Mod Organizer

[Heroine HoneyCrotch]

Mod Organizer is a great tool for modding Skyrim. Here's some quick tips on various features that MO uses

 

The main purpose of this post is show some MO features and to showcase a last straw, nuke it from orbit, technique to determine problem you are having with a bad load order and or a bad mod. What I will not be covering is how you get MO initially installed or how to load other executables(xedit,LOOT,Skse Launcher) into your MO. For that I recommend watching Gopher/GamerPoets videos  

 

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-MO you have 2 windows, 1 is for your mods on the left side, There other is for your plugins on the right side. I have heard it argued that it doesnt matter if left side doesnt match right side however for the overwhelmingly vast majority of the time I have both sides match. Will cover more on that down below in Advanced MO User section.  In both windows in the top right corner you will see 2 icons. 1 if for backing up your Mod/Plugin order, the other is to restore a previously backed up Mod/Plugin order. You have 3 slots to utilize backing up and restoring. This can become real handy when you have problems that you are struggling to get resolved. Super handy! 

 

 

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Quick info on NoGroups. At the bottom of left window(ModList) just under your overwrite You will see a tab that says "Filter" and to the right of that you see a box that should say "NoGroups" You want this set on NoGroups. If you ever see that your ModList is out of nowhere all jacked up for no good reason it is because you changed the NoGroups box, this can happen accidently and can mind fuck you really bad, just check the NoGroups box

 

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Info on lightning bolt with red and or green scores next to it. 

 

I feel like this is self explanatory however there a few tricks you can run to maximize its utility. The basics is that a mod with a red mark is getting overwriting by another mod in LO and a green mark means that mod is doing some overwriting of a mod loading before it. This will NEVER pertain to things that are in a mods esp only contents in mods that have folder structures. Examples are Meshes, Textures, Scripts, Sound folders. You can navigate to MO/Mods folder, wherever you have MO installed at, and click on various mods. Most mods have an esp/esm which will be visible when clicking on a mod inside MO/Mods. Fair amount of mods have folders in them, some have both, no mods should have neither? Any mod in mod list that has folder files are mods that might show red/green marks in ModList(left window) Once again MO will not tell you when stuff in esp 1 is overwriting same stuff in esp 2, xedit will, should cover some of that later. 

 

It is good practice when installing a new mod to look at conflicts when it has lightning bolt popping up. Occasionally this will help you determine LO for new mod and it doesnt hurt to look. 

 

 

 I was in game one time outside in wilderness and my fps tanked hard when it shouldnt of. By changing POV of Player Character I determined that the damn juniper tree was dorking me. I confirmed this by opening console(tilde key, Sexlab or MFG Console must be installed) and disabling juniper trees. So I knew the culprit but I didnt want to just start looking in MO/Mods folders for juniper.nif or juniper.dds nor did I want to look inside all mods that had lightning bolts from within MO(left window)conflicts.  So I took and copied my Skyrim - Meshes.bsa from my data folder and pasted in a general skyrim folder I have outside of steam, found the mesh for juniper tree and found the texture for juniper tree and copied them into a similar folder structure from where they were found. Meshes/Plants/juniper.nif, same with texture. Once I had them set up I threw them into a mod inside of MO/Mods that didnt have a meshes and texture folder, these files are not staying so it makes it easier to remove after testing. Now that I had properly set up folders with juniper.nif and juniper.dds I opened MO and in left window I looked at mod that I threw files into, that mod in turn told me which mods I had touching those 2 files. there might of been a better way but the results were definitive. How did I know where to find mesh and texture for juniper tree? I used xedit to tell me where to find nif, loaded skyrim.esm up in xedit, clicked on it and expanded trees, found juniper tree and the model file showcased the nif location. Usually the meshes and texture folder structure will be similar so finding mesh should tip you off to where texture will be, alternatively you can open nif in nifskope. Let me add, while I dont exactly recall all info on juniper tree problem that I had it is worth mentioning that in the event that 2 mods were dorking me and it was a by product of mod A changing just the mesh for juniper tree while mod b was changing just the texture for juniper tree the little lightning bolt option would not had been in play. My method,which I already had skyrim meshes.bsa copied and pasted and opened outside of steam,made for a fix in less than 10 minutes, very nice. 

 

 

 

Uploading your plugin order(Load Order)

 

You have txt files inside of MO/Profiles that can be copied and pasted(use spoiler tags) I have MO set up inside my Steam/Steamapps/Common/Skyrim folder where my data folder is, maybe you have MO installed outside of Steam which last time I did that I had no problems. So on my end I go to Steam/Steamapps/Common/Skyrim/MO/Profiles where I have 2 profiles. One called Default and the other Female, I dont recommend using two profiles, I had created another one and didn't like how some things in it worked(uses same MO folder for both profiles) and just havent gotten rid of profile I dont ever use. 

 

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Unsolvable problems and mysteries from the abyss. 

