. You are allowed to decide whether or not you want to update the mod. That's why you have an option to unsubscribe to the mod. And I would argue that steam only slightly more encourages ignorance than NMM. Anyone who chooses to not be ignorant should be manually installing their mods and investigating them to see how they work. You're right. Just because a mod is hosted on the workshop does not mean it's compatible or that the authors don't disappear. But that works both ways. Just because a mod is hosted doesn't mean an author will never update it. Those are opinions. Unless you have actual numbers to show which mods require the dlc's vs which don't? And you certainly can't prove that the modding community would suffer by waiting until the game is complete to mod. I would argue that it would be improved because there wouldn't be so much time wasted on methods that are no longer valid when the DLC's come out. Look at some popular mods and tools out there that no longer work. NPC editor. UFO is buggy as hell. Most of the ones that ARE still working are the ones that have been updated time and time again or else were pretty simple to begin with. And you can't even argue that fact because a simple search through the old posts in Nexus will point out all the hell raising by users whose games were "ruined" when the DLC's came down because their mods didn't work anymore. You seem to have arbitrarily taken that last bit personally. But it's ironic that you argue that Boss is a tool that needs to be monitored in order for you to use it properly and yet you argue that Steam sucks because you have to monitor what it does. :wallbash:

I don't know what happened here. Incomplete post. Can be deleted.

Like I said in the other thread. It's just a tool. If you know how it works, you can use it like any other. And it absolutely simplifies the process for people who don't really understand mods, which is what really is bad about it. The problem isn't steam, it's pure ignorance of users. Things like NMM and boss are created to hold people's hands when they want to run 100 mods. Which is exactly what steam does NOT do is hold your hand. It simply loads the mods and you're responsible for your own load order. As far as updating the mods, it's just as bad when an author doesn't update his or her mod and then it became obsolete due to DLC's, which is exactly why I was an advocate for not installing mods until the game was complete.