Skyrim / Enderal Mod Managements

There are a lot of guides out there that walks you through the process, or suggesting mods of various categories. This isn't it.

This article is more of a perspective on mod management. Messy mod setup is key to hell.

Beware the opinion in this article might be very controversial, or at least, contradict to the loudest voice out there. Not to be contradiction just for the sake of it, bur rather, because I personally find many common modding practices more troublesome than it worth, or simply didn't achieve enough to creates a well managed game.

While this article might be long, it's not hard to mod a game, it really isn't. All it takes is just understanding what is good practices and what is bad. If you don't create a problem, then you won't need a solution.

//--

Tools

Let's start with tools, what program you need to mod your game. If you look at most other guides - MO2, xEdit, BashPatch / MatorSmash, MergePlugin, LOOT... and other technical jargon like "clean master", "conflict", "nav mesh"...

I say, screw that. What do you expect from the average gamer, really?

The only tool I will ask you to use is simply ModOrganizer2 (MO2). That't it.

• There are however several mod-addons that you gotta have depending on the mod you want to install, namely FNIS for adding custom animation, Dyndolod for generating LOD, Bodyslide to change character body shape or clothing's body shape. If you don't need those kind of mods then you don't need these.
• Wait wait... what the heck is LOD? Level of Detail, it is a technical term that refer to the detail of objects rendered at far distance. Dyndolod improve these, so the stuff far from you won't looks ugly as hell.
• Wait wait... what the heck you mean by "clothing's body shape"? Let say your character is a very thin person, and you equip an armor, suddenly you become very fat! How come? Because those clothing and armor have their own built-in body shape. So, to ensure the shape of the armor is the same as your naked body, we need to use "Bodyslide" tool to make them the same.

For specific details of using these addons, simply check their mod page. They really aren't that complicated, just select a preset and hit the big red button... or gray button.

One important thing, don't use something that you don't understand what it does. Just because everyone says "you must use it or else your house gonna burnt down!", doesn't necessary means you must follow. At the end of the day - does the stuff even helps, or just creates more problem? Same for what you read here, use your own intelligence to figure out if something really helps, or not at all.

At least look up some video on YouTube regarding on Mod Organizer 2 usage tutorial.

//--

Installing Mods

Literally just download, install with MO2, you're done.

Frankly, the complicated part is on the management of mods. Which covers the following aspect:

1. selection of mods
2. managing mods into proper categories
3. managing mods into proper "priority"
4. managing mods into proper "load order"

Like it or not, management is big part of modding, and ensuring your game isn't a heap of mess, ensuring your game runs properly, and easier to track down problems if occurs.

One important aspect is, don't be greedy. Don't install tons of mods all at one go and expect everything will be fine and dandy. It is easier to track down problem if you test few mods at a time, especially for mods that do complicated things - best test in small batch.

• Wait, what the heck is "priority"? It refer to the order of files in your mod list, which is the left side panel in MO2. Whoever at the top of the priority list, is loaded first into the game. And whoever at the bottom of priority list, load last into the game. Whoever load last will overwrite those loaded first, if they happens to be the same file.
• For example, if mod-A make the dragon red and is "no.1" on the list, and mod-B make the dragon blue and is "no.2" on the list, then mod-B will take effect in-game.
• Wait, what the heck is "load order"? It refer to the order of mod plugins, at the right side panel of MO2. Plugins are files format like "esm", "esp" & "esl". And they contain information about certain things they add or change.
• For example, an armor mod that makes the armor stat stronger and lighter, will have a plugin containing those information. Why does the order matter? It matter so the correct information is loaded into the game, for example if two mods edit the same armor, mod-A change it's weight, and mod-B change it's defense rating - whoever load last will be taken into account. Whoever load before, will be ignored completely! They don't merge!

//--

1, Selection of Mods

Three general rules:

1. do you really need it?
2. does it do anything useful?
3. do you see it often or just once a thousand year?

The less mods you got, the less chance your game will break down. This isn't a competition of seeing who got the biggest mod list in the world... You want a game that runs well, with mods that improve the game in meaningful way.

