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This is a suggestion more aligned with the Mod Managers [NMM and MO] than a mod itself... For very good reasons, some of the mods that we might want to use either have a dependency upon another mod, or may be incompatible with one or more other mods. At the moment, players are reliant upon a mod author making these facts clear in a Mod Description page. Unfortunately, some mod authors like to write pages and pages of text with their mods and can occasionally bury this sort of key information... So my suggestion is that when packaging a mod into a tarball, how about including a couple of extra files, let's call them "Dependencies.xml" and "Conflicts.xml". These two files will contain the Mod Identifiers of any other mods on which this specific mod has a dependency and/or a known clash... When a user selects a mod for installation, rather than getting the pop-up message via the Nexus web site, could we rely upon the Mod Manager itself to perform the safety checks for us? Something similar to this happens today with operating systems like GNU/Linux, in which the popular package management tools [such as "apt"] will check a new package and automatically resolve any dependencies that it might have. Deciding how far to take this is up for examination... For example, suppose I want to add a mod that has a dependency I do not have installed. Could we ask the Mod Manager to figure this out, pull in the extra mod, and then correctly sequence them to resolve the dependency? This would combine aspects of LOOT-style determination with core mod management... Just a thought...

In response to post #24669294. I can echo your sentiment, but can we lay this at Bethesda's door? Isn't it Steam/Valve who are creating the pay-wall? Do Bethesda get a cut of the money charged for a mod for one of their games? [ I don't know the answers]... Let's reserve judgement until we see what they do with Skyrim's replacement, eh?

​ I notice that when I review the "New Today" and "New Recently" list of entries on the Skyrim site, that each entry in the second of these two lists has up to three little icons associated with it. These three icons identify themselves as, "files", "images" and "attributes" respectively. ​ ​I was wondering if it might be possible to augment or change this slightly, with the idea that these icons could give the viewer a clue as to what the mod actually provided. For example, a series of icons would enable a user to distinguish between a weapon, armour, an NPC, clothing, gameplay (i.e. a quest, script, etc) or other types of mods. ​ ​Looking at the default categories that ship with the NMM, I concede that there may be too many there to have a 1:1 ratio and still make a set of icons that could be readily distinguished. However, this approach would make it a little bit easier for a browser to determine what type of mod is being offered for those scenarios where the mod name doesn't explain what the mod type is. ​ ​ ​In the alternate, perhaps the site could be adjusted to invite the modder to identify the mod type when they perform the initial file upload, then prefix the name with {Mod Type}:{Mod Name} as the title..., So this could produce:- ​ ​Follower: Toccata ​Quest: Aetherball ​Weapon: Longclaw ​Gameplay: Bandits Glory ​ ​and so on... ​ ​The reason for asking is simply that once I get a game modded with a "core set" of mods, I become very, very particular about what types of mod I will add, in an attempt to ensure that a new addition doesn't "break" my existing setup. As a result of this I will automatically ignore certain types of mod until my next "run through" of the game. ​ ​Thank you.

I am very sorry if I am posting this in the wrong place. Please feel free to move it if appropriate, or delete it if it's already proposed elsewhere... Some mod authors are very thoughtful and split out a mod into a series of discrete updates, making it much easier for players to mix-and-match the content to fit their preferences. A good example of this might be the Companion Reiko Senjua, which has a primary file, "Main", and then a patch with a version id of "1.8". It is necessary to download these as 2 discrete files and then activate them in a logical sequence to achieve the desired configuration. The challenge comes when viewing these 2 files in NMM. This is because the data item for the core file ("Main") then shows "1.8" in the "Latest Version" column, which implies that the loaded version is out of date. Except, of course, it isn't... the discrepancy is just a consequence of the naming conventions and file versioning adopted by NMM. In an ideal world there would be different classes of file (core and patch) that could not only have disconnected version numbers, but even be allowed to force dependencies and thus trigger NMM into bringing in required patche files if the user was silly enough to try and load a known unstable file... But the issue for me is the use of the grey warning triangle to denote an "out-dated" patch. In the current structure of file versioning I don't think it's possible to automatically figure out a way to remove the surplus warning signs. However, it might be possible to manually "grey them out". Here's how it could work... Using the above Reiko example, consider a sequence in which I download the 2 files and then get the warning symbol for the main file. I check the Nexus and establish that this is a false positive, since the "1.8" release is in fact a patch to the main file, not a replacement. If I could right-click on the main file, then select an option to "suppress version warning", the program could then allow me to click on any other patch in the manager with the idea that whatever is selected is the file that I choose to be the patch that addresses the warning. Once so "marked", the grey warning disappears, replaced by another symbol [that shows the 2 files are logically linked] and the depency is established. If I replace or remove either file, the dependency is broken and the warning gets re-instated. If the "Latest Version" column had a view or a filter to "ignore suppressed version warnings", then I could very quickly and easily fire up NMM, spot all those mods with updates, bring in the new versions, then apply them to my game. There is nothing in this proposal that should require a change in development from Authors, although I concede that this proposal could be addressed with a much more elegant solution if file naming and version numbering were revisited. Hope this proves of interest to the Dev Team. Thank you!

