Skyrim: Snapping The Remaining Strands of My Sanity One By One

[Silver Sorrow]

Title.

I've been...preoccupied...by Skyrim lately. It's been an epic -- in the sense of neverending torment for someone (by which I mean me) -- and frankly heartbreaking tale of woe, bitter capitulation, more woe, weary resignation, and a sprinkling of sub-psychotic rage.

To expound upon the general run of events:

LATE SPRING

1. Install Skyrim with the intent of revisiting the thing.

2. Realize I bought the Anniversary Edition upgrade for some reason a while back. Why? Dunno. I think it's just that I'm a completionist. Confound it all.

3. As a result, merely reinstalling my SE mods wouldn't cut it. So I'd have to update a few here and there, paying attention to whether or not they were AE-ready.

4. Lots of description page and requirement scrutiny ensues. Scads of it.

5. Resolve issues that arise. Done! It Just Works!

6. Realize that I'm not entirely happy with any of it. What's the point of rehashing the same experience with all these wonderful mods at my disposal? I need to change things up a bit.

EARLY SUMMER

7. Experimenting with new things. Lots of crashes.

8. Many, many crashes.

9. Not as happy with new things as I thought I'd be.

10. Wondering if Tainted Grail might be a better use of my time.

11. No, too obsessed with getting Skyrim the way I want it.

12. I'll come back to Tainted Grail later.

JUNE

13. Hundreds of mods. 141 esps, roughly 614 esls. Thanks to the lite plugin phenomenon, I haven't reached the 255 mod limit.

14. Still, I wonder if I'm overdoing it anyway.

15. Probably.

16. My hood's scarf doesn't blow in the wind. It should, right?

17. More mods to download.

JULY

18. HDT-SMP mods are a strange thing. They look good...sort of...if you're playing in 3rd person. Watch the wind whip that armor's cloth skirt around! Ain't that somethin'? Ehhhhh...I don't play in 3rd person all that much, if at all. I mean, the 1st person thing is what hooked me on Morrowind in the first place, you know? (I still have a hangup or two about isometric RPGs.)

19. Cloth/wig physics aren't all that important in the grand scheme of things. Forget it.

20. Goddamn conflicts. The Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch [USSEP] mucks with too many things, especially NPCs. Between USSEP and Legend of the Dragonborn [LotD], it seems like I have half a dozen patches for every friggin' mod.

21. Do I really need every damn location overhaul that JK has released? (For example, how often do I hang out in Arcadia's Cauldron??)

22. I really don't. While they make the world more visually interesting, I'm not sure it's all worth the trouble. Plus, each one -- and there are many of them -- need the aforementioned half-dozen patches each so they play nice with other mods.

23. Doubt has set in. There is unease in Paradise.

LATE JULY

24. Freezing. A soft crash that locks up the screen but doesn't actually CTD. This means that I have to kill the game via Task Manager, and thus CrashLogger can't inform me of what's causing the problem.

25. Drat.

26. The freeze is consistent. I resign myself to the wearisome/tedious/maddening pursuit of fixing the problem via the Process of Elimination method (aka, the "One By One By One By One..." dance).

27. I narrow it down to SMIM. I never liked that mod for some reason. I shall hereby shun it.

28. With that yanked out and executed at dawn (or thereabouts...I keep weird hours), I reenable other mods and enjoy the sensation of a freeze-free existence.

29. Out of morbid curiosity, I fast-travel to the place where I was freezing up.

30. Freeze.

31. Fudge nuggets.

32. I know it's my fault. Entirely my fault. I messed up something, somewhere, and now it's biting me in the ass.

AUGUST, SO SOON??

33. Tear everything out. Reinstall the game. Resign myself to rebuilding with Vortex's help.

[Side Note: due to a curiously peristent stubborn streak, I was determined to install everything manually and just use Wrye Bash. I dislike mod managers in general (MO2 is annoyingly technical in nature and Vortex is...well, Vortex), but I've used Bash for years with few problems...at least, none that I can recall. But some mods are insanely complicated to install manually and knowing my tendency to screw things up, I realized that I needed the help. So...is it personal growth or just defeated capitulation?]

34. This will be it. No JK's Skyrim, no elaborate remeshes/retextures of glaciers...and no USSEP! (Nothing against USSEP or its author, but it just makes too many changes to the NPCs that I have to screw around with xedit to resolve conflicts and such, and I don't trust myself NOT to wreck something important. So I try to keep my xedit-ing to a minimum.)

