The Big Switch - SSE & Vortex from LE & NMM - 270 mods loaded before start - The Result

[jthrongard]

I am fairly new to Skyrim. I started about 4 months ago when I ran out of mods in Fallout 4 to try. At the time, I had a potato so I went with LE (it was also $10 cheaper at the time). Then I spent the next 3 months SLLLOOOWWWWLY upgrading LE and my rig - all on one character. There were many days of beating my head against the wall because one mod had borked my entire save and I lost 10 hours worth of gameplay due to having to uninstall the mod and revert to a clean (safe) save that would load. Eventually I would get "stable" and proceed until I'd learn about some other mod that could maybe be better than what I had and the process would repeat.

Finally I got to about 350 hours (of recorded game-time - not actually playing due to borked saves) on the one character. All that was left was Rigmor. I enter Fort Black. CTD. Reload. CTD. Reload - get through Fort Black and exit out the back. Walk through the mountain and see a massive Havok bug floating in sky (I think Rigmor's face had stretched to cover the whole sky). CTD. ENOUGH!

I'm about to give up on the whole thing and try modding GTA 5, when I look at the technical requirements for a heavy modded, photorealistic version. I'm not there yet and I'd have to spend about $500 on my PC to get there. After spending 7 months buying a piece here, changing this component there I'm already in $1000+ on playing a $15 game and my wife would like to murder me. SOOOO....

I read that SSE is more stable. Why didn't I get sold on that to begin with? Let's try it.

I decide, new character, new build, why not try Vortex? Hell...why not REALLY test this thing out and see if I can stomach it. So I track every mod I have in LE that is available for SSE. Then I sprinkle in some new ones (Lucien, The Shire, retextures of this and that, Intrigued ENB). Then I download and install each and everyone of them - without loading SSE.

This was 3 days ago - I'm now playing the most stable, beautiful, immersive game I have ever played since I started gaming 35 years ago (it still doesn't look as good as Combat! on C64, jk). In those 3 days I've had only 1 CTD - Because I tried loading SimplyKnock without seeing that it wasn't updated to work with SKSE 2.0.10. Disable SimplyKnock and boooooomshakalaka.

270 mods, 205 plugins (after Wryebash and merge of followers), no crashing. Not ONCE. No stutters, no FPS drops, no infinite load screens. Just a game from 2011 with a bunch of code added by kind-hearted people working for free in basements and it runs like it's like a AAA 2018 game.

Then end result - I can't say that everyone should switch to SSE/Vortex. I'm sure there's still the stubborn group that would rather fight their install for the rest of time. Had I known the true power of the...well you know.

My only regret - not taking before screenshots. The attached shots are without any special screenshot mods or effects. Just straight up gameplay at 2560x1080.

Now can we get a working version of RDO?

TL;DR - Loaded 270 mods without testing into SSE via Vortex - all with highest resolution textures and ultra settings and the thing looks great and is stable.

[Algabar]

Congratulations - looks really good!

 

I'm a great fan of Vortex myself. Glad to see someone else likes it, too. It's good to have another positive view on it here. TBH, I had a similar experience. I'll never go back to "Oldrim" or to another mod manager. ^^

[sopmac45]

Very nice !

 

Also playing SE version and using Vortex and my game settings in Ultra. No hiccups, not a single fps drop ( steady at 60 ), no sttutering and no CTD's. I am using SkyrimENB by the way and running 105 mods only. Not that many but I am very picky with my mods and I lean on quality more than quantity.

[jthrongard]

The eagle-eyed forum user will notice that my screenshots have some bad LOD meshes in my trees. But that's because I discovered that HQ Tree Bark is incompatible with SFO. Again, I didn't read any install instructions, just mass downloaded and installed. The worst that happened was some bad meshes??? I could never go back to Oldrim - not even if Beyond Skyrim or SkyWind or SkyBlivion were all only compatible with Oldrim. Not a chance.

[HadToRegister]

Good to hear a success story.
What did you do in preparation of switching to Vortex?

What steps did you take?
Did you just jump in with both feet, or did you read the FAQS and watch videos about Vortex to get up to speed etc?

