[skyrim] Setting Up This {Insert Words of Choice Here} Game, prettification (C) (+ merging and bsa unpacking!)

(Wow, I disappeared for a while, didn't I?  That's okay, no one but me knows this blog exists anyway.)

(This has been updated 11/18915 for a lot of fixes and corrections.  Thanks, non-existent people who hopefully don't know this blog exists yet!)

Skyrim came out in 2011.  I built my computer long before that, although I've upgraded my graphics card just last year and made a few other minor updates.  I'd like to think it's a pretty good computer: I can run Dragon Age: Inquisition on the highest settings with quite a few mods, and we know that game isn't optimized well.  (I need a new core for Fallout 4, though.)

Skyrim can still make it choke, though.

Why?  The main thing is, Skyrim just isn't optimized that well.  I mean, it will at least use 4G (unless certain other games Bethseda released I could bitch about), but that's about the best you can say about it.  There are memory leaks.  There is script bloat (god, there is script bloat).  There is the game just plain going "AH THIS IS TOO MUCH CRASHHHH" just (??) because you're using 200 mods and it hates you.

Why am I talking about this now?

Because we're at the MAKE THE GAME PRETTY section.  And, honestly, in this section you sort of have a choice.  Are you going to make the game the most gorgeous thing that's ever touched your computer's screen, or are you going to add five million script mods?  Because you can rarely do both because SKYRIM CHOKES BECAUSE IT IS NOT OPTIMIZED.

I compromise to myself on this.  I make my world look 'okay', a few things that are important to me look really 'nice' (I install pretty weather and pretty sky, because why not), and my character herself and her weapons and armor and clothes look bangin'... and then leave it like that.  But I'm going to recommend some high quality graphic options I have used in the past, too, in case you're more of the 'I think Skyrim's gameplay is fine, but the graphics are fugly' (while I'm more like 'Graphics fine SAVE FOR THE FEET WHY THOSE FEET OMG THOSE FEET, must CHANGE GAMEPLAYYY').

Right.  One of those cuts goes here, huh?

This is an extremely long post with a lot of detail.  I should cut it up further, one day...



First, though, I want to explain two things: how stuff is loaded, and what meshes and textures are.

A MESH is the shape of things.  Every graphic thing in the game is a mesh, sort of.  (I'm not going to like, get in to ground textures here.)  Take your basic dagger.  It's a dagger.  It's a mesh!  That hairstyle you have on?  It's a mesh!  Your clothing?  It's a mesh!  That stupid twirly statue in every other ruin that you open doors with?  A mesh!

Texture is what goes on the mesh.  Most graphic mods focus on textures, as they're easier to make then new meshes- and, replacing meshes can screw stuff up easier (imagine replacing a tree mesh with a bigger tree mesh- now those trees might be cutting in to floral stuff and crap that it wasn't before, or maybe now a monster is spawning inside the tree!).  You can have multiple textures pointing to the same mesh.  The dagger and clothing are good examples of this: the dagger can have a shiny Silver texture, or a ratty broken texture that makes it look like, say, it belongs in a nordic ruin.  Or the generic dress could be green, or blue or purple.  Or even your hairstyle: think of how many colors it can be (though that doesn't exactly work the same way, but, uh, it's an example)!

Installing a texture replacer can only screw up your game if you install textures 'bigger'/'better' then what your computer can handle.  Mesh replacers you have to be a big more careful with... but honestly, you have to be careful with all mods.  I'm never going to recommend you something that I know will break your game, because I'm not a jackass, but it always is a good thing to read readme's and forum posts carefully.

Okay, now, on how things load.

Mods load from top to bottom.  So, obviously, the game is always going to load Skyrim first- along with Skyrim's bsa's, which hold all the meshes and textures and sounds (and all the other things that make the game a game).  Then it loads the Update file, which in it's bsa, holds some files that overwrite the original Skyrim ones.  Say Skyrim.esm loads mesh Rock01 (through it's Skyrim.bsa), which is a generic rock mesh.  Well, let's say for some reason, it was- I don't know, buggy or ugly or both, so Update.esm also has Rock01 mesh in it, loaded through it's Update.bsa.  And then Super Graphics Update Mod thinks they can make an even better Rock01 mesh, so they have it too in SGUM.bsa, and as you're loading Super Graphics Update Mod after Skyrim and Update (which are always loaded first), that's what loads.

Unless the file is 'loose'.

If someone makes the mod 'I <3 Rock Meshes' with their own Rock01 mesh overwrite, but simply puts it as a loose file in your Meshes folder, that file WINS.  It destroys every rule of how things loading lower in the order overwrite things higher in the order.  Even if you put Super Graphics Update Mod after I <3 Rock Meshes Mod (...although it's unlikely either of those files would have ESP, but let's just go with it), the game will load the Rock01 mesh that's loose from your meshes folder instead of the one from Super Graphics Update Mod's bsa.

(In other words, if something's loose in your texture/mesh/sound/whatever folder, it should always be the BEST of the lot- the one you want to load.  If this is really bothering you, you can use the program Mod Organizer to fiddle around which BSA overwrites which BSA, but honestly, if you really want something from That BSA to be the winner, I suggest just extracting that file then goofing off with the BSA ordering.)

Makes sense?  I hope so.


Okay, on to the modding.  Finally.

I'm dividing this list up somewhat randomly.  I recommend you read everything before downloading, or at least before installing (some of this stuff is pretty big, so it doesn't hurt to have it downloading in the background I guess, but it will take up space.)

You should be using Wyre Bash or at least the Mod Organizer if you're planning on playing with textures.  If you know exactly what texture you want, you can probably use the Nexus Mod Manager, but Nexus Mod Manager isn't the best for uninstalling/reinstalling things (especially if say, Mod A and Mod B both use Texture C- sometimes, uninstalling Mod B can mean Texture C is uninstalled even though Mod A still needs it).  I like easy things, but with textures, I do advise you to use Wyre Bash and read the readme's very carefully.

(Having said that, just because I advise you, doesn't mean I'm going to do always do it: in particular, if there's a built in installer, I use Nexus.  >.>)

• The High Resolution Pack (and then it's Unofficial Patch (yes, Bethseda broke so many things just updating textures that a patch was needed)).  The easiest way to pretty up your game, this Steam download adds around 3G's of better textures in to your game.  The biggest problem with it, though, is that if you decide you don't like it, it is very hard to uninstall (you basically have to redownload all the old textures and fight with Steam and it's a pain- also, it uses up like, 3 ESPs, and I don't like that).  That, and the fact that I don't think my generic textures need to be that high resolution, is why I don't use it- but is by far the easiest way to Make Your Game Prettier.
• Skyrim HD.  The even higher resolution package (I strongly recommend only using lite, not full- which is still bigger then the High Resolution Pack).  This makes everything it touches absolutely gorgeous, in my opinion, but the Full pack definitely stretches the limit on what my computer can handle.  Remember, though: you never need more then 4k textures.  Some mods say they have 8k textures.  The very tiny unnoticeable improvements is not worth the massive lag.  It's just not.  (This pack makes almost every other mod texture mod I recommend worthless, unless you really like the looks of one.  Ah well.)
• Hi-Rez Textures Optimized  On the other side, this mod is better then vanilla, but worse then the two mods above it.  It's what I use (I use the 'full' version, so I don't have to download the high resolution pack from my nemesis Steam).  It makes things generic things 'prettier', but doesn't use super high res textures that slow down the game: for me, there's absolutely no frame rate drop at all, which is nice.  You can also use a hybrid approach, which uses some textures from this mod and some from the high resolution pack.  If you're using any of the High Resolution Pack files, you'll want to download the compatible Unoffical Patch from the downloads.
• Static Mesh Improvement Mod This basically does for meshes what those mods do for textures, while also coming with some of it's own texture fixes.  It's installer, while it will work with Nexus, also works for Wyre Bash/Smash/Crash: right click on the zip, and click 'Wizard'.  If you have a powerful computer, the merged is the best choice.  I have some slowdown with the 3D Chains at Whiterun bridge due to some added mods around there, so I usually use custom, but everything in here is great.
• Project Parallax This is to be only used with ENB's, which is why I really recommend you install this with Wyre Bash so if you decide not to use an ENB it can be easily uninstalled.  What this does is gives the gameworld a more 3d effect by allowing the lights of an ENB to 'shine' off things better.  Sort of.  It's more complicated then that, but it'll make your game look better for little trade-off.  This does it by replacing the meshes, so you can use whatever texture overwrites you want.

Those are what I call your 'core' mods.  Your main texture, and your mesh improvements.  Here are some mods that aren't as core, but will still make things pretty.

