The Elder Scrolls: It's the IX Divines, you milk-drinkers

[Malistrae]

Doesn't work: Vampires are automatically in Molag Bal's employ, and thus goes double for the Volkihar breed.

As for Nocturnal, I just headcanon that the Dragonborn tries to even the scales with a question: "Can the Sepulcher be kept open without the Key?" and a boon: Allow me to keep the Key for a fortnight after Mercer's death, but is overruled by a panicky Karliah.

Well, technically, Vampires are indeed creations of Molag Bal, but they are completely free to do as they wish. The Nocturnal-deal is bad, not because you have to guard the Sepulcher while alive (which can be easily delegated to minions), but because your soul is bound to guard the Sepulcher after your death (like Gallus). As a vampire, you will never die of natural causes, which means that you can keep delegating the task for eternity, instead of having to do so personally as a nightingale shade.

[Ailurus]

It would be hilarious if daedric princes can't claim dragon souls in the same way they can claim mortal souls.

Unfortunately, Miraak pretty much disproves that. He has more power and self-determination than an average mortal would, true, but he's still thoroughly claimed by Mora.

[Sajiri]

I am once again going through the process of a clean skyrim install followed by a mod hunt, but this time Im trying to be picky about which mods I put in, since I have a habit of just throwing in anything that sounds interesting with the intention to play it later, and never do.

I'm trying to figure out a build to play, since it always seems that no matter what I intend to do, I always end up defaulting to arcane archer, occasionally switching out the bow for dual wield instead. As much as I love the build, I keep wanting to try something different but just never do. I want to try a sort of druid/nature themed character but I'm really not sure how to go about it.

Im not big on pure mage characters, I prefer to use weapons and stealth, but I did find this mod that adds some interesting druid spells. Thinking of using animals, either from this or Tame the Beasts of skyrim mod, maybe some alteration/conjuration, possibly a bow (again), although this sounds more ranger-ish than druid-ish.

I also came across the Skyrim Romance mod Im eager to try out. Most mod companions seem to be busty females, particularly any companions that have some kind of plot or quests to them (most male companions made like this always seem to be abandoned before they're finished), which is fine, but Im kind of tired of female companions and the lackluster choices of male marriage options. Also it adds Bishop, one of my favourite game characters of all time.

Edit: Also, I used to use BOSS, but now I see posts in various sites talking about something called LOOT and that BOSS is outdated? Should I be ditching BOSS for LOOT?

[Forbiddenwar]

Edit: Also, I used to use BOSS, but now I see posts in various sites talking about something called LOOT and that BOSS is outdated? Should I be ditching BOSS for LOOT?

To piggy back on this question, what's the difference between BOSS, LOOT, and the built in mod manager? I have 25 mods, some from workshop and some from nexus, that all seem to work well with the built in manager.

[GloatingSwine]

To piggy back on this question, what's the difference between BOSS, LOOT, and the built in mod manager? I have 25 mods, some from workshop and some from nexus, that all seem to work well with the built in manager.

BOSS is a tool which sorts the order mods load in which can avoid some conflicts when they modify the same .nif files.

I presume LOOT does the same.

[NEO|Phyte]

Uh, I don't recall which is which because I don't mod my skyrim to the degree of needing a manager, but between BOSS and LOOT, one of them is the newer version of the older, so there is literally no reason to use the older one.

[Winter_Wolf]

LOOT is the current mod sort order manager, and has served me better than BOSS. Unfortunately it's not really intuitive, and doesn't explain some of the things you see in the program that you *could* tweak. Presumably the numbers there are to "weight" certain mods so they load in a specific place because of whatever conditions mods have for load order which haven't been addressed by the master file yet. Fortunately, the master file seems to be pretty solid/up-to-date and I've never had to fiddle around with anything beyond "run LOOT" to make things work without conflicts.

I have had to change my .bat files because if I add/change/remove mods, my load order changes and the reference number changes, breaking my .bat files. Guess that's a good argument for fiddling with things in LOOT, but I use Nexus Mod Manager and just try to put the mod back in "its slot" if I can. It's easy enough to open my .bat file and see what the number is and adjust it up or down accordingly (or just rewrite the bloody thing yet again) so I don't worry about it too much.

Truly LOOT and BOSS aren't all the time things, but if like me you download and install a boatload of mods at once and want to save yourself the headache of trying to place things so they'll all (mostly) play nice together, it's totally worth it.