35. ...goddamn YouTube. With titles like "A Million MUST-HAVE Skyrim mods you just can't live without!" I gotta watch, right? You understand, right? Of course you do.

36. That's...that's a lot of new mods. And each one has at least two other mods as hard requirements. Yaaaaaaaaaaay...

37. Four days. Four...days. Finally got everything installed and...hell's bells, it actually works! At least, so far. But...

38. Why is that bandit purple? And why, when I shot that wolf as it lunged at me, did it launch itself at light speed right through me? (Never did find it; it's probably sailing past Betelgeuse right about now.)

39. Clearly, I need to tweak a few things.

40. Do I need new first person animations? No, I do not.

41. Do I need 3rd person-centric combat animations? No.

42. Do I need the Nemesis engine, when FNIS PCEA worked perfectly well for me? Nope.

44. What, exactly, is the benefit of "skin variations" among NPCs? I have no idea, but the bandit's skin textures worked after I got rid of that mod.

45. So I got rid of the fancy-shmancy Nemesis (which will probably be replaced by Pandora in  terms of user interest) and reinstalled FNIS with my faithful old animations. They're not dynamic, nor do they involve a complicated config process, but they work.

[Side Note: we're at the point where "modder" is being used -- mostly by drooling morons -- to describe those who *use* mods. Actual modders, i.e., those who *create* mods, are being referred to as creators or authors instead of the far more accurate "modder". (Example: "I'm a modder! Because I modify my game with mods! I  also eat my boogers!") I hate the human race so...much...that flames...flames...on the side of my face...]

46. I'm glad I'm numbering these things. It gives me an excellent sense of just how far down the slope of frazzled madness I've slipped.

47. Where was I? Oh, right: building myself a comfy coffin fine-tuning the experience. So I think I have everything where it should be. I had to copy in a few of the "nitpicky mods" (as I call 'em) to make it right, such as the one that stops combat music when combat is over, or the Bag of Holding. That sort of thing.

48. The biggest changes I've made to my mod list are:

- Experience. Gain XP and level up through exploration and completing quests, etc., instead of how many times you've stabbed others.

- Adamant. An overhaul of the skill/perk system.

- RaceMenu. I've messed with it before, and I've never been totally on board with it. I just preferred the comparitively simple Enhanced Character Edit. But I was willing to give it another shot, just for the fact that it has a lot more features, what with overlays and the like.

- HDT-SMP Physics. This required installing a couple of additional physics-friendly mods to enhance CBBE. I didn't appreciate the ordeal, but I guess as long as my ponytail blows in the wind, it was worth it.

So I guess that's it for the moment. I'll remember something I forgot to mention sometime around 3am or so. Anyway, I should post screenshots now.

This is a comparison between a character made in ECE and Racemenu:

ECE:

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RaceMenu:

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You can see what I mean. I think with a bit of fine-tuning, I can get the latter to look more like the former, but...I don't know. They each have their own particular charm. There's no easy way to port ECE saves into RM, as they use different sliders and head meshes. And even then, the results won't be the same. So why bother? In fact, the RM version is growing on me...she seems more in line with a stealth archer/psycho assassin build, I guess.

Amendment: I didn't try to recreate the ECE face in RM. I could -- at least, I think I could -- but the RM result was just me mucking about with sliders. (It actually looked fairly decent by default, without any adjustments.) My intent was to see if I could make a good looking face without too much trouble.

On a completely unrelated side note: there's an excellent Lucy Liu preset for RM (right here), but it doesn't look good when used on my custom race, as expected. It didn't even work right when I tried in the suggested manner; I suspect that I missed one or more of the eight thousand necessary mods. But I applaud the effort anyway. (Shades of the Fallout 4 preset torment: "You'll need all of these mods...3,245 of 'em...each one configured in a specific way...and each one with an additional twelve mods, all of them hard requirements. Then, and only then, will you be able to play as Carrie Fisher.")

[Silver Sorrow]

NPC replacers. So many different takes on so many different NPCs.

Oh, my head. I think something popped in there. Tylenol, STAT.

To begin, there's load order in conjunction with most other mods. That's the easy part: load your NPC mods near the bottom of your LO. But...what about with each other? Ah, now that's where it gets tricky.

Because these things depend on the whim of the author, a lot of the time they're unfocused and scattershot in just who they alter. You might have Pandorable's delightful faces, all the races mixed together (not to mention her all-in-one (AIO) packs...the same with Dibella's Blessing. Or you have the organized-by-race Children Of The [Pariah/Ash/First/Green/etc] series, with a focus on NPCs, male and female, of a particular race.