• Skyrim Flora Overhaul 'Makes the flora pretty'.  This mostly includes the trees, the grass, the random flowers- and, yes, the stuff you harvest.  Version 2.0F (or something even newer) is gorgeous: not only does it make all that stuff nicer looking, but it adds trees, reeds, and other floral stuff where you would expect it to be.  I, however, install a bunch of house mods and other changing the landmass mods, which means I stick to the basic version, which makes the textures better but doesn't add all that cool stuff (as otherwise I'd get trees growing out of buildings- note, though, if you wish to install it and then run in to problems, what you'll want to do is hit '~' on your keyboard in game, click on the offending tree, and type 'disable' which will get it out of said building).  Also note that this requires an ini change: under the [grass] section you'll add iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure=7 (I have no idea why texture is spelled wrong).  If you do install basic, you'll probably want the version for ENB- as there's no reason to not have an ENB installed (there are some for very old gaming laptops, so no worries!).  (As a note: when making INI changes, I recommend using Wyre Bash to make them.  You may need to not only change the skyrim.ini in your documents, but also skyrim_default that's hiding in the game directory.  Why?  Because Bethseda is Bethseda.  Sigh.)
• Enhanced Blood Textures  Not only does this do the obvious in making blood nicer looking, but it does stuff like makes it so machines don't bleed red (they 'leak' oil), a heavier wound causes more blood, a killmove also creates more blood, and so on.  It's a really good mod, but unlike every other mod I've linked here, it is also extremely script heavy.  If after installing a bunch of these mods, you start getting crashes, this is probably the likely culprit (that should only happen if your computer is really bad or you've installed more textures you can handle, though!).  If you can handle it though, this mod is excellent for realism, graphics and general 'coolness', which is a pretty good combination.  (This may be a culprit for carriage-craziness; you may want to install this one later.)
• aMidanBorn Textures One of the most famous texture creators for Skyrim, this team's textures are the same resolution as the Official High Resolution patch- but a lot nicer, in my opinion (if you're using SkyrimHD, they're probably worse, but I suggest glancing at them just in case).  The Book of Silence mod has many of the Armor retextures, but not all of them (at the moment, the imperial light and stormcloak officer aren't included), and some of the Armor Retextures have been updated since it was made (the scaled and then the 'hide and studded' package can be updated- if you're not using the Book of Silence Content Addon, you may also want the Steel); it also lacks the Blade of Woe retexture, and anything touching the landscape.  The content edition of the Book of Silence is worth a download for later 'cool stuff to find and make', though there's no real need to download it now.  I personally love the Solstheim retexture, and many people swear by the Whiterun one (I usually don't retexture my cities, but it is pretty!).  Download what you think looks cool: you can't go wrong, and as most of these are just retextures and maybe minor remeshing, you don't need to worry about ESP files (it'll just install three total, IIRC).
• Improved NPC Clothing Clothing is important to me.  Really important.  It's unlikely you'll be wearing most of the stuff in this mod, but every NPC in towns will, so you might as well get them looking nicer.  This is very high res, and very true to the original texture.  Nothing out of the ordinary here.
• Smoking Torches One of those utterly simple things, this changes torches so they give off a smoke effect.  As the author admits, it's probably too much smoke, but it looks cool.
• Quality Snow Okay, let me admit: as I install mods that basically make me blind as a bat in snowstorms, I'm not often looking at the snow.  If I was, though, I'd look at this.  It's gorgeous.
• Better Dynamic Snow That's only half the battle, though.  This mod edits the snow that's fallen on objects (such as, say, roofs).  It'll use the textures from Quality Snow, so all your snow will match all nice like.
• Glowing Ore Veins This mod is not very realistic, and doesn't make your game all that much better looking.  It does, however, help.  If you're in some dark mine, especially if you have a darker dungeon mod installed, seeing the ore veins on the ground can be near impossible (or even just out in the wilderness with darker nights).  This adds a light glow to the ore, making you able to find them, so I put this here.  Obviously, not lore-friendly.
• HD Increased Terrain There are so many mods that increase the distant terrain.  I simply recommend this one because there's absolutely no performance loss (at least on my computer).  There are certainly ones that are 'prettier'/'better quality', but I think this one works well for what it is.  Having said that, Enhanced Distant Terrain is another one with no performance loss for me that's also very pretty.  Look at screenshots to decide which you like.
• Immersive (that word again!) Soulgems This is actually awesome.  It makes soulgems more transparent, glow if their is a soul inside of them, and makes the differences between the various kinds of soulgem obvious.  It's a bit harder to see unfilled soulgems in the dark dungeons, but I think the trade off is worth it.
• Gemling Queen Jewelry Remember how I said we'd do something about those circlets (aka pretty princess crowns)?  This makes jewelry lovely, focusing on the gems (that are even animated)!  (As a sidetrack, I recommend installing Left Handed Rings Modified (allows you to wear a single ring on your left hand, too, and have it show up) so you can get the nice replacers.))  While she takes complete care of rings, I use Jewels of the Nords texture on amulets (and her meshes) and Better Circlets actual circlets (with her gems and meshes- though grab better circlets darker onyx optional file, too).  So, actually what you need to do is install Left Handed, then Jewels of the Nords, then Better Circlets, then Gemling's, overwriting everything as you go (choose install last for each mod with Wyre Bash).  Phew!  Yes, I do take my jewelry very seriously.) (AS A NOTE: all jewelry retextures (and the left handed rings!) have basically been replaced by the jewelry mod Immersive Jewelry.  If you're interested in that, you don't need any of those above as far as I can tell.  Immersive Jewelry is extremely awesome, and I recommend it, but don't install it yet!  If you're not going to use it, though- all those retextures I just recommended are awesome, so try them.)
• EcthelionOtW's Retextures  Formerly known for their Mage Robe retextures and their Dawnguard retextures, the former has sadly been taken down due to asset thief.  I link to their author page in hope they return: in the meantime, the Dawnguard retextures are still there and lovely.  The Mage Equipment overhaul is also very nice: I believe one of the staffs will replace amidanborn's which I prefer (if you do, too, just hit no when installing), but everything else is lovely.  The Imperial and Stormcloak retextures may be of interest as well, though warning for body mod choices (we'll get to that eventually).  As a side note, they also have some nice (female, mostly) armor, but we'll get to that in what will likely be part fifty-million.
• Dragonborn Mage Robes aMidanborn covered most of the Dragonborn armor, but this retextures the robes to be prettier.  Nice and simple.  As another note, the author also made a retexture of the Archmage of Winterhold robe from the Collage that I never noticed but now fell in love with.
• Visible Windows I'm not currently using this as I learned to just deal with it, but if you think Skyrim's windows are the ugliest pieces of random metal pretending to be glass ever, this will help.  Totally new textures for windows and their frames that are much nicer looking.  (I'm not sure why I keep saying that.  I mean, if it's in the prettification list, it's going to make your game nicer.  Period.)
• Realistic Waters Two My water mod of choice, making the water pretty (complete with retextured waves).  I'm currently not planning on installing either of the two 'big' addons, but if you are, you may want the patches for them- you can always just delete the patches later.  Pure Waters is another good choice; honestly, I sort of just flipped a coin on which I currently decided to use.  Compare the screenshots yourself to decide which is better.  If you like the second mod, you may like it's successor, Purity: not only is it Pure Waters and waterfalls, but it also takes care of lighting and weather (all in one mod!).  I'll mention that one again when we get to weather mods as I think I'll be using it for my playthrough, but if you really like it, you can install it now.
• Vivid Landscapes All In One Sort of what aMidanborn was for armors and the like, this is for well, landscapes.  You'll have to use loose textures, though, or otherwise the BSA will be overwritten by the high texture pack you installed first.  The author has also retextured Castle Volkier from Dawnguard and Orc Settlements and Farmhouses (this one goes very well with aMidanborn, adding ENB support to the midanborn textures, so overwrite).  Note that all their work is designed to be used with ENB's, which we will get to much later; you can download the non-ENB patches, but you're sort of wasting the mod, as it's chief advantage is how well it works with ENB's.
• Inside the Nebula Pretty sky in three different varieties, retextures for the moons, and options to bring Skyrim's stars (lore!) in to these pretty skies.  All three varieties are gorgeous, so it's up to you what you want.  (Purity, also linked with water mods, has it's own stars and thus this won't be necessary- but if you aren't going to use that, I love these stars!)
• Hi-Res Legible Road Signs One of my absolute musts.  Finally, you can read where you're going in the middle of snowstorms.  That helps!
• HD Dragons I try not to use too many 2k textures (as I use so many script mods), but I mean, Dragons!  Your mortal enemies!  The coolest thing in the game (besides you, and maybe Vilja)!  And they're butt ugly.  Horrendously ugly.  Not only does this make the textures nicer, it also alters the mesh a bit (mostly to fix the frog eyes).  I approve.  (Bellyache's also has a very nice creature pack with retextures of many creatures... I use Automatic Varients (we'll get to that much later) and don't need it, but if you don't use AV, it's great!)
• Book Covers Skyrim From Morrowind to Oblivion and now to Skyrim, making book covers interesting and awesome has been, well, a thing.  This mod continues the proud tradition.  I like the desaturated version, but both are lovely.  Of note, though: any mod affecting books will need a patch, so you'll want to download the Book Covers Patch Edition.  There's nothing to install now, but eventually, you'll probably have to.  (Psst... I use a certain house/quest mod that has these Incorporated called Legacy of the Dragonborn, which is one of my favorites.  If you use that, you don't need this.  As it'll probably take me forever to get to quest mods, though, nothing stops one from downloading it now and uninstalling it later.)

And that's about all I care about that isn't too big.  Well, no, that's not true: you'll notice I'm missing one major thing there, which is a lighting overhaul.  The answer to that is I usually see what's most compatible with the housemods I'm currently using, and choose from there.  Weather's missing, too.  I'm probably going to take care of both with Purity, but waiting to see what's most compatible is often a good choice.

But what I've listed isn't anywhere close to all the texture upgrades you can put in your game.  I made Whiterun prettier with aMidanborn, but I know there are beautiful overwrites for Solitude, Winterhold, and Riften (others can be harder to find).  If you're really in to making the game prettier, I again must recommend the Skyrim Beautification Project.  That site has basically every good graphics mod out there.  DOES IT REALLY BOTHER YOU THAT THE MERCHANTS LEGER YOU USE IN THE THIEVES GUILD QUESTS FOR FIVE SECONDS IS NOT BEAUTIFUL?  They have a mod about that.  Crazy!  Yet awesome.


But now on to the important part: YOU.  Or, well, your character.  And being pretty (or cute or beautiful or handsome, or, yes, sexy: there are five gazillion mods to be sexy).

This is the reason for the update here in November.  To make a long story short, the standard skeleton used with most mods has been updated with new requirements.  Somewhat scary requirements, at that.

So let's start with the simple: do you need the new skeleton?

If you are using Duke Patrick's Overhaul Mods (over on tesalliance - this is the link to the main overhaul, but he has various other ones), then you *can't* use it.  They rely on the vanilla skeleton.  Duke Patrick specializes in making very realistic combat overhauls due to his own experience with medieval style-fighting.  They are good (although I find them sometimes too bogged down on the realism and not as much on the fun), and probably the most sane combat overhaul: they certainly are the most updated, I believe.  Besides that, there are some animations that only work with the vanilla skeleton.

