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Pandora Guide

🦋 How to re-run Pandora for Licentia NEXT

note

WHY YOU MIGHT NEED THIS?

You added/updated NSFW, regular or combat animations that don't work with DAR or OAR; if you don't rerun the behaviour engine - your characters will T-Pose.

You want to rerun the behaviour engine for any other reason.

warning

Licentia NEXT 13.7.0 replaced Nemesis with Pandora. If you are on 13.6.x or older, use the Nemesis Guide instead - these are not interchangeable, and you should never run both into the same output.

These are the general steps to re-running Pandora for Licentia NEXT:

  1. Launch Pandora Behaviour Engine Plus from MO2
  2. Check Pandora's settings point at the right folders
  3. Tick the behaviour patches and set their order
  4. Click Launch Engine
  5. Verify the output (new - please don't skip this)
  6. Refresh MO2, done!
tip

🕐 This process takes around 3 minutes - considerably faster than Nemesis.

☝️ What changed from the Nemesis guide​

If you have re-run Nemesis before, three things are now different, and all three are simpler:

  • No Large Address Aware patch. Pandora is 64-bit .NET. That whole first step is gone.
  • No cache clearing ritual. Pandora tracks its own output in Pandora_Engine/PreviousOutput.txt and deletes stale files automatically on each run.
  • The output folder is a setting, not a side effect. Nemesis wrote generated behaviours into whichever mod happened to own the file path, scattering output across TUDM, AGO and CGO. Pandora writes wherever Settings.json tells it to. Nothing lands in overwrite, and nothing lands in another mod's folder.

Step 1️⃣ — Launch Pandora Behaviour Engine Plus from MO2​

tip

Ensure that all antivirus and antimalware applications are temporarily disabled. They can interfere with behaviour generation.

In MO2, in the top right corner of the window, click on the dropdown menu and select Pandora Behaviour Engine Plus, then click Run:

Launch Pandora Behaviour Engine Plus from the MO2 executable dropdown
note

Pandora must be launched through MO2. Launched on its own it cannot see the virtual Data folder and will generate a behaviour set built from almost nothing. The Engine.log line Detected launcher: ModOrganizer confirms it started correctly.

Step 2️⃣ — Check Pandora's settings​

Now you need to verify Pandora's settings are correct. Click the Gear icon on the bottom left, and make sure that Skyrim Data is set to C:\YOUR_LICENTIA_INSTALL_PATH\Stock Game\Data and Output Folder is set to C:\YOUR_LICENTIA_INSTALL_PATH\mods\Licentia NEXT - Pandora Output.

Pandora settings showing the Skyrim Data and Output Folder paths
tip

You can keep using Licentia NEXT - Pandora Output as an output, but this would overwrite Licentia's default behaviours, so you can make your own mod that loads AFTER and set it as Output Folder in these settings.

🔩 How Licentia ships its Pandora's settings (for the curious)

Pandora keeps its configuration - the game data folder it reads, and the output folder it writes - in a single file that ships with the list:

\mods\Licentia NEXT - SKSE Settings & Various Configs\Settings.json

It looks like this

{
  "app": {
    "theme": 0
  },
  "games": {
    "SkyrimSE": {
      "gameDataPath": "C:\\YOUR_LICENTIA_INSTALL_PATH\\Stock Game\\Data",
      "outputPath": "C:\\YOUR_LICENTIA_INSTALL_PATH\\mods\\Licentia NEXT - Pandora Output"
    }
  }
}

Step 3️⃣ — Tick the behaviour patches and set their order​

When the Pandora window opens you will see the patch list. Tick the following:

  • Archery Gameplay Overhaul SE
  • AGO Sneak Bow Fix for Pandora
  • TUDM Bow Aim Fix for Pandora
  • Precision
  • Precision Creatures
  • Precision - Attack Collision Fixes
  • Combat Gameplay Overhaul SE
  • Dual Wield Behavior Fixes
  • Extra Drawing Animations
  • Horsepower - Modernized Horse Riding
  • Skyrim's Paraglider
  • True Directional Movement - 360 Horse Archery
  • No turn animations (from Disabled Turn Animations)
  • Animation Teleport Bug Fix
  • The Ultimate Dodge Mod
  • TUDM Attack Cancel
  • USSEP Behaviour Patch
  • Unarmed Sprint & Sneak Roll Fix
  • Every OStim animation pack you have installed (they are all additive - tick them all)
note

True Directional Movement - Headtracking and - Procedural Leaning are deliberately left unticked. Licentia NEXT does not use those TDM features, and they were not patched under Nemesis either.

Pandora patch list with the Licentia NEXT patches ticked
tip

Use the grippers on the left of each row to drag-and-drop priority.

warning

Order only matters for patches that edit the same behaviour nodes. Pandora's own rule is that priority increases as you go down the list, and higher priority overwrites - so of two patches touching the same node, the lower one normally wins.

There is one documented-behaviour exception, found while building the two bow fixes below: that rule holds for ordinary <hkparam> values, but where two patches replace an element inside an array, the earlier patch wins instead. That is why the ordering below is not simply "fixes last".