Hey GreekGod, Your description of the bug caught my eye and looks interesting... Wonder if you mind if I ask a couple of questions [if nothing else, thinking this through might take your mind to a fix...] 1. Have you made any changes to your mod configs recently? Any chance you can remember what they were? If this might have involved bringing in new mods, you might be able to see what they were either from your NMM profile, or simply look in the folder on your PC where NMM caches the mods it downloads, and sort the folder contents into date order. 2. Any other changes to your PC recently (Windows update running in auto mode? If so, has anything been patched? New graphics drivers? Anything else? Any issues with any other games as well?) 3. Just on the off-chance it's related to the performance of Skyrim itself, have you tried running anything like Skyrim Performance Monitor, to see if it thinks that Skyrim is hitting issues? http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/6491/? Bear in mind that although you've got a well-specified machine, Skyrim itself has been compiled to produce a 32-bit codebase, so even though you've got 8Gb or RAM, the chances wre that Skyrim won't be able to use all of it. 4. Out of curiousity, is there anything that you do, in-game, that causes the crash? I was intrigued that you suggest this happens after 2 minutes. So for instance, I wonder if you load your game from a save, and then just leave your character standing idle for 2 minutes, with nothing happening, will it crash? 5. I also wonder if it has happened as a consequence of any sequence of events you've done in game (i.e. a clash between 2 or more mods). Much harder to test, but one technique to try might be to simply load up your oldest save from your game save folder. Try running around for a few minutes and see if the game continues to crash... Sadly none of these suggestions are likely to take you to a definitive root cause and thus suggest a fix, but I'm hoping that it might set you on the right path to finding the problem...

Hi, At the risk of asking the obvious [sorry if that's the case] do you mind if I ask 1. Are you running the latest version of NMM? (0.47.3). When the dev team rolled over to the "47" codebase from the "46" release, there were three patches in quick succession, taking us to 47.3. If you're not there yet, I'd stronly recommend you upgrade. 2. Have you tried a clean re-installation? I haven't personally seen the issue you describe here, but I have noticed a couple of glitches with earlier editions. Without exception, I discovered that simply re-running the downloaded installer did the trick. 3. Hardest question to answer: can you recall if you have changed anything about your core machine recently? Do you have your edition of Windows set to auto-update? If so, could you check your update log to see if anything has been applied recently? Perhaps you could share something about your machine config, i.e. which version of Windows do you use? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit? Have you seen any other spurious errors recently? In my experience, [and I'm not a programmer much these days] NMM is written to be very respectful of the environment in which it runs - it's self-contained, doesn't demand odd things from it's host machine, is agnostic about installation location, the works. This means it's robustly and intelligently coded. It will take a lot to get BMM to CTD like that... Hope this helps...

Thanks, Chanchan - very helpful!

