Just getting back into modding after a few years, and I have some questions:

[AJtheWizard]

Howdy folks. Just reinstalled Skyrim after several years, and I'm trying to get everything working again, but I'm rusty on some details. I've got a few questions if you don't mind:

1.) There's a ton of bugs. No idea how I played like this! I've got missing textures, glitched audio, unresponsive UI, and that's only what I can find before the game crashes! I'm gonna have to start fresh and reinstall everything one by one to find out what the problem is. Are there any new tools(or old tools I've forgotten about) that'll make that process less of a pain in the butt?

2.) I dimly remember something about there being a limit to the number of mods you can safely install. I'm pretty sure 221 mods was getting close to the number, but I don't even know the right terms to search to find out more. Do you know what I'm talking about? Is that something I need to worry about?

 

3.) I get the impression the community is moving away from Nexus mods to other sites? Which communities are most active these days? (aside from this one obviously)

4.) Any chance someone's invented a mod manager that lets you swap between multiple 'loadouts' since I last played?  I remember wanting a way to easily swap between a hardcore gritty realism file, and a wacky sexy power fantasy file without having to manually toggle over a hundred mods. I never found one, though. is that something that exists?

 

5.) I've also got some mods in the manager that are just anonymous 7zip files with a name like 'fishburger' or 'twinscc1' that doesn't describe what they actually do. How the hell would I track down what those mods are doing?
 

Edited September 28, 2022 by AJtheWizard

[InfiniteImperator]

Welcome back.

1. Just to be sure, did you make sure there was no old Skyrim folder before you reinstalled? I recommend watching this GamerPoet video, lovely guy with good guides which I also highly recommend you look into as that'll pretty much answer  your first question better than I probably can. I also recommend looking at Wabbajack's selection of mod lists (Wabbajack is a tool that auto installs mod lists, easier if you have nexus premium) if you want to look at "properly" done mod lists as well as the tools that come with it to get a better idea on what you can expect if you really want to get into modding. Phoenix Flavor is highly regarded as one of the best, he also made a wabbajack list called "Skyrim Modding Essentials" which...well, installs the essentials to basic mod lists, I recommend checking the mod page of each mod for a better idea on what it does. But again, look at GamerPoet's stuff (check the playlist section), it's incredibly helpful and noob friendly.

 

I also wanted to ask how many years since the last time you've played/modded Skyrim, cheers.

 

2. Ah yes, the 255 plugin limit, or rather ESP limit. If a mod doesn't have an ESP file, you can install however many you want. However what you want is ESL plugins (or light plugins) and ESP files flagged as ESL. These two can bypass the plugin limit allowing you to effectively install as many mods...theoretically of course. Check this plebbit page if you want some more details. There's also this video that roughly explains it. Be warned, too many mods can cause instability, script bloat from poorly coded mods (usually old mods), and a few other issues so start off small and launch the game every few mods.

 

3. Ehhhhh not exactly? I made a number of rants everywhere I found the topic being discussed (Plebbit, /tesg/ and discord mainly) but super compact TL;DR that's missing a bunch of information but whatever, a lot of mod authors didn't like some changes that nexus put out (namely archiving every mod instead of allowing deletion), and some other stuff down the line, and some modders with egos that rival the moon in size took their stuff down and left. Ultimately all this did was weed out the shitty modders who crave attention and those sweet, sweet donation points, from modders who realize it's just a hobby. It's complicated and I'm somewhat biased against shitty modders. That and the Nexus staff are being woke clowns, bunch of other drama, standard stuff unfortunately. That said, I'd say a lot more people are coming into Nexus than before, as well as other modding sites such as LL. I could go far more into unbiased detail but I'm already digressing.

 

4. Yep, been around for a while but MO2 (Mod Organizer 2) allows that pretty easily. You can create "profiles" of enabled mods, plugins, load order, etc. When you're done and want to use another profile, you can click on a drop down menu and simply click on the other profile. Super easy. I can not recommend MO2 enough as the best mod manager. Not sure if Vortex (the Nexus Mod Manager successor) has that option...  

>hardcore gritty realism

>wacky sexy power fantasy
You too? Nice.

 

5. Huh...if you can, open the zip files and look at the contents. If they're BSA files you should get BAE (Bethesda Archive Extractor) and check what's in those. Some quick googling and I got fishburgers on...fishburger, and nothing relating to that second file. Scan it with Virustotal and be wary of it.

 

I hope I answered your questions as well as I could and feel free ask me to clarify anything, or ask any other questions. Fair warning, might take me a bit to reply as I come to this site maybe once a few days.

Edited October 2, 2022 by InfiniteImperator

[AJtheWizard]

Thanks! You were very helpful. I last played skyrim sometime around 2020. I got real busy with schoolwork and forgot about Skyrim for a while. Have some more free time now, so I'm getting back into it.

I'm on the fence about upgrade to SE. since I'm redoing my whole mod list anyway, is this a good time to do that? Am I missing out on a whole lot?

Edited October 6, 2022 by AJtheWizard

[InfiniteImperator]

On 10/5/2022 at 8:23 PM, AJtheWizard said:

Thanks! You were very helpful. I last played skyrim sometime around 2020. I got real busy with schoolwork and forgot about Skyrim for a while. Have some more free time now, so I'm getting back into it.

I'm on the fence about upgrade to SE. since I'm redoing my whole mod list anyway, is this a good time to do that? Am I missing out on a whole lot?

 

Ahhh, damn. Super late response, my bad.

 

I remember being on the fence about SE for a while when it first came out. But after a computer upgrade and a unrecoverable SSD (separate issue) I made the jump.

 

Honestly, entirely worth it, I probably can never go back to LE if I tried. Though the sudden updating of a game that had any issues fixed by the modders Bethesda rely on to make their game relevant a decade after release is a bit annoying. Not to say modding should substitute official updates, these updates however end up being annoying and harmful to the game's longevity than not, but you can downgrade via a third party app (modders saving people's modlist yet again). Furthermore I believe GOG's version of Skyrim allows you to downgrade via their launcher, though I can't say for sure. But I digress.

 

SE beats LE in pretty much every department. Without going into depth, the change from LE's 32-bit to SE's 64-bit is already a big gamechanger regarding performance, which was a pretty big problem with massive mod lists. And if it wasn't for SE a lot of mods you'd see today might not even exist. And since you're redoing your whole mod list there's no better time not to move to SE.

 

There's also a whole slew of resources to look into if you have the time to seek them out, be it on plebbit, /tesg/ (whenever it's not a newf*g vs oldf*g cesspool, thanks AE), YouTube (again, can't recommend Gamerpoet enough), so you'll have plenty of help.

 

I wish you good luck, and always remember to read the description page of mods, check the bugs section if it has one, and comments if the Mod Author isn't a c*nt. And beware of script heavy mods, not a lot of accurate and current documentation on that end and a lot of...influencers tend to recommend bad mods.

 

AND ABOVE ALL ELSE, NEVER LISTEN TO SINITAR. He's been infamous for years, and for good reason.

Edited October 27, 2022 by InfiniteImperator