• Mods that add one single boss at a very specific location that you'll only encounter once in your lifetime. Do you really want that to stay in your mod list forever? I don't. Things like these, really just install it - have fun with it for once - don't overwrite your previous save game - uninstall it - then resume back to your usual business from your previous save game. There is simply no good reason to clog your mod list with useless thing.

One very important aspect of mod selection, is not installing multiple mods that do the same things. You are literally asking to create more problems that require more time to find solutions. If someone already made a solution (patch), sure, go ahead. Otherwise don't do it if you can.

Example of mods that usually should only have one in each category:

• tree & grass
• city & town
• weather & lighting
• water
• perk

Frankly, a lot of gameplay mods also fall into this aspect - DON'T have multiple mods that affect the same gameplay content or mechanism. The same goes for other things like, mods that affect the same armor or items, mods that affect the same NPC - avoid having more than one if you can.

If you do needs multiple mods affecting the same aspect, for example multiple city mods, ensure you have compatibility patch installed to ensure they works together properly.

Mods like texture and mesh (3d models) are much less of a problem. Simply whichever file load last will take effect. The one that aren't loaded into the game simply just eating your harddrive space and do nothing.

Problems regarding texture and mesh aren't serious, at most you'll just notice the object doesn't looks right, missing texture, screw up texture, or simply aren't the right one appearing in the game. Such issue won't crash your game, unless if the mesh mod is faulty, file corrupted, or you just installed wrong mod for wrong version of the game. Always beware you're installing LE mods for LE, and SSE mod for SSE.

//--

2, Managing Mods into Proper Categories

How many people actually do this? Probably 99% of people just hope the software do it automatically for them. And when problem arise, they post a mess of a modlist that have absolutely no logical order, I don't even want to help.

While mods downloaded from Nexus might retain it's category information, more than often you'll install mods manually that aren't from Nexus, or just from a zip file in your computer - these installation will not be assigned with any categories. So you gotta make sure you assign them one.

It isn't necessary to have too many categories, the default came with MO2 was quite a lot, as it covers multiple different games. Here are what I uses:

• Model & Textures
• Landscape
• City & Town
• Armor & Weapons
• Animation
• Weather & Lighting
• Audio
• User Interface
• Combat
• Magic & Consumable
• Body & Hair
• Follower & NPC
• Gameplay & QoL
• Patches & Bugfixes
• Misc

Wait wait, why is your list not sorted alphabetically?

Of course that's been done for a reason. It's not strictly you-must-do-it-that-way. It is simply:

• mods that won't cause any big problem can be at the top, I call it "low risk"
• mods that can cause big problem when not managed properly, should be loaded near the end, just to make sure. I call it "high risk".

Sometime it is inevitable you'll need to place certain category way far from it should be, especially texture and mesh mods, some of them you need to load after landscape mods, or after your armor mods, etc. Take your time to understand and decide where a mod should be located, so the desired effect appear correctly in game. MO2 have a yellow "thunder" icons show up if a mod is overwritten by other, make sure to understand how it works. Sometime it does get quite complicated as your mod list grew:

A lot of the categories simply doesn't really matter where they are placed. For example body mods, follower, audio, mods that adds new armor, etc. They don't depends much on other categories to function, so they can be placed anywhere you feel convenient.

Arrange your mod so stuff of the same category sticks together

Don't let them scatter all over the place. Not only it is easier to find what you need, it is also easier to notice obvious problem within that same category.

• But but, we can sort the mod list alphabetically or by category in MO2! Yes yes I know that, but you CANNOT move the mods around when it is sorted that way. The only time you can change the order of you mod list is sorted by priority. Having stuff of the same category sticks together, so we don't need to flick between different sorting modes all the time.

What to install first?

To stay organized, installing mods one category at a time is recommended. Usually it is good to start with low risk category, such as texture mods. For example, texture & mesh > audio > armor & weapons > follower...

After finishing each category, recommend to go in game and test play to ensure they works properly. It is definitely easier to track down problems when you only install few mods at a time. Don't be greedy install shit tons of mods at one-go, really.

After you done with low risk categories, move ahead to high risk categories - mods that can cause serious problems and even CTD if something isn't right. For example, NPC mods, gameplay mods, survival mods, etc.

