Load Order (really needs a sticky)

[russader]

Until last night I had installed about 100 mods and never gave a second thought to the load order until I installed the Unique Landscapes.

 

It totally messed everything up and I found things like the Frostcrag Spire was completely black inside.

 

I placed frostcrag around the end and it worked fine again.

 

What im curious about is if there is some special rule of thumb about the load order, like...

 

Should the ULs go first followed by the rest of land mods, followed by clothing, races, charectors, soforth.

 

If there is such a rule, could it be posted as a sticky somewhere.

 

Thank you.

[Vagrant0]

Until last night I had installed about 100 mods and never gave a second thought to the load order until I installed the Unique Landscapes.

 

It totally messed everything up and I found things like the Frostcrag Spire was completely black inside.

 

I placed frostcrag around the end and it worked fine again.

 

What im curious about is if there is some special rule of thumb about the load order, like...

 

Should the ULs go first followed by the rest of land mods, followed by clothing, races, charectors, soforth.

 

If there is such a rule, could it be posted as a sticky somewhere.

 

Thank you.

The basic rules of load orders is this;

 

1) Avoid using more than one mod which changes the same, or similar things.

 

2) Avoid using mods which use or change DCL based content unless those mods patch directly into the DCL.

 

3) Avoid using more than one mod group that requires other mods to be loaded in a specific order. Most of these are making use of specific IDs, and will break if they cannot find those IDs.

 

4) Your first 20 or so mods should be any major game changing mods, such as races, OOO and similar, .esm based mods (and anything connected to them) and mods which add/change large areas. Once a game has been started with these mods being loaded in that order, and are working, DO NOT change that order, no matter what.

 

5) Other mods which come after that follow more relaxed rules. You can have minor conflicts with settings, leveled lists, areas, but not scripting, or npcs. The mod loaded later, will be used anywhere there is a conflict. For instance, if you have OOO installed with their clutter values, but have a standalone mod which affects clutter values, if you load that standalone mod later, it will override the changes which were present in the OOO mod.

 

6) Again, avoid using more than one mod which affects the same NPCs, scripting, meshes, or textures. In the later case, the meshes and textures of whatever mod is INSTALLED LAST will likely overwrite any existing data files, potentially breaking any mods that had previously used those data files. In the case of scripting and NPCs, although the last mod will be used when there is a conflict, other parts of the earlier mod will still be active, and may create unwanted behavior.

 

7) Once a game has been created using those 20 or so major mods, DO NOT add any additional large mods to the game, and DO NOT change the load order of those 20 or so major mods. If you want to install another major mod, you should begin a new game.

 

 

There are certain things which can be done to work around these rules, using wyre bash, but it can be a bit complicated. And there are cetainly some exceptions to the rules, but for the most part, following this should always leave you with things working.