Modding Skyrim for the first time, aka Schanez needs help :c

[schanez]

Hello there community. I come here with a humble request to more experienced modders for their help. I've been playing Skyrim for some time and finally decided to mod it. But as you can imagine, I soon found myself under an avalanche of mods that I have no clue how to combine. I have an overall idea of what I want, but no clue what I can mix and match, and what won't work together. So here I am, seeking the wisdom of the modding elders.

 

Onto the main topic. I am looking to add to the world, not change it. I am looking for mods that are lore friendly and enhance the immersion into the life of the dragonborn. I must admit I am in awe of all the content created by the community, but the amount of little mods made me realize that without help, I will never be able to manage to pull it off, without utterly crashing my game. I've picked a few (read over 30, which is already a terrifying amount for me) mods I would like to add, but I need your counsel in what I can do and what not. Also worth noting is that my PC is not the top of the line, and I have to stray away from all the HD 4K mods, sadly.

 

 

I guess I need to start with:

- Unofficial Skyrim Patch, by UPP Team;

 

From world immersion, I would like to pick those "few":

- Travellers of Skyrim, by m0nster;

- Immersive Wenches, by Kozuke Hajime;

- Campfire - Compelte Camping System, by Chesko

- Holidays, by isoku;

- Dolmen Ruins - ESO Dark Anchors, by Arthmoor;

- alb084 Immersive Followers, by alb084;

- Hunters not Bandits, by raccoondance;

- Immersive Patrols, by Scrabbulor;

- Immersive Sounds - Compedium, by lazygecko;

- iNeed - Food Water and Sleep, by isoku;

- InnCredible, by NeverlessWonder;

- JUSTICE City Exteriors. by GoodfellowGoodspring;

- Point The Way, by Artmoor;

- Wet and Cold, by isoku;

- Waves, by Prometheus;

- Opening Scene Overhaul, by ellderscrolliangamer aka Publick Gamer;

- Relationship Dialogue Overhaul, by cloudedtruth;

- Skyrim Sizes, by RipperArcane;

- Immersive Armors, by Hothtrooper44;

- Immersive Weapons, by Hothtrooper44, Ironman5000, Eckss;

- VanNord Carved Nordic Armour, by StavJr;

- UNP Female Armors, by Exeter;

- Black Mage Armor, by Reko;

- Vampire Royal Armor Unenchanted, by Kubos0;

- Immersive Laundry, by Nerd of Prey;

- Opulent Outfits - Mage Robes of Winterhold - 2016, by Mebantize babooncru;

- Realistic Female Armor Overhaul, by LLX;

- UNP Dragonborn Armors, by Exeter;

- Solstheim Extended - Skaal Village, by Pipas, alias Holzkaeseloeffel;

- Raven Rock Expanded, by uglydemon;

- Deadric Museum of Artifacts, by Enter_77;

- Book Covers Skyrim - Lost Library, by DanielCoffrey;

- Skyrim Improved Puddles SIP, by Brumbek and PCG4m3r;

- Oblivion Gates, by Mr C Racer;

- Populated Cities, by Pandazooka;

- Populated Forts Towers Places Legendary Edition, by presented by Sands of Time Team;

- Perfect Legionnaire - Imperial Armor Reforged 6-0, by Ali Bengali;

- Prometheus Imperial trooper Chainmail, by Prometheus_ts;

- Prometheus Imperial Winter Heavy Armor, by Prometheus_ts;

- Imperious - Races of Skyrim, by Enai Siaion;

- Frostfall - Hypothermia Camping Survival, by Chesko;

- City Trees and Plants, by Krucify;

 

From character models/textures I am torn a little:

- Windsong Skyrim Character Overhaul, by Windsong;

- Lovely Hairstyles, by sn00p;

- Fair Skin Complexion, by HHaleyy;

- DIMONIZED UNP female body, by dimon99;

- UNP Texture Blender, by Svarog;

- Better Hand Mesh for UNP UNPB UNPC, by MrTroubleMaker;

- Khajiit Eyes Extended - Khajiit Heterochromia and more, by Moncoh;

- Coverkhajiits, by mrLenski;

- Drachis Argonians Mod, by Drachis;

- XCE Warpaint and Dirt, by Xenius;

- Beards, by Hvergelmir;

- Ethereal Elven Overhaul, by nuska;

 

Other:

- Ordinator - Perks of Skyrim, by Enai Siaion;

- Ars Metallica - Smithing Enhancement, by Arthmoor;

- Rich Merchants, by WheresMyPocket;

- Better Quest Objectives, by whickus;

- The Forgotten City, by Nick James Pearce;

- The Paarthurnax Dilemma, by Arthmoor;

- No Spinning Death Animation, by dDefinder;

- Map Markers Complete, by SarthesArai;

- Unread Books Glow, by duggelz;

 

 

Uff... I think that is all... Now my concerns are as follows. If I want to use Windsong Skyrim Character Overhaul, but prefer the Ethereal Elven Overhaul look for elves, will it work if I load the second mod after the first? Will UNP glitch with Immersive Armors and other armor mods here? Should I look for something more to add? Does the NMM fix the loading order or do I have to take care of it myself, and if yes, what should it be? I know it's a lot to ask, but if you are unable to help me, no one can.

 

Thank you in advance,

Schanez.

