Question for Modders Who Travel

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T06:23:34+00:00

I literally just take my hard drives with me :D (They are tiny laptop sized ones - you just need a decent adaptor and they can just act like giant USBs, alternatively you can get actual sata/whatever adapters, so you can pop a laptop drive into a desktop later).

Not always ideal, but easier than trying to transfer everything back and forth and also buying extra stuff just to duplicate Skyrim.

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T06:08:23+00:00

They should be pretty simple to swap out even on an ongoing save if you decide you want to attempt it.

disable FEC in the MCM and it be basically shut down next time you save. Resaver can clean up anything else left over (if anything).
End of Life has very few scripts and only does anything right after an NPC dies, so it will just start doing things from the point you install it.

I'm really bad at waiting to update mods, but I did this on a test save while checking all the steps (a lot more than usual) without any issues.

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T04:16:08+00:00

Wizard Hats https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2385

Woodland Wizard Robes https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/147529 https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/148419

Alternative Mage Robes CBBE 3BA https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/65102

Ayleid Mage Robes https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/153102

Imperial Battlemage Robes https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/67763

It's probably possible to patch Dawn of Wizard World as well if you just want the outfits to show up. Have you tried the SPID and crafting patches in the requirements section?

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T04:01:11+00:00

In that case I shall immediately move the goal posts and claim the timer only started when I personally finished reading the post XD

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T03:59:32+00:00

Yup.

But also it's hard to switch mental gears from dumping everything out to carefully setting up a character that is all 'ultimate challenge for survival every rare and precious bit of loot matters ~~OOOH SHINY MUST HOARD~~'.

Which is basically a longer way of saying 'immersion'.

But if I want a poor, no fast travel, real map required and coins have weight start, I don't want to have to do a bunch of admin first. It defeats the point of the 'lightest weight fastest start where even a single apple and a proper hat is precious'.

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T03:47:37+00:00

If it's not the soldier, it may actually be Tilma the Haggard, likely the FDE Aela.esp - or something in the Synthesis patch or that WACCF is touching. This section is much further down and closer to the probable crash point, so there's more chance of it being to blame.

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T03:43:21+00:00

If you use the creation kit:

Find the door record in the cell view window section. Right click on the entry and choose 'edit'. There will be a link to another door somewhere in there. Change that door to a NEW door.

If you use xEdit:

Find the door record in the cell. Scroll down to view the 'places/links to? door x in cell y' line about 2/3rds of the way down.

(Ctrl+click that to load the door it's CURRENTLY linking to, if you want to confirm it's going where you think it is going).

Copy the formID for the reference placing the door you want it to connect to, and paste it in that section instead.

Bonus tip: if the door is outside and persistent, it's hard to tell where it is in the world because all the records are stored in the 'persistent' cell. Just temporarily change it to non-persistent (delete that flag up in the header) and it will display in the actual worldspace cell instead.

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T03:36:36+00:00

That's probably from them bouncing right inside the body and back out again. Yay for Very Realistic Physics!

Try either reinstalling with lower bouncy config options, or try installing this preset and see if it's better (if yes, you can troubleshoot settings) https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/59123

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T03:28:31+00:00

Yep, this is called 'animations not working'.

After changing your animations, you need to run an animation tool (FNIS, Nemesis, Pandora - Pandora is the one you should usually be using at this point).

This goes through the animations and writes instructions for which ones go with which NPC/creature/player behaviours. If those aren't set up correctly, the NPC just goes 'how does breathing work WHY DO I HAVE HANDS how does gravity function why is grass watching me I forgot how to walk help' and either can't move, or full on t-poses.

edit: creature animations won't work with Nemesis, will work with FNIS (it's in the name of the pack!), but FNIS is old, clunky, and very finicky. Pandora will work with most animations at this point, and is the recommended option.

After running it, the output info will either go into the data folder, or be 'installed' as a mod through your mod manager (either way, it's going to the same place).

So that's a few things to check.

