Calzien

Okay so this isn't a rant about the Creation Club, its practices, or stuff Bethesda posts but rather an oversight that will probably affect a number of people who download a certain number of the Creations they've added for Fallout 4. So some time back Bethesda had a mess-up where upon updating the game you would automatically get about 600MB worth of BA2 files tied to Creations they released that you really didn't need unless you bought them. This was fixed eventually with future updates but only half-assed as you will STILL get the original BA2 files should you download the game now or have to verify the game's cache via Steam. Normally it's easy enough to just delete them all and you're fine however it's strongly recommended you hold off on doing this. I found out the hard way... For those who still follow the Creation Club you may have found out a couple Creations are being offered for free (Pip-Boy and Power Armor non-Desert Camos and the Horse Power Armor.) and for some authors there are special bundle packs being offered at the time of writing this. I decided to grab a couple of these only to have the misfortune of having my game crash repeatedly whenever the game would start up. After wasting an hour trying to figure out if I was suddenly having mod conflicts I discovered the BA2 files for these Creations weren't downloaded. Why? Because they were a part of the original BA2 files Bethesda was and still is, including with the game. Yup, buying or getting ANY of the original Creations that had their BA2 files downloaded before Bethesda stopped it will not download their respective BA2 files unless you do a full game cache verify to redownload them. So unless you are planning to NEVER get any Creations don't delete those BA2 files, either move them off somewhere else or leave them where they are. This applies to the following Creations: Horse Power Armor Chinese Stealth Suit Hellfire Power Armor Handmade Shotgun Modular Military Backpack Mid-Century Modern Furniture Power Armor Paint Job (Black) Gauss Rifle Prototype I hope this helps anyone who is planning to get these Creations and may have deleted the BA2 files Bethesda forced us to download. Special thanks to Bethesda for wasting my afternoon... :down:

I had to go read what Vortex was at first (I'm bad at keeping up with the news.) but it looks like everything is going well. Thank you for all your hard work.

You can, there is an option in the menu screen that lets you turn it off with one press. It won't affect your game whatsoever if you enable or disable it mid-playthrough. But if you mean remove it as in uninstall then no, you can't but like DLC you can't do that either in any game unless you risk damaging your save file. DLCs like mods aren't meant to be removed from a game while playing, ever.

They guarantee it'll work with the base game and expansions. That's without third-party additions. Removing the .esl plugin mid-play is the same as removing an expansion .esm file, I think they expect people to be smart enough NOT to do that. As mentioned Survival Mode can be activated and deactivated at will. Technically you can't really even remove it unless you delete the plugin manually as it doesn't show up in your mod list in-game OR in any external app for now.

Well in this instance you only have to buy the $7.50 pack. Bethesda gives you 100 credits for free so you can get Survival Mode and if it is 1 credit per $0.01 then you'll have 50 extra credits to buy a skin for your Pip-Boy on Fallout 4.

I can agree with you in some ways. Frostfall is restricting but does come with means to tailor it and resist the cold. Coupled with Campfire and the right perks it just becomes a regular part of your gameplay. It's all down to what you feel balances out your gameplay.

Survival Mode is gained via the Creation Club. For one week they offer it for free but after that you have to pay 8 bucks if you don't get it.

Far as I can tell, just the executable. It seems it updated all the .esm files for me but that's likely because I cleaned all of them. The only one I can tell that WAS updated is Update.esm as it has a few new keywords for Survival Mode and climates.

So as a little reminder to those who may have not been following the Creation Club on Fallout 4, the main game executable is updated whenever the Creation Club is updated with new "offerings". Skyrim SE looks to follow the same rules according to the recent beta over on Steam, meaning this could be your only chance at fully opting out of the Creation Club right now if you aren't interested. What this also means is it'll prevent the current version of SKSE64 from breaking until the team releases a new version. GamerPoets does a pretty good tutorial using the Auto Backup mod for those unsure of how to do so themselves: "But how do you know Bethesda will update the .exe file?" Because the beta does. From what I gather the Creation Club works like this, each time a new batch of "creations" are offered the executable is updated to look for the newly added .esl files and if they are present, load them into the game. I can't be sure WHY beyond it could just be so it doesn't count towards the limit. Anyways, if Fallout 4 is any indication of how the Creation Club works it's that whenever they release an update to it you can be sure Skyrim SE's main executable will be updated too. And speaking of which, if you have cleaned your Update.esm expect to do so again as the beta does update this one too.

Thanks for the kind words, I didn't actually mean this to be a review since I just spent maybe a half-hour messing with it in-game. The rest was just poking around in SSEEdit. You can do so yourself with any of Bethesda's .esl files from the Creation Club by renaming the extension to .esm or .esp. Fun note, apparently .esl files are nothing more than .esm files just loaded into the game. SSEEdit reports the header using a .esm header. They're loaded in without the use of a load order ini file apparently so this is why the executable is probably patched each time the Creation Club is updated. It has to be told to look for a new set of .esl files and if they're present, load them. So I have a fairly good feeling Skyrim SE is definitely going to follow the same fate as Fallout 4 when it comes to requiring patches to SKSE64 when it is fully released. If you intend on not using the Creation Club at all I recommend backing up your executable for SSE right now before the Creation Club goes live. On that I feel I should add that they are offering Survival Mode for free right now for one week.

