Overwhelmed ny Nexus Mods, willing to learn - seeks guidance

[Heliadhel]

Again - thank you to everyone who has replied to this thread.

 

I AM reading everything everyone is posting and I guess if anyone out there is interested I have now done (i prefer to use the word achieved as i feel like im in a mini battle vs Skyrim itself in R/L with you lot helping massively from the wings):

 

1) Completely Deleted all traces of my old Skyrim Install and Savegames (im a purist I guess). I followed the following process from a nexus forum user: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/906390-cleaning-skyrim-for-fresh-install/

 

2) Followed STEP somewhat here and then Re-Downloaded SKyrim (I have all DLC so this was like 13Gb!) BUT BUT Steam now has an open Beta and thank goodness the new functionality allows you to create alternative Steam Folders. With this joyous knowledge I have now installed Skyrim into a bespoke folder on my SSD (speeeeed) and it worked like a charm. The rest of my Steam games still reside on my vast 3Tb HDD which is elsewhere but slower than SSD obviously.

 

3) Once I finished the install I zipped up my entire vanilla install on the SSD and dropeed it as an archived copy onto my large D drive. I launched the game, configured the basic video settings etc and played pure vanilla to the point where you choose stormcloaks or empire, (chose stormcloaks and went in the tower and saved) I then also zipped up my folder containing the .INI and also the folder in Appdata/Local etc.

 

4) D/L and installed NMM and got it working with my new SSD location etc

 

Im about to:

D/L Skyrim Performance Monitor to check how my vanilla install looks from a VRAM, RAM and FPS perspective.

D/L TESVEdit so i can clean the masters as per Gophers Vids (i guess i also use this to clean mods too unless they specifically say they use dirty edits (see Ive been reading/listening!))

D/L Wyre Bash though I am utterly frightened of this programme for some reason

D/L BOSS

D/L SKSE and get that working

 

Then Im going to put some utterly essentials into my game:

Unofficial Patches

SkyUI

 

And then get my head around what next....

 

Hopefully all the awesome replies Ive had from you guys to date and my little updates with what ive done and why as I progress will help any other noobs who happen to come along over the next few weeks. Point em to this thread lol and save yourselves a lot of typing :)

 

Matt

[Lord Garon]

Um...quick but probably silly question:

 

I was just about to delete all of my old Skyrim for a clean install and something someone said earlier made me think.

 

It was Lord Garon who said: "Think of your game as "practice" till you get most of the mods you want sorted out. Then start a new game as your REAL playthrough"

 

Some of the mods I want to install affect mid and end level game play (thinking of SkyRe or Requiem for example). So if my modding time is practice - without actually playing through to the end how can i tell if such mods are stable alongside whatever else mods i may install until i get to 'end game;.' - and if ive got there its not really 'practice' anymore as I will have spent about 200 hours (again! as Ive already done a vanilla playthrough to lvl 37)

 

Have I missed something?

 

Matt

 

I didn't mean to confuse anyone. As you mod up, you may find you don't like a particular mod, for whatever reason, and take it out. Or, you may add, say, another graphics replacement mod which may overwite/replace some textures (loose files) from a mod you installed previously. I do this all the time, it seems. Adding mods to an on-going game is usually not a big deal. I just save, add the mod, test it a bit, and if it works okay, I keep going. No problemo. If it breaks something, or I don't like it, I just uninstall it and then go back to the save I made before installing that mod. Disabling and removing mods can cause issues with your current savegame and my only intent here is to keep you from experiencing those issues later on in your game. I ALWAYS go back to the save I made before installing a mod if I wind up disabling it. That's all I wanted to point out. I certainly didn't mean to make anyone hesitant to mod their game.

 

My comment about starting the REAL playthrough was meant for someone who might be installing and testing a whole bunch of the mods that we're all recommending here, all at once. I think a new game is appropriate after adding a bunch of mods, testing, cleaning, changing mod settings, getting load order correct, doing required ini settings, etc, etc, etc (that's what I meant by "practice"). And some mods affect/are affected by early game stuff, even back to the point of character generation. But, you don't have to "practice" up to lvl 27, my REAL playthrough comment was meant for someone just starting to mod and adding a whole bunch of new ones all at once.

