[skyrim] Setting Up This {Insert Words of Choice Here} Game, mods (B) (cleaning, too!)

So we installed a bunch of utilities that we may or may not know how to use.  That may be progress.

Now we're going to actually install mods.  In annoyingly small doses with lots of testing.  Why?

Well, let's explain it AFTER THE CUT.  Man, I love cuts.  (/beat)

(This guide has been updated on 11/18/15 to note the changes to the Unofficial Patch(es?) and take away a few things I didn't need.)



Here's the unfortunate deal with Skyrim: once you install a mod that does scripty things, it can be very hard to get that mod back out of your game.  In fact, it might be outright impossible.  Say you install some cool mod that changes the way, I don't know, bartering works, and said mod is running a script in the background constantly to alter merchants barter gold/change what items merchant has.  Say you decide said mod isn't as cool as you thought.  You uninstall it.

Unfortunately, it's a scripty mod with scripts, and unless a mod is very particularly designed (and, even with the best scripter, depending on what the mod did, it may even be impossible to truly fix), that means that script is still there, in your game (the proper term is 'baked' in your game, which just makes me want cookies).  This means this script is still going, running, getting confused about how things it's supposed to effect aren't there as the mod isn't there, and it's trying to do what it was doing before but can't quite figure out how to do it and this script is getting bigger and bigger.  And then suddenly your save files become huge ungainly things that take forever to load, because of this script bloat.  Or it just crashes and doesn't work at all.

You don't want that.  It'll end up ruining your game, preventing you from loading it, and you really can't do anything about it besides start a new game entirely.  Sucks, doesn't it?

That's why you install your mods in small doses, make sure you like the mod and that it's not doing some horrible, and then get out, and try installing more mods.  It does make for a long process, but I'll recommend something to help with that.  Probably.


Now, here's where things get squirrely.  Most of the mods we want are going to be on the Skyrim Nexus.  (You did make an account, right?)  There are two way to download (most) mods from Nexus: manually, and through Nexus Mod Manager.

Open the Skyrim Unofficial Patch linked bellow.  Go to the files tab.  You'll see a big green button 'Download With Manager' and then, smaller, 'download manually' as a text link.  What should you do?

If you are a smart person, you will be downloading everything manually, and using Wyre Bash to install everything, as Wyre Bash is the smartest installer (and the safest uninstaller).  Wyre Bash is confusing, though: so confusing I'm going to link you a google search on videos about it rather then try and explain it myself, because, I mean, I don't know, all I could tell you is 'I install things in to the Bash Installers folder and hope they're set up right' (+ I learned this from Oblivion and I can't find good guides on the Skyrim version).

That is the smart way.  THAT IS WHAT YOU SHOULD BE DOING.

However, I'm not going to be doing it all the time and I don't really blame you if you don't, either.

Nexus Mod Installer is really easy to use, and to a degree, safe.  The 'essentials' listed below are almost completely safe to install this way.  What Nexus excels in is installing simple mods.  An ESM/ESP and it's BSA?  Nexus is fine.  Some DLL for SKSE?  Fine!  Smaller mods?  Fine!  More complicated mods with a fomod guided installer?  The best thing ever.

What Nexus is bad at is mods with lots of 'random'/optional folders (and very big files- it does not handle big files well!).  Oddly, this is often clothing mods: a mod that has five body types and seven textures included in it and asks you to copy over the ones you use should not be installed by Nexus.  Full texture mods are generally better done by Wyre Bash as well.  Very big mods- Interesting NPC's is a notable one- often crash the Mod Manager.  However, for now, you can download the Essentials with Nexus.  When we get to the troublesome ones, we'll talk about it.

("Mikka," you may be saying, "I think you're forgetting what would be the absolute easiest installation method.  It would be unzipping said mod and just dumping in my data folder."  That's called manual install, and yes, it is easy.  However, it makes uninstalling near impossible.  Do you remember what exactly was the name of the textures that mod installed and whether any other mod was using those textures?  Probably not.  So just don't do that.)


