I'm wanting to get back into modding. [NSFW]

[Cassidy Adams]

I stopped doing so and haven't played FO4 in quite some time. I hit a lot of frustration, but I loved it here and the mods these talented guys and gals made. So this is mostly asking for advice and the like.

What mod manager is the best in your opinion that will help hold your hand while also being effective in preventing clashing mods and crashes/corrupts?
What tool/video did you guys to utilize to learn modding and the like? I kept personally hitting a bug where saves would almost always corrupt after a certain point and unironically spent two days of trying to sort it.
What mods would you advise utilizing from the lewd side? Your personal preferences, ones that stand out to you. I haven't been here in a while would like to see if anything has drastically changed in a few, whether big changes to older mods, updated ones or just new ones hitting the scene! 

Any and all advice for a novice/intermediate modder to follow would help greatly. Thank you. 

[Cassidy Adams]

❤️

[Invictusblade]

so it depends on what you want to do?

but I would keep it nice and simple and then expand

(In my game design class in Uni, the lecturers caution about making the next GTA)

 

so a good chunk of my mods came from my desire to do certain stuff in the game (the irony is that I don't really play the game anymore after making said mods)

INVB_Viagra - is about bypassing the XML Morphing bullshit in AAF (it just makes me tired)

INVB_Gender - is about playing as a dominate Female in lesbian sex scenes

FPE More Creatures and Baby Addon's - Came about because I getting tired of playing around with AAF and its mods so I wanted to bypass some or all of it.

 

btw I don't have a problem with AAF itself but rather the update Fatigue of all its mods

 

here is a brief summery

1. write it down

2. keep it simple

3. find a need (first)

4. find a want (second)

5. prepare to hate your work and the game

 

 

so in my mods, I use Outfitstudio, xedit, creation kit(compiling scripts and adding scripts to stuff), Paint.net and notepad++ (to write scripts)

I use the Nexus Mod Manager because I don't care and I usually copy the contents of mods to data folder by myself (because I sometimes copy them to another drive to archive them into BA2's)

 

lewd Ideas - I can't really help you there but I did get inspired to create the first Radmorphing mod because TheKite's comic on Hentai Foundry.

so read stories and look at pictures, for fallout, I would look at pulp style works like Rocketeer or Indiana Jones or Carter of Mars or Carson of Venus(Still have to read it)

[DocClox]

16 hours ago, Cassidy Adams said:

What mod manager is the best in your opinion that will help hold your hand while also being effective in preventing clashing mods and crashes/corrupts?

 

Well, you probably won't find one that'll do both. My preference is strongly for MO2, followed by Wrye Bash. MO2 is the more hand-holdy of the two. Even so, it tends toward the arcane in places, but it's worth getting to know.

 

16 hours ago, Cassidy Adams said:

What tool/video did you guys to utilize to learn modding and the like? I kept personally hitting a bug where saves would almost always corrupt after a certain point and unironically spent two days of trying to sort it.

 

 

Just to be clear: do you mean "modding" to mean "using mods" or do you mean it as "creating my own mods"? As a mod user, MO2, Wrye Bash for the bashed patches, LOOT, xEdit/zEdit, resaver. Bash and LOOT are the must-haves though, so you don't need to learn them all at once.

 

16 hours ago, Cassidy Adams said:

What mods would you advise utilizing from the lewd side? Your personal preferences, ones that stand out to you. I haven't been here in a while would like to see if anything has drastically changed in a few, whether big changes to older mods, updated ones or just new ones hitting the scene! 

 

I'd recommend Raider Reform School, but then I am incredibly biased on the issue.

 

Seriously, it massively depends on what you like. There are some good "how to get AAF working" guides posted. Start there, and then look for mods that scratch your itch, whatever it may be.

 

[Cassidy Adams]

2 hours ago, Invictusblade said:

so it depends on what you want to do?

but I would keep it nice and simple and then expand

(In my game design class in Uni, the lecturers caution about making the next GTA)

 

so a good chunk of my mods came from my desire to do certain stuff in the game (the irony is that I don't really play the game anymore after making said mods)

INVB_Viagra - is about bypassing the XML Morphing bullshit in AAF (it just makes me tired)

INVB_Gender - is about playing as a dominate Female in lesbian sex scenes

FPE More Creatures and Baby Addon's - Came about because I getting tired of playing around with AAF and its mods so I wanted to bypass some or all of it.

