• UPDATE [Dec 3, 2016] Optional files included for The Forgotten City by Nick James Pearce
  

Explore Skyrim, and DLC locations with no music EXCEPT during combat using
NO ESP AND BSA FILE!

Now you can adventure while listening to the birds and the bees and the spiders and the skeletons and the ghosts with no music except when fighting for your life against dragons and strong enemies.


This is made in mind for people who don't use mods that ADD music to Skyrim and does not want to use plugins to achieve what this mod does (which is good for those of you who play with 200+ plugins or so, or can't be bothered to include more running scripts in your already script intensive game)

The only place with music playing is Sovngarde, which I felt should keep its music.


Installation
Extract/Copy to your Skyrim/Data/ directory
Untested, but Nexus Mod Manager should install it easier for you. (I personally don't use Nexus Mod Manager even though I have it installed. I prefer manually installing my mods)


Manual Uninstallation
Delete folders and files in Data/Music directory

• dlc01\
• dread\
• dungeon\
• explore\
• tavern\
• town\
• mus_castle_imperial_01.xwm
• mus_castle_stormcloaks.xwm
• mus_discover_highhrothgar
• mus_dlc2boatarrival_01
• mus_dungeon_dlc2apocrypha_01
• mus_dungeon_dlc2apocrypha_02
• mus_explore_dlc2solstheim_ (suffixes 01 to 11)
  

How does it work / What does it do
What this mod basically does is override the music files for vanilla and dlc explore, dungeon, tavern, town with 5 seconds of silence. It does not modify anything else (level up/reward music, etc. is unaffected) 5 seconds should be optimal for most systems because 1 second or less might pressure older cpus, 30 seconds is actually the ideal shortest length for music files but that would lead to large file sizes of nothing but dead air. 5 second files should be good for everyone.

With this we get a total of 197 files with a combined size of around just 7mb.
Using WinRar, this is compressed into a 85kb archive download for you.

This mod should cover Skyrim, Dawnguard, and Dragonborn DLC locations. (Hearthfire doesn't seem to include new music)
This does not require and is compatible with the DLCs regardless if you have them or not (for some reason)




Other info & How you can make your own Combat music
There was another mod I downloaded before that claimed to do the same thing (but for skyrim only) however what it did was just lower the volume of the explore files to 25%. For those of us who use laptops with bass boost, the music is still highly audible. This makes it dead silent.

I highly recommend using this mod with custom combat music. The orchestra gets old really fast. A good choice is to use DOOM 2016's OST, just an idea. You can use the same tools I did to override the music files:

I used Skyrim Audio Converter by JohnB to convert the files
BSA Unpacker by Wookie to extract the files
GoldWave for batch processing

If you're planning on making your own combat music, I can give you a headstart on which files to override. The combat music files can be found at music\combat, the individual files are:

• mus_combat_01.xwm
• mus_combat_01_finale.xwm
• mus_combat_02.xwm
• mus_combat_02_finale.xwm
• mus_combat_03.xwm
• mus_combat_03_finale.xwm
• mus_combat_04.xwm
• mus_combat_04_finale.xwm
• mus_combat_05.xwm
• mus_combat_05_finale.xwm
• mus_combat_06.xwm
• mus_combat_06_finale.xwm
  

The above files are for standard fights.

• mus_combat_boss.xwm
• mus_combat_boss_finale.xwm
• mus_combat_boss_02.xwm
• mus_combat_boss_02_finale.xwm
• mus_combat_boss_03.xwm
• mus_combat_boss_03_finale.xwm
• mus_combat_boss_cg.xwm
• 
  
  

These ones are for dragon fights.

All combat fights have their respective _finale files, I recommend using silent files in place for these for consistency if you're planning on converting your own combat music.




Please contact me personally if you hear music playing in a location that's not Sovngarde when not in combat. I will look into it and update the mod as necessary.