Fires in Whiterun cast no light?

[Boge]

I was using Relighting Skyrim and decided it was too dark for me, so I switched to ELFX and noticed the fires in Whiterun weren't casting light. Maybe half of them were at best. So I disabled it and checked the vanilla lighting. That's all sorts of wrong. So I re-enabled Relighting Skyrim and it was the same, maybe half were casting light. I might have been oblivious this whole time and it's just always been like this, but I've just now noticed and it's bothering me.

Is this just the way it is due to engine limitations, or is there another problem I'm having?

[DPMR]

From the mods Nexus page

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/8586

UNINSTALLATION

Probably best to use clean save procedures, we recommend at least being outside when you save before uninstalling.
Go to the Skyrim "Data" folder
Delete any .esp files starting with "Relighting Skyrim"

IF USING JIT, do the following as well;
Go into the "scripts" folder inside of the "Data" folder
Delete "LightingBall" and "LightingBallController" then go into the "source" folder and do the same.

[Boge]

Did all of that and they're still not casting light. Can someone play their game and check? Simply the two inside of the front gate of Whiterun, only one of them casts light.

[Boge]

I started a new game, no mods and checked the lighting. Obviously, vanilla lighting is all wrong. But I enabled only ELFX and the lighting looks correct. So I loaded my new cleaned game with only ELFX and it's all wrong.

What do I do?

[Sinsling]

Uh... "cleaned" game?

Please tell me you did not try and "clean" the save file.

[Boge]

I tried the "Clean Savegame Procedure" from https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Troubleshooting#Mods_and_Savegames

I did that after simply uninstalling Relighting Skyrim did not work.

Neither works.

[Sinsling]

Save file cleaning is an extremely dangerous thing to do, and is not recommended by most of the community here. And as you've just witnessed, doesn't fix issues.

You won't always be able to save a file in progress by removing mods, and can often cause even more issues as data is baked in across multiple lines of your save.

Best you can do is continue playing with the issue to see if your load order has any other problems, or simply start a new character all together.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by Boge:

I tried the "Clean Savegame Procedure" from https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Troubleshooting#Mods_and_Savegames

I did that after simply uninstalling Relighting Skyrim did not work.

Neither works.

Seems to be wishful thinking, although it does use a lot of console commands I've never heard of before.

Data from Mods is baked into saves, so unless you strip that data out it's going to remain, and since the process is propriety to Bethesda no-one knows exactly how to to strip that data out. Meaning anything that promises to restore corrupted saves is likely to fail.

And that method doesn't seem to have anything to remove that data at all......

[Boge]

Originally posted by Sinsling:

Save file cleaning is an extremely dangerous thing to do, and is not recommended by most of the community here. And as you've just witnessed, doesn't fix issues.

You won't always be able to save a file in progress by removing mods, and can often cause even more issues as data is baked in across multiple lines of your save.

Best you can do is continue playing with the issue to see if your load order has any other problems, or simply start a new character all together.

As I said, I tried simply uninstalling it first and that didn't work. So I tried cleaning the save file. I wasn't worried as I have backups. The uninstallation even says, "Probably best to use clean save procedures" and even has links. It's not an unsafe thing to try if you're smart enough to backup your saves, as I did.

Is there anything else you'd like to suggest I try?

[Sinsling]

The other option would be trying to see if you can fix the mod using xedit to make it apply the appropriate data to the missing areas.

Hats off for having the foresight to make backups in case things went south. Others have not been so lucky.

[Boge]

Strangest thing. So I start trial and error with different mod loading and trying different saves. I load the new game I started which worked fine. Then I load my other save and the lights are messed up, same mod configuration. Then I load the new save again without restarting the game and the lights are messed up. If I restart the game and load the new game save, even with all my mods, it works fine.

I changed up some load order with Skyrim Particle Patch for ENB and got my good save to work fine. But again, if I loaded one of those odd saves (not sure how they got corrupted) with the screwy lights and then load one of the good saves, the good save will have the screwy lights until I restart the game.

That didn't make it easy to figure out the problem, but I think I got it working now.

Thanks for the help, fellas.

EDIT: Not necessarily Skyrim Particle Patch, but it looks like a load order issue. Still tweaking as LOOT doesn't fix this problem, obviously. The strange save game load issue described above is still there though, so that just makes it difficult.