Need a good "ground up" guide

[wanderlustful]

Hi there, sorry if this is a common topic or if this isn't the right section for it -

 

I adore Skyrim (when it's heavily modded, at least), but I always end up biting off more than I can chew with it, and installing way too many mods in the wrong way in the wrong order without using the proper foresight or defensive precautions... so I always end up with a bloated game with scripting errors and constant CTDs that not even Papyrus logs can help me figure out, and end up having to uninstall the entire thing and start from scratch.

 

The last time it happened I lost hope and I've gone over a year without playing the game, but I'd really like to try again, since E3 dashed my hopes for a ESVI, and I want to learn to live with Skyrim. 

 

Can anyone point me in the right direction for a proper stable installation guide, esp. when it comes to the inclusion of popular Lovers Lab mods - everything including where and how to install Skyrim, which mod programs to use, which order to install the vital mods, when and where LL mods should come in, *which popular mods to avoid*, etc. it would help me out a LOT and let me enjoy the game again.

 

Thank you so much! 

[Nazzzgul666]

This request is hard to impossible to fullfill because if it's stable, especially if you just grab too much (like i often do too), depends a lot on your CPU, software running in the background, settings,... so what someone might consider stable isn't working for you or the other way around.

 

I'd strongly recommend to use MO first. That allows you to change not only your load but also install order simply by drag&drop, without uninstalling or reinstalling required. You just don't need to care much in foresight, that's the outstanding reason i prefer MO over all other mod managers, there are some other good reasons but also some downsides. Like, you have to spend some time to get things working in the beginning. Once that's done you don't really need to touch the complicated stuff anymore, though.

 

Next, the three fixes i consider mandatory for any setup are ENBoost, crash fixes and enabling it's solution for the SKSE memory patch.

 

There are good tutorials on youtube how to install & setup things like LOOT, FNIS, Bodyslide, TES5edit in MO and how to clean mods with TES5edit, you should do that at least for the 3 DLCs if you have those. 

 

I honestly don't know which mods are considered popular on Nexus, ~70% of my setup in general are from LL and many mods from Nexus i've never tried. Mods you should not totally avoid but use very carefully (in combination) is everything that runs scripts regulary/often, and mods which add (a lot of) NPCs. Which (combination) is too much is impossible to say in general, and with bad luck even totally avoiding those mods can still cause problems. The point here is, the number of tasks your CPU can do within a second is limited. Therefore using (juast as example) Frostfall, Beeing female and footprints can be fine in general although all three of those run scripts/scans regularly, but if you do the civil war quests it can be suddenly too much because vanilla Skyrim runs some script heavy stuff with a lot of NPCs around. Or if you're imprisoned by XPO which runs a lot of scripts only when you're captured, but at this time it might push you over the edge. And you won't even notice such things when you start a new game because that's usually fine, which is probably the worst part of it.

 

So, what you can do is checking the settings of mods you're using, many on LL have options to scan less often and/or in less range, use those options or even turn the scanning totally off if you think you don't need it. Sometimes you can even disable the whole .esp, xpmse and Estrus for Skyrim are good examples, you'll obviously lose the abilities from those .esps but if you just want a custom skeleton required for sexlab animations, or just the animations from Estrus without the shouts (for another mod using them), that's totally fine.

Both throw a lot of errors in your log, those errors aren't problematic in general but if it happens often like in those cases the sheer number can have some impact.

 

In general LL mods are aware of possible conflicts with Nexus mods, but not the other way around. Or they got it all wrong over there. So, read the descriptions on LL really carefully and check the conflicts section, it maybe annoying but usually it's worth the time.

 

Some stuff about papyrus logs. With a few exceptions, you won't find the reason for CTDs in those logs. When Skyrim crashes, the logging does too, so it's not written down. Those logs are rather for finding bugs in mods that don't cause crashes. Often it's recommended to turn off logging for playing because it has impact on performance, but nevertheless i usually let it enabled because a lot problems start (sometimes far) before i recognize the first problems or even crash. And i don't think logging can cause crashes itself, it just might decrease your FPS at some points, but even in those cases you'll most likely have a serious drop anyways. If it drops from 60 to 30 or to 28 doesn't matter much, imho. 

You don't need to check them out every time, but i usually check at least the size every 2-3 times i start the game, and if it's recognizable bigger than usual, i open it and search for "dump". 

If your CPU can't handle all the scripts running at once, they get on a stack. If it can't handle the stack anymore, parts of that stack get dumped, and that's where often problems starts. It may be unproblematic if it's a script that starts itself new every time it's needed, but it may totally break a quest, or kill the animations library, or dump a script that is necessary and the next time it's needed the game will crash (which can be some hours later). And those dumped scripts will be baked into every save after it happened, all you can do is load a save before the dump happened.

 

Because of all this i'd recommend to plan rather several new games than one long game. Especially LL (quest) mods are often meant to be played with low lvl characters, or at least they don't require a lvl100 character to play them. Install what ever you think is a good combination, play for some time, finish 1 or 2 of those questmods, see if your setup causes problems on your system, and if it doesn't you can still decide to go on or just start a new game if you get problems. If you want to try other mods after you've finally found a stable setup, MO allows you to create different profiles, so you can just try other or additional mods and see if it still works there. If it doesn't you can use your old setup with old saves, or skip it alltogether and start the next new game.

 

Finally, it's not recommended to change your load order during game play. Make sure you run Loot before you start a new game, if you forget it (like me quite often) you can try to use the save, but if you want a long game, better start from scratch. Do not uninstall (or update) mods (with scripts) during a running game. There are save game cleaners and stuff and there is a good chance they work fine, but no guarantee that all parts of a mod will be removed, in some cases it also deletes too much. Often but not always mod authors will mention it if it's save to upgrade without cleaning saves/starting new games, if they don't say it's save i never upgrade before starting a new game which is probably the reason i never had many problems mentioned in the support sections.