Faster way to launch the game for testing?

[Kahenraz]

Is it possible to load Skyrim right into a particular save game (or the last save game/continue) for testing purposes? That way I wouldn't have to work the menu every time.

 

[Sphered]

For quick testing, I suggest LE, and make a profile with minimal mods and graphic settings so you can get right in. I go from desktop to completely in game looking at my character, in about five seconds with this setup. I also use a custom autohotkey script to spam enter a few times if I really want to be lazy. For the save, just make sure your test profile only has that savefile within it, so you don't have to pick one manually

Most mods work on LE, but I suppose if you are testing SE-only SKSE mods, esl's, etc which aren't compatible with LE, you will have to kinda deal with waiting a bit longer to test on SE. But you can still do the profile thing with a minimal environment to speed that up. You bring back some nostalgia when I used to mod this game like crazy and test all the time lol

[AaronOfMpls]

On 11/2/2024 at 12:10 PM, Sphered said:

But you can still do the profile thing with a minimal environment to speed that up.

Indeed, in MO2 I have a few different profiles for just this kind of thing -- a "minimal mods" profile and a "very minimal mods" profile, and a "no mods" profile.  (In addition to a "mod testing" copy of my regular profile, to make sure something plays nice with my existing mod setup.)

[PeterMartyr]

the fastest way is hot loading

 

[melvinius]

Yes, there are mods that immediately continue your last save.

You should also do stuff like setup your Skyrim to load without the intro video and minimal menu elements.  There are some load time speedup mods out there as well, your mileage will vary with these.  Obviously running the game on an SSD/good PC will minimize your startup time as well.