Now, on the other side, reasons why you would want to change skeletons: more options.  Many animations only work with the custom skeleton (so it's lose-lose there, with animations).  HDT Psychics only work with the custom skeleton, which is a major plus.  Now, admittedly, a lot of HDT mods are 'make female characters breasts (and occasionally butt) bounce in ways that can be anything from realistic to horrorfying', but hair-styles that move as you walk, cloaks that move as you walk, dresses that move as you walk and so on are also allowed by this- also, high heels that actually lift you up (as everyone walks around snowy tundras in high heels!).  Finally, it allows more customization to your character.  Do you want your sword on your back instead of your side?  Do you want both of your dual-wielded weapons to show on your body?  Do you want to be able to show a ring on every finger?  Do you want your tail to be raised and move more sanely?  Do you want your quiver to actually be in a sane position that looks like your character could actually grab an arrow from it rather then an awkward angle?  Making most of that happen with the vanilla skeleton is difficult, if not impossible.  With a custom skeleton, it's all possible.

I am going to assume that you want to install the custom skeleton, and the newest one.  Just remember: no Duke Patrick's overhauls for you.

The skeleton itself is XP32 Maximum Extended 3.  We are not going to install that now, though.  First, the prereqs.

• Realistic Ragdolls and Force Exactly why this is necessary might be something of a mystery, but it very much is.  This basically makes you (and the various NPC's and monsters in the game) act more sanely when it comes to being hit in combat.  No more 'a lightning spell was cast and you are blasted 20 feet in the air at random'.  The real reason it's necessary, though, is that it fixs various things skeletons were unable to do in making them act more sanely to being hit.  You can use any of the options: the High Force makes things very similar to vanilla, but with the fixes.  The Realistic force makes people basically get hit and crumple promptly with little drama.  I recommend choosing either of the two in-between options: Reduced or Medium.  There will still be some stumbling and falling (especially with Medium and magic), but no one randomly going 30 feet and getting lost, while still some fantasy fun.
• Racemenu Mostly a mod for character creation.  Even without this mod, in game, if you open up the console (~ key on 'English' keyboards) and then type in showracemenu, the character creation screen will pop up and allow you to edit your character with more options then you were given when you first created your character at the chopping block.  This opens up even more options.  The most important to me are the ability to use any color when tinting (so you can give yourself whatever hair-color or dirt-color you want), the ability to layer warpaints and overlays and the ability to add overlays to other parts of the body (such as hands and feet).  It also includes the NetImmerse plugin that the skeleton requires.  (Psst!  Though not necessary, you may wish to install either Show Racemenu PreCache Killer or OneTweak, which will prevent ~showracemenu from crashing if you have a lot of hair/eyes/overlays.  OneTweak is my recommended mod, as it also fixes the weird double-curser bug you can get.)
• Fores New Idles in Skyrim Commonly known as FNIS, this is the most complicated of all mods we're installing so far.  What this allows is for the player, npcs, and creatures to use custom animations.  Considering how ugly some animations in Skyrim is, this is very nice indeed.  For now, though, we're not going to worry about downloading new animations (although that probably does fit with prettification); we're just going to install the program.  For now, all you need is FNIS Behaviour.  Now, check your data folder: go to the new 'tools\GenerateFNIS_for_Users'.  Click the GenerateFNIS application in this folder (NOT the GenerateFNIS_for_Modders).  With only the Skeleton Arm Fix patch check, click Update FNIS Behavior.  And- ta-DAH, that's it.  Except for that you're going to run that everytime you install any mod that touches animations.  Any mod.
• XP32 Maximum Extended 3 Finally, the skeleton itself. 
  • You have an option of what rigging to use: I want HDT.  Most people will as well: even if you do want the random breast bouncing, HDT can do that as well, and HDT is what you need to make the moving cloaks/hair and the like.  Second page, there is an option if you... ahem... wish to use (NOT WORK SAFEEEEE!) Schlongs of Skyrim (I cannot believe I just linked that).  I've never used the mod, so I can't instruct you on its use, but I assume you actually would want to install it before the skeleton.  If you're not interested, just keep the default.  There's also an option for 'style randomizer', which basically means NPC's will be somewhat random on where they put their weapons (one might wear their swords on their back, one on their side; one might have their quiver all up on their back, while another wears it on their waist): it can be good for diversity.
  • Third page, both animation packs should be checked and should keep being checked.  If you use (NOT WORK SAFE AGAIN) Magic Nipple (again, I can't believe I just linked that), you probably want that option, but again I know nothing about this mod so you figure out what option is best. 
  • Next, on the fourth page, you can replace animations.  This is a completely up to you deal: the best way to make decisions is to look at each mod's nexus page and check for linked videos and gifs.  One thing to note, though, is that this will be replacing the animation for EVERYONE in the game.  You may think the ninja animation looks cool on your little female Breton, but will the big burly male Orc look as cool using it?  There is a way to get animations so that only your character will play them, but we'll get to that later.  For now, just choose if there's any animation you think is so much better then vanilla/immersive animations (the pack that was installed, and is pretty gender/race-neutral and mostly just added rather then replaced): I don't replace anything. 
  • Finally, fifth page, install all replacer skeletons.  
  • Sixth page, I would not install any of the bugged animations, but you may want the patch for Joy of Perspective if you like being able to see your body in first-person.  It's certainly realistic, but some of the changes that mod makes me minorly motion sick, so I don't use it.  Make sure to install Joy of Perspective itself, and not just the patch (the skeleton should overwrite the Joy of Perspective mod).

• And now that you have the HDT skeleton involved, install the HDT Physics Extensions.  This will allow the HDT hairstyles I link below to work, as well as any other HDT item.

 And then, finally, we're done with that.  It only took five hundred years.  Yay!  Remember, we installed FNIS animations with this mod, so we have to go run the FNIS application again.  Keep the skeleton arm fix patch checked, too.  Phew.  Now we have a ton more animations!

Alright, now let's get back to making characters attractive.

• CoverEyes This replaces all eyes in the game (for player characters, anyway, though most NPC's use them as well) with higher quality ones.  It also offers really fancy eyelashes: I thus use eyes one, which is only a bit exaggerated from vanilla.  The others are very pretty, but also look like everyone was born very lucky or used too much make-up.  There are many, many, MANY eye replacers, though- this is just one of them.  Choose the one you like the best!  (The Eyes of Beauty is another really nice one, and you can install just add-on's rather then NPC replacers, too... I might add that in.)
• Brows This is a texture replacer for the in game brows, allowing you to see the individual strands of hair and hopefully being much less fake.  It also adds a few new brows, in particular making it so each brow can be used for light or dark hair without looking odd.
• Beards Basically the exact same as brows: texture replacer for beards, making them not ridiculously ugly.  Also adds a few beards that Bethseda left incomplete, as well.  Unfortunately, this can't be used with a popular elven overhaul... but that's a bug of the elven overhaul, not this mod.
• Northborn Scars Like everything above, this is a texture replacer for scars, plus adding more scars in to the game (although it uses racemenu to do so, meaning they might not be available at character select- you'll have to go through the whole hit ~, type showracemenu thing).  As a note, other people's facial textures may try to overwrite these scars (which you probably don't want).  If you're using NMM, you'll just want to hit 'no to mod' when you install facial textures when it asks to overwrite.  If you're using WB, you'll want to use 'Install Missing' instead of 'Install Last' with those facial textures so no overwriting happens.
• Superior Lore Friendly Hair This makes it so you might actually want to use a vanilla hairstyles!  Like the mods above, this just retextures the hair everyone in the vanilla game but possibly you wears so it's not horribly ugly.  I prefer the rough: I would recommend 1k, as a lot of this hair is used everywhere, and particularly with rough, it's very hard to see the difference between the 1k and 2k quality, so it's free saved graphic space!
• Custom Hair ...Well, there's a ton of it.  I prefer to use HDT hair (as I went through all that work with installing the stupid skeleton to allow it!), but if you're playing a male character, there are basically only two HDT options.  In fact, if you're playing a male character, there are very few options period.  I'll list the HDT options first, and mark the non-HDT ones.
• Skyrim Hair Physics Project - A simple ponytail that can be used by both men and woman.  One of the better HDT ones, it seems to mostly bounce around sanely.  If you want a lot of work for little payoff, you can install the whole ApachiiSkyHair package (not HDT!), which will make male Hair 10 (a certain hairstyle used by a certain famous video character) HDT too.  Most of ApachiiSkyHair is converted from Sims 3 mods that I didn't like back when I was playing the Sims 3 and I still don't like now and are very unrealistic (not to mention designed for a character with huge breasts), but if you're playing a male character who wants variety, that may be your only choice.  Females can probably do better, though the Khajit suffer and may wish to think about Apachii as well.  (That's a lot of talk about the mod this isn't focused on, hm.)
• Dread Tentacles - Basically, the only other HDT style for dudes, and only for Aragonian dudes.  Perhaps not the most lore-friendly thing around, but pretty darn awesome all the same.  You may be able to get them to work with female lizardlings as well, although the texture is a bit wonky (though I didn't find it too bad).
• BB's Hair Physics Project - I lied!  There is another.  This mod makes the vanilla male 01 hair HDT enabled (or at least, a copy of it).  There's also two female ponytails that are a bit higher-up then the one in Skyrim Hair Physics Project.
• Merida Hair - Because everyone secretly wants to be a Disney Princess (well, Pixar, I suppose).  For gals, giving a long and medium curly hair version that bounces around.  The crazy wildness of early versions have mostly been fixed, but it still has a slight bug in that when you select it in showracemenu, it looks like a mad mess of disaster.  After you exit showracemenu and move around a bit, it'll go back to normal.  I tend to use it for most of my female Redguards, though obviously any race could have curls.
• KS Hairdos HDT Physics - It's sort of amazing how fast this mod zoomed to the top of the charts.  Included are *75* female hairstyles.  Some of them are far too 'uses a ton of hairspray' to really fit in to Skyrim, but the majority of the ponytails and braids and simple long styles work (at least if you assume the Dragonborn has a good brush for tangles, and honestly, why wouldn't she?).
• Vanilla Hair Variety Plus - Now we're at the non-HDT styles.  This has four female and four male hairstyles that are very similar to vanilla.  I don't really like the textures, but those four male styles are basically the most lore-friendly male styles you're ever going to see.
• Kiijiko Hair - If you're still looking for male styles, though, this is basically your only other option (well, actually, there's some included with (ADULT CONTENT) Better Males, if you want long hair- but I'll talk more about that mod in a bit).  More Sims 3 styles converted to Skyrim.  Despite the pictures, they don't work on Khajit, although they've been updated to work on females if you're looking for short 'somewhat boyish' styles.  These work better on a Breton pretty-boy bard then gawr tough Nordic warrior, in my opinion, but at least they're something.  Again, non-HDT.
• Lovely Hairstyles - Around 20 or so non-HDT female hairstyles that are very lore-friendly and look like they belong in the game.  Some of them even work for Khajit, so if you're playing one, that's a major plus.
• Hair Workshop for Aragonians - Hey, it's a Steam mod!  Six hairstyles (well, more like one hairstyle and five hornstyles) for Aragonians of both genders.  Nice.  Obviously, non-HDT.