[Sajiri]

LOOT is the current mod sort order manager, and has served me better than BOSS. Unfortunately it's not really intuitive, and doesn't explain some of the things you see in the program that you *could* tweak. Presumably the numbers there are to "weight" certain mods so they load in a specific place because of whatever conditions mods have for load order which haven't been addressed by the master file yet. Fortunately, the master file seems to be pretty solid/up-to-date and I've never had to fiddle around with anything beyond "run LOOT" to make things work without conflicts.

I have had to change my .bat files because if I add/change/remove mods, my load order changes and the reference number changes, breaking my .bat files. Guess that's a good argument for fiddling with things in LOOT, but I use Nexus Mod Manager and just try to put the mod back in "its slot" if I can. It's easy enough to open my .bat file and see what the number is and adjust it up or down accordingly (or just rewrite the bloody thing yet again) so I don't worry about it too much.

Truly LOOT and BOSS aren't all the time things, but if like me you download and install a boatload of mods at once and want to save yourself the headache of trying to place things so they'll all (mostly) play nice together, it's totally worth it.

I mostly used BOSS to set a basic load order then I adjusted things as I needed it, also to tell me what mods needed cleaning. The only new mod Im looking at is that skyrim romance one, and I know that has to go at the bottom of the load order. Does LOOT give you the message about which mods need to be cleaned?

[Triaxx]

Cerwiden is still an excellent female companion, who's romanceable, but not particularly busty. She's got her own quest and plot attached as well.

I still approve of Midas Magic. It adds an Entangle Spell (Which is just a wall spell that momentarily stuns enemies to slow them.) And steam and bug spray spells. It also had a summon Spriggan spell if I remember correctly. And also a spell to transform into a wolf. Very druidish. Naturally, more mage spells, but those are the druid flavor ones I recall.

One thing you might want to try is to play a character who refuses to touch ranged weapons. I had one insanely fun character, who would not even pick up bows. Female nord, with sword and board. I played her as a Paladin type, and she didn't think ranged weapons were particularly honorable. (Of course that made dragon fights a little more of a challenge. Fortunately the character was a Dovakiin and so I was able to use Fire Breath as a substitute when they wouldn't land.

[veti]

One thing you might want to try is to play a character who refuses to touch ranged weapons. I had one insanely fun character, who would not even pick up bows. Female nord, with sword and board. I played her as a Paladin type, and she didn't think ranged weapons were particularly honorable. (Of course that made dragon fights a little more of a challenge. Fortunately the character was a Dovakiin and so I was able to use Fire Breath as a substitute when they wouldn't land.

I've played that character, and pre-Dragonrend, I never found a dragon I couldn't entice or trick into landing. Usually, taking cover from their breath weapon will do it after a while. Seems it really irks them when they can't fry from the sky, to the point where they'll actually land in order to get up close. Then you've got them.

[Sajiri]

Cerwiden is still an excellent female companion, who's romanceable, but not particularly busty. She's got her own quest and plot attached as well.

The bustiness doesn't bother me :p its the fact that the good companions who are romanceable and have their own quests are generally female ones, and the few male ones like that tend to be abandoned before the mod is finished. Although I was curious about Cerwiden anyway, my partner played with her and said something like, she was great but he couldnt dismiss her, or something? I can't recall what it was, but when he was trying to play Dawnguard he was getting really annoyed and had to uninstall the entire mod.

I've tried playing non ranged characters before. Tried a 2h axe user and a dualwield character, it was fun that I got to see some pretty awesome killmoves for a change but I felt weird that I was able to just run straight through a dungeon slashing at anything in my way, when I was used to sneaking and sniping. Also there's just something so satisfying about running around/away and still shooting things when the sneak is broken.

[Winter_Wolf]

I mostly used BOSS to set a basic load order then I adjusted things as I needed it, also to tell me what mods needed cleaning. The only new mod Im looking at is that skyrim romance one, and I know that has to go at the bottom of the load order. Does LOOT give you the message about which mods need to be cleaned?

I believe it does make mention of dirty edits and some kind of errors, it certainly has color coding for something. Honestly I gave up trying to fiddle with cleaning mods because there were too many "do clean it" "don't clean it" "I already cleaned what needed to be cleaned but leave these dirty edits" instructions in just about every other mod I have. But I'm pretty sure it tells you whether there are dirty edits or other errors and whatnots.