Edited November 2, 2016 by schanez

[ymf331]

windsong and eeo should work fine as long as you load the eeo plugin after windsong. i'd personally not use eeo's face textures, as you could potentially have a color mismatch. for immersive armors you could get bodyslide 2 and the uunp sliders. you can find slider sets for vanilla armor and immersive armors both. the best ways to fix load order are, from least to greatest effectiveness: using a program called loot, reading description pages carefully, and checking for conflicts in xedit. loot will order your plugins, but there are no guarantees that it will put them in the right place. hope that helps.

[schanez]

windsong and eeo should work fine as long as you load the eeo plugin after windsong. i'd personally not use eeo's face textures, as you could potentially have a color mismatch. for immersive armors you could get bodyslide 2 and the uunp sliders. you can find slider sets for vanilla armor and immersive armors both. the best ways to fix load order are, from least to greatest effectiveness: using a program called loot, reading description pages carefully, and checking for conflicts in xedit. loot will order your plugins, but there are no guarantees that it will put them in the right place. hope that helps.

 

I am slowly installing stuff, but I encountered another bother. Immersive Armors have a support patch for UNP up to v6, but the mod is currently at v8. So I guess that means I have to skip the UNP alltogether if I want the armor mods to not glitch? I failed to find an external UNP patch for it. Also I am uncertain if Cloaks of Skyrim will work with Winter is Comming. Both add the items to loot tables and vendors, but I am afraid that I can make NPCs wear a cloak and a pelt, as I am not sure if both mods use the same inventory slot for their items. I will keep searching.

 

As of load order, I am reading through requirements and going by logics. Loading the deeper mods earlier. I hope it will work ^.^

[ymf331]

well the uunp bodyslide version does 35 of the female armors and it should be compatible with either version. unp is pretty close to the vanilla shape, so the others should be ok still. winter is coming has a patch for cloaks of skyrim. you can use tes5edit to color code your mod conflicts to help you decide on load order.

 

1. open tes5edit and load all your plugins

 

2. right-click in the left pane and click 'apply filter'

 

3. uncheck the second and fourth boxes in the upper left and click 'ok'

 

then you can view the records that each plugin changes and see where you might need to find a patch or change load order.

[panurgy]

The Immersive Armors UNP plugin still works, it just doesn't support the most recent armor additions. As ymf331 said, BodySlide is a good option, because it allows you to use whatever body you want (including standard UNP) and there's a lot of support for it.

 

For sorting mods you should use LOOT. Install all your mods, then run it and they will be sorted. It will also give you warnings and information about your mod setup that you should usually pay attention to. Whenever you add mods, use LOOT to sort them.

 

Another tool you'll want is Wrye Bash. These days it's mostly used for it's Bashed Patch. After sorting your mods, open up WB, scroll to the bottom of the mod list, right click on the Bashed Patch (should always be last in your load order), and select "Rebuild Patch". You want to merge leveled lists, though it's also generally safe to merge mods if it offers to. Uncheck the other options if they're checked. The Bashed Patch takes conflicting changes from multiple mods and makes them work together (only regarding item leveled lists).

 

gopher has a lot of skyrim tutorial vids. There's also this one about WB (not from gopher).

[schanez]

For the most basic of load order, what to look out for? I am sorting it out more or less like this...

 

1. Skyrim Legendary Edition - base game, DLCs and HD Texture DLC;

2. SLE Unofficial Patch, SKSE, SkyUI;

3. any technical mods - sounds, survival features, etc.;

4. any extended world mods - ruins, expanded towns, villages, seperate quest locations;

5. any more NPCs mods;

6. any animation mods;

7. any looks mods - Windsong for now;

8. any armor/weapon mods;

 

Should it be fine? I haven't gotten into testing it out with the files posted earlier, as NMM takes ages for me to install a mod for some reason. I've been at it since yesterday.

[schanez]

Okay... After three full reinstalls of the game, I am totally lost. It seems I can't install even one mod for my game not to crash completely. Today I made an attempt to install Complete Crafting Overhaul. So I went for all the other stuff it needs. I kept to the order the mod's site asked for. I did not install anything else. Now during New Game the carts with the prisoners spawn in the middle of a forest. And I have no clue what could have possibly caused that. Are there any noobfriendly mods I could use? Or can someone tell me what mods are not compatible with each other? Like... All I want is some bonus immersion stuff. The additional travelers, or the immersive armors and weapons. But anything I try to install crashes my game for unknown reasons. What can I be possibly doing wrong? Is there some gold rule to install bonus NPCs before graphics mods, or that armors should go last? Because right now I am utterly hopeless and thinking of just playing vanilla.

[ymf331]

well, there's really no telling what records a mod changes unless it's explicitly stated by the author or you check yourself. you can let loot order your mods and follow all the descriptions, but there will be conflicts that aren't covered by doing that. if you want a good guide then check out skyrim revisited: legendary edition. you can use whatever mods you want and skip what you don't want, but if you follow all the steps to the end you'll have a working game and know how to add more to it without screwing things up.

[schanez]

Yeah, I limited the things I install at once and for now it seems to work more or less stable. I got myself both Immersive Armors and Weapons, Windsong faces change, Travelers of Skyrim and so other minor mods. Now am looking for something to fix the allpresent light... Darker nights and such.

 

I would like to thank you guys for the help. I would just die without you. Much appreciated.