 

btw I don't have a problem with AAF itself but rather the update Fatigue of all its mods

 

here is a brief summery

1. write it down

2. keep it simple

3. find a need (first)

4. find a want (second)

5. prepare to hate your work and the game

 

 

so in my mods, I use Outfitstudio, xedit, creation kit(compiling scripts and adding scripts to stuff), Paint.net and notepad++ (to write scripts)

I use the Nexus Mod Manager because I don't care and I usually copy the contents of mods to data folder by myself (because I sometimes copy them to another drive to archive them into BA2's)

 

lewd Ideas - I can't really help you there but I did get inspired to create the first Radmorphing mod because TheKite's comic on Hentai Foundry.

so read stories and look at pictures, for fallout, I would look at pulp style works like Rocketeer or Indiana Jones or Carter of Mars or Carson of Venus(Still have to read it)

I appreciate the input. I have tried to do that but usually do it in over excess, I feel you on the AAF front. 

Trust me, I remember hating the modding, I meant particularly me wanting to download mods and the like rather than create apologies if that was unclear. I'll keep the idea to note stuff down and the eneds and wants. I may be real tedious and work it one mod by one and load everytime, even though the save bug could be up to an hour before it became in effect.
 

[Cassidy Adams]

18 minutes ago, DocClox said:

Well, you probably won't find one that'll do both. My preference is strongly for MO2, followed by Wrye Bash. MO2 is the more hand-holdy of the two. Even so, it tends toward the arcane in places, but it's worth getting to know.

 

 

Just to be clear: do you mean "modding" to mean "using mods" or do you mean it as "creating my own mods"? As a mod user, MO2, Wrye Bash for the bashed patches, LOOT, xEdit/zEdit, resaver. Bash and LOOT are the must-haves though, so you don't need to learn them all at once.

 

 

I'd recommend Raider Reform School, but then I am incredibly biased on the issue.

 

Seriously, it massively depends on what you like. There are some good "how to get AAF working" guides posted. Start there, and then look for mods that scratch your itch, whatever it may be.

 

I will take your advice on using MO2, I believe I failed to find a copy of it when I searched last, after it lost support and disappeared off of Nexus due to the owner working on Vortex IIRC. I used Vortex, though I'd appreciate if you could point me in the direction of an MO2 download! 

And I worked my ass to get AAF of course, worth it when I did. And my apologies on the miscommunication, I meant mod user. I will definitely give RRS ago should I be getting back into it and I looked up a lot of the guide and ran into issues even on a 31 file that I followed on a post from a mod author. Have you any advice on a MO2 guide, should I be able to find a copy to download. 

It was a massivestruggle but I love this place lmfao. I always used LOOT and was using Vortex or NMM. Appreciate your input! ❤️

[Varithina]

3 hours ago, Cassidy Adams said:

I will take your advice on using MO2, I believe I failed to find a copy of it when I searched last, after it lost support and disappeared off of Nexus due to the owner working on Vortex IIRC. I used Vortex, though I'd appreciate if you could point me in the direction of an MO2 download! 
 

The guy and group that took over mo2, now actually have nexus links for each game, well se and fallout 4 anyway, not too sure about le or anything else, https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/28715

is the fallout 4 link, though any of the downloads will do you for it.

[Cassidy Adams]

1 hour ago, Varithina said:

The guy and group that took over mo2, now actually have nexus links for each game, well se and fallout 4 anyway, not too sure about le or anything else, https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/28715

is the fallout 4 link, though any of the downloads will do you for it.

Holy goddamn I didn't see that it moved to Skyrim SE page and worked for FO4.

I just saw the page and 0 files. Was I born this stupid? 

[Varithina]

1 minute ago, Cassidy Adams said:

Holy goddamn I didn't see that it moved to Skyrim SE page and worked for FO4.

I just saw the page and 0 files. Was I born this stupid? 

They kept changing their minds, at one point it was on both, then only se, then both, then back to se only, currently it is on both.  I normally install all the tools in mo as mod, not activated but still there which allows them to be tracked for updates, I complained to them a while back about not having it on both sites, so to speak, as if the person only plays fallout 4 and not se, they will never see updates for mo2 when it is only hosted on the se nexus page.

