What the Heck Is All This Stuff?
A Newbie-Friendly Guide to Bethesda Modding Minutiae
By angrmgmt00
v1.5 – 10JAN19
Welcome
Welcome to the wide, wild, and wacky world of Skyrim modification! You’re either just starting out, have modified your game already and gotten stuck with a problem, or just had a hunger for more knowledge. You might just want to refresh yourself after coming back from a long break. We’re all friends here!
The guide is written to introduce someone brand-new to modding Bethesda games to all the ideas and concepts necessary to understand the all-important “WHY”, the unspoken question that often goes unanswered in all the “WHAT” and “HOW” that usually gets posted. A fair bit of those here, too, but what can you do? It’s the nature of the beast. There will also be little tidbits of Skyrim modding history throughout the guide, which I hope enriches the experience. I’ll also provide a list of references for information so that you can do your own research if you’d like! I’ll try to provide links to everything I talk about, wherever possible. Finally, this guide is mainly targeted at Skyrim VR, but much of the info here applies to all Bethesda games; conversely it is also from my own reading and experiences so please apply at least one grain of salt when taking it.
Note: This guide will not cover topics considered to be “advanced”, as there are already great guides here at /r/skyrimvr and elsewhere for such things, and because for VR some of them are still not working or optimized properly (because mods are technically not supported for the VR version of the game). This includes anything other than an overview of cleaning and basic conflict resolution in xEdit, the use of deferred rendering (ENB), setting up new/customized animations, or complicated (and sometimes frowned-upon) processes such as repackaging groups of mods. It also will not provide in-depth information or guidance on any specific topic; rather, it will be an “in-depth introduction” to the broad topic of modding Bethesda games.
A bit about me, just for fun: I’m a PhD student studying electrical engineering, so gaming time is precious and scant. I’ve been playing modded Bethesda games since Oblivion (and I went back to try my hand at Morrowind, too). I didn’t really get into modding seriously until Skyrim, but I have built a couple dozen (varying degrees of) successful load orders for Skyrim, Skyrim Special Edition, and Skyrim VR, as well as several for Fallout 4 since then. I’ve taken every available opportunity to learn since I got serious, so I’ve collected a decent sum of community knowledge, which I’d like to share with all of you!
Contents
There is a lot here, so please use these links and the “To the Top” links to get around the guide quickly. Also, don’t be shy of Ctrl-F (find)!
Troubleshooting and Conflict Resolution
First, we’ll start by defining a list of terms, abbreviations, acronyms (and initialisms), and common parlance that you’ll see here and elsewhere when reading about mods for Skyrim. I put it in a somewhat sensible order that isn’t alphabetical, but isn’t by order of appearance, either. Good luck!
Vanilla (Skyrim) – The base game, without any modification, now typically inclusive of the DLC (since about the time the Special Edition came out, if not slightly before).
Oldrim – A portmanteau of “Old” and “Skyrim”, referring to the Legendary Edition of the game (i.e. pre-Special Edition, but also typically inclusive of the DLC at this point).
(S)SE – An initialism for the Special Edition of Skyrim.
Mod – A game modification package, designed to do one of a number of things to the game, such as add new content, change gameplay, modify visuals, change the UI, and so on. The mod may or may not contain plugin files, asset files, readmes, installer images, and so on.
Mod Manager – A program used to manage, install, organize, and interact with mods.
Load Order (LO) – The order in which plugin files are loaded at the time the game starts.
Priority – A mod’s priority determines the order in which a mod manager will load its content. In some circles, this is referred to as “install order”; that term can be confusing however, since it can also be used literally as in “the order in which you install the mods”.
Overwrite – When used as a verb, it means overwriting (replacing) files. When used as a noun, it can describe the place a mod manager stores files generated by mods while running the game.
(File System) Virtualization – The process by which mod managers “protect” your Data directory and simulate dumping all your mods there. Basically, it makes your game data look like your mod manager’s file setup as far as the game is concerned. Also referred to in noun form as a Virtual File System (VFS).
Archive – A compressed file, storing the information of one or more files. These come in different flavors, such as ZIP/7Z/RAR files which the OS can recognize (with the right software/OS version), and BSA files, which are made for Bethesda games.
NexusMods – This is probably where you will get mods. There are other sites (AFKMods, LoversLab, modDB, CurseForge, and so on), but this one has some of the best features (especially after the redesign) and is home to almost all the most popular mods.
Creation Club (CC) – Bethesda’s answer to the popularity of modding. ‘Nuff said.
Cathedral Modding (Paradigm) – This refers to a paradigm of mod authorship that boils down to mods being a joint effort amongst the community, much like the building of a cathedral. It essentially says “Please everyone, contribute and enjoy. Share and share alike. We’re all in this together. If I can’t work on it anymore, someone else can pick it up.”