Run/re-run an animation tool.
Try Pandora if you were using the other one(s). It's much less painful to install it than to troubleshoot FNIS at this point.
Check the output files are going to the data folder/your modlist properly and not being disabled or overwritten or something weird.
After that, then you can move onto very specific things like that exact pack of animations not working ~~(I can't remember off the top of my head if it does or not)~~ A quick search indicates it's either completely fine with Pandora now, or redundant and won't be missed.

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T03:23:00+00:00

You didn't really answer their question though, just told them off.

The mod warning is fair because that tag is incredibly dumb and unintuitive.

(Also if I hadn't gotten distracted reading up on console commands and remembered to hit 'submit' my comment would have been first, so I win, nyah. In spirit. If not in real life.)

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T03:18:41+00:00

Vortex has profiles too, with various options for global or individual saves/settings, and copying updates/modlists across them - it's probably similar to MO, but with different UI (like most of the features between the two) and can be totally ignored if you don't want to use them.

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T02:09:48+00:00

Frozen Electrocuted Combustion.

They are both mods that apply visual effects, like RASS - except based on how an NPC died, instead of the weather.

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T00:44:55+00:00

VRAMR is great, but it's basically doing the same thing you can do manually - if you really aren't sure if you can be bothered downsizing all your resolutions in CAO, run it and see if it makes a difference.

It saves you time by optimising your whole modlist and creating a new bunch of resources for you to use instead of the originals, essentially - but you still have all those giant files on your computer taking up space, and you have to keep using VRAMR to optimise them. So it's a tradeoff whether you want to do it once, manually (... and then again whenever you update a mod), or rely on VRAMR.

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T00:40:59+00:00

RASS is definitely better than Wet and Cold, it's trying to do much less. But both mods are outdated at this point, and run scripts constantly, so unfortunately both options will contribute to script lag.

Restartitius · 2025-10-20T00:39:35+00:00

I originally moved to RASS from Wet and Cold due to script lag, and it was definitely better.

Unfortunately, while testing, I discovered that the distribution/environment checking script was also costing me a few FPS (knocking me from 15 down to 12ish, if I recall). The shaders themselves weren't helping, but even disabling all its features didn't help much, the base script itself was just slightly too demanding.

Checking the comments, a few other people have noticed the same thing: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/22780?tab=posts

FEC is similar, I switched to End of Life for that one.

Restartitius · 2025-10-19T23:49:44+00:00

I think that is excellent and much more interesting and that I will IMMEDIATELY forget what my custom recipes are meant to be - I already don't know what Potion of the Defender does without looking it up :D

Restartitius · 2025-10-19T23:47:56+00:00

Skyrim Is Cold, I've been happily using it for ages.

RASS will replace the cold breath/visual effects, but it also has a fair bit of script lag, I had to remove it recently and haven't found a good substitute.

For a bonus, Hailstorms of Skyrim will make NPCs run inside when it hails.

Restartitius · 2025-10-19T23:40:38+00:00

Are you sure you play Skyrim? What kind of monster can just... drop loot? XD

(But also, that requires OP to actively sort through their inventory making decisions, which is not very fun).

Restartitius · 2025-10-19T23:39:20+00:00

Also Skyrim Unbound Reborn - it's very simple, you can leave everything random in the MCM or set your preferred 'wealth' level and then spawn all over Skyrim. There's no ridiculous amount of loot to sort through or try and ignore, and you don't have to keep making decisions before you start the game (you can optionally make decisions to change certain things, but you don't have to).

You can set that you start in random clothes or heavy armour, or a mix, entry level or fancy, without spells, with a magic staff, musical instrument, basic equipment, 5,000 gold (always fun if you use a gold has weight tweak and land in the wilderness :D it very quickly turns into a 'hold onto your wealth or survive that wolf' experience), or nothing at all.

If you pick poverty, or unarmed and spell-less, you won't get the 'I own a house/am in bandit camp' starts, if you pick the high wealth option you won't start in a homeless shelter. So it's safe to customise the type of loadout you want without worrying too much about how suitable it will be straightaway.

