How to easily create a perfect Windhelm overhaul

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SPOILER INFO
This article doesn't contain any spoilers.
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There are two awesome mods: Snow City – The Great Expansion of Windhelm and Windhelm Exterior Altered. They can be used together, and indeed they have to be used together, as each one of them is incomplete without the other one. Unfortunately, they have minor overlappings in two places – on the small staircase that leads from the western harbor to the eastern harbor, and on the large staircase in the western end of the western harbor.

You don't actually have to do anything about it if you don't want to. You can just install both mods and play. I mean, the staircase in the picture left below can still be descended and ascended. I am sure, though, that you'll find the one on the right more convenient to use as well as nicer to look at:

I am going to give you detailed instructions how to make those two staircases more beautiful and more convenient to walk on, as shown in the picture in the beginning of this article.


Prerequisites

You need to:
1) be managing your mods with Mod Organizer  (MO), and
2) have TES5Edit  installed as an executable in MO.
If you haven't installed them yet, make sure you search YouTube for Gopher's MO  tutorial and follow his instructions precisely.


Step 1: create copies of the two mods
TES5Editoffers a backup function, but making copies of your mods yourself is much more convenient.

Arrange your mods (left pane in MO) in alphabetical order.
Find the name under which the Snow City  mod is in your mod list. (Suppose it's Windhelm – Snow City.)
Open your computer's file manager and go to the directory ("folder") in which your Mod Organizer  is installed.
Go to the subdirectory mods.
Note that there's a subdirectory Windhelm – Snow City.
In the mods directory, create a "new folder" named Windhelm – Snow City [no rubbish]. (This is just an example; you can choose any name you want.)
Copy the contents of the folder Windhelm – Snow City  into the folder Windhelm – Snow City [no rubbish]. (Copy-and-Paste, don't Cut-and Paste!)
Exit Mod Organizer.
Launch Mod Organizer.
Observe that the mod list shows a new mod Windhelm – Snow City [no rubbish] next to Windhelm – Snow City. The former is switched off, the latter is switched on.
Note the rightmost number in the Windhelm – Snow City  row. (Suppose it's 75.)
Click on the rightmost number in the row Windhelm – Snow City [no rubbish] twice, so it becomes active. Write 76. (The original mod's number plus 1).
Check the box in the beginning of the row Windhelm – Snow City [no rubbish]  to switch it on.
Uncheck the box in the beginning of the row Windhelm – Snow City  to switch it off.

Repeat the above procedure with the mod Windhelm Exterior Altered.


Step 2: launch TES5Edit

In MO 's executables menu (upper right corner), choose TES5Edit  and click on the "Run" button.
If MO displays a message "click OK after you have logged in to Steam", click "OK". Never mind Steam.
Wait a few seconds until a box opens titled "Master/Plugin Selection". Click "OK".
A large window opens with names of plugins (esm's and esp's) on the smaller left pane and a flow of messages on the larger right pane. Wait until the flow stops. (It's likely to take several minutes.) The last message should be "Background Loader: finished".


Step 3: remove clutter from Snow City

In the left-hand pane, click on the tab "Name" in order to arrange plugins by name.

Find SNOW CITY 7.esp. Expand it by clicking on the plus sign.
Go to Worldspace > Tamriel > Block 1, 0 > Sub-Block 4, 1 > WindhelmExterior01 > Temporary

Arrange records by EditorID (optional).
Find the record
XX00572C FishRack02
(XX = the two digits before SNOW CITY 7.esp in the list; just FYI, you don't need to pay attention to those digits)

Right-click on that record (still in the left pane, not the right).
Select "Remove" (not "Remove Filter").
TES5Edit  will display a warning. Click "Yes, I'm absolutely sure".
You are asked if you want to permanently remove that record. Click "Yes".

In exactly the same way, remove the records:
XX006F2F HandCartCrate
XX0097E3 Clam01 "Clam"
XX0097E4 ClamThin01 "Clam"
XX0097E5 ClamLarge01 "Clam"
XX0097E6 Clam01 "Clam"
XX0097E7 Clam01 "Clam"
(Note that the large-type warning is no longer displayed, but removal confirmation is still asked each time.)

