Confessions and questions from a mod idiot

[Rainboscape]

When I first discovered modding, I went nuts and installed and uninstalled with abandon. I used mods like Crimson Tide and Wabbit Season. Three guesses as to what happened with my savegame, in which I'd sunk hundreds of hours... yeah.

So I vowed never to let that happen again, start fresh with only a few essentials, take up TES5EDIT and the Clean Save tool (check for orphaned scripts regularly), and actually have a damn load order using LOOT. On my new playthrough I disabled any and all autosaving and quicksaving, no saves that I didn't make myself.

I would like to ask feedback about my current set-up and if it's a safe and stable arrangement, so long as I don't uninstall anything mid-playthrough and check regularly for hiccups with LOOT.

My plugin list (according to LOOT) currently reads:

Active/total plugins: both 24
Dirty plugins: 0

Skyrim.esm
Update.esm
Dawnguard.esm
Hearthfire.esm
Dragonborn.esm
Campfire.esm
The highres texture packs
You hunger.esp
The Choice is Yours.esp
SkyUI.esp
Hunterborn.esp
Frostfall.esp
Container and Arrow Weight restrictions.esp
garm_ghost.esp
UniqueBows.esp
iNeed.esp
iNeed - Dangerous Diseases.esp
RealisticHuskySounds.esp
iHud.esp
Reinforced Hoods.esp
GondorianRangerArmor.esp
Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp

I also installed Warmth (light armour replacer) and RealBows manually, because they didn't jive with NMM. I'm not happy about them not appearing on LOOT, because now I don't have a good look at them (if there are any wild edits or ITM's going on there), but I figured they'd be safe since they are cosmetic gear replacers. They show up just fine in game.

The only thing that had a problem with LOOT was Unique Bows, which had one ITM. I removed it, just like like I did with the official Bethesda expansion packs.

Does anyone have any comments on these mods as to their long-term stability? And what about these mods, that I would like to install in the future:

High Quality map
Climates of Tamriel
Immersive Skaal Armour and tumbajamba's Heavy Skaal armour
Horker Weapon Pack
Sea of Spirits
Cloaks of Skyrim
Winter is Coming
Simply Bigger Trees
Super Sleeves of Skyrim
Alternate Music Project
Project Glacier - Transparent Glaciers
HQ Snow Texture
Solar's Portable Containers
Lanterns and Candles
Followers Can Relax
Sounds of Skyrim - The Wilds

I have tried so many mods but honestly these are the only ones that I want anymore. I want to keep it basic and easy to manage. However, I will hold off on installing them until I've heard some feedback from fellow players.

My save sizes (11 so far on my 'anne' playthrough) vary between 4428 (abandoned prison, only SkyUI and Alternate Start) and 5289 (second most recent) KB. I installed the current active mods incrementally. Does this sound healthy? What else can I do to keep my playthrough healthy in the future, so I won't screw it up again? I have 2 hours in this playthrough (I play slow), so if anything needs to get out I can revert to the first save from when I created my character without any mods (aside from Alternate Start)

Thanks for any advice you're willing to offer. Oh, and kids (new to modding), for the love of Talos take all warnings and advice seriously. Don't be a mod idiot like me.

Edited October 8, 2017 by Rainboscape

[Rainboscape]

Also, I've heard tinkering with the game's timescale could cause problems below a certain level. Would it be safe to change the timescale from 20 to 15 (in time with 4 > 3 need decay)? I would love a much slower crawl game but not at the cost of stability. I've already gone to Belethor's around 3/4 PM and found it locked up so that tells me even a relatively modest 15 is not without consequence.