I've kind of reached my saturation point on mods, now I have to delete one before I add one otherwise it starts giving me big performance hits. I'm right on the line, as it were.

[Sajiri]

[QUOTE=Winter_Wolf;18631867

I've kind of reached my saturation point on mods, now I have to delete one before I add one otherwise it starts giving me big performance hits. I'm right on the line, as it were.[/QUOTE]

Thats why there tends to come a point where I find it easier to just spend 1-2 days starting over from a clean install rather than constantly trying to deal with mod conflicts and bloat

[ArlEammon]

My Dawnguard content is gone from Steam. . . :(

how do I get it back?

[ArlEammon]

Also, I checked my mods. . .the mod it wants me to uninstall isn't even there. . .

It says something about Trolling Dragons, but it's not in my load order.

[Winter_Wolf]

Also, I checked my mods. . .the mod it wants me to uninstall isn't even there. . .

It says something about Trolling Dragons, but it's not in my load order.

I had a ghost mod problem once, but as it happened I did something to utterly break my install of Skyrim (and I'm inclined to blame QD Inventory for that) so I had no choice but to do a complete clean re-install. Kind of the inverse of Nexus Mod Manager when they released the update that required one to un-install and re-install every. single. mod. Eventually I did get around to it, but for a long time NMM was spitting out "not installed" even though I was running said mods.

[Feytalist]

I've played that character, and pre-Dragonrend, I never found a dragon I couldn't entice or trick into landing. Usually, taking cover from their breath weapon will do it after a while. Seems it really irks them when they can't fry from the sky, to the point where they'll actually land in order to get up close. Then you've got them.

Yeah, I've played this style before too. I used to just keep hitting them with Marked For Death while I waited for them to land. Once they land (after about three shouts), I very often OHKO'd them with a sprinting two-handed power attack. Feels good.

[ArlEammon]

I had a ghost mod problem once, but as it happened I did something to utterly break my install of Skyrim (and I'm inclined to blame QD Inventory for that) so I had no choice but to do a complete clean re-install. Kind of the inverse of Nexus Mod Manager when they released the update that required one to un-install and re-install every. single. mod. Eventually I did get around to it, but for a long time NMM was spitting out "not installed" even though I was running said mods.

I fixed the problem. :D

[ArlEammon]

Now all my Dawnguard content disappeared. And it's not in my store pages either in my account. I know I bought it. :|

I should have Dawnguard, Dragonborn with it. . . I got Dragonborn, thank God, but not Dawnguard.

[Sajiri]

So..Im having an odd glitch I've never had before. Im going into the Bee and Barb to try to start the Promises to Keep quest to get Frost, but Louis Letrush won't talk to me to start it. I never use the console for anything to do with quests before, but I tried using it to advance to various stages of the quest to at least get to the part where Frost will be spawned. I head out there, there's no Frost. I go inside to steal the lineage papers, no papers. I reloaded and tried disable/enable on Louis and still won't talk to me.

Anyone know if there's a way for me to start this quest properly, or just spawn Frost into my game?

[Togath]

Is there any risk to using the coc qasmoke room to acquire items if I really want a specific set?(as in, hard/impossible to obtain stuff, like the wedding outfit)

[Ailurus]

Is there any risk to using the coc qasmoke room to acquire items if I really want a specific set?(as in, hard/impossible to obtain stuff, like the wedding outfit)

I can't see one off the top of my head, but if you're using console commands anyway why not just use additem to add it?

[Kareeah_Indaga]

As it's been more than fifty pages I think I can ask this again.

I'm still having trouble modding in more eye colors. My steps have been thus:

--Save a new eye color as a .dds
--duplicate an existing eye texture in the Creation Kit, giving it an appropriate name
--set the saved .dds as the new texture
--set the texture's other fields to match existing textures (So the Normal/Gloss, Environment Mask, and Environment fields are set and the rest are blank).
--Duplicate the Headpart for the eye, setting the texture to my new texture

When I check the Race menu, the new eyes are available, but selecting them throws up an error ("MODELS: TES::CreateTextureImage unable to create image for <file name and location here>. "Yes to all will disable all Warnings for this context.") and all that displays are the default brown eyes.

Is there a step that I'm missing or a setting I need to set?

