Skyrim's Base Guide to use Mods

[Kaipiroshka]

(To Moderators... Feel free to pin this post.)

Changelog

14/09/14 - Added Basic Glossary

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Skyrim's Base Guide to use Mods

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First of all, this little guide cover some basics about mods in Skyrim... Feel free to add more information so we cand lend a hand over those who are new to modding in skyrim (please do). Any advice, tip, correction and/or info would be Higly Appreciated.

Before we start

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You'll see some links here, dont worry, most of them will redirect you to Nexus Skyrim mods or Youtube for practical purposes (there's a few of them that will redirect you to the tool's main pages so you don't have to being google them).

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Guide coverage as far...

-Manual Installation of the Mods.

-Tools to get everything working

*BOSS

*LOOT

*FNIS

*Wrye Bash

-NMM "Nexus Mod Manager" (Feel free to use Mod organizer instead)

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About MANUAL INSTALATION

You know, when you unzip an Archive (or unrar) ... the archive becomes a folder estructure (or tree). This is graphicaly like this....

(I'll put one of the mod's that im using to show it's structure here).

For example the mod's called "SEPTIM HD"

so it goes.

SeptimHD> (main Mod's Folder)

|_Meshes> (folder)
|_Textures> (folder)

|_SeptimHD.esp (archive)

The manual Instalation would consists in Droping the contents of the "meshes" folder (of your mod's main folder) into the "Meshes" folder located at your main Skyrim\Data> folder.

And then continue doing the same with any other folder there....

Now, you have to check what kind of archives are left in the Mod's main folder....

So, check for ".esp" archives and drop them in the Skyrim\data> folder.

Once that's done, you may want to run Skyrim Launcher and then select the "Data Files" option. It'll open up a lists of mods installed into your Skyrim game, so next step is to check the checkbox on the left side of each mod you want to play with.

Then when you run the game, you shoulde see the mod's running.

Beware, some mods require that you do a fresh start over so the cahnges made by the mod's could bve applied.

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TOOLS

One thing that you must know is that most of the mod's rely in a "load order" status... If you are guessing what "load order" might mean, then you need BOSS or LOOT.

BOSS and LOOt are tool that resolve the "load order" issue for you. In fact they sort the order each mod is load into Skyrim, avoiding conflicts between the mods.

You may want to have one of those here:

http://boss-developers.github.io/ (BOSS)

http://loot.github.io/ (LOOT)

Wich to use, I'll leave it to you.... Both do almost the same, "Sorting Stuff", but LOOT does it in an automatic (algorithm) way so it check's the parenthood between mods and the sort em. BOSS in the other hand relies in a masterlist updated by volunteers and the sort your mods using that masterlist as an example.

Ok so you now have your sorting program.

But what Happend if you installed some Animations Mod in Skyrim?

In that case it's no so plain to do... you need FNIS (Fores New Idles In Skyrim).

http://www.nexusmods...im/mods/11811/? (FNIS)

Self explanatory Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MqZ-EPdBvk

So ok... you already managed to install new animations...(always check when downloading if they require some kind of skeleton)

What now?

Almost done... But wait, it last one more step.... Wrye Bash

the patching and merging tool.

http://www.nexusmods...rim/mods/1840/? (Wrye Bash)

Well If everything fails... you can check here...

(check the descrition for a list of video tutorials)

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NMM (Nexus Mod Manager)

If you are using NMM (Nexus Mod Manager), I recommend you to Check out this...

If you prefer to yuse Mod Organizer, then check this out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVBBGjPxVTA

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Hope some of this Helps...

(for some reason I can't preview some videos in "Preview post" so they might not appear in the post, dunno why, but you can copy the adress and paste and go on your browser).

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Glossary

MESHES - is a collection of vertices, edges and faces that defines the shape of a polyhedral object in 3D computer graphics and solid modeling.

MOD - are player made modifications to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

RAR - File compression format

TEXTURES - Textures are image files (usually .jpgs or .bmps) that you can use to dress different type of meshes and objects

UnRAR - The action of extracting the contents of a RAR type Archive

UnZIP - The action of extracting the contents of a ZIP type Archive

ZIP - File Compression format

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Final considertaions... may be (or maybe not) some errors in this guide. Feel free to contribute here.

Thanks in advance.

Edited September 14, 2014 by Kaipiroshka