Trying to sort Mods

[RyuTakahashi117]

I'm fairly new to modding, but I'm trying to sort my mods through Vortex Mod Manager. I believe the way my mods are sorted is the primary reason why they are not loading properly and my game has constant CTD or they just completely reset. How do I go about resorting my mods and how can I know which ones are interfering with other ones. Any help would be awesome? I'm trying to get a screen capture of my loadout list so I can share it for better feed back, but haven't had any luck yet. Here are my specs. I'm modding and running Skyrim: Special Edition through Steam Deck. It would be easy if someone could just log on my account real quick and take a look, possibly even rearrange the mods to have them work, but I understand thats easier said than done. I've been back and forth for weeks now trying to get Skyrim to work and modded properly. Willing to work with someone patiently to fix this and pay them $100. If someone can't be reached here, but on Discord let me know. If any additional information is needed to help me out, please reach out me. I'm really trying, but process of elimination and being new to modding is making the whole thing rather frustrating. Thanks for help and understanding. Thanks!

 

Device name Senso_Kikai
Processor 13th Gen Intel® Core i7-13700KF 3.40 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.8 GB usable)
Device ID 245DD30A-9597-446C-8D4E-B9BA338B87ED
Product ID 00342-21033-13434-AAOEM
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch No pen or touch input is available for this display

 

Edition Windows 11 Home
Version 22H2
Installed on ‎5/‎12/‎2023
OS build 22621.2134
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22659.1000.0

[IsharaMeradin]

Vortex has LOOT built in. All the necessary sorting should already be done.

 

As far as conflict resolution, Wrye Bash can be used to build a Bashed Patch which combines leveled lists among other things. SSEEdt has some conflict resolution features but those probably should not be used without a decent understanding of how plugins work and what each mod intends to do. But those just deal with conflicts between plugins. Loose files such as meshes, textures and scripts all need to be dealt with on a one-to-one basis. Vortex should inform of loose file conflicts as mods are installed and suggest a decision to be made at that time. Often times the default is the correct one. Other times it may not be, but those are usually when you know that you are purposefully doing something with a specific file or set of files that have already been installed.

 

There are also hard caps to the number of plugins that the game will use. The bit that handles plugins has a range of 256 entries (0 to 255 or 00 to FF in hex which is how Vortex and utilities display load order position).

00 = Skyrim.esm

01 = Update.esm

02 = Dawnguard.esm

03 = Hearthfires.esm

04 = Dragonborn.esm

05 - FD = 249 available ESM / ESP spots for mods including any Creation Club or AE Upgrade mods. CC / AE mods will always start at 05.

FE = ESL plugin space (theoretical limit of 4096 ESL flagged plugins)

FF = Active memory (object references spawned or created during game play as well as those previously saved and loaded from the save file)

 

If you have more active ESM / ESP plugins than the allowed amount, the game can randomly choose which ones it loads each time.

If you have more active ESL plugins than the allowed amount, the game will crash or have corrupted data.

If you have an excess of inactive plugins in your data folder, the game can crash as well.

 

I mention the plugin limits in case part of your issues may be due to an overabundance of mods with plugins.

[RyuTakahashi117]

Appreciate the response friend! If I send a screenshot of my load order, would you be able to tell me which ones should go and which ones I could keep? Even willing to give you my login information if possible, however I understand if that makes you uncomfortable. Not sure if there is someone I can hire to mod Skyrim for me Trying to go through my list of mods and plugins to see whats what and what needs to be removed, still having some trouble, fairly new to this. Your rundown of how everything makes sense.

 

I recently added just one mod, then when I went to reload, all my mods reset, character went bald, and lost lots of inventory items. Tried reloading, but no luck. I'll sometimes get a weird bug where my character is bald and all of my mods reset. This also brakes the save. I've noticed that it's only with mods that edit or add any scripts. Ordinator perk tree constantly resets, and getting a ton of achievements unlocking top left corner. I have no idea what has caused this issue to occur. Sorting my load order does nothing. I'm gonna try to redownload Skyrim SSE, will that work? Any ideas? Could I have too many plugins?

[7531Leonidas]

Ryu, try something simple - start up Vortex, stay on the start up page, the one with the tools and the selections down the left side. To know how many plugins you have:

 

On the left sidebar, go to/click on the 'Plugins' selection under 'Mods', and let it settle down, it may take a moment or two. Then, look at the orange bar menu across the top. At the far right, you should now see how many 'Active' (standard .esm and .esp - the 254 limit) and 'Light' (.esl or .esp-fe - the 4096 limit). The Active plugins are where you are most likely to have problems. It would take a LOT of mods to have a problem with the number of Light mods.

 

 

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BTW, I replied to your PM earlier - did you have problems following the instructions to find your loadorder.txt? You could simply navigate to your 'Users' folder on your C: drive and search for it. Be warned, though - my loadorder.txt from Vortex includes listings for mods I have never installed. You should probably search for the 'plugins.txt' instead. At least it accurately lists plugins for MY setup. I thought that the loadorder.txt would have a listing of all the mods in my setup, including mods that do not include esm/esp/etc., I was wrong. The loadorder.txt is more like some sort of master list.

 

If the search of the User folder does not show the plugins.txt, just search your entire hard drive. Will take a bit longer, but may save you some headaches.

[RyuTakahashi117]

Here's what I am currently doing.

 

1. Deleted all mods/plugins. Started from scratch

2. Downloaded this collection for Steam Deck on Nexus Mods

 

https://next.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/collections/mtkcai

 

3. Waiting until all this is completely downloaded.

4. Run Skyrim SE to see if everything runs properly

5. Will Start downloading additional mods one by one to see if Skyrim can handle it and will work properly

6. Will look at load order once everything is downloaded

 

Will keep you posted on the progress. Please let me know if there's anything else I need to do. Hope this is the right thing to do.

[anjenthedog]

For future use, to determine the *number* of mods you have installed & enabled in Vortex, navigate to the mods tab.

 

In the left-most header entry, you'll see a dropdown labeled "status". Select "enabled"

 

A solid orange banner will pop up directly below the headers which says "This table is filtered, showing # enabled/ total # entries items"

 

(my game as of this morning) ex: This table is filtered, showing 585/686 items

[RyuTakahashi117]

After downloading the collection of mods as posted in last response. Do I need to download certain mods in a certain order going forward? Like immersion and gameplay mods should be downloaded before player homes and textures, etc. how should these mods be arranged in order to keep most important ones running first. Im going to upload my collection of mods to Nexus mods, hopefully with some help we can pinpoint the exact problem and culprit so it can be fixed

[anjenthedog]

It's not so much *when a mod is installed (aside from mods with dependencies, where IMO dependencies *should be installed first) but how its load order is handled and that of its plugins.

 

That is, "load order" doesn't mean "installation order", it's when the mod/plugin is loaded into the game in a sequenced loading of modules during game startup

 

>> load this one first, load that one next load that one after that....load this one as late as possible, etc, hence our need for LOOT (standalone as with MO2 or included as with Vortex) to handle sorting/assignment of that load order.

[RyuTakahashi117]

Well I dont think LOOT is properly sorting them, otherwise I would be having mods reset constantly when loading into a saved game. If you dont mind and are willing, Id like someone to take at look at my mod collection when I finish downloading it. Is there a proper way to screenshot or upload my old order so it can be viewed by other modders? Could reset be caused by to many esl plugins?

[IsharaMeradin]

You can use Modwatch to share your load order among other things. It may be hosted on a Skyrim LE page but it also works with Skyrim SE.