So let's get to those essentials.  (For now, just download them.  We'll install them in a bit.)

ESSENTIALS (of the bug fix kind)

• Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch: there was a time when they were all separate files.  That has changed.  Now there is only one, the stupidly named USLEEP (shouldn't it be USLEP?).  This fixes so many bugs that Bethseda was too cheap to, and playing without them is, bluntly, stupid.  Just download the stupid thing, even if you're still mad about how they changed the restoration perk not to apply to self-buffing vampires.  If you run in to a bug and don't have this installed, everyone is going to laugh at you.  Don't get laughed at, just download this.
• The Brawl Bug Patch  Ever get asked by the Companions to go punch someone a few times for them, and have your companion suddenly start wailing on said person with a hammer?  Or some mod has put some sneaky effect on you to know where you are and the suddenly the person you're punching screams magic and the whole tavern tries to kill you?  This mod tries to fix those bugs (it doesn't always succeed, but it tries).  You should still probably save before you start punching people out, but you'll have that craziness happen a lot less.
• Safety Load A common Skyrim bug (especially the more mods you have installed) is the game hanging on the loading screen and never going anywhere.  It doesn't so much crash as it just sits there forever.  This fixes it, and, hey, it's a SKSE file, so no ESP!  (Psst!  Once you install it, take a look where this is installed: in your data folder, in a new folder called SKSE/Plugins will be made.  How nice of it.)
• Flora Respawn Fix Simple problem, simple fix.  In Skyrim, there's a bug where if you harvest something, see it respawned, don't pick it, then go back, that thing will have disappeared (more or less).  This mod fixes it.  As a note, if you are using the Complete Alchemy and Cooking Overhaul, you will eventually not need the ESP file (but you'll need the scripts).  If you are using Harvest Overhaul, you may wish to download the Flora Respawn Fix patch for it now, but don't activate it.  (Don't worry about those two mods now; we'll get to them later.)
• Clothing and Clutter Fixes This mod seems relatively minor, but it makes the game more consistent with itself, allows you to wear some clothing and items you couldn't normally get in the regular game, and generally allows you to wear circlets with hoods.  And that is awesome, as circlets are like pretty princess crowns and everyone needs those.
• Weapon and Armor Fixes Remade This does for weapons and armor what the above mod did for clothing and clutter: makes things work better, fixes a few bugs, and makes the game consistent with itself.  Good stuff.
• Fuz Ro D-oh  An SKSE plugin that inserts a 'silent voice' file so that lines that aren't voiced can actually be read rather then whirling off your screen before you can read them.  People do their best to voice their Skyrim plugins (though in some cases, you'll wish they hadn't), but you'll eventually run in to something unvoiced.  This allows you (with subtitles on, of course) to find out whatever is going on.  (And, as a SKSE plugin, if you don't need it- well, it's not taking up any space.)  (Sadly, this cannot be installed by Nexus Mod Manager; you need to download it manually and install it through Wyre Bash (or Mod Organizer, if you really want to.))  (Okay, this isn't a bug fix, but it's important so it can go here.)

MOAR ESSENTIALS (Of the interface kind)