Edited October 8, 2017 by Rainboscape

[cowgirl1776]

I would be quite wealthy if I had a dollar for each hour I spent trying to get my list of 400+ mods working at the same time. I wouldn't claim to be an expert, but perhaps I can offer some advice to help narrow down your efforts. In my experience, Mod Organizer is absolutely invaluable in that regard. It will tell you if any of your mods are having files overwritten or overwriting the files of another mod. It also creates separate folders for each of them so you can enable and disable them without being concerned with what files are missing from any potential overwrites. These things contribute to instability, missing textures, and other unpleasantries. You already use LOOT, which is another great tool. It has always sorted mod orders for me flawlessly, or rather when combined with its automatic sorting and my action to address its error messages.

 

Cleaning the mods is also typically recommended. Dirty edits, from my understanding, are minefields asking to be stepped on. To me it's voodoo magic. I don't quite understand it, but it's recommended by virtually everyone as a way to improve stability. Many authors have done this themselves, but there are still those that have not and of course, the big one, is the game and DLC. They are not cleaned and have thousands of troubled spots.

 

It would be wise to narrow down the list of potential offenders. Mods that just add textures, sounds, and meshes have never caused instability for me. The worst that has ever happened has just been giant exclamation points where the missing textures should have been, which is actually rather entertaining when you're being charged by a soldier with a giant yellow box for a head. I'm not familiar with your entire list, but this should eliminate these mods from being potential culprits:

 

• High Quality map
• Immersive Skaal Armour and tumbajamba's Heavy Skaal armour
• Horker Weapon Pack
• Cloaks of Skyrim
• Winter is Coming
• Alternate Music Project
• Project Glacier - Transparent Glaciers
• HQ Snow Texture
• Sounds of Skyrim - The Wilds
• UniqueBows.esp
• Reinforced Hoods.esp
• GondorianRangerArmor.esp
• Super Sleeves of Skyrim
• Sea of Spirits

 

 

That would leave mods that include scrips, add objects into the game world, and spawn certain things.

 

I have used the following such mods from your lists and have never encountered instability with them:

 

 

• SkyUI.esp
• Hunterborn.esp
• Frostfall.esp
• Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp
• Climates of Tamriel
• Followers Can Relax

Hunterborn (fantastic choice, by the way) has one issue, or at least did when I lasted used it. When too many scripts are being run it suddenly stop functioning and thus 'disables' the mod. It never caused instability, only a minor annoyance. It's likely due to my actions, though. My Skyrim mod list would make anyone cry in terror.

 

That leaves these mods as potential areas to look into:

 

• Campfire.esm
• You hunger.esp
• The Choice is Yours.esp
• Container and Arrow Weight restrictions.esp
• garm_ghost.esp
• iNeed.esp
• iNeed - Dangerous Diseases.esp
• iHud.esp
• Simply Bigger Trees
• Solar's Portable Containers
• Lanterns and Candles

All of them either have a script or adds objects into the world. These things alone are not an issue, it's only when another mod adds another script that conflicts with the script of another mod. For instance, I once installed two different mods that added a bunch of new monsters. Because of this, I would get random crashes. I could not reliably replicate the issue, and so It took me a while to figure out why, but when I did I realized that both of the mods kept trying to spawn their own monsters to the same place and when it did the game crashed. The solution was simply to disable one of them.

 

Of course, the mods I claim should not be an issue could easily become a source of instability if you include a new mod. COT, for instance, modifies quite a lot within the game. Weather, lighting, audio... With your current list I don't see any incompatibilities, but if you downloaded, say an ENB or weather modification mod, then you're opening yourself up to a potential compatibility issue and thus, also potentially a crash.

 

As a rule of thumb always read the mod description pages and understand what the mod is doing. If you're installing mods that modify the same areas there could be a good chance they are not compatible with each other. Sometimes this causes graphical issues, strange AI behavior, and other times it crashes your game. Often the authors will cite these incompatibilities in the description page. Another reason to read the description page is that sometimes the mod requires other mods in order to function properly. Lacking these mods will, almost always, crash your game on start-up. (If your game is crashing when you start it 99% of the time it is because you're just missing a master. It's usually an easy fix.)