[Lorn]

So recently, I've been having an issue with Skyrim - and, on later testing, Oblivion. Figured someone might have encountered the same here.

Basically, the mouse is *always* scrolling in whichever direction I last told it to scroll. So I can't have my zoom on anything but the two extremes (ie, first person/an billion miles away) which is playable, just a bit of a pain. This also translates to menus (I can't scroll - it just goes straight to the top of bottom), the Skyrim quick-select items, waiting or resting.

I've googled the issue and found some not very helpful advice like "disable your mouse software, that'll stop the zooming!" which is, to be honest, not what I'm looking for - I don't want to have to mess around with my main computer settings for a couple of games. Setting .bat files to play Age of Empires without the colours b0rking is acceptable, anything more complex than that (ie, that requires me to manually do it each time) is not an option.

My mouse is a Kensington Expert Optical Trackball, however I've found reports of people having the issue with other mice as well, mostly non-trackballs (for I am a strange person who prefers a stationary mouse.)

Has anyone else encountered this issue or know of a fix? I'm kind of stuck on fixing it, and it's basically making both games nigh unplayable...

[Togath]

I can't see one off the top of my head, but if you're using console commands anyway why not just use additem to add it?

Because I have limited internet right now :3
But aye, I suppose it's unlikely to have had an effect.

[Flickerdart]

What are the bets mods for better faces, armor textures, and door textures? These seem like the most common up-close objects and they're all super ugly.

[Malistrae]

What are the bets mods for better faces, armor textures, and door textures? These seem like the most common up-close objects and they're all super ugly.

Vanilla female faces are okay-ish, but there are a lot of excellent texture mods for them (depends if you prefer ultra-realistic skins, or more doll-like / idealized skins). However, I can't play without a male face texture mod, since vanilla men (especially elves) are horrendously ugly. I use Younger Faces merged with Men-by-Geonox, which is a part of the modular Better Males mod.
I use the free HD textures, so I can't really recommend any armor or door texture mod.
As a side note, has anyone ever played with the Evil Mansion mod? I just finished it, and it is pretty nice. It is based around converting the Resident Evil 1 game into the ES world. It is remarkaby lore-friendly and extremely detailed. Instead of Umbrella, we have the Red Shield Alliance, an organization of unethical mages and the monsters are products of magical and alchemical experimentation. The infamous Wesker also shows up as "Albertus Whisker". Best of all, after you finish the mod, you get to use the titular mansion as a home. And it is massive!

[NineThePuma]

Vanilla female faces are okay-ish, but there are a lot of excellent texture mods for them (depends if you prefer ultra-realistic skins, or more doll-like / idealized skins). However, I can't play without a male face texture mod, since vanilla men (especially elves) are horrendously ugly. I use Younger Faces merged with Men-by-Geonox, which is a part of the modular Better Males mod.
I use the free HD textures, so I can't really recommend any armor or door texture mod.
As a side note, has anyone ever played with the Evil Mansion mod? I just finished it, and it is pretty nice. It is based around converting the Resident Evil 1 game into the ES world. It is remarkaby lore-friendly and extremely detailed. Instead of Umbrella, we have the Red Shield Alliance, an organization of unethical mages and the monsters are products of magical and alchemical experimentation. The infamous Wesker also shows up as "Albertus Whisker". Best of all, after you finish the mod, you get to use the titular mansion as a home. And it is massive!

Is he khajiit.

[Feytalist]

I have my own bug to fix also.

(First off, I don't use any mods. In fact, this playthrough, I haven't even loaded the official DLC.)

Recently my map player location and quest markers just disappeared. Discovered location markers are still there, so I can still fast travel and so on, I just can't see exactly where I am. Not gamebreaking, sure, but annoying. I might have accidentally used an old update on top of a newer one, but I reloaded the newer one again anyway.

Online fixes for this bug all say that I need to delete "map.swf". But I don't have that file. I'm guessing it's a mod inclusion. So now I'd like to install a map mod, and see if that doesn't help. Something small and innocuous preferably. Create map.swf, and then delete the damn thing. So, any map mod ideas for me to use?

[mythmonster2]

First off, have you tried verifying your files? That should go through and make sure your files are at vanilla levels, which could give you the map.swf file back. If not that, the only map mod I use is A Quality World Map, which adds roads to the main map, which I have found extremely useful.