[Cassidy Adams]

23 minutes ago, Varithina said:

They kept changing their minds, at one point it was on both, then only se, then both, then back to se only, currently it is on both.  I normally install all the tools in mo as mod, not activated but still there which allows them to be tracked for updates, I complained to them a while back about not having it on both sites, so to speak, as if the person only plays fallout 4 and not se, they will never see updates for mo2 when it is only hosted on the se nexus page.

Oh? I don't see any files on the FO4 one oddly.

And agreed. It seems very dumb when you can easily have it on both for the exposure but hey, it is their choice. 

Do you have any recommendation on a guide to using MO2? I will mainly stick with mods from this site and perhaps move to Nexus too. Kinda rough as I already have PTSD of modding prior. 

[Varithina]

44 minutes ago, Cassidy Adams said:

Do you have any recommendation on a guide to using MO2? I will mainly stick with mods from this site and perhaps move to Nexus too. Kinda rough as I already have PTSD of modding prior. 

If you used mo for skyrim previously, you are pretty much good to go, if not one of the mo guides will do for now, it pretty much works the same way for the most part.

 

You can also have a look at this, no idea if it is any good, but it is a link from one of the install/build guides

 

[Cassidy Adams]

2 hours ago, Varithina said:

If you used mo for skyrim previously, you are pretty much good to go, if not one of the mo guides will do for now, it pretty much works the same way for the most part.

 

You can also have a look at this, no idea if it is any good, but it is a link from one of the install/build guides

 

I've never used MO2 at all, and I'm worried it will be very daunting. Hoping to be able to utilize a fair few mods. 

[Varithina]

5 hours ago, Cassidy Adams said:

I've never used MO2 at all, and I'm worried it will be very daunting. Hoping to be able to utilize a fair few mods. 

What I found was I had the most problems soon after I switched, all the tweaks and shortcuts that worked and which I did automatically on my old mod manager, now of course no longer worked, but I found that I tended to do them anyway, which caused me all sorts of problems, with lots of well duh moments, when I realized just what I had done or not done as the case.  Just take your time there are plenty of guides to mo2, just try and get the more up to date ones.

[Cassidy Adams]

13 hours ago, Varithina said:

What I found was I had the most problems soon after I switched, all the tweaks and shortcuts that worked and which I did automatically on my old mod manager, now of course no longer worked, but I found that I tended to do them anyway, which caused me all sorts of problems, with lots of well duh moments, when I realized just what I had done or not done as the case.  Just take your time there are plenty of guides to mo2, just try and get the more up to date ones.

Well, I will give it ago and keep you updated. It's always something I have struggled with but I really should put effort into learning MO2. Heard is much more difficult but then people also say, the difficulty comes from the smaller bits you can do, the mastery of it.

Gonna download Fallout 4 now! 

[mashup47]

10 minutes ago, Cassidy Adams said:

Well, I will give it ago and keep you updated. It's always something I have struggled with but I really should put effort into learning MO2. Heard is much more difficult but then people also say, the difficulty comes from the smaller bits you can do, the mastery of it.

Gonna download Fallout 4 now! 

Well you could give Vortex (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU1Om8gCoO8 ) ago OR stick to the old but updated  NMM found here: https://github.com/Nexus-Mods/Nexus-Mod-Manager/releases .

 

[tuxagent7]

19 minutes ago, Cassidy Adams said:

Well, I will give it ago and keep you updated. It's always something I have struggled with but I really should put effort into learning MO2. Heard is much more difficult but then people also say, the difficulty comes from the smaller bits you can do, the mastery of it.

I took a long while to make the plunge from NMM to MO2 and don't regret it ever since..... well i regret not having made the switch sooner

 

Take your time and go little by little and you will learn that it is not as hard as people seem to say on the internet.

 

 

[Varithina]

1 hour ago, Cassidy Adams said:

Well, I will give it ago and keep you updated. It's always something I have struggled with but I really should put effort into learning MO2. Heard is much more difficult but then people also say, the difficulty comes from the smaller bits you can do, the mastery of it.

Gonna download Fallout 4 now! 

And of course I completely forgot this post, which I had been reading a bit before you posted, true it is aimed at se but the idea is pretty much the same.

