My quest to find the good way to play Skyrim. My solution: USKP

[zico]

Hello folks,

 

I just registered to tell a little story. So back in 2011 I was pretty sad when I heard that Skyrim woudl use Steam and since I am very, VERY "Anti-DRM",  made my peace and hoped there would one day be a no-DRM version of the game. However shortly before the release of the "Legendary-patch" I pretty much lost hope in that and curiosity got the better of me. So I bought the game and... well I loved it.

 

That lasted till I got around 60 hours in the game. I was still very glad I had the PC version so I could use console commands to fix things like Quests that would never end and some other small annoyances. But it was on that day... that one day...

 

I was on my way up to meet Parthuunax for the first time. I got some bugs earlier that day but I hoped for it to get better. Then when I finally met Parthuunax and he demanded me to shout at him he flew up to the sky and started circling around me. First I thought this MIGHT be normal... then I reloaded my game and tried again. It was at this point whne I first noticed that I was a victim of the glitch which bugs up the Drain Life Shout (honestly I didn't notice it before).

 

Frustrated I gave up, went to UESP and searched for fixes. Once more I found the little line: "This bug has been fixed in the Unofficial Skyrim Patch x.xx" - like with almost ALL bugs I ever encountered.

 

You have to know I am usually not a big fan of mods. I love to play the game in vanilla state if possible. I once tried to "fix" my Oblivion by using "Oblivion Improved" and it was one of the biggest mstakes of my life since besides a few good fixes it made my lightweight assasin pretty much the weakest thing on all Nirn. So you have to know I always hesitate when it comes to mods and I somehow expected the Unofficial Skyrm patch would act exactly like the "Oblivion Improved" mod.

 

But I realized things could only get better at this point and I started to read the changelogs and descriptions, noticing that the Unofficial patches actually only address bugs - not changing the Gameplay to make mages into GODS for example.

 

So I downloaded the patches, installed them and I shivered when the game pulled off th emessage about content that now might be missing in my game. "Sure" I thought "I played so long there's NO WAY the patches can still fix up my utterly broken character and it's world".

 

But when the game was loaded dozens of HUD messages flew by:

"Drain Life removed" (the bugged one)

"Drain Life added" (the proper one)

"Unknown amulet removed" (quest item alwways stuck in my inventory)

"Necromancer amulet added" (the real deal which now actually is a useful item)

and much more like that followed while my smile grew bigger.

 

From that day I began to enjoy Skyrim much more. Even the very msall annoyances I could never really get rid of - gone. I could even read the legend of Red Eagle Sword without getting that quest again.

 

I finished so many quests and got through all the DLCs. Just somehow I managed to bug up my inventory on Solstheim. I am not toally sure how I did it but after using some mannequins (I think that's related to my issue) the armor I once had on them (and kept disappearing while the mannequins were moving like weepin angels) keeps multiplying as soon as I put them in chests. Not a big deal since it's probably to fix via console commands but now I decided to ditch my Dark Elf and start over with an Argonian.

 

I now updated the Unofficial patches and I am planning to keep you guys updated if I find new bugs with them. It's just the least I can do after you actually SAVED my Skyrim-experience.

 

I want to thank ALL who participated in this project. And I hope I can be a valuable part of it, too.

 

P.S. Sorry if I am not good to understand. English isn't my native language.

 

Best regards,

zico (Chris)

[tyrel68]

Im glad to help but by me i mean Arathmoor and the team do an ungodly amount of work into this and deserve massive praises 

[NightStar]

Welcome and I must say your story made me smile!

 

If you have all the DLC and corresponding Unofficial Patches for them, make sure their load order is correct as otherwise it can cause issues. BOSS is your friend and you can find it at Skyrim Nexus.

 

About those weeping mannequins, which are you spesifically referring to? I'm asking because those mannequins should be well and truly fixed. They should not be eating or duplicating armor, nor should they be wandering around. If you still have the save where this occurs, you can give us the ID of the bugged mannequin(s) by opening the console (usually ~ key, top left corner), clicking on the mannequin, and noting the reference ID it shows. You can make sure you clicked on the right thing by typing 'disable' and the mannequin should disappear ('enable' will bring it back after the console is closed). To avoid issues later, you shouldn't save after disabling and enabling actors (if you accidentally click on them) as it can affect them in unpredictable ways.

 

Are you using any other mods beside the unofficial patches? Or did you try some mod out and then decided to ditch it? If that's the case, it could be that some other mod is overwriting the fixed mannequin script.

 

ps. For Oblivion, you'll want the Unofficial Oblivion Patch. It's from the same authors

[zico]

Currently I've ordered the Unofficial aptches with the ingame Launcher. I did it just like described in the Readme... but probably I did something wrong - even tho my Gameplay experience was flawless (except that mannequin thingie). But I'll try BOSS.

 

The mannequiny I was referring to are the four you can find in your home in Solstheim (former.. Severin manor if I said that right?). But I have to say that when this happened I has the unofficial patches which were released after the patch of 1.9 - so not the newest ones. I am also not 100% sure anymore how I managed this.

Oh and no, I'm not using any other mods besides the unpofficial patches.

 

I think it was like this:

1) Put armor (Morag Tong for example) on mennequin

2) Leave th emanor and come back

3) mannequin moved slightly forward and does not have armor one anymore

4) Click the space where the mannequin once was and there I could get back my armor

5) Put it in the quest in the same room

6) Come back later and check back in the chest - some armor pieces were suddenly in my inventory AND in the chest. That effect seemed a bit random however... it only ahppened after some time passed...

