I'm looking to useNifskope (and only nifskope) to add some particle effects to weapons I'm using, more specifically to add one of the vannilla smnoke effects to a steampunk bow I'm making, and I was wondering if someone could give me a stripped down Dummy's Guide to doing it.

I don't need technical terms or theory, I'm not looking to become a master modeller or learn general principles, I just want to accomplish this one task. Can someone help me?

it's probably easist to paste the weapon nitristrip into the particle effect file you want to use. make sure to also copy over the collision block in it's entirety, the BSX flag, and the nistringsxtradata node as well... bascially copy all the contents of the weapon nif into the particle nif you want to use.
open both nif files, You can probably get away with simply rclick the scene root ninode of the weapon>block>copy branch, then in the particle system, rclick the scene root ninode>block>paste branch. Then test it in game. if it works at all, then you did it correctly. if you get an error, failed to map parent link when pasting, then the root nodes are named differently, and simply just rename one to match the other, and it will paste over. I would personally crop to branch to remove the scene root ninode you pasted over from the weapon, but you can probably just rename it from scene root to something else and it'll all still function, actually thinking about it you might want to delete the BSX flag you pasted over if the particle system has one, which it probably does.

the particle system will probably not be aligned correctly. note which way the the psystem if pointing in relation to the weapon when you test in game, from there you should see which way the emitter is facing. it really depends on what is going on in the nif itself it'll either be clear which way it points or not.

to align things in nifskope, rclick the particle system>transform>edit. once aligned, you may need to rclick>transform>apply.

you can change whether the particle emits into object space or world space, this means you could have a shroud of smoke conforming around the weapon and it follow the movement of the weapon, or the smoke can float off into world space and leave trails where the weapon moves. the setting is worldspace in the particles main block details.

anyway being more detailed than that is difficult, I do not even know what blocks you are playing with so I cannot tell exactly what you need to do. but try that and post up the nif if you break it/get stuck, and describe in detail what you did. plus base files you are working with would be helpful to see as well.

Unk. I'm reminded of that scene from Event Horizon, with the 'laymans' terms.'

So, I click and copy the 0ninode thing, and paste it all into the flame?

This thing I can do!

Also, Ghogiel? I just squeed!