Notes on Creation Kit

Notes on learning the creation kit from scratch, what I did to make my mods. Basically beginner's impressions

Intro

I feel like this is the least intuitive mod-maker I've ever seen. It reminds me of accountant software 1C which is basically legacy over logic type of situation. Bethesda has same moon approach in my opinion.
I decided to write down everything I did, where I stuck etc, because I will probably forget after a while, and need to re-learn everything, and others may have similar experiences.

This guide will be updating while I am trying to make different stuff)

Starting a new mod

Run the kit from steam. When everything is opened, you may think that you already have all the data to work with, but that is not the case. You need to load Skyrim data manually.
To do that click Data in the menu, then double click Skyrim inside the pop-up. If you click once it will not be selected!

In that same window you will see also the mods you currently have, select them if you need them too. For example here you will find Heartfire, Downguard, etc.


When you click OK, the data will start uploading. It may take a while.
During that process you may get the warning window, always click "Yes to all" in these.



In the end you'll get 3 windows:

Object Window - self explanatory, after loading the data you will be able to look through different object lists and edit/add something

Cell View - That is basically a list of in-game locations, similar to objects after loading data you will be able to see all in-game locations and edit/add

Render window - That is where you will see the location you pick, add objects to it

Adding new food (and where it is in the creation kit)

My first mod idea was to make a green poison potato. As a Belarusian, I am obligated.
Well, what seemed simple "duplicate existing potato-retexture-add poison effect" stumbled upon the fact that I couldn't find where the creation kit stored all the vegetables. Any food really. All lists that I guessed were wrong.
Potato is not an item, or a misc, or even a WorldObject.
Potato is MAGIC.
So is almost every other dish or food ingredient. Todd stored these in the MAGIC list and every other ingredient is a POTION, god knows why.


Duplicate existing item (right click on it, pick duplicate), save with your own ID (how it will be called in creation kit) and name (how it will be called in the game)

How to find anything at the Creation Kit - easiest way to navigate

As you can see in previous example, the kit has its own moon logic and trying to guess where is something can be really hard.
This is why there is another way to navigate the kit, I wish i knew this earlier.

On the very bottom of the Object Window there is *All option. By default it is empty. But if you pick it and then write something to the filter field, you will easily find all the objects that have that exact text you wrote

This is the easiest way of looking for existing objects I found, while All is picked, you can search in all the tables and save yourself lots of time.

Re-texturing items. Making .dds files in Gimp

Texture files have .dds extension. So if you are going to make your own, you'll need to create a .dds file.
Gimp[www.gimp.org] has a plugin[code.google.com] for that and is free.

Install everything: Gimp DDS plugin goes in the gimp plugins directory (ex: C:\Program Files (x86)\GIMP-2.0\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins)

If you are not familiar with Gimp it may be very hard, that program has very different interface than photoshop or any similar graphic redactor. I recommend open any existing texture with Gimp and edit it, that will make things easier.

You can use Creation Kit to see where are located any texture files, and open that same location with Gimp, pick any file and make a copy with your own design


After you've finished with your design, simply export the file with a new name to that same folder



Now you can apply that new texture to an in-game object.
In my case I needed to duplicate potato object (because the goal was not to replace the existing one) and put a texture on it. But first you need to add the texture you've created to the texture set list.
If you saved your texture in the same folder where the game already have everything, it's going to be easy to find.
Open the TextureSet list, right click to it and create new.

Name field for a new texture set is empty by default, so if you didn't put anything there you will get a nameless item. Thanks, Todd.


After all that return to your object (in my case it was a potato duplicate, and edit it. Inside the Edit window you will see the Model section - click to edit the model and add to it a new texture.

Adding new effects to food items

By default any food has some sort of a healing/stamina regenerating effect, so any food object will have at least 1 item at the effect list.

Mine looks broken because of localization mods, but as you can see inside it is a standard healing effect


Since I want to make a poison item, I deleted the default effect and added the one dealing damage
To add a new item to this list you need to right click on it and chose New


I chose effect that deals damage to health and picked damage 5 and duration 5 sec

How to place a new item to an existing location

After you've created your new item you want to have an access to it in the game. This is how you place things into the existing locations in the game.

List of locations is in the Cell window. Pick a place from there, double-click on it, and that location will load to the render window. If during that process you will get any warnings just click "yes to all".

When location is loaded in the render window it is going to be something like that:

This is view from the top.
The render window has a bit unusual navigation, this is how you move inside it:

• To move left, right, up and down (panning), hold down the mouse wheel and move in the direction you want.
  
• Zooming in and out is simple enough; just use the mouse wheel as you do in many other games or applications.
  
• To rotate the view, hold down the Shift key and move the mouse.

Move the camera until you are satisfied with the place and then drag and drop your new object from the object window to the render window.


