new to modding and I was hoping for a bit of guidance into the advice for load orders?

[noahbodo]

Specifically I followed the Fusion girl beginner's guide and I did notice that several people mentioned load orders. I'm curious how you specifically manage which loads in which order. My programming is a little rusty and I haven't been doing computer modding since the days of doom and honestly don't remember most of what I was doing then. Yes I'm old. I think I installed the files in all the right areas. I know its a big ask for a good Samaritan to provide this foolish old timer some screenshots of file hierarchy, some commands to enter the dos if necessary, and the right commands I'd appreciate it. Asking here so I'm not expressing my smutty interests to the more upstanding gamers. Thank you for your kind altruism.

[Sgt. Marge]

If you are using Aylis's guide, Fallout 4 for Beginners, then you don't need to worry about load order quite as much because they've laid everything out in order of installing the mods.  You can certainly add a mod that isn't on the list, but you'll need to determine where it should go.  Armor / Outfit mods are easy, because you can just put them next to the other armor mods.

 

If you were using a different guide or doing things on your own, you might use a tool called LOOT to manage the load order.  But it's not strictly required.  In the case of the adult mods, the up-to-date Adult Oriented Setup Guide specifies what the load order should be because LOOT will probably get that wrong.  But if you used Aylis's guide, don't use LOOT. 

 

In general just read the descriptions in the mods you download and you may notice the author specifying a load order for their mod.

 

Load order can be very important.  Basically, if a mod has a file, and you load another mod with the same file, the one that is loaded last will have the higher priority.  So if there's a specific benifit of one that you want over the other, you'll need to pay attention to your "conflicts" area.  In Mod Organizer this is depicted with the ⚡ icon.  If you see a red line under it, that means that mod has files that are "losing" to another mod which is at a higher priority.  You can double click it to see what it specifies.  If it has a green mark next to it, it means it has files that are "winning" over another mod.

 

In Mod Organizer the load order is determined by the plugin list on the right hand side, but also pay attention to the order of the mods on the left hand side.  I usually try and keep them in parallel with regards to priority.

 

You may want to check out some videos on using the mod manager as well.  And as you get a little more experience I would recommend learning how to open FO4Edit (Xedit) so that you can see conflicts at a more granular level, and create patches to fix things.

 

 

[Karna5]

I've got well over 500 active mods in my Fallout 4 (382 Gb in my game directory) and 319 active plugins. I use Nexus Mod Manager. One vital thing I've learned balancing so many mods is never, ever, ever, ever install more than one mod at a time (single mods with multiple parts count as one mod, of course).

 

It may sound like a waste of time, but you can lose entire days trouble shooting an issue if you install many mods and can't figure out which mod is causing it. Install a single mod, log into the game, and make sure it's working.

 

In spite of this, you may periodically run into hidden issues which don't crash you but show up later when you actually play the game. For instance, I use Universal Working Bathroom Fixtures (I love having working toilets and showers anywhere I go). But that mod alters a ton of cells, and there are other mods which also change those cells. If I install a mod which changes cells (such as Wasteland Dairy Framework or several other mods which install items into cells) when I enter some buildings several of the walls and floors are missing. Through experimentation and trouble shooting I figured out that UWBF always has to be last in the load order.

 

To do this anytime I install a mod which breaks the walls and floors like this, I uninstall UWBF and reinstall it. This puts UWBF last in the load order. You can have multiple mods affecting the same things, but you need to figure out by testing which has to be last.

 

Along the same lines, let's say I install a bunch of animations and then install Indarello's animation pack (same process would work if I used Ulfbertho's). If the patch is newer than the animation, I make sure the patch is installed last. If the animation is newer than the patch, I install the animation last, but I go in game and test it. If there's a problem, I exit the game and reinstall the patch last. Usually this means the updated animations will still be the old list, but better old list than not working.

 

No matter what you do, don't take a huge list of things to install and do them all at once. Let it take hours to install dozens of mods one at a time instead of days to install them and trying to figure out what's in conflict or incompatible.

[Sgt. Marge]

7 hours ago, Karna5 said:

To do this anytime I install a mod which breaks the walls and floors like this, I uninstall UWBF and reinstall it. This puts UWBF last in the load order. You can have multiple mods affecting the same things, but you need to figure out by testing which has to be last.

 

Have you tried Previsibines Repair Pack? May require a bit of adding patches for your existing mods but it can fix precombines getting broken and I think I saw it mentioned in another thread about UWBF.

[Karna5]

8 hours ago, Marg597 said:

 

Have you tried Previsibines Repair Pack? May require a bit of adding patches for your existing mods but it can fix precombines getting broken and I think I saw it mentioned in another thread about UWBF.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind, Marg597. So far it always fixes the problem to make sure UWBF is installed last, but if I ever run into an issue where that doesn't fix it I'll try this Thanks