We don’t have a Skyrim modding section, so I hope it’s OK to post a question thread here. If we have another one already I’ll ask that this one be closed, but I didn’t see any.

I just made a quick little mod to put pretty robes on the priestesses of Dibella in the Markarth Temple. It’s dependent on another esp. (I did that part in Wrye Smash.) It works, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve done something stupid. Other than making sure my esp loads after the one it’s dependent upon, should I do anything else? Did I just create a problem that’s going to pop up later?

Yikes!!

No problem. It's something I've done a lot for mods that have add-ons that are DLC-dependent. The add-on piece has the base mod (esp) as a master, so you can't try and use it alone. Remembering to flip the esp/esm bit whenever you fix anything is a pain, but it does work. Compatibility patches have to work that way, too.

If you use BOSS, you can declare your own personal mods' requirements in a userlist that supplements the communally-maintained modlist to keep the order consistent.

Awesome, thank you. I do use BOSS, and I was pulling my hair out thinking about needing to check my load order every time I use it. Never occurred to me to tell BOSS what it needs to know. Thank you, ghastley!



EDIT: OK, do I need BOSS Userlist Manager, or is this something I can do within BOSS? I’m not seeing anything in BOSS I can fiddle with. Which is probably for my own good.


EDIT 2: Perhaps I should check in the BOSS User Rules ReadMe. D'oh! Going to dig and read...


EDIT 3: I DID IT! And nothing exploded. Yay.

Now to deal with Hamal's unsightly axe. Hmm...

I have to confess to a strong temptation to reproduce the outfit on Dibella's statue for them - to be worn only in the locked-away part of the temple for ritual purposes. That would be a valid reason for keeping out the public!

And a reasonable incentive to check out the locked portion of the temple. I have a hard time starting The Heart of Dibella in a character-appropriate way. Except once Jerric broke in thinking that he was allowed, but he had only gained access in another of his games. Or maybe that was just his excuse.

Does Sam's quest deposit you in there?

Just in the outer, public part of the temple. You have to engage in shenanigans to upset the priestess who then offers you The Heart of Dibella quest. Spoilers below.

So I’ve started using Wrye Bash profiles. I think I’m doing it right. It seems that the profile that’s active when Bash loads is the one whose mods are checked off in the mods tab. Then if I switch profiles I have to quit and restart WB to show the mods tab correctly for the different profile, though it seems that using the Skyrim launch button (or whatever it’s called) uses the newly active profile and loads the mods correctly.

Is there something I’m missing? Is there something I should know to definitely not do? My ideas are starting to get complicated, and I’m worried that I’ve already sown the seeds of destruction.

Also I’m afraid to run BOSS now since I don’t know what it will do. Sort only the active profile?

BOSS will sort everything, but inactive mods won't have any effect on your game.

BOSS is actually sorting them all, as the order is the same for all the profiles, which just determine which mods are active.

It pays to have a separate bashed patch for each profile (just rename it to match the profile after you build it), so that pieces of one load list don't get patched into another. That build only considers the active mods. All the bashed patches should get sorted to about the same relative location, but only one will ever be activated at any time.

You need to make sure the toggle on Wrye Bash locking the load order lets BOSS make its changes, or it won't do anything but show you the intended order for you to set up manually. You can also drag and drop on the mods tab in Wrye to change the LO, which is useful for temporary checks on your own (or other unknown) mods.

Aha, that is exactly what was bothering me but I couldn't put my finger on it. Thank you! It took two cups of tea but now everyone has their own patch. Yay!

Does anyone know if there is a mod that makes the food in Skyrim more beneficial? I am not looking for an immersion mod.

I would prefer one that changes most of them to have some buff that lasts for a while like venison stew or Elsweyr fondue.

That would be nice. It would make the food more useful, since potions weigh less and are much more effective at healing, and I always get to a point where I have more potions than I can ever drink.

Yes, right now I see no point to carrying any of it except the stew and fondue.

Does anyone know how to make the race/faction specific war paints available to all races? Once upon a time there was a mod that made them all available to every race, but the author took it down from the Nexus.

I have looked through the Construction Kit, and cannot even find the warpaints listed anywhere. Except in the Race entries of course. But even with those, there are warpaints listed in the race that you still cannot select during character creation. Like the Breton Race has the Forsworn tattoos listed, but you cannot pick them. They all have a Boeitath tattoo too, that you cannot use.

I think (I'm not on my CK machine right now, so can't check) that you look in the Headparts list and update the Valid Races for the ones you want to make available. It's similar to the way an ArmorAddon is checked off for the races that can use it.