 

[Cassidy Adams]

2 hours ago, mashup47 said:

Well you could give Vortex (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU1Om8gCoO8 ) ago OR stick to the old but updated  NMM found here: https://github.com/Nexus-Mods/Nexus-Mod-Manager/releases .

 

I used Vortex and NMM both had this issue, assuming clashing mods but I will try to invest time into MO2 now that I know it's still avaiable. Thank you though! ❤️

[Cassidy Adams]

Greatly appreciate the comfort. Hopefully it will round the point of having the issue of saves corrupting, where I'd load and it'd CTD.

[Cassidy Adams]

54 minutes ago, Varithina said:

And of course I completely forgot this post, which I had been reading a bit before you posted, true it is aimed at se but the idea is pretty much the same.

 

OOof, nice, I will have a read and watch some guides, heard Gopher's guides were good for it too!

[Magicballs]

So it turns out me and Cassidy both had the idea to plunge back into Fallout 4 at roughly the same date.. Coincidental, I was just about to make a thread similar to this one, well more of a rant about how much Vortex is currently pissing me off to be honest, but now that I've seen this thread I can kind of Hijack/not Hijack it, which feels groovy. So, for that I would like to Thank Cassidy for sparing me the trouble of making a new thread lol, anyway, let's get to the meat and potatoes shall we?

 

So since about Thursday as well I've been doing my own digging (and I know the timing is insane, but hey ho) and as it happens/according to my research(ish) NMM, is being dropped in favour of vortex, mod organizer 2 is now a thing, among other things.. Insane to think that 2017 was three years ago now! Anyway. 

 

So, with the advent of all these new organizers, and, seemingly, the final nail in the coffin for the admittedly buggy NMM, I'm left here wondering; what exactly is the best way to DEPLOY/MOVE *ESSENTIAL* files for outfits into the game directory? Is it manually now? Because It seems to me that this vortex DOES have some functionality to do this, but it's either all of them or none of them, no option to do so manually or for specific files which is rather annoying because I can actually see the benefit of not having to clutter up the game directory by not having the mods in the game files, but as someone who likes to doss around with Bodyslide, convert outfits ETC, I would prefer it if all files like outfits/body mods/bodyslide files were ALL in the game directory so I don't have to crack out the library card and peruse the various folders like shelves of some horny library.

 

So, given that I can't seem to see any functionality to put mods in the game folder through Mod Organizer, I was wondering what the best method was to go about this? Installing Bodyslide through vortex just seems to break everything so I'm wondering if I shouldn't just cut my losses and switch back to NMM but I don't really like the idea of having instability considering you're always rolling the dice with these mods as is.

 

So from this point, would I just get a download manager and do the files I want in directory manually? Cut my losses and go back to NMM? I don't honestly know how you guys have handled this situation so I'm curious 

[Varithina]

29 minutes ago, Magicballs said:

So from this point, would I just get a download manager and do the files I want in directory manually? Cut my losses and go back to NMM? I don't honestly know how you guys have handled this situation so I'm curious 

If  you never dealt with it mo does not put any files into the game folder, well except enb/skse stuff.

 

When I changed from nmm to mo, it was because I had killed my game for the, hmm third of fourth time in a year, so I simply made a list of the mods I was going to install nuked the game folder and nmm folder and started from nothing, though I always had my downloads folder stored on another drive, so all the mods were still there they just needed re-installing.  If you save the downloaded archives on another drive or in their own location somewhere, you can when you install and set up mo, point it to use the same download folder that you were using for nmm, it will then find all the archive files and then it is just a matter of installing all the mods and setting  up the left pane and right pane to the correct order, and of course running things like fnis and what not.

 

Another option though there are not that many builds available on it is wabbajack, which though a bit fiddly to use can install and configure the entire game as well as all the ini files and what not, though it is supposed to download from a non premium nexus account, I used it for my fallout 4 install, when I reinstalled and found that it just sat there saying downloading from non premium account, if the builds on wabbajack requires files from here or anywhere else you would also need accounts on those sites and you can configure them through its installer, to be honest the install was smooth just time consuming, and the install guide for the build I used could have been a bit clearer on some things.

 

Though I have read quite a few people slamming wabbajack as a mod pack it is more of a scripted installer, in that you still need to download all the required mods from their original source locations be it nexus, here or bethnet.