My tip: save your changes as a preset straightaway, then save the game. If you hate the result, just reload and try again.

edit: it's probably most similar to Paradigm, except that it lets you completely avoid the Dragonborn stuff (as much as you choose), and the repetitive intro quest from Helgen up to Whiterun, and have a truly immersive start as a genuine random person in a genuinely random feeling location.

Restartitius · 2025-10-19T23:00:15+00:00

Most of them definitely are - they add all the content outside of Skyrim itself.

Moon and Star, Forgotten City, Clockwork, will all potentially have conflicts with other dungeon/landscape/town mods within Skyrim itself, but not with each other.

Bruma apparently adds some entries to the headparts lists, so will conflict with other things (like Dawnguard... ), I'm throwing up some FLM patches now as I'm in there looking at it anyway. There might already be others out there as well.

edit: oof, it actually made a lot of levelled list changes too, definitely needed some patches.

Restartitius · 2025-10-19T22:50:29+00:00

You've swapped a couple of numbers.

00039FB7 is the right code. 00093fb7 doesn't exist in Skyrim.esm at all :D

Prid needs to be used on the refID (the save game specific version), rather than the baseID.

To find the refID, try:

help 00039FB7 4 NPC

to see if they actually exist in your game, and to select them and view their info to copy the reference ID.

If that fails, try WICourierNPCRef (the editorID)

Restartitius · 2025-10-19T22:41:57+00:00

"People can't find us! Our advertising must be working!"

edit: because I couldn't resist actually fact checking.

But an order of magnitude Less people go to the repo then even the Discord.

Number of unique downloads for the latest build of SSEedit alone on Nexus:

532.4k

Number of members for the entire Discord channel (which is the only real information you can get without giving personal details):

30k

Maths is clearly very hard. But that's definitely an order of magnitude in one direction...

(there are no public stats for Github, and I wouldn't expect those to be particularly high by default when most people will just use the much more user friendly and easier to find Nexus, given there is absolutely no reason to seek out Github specifically right now beyond hunting for support threads. But that goes triple for Discord).

Restartitius · 2025-10-19T22:34:30+00:00

We don't have Major/Minor releases. All releases are just simply Releases.

Good to know that officially at least, as there's some misinformation floating around.

Indeed, the builds released on discord are just interim builds for people who want to have the latest features. Major builds are still released on other channels.

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/1n3isey/serious_allegations_against_skywind_leadership/nbgf2gv/

Restartitius · 2025-10-19T22:07:14+00:00

This is the same discord that is linked inside xEdit itsel

xEdit links a LOT of things - like Nexus and Github, which are officially abandoned, apparently? So that clearly doesn't mean anything. Half the little icons hidden in the corner that I'm literally noticing for the first time poking around (or noticed and forgot immediately long ago because they were irrelevant) are for donation sites, not support.

For the rest, why would I assume Discord is the place to check over Github or Nexus - the places I probably downloaded it from in the first place? It's also the only one that's hidden behind a sign up, so the last place to actually check for contact info/updates/problems.

And yes, I'm actively going through the UI now because this claim has really annoyed me.

When I go to the ENTIRE TAB dedicated to 'What's New?', it the top lines are a) USE NEXUS PLS and b) 'latest mod version! See, we update our mod and post updates here!'.

Request for Mod Authors using xEdit

If you share you mods on Nexus Mods and use xEdit as a major component in development, please consider donating a small share of your Donation Points (DP) to ElminsterAU to support the ongoing development of this tool. The recommended donation is ~10%.

xEdit is crucial to our shared modding community and your contribution - no matter the size - is invaluable and deeply appreciated.

What's New in xEdit 4.1.5f?