The other possibility is that there are Formlists to associate Headparts with races, so check that category too.

I found it. In the entry for each Race, in the Tint tab, the disabled ones just need you to go into each paint entry and set the Type to Paint. To add the new ones it looks like you just have to right click in the field, select new, and then manually select the .dds file. So I would have to unpack all the paint textures first.

Looks like a lot of work. Plus doing this affects the Race entries, which will cancel out any other mod I use that changes the Races. Decisions, decisions...

That may be the reason for others creating a "new race" just for that sort of thing.

Question: Any idea why some critter followers will follow you through doors and others won't? I haven't tested that many, but flame atronachs and sabre cats happily follow you through doors. Familiars, wolves and foxes simply wait outside until you come back out.

The reason I'm asking is that Buffy has a conjured fox - and it would be really neat if it would follow her through doors like her sabre cat does.

I found when I created new homes no followers would enter them until I created navmeshes for the buildings. So if you are seeing this with a modded area, that might be the case. Though I doubt it. If a human companion will follow you somewhere, I would think a fox or sabre cat ought to as well.

No modded areas. It's definitely something different about the critters themselves. As I said, I haven't tested that many but here is what I reliably see:

Flame atronachs and sabre cats follow through doors.

Wolves, foxes, familiars (wolf) don't.

In Oblivion, critters needed an intelligence of 30 or higher to go through doors but obviously that doesn't translate to Skyrim. In the CK, I don't see any readily apparent 'follows through doors' or such box to check.

Edit: Did a bit more testing. Bears can be added to the list of critters that will follow you through doors. None of the canines though, it appears - not familiars, wolves, foxes; again, I'm wondering if there is something simple I could change so they would follow like the cats and bears do.

Acadian, I’ve been working on my Ulfe mod and I found something to check for your conjured critters who can’t follow through doors. Open their race and look under the General Data tab. In the middle there’s a check box for Can’t Open Doors.

Now here I must emphasize that I don’t know if allowing the summoned canines to open doors will let all of the wolves of Skyrim enter buildings. In my mod I made a separate race for Ulfe to avoid such exciting surprises. Anyway I hope that helps!

Grits! You're my heroine! That worked perfectly. Sure enough the bear and sabre cat races have that box set so they can go through doors. My interest is in the fox race more than the dog and wolf races. Sure enough the fox race had the box set to preclude going through doors So I changed it for the fox race, tested it in game, and Buffy's little fox now follows her perfectly through doors!

We've been debating between sabre cats, bears and foxes. This is just our observations purely from a perspective of what best suits Buffy -

Sabre cats are too unreliable for Buffy. She's been hammered too many times while the cat is just deciding whether to get up from his nap or not. And he gets in the way of her bow by jumping up unpredictably.

Bears are actually quite reliable. Even though they sleep alot, they get up quickly to follow and stay close. They are big and can get in the way though requiring quite a bit of caution with Buffy's bow. They're also noisy, but we use a mod to dramatically lower the roaring and grunting volume of follower bears.

Foxes are incredibly attentive and reliable. They remind us of a clannfear in that they are reliable foe-seeking missiles. They rapidly inject themselves between Buffy and a foe and do a great job of keeping he foe occupied. They're small and stay low so shooting over them is easy. The fact that they do poor damage is actually good for Buffy and helps define their roles. The fox pins/distracts the foe in place so Buffy can do the killing. We've found that it makes for a superb team. Using the 'familiar visuals' like you helped me achieve simulates a magic shielding aura to account for the fact that our foxes take little damage (while also dealing out little damage). The biggest downside was that they couldn't follow through doors. Now they can! Another consideration is (as ever), Superian. A fox doesn't scare the other horses when Buffy pulls into a stable.

Another Superian consideration is that Buffy's critters are 'summoned' and 'unsummoned' by equipping and unequipping a ring - the primary benefit of that is that they can be 'summoned' from the saddle.

Anyway, thanks so much again for finding that gem of a tweak in the CK and posting it!

Congrats Grits on lighting the bulb that illuminated that problem! Often the smallest, simplest thing is the one that is our stumbling block.

As ever, you make very concise observations Acadian. I found with Mielikki that the bears were also excellent summons. Even though like you noted, they are so big they can get in the way. I am reminded of Oblivion, where I found that the boars were an ideal summoning for an archer - because like the clannfears and Sky foxes - they went straight for the enemy. They were also so low to the ground that you can always easily shoot over their heads. The Sabre Cats in Sky are like the Lions in Ob. They have that nasty habit of jumping up right when you shoot.

