Advice on modding and tweaking?

[devilbound]

As per the title. Please.

I have recently returned to Skyrim in the form of the Special Edition after having played Oldrim for over 900 hrs back in the day. Got the limited collector's edition and all, so you know I'm a real fanboi, heh. Anyways, I would sorely appreciate good advice on how to do the tweaking properly. Somehow I managed to get Oldrim pretty stable and without noticeable glitches with 150 mods and .INI -tweaking.

 

Well, now I got me some nice good old dark faces/heads, running on horseback after having tried to equip a torch, some small gliding in the air every now and then, and some other issues (like certain NPCs just standing in formation where they should have dialogue etc), invisible items that turn visible when you shift your view or grab them etc. You know, the good old good old. Much of those are from not doing this right I know (been doing this since Oblivion. With Morrowind it was still full vanilla), even if some are bugs that just are within the game. I kind of just wanted to start playing again, when I should have made this post. I know that as well.

 

Am using LOOT and NMM at the moment. Which feel to be outdated and not really cutting it anymore. Back in the day I did load orders manually/with trying it out and got it working though, no LOOT then. And I honestly can't say if it (LOOT) is any good. Same goes for NMM now, it feels a bit like.

 

So, what programs should I be using nowadays then? And what should I do, in general? Reinstall everything and do it properly? Ok, in what order and how do I make sure the mods I choose work the best as they can together? How should I proceed to get as stable as possible a game with as few glitches and bugs as possible? Or should I just go on playing my semi-broken game before the new SKSE is out? I can sort of manage it, the few really bad things I have managed to fix with using console commands. The graphical and physics glitches are making a sad panda out of me though, even though kind of minor they may be. And when the AI doesn't do what it should (dialogues etc), it's kinda bad as well. Would be fun to hear the dialogues even if in many places I remember what it was about (like Whiterun background chatter between Battle-Borns and Olfina Gray-Mane). I can still play quite ok though.

 

Any short words or links to real good tutorials (I am not code savvy at all) that basically any PC gamer can understand with relative sanity? Please, all you wizzies in with the current knowhow, share your wisdom! :smile:

 

P.S: Attaching my load order copypaste (trying to anyway) so you can have some idea what sort of mod layout I am wishing to use. It is my current, there aren't too many there I'd like to see go. Well, Pets Kingdom, it's kinda rubbish (sorry) but haven't deleted it yet.

 

Gods. I hate doing this crap. Would rather just be playing. Well what else is new, right?

Edited April 2, 2017 by devilbound

[gavinjb]

Had a quick look at your LoadOrder and can't see anything that stands out as an issue, however I am fairly new to modding Skyrim, previously when I have had problems my strategy has been a painful one which is disable a load of mods test and repeat until I find what is causing issues.

 

With black faces I have found the following have caused me issues Hair Mods (KS Hairdo Lite in particular for some reason) & Character makeovers (I found using multiple ones cause lots of problems (e.g. Total Character Makeover, WICO... & Bijiin). I have also heard that you can introduce them if you add some mods mid playthrough.

 

For Tools I have found that MO2 (Mod Origaniser 2) makes life a whole lot easier when modding, in particular if you install a lot of Textures... and need to see what is mod is being overwritten by what, however it is in Beta currently and there are some bugs, but generally the features more than make up for it, however if you haven't used it before I would suggest watching Youtube Videos from Gopher or Dirty Weasel Media.

 

Also something I always do is read all documentation carefully for the mod, read recent posts and check on the Nexus to see if there are any compatibility patches e.g. I use Cloaks of Skyrim and Winter is Coming - Cloaks and a Patch is needed for these)

 

If you haven't already, I would also suggest keeping a document with what you have installed (makes life a lot easier if you need to re-install at any point).

 

Also if you haven't already found it then S.E.P.T.I.M. guide on Nexus is a great help (you can also have a look at my link to see what I have installed if it helps).

 

Not sure if any of this will help, but good luck.

[devilbound]

Thanks a lot! Yea that was some help alright, kudos. For example the talk about the new mod manager. Well that mostly as a lot of the things were, as you might imagine, familiar to me before. The septim thing is also new to me though. I will have to check those out, thank you so much for your input!

 

The main thing I am really wondering here is if I should even try to get my 'Rim properly set up before SKSE is out... In all likelyhood just going to have to do it all again when SKSE launches.

[gavinjb]

I personally am working on getting a good setup with an idea of what I would like to add to it when SKSE is released and the mods become available, but what I would really like is SkyUI/MGM and to see some of the heavy customization mods updated to support MGM again.

 

This will obviously take time and I am working on the assumption that it will be probably up to six months after SKSE is released before this all happens. Wish I had the ability to create some mods, but I am useless at graphics and anything I think of relating to scripts is already available for me!

[Deleted3897072User]

FIrstly. if you haven't already done so, check every mod carefully to ensure that it is a genunine SSE mod, or has been correctly converted if it was originally an Oldrim one. A lot of Oldrim mods were simply reposted for SSE without any conversion at all because people believed Bethesda who said that mods would be compatible. Some are, some aren't.

 

Secondly, don't wait for SKSE64. The latest word is that development has stalled.

[devilbound]

Alright, many thanks for the replies, much appreciate it! Good stuff there, all of it. Kudos.

 

Well, the most important bit of news for me here is the SKSE64 delay. That was important for me to hear actually, makes a big difference. Thanks for sharing!

Now, I just knew that making this post could be wise! And so it was. Thanks again to everyone posting.