Playing with or without mods

[DaRTHKiRo]

I have been spending some time modding Skyrim Special Edition and was curious if there is a way for me to play Skyrim, free of mods, without having to get rid of all the modding work?

[3aq]

yes, and quite easily too.. but that is only if you started using MO2 when you started modding.. MO2 leaves your game in pristine condition and isolates every mod in its own separate folder essentially giving you the possibility to do what you're asking.

[BaronofHe11]

You should have used a mod manager before installing mods then you could have just switched profiles.

 

You could copy your data folder. Name the copy something like Data Mod Backup and re download a new Data Folder using the verify integrity option in steam. Then rename the backup back to Data when you want to play a modded game.

[TheWilloughbian]

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4697 Give this a Look.

[thestigma]

The best solution is to use mod organizer. Then you can toggle mods with a click. The trick is that mod organizer, as well as the new Vortex manager uses a virtualized filesystem so they don't actually overwrite files. This makes it a thousand times easier to enable and disable mods without ruining mods you installed previously.

 

In my mind, using one of the two (I prefer MO/MO2 greatly) is essentialy for anyone who want to run more than a small handful of mods. Handling a modlist of 50+ (not to mention a lot more) is a NIGHTMARE otherwise. Trust me when I say that it is well worth the 10 minutes you need to invest in watching a guide video to migrate to mod organizer.

 

Mod organizer also lets you set up profiles that you can swap between with a single click, so you can have a vanilla game, a modded game, and an entirely different set of mods on 3 profiles and switch between running them as fast as you can re-launch the game.