If you use Mator Smash, you will need the UCOW Smash Fix plugin from the Unofficial Mator Smash Updated page. Make sure to load it before UCOW, but after ICOW and OCW. Adding LOOT rules for it now. See compatibility article for more info.
If you experience a bug with the college, please report it here, not on the ICOW or OCW page, even if you are really sure it's a bug with one of those mods. I'll do what I can to verify its legitimacy then pass it along to GrantyBoy or patch it for Obscure's since she has retired from modding.
If you have found something you believe to be a bug, do what you can to verify its legitimacy (replicate it on a new game with no other mods loaded).
You can report bugs/seek support here or on my Discord in the appropriate channel.
Post your load order via https://pastebin.com/ when reporting a bug or asking for help. Please be honest about your load order, I don't judge, and I need to know that info in order to appropriately help you.
If the bug is verified, I will add it to the Bugs section and FAQ so users are aware of what has already been reported.
A note about version 1.1.0: I had to reupload this version a few times, I kept leaving this out of the FOMOD and didn't want to make a new version number since the main mod didn't change. Sorry about that folks! Upload 1 was to add three missing patches, upload 2 was to add back the replacement OCW_CellSettings.esp file (kind of important lol), upload 3 was to replace an old version of the Audio Overhaul patch. Again, I apologize for the confusion! Helpful Links:
I have received multiple reports that the “Minimap” mod causes freezing when the eye of magnus is present in the college. Isolating and fixing the issue is not a priority for me right now, so for now I will recommend you not use Minimap. The issue does not seem to be unique to UCOW, so I make that recommendation whether you use UCOW or you don’t.
Update Dec 29 2021: User TcoBlack shared this workaround. I have not tested it myself but I figured I'd provide it in this sticky anyway. Thanks for the info TcoBlack!
Just want to say that I tried a workaround suggested by a user on the minimap page.
The tweak was to set DisplayMarker in the minimap.ini to 18. I tried this without doing this first and crashed (crash happened in the location following the stairs on your right in the hall of elements to get to the next area and then more stairs (same staircase) until you get to the floor with some sort of library location. The crash occurs when trying to enter this area for me).
I'm having this issue where the doors to the staircases left and right of the hall of elements main entrance are instead a pair of pillars with plaques that report the various floors' chambers. Crazy thing is that I already played with this mod on an old PC and it just worked back then :\
I've tried to delete anything college related and reinstall, but nothing; same with Lux, cause the only other player I found with the same problem fixed it with some Lux patch (that he didn't post). HALP.
if you don't to believe me or even check it out as as possibility, that's fine. it's no skin off my nose. all i can say is that it kooks exactly like every single other reported lux related bugs for the staircase.
i see. i was assuming a certain knowledge base on your part. let's start out with something more basic. are you familiar with the lighting mod called lux made by ggunit and do you have it installed, and ( just to thorough, have you installed this mod or lux mid play through. because the answer to your question is yes, ggunit did a patch for ucow quite some time ago. but if you've never heard of or installed, then, i dunno,
I installed everything without any saves up, brand new. Lux is installed and I even reinstalled it to be sure that from the setup process I had ticked the patch for the college that is in it (don't remember if it is from immersive, obscure's or ultimate, but there is only one in there). I assume that that's the patch cause I went on ggunit's profile and there isn't a specific patch mod for UCOW.
I had this exact problem - and here is how I fixed it:
1. I deleted Lux and reinstalled it completely fresh, making sure that I have the patches for Obscure's college and Ultimate college. Yes, both of them. I also made sure I installed the patches for exactly the mods I have - nothing more and nothing less. 2. I deleted anything and everything relating to Enhanced Lights and FX (ELFX). Apparently this is what caused the horrible floor and ceiling glitches. I don't even use ELFX, just the patches themselves caused chaos. 3. I installed Unofficial Lux Patches by Skurkbro, and picked the patch for the college. IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO NOT PICK ANYTHING FROM THE PARALLAX SECTION - ONLY MADE EVERYTHING WORSE. Lux should overrite the Unofficial Lux Patches. This is important. 4. I followed this load order (I did it with loot and some tweaking with vortex, I don't know how else to do it): Immersive College > Obscure's College > Ultimate College > Lux > Lux OCW patch > Lux UCOW patch. This step is very important as it puts everything in place.