[jthrongard]

I tried to import my NMM Oldrim about a week before hand but the problem was SSD space to do it quickly (transferring and importing to HDD and then zipping and moving to SSD was a major pain and not enough room on SSD to do both). So about halfway through the import I realized that each mod would have to be "reinstalled" (technically first install on Vortex) and my Oldrim's install was so fragile that I ran in fear. I thought that I might install just 1 mod with slightly different options that it would crash whatever happened. I should have just gone for it, because honestly it seems like Vortex is helping with stability. I stopped using LOOT about a month ago because I found manual sorts work better (if you use the STEP system for sorting by category and understand how load order works & reading install instructions), but really I haven't had one problem with the load order via Vortex/Loot. I DO wish there was an easier way to manually sort and set rules for that sort order but the automatic is a huge boost to time-saving and frustration.

 

But OTHER than that - I'm not kidding - download, install & add options, enable X 270 - hit the SKSE64 button and I was on my way. Love it and FULLY immersed. I spent last night just hanging out at the Bannered Mare - thank you 3DNPC & Immersive Citizens.

 

Good to hear a success story.
What did you do in preparation of switching to Vortex?

What steps did you take?
Did you just jump in with both feet, or did you read the FAQS and watch videos about Vortex to get up to speed etc?

[Blewstar]

Appreciate your posting as I am returning to Skyrim from the days before DLCs and never finished the game. I have time now due to a permanent injury to spend the time, but I hope not to waste it. I installed MO2 and being told which you confirm to use vortex.. I have a few questions to help me if you would from your experience.

 

1. Where did you load skyrim to? I used default program files x86 when steam was setup. Determining if there is any issues here

2. What were your first patches/mods you setup? Thinking ahead what is best to install first USSEP, SKSE64, SKYui..(these seem to be the common ones - looking for more)

3. Still need to clean the DLCs? that was scary when I first encountered it

4. Is LOOT part of vortex? I installed this in the game folder why I asked about program files x86 location

5. Any other steps you would recommend for a new person. I want to learn so difficulty is not concerning to me, just want to be productive (being efficient)

 

Appreciate your time - Thank You!

[jthrongard]

Appreciate your posting as I am returning to Skyrim from the days before DLCs and never finished the game. I have time now due to a permanent injury to spend the time, but I hope not to waste it. I installed MO2 and being told which you confirm to use vortex.. I have a few questions to help me if you would from your experience.

 

1. Where did you load skyrim to? I used default program files x86 when steam was setup. Determining if there is any issues here

2. What were your first patches/mods you setup? Thinking ahead what is best to install first USSEP, SKSE64, SKYui..(these seem to be the common ones - looking for more)

3. Still need to clean the DLCs? that was scary when I first encountered it

4. Is LOOT part of vortex? I installed this in the game folder why I asked about program files x86 location

5. Any other steps you would recommend for a new person. I want to learn so difficulty is not concerning to me, just want to be productive (being efficient)

 

Appreciate your time - Thank You!

 

1. No, not program files - I installed to an SSD that is separate from my OS.

2. As I said, I did a massive dump of all my mods at once. So USSEP, SKSE64, et. al. were all put in at the same time. Vortex has a little learning curve on how to setup overrides and install order so you'll need to see how to do that.

3. Oh crum, I forgot to mention that I did that. Yes I used SSEEdit to clean all DLC and any dirty mod edits

4. Yes - Loot is set to automatically run. It's still good to have a copy of LOOT just incase you need deeper info on some items.

5. Make sure your rig is solid. I found out before hand that my CPU was bottlenecking my GPU. There's a ton of focus only on GPU for Skyrim but other components can drag that down. Also check out Skyrim Performance Monitor to check if any CTDs might be caused by hardware limitations.

 

Good luck!

[Kraggy]

Appreciate your posting as I am returning to Skyrim from the days before DLCs and never finished the game. I have time now due to a permanent injury to spend the time, but I hope not to waste it.

I'm in pretty much the same position as yourself, I played Skyrim 3 years ago with around 50 mods but never got far and other things dragged me away.

 

Right now I'm planning on re-starting and am in the same OldRim vs. ShinyNewRim as you and many others before, and I greatly appreciate jthrongard's posting his experience, which gives me great hope that this time round I'll spend more time playing than modding. :)

[Transient3292]

Im also in a similar position. Ive reinstalled SE after a long break, and the last time i played was also my first experience with modding. Since that time I've heavily modded other bethesda games, and installing a skyrim setup makes me realize how much ive learned since that time.

 

I also switched from NMM, but I moved to Mod Organizer 2 instead of vortex. Its a great piece of software and gives so much control over your mod installs.