Mods and Saves

[Stemin]

So I haven't actually used any mods except for one that I made to test the creation kit in which I made a reference of a single object and attempted to manipulate it (unsuccessfully). But I'm attempting to play a "complete" character to level 81 and along the way I'm thinking of all sorts of things I'd like to fix that might just be general bugs or change, such as having NPC's that just sort of disappear from the game (Eisa Blackthorn for example) or sit idle after you've helped them (Anska) become followers, and just in general creating some personal mods that I may or may not share with the public at some point.

 

I'm wondering if anyone whose been modding a long time has any good advice on saves and mods and how they work together. I haven't yet made any hard saves when I have my mod active, but there have been some autosaves made and I get the message about files or items no longer existing when loading the save without the mod. It seems there's a potential here to really damage or mutate your current game conditions if enough changes are made.

 

I'm guessing the answer to the question is to create a new save for working with the mod and using the console commands to level your character and create scenarios for debugging.

 

But I do see a lot of people updating their mods, and of course there are the official patches from Bethesda, so I was hoping there were some rules to follow that I might learn before getting into too much trouble with my save files?

[Cyberlazy]

Morrowind had some bad problems with enabling/disabling mods midgame that could result in massive item duplication IIRC.

 

That said, it seems to have been fixed in oblivion and fallout and I can only assume skyrim. Fallout has been very good about not messing up when you disable mods as long as they don't excessively change cell the player is in when the save was made.

[jet4571]

with modding NPC's you will get quite used to using console commands to refresh the AI from the esp rather than the save. some info is stored in the save and some in the esp so when you are changing things allot to perfect them you will need to refresh them when you make changes. I always use the resurrect command on them. it reloads from the esp everything except quest related or follower status as long as you dont include the 1.

 

General rule of thumb is use a clean save when modding and testing the mod. Also dont have other mods installed except texture replacers and mods that your mod is dependent on. you can use tgm for god mode and coc to fast travel to the new location and not worry about console commands to up the player's stats. once you feel that it works fine with vanilla, go ahead and load all your mods back to test some more.

 

For a clean save I make it then put it in a new folder for safekeeping and have another folder for the play saves to be backed up in. I then backup my plugin order text file (name and location in the load order and you sticky thread). when i go to test my mods i move all my saves to the backup folder and copy and paste the clean unmodded one into the main save folder. start the game with the launcher and remove all the mods except the test one and its dependancy mods and play the game.

 

when i am finished i just delete the new auto saves, put my old play saves back where they belong, and replace the load order with the original. takes but a minute to do and when restarting the game it is exactly how it was when I left off.