Vortex Profiles: My Skyrim SE Saves are Gone?

[LucidGamer137]

Quick rundown of my issue: yesterday I was tooling around in Vortex and figured I would make use of its Profile management feature. The game I play the most is Skyrim Special edition, and I have two different saves/characters who use a few different mods, specifically, one character uses Original Opening Scene and one uses Alternate Start: Live Another Life. So, instead of having to manually switch mods on and off each time I wanted to play one character or the other, I figured I could set up a Profile with the right mods active for each character, and load those up instead.

 

Well, if youre too lazy to read the rest, using profiles deleted all my saves. (Thumbs up)

 

If you aren't lazy or think you have a solution, here's the full story.

 

So I created a new profile, named it after one of the characters, and went in to make sure all the mods were loaded that I wanted loaded for that character. Now, this is most likely the cause of the issue: I checked the "this profile uses specific saves" box (or something similar to that effect), and tried to load up the game. I noticed that the main menu was missing the Continue and Load options, I was only able to create a new game. I figure, alright, well, its probably because I had this new profile that I had never used before, set to use its own saves. So I loaded up the original/default profile, which I had (most likely stupidly) checked the "this profile uses specific saves" box on. Again. Same issue, load the game, saves are gone.

 

I did a bit of digging around and found the folder that Skyrim SE saves the game into, and from what I could tell, all of my saves are in place. There are a bunch of files named "autosave X" or "quicksave Y" with the names of interiors or buildings and a bunch of numbers. I'm not sure how these files are supposed to look, if there is any particular appearance, but I do know that my game basically isn't recognizing them anymore. I tried connecting to Steam, thinking maybe if I synced my saves up with the cloud and restored them, all would be well. Yeah, that didn't work, saves still didn't appear.

 

So yeah, it looks like checking that "unique saves" button was the most likely cause. Otherwise, FNIS gave me a bunch of random popups and kept reinstalling over top of itself for God only knows why. Those are the only two causes I can think of.

 

If there is a simple, easy fix to this, I would love to hear it, but if not, or if it's impossible to fix this, no worries, I'm honestly fine with starting up a new game if need be. I would just really like to not lose my progress, considering for five days before I grinded one of my characters a solid 8 levels (not much but I don't get to play often).

 

Thank you for the feedback, help, or tips, if any.

[HadToRegister]

-UPDATED-

 

OK, after re-reading your post, this is what you did wrong.
You have a bunch of default savegames that have been saved to "C:\Users\<yourname>\Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\Saves"

 

You made 2 new profiles, and told each profile to manage their own saves, which means both profiles created their own SAVE folder inside your "C:\Users\<yourname>\Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\Saves" folder, which also in turn, changed your Skyrim.ini save path from "SLocalSavePath=Saves\" to (Example) "SLocalSavePath=Saves\GkmsFdhJ\" in your ini

This is what Savegame Managers also do, and people use them without understanding what the Savegame Manager does, then they accuse the Savegame Manager Author of making a virus that deletes their saves.

Because of what you did (Picking your default profile and telling it to manage saves) you've changed the path of your default profile so it can't find your old saves because the INI file path has been changed.

This is why it's important to watch the tutorials and read the Wiki.

Vortex didn't delete your saves, you experimented and changed things and changed the path to your saves.
They're still there, you just need to turn off the manage saves in your default profile and it should undo what you did.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-ORIGINAL POST-

 

Look at your profiles, notice the ID in each one, such as "GkmsFdhJ" or "e1v3FmDhdu"

EX:

 

 

Now, Navigate to C:\Users\<yourname>\Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\Saves

And I'm willing to bet that inside the saves folder is a folder that Matches whatever the ID of your profile is, along with the saves you claim have been deleted.

People complain about this all the time with any Savegame Manager written by a modder and start claiming it's a virus that deletes their savegames.

So, if you've got everything set up correctly, the folders that match the IDs (yours will be different than mine) will be in your "C:\Users\<yourname>\Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\Saves" folder.

[AugustaCalidia]

 

I tried connecting to Steam, thinking maybe if I synced my saves up with the cloud and restored them, all would be well. Yeah, that didn't work, saves still didn't appear.

 

 

The reason the Steam saves didn't appear is that your profiles have unique save folders (as described by HadToRegister) that Steam knows nothing about.

[Dragoness242]

-UPDATED-

 

OK, after re-reading your post, this is what you did wrong.

You have a bunch of default savegames that have been saved to "C:\Users\<yourname>\Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\Saves"

 

You made 2 new profiles, and told each profile to manage their own saves, which means both profiles created their own SAVE folder inside your "C:\Users\<yourname>\Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\Saves" folder, which also in turn, changed your Skyrim.ini save path from "SLocalSavePath=Saves\" to (Example) "SLocalSavePath=Saves\GkmsFdhJ\" in your ini

 

This is what Savegame Managers also do, and people use them without understanding what the Savegame Manager does, then they accuse the Savegame Manager Author of making a virus that deletes their saves.

 

Because of what you did (Picking your default profile and telling it to manage saves) you've changed the path of your default profile so it can't find your old saves because the INI file path has been changed.

 

This is why it's important to watch the tutorials and read the Wiki.

 

Vortex didn't delete your saves, you experimented and changed things and changed the path to your saves.

They're still there, you just need to turn off the manage saves in your default profile and it should undo what you did.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-ORIGINAL POST-

 

Look at your profiles, notice the ID in each one, such as "GkmsFdhJ" or "e1v3FmDhdu"

 

EX:

 

 

Now, Navigate to C:\Users\<yourname>\Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\Saves

 

And I'm willing to bet that inside the saves folder is a folder that Matches whatever the ID of your profile is, along with the saves you claim have been deleted.

 

People complain about this all the time with any Savegame Manager written by a modder and start claiming it's a virus that deletes their savegames.

 

So, if you've got everything set up correctly, the folders that match the IDs (yours will be different than mine) will be in your "C:\Users\<yourname>\Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\Saves" folder.

I have deselected the "save game" option when i clicked it accidentally and instead of going back to the default path it stays the same even after i delete the sub folder it makes how do i change it back to the default path, i have tried to reinstall vortex but it dosent change it. PLZ HELP!!

[HadToRegister]

 

I have deselected the "save game" option when i clicked it accidentally and instead of going back to the default path it stays the same even after i delete the sub folder it makes how do i change it back to the default path, i have tried to reinstall vortex but it dosent change it. PLZ HELP!!

 

 

Start a new Help topic, you necro'd a 7 month old thread.

[owenvaljean]

Seven months old or three years old, good advice on the save game folder. Was the solution I was looking for, so thanks.