Content Consumer

  That is precisely what happens to me. Like, 2/5 of the time I'm in that place. I've stopped participating in battles in Falkreath... too much chance of smacking the wrong guy in a melee.

Whoops... Katria (dragonborn) counts, and I forgot to add in something for her, so she's currently using nonvanilla (racial) lines.   Are there any more like her? That is, vanilla or DLC followers that count as followers even when they don't use standard interface?

I love this blog. You make Skyrim better than it is. If only the game had some of this stuff!

despite the cold

  There's a joke in here somewhere, about men always making over-sized weapons to compensate...

  I love being evil. Really, most of this is probably my fault anyway - copy/paste does tend to turn " ... " and " ' " into single characters for some reason.

  Please see this post. Just a couple posts up from here.

  Perhaps. But developing a mod from scratch to selectively blur-out portions of a character when certain slots are removed may be a bit more of a hassle. Which slots? There are several clothing and armor mods that use nonstandard slots for various items. If you have an "armor" that takes the main body slot but still has exposed nipples, the mod would be unable to determine that. Some armors are also translucent or even transparent, which would negate the utility of the mod. How does it know where to apply imods? You can't give X/Y/Z coordinates to an imod and tell it to apply it locally to a specific area of the body. At least, I know of no way to do that at all. You'd be better off making a mod that re-equips a blur-effect as an actual piece of armor that covers the slot(s) in question. Essentially an armor mod that instead of using a solid mesh, maybe a feathered mesh or magic effect, or heavily-modified transparent texture. You might get away with using slavetats or some other method of body tattoo to cover up spots, but that's just a texture, I'm not sure it would work for this... In any case, removing armor will almost certainly lead to a very slight delay before the next armor is applied. This is apparent in the sounds you hear if you're using Devious Devices mods, when you remove torso armor or clothing, there is immediately another sound effect indicating that the device hider has been engaged (equipped). So this delay, though merely a fraction of a second, will force you to go through frame-by-frame to edit out stuff anyway. I'm thinking that the delay for imods might actually be longer.

It might be easier for you in the long run to go to Mod Organizer, and use that to create separate profiles. That way you can have your prurient profile for when you play and your puritanical profile for when you record. Caveat: I've never used Mod Organizer, but there are several threads and lots of people who can help you out.

Considering that your SSD just died, I figure this is the perfect time to report more bad characters. Because I'm an asshole like that.  

  A papyrus log is essentially a big list of background things that happen in Skyrim while you play. It can be helpful to developers because it can help narrow down causes of crashes or mods not working properly.   This link (LINK) gives a description on how to get your papyrus log.   Basically, edit your My Documents / My Games / Skyrim / skyrim.ini file and add the following lines:   [Papyrus] fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=500.0 bEnableLogging=1 bEnableTrace=1 bLoadDebugInformation=1     Then, start Skyrim. To figure out what's wrong, you'll need to load your saved game, before you started noticing the problem, and play through until the problem happens. Then exit the game. Hopefully you still have a save before the problem started!   Then, in your My Documents / My Games / Skyrim / Logs / Script folder you will see a Papyrus.0.log file (or papyrus.#.log - if you don't know which is the right one, just go ahead and post them all). Either post that file here via attachment, or copy the contents of it and post it in a spoiler tag.   p.s. Make sure to turn logging off when you play normally, as it increases the load on the engine and can lead to slowdowns or, potentially, crashes. To turn logging off, change these three lines:   bEnableLogging=0 bEnableTrace=0 bLoadDebugInformation=0   Turning the ones into zeroes.     EDIT: Ninjad!

reviving old threads

  Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For this mod has very few bugs, and as long as your current load order does not exceed 255 mods, and assuming you have all the prerequisites, it should work just fine. Just remember it is still a WIP and it will be updated, adding new content.

  That is odd. Never had that happen, but I have had some other vanilla quests randomly fail to update properly. It's rare (very), but it does happen. My guess would be too many things happening all at the same instant.   To bypass, this should work. In the console: setstage tutorialblacksmithing 20   To double-check, sqv tutorialblacksmithing (or sqs). You should be at stage 10 before entering the command.

I guess I should be thatchful for the attention. I'll be sure to thatch him when I see him.