 

Again, sorry for any confusion. If you want to take away just one thing from my previous comments; If you uninstall a mod, go back to the save you made just before installing it. That will save you much modding grief.

Edited January 2, 2014 by Lord Garon

[Heliadhel]

Lord Garon

 

Please dont think you in any way put me off modding (i can only speak for myself) - i was just curious about how far (long I guess) you take you practice run whilst assembling all the mods you want before calling it quits and playing to have fun.

 

I think I am going to add the mod that allows you to make alternate starts....i literally cannot go through the Helgen Dragon scheme one more time! Once Im 'somewhere' where I can see outdoors and indoors and dungeons with reasonable ease I will put all my mods together and try for stability. then ill go play.

 

My only dissapointment so far has been with a completely vanilla install, and only 1 save - i loaded it to test out Skyrim Performance Monitor (by Sir Garnon - not you is it??) and whilst the monitor worked fine in game the game 'stops working' the moment i click on quit to desktop. this does not seem to have a detrimental effect as ive already left the game so to speak. If i dont run the SPM programme then when i quit it quits normally. Any thoughts? Ill go read the site and see if anyone else has this issue.

 

Cheers

Matt

[titoman]

Hey Matt, good to see you are making progress. I overheard that in skyrim it does not make difference whether you use ssd drive. I guess it's true cause I watch MXR's let's play and his loading screen is almost as long as mine. He uses ssd and I'm not. Shame to skyrim programmers!

 

I think you don't quite need performance monitor now, you are all good. The reason for me to use is to test how much RAM is being used in skyrim, because silly skyrim has 3.2g RAM limit. I use it when I feel like I have modded too much. And again shame to those programmers :|

 

If you read my post I mentioned I have gtx 760. And yours is better than mine. I almost textured everything available to 2k and with my enb and I never had VRAM issue, so you will be fine. Gopher also mentioned skyrim doesn't have VRAM cap so only corns you'll see is frame dropping.

 

I think what you need to worry about primarily is:

Compatibilities, edits, load order.

 

Wryer Bash is kinda confusing but they have made it really user friendly. Wryer Bash automatically tags your mod by itself so all you need to do is right click the bash patch.esp(some thing named like that) and rebuild patch and your good. How to get the esp? Hmm... Idk, I was as confused as you, I was going through some tutorials I guessed maybe that's when I get it, or maybe WB creates one when first launches. But once you have patched once, every time you change the mod order, you will need to patch again.

 

There's a simple feature is really useful in WB, you might see some esps have different colours. If its green that means after patching this esp can be unchecked. Orange means the esp is missing something, it's usually fine as long as you know why, otherwise just keep an eye on it. If its a red esp, that esp is corrupted, or something is horribly wrong. If you have problem that might just be the culprit. You should reinstall or uninstall it.

 

I hope this helps, cheers!

[Heliadhel]

Ok - quick update

 

Ive now:

 

1) D/L Skyrim Performance Monitor to check how my vanilla install looks from a VRAM, RAM and FPS perspective. Having a 'skyrim stopped working' when I exit the game with this running and speaking to the mod author about it. Apparently its a rare event that im getting reproducably so hes interested in knowing more about my system. Aside from that it works great.

2) D/L TESVEdit - watched vids about it and have now cleaned all my masters that should be cleaned.

3) D/L SKSE and got it working and tested in game with GetSKSEVersion in the console

4) D/L all of the Unofficial patches (i have all the DLC) and also D/L the Unofficial Fix for the Skyrim DLC textures

5) D/L my first mod - Better Quality Skyrim Map (IcePenguin's) and got it running fine.

5) D/L BOSS and used it to sort my load order after the above D/L's

6) Followed some more of STEP and created a profile setup in NVidia Inspector which have various changes to run it better

Still to D/L Wyre Bash and am still scared of it.

No Im going to do some UI stuff first.

Matt

[cloudmage]

Personally, I don't use Wrye Bash (I don't want to scare you but Wrye Bash confuses the heck out of me). My skyrim works fine without any CTD and without Wrye Bash (once again thanks to gopher for the great tutorial vids) and I have 71 mods installed (including the unofficial patches).