 

 

Once you feel comfortable that everything has been done, start up a game and test it. Few things are worse than creating your character, playing for a few days, and then realize that certain areas cause you to consistently crash or that one of your mods is not working properly. The way I test my list, which will probably be horribly inefficient, is to 'create' a character and teleport all over Skyrim using the console command. I'll run into a few cells, kill a monster or two, enter/exit a building, and ensure that the mods are working. I look for crashes or any sort of issue. If I don't encounter one then the chances are good that I won't need to worry about the rest of the game. If I do, then I try to discover what mod might be causing the problem. For example, say that the lighting is bizarre. Well, I know it won't be a mod that adds a monster to the game - it has to be something to do with the lighting. If your game crashes when you enter a new cell, then perhaps something is being spawned - an item, a monster, the script to do something. It probably will not be a graphical related issue.

 

Finally, as a safeguard, save your game often and keep a multitude of saves from different times. Should your game ever become unstable, perhaps you added an extra mod midway into your game, or you enter into an area that was not imminently a problem-zone but became a quagmire you could not escape, those backups will save your ass. Yes, it is heartwrenching to revert back a day(s) worht of gameplay, but no one will argue that such a outcome is better than restarting the game all-together.

 

Overall I would say your list is perfectly fine. Most of them shouldn't even have the potential to cause instability, I can attest to some of the ones that might, and the ones I have not used do not appear to be an issue either.

 

 

tl;dr

 

- Mod Organizer will make troubleshooting far easier. I think everyone would think you're crazy for not using it.

- Use LOOT to sort your mod order and pay attention to its error messages.

- Clean the mods and game files. This can be done using TES5Edit.

- Read the descriptions for the mods and pay attention to what the mods modify. IE, don't use two mods that modify the weather. They would conflict with each other.

- Some of your mods require the Script Extender. The game will be unstable if you do not have it.

- Test your game out before you become invested in it. Spend a few minutes teleporting to different locations and finding out if you might crash.

- Save often. Save in multiple slots.

[Rainboscape]

Hello cowgirl,

From the way you capitalize Mod Organizer I take it you don't mean just any one organizer? Because I've been using NMM since I started with mods in the first place.
I have used TES5EDIT for cleaning the game files. LOOT didn't have anything to say about the mods I am currently running, but would you advocate cleaning them anyway? I have heard the saying 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' with regards to mods.
I do use SKSE, and LOOT considers it up to date.
I downloaded the game a year ago, so it's as shiny and up to date as 'Oldrim' gets.

I think the reason most of my mods are either simple texture/weapon mods or (when they use scripts) reknowned in Nexus is a bit of paranoia that still isn't gone yet. On the one hand I hope it settles so I can get as fully immersed as I used to be, but on the other hand it's keeping me sharp and pushing me to explore every way to prevent horribly mucking up again.

I have also downloaded the SKSE ini for lazy users. Like most steps I've taken, I try to tackle what I feel like I understand on the most basic level. A lot of what I read on Nexus sounds like a secret code sometimes, so I laud those who have really dummied it down so that I can take basic steps.

Right now the game is running smooth as butter, certainly compaired to when textures were going out of whack 30 minutes in, and at the worst point I couldn't so much as fast travel without CTD'ing. Yeah, it was that bad. I'd rather settle on a relatively un-tricked out game than repeating my mistakes.

Edited October 8, 2017 by Rainboscape

[cowgirl1776]