Dealing with these "high risk" mods, goes even slower - install very few at a time, or even just ONE at a time if that mod in question cover huge scope of the game (such as Morrowloot), and test play to ensure they works properly. Go slow, be caution - always check their mod page properly to ensure you didn't miss out any patches & requirements.

//--

3, Managing Mods into Proper "Priority"

You probably noticed and understood a little about this aspect already, after reading though the last section. Mod files that load after, will overwrite the one loaded before, it is that simple.

Problem with priority happens a lot, especially in texture and mesh mods. This is because many popular mods of this category, affect hundreds and thousands of item in one single package. For example:

• Skyrim Community Texture Pack, which is a texture package over 4GB in size, literally affect every aspect of the game.
• And then there are medium sized texture packages like Skyland Whiterun, that only affect texture in Whiterun city.
• And then there are even smaller packages like 4K Gildergreen texture mod, that only affect that one single unique tree in Whiterun city.

Do you see the pattern? Yes you can roughly separate texture & mesh mods into tiers. The "big" package will always serve as the "base" of all things, so they are arranged to load first into the game. And the smaller packages are arranged to load last, so they actually take effect in-game.

If a mod appear in MO2 with "grey thunder" icon, it means it is completely overwritten by some other mods - it serve no function at all in your game. If you realize that is a mistake, then re-arrange it's priority to ensure it actually takes effect in-game.

Double clicking a mod in the list will open up detail window, you can go to the "Conflict" tab to see what files from other mod it overwrite or being overwritten. For "dds" files, which are textures, you can right click and select preview to open a window for comparison. Simply flick the arrow buttons to compare textures from different mods, to decide which one you actually want it to be loaded into the game.

The other common importance of priority are:

• patch of a mod should always load after the mod it patches
• if mod-A require mod-Z to function (essentially, mod-Z is "master"), then mod-A should load after mod-Z

Those should be pretty self explanatory. Ensuring the correct files loaded into the game is an important part of ensuring your game runs properly. Unfortunately, many people didn't take care of this aspect, but only focus in "load order" - which is the priority order of plugins. BOTH must be correctly managed!

//--

4, Managing Mods into Proper "Load Order"

This can be a... touchy subject. 99% of player out there rely on LOOT (Load Order Optimization Tool) and LOOT only to manage their plugin load order. Thinking it is a "silver bullet" to all problem. No, it isn't. Also it is a pretty stupid program because it didn't arrange things by any logical order, and unable to arrange certain type of mod properly - which is a topic we will talk about later.

Same with managing your mod list priority order, you should also categorize your plugin list, or "load order" which is commonly called. While there isn't built-in function in MO2 to assign plugins with categories, we can manually achieve that.

Here is my method of categorizing plugins:

• create a mod and name it something easy to distinguish, eg: " -------- SPACER MOD --------- "
• copy any esp plugin you can find, place them in that mod folder and make a lot of copies of it
• name those esp files to each category names, refer to picture below. Purposefully give it easy to distinguish name, such as " ---- ARMOR ------------------------------ .esp".
• arrange these spacer esp plugins in your load order to create separation, but make sure they are deactivated, so it's contents aren't read into the game

Once you have your spacer "dummy" esp plugins, now just arrange your other actual esp plugins into each categories. Much easy to read your plugin list, it makes total sense isn't it?

Now, onto the topic of how should we arrange these categories. Plugins have it's own set of things to take note of.

• "esm" should always at the top most, these are like master files and is bolded in the list.
• there are only a few mods that specifically need to be loaded last, as mandate by the mod author, namely Alternate Starts, and Dyndolod.
• the typical rule of - patch of a mod should always load after the mod it patches, also applies here
• the typical rule of - if mod-A require mod-Z to function (essentially, mod-Z is "master"), then mod-A should load after mod-Z, also applies here

You probably very confused, "but what actually is a plugin?"

A plugin is simply a file containing list of information. To give you a clear picture, the following shows the actual information list of Skyrim.esm, which is the "master" of all things and will always be loaded first.