Now I finally have staircases and the Hall of the Elements doesn't give me a headache. I hope this helps anyone who needs this.
i can ssure you there is a lux patch for UCOW. it's why ggunit never made any other patches for any other colleges. it wore him out getting it right. but, you can always try asking on the lux page if you don't beleieve me.
Thank you so much brother, anyone whos having problems with the stair cases and the hall of elelements floor, the method meowfeather describes fixes it completely! The only thing i saw out of place was the archmages bed that was floating along with some candles floating over it but for now the candles can be disabled and the bed can be repositioned with that new mod that controls and places items
If meowspost could be pinned that would be great, first comment I ever left and this right here fixed every issue I was having with this Mod, flashing lights, no stairs, floors not showing up correctly.
Hello fellow modders! I was hoping to get some help regarding display tweaks sort of conflicting with ucow. For some reason 70% of the time I get stuck inside the door to the hall of elements. I know for sure it's display tweaks since i turned everything off except for display tweaks. When I turn it back on the same glitch starts happening again. I'm not sure if this is a known bug or not but I would appreciate any help!
I have an issue since I installed this. Downstairs in the training area Nirya and Arniel are in the same stall facing each other. Nirya is using Ice Spikes I think hitting the target which just so happens to be above the guys head. Her attacks sometimes miss when I'm down there and she "accidentally" shoots a spike into his head.
After two or three hits the entire college is hostile and attacks ME like I did something but all I did was watch. For some reason the game makes her attacks think they came from me. WTF man.
Idk if this little encounter is intentional because if I talk to Nirya when the guard comes she'll day I would've gotten away with it too or something, giving the player an option to kill the guard that is summoned. If all this is intentional is it possible to disable whatever is causing her attacks to make everyone hate and kill me because I just wanna practice my skills man 😂
To add, I have Immersive Citizens and AI Overhaul installed with their respective patches for UCOW.
don't use both mods or you'll get this same problem happen they both do the same thing. use either immersive citizens ai overhaul or use ai overhaul. i'm only surprised you haven't seen worse.
Is that for sure the cause? The others seem to practice together just fine it's just those two like she has some grudge against him. No idea how disabling ai Overhaul and all it's patches mid save will affect my game at this point though
don't know if it'll solve your problems or not, tbh, i never used the two together. you might try fallrim resaver: fallrim tools that might help or it might not. even the mod author doesn't advise using his mod because he knows it's often times a total crap shoot. he only made it because he knew he was never going to convince people to not remove mods mid play through. it this point though, it might be your only chance to solve the problem. i dunno if it'll work or not however. you're removing scripts mid save and that's about as bad as it gets. and it's also possible its something else as well. there was an issue earlier with fights breaking out in the library because mods were adding summoned creatures to npcs and they had no patch for them so npcs ended up aggroing on other npcs. i'd check that out first before you do anything else. in any case, before you do anything i'd do some trouble shooting with xedit just to narrow down any conflicting plugins and make a save before you run fallrim tools.
Frell me sideways I'm screwed either way lol. I'd personally prefer not to ruin the 100 hrs I've sunk into this by doing that so I can live with it unless there's other issues elsewhere. I'll consider the xedit solution at some point too but I currently don't have a convenient way to use it and fallrim yet (steamdeck only).