Well, the 'can open doors' tweak has really helped Buffy's fox become more alive.

She's traveling with a very neat Bosmeri Bard companion named Anduniel, who is incredibly interactive and custom voiced with thousands of lines of professionally added dialogue and has her own story and quests. Sha has full sandbox AI and her own horse. Andie doesn't count as a follower, so Buffy can also travel with a vanilla follower of her choice. Right now, that is Brelyna.

Buffy has her fox, Andie summons a spriggan and Brie summons astronauts - so there is plenty of combat power.

Convenient Horses + King Coin's Followers Can Relax give vanilla followers full horse abilities and add sandboxing to thier AI - the combo really brings vanilla followers to life and we're very much liking it.

It's nice that Superian has the company of other horses, and a group of three means someone can always watch the horses.

I’m so glad that check box did the trick! I never considered a fox follower, but Buffy’s fox friend sounds wonderful. I’m debating my next adventure in the Creation Kit. A fox animal follower/pet for The Boy (I found a texture that looks just like the one who lives in my back yard), a skeever follower, or a summonable Ghost Fox? A fox familiar would suit Darnand who is far more clever than wise, but the idea of a handsomely retextured skeever trailing along after him is just delicious. Also The Boy has a lot of summer homework and should not be encouraged to play Skyrim right now. Hmm.

I’ve recently switched to Convenient Horses, and I just love it. My favorite feature is that now everyone rides their own horse.

Another light bulb came on last night and I got Ulfe properly decked out in AleinSlof’s Better Dogs textures. I just had to make a new texture set! I’m still not sure what to do with the _s.dds file, though. Also Ulfe unexpectedly came along with Jerric without her recruit dialog, but she works.


Edit: Lildereth has spoken up and shuffled my priorities. This is what happens when I leave her idle in Anvil for too long. Apparently Darnand’s inner Witch requires a stag familiar. Since they’ve all learned to summon wolves with SubRosa’s Nature Summoning Lil thinks that a Ghost Fox might make a nice Conjure Familiar replacer. And the whole gang wants a pet skeever for Darnand.

The new and regroomed Ulfe looks marvelous! She is much more colorful than the vanilla dogs.

A summoned stag sounds neat. I never thought to use one of the normally prey animals for a summoning. But it works really well. Even if poor Darnand ends up with a rat instead! You could name his Scabbers...

An _s.dds file is a specular map. It determines how shiny a surface is. The blacker the color looks in the file, the less shiny the finished product will be. Add it to your new Texture Set. If there is a Specular line in the little graph area up at the top, select it, then click on the button down below to select the _s.dds file. You will see its full path name show up in the Texture field right next to the button.

If the Specular line is not there, I am not sure how to add it in. When I added Specular Maps for my Deadwalker Race, I copied a vanilla race texture set, and it was already there.

Thanks, I’ve been holding on to that texture forever. She’s really beautiful in the game! I can see Darnand getting stuck in a hall between a spectral stag and Jerric’s frost astronaut, lol. The fox familiar replacer was easy, so he might get his stag sooner than I thought. Oh, and funnily enough it seems that foxes are 0.6 scale. My first summoned fox was wolf sized!

Thank you for the specular map tip. There’s not a place for it in the texture set I made, so I’ll look around for a different set to copy. In the meantime if Ulfe’s coat looks especially lustrous and shiny we can blame it on Jerric’s refreshing homemade dog shampoo.

Orange for cleaning, aloe vera for moisturizing, and lavender for a nice scent. Perfect!

That reminds me, I have been thinking of making a cooking mod for Skyrim that adds more recipes. Not for straight healing, but for special effects. I was thinking Chicken Soup would be perfect for a Cure Disease. I would like to do something with the Gourds as well, since they are not used for anything in the game. Maybe some kind of squash dish. The same with green apples (Granny Smiths, or maybe Granny Steiners ).

Grits, I'm so glad you're having fun with critters! At 0.6, a fox is perfect to bite 'em on the knees while Lil shoots 'em in the chest. And I love the recipe for dog shampoo. Buffy and Jerric will have to swap recipes for grooming products. It's nice to see that, despite his rough edges, Abiene and Lil have him a little bit domesticated.

Found it! On the texture set page there are two check boxes, one of which puts a specular map entry in the list. Then you can click the entry and add the file. Thank you!

