A few questions about Vortex

[HolyDevastate]

Hi all, i'm new to vortex and modding in general. I have been using vortex for about a month or more now and i could understand the basic steps. However, there are a few things i don't have a clue what it does and how to use them in vortex. I tried search online and looked in the vortex wiki (https://modding.wiki/en/vortex) but couldn't find what i want to know. Therefore, i made this post here in hope someone could enlighten me. Please ignore any gramar errors i made as i'm not a native english speaker. Here are my questions:

 

1. What is the "Install Optional Mods" option. What does it do, i think i have never seen it clickable.
2. What is the different between "Remove related" and "Remove". I guess it has something to do with mods dependancy, but i tried to remove related with SkyUI (a lot of mods has it as hard requirement on nexus) and nothing show up except SkyUi itself in options.
3. What is the "Install Recommendations" option. Some mods i installed would have this option clickable but when i click it, nothing seem to happen(not thing i can see with the vortex UI atleast) and if i uninstall that mod then this option also grey out?
4. The "Variant" section state that i can have the same mod with different settings made. How can i do that? I know i can have different version of the same mod and toggle between them but the same version with different settings? Is that what this Variant mean?
5. Do Vortex has option to hide files of a mod? Ex: i installed "Vanargand Animations - One handed Mid Stance" animation pack but i only want some of the animations included. To know which animation i want and don't want i would have to open the mod in File Manager => delete file one by one => hit deploy in vortex => go in game to check it out if i delete the right animation. If i delete the wrong file for example i would need to restore the file by other mean. If Vortex has option to toggle hidden files from being deployed would be nice.

Anyway, i think that all for now. Hope someone can have me on these. Thank you very much!

[Tannin42]

Re 1&3: They are almost the same, if there are recommendations for a mod, these install them. "Install Optional Mods" will only work with collections containing optional mods, "Install Recommendations" works only for games where there is a (supported) third-party service making recommendations for mods for that game.

 

Re 2: "Remove Related" will offer to remove other versions, variants or optional files belonging to the same mod. So if, for example, a mod has one main file and then optional files on nexusmods.com and you install the options, "Remove Related" will offer to remove those options as well so you don't have to find them yourself

 

Re 4: If you reinstall a mod you get an option to Replace the existing install or create a variant. When you do the latter you get the option to switch between variants the same way you can switch between different versions of a mod you have installed

 

Re 5: No, Vortex currently has no option for that but I would suggest you change the file extension (e.g. .dds to .dds.hidden) instead of actually deleting the files. That way they would still be deployed to the game directory but have no effect on the game. If you then find you made a mistake it's much easier to restore the files.

[HolyDevastate]

Thanks you sir!