[Hana]

It's wonderful to hear stories like this.

 

Welcome zico, and thanks for sharing! We're here to help with all your bugs.

[Lorelai]

Welcome zico!

Just a little note:

So I downloaded the patches, installed them and I shivered when the game pulled off th emessage about content that now might be missing in my game. "Sure" I thought "I played so long there's NO WAY the patches can still fix up my utterly broken character and it's world".

Emphasis on that "missing content" message. That pops up when you uninstall mods that you had on the save you're trying to load.
You should be careful about doing that, preferably don't do it at all, especially with mods containing scripts.
There's no knowing how it might mess-up your save, and there's nothing the Unofficial patches can do if another mod caused damage.

[zico]

Thank you all for your kind words. I'll also try to really pay attention while running my new character so I can probably help you a bit to improve the patches even further. I am not very good with modding tools or general debugging so right now I try to read as much as I can so that I can report bugs as helpful as possible and probably already see if the bug comes from the unofficial patch, from the normal game or even it's engine.

I am doing some programming myself and I know that half of a bugfix is getting a good bug report. And I fight with lotsa regressions as well so... I certainly won't get mad with bugs that have been introduced by the unofficial patches either.

 

So in the end I hope with a little help I can pay back all the hours of fun these patches made possible.

 

 

@Hearthfriend:

I could not say it 100% but before adding the Unofficial patches I had another mod installed that was supposed to "fix" the Drain Life shout. And of course it may be possible that the uninstallation of that one may have caused this message. Even tho I am pretty sure I used a savestate I saved before installing "any" mods. I usually use 10-20 savestates in rotation so I can backtrack if necessary. But it's not been so long.. I honestly cannot say for sure anymore.

To be honest I was prepared for everything at that point. I had the feeling my vanilla game was bugged beyond repair and I knew all the time that 60 hours into the game wasn't the best idea to activate these patches. Which is also why I'm now restarting.

[Arthmoor]

Always nice to see storied like this

 

Activating the patches mid game isn't generally an issue. It's only when you're doing so and hoping it'll repair damage already done that tends to bring about disappointment. Looks to me like you've got a good understanding of what the game will and won't do.

 

And if it's any consolation to the loss of your character, even us gurus can be blindsided by the game's cruelty in this.

[Leonardo]

Always nice to see storied like this

 

And if it's any consolation to the loss of your character, even us gurus can be blindsided by the game's cruelty in this.

Me too.

 

I'm not a modding guru, but I know for sure how it's like by losing a character, because a messed up *scripted* game just made me in the end to reinstall everything except the mod tools (BOSS, Wrye Bash, TES5Edit).

 

 

@zico:  Here is a simple instruction about cleaning a mod in general speaking of course.  If you want to have the *perfect* result from BOSS when ordering your loadorder then it's highly recommended to use Wrye Bash too.

[zico]

More and more thanks for all your heart warming Welcome. Especially to Arthmoor for his great work on the project.

 

 

Oh about my character: My dark elf - Zecor - isn't really lost. I still have the Savegames and I think I read that by dropping my items via console, recollecting, selling and buying again they should fix themselves. Honestly I am not sure. However at this point in the game I had probably finished around 90% of the quests the game offered (by comparing to the quest list of the UESP) and I know I'll have a LOT of fun just replaying. Especially now that I start with he 1.9 patch which will make me able to use legendary skills much sooner AND now I know I can power-level smithing by making jewelery. That's always the good thing about a second run: Now I know all the quirks, know what perks I want, know which quests best to do in which order (i.e. not getting under-levelled items).

And of course I can play all that with the Unofficial patches. That means I also don't need to be afraid that Viarmo will burn down the Bards College by sleeping with a torch.

 

 

But just for the record:

I have now downloaded BOSS which I'll try next time I have time to play. As I said, previously I only used the launcher to sort the Unofficial patches like it's described in the Readme. And as I understand from the Readme, Mod managers like BOSS would be recommended *if* I use a variety of Mods. But I am the very vanilla player. All I use if the Unofficial patches (for main game, DLCs and High Res content). And so far I sorted them - like described - as the Readme suggests and with my old character it seemed to work. However is there another reason why BOSS or similar tools are recommended in a situation like I have? I can understand that there are some very complex mods out there where I can see they might conflict with other complex mods - while I think this is not the case for me. I can also see that there are folks which are not that experienced with file management - which is fine and so I can see they want to use such a manager, too. Again, I'll use it if it's recommended but I'd love to know the technical details behind it - guess I could understand it better then.

[Bruno Augusto]

I know this topic has almost a year but instead of create another one can I just raise this dead body?

Well, I'm playing Skyrim again with more mods than last time. One of them, Sjel Bald Castle has a very awesome Armory with several mannequins. From the entrance door, if I run to the first mannequin room I can see them walking and from USKP Changelog, this should not happen as it was fixed in version 1.2.4.

See them walking a little bit is not a big deal to me, as they are always walking back to their correct postions. The problem is they are, in the words of others, eating their armor. But the armors are not vanishing, they are just being unnequiped and all mannequins are naked.

I tried different mods intended to solve this but they're included in the list of obsolete mods. So what should I do?

[Arthmoor]

You need to make sure that house mod hasn't added their own copy of the mannequin script. That used to happen a lot with house mods. Not so much anymore.

[Bruno Augusto]

Hmmm... And how could I check this by myself?