[Magicballs]

37 minutes ago, Varithina said:

If  you never dealt with it mo does not put any files into the game folder, well except enb/skse stuff.

  I suspected as much.. This is unfortunate, seemingly makes what I intend to do more convoluted/difficult.

Quote

When I changed from nmm to mo, it was because I had killed my game for the, hmm third of fourth time in a year, so I simply made a list of the mods I was going to install nuked the game folder and nmm folder and started from nothing

I can relate to having to do this myself many *MANY* times lol.. Looking back, NMM was much more convenient than manually putting in everything, but when you had that configuration just right... That being said, the game did run way more smoothly I must admit. 

Quote

If you save the downloaded archives on another drive or in their own location somewhere, you can when you install and set up mo, point it to use the same download folder that you were using for nmm, it will then find all the archive files and then it is just a matter of installing all the mods and setting  up the left pane and right pane to the correct order, and of course running things like fnis and what not.

Not sure if I want to do this, I already went about doing this somewhat manually.. Took me the better part of the last two days. 

Quote

Another option though there are not that many builds available on it is wabbajack, which though a bit fiddly to use can install and configure the entire game as well as all the ini files and what not, though it is supposed to download from a non premium nexus account, I used it for my fallout 4 install, when I reinstalled and found that it just sat there saying downloading from non premium account, if the builds on wabbajack requires files from here or anywhere else you would also need accounts on those sites and you can configure them through its installer, to be honest the install was smooth just time consuming, and the install guide for the build I used could have been a bit clearer on some things.

 

Though I have read quite a few people slamming wabbajack as a mod pack it is more of a scripted installer, in that you still need to download all the required mods from their original source locations be it nexus, here or bethnet.

I looked this up and it looks interesting.. The only downside though, seems as though I would have to deliberately choose whether I want MO2 to manage things, or this wabbajack/similar, because I can imagine that If I install something on wabbajack and the master/required files for it on MO2 (like the high heels mod or something) then it's going to tell me that there are missing files etc.. Maybe I can work around this but it does seem like a bit of a faff.. I like the idea of having stuff like SnapNBuild and Homemaker outside of the game directory to save on clutter, maybe it would help stability too, certainly would make the removal of unwanted mods FAR easier lol so I'm still not 100%.  Seems like the best choice right now to be honest though so thanks for letting me know it exists lol 

[Magicballs]

Just to add Varithina you've certainly planted the seed in my mind of using both MO2 and this wabbajack simultaneously for which I am grateful lol if you advocate for it yourself, I'll mess about with it and see how it goes. One of the key selling points seems to me that it can install straight to folder and also download from nexus links, which is invaluable, putting it over wrye bash for me, but maybe I'm missing a huge thing there with avoiding wrye bash I dont know 

[Varithina]

7 hours ago, Magicballs said:

  I suspected as much.. This is unfortunate, seemingly makes what I intend to do more convoluted/difficult.

I can relate to having to do this myself many *MANY* times lol.. Looking back, NMM was much more convenient than manually putting in everything, but when you had that configuration just right... That being said, the game did run way more smoothly I must admit. 

Not sure if I want to do this, I already went about doing this somewhat manually.. Took me the better part of the last two days. 

I looked this up and it looks interesting.. The only downside though, seems as though I would have to deliberately choose whether I want MO2 to manage things, or this wabbajack/similar, because I can imagine that If I install something on wabbajack and the master/required files for it on MO2 (like the high heels mod or something) then it's going to tell me that there are missing files etc.. Maybe I can work around this but it does seem like a bit of a faff.. I like the idea of having stuff like SnapNBuild and Homemaker outside of the game directory to save on clutter, maybe it would help stability too, certainly would make the removal of unwanted mods FAR easier lol so I'm still not 100%.  Seems like the best choice right now to be honest though so thanks for letting me know it exists lol 

The fallout 4 one I got included mo2 as part of its install, configured everything including mo2.  This was the installer I used for wabbajack https://www.wabbajack.org/modlists/gallery/fallout_4_enhanced_edition

 

There is a nexus page for it as well, though there is an update to the patch file which sorts out all the conlificts, it seemed to be for an updated mod list as it had a master file not in the wabbajack installer, so no idea how that would work or where the missing esp would go in either the left pane or in the load order.