What should I know about load order?

[Dubnoman]

I want to start a new game of Skyrim. I'm giving Skyrim a fresh new start. First, can you reset the play time tracker from Steam? I went up to well over 100 hours, and I'd like to bring that back down to 0 play time tracked. I am going to reinstall the game. Will that do the trick? Will that reset my achievements, too? I wouldn't mind those being reset.

 

Also, what should I know about load order? I never really bothered with that, as I just use NMM. I see a topic on it that is recent, but the thing is, I know nothing about load order. Is there a thread about it someone can link me to, or is there a TES wiki page on it?

 

I was thinking of disabling all my mods and then reinstalling them. Should I uninstall all my mods first, and then reinstall Skyrim, and then reinstall the mods I want?

 

If you are curious as to why I'm doing this, it is because I was playing Skyrim a lot, put it down for awhile and then that ended up being for a couple of months, and I want to start the game again with a new character and start things with a clean slate.

Edited May 1, 2012 by Dubnoman

[stars2heaven]

Im not really sure where to tell you to go but you should learn what load order is if you are going to be using mods. I can give you a small rundown of why it's important though.

 

When two mods change exactly the same thing in the game they will conflict. (because they both changed the same thing) Whichever is loaded by the game last will be the one whose changes actually make it into the game. Sometimes this isn't much of a problem. Maybe they both do the exact same thing to what they change. Maybe they are different though but not so much so that the change is a big deal. For example, maybe they both change the stats of the iron sword. One mod makes it do less damage and the other more. If the mod that loads last is the one that makes them do more damage then the iron sword will do more damage in the game and the conflict isn't a big deal. This is important for you to understand so that you can order your mods in such a way that you get the results that you want.

 

This actually can get much more complex than this though. Maybe you have a mod that changes several things that all need to work as they were intended by the mod author in order for the whole mod to function properly but you have another mod that changes one of those things. Now neither mod works. But you may be able to get both mods working by changing the load order or you may end up trading one buggy mod for another and have no idea what is going on. It all depends on the mods. But it is definitely something you should at least know the basics of and why it is done.

[fms1]

Snip:

This actually can get much more complex than this though. Maybe you have a mod that changes several things that all need to work as they were intended by the mod author in order for the whole mod to function properly but you have another mod that changes one of those things. Now neither mod works. But you may be able to get both mods working by changing the load order or you may end up trading one buggy mod for another and have no idea what is going on. It all depends on the mods. But it is definitely something you should at least know the basics of and why it is done.

 

In this case use Wrye Bash, and in most cases you can merge the 2 mods into the Bashed Patch and they will both work, 1 may still win though, and this doesn't work for every situation, but it's great for this sort of thing.

[Dubnoman]

Alright, thanks, that give me a better idea of load order. I'll check out Wrye Bash.

 

So about this:

 

"Should I uninstall all my mods first, and then reinstall Skyrim, and then reinstall the mods I want?"

 

Is that the order I should do things? I figure there is a right way to do it and some wrong ways to do it.

 

Also, does anybody know the answer to the Steam play time tracking question?

Edited May 1, 2012 by Dubnoman

[fms1]

Wrye Bash is a very advanced mod utility that you can easily get lost in the all the features it has to offer. If you take in as you can you should be fine though. You may also need another such as Nexus Mod Manager, the last I used Wrye Bash was for Oblivion, and there were some mods that other utilities (OBMM) would install easier and more stable, the ones I refer to are the complex animation mods, with multiple options such as Sexy Walk for Oblivion. With both utilities you get the benefits of both, such as installing one of those mods with NMM and then using Wrye Bash to merge the esp. into a bashed patch. Also after a clean install it would be a good thing to make a copy of your Skyrim folder so you should never have to reinstall from scratch if you decide to uninstall a mod or mods that overwrite something important.

And while you have the chance install it somewhere out of Program Files to get away from the UAC problems, install to a place such as (C:)Steam\ blah........

Hope this helps more than it confuses.

 

EDIT: Use BOSS too for load ordering

Edited May 1, 2012 by fms1

[thompsonar]

I don't think you can reset your play time and/or achievements as these are linked to you steam account not the game (if I'm correct). There are some mods that display time during the loading screens. I haven't used or looked at any of them so I don't know if they display game time, real time, time played in current game, or something else but you could look into it.

 

The other posts are right on about the load order though and Wrye Bash. I use boss for the load order and it's really easy. Wrye Bash is another story. I used it years ago with Morrowind and just got it again to use on Skyrim. I was (and still am) pretty clueless on most of it's functions though. It has a good guide though if you go to "help." I have only used it to merge my leveled lists so that I can have lots of weapons and armors integrated into the game. I'm not even positive I did that right, but it seems to be working as far as I can tell.

 

It doesn't matter if you uninstall your mods or the game first. The easiest I think is to uninstall the game then just delete the game folder (which will delete all your mods). Make sure you also delete the folder in your "Documents" folder that has all the ini's as well. CCleaner is a good program to use to uninstall programs as it will find lots of files that are usually left after a typical removal and get rid of them as well. It's free too.

 

After that just reinstall it all.

[fms1]

I don't think you can reset your play time and/or achievements as these are linked to you steam account not the game (if I'm correct). There are some mods that display time during the loading screens. I haven't used or looked at any of them so I don't know if they display game time, real time, time played in current game, or something else but you could look into it.

 

The other posts are right on about the load order though and Wrye Bash. I use boss for the load order and it's really easy. Wrye Bash is another story. I used it years ago with Morrowind and just got it again to use on Skyrim. I was (and still am) pretty clueless on most of it's functions though. It has a good guide though if you go to "help." I have only used it to merge my leveled lists so that I can have lots of weapons and armors integrated into the game. I'm not even positive I did that right, but it seems to be working as far as I can tell.

 

It doesn't matter if you uninstall your mods or the game first. The easiest I think is to uninstall the game then just delete the game folder (which will delete all your mods). Make sure you also delete the folder in your "Documents" folder that has all the ini's as well. CCleaner is a good program to use to uninstall programs as it will find lots of files that are usually left after a typical removal and get rid of them as well. It's free too.

 

After that just reinstall it all.

 

Yes, I'm sure about the Steam account being that way. And about using CCleaner is spot on too, but it's also good to use a HDD sweeper\ cleaner at this time to remove the leftovers from your HDD, from what I've been hearing in other posts.

[Dubnoman]

I forgot to mention I use NMM. So perhaps my best bet is to use BOSS, or should I just go for Wrye Bash and learn how to use it? Also, since I use NMM, should I just uninstall the game and then delete the game folder like someone said I should, or with NMM, should I uninstall all mods via it?

 

An HDD sweeper would be good for when I uninstall the game? Does anyone have an HDD sweeper brand I should use? One that is free. If I go with an HDD sweeper, would I still need CCleaner?

[fms1]

If it works fine (other than game bugs) just uninstall the mods with NMM and delete the saves you don't want by going to your saves folder, not in game (because if you use SKSE it will have a backup for every save in there that the game won't delete, it will have a ess.bak extension where a normal save will just be ess.). NMM is a perfectly alright utility (other than a few minor bugs, due to it still being a Beta), Wrye Bash just has more advanced features for conflicting mods, and to potentially allow you to run more than the max number of esp.'s, which is already an absurd amount (254 plugins). Those cleaners\ sweepers are mentioned just to save potential headaches for uninstall\ reinstall. And I would definitely use BOSS.

[shadowfx78]

NMM, Wyrebash and Boss can all work together to maintain your mods as well as load order.