CHAPTER 37: SOMETHING INTERESTING ON THE OTHER SIDE In which our hero bitterly, and probably ignorantly, complains about blindness. Previous: Chapter 36, Dimfall or Darkhollow or Something Like That   Spoiler alert: Serana and I walk through the portal together.   It's an interesting portal, too - the static image behind it is slightly larger than the aperture, so it actually looks like a real magical gateway rather than a flat pic. Pretty nifty. It also tells me that we're safe for a minute or two, no ambushes on the other side, because you can't animate NPCs in one of those things. Through the magic door we go!   And... everything is glowing. I mean that, seriously. I've been to Blackreach, so I'm no stranger to glowing mushrooms and crap, but freaking everything is glowing through here. You barely walk five feet without encountering a rock so bright it hurts to look at it, and the place is filled with glowing flowers of all descriptions. I'd complain that any race such as the Falmer evolving in these conditions wouldn't lose their eyesight because there's plenty to see, but then I remember that we're supposed to be accepting the admittedly better excuse that they were magicked this way. Fine. Nice for me, though, since I don't need to use a torch or those annoying light spells just to see in here. Pretty, too - I really like the purple flowers that cover some spots. I want to plant a garden with something like that.   The place may be full of glowing stuff, but it's also full of Falmer and Chaurus. Some mod I've downloaded recently seems to have made the Chaurus spit paralytic, and I'm a melee character, meaning I can't just keep well back and dodge whilst firing off arrows. Good thing I'm full of vim and vigor and covered in thick armor, or this might actually be irritating. As it is, I keep getting knocked over, but summoned Wrathmen and Serana do help out, and we make it deeper into the caves, past the totems, and... totems? Why would the Falmer, a race of blind creatures, pose a skeleton in the middle of a room? For what possible reason? Do they wander by every now and then to feel up the skeleton? I mean, if you can see, then you have a reason to put up a fenced-off statue in the middle of a room, but if you're blind, then why do it?   Anyway, eventually we make it outside, and it's actually pretty cool out here. Looks like what Riften would look like if winter ever hit the place. I'm a big fan of new architecture and vegetation, and this place has it in abundance. Plus Falmer and giant spiders, of course, because we can't have it all good, nope. Serana and I travel the place, dipping ewers in water and popping up wayshrine teleporters here and there. Other nice sights to see include frost giants that are apparently the result of a disastrous troll-giant crossbreeding program, each one having something called a Paragon in its possession, though a paragon of what I am at a loss to understand. I'm tempted to put the word "paragon" into the box containing the word "nightingale" and slap a label on it that says "words the devs liked the sound of without knowing their actual meaning." There are some books written in strange writings that I fully intend to decipher later, maybe take them to Calcelmo because he's the apparent expert on Falmer language. A bit later on we encounter a pair of dragons that insist on playing hide-and-seek underwater, which is also pretty damn cool. I'm used to dragon fights where they circle a while, then land, presenting themselves to my axe, then take off and circle again, rinse and repeat until dead... but these guys like to dive through the ice and come up in random spots, and it's actually a pretty intense fight. I really like this place, this Forgotten Vale. Of course, the way things have gone for my whole time here in Skyrim, if I really like a place there's bound to be something coming up that is absolutely awful. I am not disappointed.   These bridges, that the Falmer put up. Goddamn it. Serana and I get separated multiple times, and I keep. Falling. Off. Oops, I fell off the bridge. TGM before hitting the ground, TCL back up. Onward... and I fall off the cliff, TGM before hitting the ground, TCL back up. Kill a couple of Falmer, and I fall off the bridge again. How did these goddamn Falmer build these bridges when they can't freaking SEE? For that matter, WHY would they build these bridges? They don't connect anything to anything else important! There is no reason for these damned blind elf-degenerates to WANT to engage in an engineering nightmare of this magnitude! STICK TO YOUR CAVES, ASSHOLES! Backing up in mortal combat with a Falmer, I fell off a damn bridge again. TGM before I hit the ground, TCL back up, yeah yeah. Honestly, I'm not normally this clumsy, it's just this place is getting to me. And why the totem or shrine here again? This troll skull on top of a big rock with gemstones all round it? Returning to my question about why a blind race would put up statues like this, I must say that putting garnets and rubies around a troll skull on a makeshift altar is pretty dumb. You can't give me the argument that they knew the gems were shiny rocks, because they're blind. Don't tell me they liked the feel of the gemstones, because I'm pretty sure there are plenty of just plain rocks hanging about too with that same feel. Now I'm not saying a blind race can't make shrines or anything, but it makes no sense for a blind race to build shrines that are primarily visual in nature. If you're deaf, you don't care about the vocals, tone, pitch, and so on... you care primarily about the rhythm and volume, right? If you don't have legs you don't build stairs, if you're anosmic you don't give a damn about bad smells, and if you're blind then you don't build neat-looking but impossible-to-feel shrines. While I'm complaining to myself, Serana disappears again and I fall off a bridge again. Fuck this place, the prettiness and dragons of the past aren't worth it.   Quick question to anyone who wants to listen: why does Serana get lost so often in this place? I have been around the world, looking for that woman girl, who knows exasperation can endure, and you know it will. I just have to make the assumption that she's off fighting something, and hopefully not getting raped by said something. Of course, knowing her AI, she's probably just stuck running against a rock or tree, or she fell over a waterfall, or got fed up and decided to head back into Skyrim and take up flower arranging as a hobby. Gods know I want to.   But no, I've got to finish this damn quest. Over the bridges, through an underground ice chasm, back up onto the surface and yet more Falmer bridges. Ooh, I've about had it. Luckily for me, we reach the last wayshrine and dip the ewer to get the last bit of water, and once across one final bridge, there's the Temple of Auri-El. The phantom priest said it was a difficult climb to the inner sanctum. Gelebor said that initiates would haul the ewer of water around as a symbol of their dedication to the cause. I gotta say, it's not that hard. I've been hauling this jug about with me, while fighting off dragons, sprinting across rickety bridges, and shouting Falmer off the cliffs, and I haven't spilled a damn drop. Once we solve the painfully pathetic "puzzle" lock (at least, I am assuming it's an attempt at a puzzle, because it's very similar to other nordic and dwemer "puzzles" in Skyrim), we're in the temple.   