How do Profiles Work?

[kurt91]

Probably a stupid question, but it's a feature that I've never used before.

 

I've got a fairly stable setup going for Skyrim Special Edition. However, there are a few things that I'm not entirely happy with, and I'd like to tinker with things and try alternatives. If I understand it all correctly, I should be able to make a new profile, and start modding the game from scratch again, as though it was a fresh download of the game off of Steam. If I switch back to my original profile, then I have the exact same mod setup and settings as I currently have, and nothing should break at all? (Of course I could just try it myself, but I'm terrified of screwing something up and losing out on many MANY hours of work)

 

If I do start an entirely new profile, can I transfer individual mods from one profile to the other? It took me well over an entire weekend to download everything and get things working, and it took quite a lot of disk space. I'd really appreciate being able to use the files I've already downloaded when possible instead of having to download an entire second copy of everything.

[SkunkMonkey]

Your assumptions are correct. Profiles can maintain different mod setups you can switch between them and Vortex will handle it all for you. You can start with a copy of your current profile, or start a new one from scratch. You won't have to download anything again. Profiles can even have different settings from each other as well as their own saves.

[Grestorn]

No bugs withstanding, it should work exactly the way you described.

 

Actually, I had a problem yesterday, when my newly created Skyrim VR setup caused crahes (one when using destruction magic on an NPC and one when opening the skill tree).

 

What I did was to copy the current (default) profile and switch to the copy. Then I disabled mod after mod, to find the culprit. I could do that savely, because the original setup was still in the default profile.

 

It worked fine in the end (I found the problematic mods), but I'm not 100% sure if all the profile functions are free of bugs. Sometimes, after copying a profile, the number of mods (shown in the profile) was one less in the copy than in the original profile. And one time, after deleting a profile, I got the impression that the profiles were mixed up (the names didn't match the profile's contents).

 

But that could also be the result of a mistake of mine, because I couldn't reproduce it, and in the end all mods, their rules and order were correctly stored in each profile.

[fchopin]

The save games do not work correctly for the different profiles for version 0.14.0

[kurt91]

Well, I just tried making a new profile for tinkering. Swapped to the new one, and it still had all of my mods, except they were all disabled. Just to make sure things were working correctly, I swapped to the original one. Everything is still disabled...

 

Is this normal? I hit "Deploy Mods", but nothing happened. Am I going to need to manually re-activate every single mod? The list is 80-something long! What about mods with their own built-in installers? Do I need to manually re-run all of those in order to get my "working" profile going again?

[SkunkMonkey]

A new profile will still have all your mods, but they will be disabled and effectively uninstalled. Although, when you switched back Vortex *should* have re-enabled everything back. That may be a bug. You should not need to re-run the installers, just re-enable them.

[sopmac45]

I asked this question before but I do admit that I still do not understand how this works and if somebody can help me with details, I would appreciate that help.

 

In this Vortex section ( profiles ), there is a tab stating "Add Skyrim Special Edition Profile" ... so I am assuming that if I want to add one, then I need to click on that tab, am I right ? But also, in my default profile, there is drop arrow tab ( Edit ) that allow me to make a clone, so if I clone it, I will have another profile exactly as my default one ( with all my mods and game saves ), am I right ?

 

What is the difference between them ?

 

Also, in the default Profile that I have, there is small icon on the bottom right and when I put my cursor on it, states : "Drag to another profile to transfer settings" ..... so exactly what I would need to do to have another profile with no saves and no mods so I can download / install others and try them out without interfering with my default profile ?

 

Sorry for being so ignorant but I do not know and as the OP, I would not like to monkey around and screw up with my current game, so your help is really appreciated. We should have in this section, some "information" but unfortunately, we don't so questions must be made and I am sorry if I am not that smart as you guys to understand something that I never did before. Thanks for your help .... :huh:

[SkunkMonkey]

Clone makes a copy of the profile complete with all mods currently enabled. New profile gives you a vanilla game with all your installed mods deactivated.

 

If you want to start a fresh profile with no mods, chose New Profile. You can then activate mods you've already installed or install more. If you've got two profiles and you want to set one up just like the other, you do the drag and drop from one profile to the other and it will essentially become a clone of the first one.

[rmm200]

My biggest problem with Vortex is that "mods" are not read-only. Changes merged back to a mod by Vortex affect all profiles that use that mod. This can be disastrous to those other profiles. I really thought the "Overwrite" files used by MO were superior. Each profile could have it's own unique "Overwrite", and never be affected by what another profile did.

[kurt91]

Sorry to pull this thread up again, but I have a new question about Profiles.

 

My computer got all screwed up after a Windows Update, so I lost most of the stuff on my PC. Rather than go through the whole process for setting up Skyrim again, I decided that I'd play Fallout 4 instead. Spent some time setting up mods and making sure everything worked, and my younger brother decided that he would like to play.

 

Unfortunately, one of the mods that I had added was Horizon, and it adds a bit too much to the Survival setup for him. He prefers to kind of wander around, and does not have either the patience to stay put and set up supplies/whatever, and does not have the focus to get the necessary gear to not get sick, starve, and die right off the bat.

 

So, I want to set up a profile for myself with Horizon enabled, and another profile for him without it. I've got the two profiles set up, but I wanted to ask: Are there going to be any issues as far as save files go swapping between the two profiles depending on who's playing? Vortex claims that each profile can have its own save files, so does that mean that I don't have to worry about him overwriting my files by accident? Somebody else posted that the profile-specific save file setup wasn't working quite right, but it's been a while and I thought that maybe it's been fixed?

 

I know that I could just kind of trial-and-error my way through figuring things out, but my desktop isn't in an easily-usable state right now. (No easy flat surface for keyboard/mouse. It's not at a desk at the moment) My little brother is the kind of person that playing the game like that doesn't bother him, but it does make extensive troubleshooting sessions a bit of a pain.