I’d love to see some more useful recipes, especially ones that use squash and clams. It seems I always have clam meat available. I was thinking about Three Sisters Stew for the squash, but Skyrim lacks beans and corn. D’oh! Chicken soup is perfect for Cure Disease.

Jerric’s friends have noticed that his coat is more nicely scented and lustrous since he started caring for Ulfe. I suppose now that he has shampoo and a brush handy he’s more likely to use them. Jerric could use Buffy’s advice for making shampoo in Skyrim. He starts off with juniper berries for astringent purposes but then he wants to add garlic for pest control!

When you said Three Sisters, the first thing I thought was the Inn in Leyawiin, with the three Khajiit sisters. The one who works, the one who worries, and the one is is mostly decorative. Then it clicked that you meant the Native American farming technique, which I even used in the TF!

OMG! So does that mean Ulfe's shampoo works on Big J because he's a dog, too?

In any case, I'm thinking of creating a new recipe called Flea Repellent (after an ironically interesting conversation with a particularly Interesting NPC regarding her underappreciated canine companion). But first I need to find a Skyrim analogue for chrysanthemum. Works better than garlic and doesn't smell so bad! Though the garlic recipe would be useful against vampires . . .

Add a few more hairs to Ulfe and you'd have a Nord!

I do miss custom spell potion names. Cooking is a fantastic addition for roleplay, but we have a lot of fun in Oblivion with named potions.


Edit: Looks like I was tired.

Hey everybody, I want to give dual casting a try.

The problem is that the mice I have don't support pressing both right and left buttons together - due to their physical configuration they support only either/or. So the dual casting, and the zoom perk in archery are lost on my character. She is beginning to experiment more with magic in this playthrough and I really want to give her that ability.

I do have a third-party mouse with distinct left/right buttons, but it is so jerky in its motion that I couldn't stand moving around the environment with it. So I went back to the standard Apple mice I have (Mighty Mouse, with a scrolling ball as the third button).

I tried searching on the Nexus to look for a mod that changes the way the mouse works when I'm dual equipped. I found this mod that sounds perfect for what I want to do, but it requires ScriptDragon. So far I've avoided mods that require this, because I'm not sure just what it is or how it will affect my game. I'm currently using SKSE and SkyUI and love what they do for my gaming experience.

Is there a simple way to modify the game (such as an ini edit) that allows me to dual-cast, zoom in archery, etc with either a single button press or even using the third button (scroll wheel) on my mouse? I really like the smooth movement and responsiveness of my Mighty Mouse and would like to keep using it.

Thanks!

Sorry, I didn't notice that you mentioned the scroll wheel. I thought it was the typical one button apple mouse that I used years ago when we had one at the computer store I used to work at. If it is the kind of scroll wheel that you can click like a button as well as spin, you might be able to map it to the left hand. Go to Controls, find the Left Hand, press space to select it, and then try clicking on your scroll wheel. It might work, it might not.

Already tried that, it kept telling me it was already reserved.

I'm not sure if Boot Camp/Win 7 is reading that as a left/right button or if another mod in my load list is already using that. I haven't come across any actions that can be traceable to it, though.

I just found an awesome plug-in the other day called New Animals and Fixes?, which adds a lot of new critters to the game, most of which are non-violent, or so I thought.

I've had a couple moose attack Claire, and I don't want this to happen, because I've been around moose when I lived on the west coast, they won't just attack humans. So I go into TES5 Edit, and try to see if I can change this. Oddly, moose are given an Aggression rating of Unaggressive, a Confidence rating of Cautious, Mood of Neutral .... nothing to suggest that they're anything but peaceful. Any idea how to fix this?

Was it a one-time occurrence or moose in general attack Claire?

I've been using Real Wildlife which adds some new subspecies of animals as well, both hostile and non-hostile, however it's possible for non-hostile creatures to get aggressive if they get attacked and have to defend themselves. What I'm saying is, that it's possible that some other critter or enemy attacked and provoked these animals, that's why they're now aggressive towards Claire.

"I figured it out". That was my motto for the year 2014, and it still pertains in 2015.

All I had to do was set the Moose's Awareness from Cautious to Cowardly, so it flees instead of stands its guard. I want to tweak this further though, because a large, 700-pound moose (or whatever they weigh) isn't going to just flee from a skimpy, 130-pound, snotty little elf. Ideally, the moose would just stand there, so I'm going to see if there are other options. I also want to see I there's anything which removes all the freeking bears in this game, especially in The Rift. XD There shouldn't be so many damn bears, and hardly anything for them to eat.

