Sorting and Organizing Saved Files

[musicalfrog7]

The more I progress with my main orc gal and draw close to a point in her story where I want to make a new character, the more I begin to feel intimidated by how the save system treats different characters. That is, different character saves are all jumbled and mashed together and there is absolutely no organization to it. :confused:

 

I have seen some mods that cover this but I have no idea if they are good and many of them either seem complicated to use, not recently updated, and do the organization all out of game.

 

I take it no one had found a way to alter the actual in game screen into sorting different characters for you?

 

What do you guys do to organize your saves? Do you use a mod or do you use some sort of sorting in game or through folders?

 

I need your help and tips!

[stabbykitteh]

I never understood why there isn't a built-in way to manage multiple characters in these games (looking at you too, Fallout 3 / NV). Maybe most people only play one character so it's not worth it to the devs, I dunno... To answer your question, I use folders with a text file to list associated mods for each set of saves. Not the most efficient method, but it works.

[fms1]

I use Wrye Bash, it mainly functions similar to NMM, but also has a saves tab for managing saves (and even tells what mods you had active with each save). This however is not done in game, and can be a little overwhelming, but a very powerful utility indeed.

[musicalfrog7]

I really want to use Wyre Bash. I really really do. But it requires you to have Skyrim installed somewhere other than your Program Files and I'm not re-installing my game just to be able to use it. That sounds like a major headache.

 

I've been thinking of doing the sorting by folders thing but have no idea how that would work in game. Do you switch out which folders you use depending on who you want to play as?

[Rabbit1251]

You probably already know this, but I will mention it in passing anyway.

 

Open your console.

Type "save name" (name can be any word that you want it to be, i.e. character name).

If name is two words then enclose them in quotation marks, i.e. save "John Smith".

Close your console.

 

This is what I use to organize all of my many character saves.

 

 

Rabbit

[AnkhAscendant]

Honestly the only way I manage save files is scroll and hover :P That is to say I mostly don't. I just remember the numbers. For instance, 157 is my right-before-char-gen save for skipping the wagon ride, 13something is my Altmer thief's last save, and my main character is whatever the latest save is (and 156 is his latest save before installed any mods, so it's also my clean save). But then, as you see, I only have a few to remember. It would be nice if they all had the character name appended to them by the game engine, but it doesn't inconvenience me terribly not to have it.

[OakRain]

I keep all my different character saves in separate folders on a spare HDD.Each folder is named after the character in question.

 

When I am about to start a new game I will empty the entire game save folder so that each new character starts with save #1.

 

When ever I want to play an old character I move that character's saves back to the save folder.Basically I only keep the saves of a single character (current game) in the default save folder.

 

I ought to add I keep Steam in off-line mode and do not use the Steam Cloud for storage.I also use Wrye Bash to make sure the correct list of mods is loaded for each character.

[LufiaGuy2000]

When you create a character, if you name your character, then add ", Hi" after your character's name, it shows the save as "Hi, (location)" instead of just "Location". Just throwing this out here :smile: This is how I separate my Mage char from the others, the name is "Faren, Mage" and the save name will show "Mage, Skyrim". :D

Edited June 13, 2014 by LufiaGuy2000

[OozyGorilla]

You probably already know this, but I will mention it in passing anyway.

 

Open your console.

Type "save name" (name can be any word that you want it to be, i.e. character name).

If name is two words then enclose them in quotation marks, i.e. save "John Smith".

Close your console.

 

This is what I use to organize all of my many character saves.

 

 

Rabbit

This is how I do it. I also use Mod Organizer which has the same feature as Wyre Bash where you can view the character names of saves and mods associated with that save. As far as I'm aware, it doesn't require the game to be installed somewhere else (though it is recommended) like Wyre Bash does.

[Capncrass]

You probably already know this, but I will mention it in passing anyway.

 

Open your console.

Type "save name" (name can be any word that you want it to be, i.e. character name).

If name is two words then enclose them in quotation marks, i.e. save "John Smith".

Close your console.

 

This is what I use to organize all of my many character saves.

 

 

Rabbit

 

Necro-reply, I know, but:

 

That's the method I use, as well, and you can get pretty fancy with it. For example, I have two characters that I play, as well as keeping a few "break point" saves (right before character creation is the main one) and separate "general purpose" saves for stress testing any mods or dinking around "out of character". To keep them all nice and organized, I use a 3-character prefix for all but the general purpose ones. I use zzzExampleSave for one character, yyyExampleSave for the other, 000ExampleSave for the break points, and just ExampleSave for the general purpose ones. I'll also name the save what I'm up to at that point so I can remember what I was doing later on, and I'll use numbers to keep consecutive saves in chronological order (zzzBleakFalls01, zzzBleakFalls02, etc.).

 

This allows you to tell at a glance what a save is about, even in your Saves folder (where the in-game information like location and character name don't show up). Makes it really easy to differentiate between "junk" save files (zzzWhereAreMyPants) and important ones (zzzJoiningStormcloaks).