Please forgive the impertinence of this post. As a Skyrim gamer who is only now just learning about the Creation Kit and related tools, I'm very conscious that I'm about to ask people *way* more experienced than I to do things differently. I certainly don't mean to be presumptuous... As my confidence with Skyrim modding has grown, so I have added quite a few mods to my game (probably north of 180 by now). In so doing, I've learned that it's actually quite difficult to know, when you have so many mods, where you might find issues. For example, yesterday I downloaded and installed TES5Edit for the first time, and discovered to my horror that many of my favourite mods were carrying a range of errors. I also quickly learned that tracking down problems is not easy - for example, when TES5Edit reports an issue with a mode file, and yet I can find no Mod in NMM with a matching name or reference. I also discovered that, at some point, I've added something to my system which breaks the Creation Kit - I get errors when I launch - and that I've no way of detecting the source of this issue... So, thinking through some of the challenges I've seen, I wondered if this community would be willing to consider a couple of ideas? 1. Naming Conventions One problem I've seen is that there is often a discrepancy between the name of a mod file at the Windows File System level (i.e. the name of the ESP file) and the way that it gets displayed in tools like NMM. So my first suggestion would be that maybe there's scope to have some "mod development guidelines", with best practices that we could share, to make it easier for non-modders to diagnose issues if they occur. I really see this as important - it's all well and good if TES5Edit reports an issue, but finding it can be a problem! [ And: sorry in advance if I've missed something in my ignorance...] 2. Defect Reporting A second idea would be to ask if there is scope to either implement a feature, or to stipulate a "convention" to follow with respect to reporting issues with a mod. At the moment, a mod's home page has a lovely set of clickable buttons - "DESC, FILES, IMAGES, POSTS, FORUMS, TAGS, ACTIONS, READ ME. Some mod authors do create a forum for bug reporting, and others include an FAQ forum where answers to previously-raised questions get posted. Would it be a good idea to either add a new entry to the above list of buttons: "Report Problem" (which on the back end captures details and emails the mod author), or to provide guidelines to all authors to set up a certain set of default forum topics (or do this for them) to give a consistent approach to bug reporting... 3. Defect/Status Ranking One of the things I've spotted through my (very brief so far) experimentation with TES5Edit is that not all mod authors clean their mods before uploading, and that files contain varying levels of issues. I wonder if it would be appropriate for a mod home page to contain a marker/field/indicator showing both the latest "defect status" of a mod, and an indicator of whether or not the known issues are cosmetic, minor, or likely to cause known problems with other combinations of mods. I see that some modders do provide this in their descriptions, but this is discretionary, and displayed in an inconsistent way... A clear and consistent approach would let gamers make an informed choice about whether or not to download a particular mod. 4. Mod Versioning This observation relates more to the functionality of the NMM, but I've observed that NMM often flags up a version issue with multi-part mod when perhaps non exists. Specifically, imagine there is a Follower mod for a character, with version ID 1.1.1. I have this loaded... There is also a supplementary mod for this character, the "No Face Paint Patch", with version ID 1.1.2. Within the NMM Tool, the first of these 2 mods will get the "Version Mismatch" warning triangle associated with it. Obviously, there are 2 ways that we could fix this : change the NMM or change the mods. Of the 2 options, I'd much prefer to educate mod authors to apply a consistent file naming convention to their mods, so as to resolve this particular issue. Honestly, I'm not too fussed as to the "right way" to address this, but I do think it would be helpful if we could find a way of removing the "issue noise" by addressing this. 5. Mod Upgrades Sorry in advance if this needs to go in a bug report list elsewhere, but I think there is an issue with the Mod Upgrade feature within NMM itself. When I try to use the mod upgrade feature, I get an on-screen display to suggest that it is scanning my mod library, but I don't think I've ever seen a mod properly updated by this automatic tool. Again, I wonder if this is because of a broken bit of functionality, or an inconsistent approach to mods themselves? 6. Mod Combinations And Clashes - An Audit Log I might struggle a bit to explain precisely what I mean by this, but let me try anyway. We know that if two or more mods both make changes to the same game element, then the mod most recently applied will typically be the one that over-writes the game default settings. If I have 2 or more mods that change Lydia, for example, then applying both of them will produce a "custom" result. More importantly, the sequence by which I apply those two or more mods gets very important too... So I wondered if it might be possible for the NMM itself to maintain a simple flat log file that records, in chronological sequence, the precise series of mods that I add and remove to my game. Armed with this [and aided with clear naming conventions] it should be possible for me to re-constitute my game configuration/environment with nothing more than this file... and get back to precisely the configuration I have previously enjoyed... 7. Local Mod Cache Most of the time I don't use Windows on my home PC, but a version of Linux (Mint Debian Edition). Just like NMM, Linux uses packages to deliver functionality to the core product. Unlike NMM, however, Linux has come up with an amazingly simple way of letting me manage upgrades. Basically, it separates "updating" into 2 discrete steps - the first is downloading a package file, the second is installation. The advantage is that I have, on my machine, a folder that contains every single Linux package I've ever downloaded. When I build a new machine, I simply copy that folder to a shared drive, and make it available to the second system. When the second system tries to download one of the optional packages, it checks it's local cache, finds that it already has a copy, and installs it without trying a second download. This massively reduces my network traffic (and cost to me) and reduces the load on the central servers too. So, I was wondering... Since NMM uses compressed (7Zip?) files to distribute packages, would it be possible to reconfigure the client to keep "local copies" of all deployed mods? Maybe as an optional switch? The advantage here is that if I decided that I needed to rebuild my games machine, then re-installing Skyrim would be a case of 1. Archiving my NMM Package Files 2. Archiving my NMM Config (i.e. which Packages I had deployed, and it what load order) 3. Re-installing the game 4. Placing my archived Package files in the appropriate directory 5. Importing my "Config Script" to put everything back the way I wanted it... If you think about it, there's a wonderful side benefit. If you apply a mod which over-writes something in a way that you did not anticipate, and you don't like the result, you can use a "Config Script" to get you back to your desired setup. Simply implement an "Uninstall All Mods" option, then re-run a previously saved copy of your optimum config and you get everything back the way you like it... Sorry for the long, rambling post. I hope it proves to be helpful, and/or thought-provoking. If any of the suggestions I've made here sound possible but are not entirely clear, do feel free to reach out, and I'll be happy to clarify. Thanks for reading all the way down to here!