I decided to sign up for the new beta and tried out Survival Mode a bit. Honestly, it's not as impressive as I hoped it would be. It has the basics of mods like Realistic Needs and Diseases, iNeed, and Frostfall but implements them rather poorly. First let's talk needs: Your basic needs are hunger and sleep. Food and drink fall into the same category meaning you can play a Nord who survives on nothing but alchohol and the game is perfectly fine with that. Stock up on mead, ale, wine and you're good. Solids are for milk drinkers. Sleep is represented by fatigue which lowers your magic pool and regeneration of both magic and stamina. Forgetting to eat will reduce your fighting ability a bit and lower your overall stamina pool. Being overencumbered will quickly drain your stamina and rapidly increase your rate of fatigue. Run out of stamina and you can forget about moving anymore until you drop something or chug a stamina potion. Diseases are deadlier and you can contract Food Poisoning by eating raw food. A few races have slight resistances like Orcs can go longer without needing to eat or drink, and High, Dark, and Wood Elves can last a bit longer before needing a rest. Cold is handled somewhat like Frostfall but on a very barebone level. Parts of Skyrim are considered one of three climates: Freezing, Cold, or Warm. Areas like the Whiterun Tundra, Riverwood, and the Reach are considered cold. Heading into more snowy climates like Helgen, Winterhold, Morthal, Windhelm, or the mountains is where you're going to freeze to death. Head on down into the Falkreath area, hotsprings north of the Rift, and the Rift itself and you'll find warmer climates. Armor offers some protection but it categorized as either "Cold" (Basically barely more than being naked.) or "Warm" (Fully covered head to toe.) depending on the armor. However there isn't much difference between say most of the fur armors and wearing a full suit of orcish armor, daedric, or glass. They'll all offer the same amount of warmth. Of course if you want to run around naked or wear custom armors you can pack some "hot" variants of soups and stews recently added using Fire Salts and the normal ingredients. Good for a quick temperature boost if you're headed somewhere cold. Skills like the Dunmer's Ancestral Wrath and Flame Cloak will allow you to temporarily resist freezing waters if used or casted before you dive in. There's more but I only wanted to give the basic grasp of it. Now for the bad part, a number of mods are going to be incompatible with it until either patches (Which can be hard to make given the .esl format isn't compatible with SSEEdit or the Creation Kit.) are made or somebody figures out a workaround. Some incompatible mods include: - Custom armor mods (These require adding the warm/cold keywords to fix. These are found in the Update.esm file and not the esl for Survival Mode fortunately.) - Mods that alter vanilla armor (Retextures and meshes are fine. Like custom armor adding the keywords to the armors will fix this issue.) - Mods that alter vanilla food and drinks (If they change the price, weight, name, or anything with the entry it will overwrite the .esl file changes.) - Mods that change vanilla weather (Some cold effects rely on the vanilla weather system, which and how much I'm not sure.) - Campfire (Heat sources like campfires in that mod are not recognized by Survival Mode. The .esl file uses scripts to determine what in-game fires are considered heat sources.) As a final thought, I'm a bit disappointed in this. Like Fallout 4's Creation Club the first offering falls quite short for the steep price tag of $8. It's nice to see it isn't as cumbersome as Fallout 4's Survival Mode difficulty is and can be turned off or on at any time too. But it still lacks a considerable amount of content that really doesn't justify paying that price. If you're on XB1 or PC I'd still suggest sticking with a combination of Frostfall, Campfire and Realistic Needs and Diseases/iNeed for a more rounded experience.

I tried to look into your request and it does seem possible. Survival Mode starts via a quest script that initiates as soon as "Unbound" is started. It's likely this could be triggered instead to start as soon as a different quest completes, for example if you were using the Alternate Start - Live Another Life mod as soon as that quest marks itself complete after leaving the cell then the Survival Mode quest begins. You can take a look yourself by renaming the file from .esl to .esm or .esp and loading it that way. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to make it load the .esl file directly to use as a mod dependency so making an esp file to alter that may not be possible. You COULD however, possibly do so yourself using the above extension rename and either the Creation Kit or SSEEdit.

Amazing Follower Tweaks has been ported over but not the Immersive one. And I can give you two reasons why: 1.) SKSE support is required, it would need to be stripped out of that version to function properly. 2.) The mod author seems to be inactive only checking for problems to update the original. So you'll either need to find someone to do it as the mod author does give consent as part of the rules for AFT, or wait until they return. I'm not really betting on the second one happening so you can only hope someone does port it over.

Any and all games installed via Steam (Not inserted via the "Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library" option.) are located under Steam > Steamapps > Common then the game name. So for example Skyrim Special Edition is whever your steam installation is placed, typically in the Program Files folder on your C drive unless you changed it, followed by Steamapps > Common > Skyrim Special Edition. C:\Program Files\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Skyrim Special Edition Remember that just putting in a key won't work, you also need to make sure Steam downloads the game. Another way to find where the files are actually located is to open Steam, highlight the game you want, left click and choose "Properties". Choose the "Local Files" tab and click on "Browse Local Files..." to open up a window in Windows Explorer to the folder containing the files for that game.

Since the Switch is going to support Skyrim (And I think modding to PS4 level.) I felt this was relevant news for here. If you bought a Nintendo Switch and like to add cool decals to your consoles, don't do it to the Switch. There's an article on GamesRadar that reports from popular brand dSkins that the NS is cured in a way that adhesive from vinyl stickers literally damage the system's surface. So I'd either wait until a solution is found, or just don't altogether. Link: http://www.gamesradar.com/important-psa-dont-skin-your-nintendo-switch/