The walls are caving in, and there are fallen bits of masonry everywhere. My guess is, it looked like that before the place was overrun - the requirement of hauling water from shrine to shrine across a whole valley, pouring the water into the basin, emitting a beam of light, and a drawn-out rotating door lock just to get inside the door were too much for the average janitor or stonemason, so they let the place fall to pieces rather than go through that whole rigmarole every time the floor needed to be swept or a piece of cracked wall needed to be fixed. Note to future temple-building architects: if your doorway is too complicated for the custodial staff to get through, you should re-think your security measures.   Serana and I whip through the place, killing frozen Falmer, which is actually kind of neat - they're all statues, you see, but some of them come to life if you try to steal the items they're holding out. So we kill a load of Frozen Falmer and Chilled Chaurus, all the while looking for the head honcho Vyrthur, to kill him and hopefully we'll be able to grab Auri-El's Bow so we can proceed to Castle Volkihar to kill Serana's father to stop the prophecy that says that either Serana or her mother will bring about eternal night. Got all that? Good.   And there's a dude on the throne. Vyrthur, in the flesh. He asks us if we came here expecting to claim Auri-El's Bow, and I shout "yes" back at him, which seems to stump him for a bit. Direct answers do tend to confuse these people, you see. He rallies 'round and then says that I've done as he predicted and brought my companion to him, then says my usefulness is at an end. Then the ice statues of Falmer vampires begin to explode once again and attack, along with some frozen Chaurus, which does fuck-all to reduce my health, although Serana takes a knee. Vyrthur shouts out to us "An impressive display, but a wasted effort." I want to console him and say that he can do better next time, but apparently he was talking to me, not just talking to himself out loud. Oh. "You delay nothing but your own deaths!" Well, yeah, that's what living is, dude. Way to go, you figured out the secret. After a bit more fighting, he says that it's gone on long enough, to which I can only respond in the affirmative, but then he proceeds to summon yet more things for me to crunch into ice cubes suitable for putting in your drink, should your evening plans include drinking liquids cooled with Frosty Falmer Flesh (tm). Vyrthur refuses to surrender, instead choosing to shoot icicles at me and Serana and then collapse his temple on us. Although I am, obviously, way WAY tougher than Serana, it's me that gets knocked on my ass, because reasons. Serana hauls me to my feet and we run out after Vyrthur, who is sitting on the upper balcony outside, his hand to his stomach in the universal gesture of "NPC in pain" made popular by the Resident Evil games.   She tells him to give her the bow, and he goes a bit off topic, saying that he had the ears of a god. I'm not sure if he was bragging about his collection of deific body parts or talking about the pair on the sides of his head, but either way this is a creepy dude I don't particularly want to socialize with. I try to fus-ro-dah him off the balcony, but the devs Gods are set on my hearing their oh-so-clever dialogue and have locked my combat abilities, because, like always, gods forbid I skip any of this brilliant, scintillating conversation.   Vyrthur then asks her to "look into my eyes, Serana, you tell me what I am." A prat? I could have told you that without looking in your eyes, dude. But no, she seems surprised to notice that he's a vampire, as if the "feral falmer" and vampiric frozen falmer with vestigial or cutoff wings sticking out their backs, fangs prominent, and blood dripping down their faces, wasn't a clue. There are vampires here? Outrageous! Who would have ever considered that? This whole damn thing, from start to finish, has revolved around vampires, and she's surprised that he is one too? I knew he was a vampire as soon as I saw the bastard sitting indolently on his throne.   I have to admit, though, I was surprised at the race of one individual in this whole mess - Gelebor. I thought for sure that he was a vampire as soon as I saw him. Pale skin, stays out of the sunlight in his underground lair, lived for a very long time apparently without eating, and his face is a bit reminiscent of the bifurcated look common to the uglier specimens. Whatever.   Anyway, Vyrthur proceeds to weave a threadbare web of barely-connected bits of what could laughably be called 'logic' after a three-day bender, and wraps it all up in a neat little package called a "prophecy." Apparently he was the one who created the prophecy. You know what a prophecy is? If you answered "a prediction, forecast, or divination predicting unique or special events such as war, death, birth, or other major events" you would be completely wrong. A prophecy, according to the makers of this stupid damn game Gods, is apparently "whatever I say it is." Vyrthur got vexed at Auri-El and decided to make a "prophecy" all on his own that predicted that someday a vampire would come and try to take Auri-El's bow and dip arrows in vampiric blood to blot out the sun. As vague, revenge-motivated wishing goes, it's fine, if a bit clichéd and thin, but as a prophecy it is utterly ridiculous. A wish does not a prophecy make. A daydream is not a prediction, and just wanting something to happen doesn't make it so. I guess the word "prophecy" goes into my new box along with "paragon" and "nightingale."   While we're on the subject... how the heck did this "prophecy" make it to Harkon? If Vyrthur made it up while he was ensconced on his throne, and his influence is and has been for thousands of years limited to the confines of the Forgotten Vale, how the fuck did it get to Skyrim? Message in a bottle? Or is this another of those "wish upon a star and it will be so?" I resolve to try my hand at it too. When I get back to Skyrim, I'm going to wish really hard that Alduin just drops dead and the civil war ends and they name me High King of Skyrim so I can institute a stupidity tax. Then again, such a tax would immediately bankrupt the entire population, so maybe I'd better just wish for a fast horse out of the province.   Hell, it doesn't matter anyway. Serana and I proceed to wipe the ground with Vyrthur, and then the shrine pops up and out strolls Gelebor, the ass, who apparently could have done this at any time he wished just by popping through a teleporter, but no, he had to send us to do it. Fuck you, dude. If I didn't need you to make a bunch of arrows to shoot at Harkon, I'd throw you over the balcony. Seething with barely suppressed rage leavened with a generous helping of disgust, I turn all the elven arrows I'm carrying into Sunhallowed arrows, and Serana and I skedaddle out of there. Next stop - somewhere warmer, please.   Next: Chapter 38, Assault on Vampire Central Start at Chapter 1  