Now here's where it goes from merely tricky to downright diabolical: what happens to your LO -- and what's left of your mind -- if you like the Dibella's Blessing version of Elisif the Fair over Pandorable's version...but at the same time you prefer Pandorable's Faralda to the Dibella's Blessing version? That's when I started seeing things out of the corner of my eye...inexplicable things falling from the ceiling and disappearing...shadows that move without reason...whispering from the corners...a roaring in my ears that no one else can hear...

...what is that clicking sound? Does anyone else hear that?...

ANYWAY, so what then? Which one loads first?

The truly demented insane completely goddamn unhinged dedicated individual could go through all the conflicts one by one with xEdit and remove the ones they don't want and make sure that the facegenmorph meshes and corresponding face textures are the right ones -- and you can't rely on Vortex to be of any help -- because otherwise the brown face thing pops up and the dedicated individual in question decides to wander off and shop for display shelves online. I have my eye on a couple from Walmart, but half of the reviews claim they're great and the other half claim they're complete crap and who am I to believe? Yea or nay? Should I buy one ($37) and find out for myself? Or should I go to Big Lots! and find one there?

That clicking sound is definitely coming from over there. Or somewhere. Doesn't anyone hear that??

Okay, never mind the NPCs. To hell with the shelves. I guess I can line my Transformers up on the floor or something. I'll cosplay Unicron and stomp 'em all flat. Yeah.

Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp. HA! Take THAT, Cybertron!

Click click click click?

Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong, I say.

Stop the clicking!

Before I completely disintegrate, I should post a couple of screenshots.

Murray?

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Sadly, he doesn't respond.

I'm back to ECE. Racemenu...I don't know. 16 million sliders and I never could get it right. So...yeah. ECE.

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Is this the face of a killer? Ask the Emperor. Or his ghost.

Apart from the bedevilment of the NPC dilemma, I've had to reinstall the [expletive deleted] game since my last post. Something wasn't right -- upon being shot, bandits should not fling themselves across the map -- and I suspect it was all the fault of a physics mod. I think. So I've dumped all physics-based mods for this go-round. Who needs flippy-flappy hair, anyway? It looks dumber than the static hair.

Okay. Get away from the computer for a while. Maybe get a pizza. Go scream at some clouds.

EDIT: the NPC thing? Looking into EasyNPC. This might be the answer. Or it might not be. Either way, I should be able to derive hours of irritation from the experience.

[Silver Sorrow]

It must be September: the delicate turn of light, the mornings turning crisp, the lovely taste of Halls Mentho-Lyptus mixing with 100% cranberry juice...gag.

Mostly screenshots for the moment. Nothing truly new to report, but it all seems to be working, for once. A lot of my time is spent fixing this and that -- a missing texture here, armor that needs Bodysliding there, a random encounter that should have been fixed by a mod but wasn't, and so on -- until at last I will achieve: Godd Enough. I'm not aiming for perfection, I just want it to be Good Enough.

So...

Mucking about with Tainted Grail, I was intrigued by how blatantly the female characters are portrayed as not being fashion models. I mean, the sheer gall of these guys. Still, I found it interesting:

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[I'd have played more of TG, but it came out when I was going through a few eye surgery issues and couldn't really commit to it; I've since picked up on it again.]

So I thought I'd go ahead and apply the same aesthetic to my Skyrim test subject -- remember the endless tweaking? yes, I have no real attachment to the current character -- and so...

I went from this:

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To THIS:

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And then I thought, could I make it creepier? [Besides restoring the original Skyrim textures, I mean. ] And I remembered that a few years ago I had attempted to make glowing eyes and abandoned it, for some reason. So I fixed it all up and realized that yes, I COULD make it creepier:

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I also decided that the Forsworn needed some help, fashion-wise.

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She's so embarrassed. And I don't blame her. Shame on me.

On a side note, I am enjoying Skyrim life without jiggle physics. Boob armor? It's awesome. Give me more. But here's where I draw the line: boobs on Steel Plate armor should not jiggle. Ever.

Well, it's almost lunchtime. Time to go stare at whatever I have in the fridge and think, nah...I'm gettin' tacos.

[Silver Sorrow]

So I was messing about with my Xiangshi race, something I hadn't done in a decade, maybe. (The standard Xian are ludicrously OP as it is, the X-shi are pretty much god mode without the hassle of using the console, so playing that race colors the experience somewhat.) Anyway, I ended up with this:

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Pan down and I'll kill you.