I read about Real Wildlife, but I'm trying not to add any more hostile creatures, and instead only focus on peaceful ones. That's how wildlife should be, lots of non-hostile critters, with only a few predators at the top of the food chain. New Animals & Fixes adds some hostile animals, but it focuses mainly on adding female versions of hostiles, and merely tweaks some of the males a bit.

Male moose typically weigh about 1000 pounds, though they can reach 1500 lbs. By comparison, white-tailed deer so prevalent around the US Midwest weigh in at about 300 lbs for the males and 125 lbs for the females (which explains why Errol Flynn can carry a full-grown buck across his shoulders - properly gutted of course). Horses in Cyrodiil typically run between 750 for Slof's and vanilla horses and 1500 lbs for Zira's horses. Skyrim horses are roughly between 1500 to 2000 lbs - they are heavy draft horses, after all.

Just sayin'.

Yowza, well I was only off by ... 800 pounds. *whistles*

This is not a mod question but an answer. Today I figured out how to make water transparent when viewed from above it and looking down into it. Go to WorldData -> WaterType, and you will see about two dozen different water entries. Open any one of them and go to the Fog Properties tab. Make sure the Above Water setting is toggled.

The two sliders to pay the most attention to are Fog Distance - Near Plane and Fog Distance - Far Plane. For water to be transparent from above, the Far Plane value has to be higher than the Near Plane. It does not take much. A little bit goes a long way here. Using the numbers rather than moving the sliders with the mouse works best here. I found that keeping the Near Plane at 0.0000 and the Far Plane at 300.0000 gives a nice amount of transparency. It is enough that you can see the bottom in places where the water is shallow enough to wade through without having to swim.

The Fog Amount also can be changed, but I found the value here did not make a huge difference. I wound up setting it all the way down to 0, and I still have quite a bit of fog in all the deeper area.

You're talking about going into the CK, right?

I opened it up the other day for the first time. Yowza! I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to navigate the darn thing, let alone look up a value for a specific quest!

Guess I have to find a good CK tutorial . . .

Has anyone used the Skyrim magical effects for Reflect Damage (Heavy Armor perk) or Absorb Spell (Atronach Stone/Perk) to re-create the spells they took away? Mellewen, being a Psijic acolyte, would like some more Mysticism spells/enchantments to go with her Absorb Health. Those two would be better as enchantments than spells, but "cast on self" would work as alternatives to the mage armour spells.

I may also create the Elemental Shield spells for her, which would work like Stoneflesh etc. but combine specific resistance to one element with the base defense, with each component being a bit lower. E.g. Stoneflesh gives 60 defense, whereas IceFlesh could provide 50 general defense + x points of resist frost. X wouldn't be 50, as the defense points cap at 576, not 85. Duration would stay the same. Mage Armour perk would affect only physical defense part. Magic resist would stack with Magic Resistance perk.

It would be fun to try and add a whole Mysticism skill tree, but I'm not sure I'm up for that.

The basics have not changed from the Oblivion Construction Set. So the TES Construction Set Wiki is still relevant for things like the difference between an .esp and .esm file, how to save files, and so forth. The Creation Kit is a good starting point for Skyrim specific stuff. Think of it as a user manual for the Creation Kit. It describes what everything does, and has many tutorials on things such as how to create a merchant, and so on.



I cnanot say I ever tried them. The elemental shields sound like wonderful ideas.

I haven’t but I second SubRosa in that these sound like wonderful ideas. For the longest time I actually thought that the flesh spells provided some magic resistance as well as the AR increase.

I’ve been meaning to take a crack at an Absorb Spell enchantment to recreate Jerric’s ring of Hump You Fetching Mages. I’ll see what I can come up with tomorrow. (Right now there is a growler of mosaic pale ale calling my name.)

OK, here’s a start. I made a spell absorption spell and enchantment and put them on a ring and a novice level Alteration spell. The enchantment can be placed on the same items as Resist Magic. Everything in the CK can be found by searching Grits, and the ring and spell tome can be found in-game by searching Absorption (not Absorb).

Here’s a dropbox link for the esp in case anyone wants to use it for anything: Spell Absorption. I hope it helps!

Mellewen found out the hard way trying to take on Otar in Ragnvald. That's why she asked for a slightly different spell. I'll give your absorption a try this weekend, and see if I can make some others.

I don't think it's possible to add a whole new Skill Tree for Mysticism, and even replacing one (such as Lockpicking, which I never use) would need tools I don't have. So the spells will have to be connected to the other schools for now.