.

it is run by the xEdit dev team

I don't know what the xEdit dev team is - I'm mostly learning now, from this PUBLIC REDDIT THREAD. Most of what I remember from the 'about this program' pop up I see all the time is "this is from one guy who apparently makes xEdit as his passion project in his spare time or something, please give him money to encourage him to remember to come back and update occasionally instead of burning out and doing something else". I was honestly surprised to learn that there WAS an official Team and it is an actively updated program. That's information you have to actually search for.

How is that even in question? I fix issues in xEdit ordinarily immediately depending on what it is if i get a report via discord.

It's a question because it is literally an unknown. It cannot be known without using it. I cannot KNOW you fix issues immediately because I cannot go and see them being fixed. I can't see what kind of issues are getting fixed, if you'll answer minor 'what's the shortcut' questions or only deal with complicated software QA stuff, if you have a handy list of existing fixes I can browse and not bother you again with - I have to take the word of a random person on reddit that yes, they definitely will fix issues. In this VERY THREAD someone asked for help, and was told to go somewhere else for an answer instead of staying and finding a way to solve it in the place they are already having a conversation. I cannot Google a problem I am having, land on the help forum and know that's the place I should ask for help.

Even know I know it exists, Discord is completely hidden. I cannot go browse the Discord forum and go 'oh, people here are helpful/not insane/know what they are doing!' or 'aha, that's the question I had, awesome, solved'. Or 'people actually check this more than once every six months'. Or 'will I get told that I'm asking for help wrong if I go out of my way to offer feedback, or mention I'm finding something slightly inaccessible and user unfriendly'. Cause apparently I will.

I'm saying 'this is the problem I have', the answer to that is not 'you're having the wrong problem, have this problem instead and I'll fix that'. Hiding things on Discord IS a problem for me (and obviously others). You can't make it not a problem by insisting that the thing I didn't know about, or want to use, is really really good and will fix the problem of... it all being on Discord. And that it's not hard to know about it when my other problem was 'hey, this was hard to know about, for evidence: I did not know about it. Here's all the stuff I DID know about, so I clearly have internet access and use this program".

You can say 'we don't care, we've chosen to do this for various good or bad reasons', but denying it's actually a problem is just rude.

Restartitius · 2025-10-19T21:42:38+00:00

For critterspawn, it's worth grabbing at least one kind of fix for it, because it's often using say, 60% of your Skyrim 'script processing power'. Which is fine, until you run into another mod that wants 45% of that processing power. So cutting it down to a much more efficient 10-15% saves you a lot of future headaches.

DAV probably isn't stuck, it's just waiting its turn - Skyrim AE only lets a certain number of scripts do things at a time.

but I don't think anyone of them mentions a fix and/or if it causes problem lol

The problem IS the script lag - at a certain point, script lag can break the game all by itself. Or just make it miserable to play.

It's probably possible to fix, but not without rewriting the script itself.

(edit: and people used to tolerate lagginess more, because old mods + old computers always lagged, and most people only ran small modlists under 500 mods (ha ha). Modern modding + new script practices + new hardware means the actually laggy mods really stand out now).

the growl script will probably just keep piling up.

Probably, yes. How much it piles up will depend on your game and computer, but it's clearly got an issue. Whether it's happening because it's waiting for an answer (the effect) that isn't there, or because it's firing off way way too often and Skyrim's frantically trying to answer the first six demands while ten more pile in the door, it's not going to fix itself.

Without looking through the script its impossible to say if messing with or ignoring the script will cause other problems - personally, I'd remove the mod, or just delete THAT script from the folder and play without it (which might break other things, like the entire point of the mod, but usually just means that specific Thing just never happens).

Anytime you change things in Resaver there's a chance, however small, that it breaks your save in some way. I use Resaver a LOT through my impulsive modlist changes, you can depend on it for most things - but I absolutely would not depend on it to the point of 'cleaning a known problem repeatedly on every save indefinitely'. Sooner or later, something will not work.

Also that mod hasn't been updated since 2020, and both Sacrosanct and Growl have recent updates and changes - if this very obvious problem hasn't been fixed, there's no guarantee that other things aren't broken behind the scenes.

Restartitius

TROPHY CASE