Rest in Peace, Skyrim Saves
It turns out, after my hard drive died, there were only three major casualties. OpenBroadcastSystem doesn’t want to work on my computer but I’ll probably fix that. I forgot to copy over my Screenshots folder, but since I have a lot of my screenshots uploaded and a lot of my screenshots are copied to my Random folder (dunno why it is called that), it doesn’t matter that they’re all gone now. But the biggest victim for all of this is Skyrim.
Skyrim is actually a horrible thing when it comes to mods. It’s not enough to download a mod and stick it in your Data folder. You need to make sure that mods are installed in the right place in the right order, and it’s recommended to 1. never use Steam Workshop mods because they are updated without your consent and often in a not clean way, 2. never to install mods during a play through, 3. to use LOOT to sort your mods correctly and 4. to use Mod Organizer to, well, organize your mods, installing them in such a way that your Skyrim folder remains clean and pure.
Out of all of those, newbie me only ever did number 3. I used LOOT to fix a problem I had with mods. Then used it obsessively. But newbie me kept on making mistakes until I switched to Mod Organizer. Not Nexus Mod Manager, because that is a buggy piece of shit. Unfortunately, it was too late, my saves were dying even then.
Then my hard drive died. I did copy both Skyrim, my save files and Mod Organizer’s files onto my external hard drive, but that wasn’t enough. Something happened. Something wasn’t saved. Something was missing. I finally got everything sorted out, only to find that half my characters had insane bugs that not even the Save Cleaner tool could save. Most of my saves were ruined. Lokmah, Kindyna, my unnamed Priestess of Arkay, Sniper and my later leveled Phovos saves are all dead. All I have left is level 31 Phovos, Medic and Odahviing. And the Odahviing character was pretty shitty anyway.
My biggest loss is Lokmah. He did everything: the main story to the buggy Companions, the awkwardly short College of Winterhold, the tedious but fun Thieves Guild, the spoopy scary Dark Brotherhood, the Dawnguard storyline on BOTH sides (since I went back and did it again) and the Dragonborn series of quests. Well, almost everything. Lokmah never killed Paarthurnax, and would spend many an hour just sitting and chilling with the old, tattered dragon while Odahviing would fly around like a twat above us.
On the flip side, this is a chance for me to start fresh. New characters, new mods, new all sorts. My first character is going to be in memory of Lokmah. He’s called Lokmahro (which was Lokmah’s full name – he was supposed to be a dragon who got turned into a humanoid!) And he shall continue the legacy of being an awesome Argonian during the day and a kick-ass Frost Dragon at night. I’m also looking at getting a few more mods, mostly to up the population of Skyrim. It does mean having to reduce performance a lot, but I don’t mind. I want more people to kill.
Of course, this all depends on whether I can get Burning Skies to work. If I can’t get that to work, I’m going to have to be very patient and wait for someone to make a proper Dragon Simulator. And right now, Burning Skies just won’t work. Which makes me really, really sad.
Seriously, why isn’t there a decent dragon simulator yet?