 

The only time I had a ton of CTDs is when I was still a noob at skyrim modding but still decided to ignore the tutorials (I was too lazy to read mod descriptions and watching vids). I just dumped the mods I like to my skyrim to the point that it won't even start. :sad:

 

I was so frustrated at my game and myself, so I decided to watch the video tutorials and carefully read mod descriptions. It turned that I had a TON of mods conflicting with each other. I had to reinstall the game and start anew.

well, that's one of my experiences with skyrim modding, and I don't want you to experience that so here are some things that I do:

 

 

- Always read mod descriptions (check if there are mentions of mods that conflict with the mod that you like in the description)

- Always install the required files of the mods

- Install mods ONE AT A TIME

- Use BOSS for sorting load order

- Use TES5Edit for cleaning mods and masters. TES5Edit is also useful in scanning mod conflicts and errors.

- Check your load order via SkyrimLauncher, in case BOSS missed anything

- ALWAYS create a NEW manual save BEFORE adding mods

Edited January 4, 2014 by cloudmage

[TehKaoZ]

Your going about this all wrong. Your suppose to haphazardly download mods at random, not read any descriptions and avoid readme's and warning notes. Second launch your game (assuming it launches at all) and when you find something wrong, sporadically go on each of those mods pages and demand troubleshooting help claiming that their mods clearly broke your game.

 

Now that that's out of the way.

 

Personally I think Wrye Bash is an essential program for getting mods into your game neatly. I avoid NMM like the plague as I've had it just blatantly refuse to install certain mods, and then fail to remove other mods properly from the data folder (Of course this was over a year ago, so I'm sure NMM has gotten a little better). I think that if you can manage Tes5edit I don't see Wrye Bash being that confusing. Theirs a handy little button at the bottom of the program that's a question mark, and while I do agree the program can be jarring for new users, I find it to be relatively simple.

If you want a confusing mod manager then go download Mod Organizer, there are tutorials on how to install SPECIFIC mods, not just the basic functions!

 

Of course using Wrye Bash is not strictly required, I just find it far too useful to not use. The biggest highlights for me are, of course the Bash Patch which merges leveled lists which is something you simply cannot get anywhere else (to the best of my knowledge), since you don't want two armor mods overwriting each other. Second is how well it organizes textures (or any files), I know if I install a texture that overrides another mod, I can simply check the conflicts tab and know EXACLY what textures are being overriding, underwritten and so forth, that way I can make sure I am getting the textures I want and not have to worry about (damn what was the last texture mod I installed?).

 

Other things of note are

- Tells you your missing a master without having to load tes5edit (The mod missing the master will be red)

- The conflict list (as I noted), tells you was "above" (overriding), and below (being overriten) in conflicts for files such as textures/meshes

- The Save tab will show you your saves and a list on the right side will tell you what mods are in that save

 

Hope this alleviates some of the fear. Just keep in mind you don't have to learn all of the functions to make it work, majority of them can generally be ignored to be honest.

[Heliadhel]

TehKaoZ,

 

That was a really helpful precis of what Wyre Bash can do - and now I can see its utility through your eyes (experienced) rather than mine (misunderstood and scared of messing things up) I will D/L it and start having a fiddle with it at a cursory level. Just knowing what mods are in my saves is actuallt very useful for me at this very stage where im now pulling texture replacers in and out to see which effects i prefer for water and the like.

 

Cheers

 

P.S - I know Im going about everything all wrong - and its only a matter of time until I sear the eyebrows off some poor modmaker with my NoobWrath - but is it also about right that the users of the mods actually spend 90% of their free time modding Skyrim and only 10% of it playing Skyrim? This feels like we have reverted to the 70's and simply replaced muscle cars with Skyrim and all we do it tinker with the 'big end' and the 'compression ratios' and polish it but dont dare drive it anywhere...

 

Matt

[chanchan05]

Somewhat LOL. Although I'm nearing the completion of my build, with only texture mods waiting (waiting for my new rig which can handle it LOL). Sooner or later you're either gonna find the game you want from it, or hit the performance ceiling of your rig, or the game capability ceiling (255 plugin limit). After that, all you can do is play, or rebuild a new mod set. LOL.