Realistic Water Two

Overview


One of the many upgrades to Skyrim Special Edition is the new water flow system that allows water to bend around turns and change speed depending on the environment. While the water is much improved over the original edition of Skyrim, water flow was applied to most bodies of water, indiscriminately, resulting in odd looking water in certain situations. With RWT installed, marsh, pond,  and river water are once again visually and aurally distinct from one another. To fix some major LOD issues both the lake and ocean water are now the same.

Features

• Lakes and ocean water now share the same texture. This fixes most distant LOD issues.
• Lakes, ponds/marsh water, and ocean water no longer flow in any particular direction.
• Lakes, rivers, and oceans have new, ambient sound effects. Ponds are silent.
• The volume of waterfalls and rapids have been increased.
• Icebergs and ice chunks will sometimes crack and gurgle.
• Rowboats floating in the water will animate and gently bob around.
• Waves were slowed down, retextured, and now have a crashing water sound effect. The splash/foam effects were made more visible. They have been added along the coast of Skyrim at locations that make sense. Additional waves have also been added to Solstheim.
• Large waterfall's animations have been sped up, retextured, and more splash particles have been added. Waterfall mists have more volume.
• Foam effects have been retextured.
• Rain ripples will no longer slide across the surface of the water. They've also been retextured and transparency has been increased.
• Small rapids and the foamy streams in Markarth have had their animations sped up.
• The green reflections emitted by some meshes when viewed at a certain angle is a bug that was introduced with Skyrim Special Edition. This bug is now fixed.
• New animated water for blacksmith troughs.
• Better splash effects.

Optional Options (available in the main archive)

• Extended Ambiance: Extends the lake and ocean ambient looping sound effects from 30 seconds to 50 seconds long.
• Flowing Lakes: Reverts lake water back to vanilla river water visually and aurally. Lake water will flow strongly in one direction again instead of being made up of slow, lapping waves. (not recommended)
• Original Foam: Reverts the rapids foam back to the original RWT textures. The new default foam textures are from the mod, WATER. Credits to SparrowPrince for those textures.
• Cinematic Rain Ripples: The default rain ripples are more chaotic in nature which blends the ripples together. This option will make the ripples more uniform and cinematic. Credits to SparrowPrince for this texture.
• Smoother Rivers: The default river flow texture is a more choppy texture. This option is very similar, but will make the "waves" on the water smoother. Credits to SparrowPrince for this texture.
• Watercolor: Turns the water into a more vibrant, fantasy-like, teal color.

Version Scheme
Since I (TechAngel85) manage several mods for authors, I've developed a managing style to keep myself organized while doing so. One of the changes I typically make is to regulate the version scheme with something that is structured and makes sense. The new scheme will be as follows:

Major.Minor.Hotfix

• Major = changes to assets such as new or updated meshes, scripts (if applicable), textures, etc.
• Minor = compatibility updates, patch updates, larger bug fix rollouts, etc.
• Hotfix = hot-fixes, single bug fixes, update to installer code, etc.

Installation / Updating / Uninstall


Manual Install:
Manual installation is not supported. Use a mod manager. No support will be provided for these users.

Mod Managers:
Download the file and add it to your respective manager. Install using the provided installers (FOMOD or Wizard).

Bethesda.net:
Add to your library and enjoy.

Updating
Simply uninstall the previous version and install the updated version. Wrye Bash users may need to Anneal some mods.

Uninstall
User your mod manager to remove the mod.


Plugin Load Order

• RealisticWaterTwo.esp
• RealisticWaterTwo -ModPatches.esp (any patches installed)
• RealisticWaterTwo - Watercolor.esp

Compatibility


Mod Patches
The following patches are provided during installation:

• iNeed (works for Realistic Needs and Diseases too!) - (link) (RND)
• The People of Skyrim Complete SSE - (link)
• Wyrmstooth - (link)

General Compatibility
This mod must be placed AFTER any mod that modifies a cell near a body of water!
This must be done to avoid seeing "seams" in the water. It is recommend placing this mod VERY low in the load order (towards the bottom) and use xEdit to make any necessary patches with other mods.


Majestic Mountains
Install Majestic Mountains after RWT.
Majestic Mountains includes three meshes that conflict with RWT. Users should overwrite RWT with these meshes when using both mods or delete/hide the files from the RWT installation. They are two creek meshes and one river rapids mesh. The changes to the meshes are only to the rocks included within them, from what I can tell. Users will still get the RWT foams with the river mesh. The creek meshes will likely be reverted back to vanilla. RWT speeds these two meshes up so the water doesn't look like it's in slow motion, but it's not that noticeable.

SMIM
Install SMIM before RWT.
SMIM has one mesh that conflicts with RWT. Users should allow RWT to overwrite this mesh when using both mods or delete/hide the file from the SMIM installation. RWT fixes a green glow on this mesh caused by certain lighting conditions. The SMIM mesh was used as the base for the included, fixed file so users are still getting the SMIM fixes/updates.



Recommended Mods

The following mods are recommended to help support a stable game:

Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch - (link)
An essential mod for everyone.

SSE Engine Fixes (skse64 plugin) - (link)
This mod will fix several issues within the game engine, including some FPS issues with tree LOD, but it's recommended here because it also includes a fix for the new water flow system being tied to the game's timescale. Without this mod, lowering the timescale will slow down the movement of river water. This mod fixes this so that the water flow speed will remain consistent across all timescale settings.



Bug Reports


A quick statistic: I pruned over 70 bug reports and 90% of the reports were user error!

If you have seams, it's 99% likely due to another mod or your save. See the second sticky post covering seam issues before moving to the instructions below.

Before reporting any bugs please ensure the issue has been narrowed down to Realistic Water Two and is not a conflict between mods. To do this:

1. Remove all the mods except the game's content, the unofficial patches, and Realistic Water Two.
2. Ensure RealisticWaterTwo.esp is loaded last. If you have other plugins from RWT, follow the load order above.
3. Run the game.
4. At the menu screen, open the console (~)
5. type in: coc riverwood
6. Once in game, open the console again and type in: tmm 1
7. Open your map and travel to the location where the issue was presenting itself. If combat is an issue, you can turn it off with the console command: tcai

If the issue is no longer present, it is either your mod list or your save file that is the issue. Not RWT.

If the issue is still there, congratulations! You've likely found an issue with the mod. Please report the issue using the "BUGS" tab above.

If you're able to narrow the issue down between RWT and another mod, please report it so that I can look into making a patch.

Due to the statistic above, if you do not follow these procedures to narrow down the issue, your bug report will be deleted without warning. I simply do not have the time to sort through that many false bug reports. So if you're lazy, don't expect help. If you're not lazy, I will help any users who have diligently attempted to narrow down the issue to RWT.