General Load Order Discussion and Ideas

[Taunzai]

Welp to start this off How Accurate is this Load Order? is there a better way or ideas to improve upon this

 

1) Patches and bug fixes

2) Big mods and overhauls that affect the entire game

3) Quest mods (big or small)

4) Environments/weather Overhauls

5) Large add-ons that add cities/towns/land masses

6) Adds buildings to current cities/towns

7) Plants and foliage mods for the entire game

8) Gameplay changes/tweaks/add-ons such as combat/magic/perks/etc

9) Changes/add-ons to NPCs

10) Visual/textural/atmospheric changes

11) Sound/audio/FX alterations

12) Sorting, menu, and player & NPC inventory

13) Cheat items

14) Character model replacements

15) Weapons/armor/clothing add-ons/additions

16) Crafting related mods

17) Misc. items, as well as small scale foliage

18) Weapon/armor/clothing alterations

19) Specific mods that need to be loaded at the bottom as directed by the mod author

20) Mods that remove graphical effects, like disabling godrays, to improve performance - this goes last to ensure that all mod added effects get disabled too.

[SlapMeSilly]

This could become a quite complicated subject. Ultimately there is no perfect answer. It will all depend on which mods you will be running. And just posting a list of them will not likely get you help. As it looks, it seems fine. But again it will depend on what is in the mods. Though you'll likely find that trying to categorize mods in that fashion gets annoying. Let's take Spectraverse. It's a quest mod, a spell mod, and adds land mass. Or Mirai The Girl With The Dragon Heart. It has new land mass, new zones, quests, spells, and npcs. Then there's other mods which add armor and weapons along side quests. Some of them including small or large land mass changes, or entirely new areas.

 

I usually advise mod users to learn a little about how the creation process works and get a copy of xEdit for their game. Some people like to use WryeBash (I don't, but to each their own). It has the facility to look at all your plugins, in your load order, and point out any types of conflicts. Also allowing for creation of a bashed patch to attempt a resolve of conflicts. Such as if 2 mods change the same leveled list. It would try to merge the changes. Though in my experience doing it by hand gave me far better results in general.

 

You would want to find out if any, and which, mods overwrite the same records (meaning they conflict). xEdit has a tool to do just that showing the conflicts. Then you can figure out if you need to make a patch to merge changes between them, or if you need to change the load order.

 

Once you've determined that any conflict winners (last loaded mod that has a conflict with another mod) is what you want, or you've made and positioned your custom patches where you want. Then you should be good to go.

[Frankfranky]

I think it would be better to catagorise mod users than mods. Definately easier. There are 2 basic types of mod users. Those that look inside the mods and understand what they are adding to their game and are therefore able to make intelligent decisions about where to put things, and those that press the d'l with NMM button, overwrite all, YOLO, "omg your texture replacer broke the civil war".

 

The first group understands that an install order framework isn't really going to work. The second group ... .... yea. The second group is the reason that breaking ysolda is now a meme amongst mod authors.

[The First Lady of Hats]

Load order is like building a sandcastle.

You add things and painstakingly organise them with OCD like precision.

Then something does not work so yer press LOOT and it stomps all over it and turns your perfect list into a cup of chaos. :[

[Taunzai]

14 hours ago, Frankfranky said:

I think it would be better to catagorise mod users than mods. Definately easier. There are 2 basic types of mod users. Those that look inside the mods and understand what they are adding to their game and are therefore able to make intelligent decisions about where to put things, and those that press the d'l with NMM button, overwrite all, YOLO, "omg your texture replacer broke the civil war".

 

The first group understands that an install order framework isn't really going to work. The second group ... .... yea. The second group is the reason that breaking ysolda is now a meme amongst mod authors.

thank you all for the advice and unfortunately i am in category 2 which is why im asking about more detail so i can understand better at how modding works like i know the game loads things in a certain order. but im trying to figure out what order that is exactly this load order was by Bethesda. and one more thing im moving to mod organizer but was wondering if someone can explain the difference between plug-ins and mods for me.

 

TY in advance for i tend to come and go like a drifter in the horizon 

[Frankfranky]

Sorry my reply was a bit acid. It was one of those days.

 

A mod is everything. It will almost always be a .zip file. Inside it you will find a plugin and some folders. Let's have a pretend example, say a armor mod called crackwhoregear.

 

If you unzip the mod - crackwhoregear.zip you will find

 

Textures - folder

Meshes - folder

crackwhoregear.esp

 

Crackwhoregear.esp is the plugin. This tells the game about the armor. Which model to use, which texture files to use, how much it weighs etc. This is the thing you will often see mod authors say make sure this loads after .... In MO this will be in your list in the right hand window after you install the mod.

 

The textures and meshes are where all the stuff the .esp is referencing are located. In MO these will be in the left hand window after you install the mod. This left hand window is what the game will use as your data folder.

 

Both these windows are read by the game from top to bottom. If there are duplicate files, only the last one it reads get used. This is where the whole install order thing applies. With NMM, when a duplicate is found, you are asked if you want to overwrite because there is only one spot and you have to choose. With MO by moving the order of the mods up and down in the left hand window, you can choose which files you want, by placing them below other files that alter the same thing. If you rclick on a file in the lefthand window, you will be able to access infomation and conflicts and select individual parts of a mod and by moving them between the top and bottom windows, choose to have a bit of this mod, and a bit of that mod. This also means you can change your mind later without having to reinstall everything, or remove them without leaving a blank space behind.

 

This is why we love MO.

[Taunzai]

...... that's awesome now i just have to get past the learning curve and i think i will love MO thank you for the adv

[Veladarius]

On 1/15/2018 at 6:37 PM, The First Lady of Hats said:

Load order is like building a sandcastle.

You add things and painstakingly organise them with OCD like precision.

Then something does not work so yer press LOOT and it stomps all over it and turns your perfect list into a cup of chaos. :[

Don't use LOOT, open your entire load order in TESVEdit and look for conflicts between the mod that doesn't work and other mods. The only reason to use LOOT is because you don't know what your mods affect so have no idea where they belong.

[Guest]

On 15/01/2018 at 11:24 PM, Frankfranky said:

I think it would be better to catagorise mod users than mods. Definately easier. There are 2 basic types of mod users. Those that look inside the mods and understand what they are adding to their game and are therefore able to make intelligent decisions about where to put things, and those that press the d'l with NMM button, overwrite all, YOLO, "omg your texture replacer broke the civil war".

 

The first group understands that an install order framework isn't really going to work. The second group ... .... yea. The second group is the reason that breaking ysolda is now a meme amongst mod authors.

Hmm, I'd say there's only really one type of actual modder - those who rapidly acquire a taste for personalising their gaming experience, and persist for long enough that they naturally accumulate skills and knowledge in that pursuit. 

 

The drive-in consumption approach to modding will inevitably lead to a perpetual state of  "WTF?", which isn't a gratifying place to be ultimately. Those folk probably don't hang around very long before moving on to something else. They're gamers, not modders.