Not too bad of a selection.  You'll notice I'm missing one thing here- tattoos and overlays.  I chose to put that at the very bottom of this guide, to go with the bsa unpacking and merging section.

Instead, I'm going to slip over in to the 'body mods' section.  Prepare for nothing but links to nekked people, coming right up!  This is ADULT CONTENT territory.

First, though, to understand body mods, understand this: in Skyrim (and Oblivion, and Fallout...), clothes *are* a body.  Clothing does not magically change shape to suit the body it is on.  Take, say, the Barkeeper Clothes (also known as Clothes06).  No matter what body mod you have installed, it is always going to look EXACTLY THE SAME.  Using females as an example, it does not matter if you install some a mod that gives you giant balloons on your chest, or one that makes you look like you haven't went through puberty (for males, assume the 'scrawny 14 year old versus big buff weight lifter').  As long as that outfit is on you, your breasts/chest (and everything else) is going to look exactly the same.

The difference is the skin texture, which is why I chose the Barkeeper Clothes specifically- they're lowcut on both men and woman, so the upperchest is showing.  Remember how there is a mesh and there is a texture?  The body mesh is controlled by your clothing, but your body texture is still visible no matter what (if you're wearing clothing that shows skin).  If you pull of your clothes so your naked (or wearing underwear, if the body has them), you'll notice you- ta da!  You have whatever body you downloaded.  But as soon as you put on clothes/armor/pieces of twine, your back to using whatever body that clothing/armor/pieces of twine were designed for.

Which leads to the question: is it worth downloading a body replacer?

The answer is different for men and woman, I believe.

For dudes, it comes down to this: A) Do you want super skimpy dude armor?  (Then yes, as super skimpy dude armor is mostly developed for body mods.)  B) Do you hate the Bethseda skin textures with a passion of burning hatred that will never be solved without replacement? (Then yes, as finding a texture replacer for the vanilla body has been ridiculously difficult.)

I am very close to saying yes for the second question, though skimpy dude armor I can take or leave (I like to have some of it in my game, but I generally don't like all armor to be made skimpy).  Like for females, there are two main body replacers: unlike for females, there are not five million not-so-main ones lying around.  There are Better Males and Shape Atlas for Men (NOTE: I attempted to link to the disclaimer to this site, but it only lead to a 404 page- so let's just nod and agree that by going to that site you agree not to distribute their nice stuff or to whine and scream about seeing nekked men and sexual content), and that's that.

I've actually only ever used the first mod.  The main reason for that is that the first mod has underwear, and the second doesn't.  I'm sorry, but I don't like looting random bandits and finding their naked erections staring at me.  And I do believe that people in cold areas wore stuff under their clothes, even in fantasy Scandinavia, so, uh, there.  Having said that, there is a big reason to choose Shape Atlas: remember the whole mesh issue?  Installing Better Males, you'll get nicer looking textures, sure, but your body is going to change every time you put on ANYTHING, as no one has made an indepth mesh replacer for all vanilla items.  Shape Atlas does not have all vanilla items (though they have a lot more then I remembered seeing!) remeshed to fit their body, but they have a decent start and seem to be going through them quickly.

So, quick summary: if you want Better Males, choose a body download and a face download.  I use Slip for the body, and YoungerFaces + Geonox for the face (DCE Realistic Male Face is also a favorite of mine, and seems to blend relatively well with that body), usually (if I do decide to install a male replacer).  If you're going for naked dudes, it's sort of a toss up: it used to be that Sundracon saw more custom armor made for it, but with the release of SAM, FavoredSoul is probably going to take that lead.  If you're looking for skimpy armor replacers (that change the armor to fit those meshes), here is the version for Favoredsoul, here is Sundracon's.  Warning that they are very, very skimpy.

Looking at SAM, what you'll want to do is install the SAM Core, and one of the two SAM Texture files.  Then you'll want the SAM Vanilla refits and Alfendor's Dragonborn and Dawnguard refits if you want armor similar to what's in game: if you want skimpy mesh replacers, try legacy skimpy and vector's modular armors.  Note that this is a new mod, and they're still looking for  All of this should be installable with Wyre Smash: if not, try unzipping them and putting them all in one simple folder in a way I... describe below when talking about merging.  Hm.

(You'll notice that all of these are just changing the MESH.  That means that the texture files we installed above, like amidanborn's, will still work on these!  Even if you get a skimpy armor that completely changes the mesh, his, I dunno, cool looking glass will still show on the parts of armor that, er, are actually there.  Nice.)

Oh, and you may be wondering... what happens if you put a custom armor made for Sundracon on a Favoredsoul body, or vice-versa (if you can actually find one- they're pretty rare!)?  Well, your game doesn't explode or anything.  You'll suddenly have a Sundracon body, with the armor to fit it.  The problem is going to be the skin textures.  You have Favoredsoul skin-textures on your body, made for the Favoredsoul body.  While both Favoredsoul and Sundracon are compatible with armor made for vanilla bodies, they are not very compatable with each other.  The most likely thing that will happen is you'll get seams: textures will seem reversed at the wrists, ankles, and neck especially.  It could be bad enough that it actually looks like your wrist/ankle/head is seperated from your body, with blank empty space of doom betwen them.

Female bodies will have even more trouble going between the two main (which we are about to talk about).  While their are differences between Favoredsoul and Sundracon's defaults, they aren't as big as the ones between UNP and CBBE.  UNP is a lot smaller then CBBE (in the chest/hips/rear area, at least), so if you put a CBBE clothes on a UNP body, something simple like clevage could stretch out in to this ugly foul thing as well as the random seams, with the reverse happening if you put UNP clothes on a CBBE body.

Note, though, if the clothes or armor completely cover the body (IE, if you download a full heavy armor set that actually covers everything or high necked robes with no skin showing), this will be basically unnoticeable.  If there's no skin showing, the only thing that's going to happen is your body will change shape.  Hardly anyone makes full skin covering clothing for bodies, though: that's almost always just for vanilla.


Alright!  Dude's are done, as is the explanation.  So let's get to the gals, and we are as complicated as ever.

When I first made this list, I counted somewhere about fourty but lower then fifty body meshes for females.  I assume even more have come out in the last few months.  For the sake of my sanity, I'm just going to talk about the two most used: Caliente's Beautiful Bodies Edition (CBBE for short) and then Diamonized UNP (UNP for short).  They're number one and number three in Models and Textures on the Nexus; it's hard to miss them.

You can compare screenshots and hm and haaa over them.  Which one you prefer is going to be completely up to you, and I can guarantee that no matter which one you choose, you will eventually find a set of clothing or armor somewhere that is for the other body that you love and will leave you sulking about your decision.
I'll do a quick comparison of the good and bad, but it's really a choice only you can make.

First, understand that UNP is something of a classic: the core body shape was with us in Oblivion and both of the newer Fallout's (well, not Fallout 4, but it'll probably make it's way there eventually).  There are probably double the amount of clothing and armor for it as there are for CBBE... mostly because people just converted Fallout clothes back over to Skyrim.  (Many authors now, when making clothes, make it for both bodies, but that didn't happen originally; most older mods just made stuff for UNP.)  If you Want A Ton Of Custom Clothing, you can lean that way.  If someone is making an armor for males and females and is going to include support for one body, they're probably going to go with the UNP body.

Second, note the interesting bullet point on the CBBE page.  It's complicated, it's confusing, and it's awesome: BODYSLIDE!  Bodyslide is a program that you will install when you install CBBE, and basically means you can adjust the body to look exactly the way you want in a relatively user friendly way.  Hell, you can even make it look like the UNP body in a confusing round-about.  What is so great about this, though, is that any armor/clothing for CBBE bodyslide will (with some tiny extra work of running a program on your part) then fit the custom body *you* created.  Going back over to UNP, you'll notice there's UNP Skinny... but there are hardly any mods made for UNP skinny.  Well, using CBBE's bodyslide, you can make a skinny body (or a more athletic looking one, or a chubby one), and there will be quite a few mods that'll fit without causing your character to suddenly gain/loose weight everywhere!

Third, understand that in Bethseda games, skin texture and facial texture are different things (remember back in Morrowind, even, when you would select a head itself?- it's still sort of like that).  If you can find a body texture and head texture made by the same person, you're in luck.  Instead, you'll often find body textures and head textures made separate, which means they won't line up quitteeee right.  This means that the body will usually not be the exact same color as the neck.  There'll be a seam where different colors start and end.  This is often covered up by necklaces (neck seam concealers, we call them), but CBBE offers a program that will try to help blend a head texture and body texture together.

And fourth, note that UNP has basically all vanilla clothes, ever (including for the DLC's) included for their body.  CBBE has a selection of armors very well converted with bodyslide, most of the vanilla clothes converted with some errors for the standard, and then a very small selection of DLC outfits.