Now the item is placed! But you still need to edit it a bit. The last placed item is automatically selected. If you lost the selection, just click on the item you added again. Then right click on the selected item to edit it. Pick Edit from the menu and then you'll see the Reference window.
Here you usually need to change 2 things:
- remove the respawn option - unless you want your new item to respawn;
- pick Don't Havok Settle - so your item has normal physics. I am not entirely sure how it works but I tested it and if the object doesn't have this picked, it will spawn somewhere below accessable surface. To find it you'll need enable ~tcl command and go through textures. All items that have this though will not fall through the floor


Now some unexpected (at least for me) hidden knowledge about how location content works in Skyrim. OBJECTS INSIDE SEEM TO INHERIT LOCATION'S PROPERTIES. What I mean is if some location's properties say that your character can not pick items from there freely, that will apply to your new items as well.
In my case I placed my new poison potatoes to Jorrvaskr, came there as a new character and found that all my modded potatoes can only be STOLEN from there, because for that lvl1 character ANYTHING from that location is not freely accessible.

And when I went there with another character, that already has done that quest line and can touch anything in Jorrvaskr, these same potatoes were as well free to take.

How to load your mod in the game

After you are done with everything, save your work in the default folder the kit gave you. You will get .esp file. This file now will be seen through the game but you need to enable it.

This is how it is done in Skyrim Special Edition

1. Run the game from Steam and click play
2. When you load the main menu, go to Creations (don't mind my overly modded multi-languaged game lol.)

This is Todd's mod shop where you are supposed to buy stuff, but everything you've made yourself is going to be there too.

3. Press "T" or click Load order

You will see a list of available .esp files that can be activated from there. Click on those you want to be active
When you pick something it already becomes activated, you don't need to do any additional saving.
Leave that menu and return to the main menu. You will see the message that there is a new mod and it's files will be loaded now.
Just click OK, wait till everything is loaded and then load your save game file to enter the game.
Now your mod is active, so you just need to find your new content and enjoy it!

How to edit existing mod

If you already have a working selfmade mod in your hands and want to edit it, to load it properly you need to select in Data window your master (usually it is Skyrim), your mod and make your mod an active file.


This is important because otherwise you may not see the data you've created before. At least this was happening to me before I started loading the way I listed above

Skyrim console ID for modded items

You can summon any item you've created in your mods through in-game console. To do that, run the game save you want and open the console by pressing ~ button.

To summon an item near you write following command:

player.placeatme item_id item_quantity

where
item_id - unique id for your item, further on that later
item_quantity - a number of items you want

so if you want 100 items with id 0000000 you need to write

player.placeatme 0000000 100

press enter and close console, the items you summoned will appear on the ground near you.

To add an item to your inventory you will need this command:

player.additem item_id item_quantity

variables are the same as before. This command will add items straight to your inventory.


Now you just need to figure out what id your modded item has to use these.
Inside the creation kit you will see the id in the list where you added your item.
In my case I added the poison potato to the list with the rest plants so I have it like that:

however this is not the id I need to use in the game.
I am 99% sure that the first 2 digits in these are the number of mods. Since I am just working on my mod here in the kit and never got data from anything other than that, my id starts from 01. However if I load my game and try to use it, it doesn't work, because the game has way more mods loaded and Todd only knows which number was the one I just made.
So the correct understanding of the ID you see in the kit is going to be this:

The easiest way to figure out these XX is in my opinion to use in-game console.
You will need to have at least 1 of your modded items spawned in the game already. Place one, load the game, DO NOT PICK IT UP, just turn your character to it, open the console and click on the item laying in front of you.
You will see 2 types of IDs: RefID and BaseID. The one you need to use is BaseID. As seen on the screen below, mine first 2 digits are now 12, while the rest of ID is the same as it was inside the creation kit. I assume it is load order of all the mods I currently have.

This method does not work with the inventory. If you try to open the inventory and click stuff there, that will not work. So make sure to drop the item you want on the ground and go from there.

This method is a bit flawed because sometimes your click will miss the object you want even if it seemed you aimed perfectly and you can end up with the ID of anything, including the location itself. Yes, it happened to me. Yes, I warped my city a bit by summoning a piece of the street.

So carefully check your item's ID with the creation kit id, the only difference is going to be first 2 digits, everything else should be the same.

Outro

Thanks for reading! Feel free to correct me or to add something. I am just starting to learn the Creation Kit and would love to see people sharing their experiences with it!

[/ /\ (ರರ⌓ರರ) /\]

never tried it yet, but i assume any bethesda game has similar creator kit, that's their notorious feature, isn't it?

[Anemoshi]

Morrowind Construction Kit or whatever it's called next, right?

[/ /\ (ರರ⌓ರರ) /\]

I glad this helped! As far as I know NPCs in Skyrim don't eat as it was in oblivion, but maybe there are mods for that too!

[Noxy Lime]

you made making a mod for skyrim for the first time look easy and fun. i love the poison potato idea. maybe you could use it like a poisoned apple in oblivion and sneak it into unsuspecting NPCs inventories (*cough*nazeem*cough*) and they would eat it and ragdoll lol

[/ /\ (ರರ⌓ರರ) /\]

haha thanks and glad it was useful!

[Toyturfy]

Loved the summoned a piece of the street adding the screenshot is amazing this also was very informative especially for a completely inexperienced me