Before You Begin

Before you get started installing or playing Masterstroke, it’s important to note a few things:

ℹ️ Info blocks like this provide more information regarding a step of the guides, usually an image.

⚠️Sections labeled important like this one will tell you when you need to pay extra attention to something.

🛑 Warning blocks like this one will warn you when you absolutely must not forget to do something. Failure to heed warning blocks is cause for disaster.

• If you instead only wish for a brief overview of the major changes this modlist makes, you should refer to the Important Mods You Need to Know About section of this document.
• Autosaves for Masterstroke are disabled. You should make your quicksave button your best friend (usually, the F5 key).
• Continuing the last point, it is always better to save before entering a loading screen instead of after. After a loading screen it is very likely that scripts will be running for at least 30 seconds, so if you must save after a loading screen, at least wait that long before doing so. When practical, try to avoid saving during combat.
• In Masterstroke, NPCs and player characters are nude while wearing no armor/clothing.
• By default, Masterstroke has the game running in exclusive fullscreen mode to assist with game performance.

Important Links

• Important mods (For the full modlists: regular profile / creature profile)
• Masterstroke Discord
• Masterstroke Patreon

Hard Requirements

The following are absolutely required to begin installation of Masterstroke. These must all be installed and up to date before you begin.

• Skyrim Special Edition (Steam, v1.6.1170)
• Microsoft Visual C++ x64
• .Net Runtime
• 425GB of available space on a hard drive/SSD/NVMe. (135GB Download Size + 317GB Installation Size)

More detailed instructions on installing and configuring these are in the following pages.

System Requirements

Additional Requirements

Nexus Premium

You are not required to have Nexus Premium to install Masterstroke, however, it is highly recommended. Nexus Premium will cut your install time to a fraction of what it would be by automating both the mod download and mod install processes of installing the list.

Storage Space

As of version 1.10.0, Masterstroke requires approximately 425GB of hard drive space (This number includes the download size). Installing to an SSD/NVMe is not required, but also highly recommended. The faster the drive you install the list onto, the faster the installation process will run and the faster the game will go through loading screens when playing.

More About System Specifications

Masterstroke requires a good to excellent computer to run. Textures range from 512x512 to 4K and everything in between. The following system is ForgottenGlory’s personal computer and is able to run the list at a constant 60FPS including ENB at 1440p monitor resolution.

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X @ 4.2GHz
• RAM: G.Skill TridentZ Neo 32GB DDR4 3600MHz CL16
• GPU: nVidia RTX 2080 Super 8GB (8192MB actual)
• Monitor: Dell S2716DGR 2560x1440 @ 144hz
• Storage: Sabrent Rocket 2TB M.2 NVMe 2280; Samsung EVO 860 250GB; SeaGate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM

In general, it is recommended that you have a processor with a clock speed of at least 3GHz and a graphics card with at least 6GB of VRAM. 4GB graphics cards may be able to run the list if you do not use ENB, but it is not guaranteed.

As for RAM, 16GB is the recommended specification for running the list. 32GB is the ideal amount, and anything more than that is honestly overkill for this list.

Pagefile Configuration

Bigger Skyrim modlists need a lot of memory, and when there is not enough available it may fail allocating more. To fix this, you’ll want to have a bigger pagefile.

A pagefile is a file on your disk Windows will use when there is not enough RAM available.

Never disable the pagefile - this may lead to various issues on your system, including Skyrim crashes.

To set the pagefile up properly for this modlist, follow these steps:

1. Press Windows + R on your keyboard and enter sysdm.cpl ,3
2. Under the Performance section, press ‘Settings’
3. Go to the Advanced tab at the top, and at the Virtual memory section press ‘Change…’
4. Disable ‘Automatically manage paging file size for all drives’
5. Set a custom size for your fastest drive and increase the initial and maximum size to be at least 20GB (20000MB).
6. Restart your computer to make sure the changes have taken effect.

If you have more than one drive, try enabling it for at least one more drive as a backup (make sure it has a decent bit of free space, like 15GB). Set the size to ‘System managed size’.

Microsoft Visual C++

The Visual C++ Redistributable is a DLL (Dynamic Link Library) file required by programs or games built using Microsoft’s Visual Studio software development environment. As Skyrim Special Edition is a 64-bit program, elements of it - along with other aspects of the modlist - require the 64-bit version of Visual C++ in order to run.

Click the link to download the latest Visual C++ x64 Redistributable, then double-click the downloaded file and follow the instructions:

• Microsoft Visual C++ x64

Microsoft .Net Runtime

This is another runtime library required by some programs. Not having these installed can result in issues running Masterstroke.

click the link to open a page on the Microsoft Website to download the .NET runtime files. You may need both the Desktop and Console versions, so please install both:

• .Net Runtime

Steam & SSE Setup

🛑 Before installing Masterstroke, you should make sure Skyrim: Special Edition is up to date in Steam. If you have run a downgrade patcher or not updated yet, verifying the game files using Steam will fix any issues you may encounter during installation.

Before proceeding with installation, it’s important that your Steam and Skyrim Special Edition install are configured correctly.

First, make sure that your Steam library, and therefore the Skyrim Special Edition install folder, is not located within your Program Files, Program Files (x86), Desktop, Documents or Download folders. Having the Steam library or your copy of Skyrim Special Edition in either of these folders is known to cause issues. Instructions on how to move your Steam library can be found elsewhere on the internet.

Next, you’ll need a clean copy of Skyrim Special Edition. To get your copy to this state, follow these steps:

1. In Steam, uninstall Skyrim: Special Edition:
   Right-click > Manage > Uninstall.
2. If there are any files leftover in the Skyrim Special Edition game folder, delete them:
   Right-click > Manage > Browse Local Files.
3. Install Skyrim: Special Edition.
4. Disable the Steam Overlay.:
   Right-click > Properties… > General > Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game checkbox.
5. Configure Skyrim’s language to English:
   Right-click > Properties… > Language > Select ‘English’ in the dropdown list.
6. In Steam, press the Play button to open the Skyrim Launcher. After it successfully selected a graphics preset for your hardware, immediately close the Launcher.

⚠️Do NOT press PLAY in the skyrim launcher to start the game.
If you did, then verify the game files in Steam:
Right-click > Properties… > Installed Files > Verify integrity of game files

Wabbajack Preparations

We’ll now setup the folders needed for the installation to proceed smoothly.

1. Create two empty folders: one named Wabbajack and the other named Masterstroke.
   Ensure that these two folders are :
   ... completely empty.
   ... not within each other.
   ... not within drive A: or B:
   ... not within any of the following folders: Skyrim Special Edition, Program Files, Program Files (x86), Documents, Downloads, Desktop.
2. Inside the Masterstroke folder, create another folder named downloads.
   Example of folder structure:
   C:\Wabbajack
   C:\Masterstroke
   C:\Masterstroke\downloads
3. Download the latest version of Wabbajack from the Wabbajack website: Wabbajack.
4. Place the Wabbajack.exe file you just downloaded into the folder you created earlier called Wabbajack.

🛑 Failure to set up these folders properly will result in the install failing. For example, [install drive]\Wabbajack\Masterstroke is incorrect.

ℹ️ The Masterstroke folder needs to be unique, but you can use another download folder on a backup drive or/and a shared folder for multiple modlists. For example:
C:\Wabbajack
C:\Masterstroke
D:\modlistdownloads

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