• SkyUI In a way, this may be the most important mod for Skyrim- because so many other mods link to it.  Not only is it a fantastic interface (much better then the horrible console port default UI we have), it has this famous thing called the 'MCM Menu'.  Any other mod in the world (if properly programmed) can hook in to that their configuration menu is activated through SkyUI rather then each mod assigning you a unique power to use (or worse, making you use the console).  Really, you are going to need this mod.  If, however, you are fifteen different types of crazy and actually like the ugly console UI better, though- SkyUi-Away replaces the better interface with the ugly old one, excepting the MCM Menu which is still there.  Regardless, you basically need one or the other to be using a lot of mods in Skyrim, so get!
• Better Dialog Controls Helps with the problem you have when you're desperately trying to click a certain response and the fact that this game was designed for consoles laughs at you manically and makes you ask someone for the fiftieth time who Ulfric is. Now, by using your keyboard and mouse together, you can make sure something is selected and pressed and working.  If you use a controller, you probably don't need this, but hey, it won't hurt.  (In practice, if you use EZ2C- which has more functions with the screen changing- you probably don't need this, as you can use the page up/page down to scroll and select.  However, considering they can easily be merged and they use different keys, it doesn't hurt to have them both.)
• EZ2C Dialog Menu Another helper for the dialog menu, this helps if your screen is dark or your eyesight is poor (but is pretty useful otherwise, too).  This replaces that horrible grey on grey dialog with white and yellow on grey.  It also allows you to use page up and page down to scroll the dialog menu rather then you pressing on that tiny white bar and cursing as it refuses to work.  Plus!
• Better Message Box Controls Better Dialog Controls cousin.  It allows you to use the keyboard for message box controls: use your A and D key to move between actions, and hit E (or whatever you've mapped 'activate' to) to select it.  It also allows you to use the exit key to exit message boxes, which is such an obvious thing I can't believe it wasn't included in the game.  Seriously?  Sigh.
• Categorized Favorites You may be the sort of person who barely uses your favorites menu.  that's cool.  I, however, seem to end up putting all my spells in the stupid thing, along with around five different shouts.  I then have my regular set up, my magic set up, an equipment set up of a pretty dress for when I'm wandering around towns so I can pretend I'm roleplaying... you get the picture.  This makes finding things in your favorites menu easier, and allows you to set up an 'equipment set'- so you can press CTRL+1 or whatever and suddenly change from your dress and staff to full armor, sword and board.  Nice.
• Floating Health Bars This is another your mileage may very mod, yet I can't live with out it.  In a completely non-lore friendly fashion, this equips all residents with Skyrim who are currently trying to kill you with a shiny red bar over their heads that tells you how dead they currently are with exact hit points.  It is unimmersive and will ruin your lore friendly game, but I honestly can't play without it.  (Hey, I had a supposedly lore friendly mod installed that added a 600 HP frostbite spider that looked exactly like all the others to Bleak Falls Burrow for my level three character.  Being to identify this monster (and figure out who put it there) was so very useful.)
• No Poison Dialogs Simple SKSE mod that makes it so that when you want to poison something, you just poison the piece of junk, rather then awkward staring of 'ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THAT REALLY'.  If you do a lot of poisoning, this is so helpful.

EVEN MOAR ESSENTIALS (Simple gameplay changes)  