Thanks for the suggestions tho. I'm thinking it may have to do with her scripts or factions, was kinda hoping a simple disable in the console would work. Could also be Arniels placement marker too. On fallrim if I did the resaver thing and the save was messed up would it be noticeable immediately or later on? Be handy so I could load the backup save and continue if it's not too far back
probably right away, and most likely it'll be pretty obvious but i'd do some traveling first and see how people are acting every where else and not just in the college. the xedit method is pretty simple to check as well as very painless and i'd run it just to make sure you didn't miss anything else. it's a very useful for some complex editing and big time conflict resolution ( meaning you can use to find mod conflicts and to make custom made patches) but for your purposes here now, it's uses are going to be very very simple. you'll just be using it to limit the list of possible suspects screwing up your college npcs. and with any luck it's a relatively small list. you simple load up all of your plugins you're using now, and then either right click the plugin for this mod ( on the left screen of xedit) and\or for the vanilla npc which you find in skyrim.esm under actors. ( also on the left screen of xedit ) if you need to find what your mod's plugin name is ( which is different then the mod name ) you'll need to look that up in your mod manager. if you're using vortex it'll be in the plugins tab, and if you're using mo2, it'll be found under the plugins tab on the right side of the mo2 window. both will have different methods of searching for the plugin names however. any conflicts will show up as red bars on the right screen for xedit under vertical data columns for each plugin ( whose names will be listed at the top of the right screen) . fyi, conflicts are not always bad so just because you see a lot of red boxes in the right screen, you don't have to automatically worry. the important thing to keep in mind is that the red boxes will be the only thing you need to focus on. if you need help installing it, gamerpoets has an awesome tutorial vid on how to use it: how to install xedit
I can confirm that Nirya's attacks still hit Arniel when using just AI Overhaul. I was using both AI Overhaul and Immersive Citizens like you, until I read this post identifying that only 1 should be installed. I had just started a new game, so I removed Immersive Citizens and kept just the AI Overhaul mod (and patches of course).
Also, interestingly, I have been playing for years with both AI Overhaul and Immersive Citizens and hadn't noticed any issues. I assume it was a case of one mod winning out over another in load order, combined with a good load order.
I'd like to add that it happens also if you only have immersive citizens. It's a pretty big downside that there's a time where I just can't enter the main room
Disable the map marker patch and then try re-running DynDOLOD again. I get one like that for a Fountain of Skyrim patch. Then after running DynDOLOD I re-enable the patch.
For those who come later, Atlas Map Marker - SE has in it an updated version of this patch that has the correct references. You can use that instead of the version that comes with Ultimate College. I didn't go through reinstalling the FOMOD and instead just copied it from the zip to a new mod over Ultimate College in my mod list so it took precedence over the one installed by Ultimate College.
EDIT 17/06/2025: I resolved my issue and update my post now to help assist others, now and in future.
THE ISSUE: Game was consistently crashing to desktop (CTD) every second (2nd) time I entered the 'Hall of Attainment', but only AFTER I had entered another interior area. Simply exiting the 'Hall of Attainment' and re-entering did not trigger the crash.
Through disabling mods and testing I discovered that disabling 'Lux - OCW College.esp' specifically, as well as 'Lux - UCOW patch.esp' prevented the CTD.
THE SOLUTION: Updating to the latest version of LUX v6.9 and LUX - Patch Hub v6.9 which were released 23rd May 2025, the first to post-date the ultimate college mod (Previously using v6.7.2 and v6.7 of the respective mods, dated 16th of June 2024 which pre-dated latest version of ultimate college mod). This was after looking at and giving up on trying to find the issue in SSEEdit (and I don't have the creation kit to check nav-meshes for example).
The reason that updating the Lux mod to the latest version wasn't at the top of my possible solutions checklist is because 1) The Lux version I was running wasn't that old, from mid 2024, and only the recent v6.9 post-dates the ultimate college mod, and; 2) I am still running Skyrim GOG version 1.6.659 as my mod list is built around that, and so am cautious in updating mods to the latest version unless I have to, in order to avoid potential Skyrim or USSEP version issues.
I do have the 'backported extended ESL support' mod, however my general approach I've adopted whilst running Skyrim 1.6.659 is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and so unless directed by a mod author to use a specific version of another mod, I don't think to try the latest version of a mod. Some mods for example I've even had to download multiple old versions to find one that works with my version of the game, though only 1 or 2 mods did I need to do this, I can't recall now which.
I've made a patch for my playthrough and will look at sharing it, though I've never put anything on nexusmods before.