There are other concern... there are extremely high resolution textures for UNP's hands and feet out there that surpass CBBE's.  CBBE has an easier installer, compared to UNP's textures.  This Awesome Clothing Mod uses CBBE, while That Awesome Clothing mod uses UNP.  So on, so forth.

As I really desperately love vanilla replacers and bodyslide confuses me, I'm going to use UNP.  I'll give my best advice for CBBE, but if you plan on using CBBE, I suggest looking at the various CBBE sites as they will probably help you more then I can.


First, though, here's how we'll install UNP.

Diamonized UNP base has a simple install: it's just a textures and meshes folder, nothing more.  Install it through Nexus, Wyre Bash, Mod Organizer or whatever program you like.  Sadly, even if you prefer the skinny version, you probably want the other version for compatibility with other mods.  Addons get a bit more complicated, though.

The newest body textures are in the 1,.6 (at the moment I'm writing this (As of November 2015, it seems we're back to using 1.51?)) texture file.  This is a much more complicated install.  What you're going to have to do is create a folder in your Skyrim Mods/Bash Installers directory.  Call it 'UNP textures'.  Then, in that folder, create a folder called textures.  In that folder, create a file called actors.  In that folder, create a file called character.  In THAT folder, create a file called female.

(Thus it will be UNP Textures/textures/actors/character/female when you're all the way in it.)

Then, you'll want to drop and drag one of those texture files, depending on (...I can not believe I'm writing this) the amount of, ahem, pubic hair you want female characters to have.  ('1d6STRIPdss.dss', or the like.)  You'll then rename that file as 'femalebody_1.dds'.  This will give you the more updated textures to the UNP body, which have much nicer feet (and other details).

But maybe you don't want every female character in the world lying dead naked when you loot them.  Then instead you'll want the SFW Bikini's for main body (also of note: Exeter below has an optional file in their Skyrim Vanilla Armor Replacer that puts the basic 'vanilla' game underwear on UNP meshes if you don't like the more modern bikini).  Thankfully, that can be installed via Nexus or Wyre Bash.  It uses the less detailed foot textures, but will have a black bikini on every female.  There's an optional file that replaces that bikini with a white one... you'll want to either overwrite the black bikini with that, or delete that OPTIONALS folder now taking up room in your Data directory.

On the other side of things, there are also the DIMFace textures that seem to make the faces look nicer.  Thankfully, they're easily installed, without any optionals.

(As a note, if any of this texture stuff is too complicated... well, to be blunt, you're probably going to end up overwriting them with a better texture later.  The UNP textures are very nice, but there are some out there that are even nicer!)

After you've installed the base body, you'll want to install the replacers for the vanilla clothes.  Exeter's are the most base/similar to vanilla: for skyrim, for dawnguard and for dragonborn.  If you're more interested in skimpy clothing, maddbomber82 put together a collection that basically grabs all the various options of UNP replacers in three huge packages (though the expansion's aren't included).  Install the textures, then install the armor and clothes with NMM, picking and choosing what you like.  If you type UNP replacer in to nexus or google search, you'll probably find even more replacers, too: those are just the most popular ones.

(Note: you're going to see UNPB stuff coming up a lot, too.  The UNP Blessed Body is probably the most popular body mod based on the UNP.  It's basically the UNP body with bigger breasts.  Again, you can use any UNPB clothes and the like on an UNP body, your breasts will just get bigger.  I suppose you're using padding?  I don't know.)

Finally, a link over to the 'How to Waifu' page over at TesGeneral, where they have a link to the super special awesome UNP feet and hands.  They are the most beautiful feet and hands a character could ever have.  They are so high poly they may break your computer if it's not high end (and remember every female character will have them), but they are gorgeous.  So gorgeous.


Oof!  Now jump over to CBBE.  (NOTE: this has not been updated in November.  CBBE now has seperated bodyslide on to it's own page over here.  If you're using CBBE, you'll probably still want it!  If you're using UNP, you might even still want it: if you find a CBBE mod that includes bodyslide files that you like, you can use that to make it fit the UNP body.  Though you'd still have texture issues, probably.  Hm.)

CBBE has a nice little installer if installing through Nexus (note: installers in Nexus generally work fine if you use Mod Organizer, so if you're one of those smart people who doesn't use Nexus at all (or, er, you got IP banned and don't feel like using a proxy), just install things with complicated installers using Mod Organizer).  As always, options should be whatever you please.

I prefer the slim body.  Mods for CBBE that don't use bodyslide will use either the slim or the curvy without generally specifing which- so if you're not a very good judge of bodytypes by looking at screenshots, you'll likely have a mix of clothes for both the curvy and the slim bodies.  To me, it makes more sense that my character's thighs/chest grow a bit more when putting on armor (using padding under armor is a smart thing, after all) then that they shrink.  Up to you, though.

As for other options, I'm installing CBBE (for this tutorial anyway) because I don't like the vanilla shape (although installing that will certainly mean mods for the vanilla body will work better for you), but I check everything else.  I may replace the face textures later on, but CBBE's work for the moment.  I want all three utilties, *especially* the racemenu (we installed that one back when we installed our skeleton, I believe) plugin support.

Next is the underwear support.  If you don't want any underwear, just don't select anything, but keep in mind that'll mean whenever you loot a female body, they'll leave behind a naked corpse.  If you do want underwear, there's something similar to the vanilla default and two purpley options.

Texture quality, I use high. If you're not installing much but graphics, you can go Ultra (again, I put in too many script mods to do that); if your computer isn't that strong (especially if you're using a laptop's integrated graphics card) you'll probably want medium or even low.

Eyebrows, we already installed an eyebrow retexture.  However, you may like the style of CBBE's better especially if you're primarily concerned with female characters: this is up to you.  I skip them.  The dirt to beauty marks is an interesting thing: unlike every other option, this will be for your character alone (other characters in game will still have dirt splatters if necessary).  For this, I really think it depends on your character: an Orc is probably more likely to have dirt on them, while a more diplomatic focused mage type is probably more likely to have a beauty mark.  Go with whatever makes you happy.

Oh, and as a side note- each month, Caliente has been releasing a retexture of the underwear with a different color according to real world birthstones.  As a Leo, I'm currently waiting for July's ruby: I doubt anyone is going to see this before July is out as I haven't shared this blog link with anyone, but June is a pretty bright pink.  They're only downloadable for that month, but it seems they'll be re-released later on.

As for replacements for CBBE: sadly, there isn't much.  Caliente herself has made the most, Vanilla Outfits, which covers most of the lower level armor both light and heavy, as well as some townperson items.  Hers are all optimized to be used with bodyslide.  CBBE Dragonborn Armors covers some of the items from the expansion, though not bodyslide based.  For the slim body, it's just the cloth robes; for the curvy body, there's the cloth robes and three armor sets.  Then, finally, Bodyslide 2 Vanilla Outfits attempts to convert almost all base game non-heavy armors to bodyslide, after which you yourself can convert to your body of choice... but they have an unfortunate tendency to be buggy (some texture errors, clipping...).  If you're looking for a skimpy replacer, there's Killer Keo's (relatively easy to use, though not bodyslide enabled- I believe a body similar to the curvy one is used) and then Remodeled Armor (fully bodyslide enabled, requires certain things installed (though we installed quite a few of the requirements), has all that bouncing breasts deal thing).

...For all that I sad CBBE was easy, it is sort of complicated, huh?  Ack!


Still, while on CBBE, let's look at Bodyslide and how to make outfits work for it.  (UNP users, just keep skipping ahead... textures will come soon.)

It should be installed in 'Steamapps\Skyrim\Data\CalienteTools\BodySlide'.  Click the exe, and go.  (If you get an error about it not finding your directory, close the exe, go in to the config file, and set your actual directory after commenting out the <!--- part, you probable pirate, you.)  There you can see all your five gazillion options.  If you want to, play with it- though at the moment you're just testing, not making something you're going to save.

Now, let's install our first bodyslide clothes: I'm using the Vanilla Outfits from above.  Choose the bodytype you do installed, and then tell it to add the bodyslide addon.  If you still had bodyslide open, close it and reopen it once the mod is installed.

Now you can play around.  Choose the first armor option on the list: that's the Forsworn, way at the top.  If you wish to alter your body, do so!  But I would suggest not going too far from either slim or curvy (or vanilla) so that the clothes/armor for that body will still fit your character well.  After your happy with the way the body looks, SAVE PRESET.  Give it a name you'll remember, and put it in the CalaniteArmor folder by clicking the tick box.

Now, you have the Forsworn armor selected in Outfit/Body, you have your preset selected in the Preset tab, and it's time to click 'Batch Build' down in the corner.


Batch install should change all the ones in the CalaniteArmor pack to the body you created.  You would then need to change the clothing and armor from the other two packs as well.  From what I understand, you have to remake your preset each time (...I don't understand this very well, sadly).  So you may wish to screenshot or write down the variables of your custom preset.  And... honestly, that's really all I can explain about Bodyslide.  I suggest you read all the readme's involving it and look for tutorials to see if there is a better way to do this, as I don't want to go changing my meshes when I'm using UNP.  Sorry!


Okay, oof.  We installed textures for guys when we installed the male body replacer (or at least, we had the option to), and textures for females came with CBBE and UNP.  But there are better textures for females out there, and those guys and gals textures are missing something.

Our friendly beast races.

FAR (Forgotten Argonian Roots) is the go to for those of the Southern Marches.  There are textures for both main male bodies and both main female bodies.  The default has a slight glow to them, though you can also install the non-glowy textures.  This one you'll probably have to download manually, put in it's own folder, and install through Wyre Bash due to it's odd folder structure.  You'll want to choose the textures that correspond to your bodytype.  The female has two optional textures to give her different snake like patterns.

Those textures are probably the most lore friendly, but Drachnis (here for gals) is also an option.  This gives the Argonian's a dragon-like texture.  I'm not sure it really makes sense for them to be all dragony, but it's certainly cool looking.