The four pairs that actually matter in Licentia NEXT:

Must come firstThenWhy
Archery Gameplay Overhaul SEAGO Sneak Bow Fix for PandoraThe fix replaces AGO's sneak-bow blend layers, so it has to overwrite them
TUDM Bow Aim Fix for PandoraThe Ultimate Dodge ModReversed on purpose - the contested node is an array element, so the earlier patch wins
The Ultimate Dodge ModTUDM Attack CancelAttack Cancel layers on top of TUDM; placed above it, ~50 of its edits are silently discarded
Precision, Precision CreaturesPrecision - Attack Collision FixesThe fix layer belongs below the mod it fixes

USSEP Behaviour Patch sits near the bottom on purpose - it is a bug-fix patch and should win the handful of nodes it shares with anything else.

Everything else can go anywhere. All the OStim animation packs (OStim, Billyy's, Anub's, Leito's, Nibbles', OARE, Drago's, Tweens', etc.) only add clips and never contend with each other or with the combat patches, so wherever they land in the list is fine - add new ones without worrying about position.

note

Ultimate Combat / TK Dodge is not part of Licentia NEXT. It only appeared in the old Nemesis guide because Third Person bows aiming misalignment bug fix for TK dodge or TUDM required it, and that mod is no longer used.

Your ticked set is saved to Licentia NEXT - Pandora Output\Pandora_Engine\ActiveMods.json, so it persists between runs. If you ever want to check what actually ran without opening the GUI, read that file.

Step 4️⃣ — Click Launch Engine​

After you've selected all the patches, just click Launch Engine at the bottom right.

Click Launch Engine in the Pandora window

Generation takes roughly 1 minute on a modern machine. The window flashes in the taskbar when it finishes.

note

Pandora is error-tolerant by design. Lines like this in the log are normal and mean the engine caught a conflicting edit and skipped it rather than producing a broken behaviour file:

WARN : Validator > defaultfemale~1hm_behavior > Duplicate Event > Collision_Remove > Index > 488 > SKIPPED

A run with dozens of Duplicate Event ... SKIPPED warnings is still a good run. What you care about is ERROR.

The full log is written to Licentia NEXT - Pandora Output\Engine.log.

Step 5️⃣ — Verify the output​

danger

Please do not skip this step. A behaviour engine can finish with zero errors and still produce a behaviour graph the game cannot load - the result is a crash on save load, roughly 100 seconds after launch, pointing at 0_Master.hkx with no useful message. Checking takes a few seconds. Finding it the hard way takes a day.

1. Check the engine actually wrote to the right place. Licentia NEXT - Pandora Output should contain a fresh meshes\actors\... tree and an Engine.log with the current timestamp. Nothing should have appeared in overwrite, and nothing new should be inside TUDM, Archery Gameplay Overhaul or Combat Gameplay Overhaul SE.

2. Check Engine.log for real errors. WARN ... SKIPPED lines are fine. ERROR lines are not. Open Engine.log in Notepad and search it with Ctrl + F for ERROR - or from a terminal:

Select-String -Path "<your Licentia install path>\mods\Licentia NEXT - Pandora Output\Engine.log" -Pattern "ERROR"

3. Keep a snapshot of every good run. Before changing anything, archive the output and the mod state together, so you always have a build you can return to.

Step 6️⃣ — Refresh MO2, done!​

Hit F5 in MO2 to refresh. If you see FNIS.esp that has appeared on the right pane in Plugins section - you can untick it or delete it, Licentia doesn't need FNIS.esp (but Pandora still may generate it sometimes)

That's it, you're done! 👑

ℹ️ Troubleshooting

  • Pandora finishes suspiciously fast, or the patch list is nearly empty. It was not launched through MO2 and cannot see the virtual Data folder. Check Engine.log for Detected launcher: ModOrganizer.

  • Characters T-Pose after a successful run. Output Folder in Pandora's settings is pointing somewhere that is not the Licentia NEXT - Pandora Output mod (or your custom output mod), or that mod is disabled in MO2. Check both.

  • A patch you expect is missing from the list entirely. Pandora only shows patches whose mod is enabled in MO2 and that carry an info.ini. A patch supplied by a mod you disabled will disappear without warning.

  • Disabling a mod does not remove its patch from an existing build. The Pandora generated .hkx files still contain everything from the last run. To actually drop a patch, untick it in Pandora and re-run the engine - toggling the mod in MO2 alone changes nothing.

  • The run errors out. Read Engine.log from the top. Unlike Nemesis, Pandora names the exact project and node it had trouble with. WARN ... SKIPPED lines are normal; look for ERROR.

  • You want to go back to Nemesis. Nemesis is no longer part of Licentia NEXT - both the engine and its output mod were removed in 13.7.0. You would need to install Project New Reign - Nemesis Unlimited Behavior Engine yourself + all needed Nemesis patches for Licentia, disable Licentia NEXT - Pandora Output and Pandora Behaviour Engine Plus, and generate a fresh output. Never leave two behaviour output mods enabled at once. Please refer to the old Nemesis Guide if you need to.