She is exactly the aesthetic I intended for that race. If anyone recalls, I included the X-shi in my Oblivion mod, and the thing I was going for...eludes me, really. I'm just not sure what my goals were. I suppose, by treating old screenshots and the elements left in the options available to the player as perhaps archaeological relics, then I can put together a decidedly murky picture of my intentions: as far as I can tell, I was going for some sort of ghostly pseudo-Asian goth chick. This does not surprise me.

So...what would complement her style?

It's a question that plagues me with every character; for the Xian, I usually go with -- depending on play style -- either black or black. I know: crazy, right? But not everything should be impenetrable Vanta black leather...a statement that is so utterly alien to my stupid pathetic rut typical way of dressing them that I cannot believe I could bear to even entertain the thought, let alone do something about it.

Blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I was staring at my character...squinting, actually, as she's very pale. And I suddenly had an idea--

I know, I know. I should really stop having those.

--and I thought, hey, what about white Glass armor? The idea was so stupid that I just had to do it.

[Clarification: the idea itself wasn't stupid; the stupid part is the amount of effort I would have to put into yet another useless project.]

Since I'm nearly narcoleptic these days, I wondered if someone else had done something similar so I could save myself time better spent on sleeping on the couch. I mean...there had to be white Glass, right? Fourteen years of mods, people!

There actually was such a mod. They called it Frost White Glass and Armor Retexture, and it was almost exactly what I was looking for. Almost. (I was pleased that I wouldn't have to do the texture work myself, as I'm not exactly great at such work and would prefer to take the easy way out, if one exists.)

But then another thought assaulted me in that completely unnecessary way that thoughts tend to do: what about refractive glass? I recalled something about a refractive stalhrim mod, so was there a version for regular glass armor?

Oh, but of course there was: Light Refracting Glass Armor and Weapons. Aha. I  thought it would be an interesting use of my rare conscious time...rather, a good way to kill the hours until I could happily fall asleep again...to combine the two concepts.

It took some fidgety editing on my part -- DXTBmp, though ancient (apparently), is still a great tool for someone wanting merely to import/export alpha channels without cracking open the paint.net manual -- but I managed to combine the Frost textures and the alphas of the refractive mod's textures.

Talk, talk, talk. Let's skip over the tedium of nifskope work and all that other boring stuff and cut straight to the results:

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I think it works. It's a bit busy for the eyes, but that's just a personal quibble based on eye surgery recovery. I actually like the end result...otherwise, this post would have a completely different tone. ("Hey, look what I screwed up this weekend! Ain't I DUMB!")

Notes:

- I have no interest in the blunt weapons so I haven't put them in there yet. I have the swords, dagger, and bow. But no axes or hammers. Pity, I know...but I never use 'em.

- I wonder if I should find a way to make katanas a thing with the same aesthetic, or maybe I could use something that's already in my arsenal. I'll check to see if that one works.

- I don't like the Glass helmet at all, never have. But I included it just for the hell of it. What you seen in the screens is the end result of me managing somehow to adapt the Glass crowns from Crown Helmets Redux without crashing the damn game. I'm (lazily) looking into alternatives as well. Maybe something about horns. I don't know yet.

- I'm not thrilled with the shield (to put it mildly). The edges are *clear*, and it's not what I want. Maybe I could tweak the alpha a bit. Later, though. I don't use shields much anyway.

- The bow and quiver are something I really wanted to get working, and I'm happy with that, at the very least.

- Where it looks as if she's has a clear spot over her sternum is just a thing with the light; it's actually chainmail under there.

- This uses the CBBE option (as opposed to Vanilla). There is no Bodyslide made available, nor has anyone made one. So I have to go with the standard whatever. The good thing is that the default shape isn't all that far from the slider preset I use. So it's something I can live with. (I have to; the whole Bodyslide thing is beyond me.)

- The name I came up for it is "Winterglass", which doesn't represent my finest naming efforts, but it'll do.

- Yes, there's a male version. Hooray for Equality.

- I'm also (again, lazily) looking into Glass alternatives that I could twist into my own vision of...of...of whatever this might represent.

- I have a white leather version the Dark Brotherhood outfit that might work for her, too.

- What are the odds that I'll just use the white leather armor and never touch this armor (in-game) again?

- I'm fickle like that. And randomly impulsive. And subject to whim.

In all, a good use...that is: waste...of a Saturday. I'm tired of typing. The post is done.