 

Sometimes you might have problems you dont know how to fix. A lot of problems can occur from having bad mods or mods that dont play nice together. Most mods that dont play nice together is remedied by adjusting LO, sometimes you have to make a patch and or discard a mod. The problem that users run into sometimes is not having a clue what mod/mods are causing it. When I am at my wits ends with a problem a last straw technique would be test on new game with no mods active. I call that my base, you are a MO user so of course your base is good. If you fucked with enb.ini or did something to skyrim/skyrim pref ini's, maybe tinkered with whatever you're using for memory allocation fix,changed graphics card setting,then maybe your base comes back not looking pretty. If you have a mod dorking you, then going into game with all mods disabled(for easy testing you can gladly keep Alt Start mod active) Then in game rejoice that your not being dorked by which ever mod is getting you. This is where using the backup and restore icons come handy. 

 

 

Super important, if you go into game to test and come out and make changes to LO to remedy/troubleshoot problem, after making any changes to LO you need to close and reopen MO before going back into game, just do it. This includes making changes in xedit/ck and or adding or removing mods. 

 

After seeing your base is good it gets trickier, remember last straw technique. If you are not having problems specific to animations, particularly mods that require fnis, I recommend you just leave them off. Activate a bunch of mods, 10-20 and test, do this until you run into problem. Once you find a mod that seems to being giving you problems you can then restore previous LO in both windows and load all mods into xedit and see what mods are touching the mod that was dorking you, also use MO left window to indicate what mods if any have folder files that are conflicting. Sometimes adjusting LO of problem mod with other mods that are touching same files(folders) or are touching things in its esp will allow you to keep problem mod with other mods that are conflicting with it. Sometimes it is just a bad mod, and either it has to be removed or fixed(xedit/ck/MO/ModsFolders)Sometime maybe make a patch in xedit(videos for that are easy to follow)

 

Alternatively, after seeing that your base is good you can restore previous mod/plugin order with MO icons and you can go opposite route, disabling chunks of mods that are newish to your LO. Some problems in game can occur in certain locations, around certain npcs, half way through a quest, Some problems like "I crash when I hit lvl 36" needs to be tested on current save files. The problem in game determines if you use a new game approach or current save file, the problem in game determines if you add chunks of mods to your base or if you restore all mods and disable until problem is found. Ultimately if you back up you Mod/PlugIn order you can always go back to where you were at. 

 

Let me add, if you interact with mods that require fnis and you deactivate one and dont run fnis and in game you have new problem, that problem is solved by activating particular mod or re running fnis. When main problem gets resolved if any fnis mods were touched just rerun fnis with the mods you want active and your good. 

 

To disable all mods in LO, after having had made backups, you just need to right click anywhere in left window and choose option "disable all visible" 

Restore BackUps icon will get them back, Always do both windows when backing up or restoring. 

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Overwrite folder Info:

 

This is a touchy subject for some users. I am the type of user(install and uninstall mods on the regular/making or changing mods in ck a lot). This makes me the prime candidate to never keep stuff in overwrite folder. Can you leave stuff in overwrite? According to some users you can, I never tried. When I do work in ck it generates to my overwrite folder which was empty and everything that lands there after saving file in ck will always be all that is temporarily in there. Whenever things get generated to overwrite folder there is already a mod, with a mod folder in MO/Mods, for the contents inside the overwrite folder(We call that "The Parent Mod" Open overwrite folder, if you dont know what mod the new contents goes to then we are talking folders and opening folders will tell you what mod you need to look for in left window MO. I dont know why, maybe only for MO1 but if you open folders that are inside overwrite folder from within MO you need to close overwrite folder and reopen it to be able to drag and drop the contents into Parent mod. Note some mods like Simple Knock, after running for 1st time in game will have an skse folder waiting for you when you then exit game. Open skse folder from within overwrite and you will see something named SimpleKnock, I think its a dll file? Anyways the name of file will tell you Simple Knock and you know that contents needs to be dragged and dropped into Simply Knock mod(MO left window) Real easy

 

Whats wrong with just keeping stuff in overwrite folder? Outside of it being unorganized and not needed Im not entirely sure. I assume you could run into problems when uninstalling mods that have contents in there and or updating mods that have contents in there. You shouldnt need to look inside overwriter folder anytime you uninstall or update a mod? Its really unorganized and lazy, and it looks bad. It keeps your Overwrite folder red, that is MO telling you to get that shit out, it keeps the triangle/exclamation mark in MO, top right corner lit up, that is MO telling you that you have a problem. As mentioned before if you are in ck a lot an empty overwrite folder is easily prefered not to mention there is no good reason not to keep it empty. Never has any user made a declaration that if contents from this/that mod generates stuff to overwrite and you properly place its contents into parent then in game this bad thing will happen. All users should keep overwrite folder empty. 

 

 

 

I have a little more to add but Im going into watch entertain mode for the remaining of my evening. I want to cover how I set my load order up with MO and something else I cant remember right now?

[Heroine HoneyCrotch]

Any users are welcome to comment/Add. Nobody needs to know that this other mod manage also does this or that, this forum is about MO. 

Any insights on how MO2 works different than MO1 is welcomed, I only have used MO1 though I think everything I typed is applicable for MO2 users as well