Go from WindhelmExterior01 to WindhelmExterior02.
Remove the records
XX003A0A MountainCliff03
XX003A0C MountainCliff02_LightSN
as described above.


Step 4: remove clutter from Windhelm Exterior Altered

In the left pane, find Windhelm Exterior Altered.esp.
Go to Worldspace > Tamriel > Block 0, 0 > Sub-Block 3, 1 > 000090AC > Temporary

In the same way as on Step 3, remove the entries
XX0033E7 MountainCliff01_LightSN
XX0033EC MountainCliff01_LightSN
XX006F25 VendorCartStatic01
XX007BC0 TreasBanditChestEMPTY "Chest"
XX0275F3 ChestOpen
(Of course, the digits "XX" will be different here. )


Step 5: save your changes

Click on the cross in the upper right corner to exit TES5Edit.
A box opens asking you to confirm the saving of plugins. There should to be two plugins listed: the two you just edited. Both should be checked. Leave them checked and click "OK".


Step 6: make sure the edit was successful (optional)

Launch Skyrim.
In the opening menu, press ~ to open the console and type
coc WindhelmExterior02
Check out the two staircases.
If you followed my instructions, the staircases should look like in the "after" part on the first picture in this article. Should there be anything you don't like, you can switch on the two original mods in MO and switch off the "no rubbish" versions, and your game will be back to exactly as it was before. That's the beauty with Mod Organizer  – you are in control. All it takes to switch from one version of a mod to another is two mouseclicks.


Happy with our successful work, please let's have a minute of silence to sympathize with Nexus Mod Manager  users who would need an unimaginable amount of time and effort to do simple things like the above, and run into a great risk of screwing up their game while they're doing it.

What to do about the uselessness of unique items?

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SPOILER INFO
This article contains no spoilers.
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As you probably know, playing Skyrim is to a large extent a fight to beat the system. The two BBB's (Bethesda's Blatant Blunders) which I took on the other day were:
1) unique items are complete garbage;
2) critical hits are as good as nothing.

I am not the first to point out that it just isn't right when you kill a couple dozen undead, find your way around traps, beat a huge monster, find a chest and are rewarded with a weapon with an incredibly cool name – only to find out that even with all the improvements you can make, the weapon still does less damage than the weapons you and your followers are already using. It is more than a disappointment. It's an insult.

And the very thought that 6 points of additional damage could be refered to as "critical hit" is insane.

I have been frustrated with that screaming nonsense for a long time. It occurred to me only recently that since Skyrim Economy Overhaul  changes the prices of many items, maybe they include unique weapons and armor items, meaning it has records for them which can be altered with TES5Edit . And a moment later I had a horrifying thought – what if those items are actually all right, and it's SEO  that is ruining them, like it ruins health potions?

Well, turned out that SEO  had records for most unique items, and in most cases it had not diminished their usefulness. You can't alter skyrim.esm with TES5Edit, but fortunately SEO, Dragonborn, Dawnguard, USKP  and update.esm  have almost all unique items covered between them. I decided to be cautious at first and made the items only 2 times stronger. The so-called critical damage I increased 4 times for the time being. I doubt it will make any visible difference, but I don't want to risk the game going crazy.

Actually, critical damage ought to be increased for generic weapons as well, but that would be too much work. Neither did I bother with increasing the prices of unique items, many of which SEO  has cheapened beyond all reason. It ought to be corrected, but I am too lazy for that.

But at least there is a chance now that I am going to pick up stuff in dungeons that I can actually use.

Added much later:
For my latest game, I made the strength of unique weapons 8 times their vanilla strength, except the ones which were not really meant to use as weapons (i.e. Nettlebane and maybe there were others I can't recall at the moment); the latter I set to 4 times vanilla. I set every unique weapon's critical hit to twice their new regular hit, regardless of vanilla. I know I should have increased the regular weapons' critical hits as well, but that was too much work because there were so many of them.
I can confirm that it's perfectly safe to increase the strength of unique weapons, and it's something I definitely recommend you do. It adds greatly to the pleasure of dungeon-exploring.



[originally published 2017-05-06]