OJLMethos

Ah my apologies on post #29 - I realise now that all the answers are in the tome and I just hadn't got round to reading it yet! I see the section on "The Method" is pretty extensive so I shall read that fully! Thanks for all your ongoing help, it has been really useful!

I also dont understand the following situation: add 1 mod to my load order run QCFC Select 2 mods > create modgroup > name it > assign it to mod > apply it, along with my other modgroups and.... nothing happens. I refresh conflict filter.... nothing happens I close xEdit and load it back up - no conflicts are reported - so it worked (I think... but do I really need to close xEdit every time... can't I just refresh somehow?) Furthermore, I use MO2 and all the .modgroup files are appearing in my Overwrite folder and NOT the mod folder that I assigned the modgroup to... any ideas how to fix this?

Ok, it's hard to understand certain bits of this but I think I am getting it. One bit I'm still a bit stuck on the whole concept of have a totally, utterly, non-negotiable, fixed, permanent load order established before I have even started the Conflict resolution stuff... CR is a big part of finalising your load order so I am at a loss as to how I am expected to have all my mods in the right order before I even start that journey. CR will mean I either: change my load order to ensure the right conflicts are being adopted OR create a compatibility patch...Either would invalidate all my ModGroups made up to that point because of the change in load order,with all my ModGroups gone, I imagine I start all my CR from the beginningwhich means at some point I will change my load order or introduce a new compatibility patch (see step 1)....which would invalidate all my ModGroups......So i have to start again...........and round and round we go. Like I said, cant get my head past this and I only hope that I have misunderstood or Load Order doesn't matter.

A question I do have: Say I load a mod (lets call it modY) and it conflicts with Update, Dawnguard, Hearthfire, USSEP and (for example) 2 other mods, one of which has a compatibility patch, so modA, modB and modB compatibility patch. Per your rule of "only two mods in a ModGroups " Do you honestly create 1 ModGroups for every single one of those pairings, which in this case would be 6 separate ModGroups , 1 modgroup each for: Dawnguard & modY Hearthfire & modY USSEP & modY ModA & modY ModB & modY ModB compatibility patch & modY Why can't you make one mod group covering all of these conflicts in one go? I imagine this gets VERY VERY lengthy later on when you have 200+ plugins and one mod will likely conflict with 30 - 40 of them... I cant believe that you need 30 - 40 ModGroups for just one mod... Also, the tome references ModGroups being linked to load order... so is the proper process for all of these: Install and activate mod LOOT / manually sort the load order (I believe this must be the FINAL load order otherwise any ModGroups will cease to work) This represents a problem, because mods I install later will likely change the load order. If they do change the load order, the ModGroups that I have setup will stop working. So I dont understand how this is practically done. I also dont know how to see what ModGroups are "filtered" due to erroneous load order, as the tome simply says they will be filtered out of the list... so my hard work is undone but I dont even know it! Run and review Conflicts in xEdit, once happy select 1 conflict & ModY > right click > create mod group > assign CRCvalues > name it > done!

On the note of "The Method" I just saw this section (have been reading through the guide slowly over the last few days) and I have to say it resonates with me! It literally just described the last 5 years of my Skyrim modding experiences, culminating in today when I deleted all my saves and all my mods and did the fresh game install because I was close to giving up :P The goods news is that I had come to a similar conclusion myself with modgroups - so that shows I'm using the tool correctly and its good to have some "official" guidance on "The Method". also, ongoing thanks from me... you are by far the most useful person I have found in the modding community and have enabled me to take my modding to the next level :D

On the note of ModGroups I hope you can help because I want to use them but dont understand exactly how and the tome isn't helping / I dont get it yet! 1. Say I install all the mods I want that change textures. They over-write vanilla textures, some over-write each other where they change the same stuff etc etc. 2, Lets say for arguments sake my load order is dealing with 100% of the conflicts correctly and / or I have made a merged patch loaded after all these texture mods to ensure that I get the textures I want. 3. I highlight all the mods in xEdit (all my texture mods, all the masters, all the DLC .esms etc) right click > create mod group > name it "textures". Great 4. lets say I have NO other mods installed. Nothing that could conflict beyond the texture mods that I just made a group for. Based on the above, I should have NO conflict flags appearing right? Because I have organised my conflicts how I wanted through load order or merged patches and then I made a mod group and only the last records from all the files within that group should be listed. Since there are NO other mods that may alter textures, then my xedit flag for conflicts should be 100% EMPTY... right? But... I have done the above and there are still loads of conflicts flagged.. I dont get it.. It didn't really help "reduce the noise" I have tried re-applying the filter to see conflicts but that doesn't seem to "apply" the Mod Group. I only get the option to apply the Group on a full xEdit restart... The tome refers to a ModGroup window but doesn't actually say how to open it and I can find out how - except for entirely closing and reloading the programme

I actually started fresh and removed all my mods and a clean skyrim install, because I figured with this CR knowledge building up, finding erroneous mods would be much easier when I am installing them vs trying to find the culprit amid the 300+ mods I had installed :D I am not sure what you mean by "the method"?