Nexus Mod Manager was great when it was first released, revolutionary, even, but after several years another tool came out calledMod Organizer. Just as NMM had provided a major leap in terms of making mods easier to install and uninstall (rather than simply dropping them into the data folder), Mod Organizer provided us with those same features, but made reordering mods and viewing incompatibilities just as easy and without any of the headaches that came with replacing files.For instance, say you have two different mods that replace the texture for the same suit of armor. NMM would simply ask you if you wish to overwrite a file. Click yes and it's done, the file from one of the mods is permanently deleted. Not only could this cause a problem, but if you wanted to revert you would need to install the mod again. Imagine returning to this problem and not remember which mod overwrote which - yet alone what specific file. Mod Organizer changes this by placing each mod into its own individual folder and then calling individual files or entire mods into the game, thus preventing things from being overwritten. It also provides a user interface to remind you which files will be overwritten, which mods have incompatibilities with each other, and tells you what will happen if you activate both of them at once. Some people still prefer NMM, but I see that the lion's share of the people has switched to Mod Organizer years ago. You can even choose to 'hide' and 'unhide' each file to let you select which parts of which mods to have in your game whilst also avoiding compatibility issues.

 

 

Here is the link if you want to look into it:

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/1334/?

 

It's essentially the same thing as NMM, but with many additional features.

 

 

Cleaning dirty entries is something a lot of people recommend. It could take 10 - 30 minutes, depending if you know how to do it or if you need to follow along with a tutorial, but unless you're going to use 50+ large mods I don't really see it as something that not doing would cause a critical issue. You might crash once throughout the entire playthrough, and that is a big maybe, but it is an extra thing you can do to further stabilize your experience. The good thing is you only have to do it once with each installation of Skyrim.

 

Hehe, I know how you feel about it seeming as though people speak in code. I don't know what some of the stuff means, but everyone swears it works and I have always just followed the advice of the forum. Something must work, though, because my games no longer crash like they had when I first started back in Morrowind.

[Rainboscape]

Okay, I might have to check that one out, then (MO, that is).

I remember having had to download a patch for Sounds and Climates, but I must have managed because LOOT was happy afterwards.

I guess I still worry about accidently downloading the next Crimson Tide, or this rabbit mod that made my game bloat like crazy and completely borked it up.

[IsharaMeradin]

Putting this out there since it hasn't been touched on yet. Your save file sizes that you posted in the initial post are fine. They will get steadily larger as you play the game and encounter more areas. There will also be times that they get a little smaller especially when you've not needed to visit areas for whatever reason and 30+ game days have passed (default reset time). Save bloating would be evidenced by extreme jumps in the save file size.

 

Since this is for original Skyrim, you could also look into using Crash Fixes for additional stability. It does make your save files incompatible with the game if you decide to remove it after testing. So... make backups before trying it out.

[Rainboscape]

Putting this out there since it hasn't been touched on yet. Your save file sizes that you posted in the initial post are fine. They will get steadily larger as you play the game and encounter more areas. There will also be times that they get a little smaller especially when you've not needed to visit areas for whatever reason and 30+ game days have passed (default reset time). Save bloating would be evidenced by extreme jumps in the save file size.

 

Since this is for original Skyrim, you could also look into using Crash Fixes for additional stability. It does make your save files incompatible with the game if you decide to remove it after testing. So... make backups before trying it out.

I figured that, but I'm not sure yet how much is too much. I've heard some people say to worry when your files get over 10'ish MB, while others claim to be at 30+ MB and have no issues. Mine started after 10 and became unbearable between 13/15 MB.

 

What kinds of sizes or increments are normal, and which would you consider alarming?

 

I had one mod take my saves from 6 to 9 in less than 2 days of playtime, and fairly early in the game too. I was around level 18/20 when I figured it out. When I did it was a lot of work to get the game to work without it. They went back down to 6 (so it was clearly that one mod) but the save was still irreparably damaged.

Edited October 9, 2017 by Rainboscape

[IsharaMeradin]

There is no hard set rule on what constitutes save bloat. It can be possible to have a stable game with large save files and a problematic one with small save files. If I had to put a number on it, I'd say be concerned if your save files are doubling or tripling in size when you haven't done very much in-game. One exception to that is when you've added a bunch of mods at once, your save file will increase simply because there are additional mods to load and keep track of. And the reverse is true, save file size will go down when you remove mods but that is more dangerous than helpful.