• A Quality World Map Makes your world map prettier and more useful by allowing you to add all the roads in the world to it (and get rid of those stupid random clouds, if you desire).  Also, there's an option for a cool 'old leather' style world map as well as the normal 3D one.  Options!  Awesome!
• Dead Bodies Have Collision A mod that means that you can't just walk through a gaggle of dead bodies: they actually exist and you walk/jump over them.  A simple mod but it adds to that IMMERSION thing people so love, as well as common sense.  Bodies getting annoying?  The mod adds a 'burn dead body power' that allows you to destroy a body that's getting in your way.  This is basically 'not useful', but... IMMERSIVE!  (Skyrim fandom has this thing with the word immersive.  It's sort of like a love affair.  The Love We Dear Not Speak Of.)
• Alt F4 Out This is simple.  A SKSE mod that makes it so that pressing Alt + F4 will close your game.  This is good, because, unfortunately, the more mods you have loaded the more likely it is your game will hang and you'll have to CTRL+ALT+DEL when exiting Skyrim.  This mod makes it so you can have a 'clean' exit without having to kill the file or, at worst, restart your computer.
• Smart Souls Another SKSE plugin that will need to be installed the Wyre Bash way, this one does with a .dll file what another mod I once used took three ESP's to do.  It makes it so that a soul will go in the right soul gem when you use the Soul Trap spell.  No more 'petty' souls somehow ending up in your gazillion septims 'grand soul gem' and ruining your life.  A petty soul goes in the petty soul gem, a grand soul goes in the grand soul gem, and that's that.  Now, if you're doing the 'Summon creature with conj, kill it and soul trap it' farming method, this might not be for you as you just want any soul in any soulgem... but in normal play, this is useful.
• SkyTweak All this mod is is a MCM (remember SkyUI?  That!) menu.  But what a menu this is!  SkyTweak is complicated at first glance, but basically, it allows you to change almost everything in the game.  Like basically everyone, do you think destruction scales horribly at higher levels, but for some reason you don't want to install a Magic Mod?  With Skyrim, you can change the damage dealt at each spell level, the cost of spells, the duration, the magnitude- basically everything.  In general, you'll probably be installing 'Overhaul' type mods that change the majority of things, but if you're unhappy with a certain thing an overhaul does when changing vanilla stuff, SkyTweak allows you to make it how you want it.
• Complete Crafting Overhaul Remade This does so much it's hard to list it, but the most basic way of saying might be: 'It makes the game consistent with itself while adding cool stuff'.  Some basic things: you can wear, say an iron circlet (pretty princess crown!) instead of a helmet and get a matched set bonus if wearing iron armor, you can 'upgrade' lower level quest rewards to higher level ones as you level up, you can gain smithing experience from stuff like mining, you can craft stuff you couldn't before... yadda yadda.  It's good.  Install it.  (Note!  There are mods that are incorporated in it, and mods that have patches for.  I wouldn't worry about that now, although you may wish to download the WAF patch and have it waiting in your Nexus for later.)

HURRAH.  WE HAVE A START.

Now, let's start installing this crap.  For the mods at nexus, all you're going to have to do is find the mod in Nexus Mod Manager, and double click it.  If you get an error, try redownloading the mod.  If you still get an error, cry and whine on the Nexus forum.  It helps!  Sometimes.

Or stop being a bum and use Wyre Mash like we all should be.  Hm.

(Make sure, right now, you install Flora Respawn Fix rather then Flora Respawn Fix Harvest Overhaul.  As you don't have that installed yet.)

Weapon and Armor Fixes Remade is probably the first time you'll have a mod pop up at you.  Click on each option, and you'll notice each has a nice description on what it does.  This is where I advise you to be smart and clever on what you want.  For me, I have all DLC's, so the all in one option was a must, and I wanted all the options, so there we go again.  You?  You might want something different.  Read mod descriptions.  Read readmes.  Make your own choices.  Feel like the unique and special snowflake you are.

The second page of options is more difficult, however.  Confusing installs might lead you to installing things twice: it is very likely you'll be using Immersive (there's that word again!) Weaponry (as basically everyone uses it as MOAR WEAPONS YAY), so you'll want that 'patch' installed, for instance.  If you don't, you can always deactivate that patch.

(Replacers are more difficult.  We'll get to that eventually.)

The Skyforge Weapons thing and the Open Faced Helmets, though?  I mean, you don't even know what those are yet.  Personally, I don't use either, although Open Faced Helmets is IMMERSIVE!  (Seriously, how do people see out of the helmets with no eyeholes?  IS EVERYONE A FALMAR?!)  So you probably will want it if you care about sanity in the world.  The Skyforge weapons, on the other hand, is unlikely to be needed by you: if you're using Midanborne, you'll probably be using the full content edition.

(This is one of those cases where Wyre Bash beats NMM by far: if you installed this with Wyre Bash, you could simply add a patch by right clicking it later.  With NMM, you'll have to basically uninstall the mod then reinstall it to add a patch file later.  Sigh.)