Questions I did have from my CR adventure was the importance of: XLCN - Location: Skyrim.esm had it blank, but some mods and fixes had entries for this e.g. USSEP, LoS II, Majestic Mountains...... then Realistic Water Two - the dedicated water mod - didn't. I understand it's an "exit location" of some description but I dont understand that in the context of water. XCLW - Water Height: again, some mods changed this, even mods that dont do anything with water such as gildergreen regrown or CACO and others made it "default" like Immersive citizens. Cell > Data -flags > Show Sky - For dungeons etc I noticed some have these, some dont, some mods change this... XCCM - Sky/Water from Region - not a clue what this is? Any insight on the above?

I have previously checked out Fallrim tools to look at my saves... I initially did it during testing because I thought that Predator Vision and Immersive Encounters were crashing my tests based on Papy logs and indeed there were a lot of unattached and undefined instances in them.... I haven't checked my recent ones tbh - didn't have a reason to think that existing mods were leaving nasty open scripts but it may be worth alook thanks again LD

Hey again, I truncated the quote for the sake of space efficiency and wanted to comment on the 3 categories called out above. Merged patches I wholly agree with your statements - but with no prior experience I wanted to see what it could do and (per my post) it only addressed very simple things (and even then, I had to tweak most entries to make sure it wasn't doing odd stuff). Load Order: Agreed, obviously. I am confident in my load order as it stands and the manual CR and even the CR of the merged patch was a useful exercise to understand exactly what was being over-written by the various plugins and why X should be after Y. I gained even more confidence that there were no glaring issues with my load order from this experience. Easy Route: I cant agree with this. I am new to CR and understanding the various facets of each tool (such as these merge functions) is part of learning.... sure, the automated merged patches were an obvious and potential quick solution which would have been awesome if it addressed important issues but as I already mentioned, they deal with superficial issues at best. My closing statement was that I am going to review all 63,000 records in xEdit individually.. that's not exactly the easy route :D Interestingly I am starting to think most of my crashes are script related, below are my 3 main crashes: 1. Crashing when using Spellsiphon spells (a scripted spell mod)... I infrequently crash in combat but when I do, I am typically casting a Spellsiphon spell. Doesn't happen even time so assume there is a "perfect storm" that causes the script to fall over sometimes. This is a very important mod to me, so next step is to check out script CR and talk to the author to see if I can confirm the diagnosis. 2. HDT SMP physics on Cloaks of Skyrim - I think this is the crash most often occurring when I load a game. When I CTD on a load (after say, a death) I see the HDTSMP.dll plugin in the probable crash stack in the .net script framework. I really like physics so not sure what I am going to do about this one, maybe die less :tongue: 3. Something to do with kill moves - less frequent than the above two, sometimes when it goes 3rd person camera for a killmove, the game has a specific crash where mid-killmove it locks up, is "not responding" but doesn't (literally) crash to desktop and I have to kill the process in Task Manger (all others crashes do CTD). Unfortunately I dont get a crash log in this instance so harder to pin down... Next step for me is to review further conflicts in xEdit and also specifically look at script CR

edit: accidental double post

Update for those interested: I took my first proper delve into xEdit conflict resolution and spent the entire of yesterday reading the xEdit tome and working through the conflicts in my Load Order... 1. I think literally every mod had a red conflict somewhere in it and so I started having a look at random ones to just get a feel for what they are, what were conflicts etc etc. Interestingly i found it was very similar to MO conflict flag system, the vast majority of red errors were where patches / fixes had overwritten something as intended and looked completely benign. Naturally it goes deeper in detail than MO and you can select exactly which over-writes you want to keep. I need to look at the Groups system properly as that seems to be the key to ignoring all the false positive / benign / accepted overwrites and conflicts. 2. As there were literally over 62,000 records in the list, I decided that going through each one would be a bit long winded - so I started to look at an automated merged patch (which is no longer supported in xEdit, and directed me to Wyre Bash). So I made a Bashed patch and then had a look at that in xEdit because I was aware that automated processes aren't as good as manual ones. For the most part it did a good job but did have some "errors" where unpatched data was overwriting a patch I wanted to keep. I fixed this and made some further enhancements where I thought necessary leaving me with my own merged patch. 3. Through this process I didn't uncover anything that I believed would cause any kind of CTD. The majority of the conflicts were very superficial such as RND and COCO competing over what attributes to give when eating / drinking. Though this was just looking at conflicts made by the Bashed Patch and so maybe its scope doesn't cover the important juicy stuff. 4. Next I looked at any "critical conflicts" highlighted by xEdit and to my surprise, all of them were benign false-positives. Things such as Frostfall and Cloaks of Skyrim having different hexidecimal colours in fields that were (according to the mod authors) literally not used. I changed them anyway to get rid of the pink flag. I think the next step is to start going through the records 1 by 1 as I dont believe I saw anything that would cause the game to crash in the above, so while I may have my RnD food giving me the correct, merged properties now - I literally didn't even know it wasn't to begin with - so I feel I have not fixed much.