Suggestion: Migration Towards a Debian-Like Package Management System OK, for all those reading this who are not reasonably technically aware Linux users, I apologize. This will be a stretch - but please stick with me. There is today a fabulous contrast in efficiency between Microsoft's patching model for Windows (which is awful) and the Linux patching model, as implemented by Linux versions based upon the Debian distribution. With Windows, each time I build (or rebuild) a new machine, I am required to re-patch my system from scratch, unless I have something quite exotic (like ipFire) on my local network. With Linux, however, I can do something very different. Packages are downloaded into a disk cache area before being applied, and each package comes with a set of dependency descriptors built in. Thus, if I download a package that needs something else, my machine will *automatically* fetch and install everything I need in one go. But more than that, the fact that all the packages I use are cached locally means that I can take a copy of that cache for archive purposes. I can copy the cache from one installed machine to another (or in my case just map a network share). It means that I can create a new build and patch in seconds, without having to re-download hundreds of Mb of data... You get where I'm going, right? Would it be possible to tweak the implementation of NMM - borrowing directly from Linux Package Management code - so that we could have an environment where we can cache packages locally please? That way, if ever I want or need to re-install Skyrim, I can very, very quickly re-apply all my favourite patches because I retained copies of them... In the Linux world, "apt-get update" refreshes the package index, identifying any newly upgraded packages I may need "apt-get upgrade" then downloads the packages, caches them, and applies them. When I go to a second machine and repeat the above commands, I do not have to "re-download" anything previously fetched. It saves me masses amount of bandwidth and it's *lots* faster... I do appreciate that this could require architecture changes under the hood, but I truly believe it's a great feature to have...

Thomriis, I can't write for anyone else, but from my experience in other forums, I think at least past of your challenge might be the subject line you chose. Some people may read, "Need advice" and think, "Well, if this person can't even give a meaningful thread name, I can't be bothered to even look..." I am sorry, I don't mean to be harsh or unkind... but I had personal experience of this on a QNAP technical forum when I posted an entry with pretty much the same title... As to the challenge you've described, I have an approach that may or may not work for you... The place I start is with ingredients... I am interested primarily in 2 potions: Fortify Smithing and Fortify Enchanting. As you know there are no "Fortify Alchemy" potions, since this would create a loop... However, I create Fortify Enchanting potions from Blue Butterfly Wings and Snowberries, because both of these can be found in good quantities throughout Skyrim [in the right general areas, of course!] I also create Fortify Smithing potions from Blisterwort and Glowing Mushrooms, both of which can also be found in generous quantities in lots of places... Now, in order to create stronger potions, I use enchanting to produce 4 magical items: A "Circlet", "Necklace", "Gauntlets" and a "Ring" of Alchemy. I can wear all 4 items at the same time, and I can, through this, produce potions that will enhance my Enchanting to a good degree... Now it's a question of setting up a loop. Create lots of potions to enhance your Enchanting ability... Then basically, your loop consists of using simple smithing to make 4 of the wearable "Alchemy" items, then enchanting them. You put them on, and you create 4 more enchanting potions, which this time will be stronger. You drink one potion, enchant one more artifact, and so on. As you go, you will be practicising your Alchemy (which improves) and of course you're also practising your Enchanting, which improves too. One key to making this a successful strategy is to ONLY PRODUCE ONE SET OF POTIONS AT A TIME... This is because your skills will get better every time you use them - every iteration through this loop should yield better, stronger potions and stronger enchantments. The most valuable resources you have will be the alchemical ingredients to make your potions, and the soul gems you need to enchant items. I buy soul gems wherever I can, find as many as possible, and mine them in Black Reach too... Another top tip is to use the smaller gems (Petty, etc) to enchant your weapons with recharges. Save the Black/Grand soul gems for enchanting magical items - those activities where you want the maximum boost in one go... Hope all this helps!