Now, on to our next mod that's a unique and special snowflake: the silent voice mod.  That can't be downloaded by Nexus Mod Manager, as we've noted.  So we'll want to install it with Wyre Bash.

When installing Wyre Bash, it should have set up a folder for you to put your mods in (or, at least, it'll set that up as soon as you open the program and switch over to the Installers tab).  It's usually '\Skyrim Mods\Bash Installers' at the ending, but the exact directory could be wherever.  Check Wyre Bash's readme and the videos I told you about for more information if you can't find this folder.   You'll simply want to put the Fuz-Ra-Doh file in that folder.  You don't unzip it.  Just put it there in all it's zipped up glory.

Now open Wyre Bash.  See those Mods?  That's what you have installed right now.  Shiny!  But click over to the Installers tab.  Fuz Ro D'oh should be right there.  Right click on it and hit 'install' (it's pretty far down the list, after the halfway point).  Ta-da!  Mod installed.

This is where Wyre Bash is useful.  Did you see how it went from telling you 12 files were 'missing' (not installed) as to telling you 12 files were 'matched'?  This is what will make it the queen for installing texture mods.  You can tell it to install only 'missing' files- files that aren't 'conflicts' (AKA, installed by a different texture mod), meaning you can install texture mods out of order.  That may not sound very useful, but trust me: it will be.


Let's start installing the interface files, now.  When it comes to Ez2C, replace the dialogmenu.swf file if you installed it through Better Dialog Controls.  Everything else is pretty simple.

I'm going to note this here: though you won't want to merge SkyUI itself, the other interface packages (especially if you install a bunch of other ones- the immersive (IMMERSIVE!!!) UI, lockpicking interface redone, time on loading screen, clock widget, yadda yadda, whatever floats yer boat) are good for merging, and can be a good way to cut down ESP files.  I'm not going to talk about merging until we get to the 'make my character look pretty' part (which is probably the next part, which will not be out for months as I am lazy but shh), but if you're like me and desperately running low on mod space, it's a thought.


On to the next category, and the World Map offers options.  Whether you like the regular map (HiRes, for me) or the Classic Map is up to you; I've played with both.  I find the clouds annoying, so if I use the regular map, I usually get rid of them.  Up to you, though.  I do recommend all roads, though, because I disagree with some of the 'are these main roads or not' decisions the author made, so might as well have all of them.  (Also, makes me less likely to get beaten up by Snow Trolls at level 4.)

Smart Souls, we'll have to install through Wyre Bash.  Same deal: put the zip in the Bash Installers folder, right click install, and ta-da, we're done here.  (Randomly, you might get a warning plugin saying 'Hey, this is a dll!' here.  It's okay, tell it to install.  I would not recommend you a DLL that would break your game.  I'm not even sure where I would find one.)



And... with that, we're done with part one of our mod installing.  Save for I'm going to recommend one mod that will make testing easier for you: Alternate Start: Live Another Life (note that this mod has changed to require all the DLC...you can install the older non-DLC file if you don't have them, but it may have some old bugs in it).

If you've played Skyrim (er, you have, right?) you'll know the game starts off with a five minute or so carriage ride that introduces the setting and has the big logo on it before you finally get to make your character.  Then you have to go through a tutorial dungeon that is for the most part very carefully scripted and may not reveal any flaws in your game.  When you're testing mods, this is irritating as hell.

There is also an issue where certain mods will, to be blunt, break that carriage ride.  Almost anything with a serious script can break it.  This is actually funny enough that you should see it once: the carriage will toss and turn, the horse will do cartwheels, run in to walls, someone might randomly die, and eventually either your game will crash or you'll be forced to CTRL+ALT+DEL out as you'll never get to Helgan.  (But at least the horse-thief lives forever!)  However, what that does mean is that you don't really want to install mods with big scripts until after you get control of your character... or if you're using Alternate Start, in which those scripts can load quietly in the background and then be ready when you choose the cart ride (if you want to).