As you can see, it is actually a list pretty easy to understand. There a bunch of stuff that are very obvious like "ammunition" which contain information of things like arrows; "armor" contain record of all the armor, clothing and shield items; "book" obviously means all those books you will just pick up and never read...; "constructible object" contain information of all the crafting recipes; "container" are storage chests... so on and so forth.

• Let say we have a mod that changes some armor's weight, let say "stupid-armor.esp" plugin. Essentially what it contains, are just duplicates of the same armor information from Skyrim.esm - except it changes the weight number.

In some earlier example, we talk about example of multiple mods affecting the same item. Such as mod-A change armor weight, and mod-B change the same armor's defense rating. What happens and what should we do? As we mentioned before, try to avoid such situation where multiple mods affect the same thing if possible, as we will need additional work to fix such problem.

Things like item stats won't cause any game-breaking problem, but other more complicated mods are very likely to cause major problem when multiple mods affecting the same aspect of the game. Which is why "big" mods like Requim (a game overhaul mod) came with crap tons and tons of compatibility patches, to ensure it runs well together with other mods.

But in case you really HAVE to have multiple mods affecting the same thing, then you will have two choices:

• search for compatibility patch mod someone else already made
• or, study xEdit & CreationKit to create your own patch... 

Special Case #1 : Landscape & City

I did mention we should only have one of such mod at a time. One thing to take note about landscape & city mods, where they place objects into the game world - have a different rule than "the one load early will be ignored".

In mods that place objects into the game world, all information from all plugins actually take effects - for example if mod-A place a barrel at one spot, and another mod place a cart at the exact same spot - what happens in-game will be - both object exist and overlapping each other. You don't want that, it looks ugly.

Which is why if you want multiple city mods at the same time, for example if you want to combine ETAC with JK-Skyrim, you will need a patch for it to ensure no object overlapping or clipping each other. This also applies to quest mods, house mods that adds object or new buildings into the existing game world.

Special Case #2 : NPC Appearance Mods

LOOT literally don't know how to handle this. Really.

The load order priority of NPC overhaul mods is actually quite simple - the order should be the exact same order between your mod list priority (left panel) and plugin priority (right panel).

For example, a big NPC overhaul package like Ultimate NPC Overhaul II (UNOII) affect hundreds of NPCs. And then you also have Bijin Warmaiden that only affect a few NPCs. And then you have Seranaholic that only changes Serana's appearance. What should we do?

Remember the "tier" we talk about way earlier? Understood that bigger mod package always load earlier than the smaller one, and both mod list priority and plugin priority should be the same for NPC mods, our ordering of both left side panel and right side panel will be

1. UNOII
2. Bijin Warmaiden
3. Seranaholic

What if you mess this up and both side didn't match? Black face, neck seam, monster ugly face, etc. But why does those problem will occur? Because the information in esp plugin points to wrong face-files. NPC mod contains something called "face morph" files, among other things, which dictate the shape & appearance of the face. When plugin information and files didn't match, you got ugly problems.

//--

But wait...

How to arrange those categories of plugins?

Here is my example:

• Armor, Weapon & Items
• User Interface
• Animation
• Follower & NPC
• City & Landscape
• Gameplay & QoL
• Quest
• Weather & Audio
• Combat & Magic
• Misc

Why armor, weapon & items at the top? For quality of life. There is a mod called Add Item Menu that you can use to add items from any mods, much convenient than using console command. It calls up a list of plugins in-game, so if you item mods are all at the top, you don't need to scroll far to find the mod esp you need to open. Save time and convenient.

Most of other categories doesn't really matter where they are place, because they does very specific things, altering very specific sets of information.

Remember how many times I say don't add multiple mods that affect the same thing? I don't even count. Your load order will be far easier to manage when there isn't any mods that are obviously conflicting each other by doing the same thing. If you do have such situation, make sure to find & install a patch mod.

Why combat & magic at the bottom? Nothing specific. Just things that are generally very important should be placed later in the priority list.

But of course, repeating the rules:

• patch of a mod should always load after the mod it patches
• if mod-A require mod-Z to function (essentially, mod-Z is "master"), then mod-A should load after mod-Z
• some very specific mods are mandatory to load last, Alternate Starts and Dyndolod for example. Not doing so will cause the game likely to crash very easily.

