Since Cliffworms pulled the SoS-mods from distribution after discovering an issue causing save bloating and he hasn't been able to fix it yet, is it safe to keep using the bugged versions of the mods? Because after reading certain user comments, the bloating happens when mods are deaktivated/uninstalled but keeping the mods installed&activated doesn't cause bloating.

In reading the last SoS thread, it looks like the bloat only occurs when removing the Civilization module. So, assuming that's indeed correct, you're in the clear if:

- you have the Civ module, but don't uninstall it.
- you don't have the Civ module installed at all.
- if you did have the Civ module installed, but then uninstalled and rolled back to a save you made prior to installing it.

FWIW I only use the Dungeons module...never tried uninstalling it, and never had any problems with it. My saves are all sitting pretty at ~9MB.

If you are playing a character made with all three SOS mods active, then continue to use them.
Just watch the size of your Saved Games, if they become huge you may need to uninstall the Civilisation mod and start a new character.

I was planning to start a new character. So I wonder if deactivating the Civilization-part before starting a new game is safe.

Since the civilization portion has been removed, i've been unable to download it. Is there an alternate link for the mod? I would lile to try it to even though it may cause bloating.

If you deactivate the Civilization part and completely uninstall it (with Skyrim, just deactivating the .esp isn't enough) you're fine. There's no way for a mod which has been disabled and uninstalled to cause bloat in a save it's never even laid eyes on.

Thanks for the info.

So files in the scripts folder are still used sometimes, even without their relevant esps?

That was the way it was explained to me, at least. Same goes for other loose files...I remember when 1.6 came out and some animation mods borked as a result of it, people who disabled those .esp files were still seeing broken animations, because their save was still referring to the installed, loose animations floating around in \Data Files rather than the vanilla game ones.

Apart SoS-Civ issues....Climates of Tamriel seems to have some conflicts with SoS too...even with Sos-Wilds.