So choose a different path.  With Live Another Life, you'll start in a small prison cell, and talk to a Statue of Mara.  You'll be given all different options of places to start (note: shipwrecked and Frostfall (a very good mod I will recommend later) are a hard start!).  There are some cool options: already starting as a rich home owner can be fun or already being in a certain guild you like, and each race even gets a unique one, too!.  For testing, though, I recommend the starting as a hunter in the wilderness.  You start not far from Helgan, and see a certain dragon doing his dragony thing without having to run all the way to Helgan (psst: that's how you'll start the main quest if you decide to try a different start: run over to Helgan gates).

With serious testing, I recommend choosing that start, running through Bleak Falls Barrow, and then running the way to Whiterun and wandering around the city (check the companions guild hall and the taverns) and then running the road to somewhere else important.  Having said that, doing that over and over takes, well, a lot of time.  So if you're not installing big script mods (we're not, right now), just do something like find a wolf to kill (to make sure your combat is working), rush over to Whiterun and check out somewhere populated (tavern's usually work), then maybe making sure fast travel works.  Then just let your character stall standing around (or jumping off everything, whatever) for at least five/ten minutes to make sure a script isn't running in the background that's crashing you.

You're going to have to do this multiple times, and you're going to want to start from scratch as quite a few mods only function on a new game.  So just deal with ugly level 1 nord male named Prisoner.  Eventually, you'll get to play.  Probably.


Just not now, as GUESS WHAT.  You've gotten to the most freakin' annoying part of mod installing!

Go to your data folder.  (To entertain yourself, quickly go and look at the mods tab of Wyre Smash while making sure the load times aren't locked.)  Hit the LOOT.exe.  Help it find Skyrim if it needs to.  Tell it to sort your plugins, and then hit 'Apply'..

(To continue entertaining yourself, go back and look at Wyre Smash (you may need to hit the Installers tab then go back the Mods tab.  Look!  Your mods changed order!  Shiny!)

(Wait, they didn't change order?  Here's why: go back on the Wyre Smash Mods tab and right click on the top.  Turn off the option to 'lock times'.  That prevents anything but you in Wyre Bash from meddling with your load order.  Not what you wanted when trying to sort it, oops!)

Now, click the details tab.  And sigh.

Guess what?  You have dirty plugins.  And guess what, two?  SOME OF THEM ARE THE OFFICAL PLUGINS.  That's right, Bethseda couldn't even clean their official DLC's and updates.  Instead, there are dirty edits and deleted references in there.  If you want more detail on what exactly that means, look up TES5EDIT guides.  For now, know that they're bad, can lead to game crashing, and means that when making the mod someone goofed and did something they shouldn't have.

(Usually.  Sometimes there are deliberate dirty edits in plugins, which makes everything more frustrating: it means you can't just go and clean everything.  You only can clean things that are bad dirty, not good dirty.  Like bad mold and good mold!  I don't know, I didn't take my pills today, I have no idea what I'm saying.  For instance, though, you don't want to clean Skyrim.esm, or the Unofficial Patch.  That'll break stuff, badly.)

For now, you'll just want to clean the plugins that say they have dirty edits, as everything we're installing is pretty standard and well known.  If you're installing a new plugin (one that was only made in the last month or so and isn't from a well known author) that you notice has dirty errors, I suggest asking on the Skyrim Nexus page or the official Bethseda forums if the plugin should be cleaned.


Anyway, on to the cleaning!  Update.esm is showing up as my first dirty plugin.  I'm going to clean it.  You'll want to clean from the top of your load order to the bottom, generally.

I do this by opening TES5Edit.  I right click and 'Select None', and then I click only on Update.Esm.  That's the only thing that should have a checkmark: the one file you are cleaning.  (There has been debate if you can clean multiple mods at once.  In general, I haven't run in to any problem doing so nor have I seen any good reasons why you can't, however, for the purpose of this tutorial thing, I'm just telling you to clean them one by one.  When you get confident, clean as many mods at a time as you please: you'll load them all at once, but clean them one by one.)  Hit 'OK'.