The main mod for the Khajit is Coverkhajits.  It's made for the default male body (which will be fine with the Better Male's meshes, and I'm guessing SAM's) and the CBBE body (which will be fine with vanilla).  Unlike the textures for the mer/man races, the CBBE Khajit textures actually look okay on the UNP body (particularly if you use the UNPB body): there may be a slight bit of blur, but it's not too bad.  An option for UNP (and CBBE) is the Feminine Khajit Textures.  They're much more human-like (well, unless you install the option that, ahem, is more cat like in another way...), but do work better for the UNP body.  I personally like my kitties all furry, though, so I go with the Coverkhajits despite using UNP.  YMMV.  (Amusingly, this generally means that a UNP Khajit can wear CBBE armor better then any other UNP race.  Go figure.)

Now, on to the female mer/men.  There are dozens upon dozens of options here... I just know a few.

For the longest time, every person of the same sex in the world shared the same body textures (excluding beast races and custom races, obviously).  They still will, actually.  Unless... you use EBD - Everybody's Different.

What this does is allow you to use one body texture, and other people in the world can use various different textures.  It also allows eyes and hair you installed to be put on other NPCs, their heights to be randomized a bit so everyone isn't always the exact same height and can set female characters that were currently using male animations (such as housecarls and almost all orcs) to use female animations.  All of this is optional, though!  How does it do that?  With a SkyPROC patcher.

Now, note that if you use this, everytime you add an NPC to the world, you'll have to run said patcher.  (You can add a whole bunch of mods and run it once, but you can't run your game with a new NPC somewhere in the world without running it.)  This takes time.  And as your mod list gets bigger and bigger, this patcher will take longer to run.  And you may end up with like, five different skyproc patcher, all for different things, and having to run five different patchers before running your game after you add one mod to it, each patcher which can take quite a bit of time.

However, if you want to use a texture that only you have while not using a custom race, this is the only way.

I'm not going to use it at this time (I probably will eventually (even though it will turn half the population naked), but I want to see how many SkyProc patchers I end up with first), but here's an example of how to use it: download the EBD skyproc patcher, and then download a replacer of your choice from the EBD - Example TexturePacks.  Just pick one at random that you like, but don't want to be using for your own character.  Install it with Wyre or NMM, whatever doesn't hurt you, and then run the patcher (it's a jar file- make sure your java is updated!).  You'll have all sorts of cool options, including how to distribute everything.

I do recommend, though, setting your hair and eyes to NOT be distributed to unique NPCs.  Random guards, bandits, necromancers and what have you will get your eyes and hair, making them stand out a bit more, but it will keep important people from getting stupid ridiculous things.  Almost every hair pack has at least one style that looks ridiculous and ugly, and when Ulfric or Elsif is running around with it, it sort of ruins the mood.

The ENB pages link to most of the best textures (including some for dudes I didn't even know was there).  I would just follow them; try to find textures that have both a head and a body included to reduce the risk of a discoloration/seams between the neck and the body.  My favorite generic 'everyone uses it' skin is Mature Skin, which works for every body type ever basically and should fit everyone in the world; my favorite 'me and me alone' skin is one of the BI Phenotypes that fits my character that gives her scars and the like she picked up.  If you're looking for something of the more unblemished/perfect variety, Fair Skins Complexion looks pretty and popular.



Now, for fun, how about some custom races?  Sure, it undoes all that work we did in hairstyle hunting, but hey!  Pretty!  Unique!

Skyrim handles custom races relatively well compared to former games (remember in Oblivion how you could never get out of the beginning cell or in Fallout 3 how two of the main quests Just Wouldn't Work (including the last one!) with custom races?), but it still wasn't perfect.  Then Dawnguard came out, and they were broken utterly.  Thankfully, there's RaceCompatibility which should make custom races mostly work.  If you're using a custom race, YOU NEED THAT.  I would write that in huge red letters if I wasn't so lazy.

With a custom race, you will miss certain things in the game.  Even at the beginning when you're about to be executed, the General won't have a comment for you about where your corpse will go.  There are other various comments (mostly directed at the beast races and Dunmar) you'll miss.  There are a few times when the game will try to check your race and get confused if it can't find it.  Also, there are some quest and companion mods have a few comments about your race (Vilja telling me I was the nicest Altmar she ever met rings in my mind) that you can miss as well (including a popular mod- Anna's NPC's- with romances that are race exclusive).  This may mean that you have to use console commands to get past a certain stage in a quest: all the makers of the races try to add in checks (at least, I hope they do...), but inevitably they're going to fail somewhere.  If you're okay with missing a bit of content and occasionally having to use the console, though, custom races can be a fun way to explore the world... and make yourself look incredibly unique while doing so.

++ Ningheim Race A race based somewhat on the Nords, this is one of the most extensive ones.  Almost all bodies are usable.  There's custom warpaint, head meshes, and textures.  There's some rather interesting powers that you earn by leveling.  It's not exactly lore friendly, but as far as it goes, it doesn't overly clash, either.  It does require an expansion from the Brows we downloaded earlier (under optional files), but other then that everything is included.  Overall, they're an extremely attractive race that it's easy to make pretty characters with.
++ The Ashen Race Tying in to the mysterious Akaviri, this mod's basic purpose is to allow you to make an Asian looking character, something nearly impossible with the basic races, sadly.  Though all the pictures uploaded by the maker are for females, this works for male characters too.  For both gals and guys, it has a tendency to make them look 'cute', I think (which can be awkward for the guys and the buff body they have): it's good for making a teenage character.  It has a ridiculous amount of eyes and it's own custom warpaints, head meshes, and all that.  The powers aren't as interesting as the Ningheim, but they're less overpowered at the same time.
++ The Norial Reloaded Like the Ningheim, this is another race based on the Nord's, but goes a bit differently: rather then blessed by the Nine, they took power from old runes.  Their bodies are decorated with tattooed runes (that I think are pretty awesome).  They have a variety of racial powers that revolve around decorating themselves with runic auras, summoning, and shape shifting.  The racial powers can be a bit overpowered, but most of them you have to find, and they're a new way of playing.
++ Custom Races But what if you just want to make a race for you and you alone just so you can have a body and texture unlike anyone else in the game as you don't feel like using EBD?  This is the mod you want, then.  This involves some namechanging: you'll want to download body meshes and textures that you like (don't forget the skeleton, too!), overwrite the files (such as 'skeleton_female.nif') with the new ones you downloaded, and viola!  As a note... if you're using a 'human' race and the UNP body, this opens up some crazy new options from other games.  Jumping over to Fallout New Vegas, for example... the Tattoo Full of Roses is one of my favorite textures.  You could use that on your Skyrim character, as Diamonized UNP is basically the same as the Diamonized Type3.  Or you could use those cool scars from BI Phenotypes... whatever you want!

Now, on the completely gonzo side of Skyrim, here's two completely non-lore and crazy races: the Predators (as in those scary guys from Alien) and the Uchiha Clan (as in, those asshole jerks from Naruto).  Both add completely ridiculous races to Skyrim, but are more then just race mods.  The first adds various camps of evil Predators (...and one 'good' one?), drop boxes around the world with mysterious supplies, some rather terrifying enemies, and some futuristic type of weapons and armors.  The second, dependent on the Naruto Overhaul, adds tons of spe- ahem, 'jutsu', some Naruto type clothes (not the best textured), and a huge line of various eye powers and things you have to do to get more eye powers.  Both mods are ridiculous, in their own way, but they're also fun if you're just playing a goof off game.  Though recommending them makes me feel sort of guilty.

You may notice that custom hair, eyes, and warpaints you installed are not showing up on your custom race.  There's some advice on getting that to work here, and then here.  You'll have to open up the Creation Kit or Tes5Edit (I say use the latter- the Creation Kit is a confusing disaster if you're not used to it) and then add the hairs/whatever from the ESM/ESP files over in to your custom race file.  If you're going to merge hairs, do that first!


Oof.  Now, here I'm going to talk about merging and folder installation in to Wyre Bash, using Warpaints/Tattoos/Overlays as my base.  I think I mentioned before, but I love these things: it allows me to customize my character's body (rather then just face) to at least look a bit different from everyone around her.  Unfortunately, I'm the type who might want to use this warpaint from here, that warpaint from there, this from over here, maybe change an NPC to use that... meaning like ten or so mods.  That's nine plugins I could be using for something else!  Like Yet Another House mod, because my character needs at least twenty houses, clearly.

Thus, that makes these mods a great thing to merge.  They have basically no scripts (just what's needed to get them in to racemenu), they all do the same thing, they all are named differently so there's no way they can conflict, and they're not armor/weapons/clothes/spells that I may wish to have changed by a SKYproccer (we won't even get in to that mess until probably the very last skyrim modding post I make).  They're perfect for merging.

So, to start: I am listing basically every overlay mod I have used.  YOU DON'T HAVE TO DOWNLOAD THEM ALL (I might not!).  Many, for instance, are only for gals: no need to download them if you're playing a male character: likewise, I believe the Weathered and Worn are only for dudes.  Some may just not be interesting for you, some might be too 'smears of paint' for you or some might be far too lore-breaking and modern for you.  Just go with what you like.

Even if you don't intend to download many, though (or even if you don't intend to download any at all as you're using a custom race), I still recommend you keep reading this to learn how to merge mods, though.

So, here's a list of warpaints, tattoos, and overlays.  DOWNLOAD THEM ALL MANUALLY.  No nexus for this!

Warpaints and Tats (note this has a ton of files!- also, welcome to loverslab, the more adult portion of Skyrim Modding, but they still have some awesome non-adult stuff (plus, er, plently of adult stuff if you want it)), Weathered and Worn Warpaints (you want the for Racemenu version, third down ATM), Nuska Warpaint, Battle Hardened Warpaints (one of the best, IMO- download the first file, the standalone), Empyrean Warpaints in HD (another favorite of mine), WyldTats (racemenu version- I used this one way too much in DA to use it again, but not bad!), Neith Team Warpaints (set 50 racemenu version- should be the last download in the main files), Empyrean Warpaints Custom Series for Females (yet another favorite- these are great for layering), TarienSoul's Warpaints (this links to their user page; you have to download the tattoos through links to their dropbox), Freckle Mania (def 2K version), KJ Tattoos (again, 2K), The Coenaculi Tattoo Parlor (sadly, you can only have one of the plugins at once- so if you're playing a guy, go with male, for a gal, use your bodytype of choice... because of this, you may not want to merge this one, but as I always play gals, it doesn't matter to me) Norse Themed Tattoos (for the UNP body), Rutah Tattoo Pack (again, for UNP), Suicide Girl Overlays (yet again, UNP but may work for males)... I think that's all I specifically have used?  Obviously, the last two are incredibly unlore friendly, but eh.