Vyrthur, just as he initiates combat, shouts "What treachery is this?" You have got to be kidding me. I get the devs wanted him to shout something as battle commenced, but someone needs to look a bit beyond stock phrases, or possibly take a gander at a dictionary. There was no goddamn treachery here. Now, I am going to step back and make the assumption that I just misheard him. I don't have combat subtitles on, so I didn't read it, so it's entirely possible I just misheard it. So... what did he shout? "Treachery" kind of sounds like "mockery" but that makes even less sense. Pagentry? Was he misusing the Dunmer insult "fetcher" perhaps? "What Fetchery is this?" indicating that he's surprised at the sheer amount of... uh, of fetchery around... nah. Fletchery? Nope. Archery? Hmm... we were there for the bow, after all, but it still doesn't make any damned sense. When we killed Harkon it would have made sense for him to shout about archery... maybe. Okay, I must have misheard even worse. Nothing to do with _____tchery or anything that sounds like that. So what the hell did he say? "What _____ is this?" Stupidity? I can get behind that. Hostility? Nah, he's not that much of a dumbass either. Since we're looking for a single word that would reasonably make sense in the context, and since this is in English for my game, we're talking probably about no more than 20,000 possible words or so, right? I'd hate to go through them all trying to figure out which is the right one to go into the slot here. Does anyone have combat subtitles on when fighting him? What does he say there?   p.s. I've noticed that I am more and more frequently breaking the fourth wall - this is turning into a person writing about a game rather than a person writing about his life. I think I'll try to stop doing that.