Before I share though, I am wondering if anyone knows what the "WCollegeDangerDinnerPackage" and the "WCollegeDangerLunchPackage" packs are for/what they are scheduling? They come from the 'Immersive College of Winterhold' mod. My concern being if these are not actually needed when combined with 'Obscures College of Winterhold' as it brings its own lunch/dinner packages, and perhaps they send the NPC's to some other destination for lunch and dinner that no longer exists in 'Obscure's' altered college layout? I've never played with the immersive college or obscures college independently, so I don't know what each authors NPC schedules/packages do.
I have a problem and I know its my fault so I need help fixing if anyone can, I went into the Hall of Countenance if I spelled it right and went into Urug room the Orc in charge of the Library and he had two beds and that were phasing into each other lot of his furniture was also. I had another issue with my spell research book, but I found a way around it.
Additional I thought Had an issue with The stairs being blocked to the Arcanium but it turns out if using Lux you have to tick obscures mod COW plus the Ultimate UCOW do not select Immersive college of Winterhold ICOW in the Lux Patch Hub FOMOD
I am using the Ultimate college of Winterhold Mod combo there is a bug/issue with using Dibella's Blessing-Immersive College of Winterhold Patch. At the main entrance when attempting to gain access. The initial take a magic test speech does not fully activate. has any one made a patch for that? I would like to keep the Dibella's blessing college NPC's
I've used EasyNPC to merge my NPC overhauls into one, and disabled the original plugins. However this puts a spanner in the works as Pandorables NPCs has a patch for this mod, which obviously requires Pandorables NPCs as a master.
My question is - what does the patch do exactly? Can I either: a. Disable the patch b. Go into SSEEdit and remove the master requirement
Or do I have to keep it enabled despite having the NPC appearances merged with EasyNPC?
1071 comments
A note about version 1.1.0:
I had to reupload this version a few times, I kept leaving this out of the FOMOD and didn't want to make a new version number since the main mod didn't change. Sorry about that folks! Upload 1 was to add three missing patches, upload 2 was to add back the replacement OCW_CellSettings.esp file (kind of important lol), upload 3 was to replace an old version of the Audio Overhaul patch. Again, I apologize for the confusion!
Helpful Links:
Installation Instructions/Compatibility
Compatibility Patch Status Sheet
Patch Request Form
Mayor's Discord
Update Dec 29 2021:
User TcoBlack shared this workaround. I have not tested it myself but I figured I'd provide it in this sticky anyway. Thanks for the info TcoBlack!
I've tried to delete anything college related and reinstall, but nothing; same with Lux, cause the only other player I found with the same problem fixed it with some Lux patch (that he didn't post). HALP.
https://imgur.com/a/JPe9rPp
I assume that that's the patch cause I went on ggunit's profile and there isn't a specific patch mod for UCOW.
1. I deleted Lux and reinstalled it completely fresh, making sure that I have the patches for Obscure's college and Ultimate college. Yes, both of them.
I also made sure I installed the patches for exactly the mods I have - nothing more and nothing less.
2. I deleted anything and everything relating to Enhanced Lights and FX (ELFX). Apparently this is what caused the horrible floor and ceiling glitches.
I don't even use ELFX, just the patches themselves caused chaos.
3. I installed Unofficial Lux Patches by Skurkbro, and picked the patch for the college. IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO NOT PICK ANYTHING FROM THE PARALLAX SECTION - ONLY MADE EVERYTHING WORSE. Lux should overrite the Unofficial Lux Patches. This is important.
4. I followed this load order (I did it with loot and some tweaking with vortex, I don't know how else to do it):
Immersive College > Obscure's College > Ultimate College > Lux > Lux OCW patch > Lux UCOW patch.
This step is very important as it puts everything in place.
Now I finally have staircases and the Hall of the Elements doesn't give me a headache. I hope this helps anyone who needs this.
After two or three hits the entire college is hostile and attacks ME like I did something but all I did was watch. For some reason the game makes her attacks think they came from me. WTF man.