There are a ton more, though: just type warpaint, overlay, tattoo, racemenu or other such words in to nexus search, and download what you want.

(Beast races miss out on the fun here... there's HD Khajiit Warpaints and there's Argonian Warpaints, but neither are overlays: they're replacers, and thus should not be merged or combined.)

You probably noticed basically all of those mods mentioned you needing to change your SKSE ini.  Well, here's the lazy way: viola!  This puts a simple ini file in your SKSE folder (which is in the data folder) that fixes the warpaints you downloaded so they don't look so awful and pixelated, as well as does a minor fix that should help delete some errors from your game (it's not going to stop crashes, but it may help with lag from a stupid script).

Okay.  Breathe.  You're doing well.  Now, go in to your Skyrim Installers/Bash Installers folder.  Create a new folder.  I call mine 'Merged Overlays'.  And now, it's time to start unpacking.

Go to wherever you downloaded all those warpaints, and start unpacking them.  What you want is to put in this folder exactly what will be in your data folder.  Texture folders, Script folders, BSA's, and ESP/ESM's, and a readme or two.  For instance, the Warpaints and Tats files are in the Data folder, which you then click through to get an esp and bsa.  Copy the esp and bsa in to the 'Merged Overlays', not the 'Data' folder.

(You may find a BSL file (Nuska and Coenaculi both have them, I know); I think that's the first time we've seen one.  A bsl file basically is a helper to people looking in to a BSA; it displays the insides of the BSA better.  BSL is not at all needed to run your game, though, and in fact most mod managers (Wyre Bash I know for sure) simply will just skip it and not install it.  I'm keeping it around until I unpack the BSA, but you can just delete it now if it's looking at you funny.  Delete it before installing and after you're done unpacking, at least: it's just a waste of space.)

(TarienSoul, and maybe a few others, nicely included a SKSE ini file in their file, but the SKSE ini we downloaded up there is better, so don't install the included ones.)

Okay, everything put in your Merged Overlays folder?  Open up Wyre Smash, then, and click over to the Installers tab.  Oh, but while you're doing that and are still hanging around in your Mopy Folder... open up 'Templates'.  See three files.  Copy (copy!  don't cut!) 'Bashed Patch, Skyrim' over to your data folder (unless there's already a Bashed Patch over there- you don't need two of them!).  We don't need it now, but we will in a bit.

Alright, now in your Installers folder, you'll notice somewhere in your list is 'Merged Overlays'.  Unlike the squares of zip/rar/7ZIP files, it's represented by a diamond.  Install it by right clicking.

And that's basically how you 'folder install' something in to Wyre Bash.  Unpack the file or files, make it in to it's own folder, nod at it approvingly, install.  This is good for mods with various optional files, and absolutely necessary for mods with weird folder structures: some of them are so odd that no mod manager can properly install it, meaning this is basically the only way to do it.  You could certainly zip the folder up once you set it up (as long as it's only one level deep- 'Merged Overlays/stuff' or 'Data/stuff', not 'Merged Overlays/Data/stuff'- it will install fine), but as we're still going to be using it, that's not a good idea at the moment.

Check all those mods.  Run LOOT.  (You may need to close Wyre Bash and NMM for it to properly apply the sorting.)  I have one mod to clean (SMIM ShackRoofFixes for Dragonborn), so I'm going to do that quick.  You know the drill: Apply Filter for Cleaning, Undelete and Disable, Remove Identical.  Yadda.

LOOT said all our overlays were clean, but we're going to be overly cautious here.  Load up ALL of them.  Thankfully, they should all be clustered together, near the end of the load list: the Bashed Patch and Alternate Start and maybe a Weapon Fix might be lower, but really nothing else.  Honestly, though, where these are isn't too important in your load list... as long as they're below ALL mods that directly fiddle with the racemenu.  Anyway, apply filter for cleaning and then undelete and remove.

(As I suspected, I didn't find anything- so honestly, you don't need to do this.  There's nothing to clean here.  Still, if you're merging, it's a good idea)

Here's the extra step I only worry about when I'm merging mods, though: I check each mod for errors.  Unless you know the mod very well, if the mod has an error that can't be fixed, you should not merge it.  Ever.  Likewise, if a mod reports a deleted navmesh, don't merge it.  Those are things that can lead to crashes.  It's not guaranteed they will, of course!  (Very little is guaranteed in Skyrim modding.)  But they can, and if that mod is tangled up with ten other mods, you're going to have a lot of trouble if you do start getting said crashes as everything is going to have to go.  Owch.

(In any case, none of these mods had errors.  No cosmetic mod should have any errors or need for cleaning, to be honest, but I'm sure one is out there where someone screwed up and thus this is necessary.)

Now, we do a quick check for conflicts before we get to the nitty gritty.

First, right click and remove filter (that's the filter you had for cleaning).  Then, click 'Apply Filter'.  A screen will pop up with a ton of information.

In general, here's what you want to do.  At the top left, five or six down, click 'Conflict' and below that, 'Critical Conflict'.  At the bottom of the page, 'Conflict Status Inherited by Parent' is ticked: keep it so.  Directly left of that are two options 'Flatten Blocks/Sub-Blocks' and then 'Flatten Cell Children'.  Those are the five things you need checked when doing simple conflict checking.  Finally, click 'Filter' (the green check mark) near the bottom right.

(If you want a more in depth guide to this, I recommend FNVEdit Training Menu over on the New Vegas site.  It's probably the most helpful tutorial to TES5Edit that exists... as TES5Edit is built on the same engine as the editors for FO3 and FNV)

And... ta-da!  We have no conflicts.  Which there certainly shouldn't have been.  Butttt....

Just for fun (and to give an example of what it looks like), load up all the mods you have installed so far and apply that conflict detection filter.  Now you'll see what conflicts are!  In general, it's the backgrounds you need to pay attention to.

A green background?  'Multiple stuff is touching this one item, but it's all the same'.  The only example of that in my current load order is Brows and the Skyrim.esm, which both are touching a certain brow record but neither are changing (at the same time, this isn't an identical to master issue).

A yellow background?  'This mod is overwriting stuff, but there's not a specific conflict'.  SMIM Dragonborn Shack Roof Fixes overwrites the vanilla Dragonborn roof by changing it's position slightly (so it, you know, actually fits on the shack the way it's supposed to).  In general, yellow background means that a mod is changing it's master file (usually Skyrim itself or one of the DLC's).  You don't have to worry about it... most of the time.  Sometimes you may install a mod made by a maker who uses a different language version of Skyrim then you, and thus areas/items may be overwritten to use names of that language.  Those overwrites you'll want to delete.

It's the red/orangey and the purple backgrounds that are worth looking at.  That basically means 'conflict'.  That doesn't necessarily mean bad, though.  The unoffical patches conflict with the masters and each other, but in good ways.  Take the NPC Hert, a certain vampire lumber mill owner.  The Unofficial Skyrim Patch gave her vanilla vampire eyes, and added tinting.  Then Dawnguard comes, and takes away the tinting and gives her Dawnguard face.  Then comes the Unofficial Dawnguard patch, which goes with the Dawnguard face and again adds the eyes and tinting.

In this case, the Unofficial Skyrim Patch was the 'loser'- it got overwritten by Dawnguard, and then by the Unofficial Dawnguard Patch.  But we wanted that to happen!  So all is good.

I'll discuss more on handling conflicts in the next part of this guide, or the part after.  But for now, just understand that red/orange/purple background means that a conflict happened.  This is the only case where the text color matters: red text means 'This mod did not win the conflict' and orange text means 'This mod did win the conflict' (thus, the orange text mod's stuff will be what loaded, not the red text mod).  At the moment, most of the conflicts we have now are A) supposed to be there or B) leveled list conflicts (Weapon and Armor Fixes Remade and Complete Crafting Overhaul are both trying to add conflicting items to a leveled list- that would be sorted with a bashed patch).  The more mods you install, though, the more likely you are to find things like 'This mod puts a house here while this mod puts a dungeon right on top of it', which is a lot harder to deal with.


Now that we have checked all our Overlay mods for errors and made sure they didn't conflict with each other, it's time to merge them!

But first, we have the issue of BSA's.

BSA's don't merge well at all.  Certain programs will try their best to do so (Tes5Edit will try to unpack them for you during a merge, for instance, but I have never had this work a hundred percent correctly), but this can lead to buggy textures and issues and really, it's best just to make things work properly in the first place.  As many Skyrim mods use BSA's, though, we're going to need to unpack them in to standard files.  BSAOpt (which I believe I said we should download back in part one, fifty years ago) is the best program to unpack BSA's, though the nice and simple BSABrowser can also do so.

So for that: let's create another folder in our Bash Installers Directory.  Call it 'Merged Overlays Real' (or 'Final' or 'Super Special' or 'The Bestest' or whatever appeals).  Let's copy in to it *just* the folders (and maybe readmes) from our Merged Overlays folders (IE, copy the Scripts and Textures folders, do not copy the ESP's and the BSA's).

Now, I did this with BSABrowser.  Select the first BSA in our list (I go in alphabetical order, so for me it's BHWarpaints).  It may give you an error about version numbers: ignore it.  It tells you exactly what is in this file (a few mods are including racemenu scripts, you'll notice- we're going to want to delete those later to use the generic racemenu script included with the latest racemenu plugin).  All you have to do is click 'Extract All', select your Merged Overlays Real folder, and tell it to extract there.  It's that easy (and very quick, too)!