Hey Indiao21, Thanks so much for your replies, I have touched upon xEdit but pretty much only for the quickautoclean and some manual cleaning as directed by the STEP guide. I am at least aware of the CR stuff xEdit can do and have started to look at it but was lacking a resource / guide and the Tome you linked maybe it! The STEP guide has a CR patch made for all the mods that they use, which they have created themselves. This resolves the issues with the mods you specifically highlighted (as they happen to be part of the STEP core guide), however the mods I have added above-and-beyond the STEP guide may have conflicts of their own - so this is still very much going to be useful I suspect. I'll check out the tome you linked and see what I may have conflicting - shall report back with what I find :D thanks again for your posts! edit: I have also downloaded a useful tool in the .net script framework, which posts very useful crash logs with stack information that can help identify issues - I recommend it for anyone who wants to add to their diagnostic toolbox. link https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/21294

Hi MFitz, Thanks for your suggestions, I forgot to mention that I do indeed use the engine fixes and also Bethini for my ini's Side note: Papy logs uploaded for anyone who maybe able to look at those - dont know why they didn't originally upload

Apologies - this is mean for Skyrim Special edition. Posted there so please add any comments to that thread: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/8462133-a-request-for-help-im-out-of-ideas-to-fix-my-ctds/

Hi Jimmmy and thanks for your reply. I didn't install "a hundred mods in one sitting" and I'm not complaining about the crashes - apologies that I didn't make it clear in the original post, but to be explicit now: I do exactly as you do and install mods 10 or so at a time, tested for half an hour per batch and if I find and issue, I resolve it - this whole process took me over a week for the core of the mods (as mentioned in the original post, if you read it) and is the same process I have been following on all my modding attempts across years and years. I rinse and repeat the above until I have all the mods installed. I had no issues during the "install testing" and it is only on testing the current setup for around 16 hours that I have now been experiencing crashes. It has taken me around three weeks of testing, researching, debugging and patching to get to this point. I have not yet actually started to "play" the game. I am asking for help diagnosing these issues so that I can. To clarify a point further for you: where I am getting stuck is that it is not one mod that causes issues, it's one mod conflicting with "X" other mods. These conflicts are not always readily apparent (e.g no file conflicts in MO, no LOOT compatibility suggestions or where a script is conflicting with another mods scripts). THIS is where I am asking for help. I don't know how to diagnose where these hidden issues are and do not know how to fix them. What would you do in the above circumstance? edit: I am also saddened in your response. Your other posts on this forum to other users who just copy paste their .esp lists and have plainly done far FAR less work than I have in trying to debug their game have had more positive replies from you. Must have caught you on a bad day I guess :sad:

Hello and I hope you are here to help! I'll start with an apology for yet another "CTD, plz halp" thread, but I have exhausted my knowledge and can't seem to find the solution on my own, so I'm really hoping someone here can. I have been "playing" and modding Skyrim (originally LE, now SE) for 5 years and have literally never finished the main quest, not once. Every time I try to tailor the game I get CTDs which I never seem to be able to fix. I then end up CTD'ing more than I play and ultimately give up. A year or so passes and I build up the courage to give it another go... rinse and repeat the cycle. This is my attempt to recruit 3rd party help from some knowledgeable guy or gal to guide me towards a solution so I can finally complete this game! Issue description: Needed information to help diagnose / fix: LOOT / xEdit / FNIS / MO / Core tool Info: Papyrus logs: Extra Information I have put a lot of time and effort into trying to properly mod my game but have no more knowledge to try and fix it, so I really really hope that someone out there can help :smile: It took me two days to compile this post, but if I have missed something you think would be help, please let me know and I will happily include it! Thanks to all who bothered to read :D

Hello and I hope you are here to help! I'll start with an apology for yet another "CTD, plz halp" thread, but I have exhausted my knowledge and can't seem to find the solution on my own, so I'm really hoping someone here can. I have been "playing" and modding Skyrim (originally LE, now SE) for 5 years and have literally never finished the main quest, not once. Every time I try to tailor the game I get CTDs which I never seem to be able to fix. I then end up CTD'ing more than I play and ultimately give up. A year or so passes and I build up the courage to give it another go... rinse and repeat the cycle. This is my attempt to recruit 3rd party help from some knowledgeable guy or gal to guide me towards a solution so I can finally complete this game! Issue description: Needed information to help diagnose / fix: LOOT / xEdit / FNIS Info: Papyrus logs: Extra Information I have put a lot of time and effort into trying to properly mod my game but have no more knowledge to try and fix it, so I really really hope that someone out there can help :) It took me two days to compile this post, but if I have missed something you think would be help, please let me know and I will happily include it! Thanks to all who bothered to read :D