Idk if this little encounter is intentional because if I talk to Nirya when the guard comes she'll day I would've gotten away with it too or something, giving the player an option to kill the guard that is summoned. If all this is intentional is it possible to disable whatever is causing her attacks to make everyone hate and kill me because I just wanna practice my skills man 😂
To add, I have Immersive Citizens and AI Overhaul installed with their respective patches for UCOW.
that might help or it might not. even the mod author doesn't advise using his mod because he knows it's often times a total crap shoot. he only made it because he knew he was never going to convince people to not remove mods mid play through. it this point though, it might be your only chance to solve the problem. i dunno if it'll work or not however. you're removing scripts mid save and that's about as bad as it gets. and it's also possible its something else as well. there was an issue earlier with fights breaking out in the library because mods were adding summoned creatures to npcs and they had no patch for them so npcs ended up aggroing on other npcs. i'd check that out first before you do anything else. in any case, before you do anything i'd do some trouble shooting with xedit just to narrow down any conflicting plugins and make a save before you run fallrim tools.
Thanks for the suggestions tho. I'm thinking it may have to do with her scripts or factions, was kinda hoping a simple disable in the console would work. Could also be Arniels placement marker too. On fallrim if I did the resaver thing and the save was messed up would it be noticeable immediately or later on? Be handy so I could load the backup save and continue if it's not too far back
Also, interestingly, I have been playing for years with both AI Overhaul and Immersive Citizens and hadn't noticed any issues. I assume it was a case of one mod winning out over another in load order, combined with a good load order.
Dont know how to fix it
Hope that helps
thanks.
edit: nevermind i found it, im silly. you can find the updated patch by simply installing atlas map markers again if anyone else is wondering
EDIT 17/06/2025: I resolved my issue and update my post now to help assist others, now and in future.
THE ISSUE: Game was consistently crashing to desktop (CTD) every second (2nd) time I entered the 'Hall of Attainment', but only AFTER I had entered another interior area. Simply exiting the 'Hall of Attainment' and re-entering did not trigger the crash.
Through disabling mods and testing I discovered that disabling 'Lux - OCW College.esp' specifically, as well as 'Lux - UCOW patch.esp' prevented the CTD.
THE SOLUTION: Updating to the latest version of LUX v6.9 and LUX - Patch Hub v6.9 which were released 23rd May 2025, the first to post-date the ultimate college mod (Previously using v6.7.2 and v6.7 of the respective mods, dated 16th of June 2024 which pre-dated latest version of ultimate college mod). This was after looking at and giving up on trying to find the issue in SSEEdit (and I don't have the creation kit to check nav-meshes for example).
The reason that updating the Lux mod to the latest version wasn't at the top of my possible solutions checklist is because 1) The Lux version I was running wasn't that old, from mid 2024, and only the recent v6.9 post-dates the ultimate college mod, and; 2) I am still running Skyrim GOG version 1.6.659 as my mod list is built around that, and so am cautious in updating mods to the latest version unless I have to, in order to avoid potential Skyrim or USSEP version issues.
I do have the 'backported extended ESL support' mod, however my general approach I've adopted whilst running Skyrim 1.6.659 is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and so unless directed by a mod author to use a specific version of another mod, I don't think to try the latest version of a mod. Some mods for example I've even had to download multiple old versions to find one that works with my version of the game, though only 1 or 2 mods did I need to do this, I can't recall now which.
Before I share though, I am wondering if anyone knows what the "WCollegeDangerDinnerPackage" and the "WCollegeDangerLunchPackage" packs are for/what they are scheduling? They come from the 'Immersive College of Winterhold' mod. My concern being if these are not actually needed when combined with 'Obscures College of Winterhold' as it brings its own lunch/dinner packages, and perhaps they send the NPC's to some other destination for lunch and dinner that no longer exists in 'Obscure's' altered college layout? I've never played with the immersive college or obscures college independently, so I don't know what each authors NPC schedules/packages do.
Dibella's Blessing-Immersive College of Winterhold Patch.
At the main entrance when attempting to gain access. The initial take a magic test speech does not fully activate. has any one made a patch for that?
I would like to keep the Dibella's blessing college NPC's
My question is - what does the patch do exactly?
Can I either:
a. Disable the patch
b. Go into SSEEdit and remove the master requirement
Or do I have to keep it enabled despite having the NPC appearances merged with EasyNPC?