Close that BSA.  Open the next one on the list.  And repeat!

(Note that this program does not worry about overwrites- it just extracts, overwriting without telling you.  Save for those racemenu scripts, nothing here should be overwriting each other, but other mods may be different.  That's the reason I used BSABrowser, actually, rather then the better BSAOpt; BSAOpt would be worrying about racemenu scripts unpacking on to each other, while I just wanted them to as I was going to delete them anyway.)

That done?  Yay~!  Now we merge the modules together.

This is a good guide for merging plugins, by the way, if you think I don't make any sense.

For the easiest merging possible, we're going to use a script that will be used in TES5Edit: the Merge Plugins Script.  This script is so awesome, and has completely revolutionized the way I merged plugins before! ;P  Install it wherever you have Tes5Edit: mine is somewhat awkwardly put in my main Skyrim folder.  Now, open Tes5EDIT and open the mods you want to merge (all of these overlays).  Start clicking on them with the CTRL button held down: you'll notice they're being highlighted.  When all are highlighted a light blue, right click on any one and choose Apply Script.

Check 'Merge Plugins 1.9' (or greater, if another update has come since I made this post).  (If you're stupid like me, update the TES5Edit you've apparently been using since early 2013, then try again.)  A pop up box will come up that will ask you to pick some options.  The default stuff is good, but there aree two critical choices, though.

(Well, three, if you're using Mod Organizer.  If you are, put in all your Mod organizer information!)

The first is your 'assets' folder.  That's where stuff gets extracted and put, basically (at least, BSA's if you tried to unpack them with TES5Edit).  The default will be your Data Folder, but I like to add an extra folder to that to check out- so, I extract to my Skyrim/Data/Merge.  This allows me to find the stuff I merged easier and put it where it belongs if I do try to use their extraction.

The second is above that, and it's the Renumbering FormID's.  That's somewhat hard.  If at all possible, you want to avoid renumbering FormID's.  Other mods can riff off a mod you're merging, and will require the FormID to be exact in order to match up.  Having said that, as it notes, if you choose not to renumber FormID's and attempt to merge two mods that use the same FormID, your game will break in to tiny pieces of doom and destruction.  So the safest choice is to keep the default of Renumbering Conflicts, and do your best not to merge any mods that use the same FormID's.

(Someone cool: when you merge, some of your mods may be green.  Click on them, and you can see reports of those who have Merged Before You.  In this case, all the reports are basically 'merges fine', but hey, it's good to know.)

When merging, always create a new file.  Always!  Name it whatever you wish- mine will be Merged Overlays Real, simply to keep things as I know.  In this case, the merge of 20 random plugins was completely successful.  Once you exit Tes5Edit, your Merged Overlays Real should be sitting in your data folder.  Copy it over to your Merged Plugins Real folder, and, in this specific case, go in to your scripts folder and delete 'Racemenubase.pex' (also, if you have an extra plugin, delete that too).  Open Wyre Bash yet again, go back to your Installer tab, and uninstall your first 'Merged Overlays' folder (you'll probably have to simply delete all those ESP files from your Mods folder, as they were changed when you saved them with Tes5Edit).  Then install 'Merged Overlays Real'.

And that's it!  You did it!  Yay, sparkles!

Considering how much space this takes up, you may wish to repack this all in to a BSA- using BSAOpt.  I'm not doing that as I'm considering merging my hair and other cosmetic mods in to this file, but it'll save you space.  Make sure everything is working beforehand, though- you don't want purple textures and bugs!

I was actually going to cover making a Bashed and Merged Patch in this section, but this is long enough as it is and we're not really at a point where we're playing the game yet anyway.  So uncheck both your Bashed Patch and your Merged Patch (if you have either) and load up the game.  As always, I recommend using the alternative start and hanging out in the tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere.  Even when just creating your character, you'll notice you have a ton of options you didn't have before assuming you installed prior mods.  For all the overlay stuff, however, the big treats are when you use show race menu.

This is relatively simple.  Wait till you're in a quiet spot (after running from a certain angry dragon and going inside the Keep in the regular game, or when in the starting in the little shack if you use the Alternative Start), hit the tilde key ('~'- on the typical American keyboard, it's above the ` if you press shift, directly below the escape key) and type the words showracemenu in to the 'console'.  Then hit the tilde key again to exit: you're back in the 'create a character' menu.

NOTE: Changing gender here may (and often does) crash your game.  Don't do it (there's a fix somewhere on the nexus for it if you really wish to, I think).  You can change your race, but it *may* cause you to loose your perks and skills (in other words, if you want to change your race, do it very soon after you start the game, not at level 50).  Anything else you can change, though: obviously the overlays/tattoos (and hair) are the things you'd most often be changing, but you can alter your height, weight, sliders, eyes, complexion (age your character a few years, add some scars after you've adventured a while...)- whatever you want besides gender and race changing.

You'll notice that while you had multiple new options before when you first created your character, now that you've hit showracemenu you have a ton more (IE, I didn't have any hand overlays during character creation, but had around ten in showracemenu).  You'll also notice an odd thing about overlays: all of them are transparent by default.  That's just how Bethseda made things.  What you'll want to do is assign a color (any color) and THEN hit T to choose a texture.  Sadly, due to the way Bethseda designed things, you can only look at your front/arms/face/chest in the character creator and racemenu.  You can try the 'tcl' command in the console to see if it allows you to swerve around to your back or legs, but you may simply have to put a tattoo in, quit racemenu to see what it looks like, and then go back and try a different one till you find what satisfies you/the color that looks best.


On that note, merging mods: genuinely helpful!  255 may seem like a lot of plugins, but considering one mod alone may have nine or so plugins, it really isn't.  You can run in to the limit fast, especially if you're someone who really likes NPCs/armor, weapons, clothes/House mods/or lots of options (all which add up quickly).

So what should you merge?

++ Cosmetics are the biggest ones.  If you so wish, you can add your hair, brows, and complexion in to that same file as the overlays.  The only thing I'll note is I wouldn't merge Apacchi Skyhair (as many other mods are dependent on it).
++ Small weapon, armor and clothing mods- ESPECIALLY if all they do is add the item for crafting rather then placing it in the world or adding it to leveled lists.  (If they do place it in to the world, it's fine to be merged as long as you know that place isn't altered- if it's added to a leveled list, you'll have to do some extra work when merging things, but it's still possible!)  If you're using SkyRe/PerMa overhauls, this sadly doesn't work as well, but you probably shouldn't be using either of those if you're new to modding.
++ On the same note, anything that relies on the crafting menu almost solely.  Food mods that just add more food to craft rather then to leveled lists is good, and if you know how to merge the leveled lists together, it works as well.  Note if you use a 'realistic' mod that requires you to eat and drink, you may need to merge patches together.
++ Basic simple NPC's.  A ton of mods add simple adoptable children or followers that basically rely on vanilla voices and scripts and are mostly just there to give you variety (and pretty attractive people to look at).  These can all be put together.
++ In general, simple basic stuff.  Mods that are basically just MCM tweak menus or UI mods (I wouldn't merge SkyUI itself, though).  Mods that might add a simple shrine out somewhere, or a little Easter egg or a simple one cell starter house that's basically a bed and eight storage dumps.

The rule is more what you don't want to merge, and the answer is nothing that is currently getting regular updates (or that has recently been released and may have undiscovered bugs) and nothing script heavy (that includes large houses, quests, big NPC mods, any kind of overhaul).

We didn't in this case, as I knew all those mods worked, but if you're planning on merging mods together, activate them and check them out first!  You do not want to end up merging something you dislike or something that simply doesn't work for your game.  That would be bad.


Finaaaallly...

Error fixing for graphics!

Or, "HELP SOMETHING IS NOT SHOWING UP RIGHT".

The first step is figuring out what's wrong: are you missing a mesh, or are you missing a texture?

Missing meshes can show up as simply not being there at all (I remember once having an amusing bug where not a single vampire had a face: you saw teeth, eyeballs, hair, and nothing connecting them), or as a giant red diamond with a white excalmation mark in it.  The latter is more common.  A missing texture will generally turn an object purpley/blue with no details (currently, I have an amusing bug in Fallout New Vegas where everyone that doesn't have custom eyes has these dead soulless purple emptiness instead- I actually know how to fix that one, but it amuses me so much (I pretend everyone but my character and a rare custom follower is an alien) I haven't bothered).

The most common cause of such things is that a mod did not install right.  Unfortunately, figuring out what mod it is that's causing the error is the hard part.  You basically have to think about what you've installed, and guess.  If you post the exact error and what mods you have installed (including ones without ESP's), someone on the Bethseda or Nexus forums (or Reddit, or wherever your usual hangout is) may be able to help.

The only thing you really can do is reinstall the mod.  NMM has been known to have a problem in the past of having difficulty installing really large mods (and sometimes uninstalling textures from one mod that another mod may also use): that's why Wyre Bash is strongly suggested to be used instead (and indeed, Wyre Bash can straightly note if you're missing any files).  If it's a big NMM mod that you think is causing the error, try installing it through Wyre Bash.

Another cause can be BSA unpacking (which is why, in general, you don't do it unless you're merging or absolutely need something unpacked)- something may just have not gotten unpacked right.  If your error is with one or some of the overlays, try unpacking the related BSA again, perhaps even using a different program.  (In fact, I had this problem- one of my merged BSA's didn't unpack right and instead turned my hands purple.  Unpacking it again fixed it.)

(Also, for the overlays, if you're still having trouble, try installing the 'Loose Base Scripts' option for Racemenu mod.)

If all else fails, go back to Steam and make it check if you have any missing files, and install them.  That should fix any base meshes and textures that are missing, leaving you just with mod stuff, and you can always uninstall mods at random and probably with some angry cursing if you really can't find what your missing mesh is.

(Er, but start a new game after that.)

And, then... wow.  I think this section is, finally, over.  Finally.  Wow.

...On to gameplay!

(In like, twelve months.)