CACO and Harvest Overhaul/creatures?

[Mreisse]

From the description of Complete Alchemy and Cooking Overhaul by kryptopyr, it looks like Harvest Overhaul is already integrated.

Does that mean it will do all the same things as Harvest Overhaul + more? Can I remove HO in my mod list in favor of CACO?

[gnewna]

Yes, more or less (one or two features are not, I think, carrying over, e.g. I can't boost coin purses and add gems to them, but that was a bit silly). However, I don't know how safe it would be to disable Harvest Overhaul mid-game and add CACO, probably not very, so you'd be best off starting a new playthrough. I restarted one of my characters to use CACO and absolutely love it so far, it does make some stuff tougher, obviously, because Alchemy was kind of stupidly OP in a lot of ways and CACO is much better balanced, IMO. Fair warning, it seems to change ingredients' properties (e.g. I can no longer make a fortify/restore health potion with wheat and blue mountain flowers).

On the off chance you're also using Ordinator, make sure CACO is below Ordinator in your load order (may have to move it manually and/or set metadata in LOOT if LOOT wants to put it above) so that it wins out and you get the CACO alchemy tree, not Ordinator's.

[Mreisse]

I have two experimental 'newgame' profiles now, LOL. One with Ordinator, which I have decided to put off for a futurer playthrough (because the extra perks are confusing me right now. I can only learn so much at a time!!!) and one with CACO which (because I am crafting crazed) will definitely be a new game. With the 'baby' needs and fatigue mechanic included, I can even try my playstyle against a time when I will try Requiem (aka REAL needs and fatigue)

...I'm basically never going to get too far in any playthrough, am I? I have a new game playthrough planned for Civil War Overhaul too.

[gnewna]

Hehe, I know the feeling - as I say, I restarted my main character to use CACO, except I'm having an issue with one of my other mods not liking the Bashed Patch process, and I'm starting to think I should restart AGAIN without that mod, which is a real shame as it was super perfect for my character (Immersive Jewelry, she loves shinies) but until I make a firm decision on that I'm doing a Dead is Dead competition (I will never win, but it's fun to join in!) on another forum, my first ever Conjurer, with a very limited mod profile as we're not allowed any mods that give a significant advantage over console players, naturally (although apparently the USKPs are allowed, go figure.)

Anyway, I love CACO, also very pleased about the 'simple needs' function (and the fact that if you toggle it off it's still compatible with a more fully functioned needs mod!) because I really don't want iNeed on my remade main because Reasons, but I want her to need to eat. Make sure you don't toggle on the fatigue thing until you're ready to sleep, though, I started with it enabled on an Alt Start profile, she 'spawned' in the morning, in her bedroom, but evidently she had not had a good night's sleep, as she got the 'tired' penalty a couple of in-game hours later. Which is logical enough, of course, presumably the mechanic is based off the 'well rested' bonus. Starting off with the hunger enabled seems to be okay, though, given even with the vanilla start you can grab some food pretty quickly.

Also, it has new cheese! What more could one want? (I got very excited when I saw a piece of Rorikstead cheese for sale in the Winking Skeever, as it looks like brie, my favourite!)