In the background it's loading, taking it's time... eventually the right will say Background Loader: Finished.  (If you have a very big plugin, or are merging and thus have a lot of plugins open, this can take a while.)  You'll notice that not only is Update.esm loaded, but so is Skyrim.esm.  That's because Update requires Skyrim to run: 'Skyrim is it's master file' (it's the master file to every mod ever, basically, save for a total conversion).

Right click on Update.esm.  Fourth option down, 'Apply Filter for Cleaning'.  Click that, and wait for it to finish 'filtering'.  You'll notice that Skyrim.esm turned purple and Update.esm turned green.  I'm... honestly unsure on why that happens.  Sometimes you'll have the file get italicized, or highlighted red, or all sorts of odd things.  I'm guessing if I read the readme again it would all be explained.

(You should read the Readme.  Always read Readme's!  Don't be like me!)

Anyway, right click again on Update.esm.  You'll want to do two things: first, 'Undelete and Disable References'.  A big warning sign warning you you're editing the ESM will pop up: just tell it you know what you're doing, even if you don't.  Wait for it to do that undeleting and disabling, and you'll notice that it fixed three errors.  Huzzah.

Second, try 'Remove Identical to Masters'.  Now we'll notice there were 92 times when the Update.esm made the exact same change as Skyrim.esm did and just filled up our game with junk.  Thanks a lot, Bethseda.

("What about Check For Errors, Mikka?"  If you run it, you'll notice there are two errors in Update.esm, apparently relating to the Whiterun Civil War questline.  Unfortunately, there's nothing really we can do about it unless we wanted to break open the Creation Kit and try and find and fix it.  And that's, well, hard.  So all we can do is cross our fingers and hope for the best.  Generally, the only thing to do with Check For Errors is avoid mods with a lot of errors in them, and don't ever merge mods with errors unless you know exactly what they are.)

However, Update.Esm is at least a lot cleaner then it was before.  Exit TES5Edit (saving the plugin, which is default checked).  It'll also make a backup of the original Update.Esm for us, if you have that box at the bottom checked.  Let it, for now; delete those backups after you've tested the clean plugin and figured that it works.


Go back to LOOT, and you'll notice all the other DLC's are dirty.  Same process: load, if you're doing them all at once go from top to bottom, apply filter for cleaning, undelete and disable references, and then remove identical to masters.  Then save.


(I had to clean Dawnguard twice, for some reason: 6 ITM records didn't clean themselves the first time.  I don't know why.)


Check back to Wyre Bash.  Were you like me and did you install 'WeaponsArmorFixes_ImmersiveWeapons_Patch.esp'?  If you did, uncheck it.  You'll notice it's red: it has a missing master (Immersive Weapons, obviously) and would crash our start up if we tried to load the game with it running.  We don't want that.

(If anything else is red, uncheck it to- perhaps you installed a patch for open face helmets or the like that I didn't.  You'll install that file later, for now just make sure now mods are loaded that are red.)

(If you installed Weapons & Armor_TrueWeaponsLvlLists.esp', uncheck that as well.  That wouldn't crash our game- all it's masters are there- but it's not currently wanted, especially without the bashed patch.)

Make sure everything else is checked.  Now, what do we do want to do?

Start the damn game.


You have SKSE plugins now, as a reminder.  Check that shortcut I had you make on your desktop (and run Steam if it's not cooperating).  Remember you're going to start in a little cell.  Talk to the statue of Mara to go some place.

As I said, kill a few wolves, check out a city.

Sometime in the (apparently long long, as I got lazy) future, we'll go over how to make your game and character look pretty.  Because apparently that's the important thing in Skyrim.  For now, though, at least you have a basic working game.  Hopefully.