Creation Kit for Beginners Q/A

[rayjames06]

Hello, I have recently been using the Skyrim Creation Kit and been going through all the ups and downs of getting familiar with using, mixing, and applying mods to my game. Basically I just use it to take say a player home mod I get, then look at other mods to add some static items from them to make it more customized for my liking. But getting errors or items not showing up was a real pain I spent quite a bit of time going through help posts to get started and found a lot of the time the simplest answers usually were the best ones. So I'd like to give a few pointer on what I have found to get new players started messing around with the creation kit. Im sure this has been posted before and anyone familiar with the CK can skip this.

 

So the first thing I did was get familiar with the creation kit. I took some time loading up mods and player home cells and messing with camera angles and most importantly key bindings, for starters Z, W, and 2 for moving items up and down, rotating and scaling. Using snap to grid which is the tiny red circle button and the button to the right of it in the tool bar, and using duplicate on an item and moving them to new spots so-on. I keep the items in the "Object Window" set to form type just so I can see what's say a static, container, npc so on and i resize the three windows in the creation kit to where i can see them all at once and they don't overlap. Also since i'm not really creating mods just changing them in my game I found that with the help of JaxonzPositioner mod you can move most any item to exactly where u want it after you get it close in the CK. JaxonzPositioner is great but it has some getting use to, a lot of the time you will have to console /unlock on an item before you can move it and it also has its limitations.

 

Crashing was an issue I was running into first. An apparent error of not finding "String Files" was crashing my CK. Now a lot of mods require some or all DLC's. These DLC's have to be manually added as resources in the file of "SkyrimEditor.ini" in your Skyrim folder for the CK. So you just open it up search for SR, you will move down a little bit to see SResourcelistarchive2=Skyrim shaders.bsa, update.bsa you continue to add the DLC's you have installed here. so after update.bsa you put ",dragonborn.bsa, hearthfires.bsa and so on. Also having multiple DLC's or "Master files" loaded in the CK at the same time requires you to add bAllowMultipleMasterloads=1 right under the general files section.

 

Next was getting larger mods to load up in the Creation Kit, im starting to see the really large or detailed mods are .BSA files, which means if you load up one of these in the Nexus mod manager, then go to the Creation Kit and load the .esp file you will get errors on most items, the CK cannot find the paths to meshes/textures as they are in the .bsa file itself I assume. So to fix this the BSAopt Mod is a great was to unpack a .BSA, you then get the everything needed for a data folder, then just take the .esp file put it in the data folder covert to a .rar and upload it to the Nexus mod manager. Then you can enable it in the CK that way all the file paths are now correct and the items appear in the Creation Kit.

 

I wanted to mention items not appearing in game after you save in the creation kit or just finding the item code to enter it in game with console player.placeatme. It was so confusing going through all the types of ID's for items, reference/form so on, but having the creation kit made it so much easier to find items. So I started with seeing an item say a statue or something in a mod i had installed. I wanting to find the code to be able to player.placeatme that statue somewhere else to my liking. Well just clicking on it in the console really doesn't give you much. You can't player.placeatme that code nothing will happen. So what you want to do is load up the mod in the creation kit. File/Data then when you see the mod in which the item is in just right click it and select "Details" right next to "SetActiveFile". This will give you a list of all files in the mod, then at the top where the tabs are next to "Offset" you are going to have to expand the bars to reveal the "FormID" number column. So this is what you need, either finding the item here or just loading the mod in the creation kit, you'll need the FormID. With the FormID you will disregard the "First Two" numbers so if its 05xxxxxx, the 05 has to be changed in game for player.placeatme to work. You'll find the starting two numbers you need in the Nexus Mod Manager. Go to the mod manager and to the left the plugins tabs, you will see the "LoadOrder" tab. The two numbers there are the ones you will use to change the first two numbers in the FormID. So the original 05xxxxxx from the CK will need to be changed to [loadorder#]xxxxxx. This will allow you to use player.placeatme with object from the mod in game.

 

Also taking objects from another mod and putting them in your mod or the one you want to customize. So i had a player home mod i downloaded, then found items in another player home i wanted in my first one. I loaded both of them up in the CK, took objects from house X putting them into my first house then saved. Behold they were not in the game for some reason. No like i said i haven't started creating mods or object this is where understanding paths and so on will help a ton, but i found just duplicating the object in the "Object Window" first in the CK making a new form will allow you to then use that duplicate and have it show up in your mod. That's just what i found works.

 

So that's really what i have so far, taking mods or objects and figuring out how to start manipulating them with the Creation Kit and using them to customize your game as that's what I've been doing recently with the CK. I hope this helps i wanted to make it for people that's just starting out like it did, and maybe save them a lot of time going through posts figuring out the basics.

 

 

 

 

[Shivala]

Thanks, I have only dabbled a little with CK, 'just' making a follower. This kind of info would go great into a Wiki. Is there one for CK / modders? I think I want to make a 'dummy' guide to making followers in the future... Natalia's tutorial is not truly complete.

[rayjames06]

Thanks, I tried to put in all the issues and answers I had to look up for me starting out, so if someone has a question maybe running into this first will save some time.

[lofgren]

Creation Kit wiki (seriously people, google was invented for a reason):

 

http://www.creationkit.com/Main_Page