pink mini skirt (I thought this thing died!)

There's also this thread. http://www.loverslab.com/topic/36607-share-your-racemenu-preset-slot-file/

A good question, and a point I always forget to consider. I'd guess that most people do have the DLC. It's just a knee-jerk reaction for me to worry about dependencies.

  That's not a bad idea... but it would require making Dawnguard a requirement.

Sorry, I didn't get a quote trackback, so I missed this.     I know it is somewhat fashionable on the internet to make complaints and then when someone responds to those complaints to respond back in a passive-aggressive manner saying "you misunderstood" or "I didn't mean it like that"... but I honestly didn't mean to be an asshole. I do sincerely apologize for causing offense. This is me apologizing, because a smiley-face just won't cut it. Sorry for being rude, that wasn't what I intended.

  Ah! That makes sense.  @jfraser - in that case, I recommend duplicating the spell effects (and magic effects? SkyRe alters those too, I'd guess?), and using the duplicates for your given spells. Either that, or make up entirely new spells as training spells. They don't have to be amazing, just unique. I'd suggest something like this (just suggestions, mind you, not recommendations): Alteration: An armor spell like oakflesh, stoneflesh, etc. that either provides more armor than Ebonyflesh and lasts a shorter time, or less armor than Oakflesh but lasts a very long time.Conjuration: By examining the "conjure familiar" spell you could do the same basic thing - summon, say, a fox with low HP but lasts a long time.Destruction: What about a concentration spell that combines flames, frostbite, sparks? Those do 8 damage per second, so if you did your combo spell with each effect doing 2 damage per second that'd work. That'd be my go-to spell at low levels instead of switching back and forth between the others for when certain enemies are resistant or immune to certain damage effects. If you wanted to boost it, you could give it the range and casting effect of the master spell Lightning Storm or something.Illusion: How about chameleon? That doesn't exist in the base game, and IIRC there isn't one elsewhere. Just give a flat sneak skill boost and combine it with a transparent shader like invisibility. You'd get the effect of increased sneak but it wouldn't die when you activated something or attacked something like invisibility.Restoration: I could see the utility of a low-cost, low-power version of Grand Healing, or maybe a mass version of the starting Healing spell.More work to make up your own spells, less work to copy and use the duplicates. Anyway, if you do end up making your own spells, I'd suggest taking a look at some of the spell mods out there for ideas. Apocalypse Spells, for example, is my favorite.

Oh dear, more nonremovables. I don't mind the QAYL meatstamp (quite like it in fact), but I'm not looking forward to being permanently branded a Stormcloak.

  But CDW doesn't do anything with spells either, right? Even the spellbooks given to you are just copies of vanilla spellbooks, that reference the same spells. So I'd still think it would be just fine. Am I wrong?