Without diving deep into xEdit and other complicated modding tools to create your own patches and what not - by simply ensuring your mod selection process, which is the earliest step, well managed and everything well categorized - then you'll have less problem down the line in managing load order priority.

//--

What Next?

"Hei I done installing all my mods, sorted them neatly, game is running fine..."

• Look back to your mod list, and think "what can I get rid of?". Referring back to the 3 mod selection rules earlier, figure out what junk you can throw away, mods that you feel "eh, not so useful after all", "it looks ugly!", "it didn't perform well...", etc.

"But I got problems, bugs, crashes..."

• Remember I said don't be greedy? Especially when dealing with complicated mods that changes large aspect of the game, for example survival mods, NPC mods, game-world changing mod like Morrowloot, crafting overhaul mod, etc... Install one at a time, test play for half an hour or more, check if they are fully working properly, before you proceed to install bunch of other stuff.
• Broken visual and bugs are usually much easier to fix. Crashes on the other hand can be pretty damn annoying. Typically mods that cause the game world to be much more performance intensive are prone to crashes - for example mods that adds or alter NPCs or monsters. These are the top suspect if you somehow randomly crashing around, especially at a very specific spot where the problematic NPC spawn and cause the crashes.
• If the crashes happens totally randomly with no recognizable pattern, then you'll need to check your gameplay altering mod first. Maybe your survival mods is causing problem, or even combat related mods.

Solving problem is tough, confusing, time consuming. There's no other way than just spend the time to Google for things, hopefully someone have similar problem and the answer of solution just laying on reddit or some forums.

Do your own research. That's one part of game modding that is so incredibly crucial.

People just go onto reddit or forum, "hei bro my game CTD I dunno why, here is my 100 pages of mods hopefully you can figure out for me, k thx bye!", is a really bad manner. Happens every single day, and you're sure to see rarely anyone reply to such question.

//--

But Do You Have Mod Recommendations?

There are tons of it around already, for example the Essential Mod, and Best Mods For ____ page on reddit. Asking for mod recommendation without doing own research is also a bad manner we see practically every single day... If you need something that is so specific and can't find it, sure, ask away. Otherwise, super broad question like "can you recommend me some mods?" is just... geezuz crysis go Google yourself man...

• If you want to take your mod management up another level, you can try to use spreadsheet or excel to record mod information, writing down notes about the problem you encountered, the solutions for future reference, etc.
• Check my Skyrim / Enderal Mod Journal.

Modding is overwhelming, so many mods, so many information. Unless you have some sort of crazy brain superpower, it is best to write things down for later reference. I kept links to all the mods I uses, just in case I need to refer back for update, or if facing any problem I can easily look back the page see if I install it wrong or what not.

Nexus isn't the only mod site on this planet. There are dozens others, some also very obscure. Keeping links to them make things easier down the line.

"But but there are millions of mods out there where should I begin?"

• Read from page 1 till the last page. Literally that is what I did, for every single modding website and blogs. If you don't have such crazy endurance, sticking to other people's mod recommendation is enough already, I dare say 99% of mods aren't important at all - only that 1% that is actually useful, high quality, and meaningful.

//--

The Do and Don't

Do

• use Mod Organizer 2
• read mod page description properly, ensure correct installation steps and not missing any requirements and patches
• a lot of research and reading, Google is your friend
• understand your plugin load order rather than relying on LOOT completely
• use SSD for faster game loading, it also helps to reduce stuttering in-game which caused by game asset loading in the background
• create backup, you'll have no idea when your hardware will die

Don't

• use Vortex, there is no option to manually manage load order, which is a very important aspect
• use Steam Workshop. If you need something from there, find a way to get the file and install it in MO2
• don't use tools you don't understand, don't use things before reading through their manual
• listen to me (⌐■_■)

DigitaLifeless

Author & Editor

Has laoreet percipitur ad. Vide interesset in mei, no his legimus verterem. Et nostrum imperdiet appellantur usu, mnesarchum referrentur id vim.