Parlor Modding (Paradigm) – The opposite paradigm to Cathedral modding, this essentially says “Come to my parlor and see what I’ve made. Feel free to look at and enjoy it as that is why I made it, but it is mine and mine alone. If I kick everyone out, I’d best not see anyone back in here.” Please note that these two views are included simply for completeness’ sake, and I am not suggesting anyone follow one or the other. Each has some merit, as evidenced by the fact that many people will naturally gravitate toward one or the other. Google the terms and you will find plenty of viewpoints on the whole split.
Mod Organizer (2) (MO(2)) – A popular mod management tool originally created by Tannin (Tannin42 on Nexus), who has since joined development of Vortex. The original MO is now deprecated, but MO2, despite Tannin’s leaving, is still in active development by the Mod Organizer Team (represented by LePresidente on Nexus) at GitHub. This is my preferred mod manager.
Vortex – A newer, oft-misunderstood mod manager hosted and distributed by NexusMods. It is the spiritual successor to Nexus Mod Manager, and the brainchild of Tannin and Nexus’ own Robin Scott (DarkOne on Nexus). As you might guess, it’s tightly integrated with NexusMods. I’ve not used it yet.
Nexus Mod Manager (NMM) – An older, yet widely popular mod manager, by Robin Scott. While still serviceable, this one is probably now best left as a warm memory, despite still being in active development at GitHub. I will say that it certainly provides an intuitive and streamlined experience, and I used it exclusively for Fallout 4 modding because it perfectly suited my modding needs for that game.
Wrye Bash – Once the mightiest of mod managers, and still a great overall tool for modding Bethesda games, this fine beast (created by WrinklyNinja, and represented by lojack on NexusMods) is now typically relegated only to the creation of the “Bashed Patch”, despite still being in active development on GitHub.
xEdit – The stand-in name for some of the coolest, highest-class tools for Bethesda modding in existence, created by the wizard Elminster (ElminsterAU on Nexus). Simply replace the ‘x’ with an initialism for the Bethesda game you want to play, and you’ll have the tool you need. In our case, x = TES5VR, making our tool of choice ‘TES5VREdit’. We’ll have a whole section on xEdit later. This is also in active development on GitHub.
Installer – A file designed to install other files, placing them in specified locations for predictable future access. These exist for most of the tools you’ll use but can also exist for mods! (Ex. BAIN or FOMOD)
Standalone – A term describing software not included as part of another program.
Engine – The enormous mountain of code responsible for driving every event, interaction, bit of data, audio clip, and pixel on the screen. This is what calls up all the various files for textures, checks against references in plugins and their masters, and ties together all the base elements and things we’ll add in mods to present the overall game experience.
Renderer – The part of the engine responsible for passing graphics data to the video card to be drawn to the screen (or in our case, the HMD). A deferred renderer takes that data, performs some modification to it (like changing lighting values), and passes it on to be displayed just as if it were the game itself.
Plugin – Referring specifically to plugins for the game, these define all the various relationships of the elements of the game. For example, Hadvar is wearing Imperial Armor, has an Iron Sword, and is friendly to the player; each of those things (and more) is defined by a plugin. What loot does that bandit have? A plugin has that info. At what player level does the Dawnguard campaign start? Plugin. You hopefully get the idea. One more note: the game (and just about any tools used for it) will load no more than 256 (numbered 0 – 255D or 0 – FFH) of these, inclusive. An exception exists for ESL extensions.
Master (Plugin) – These are the top-level plugins, which define what “stuff” can be in the game, and which other plugins reference when looking up what to put where and under what conditions. The stuff in the base game, all the DLC, and any Updates are contained in master plugin files.
Script – A segment of code telling the engine what to do, how often and when.
Meshes – You can think of these like wireframes defining the shapes of people, places, and items in the game.
Textures – Images designed to be projected onto meshes, which come in many varieties. Just about anything you can see in game has a texture with which it is associated. They come in varying sizes, which can be thought to describe the amount of detail in terms of image, normal map, and specular map resolution. (ex. 2048x1024x512 has a 2048-pixel2 base texture, 1024-pixel2 normal map, and 512-pixel2 specular map)
Normal Map – A file defining the surface normal at every point in the texture file. What is that? Go to a flat, grassy field and stick a pencil in straight down, eraser-first. The pencil has now become your surface normal! This is important for drawing lighting and shadows on textures, as it tells the renderer what angle the surface is relative to the light source.
Specular Map – A file defining the “shininess” at every point in the texture file. Let’s keep it simple and just give an example of a sword texture with a shiny blade, and a dull leather handle.
Level of Detail (LOD) – This refers to the idea that when something is far away, we don’t need to show it in 4k gloriously-rendered 3D detail. In fact, we can use a set of 2D images with increasing levels of detail for decreasing distances.
Billboard – This is the name for those 2D images used in LOD.
Skeleton – No, not the monster. No, not that pile of bones on the ground, either. We’re talking about the animated, poseable frame for the player character and NPC’s. This is important if you want to add different types of animations or different scabbards, sheathes, and other attachment points for your character and/or NPC’s.
Form – A specific place, person, creature, item, etc. in the game. You’ll see this in the context of xEdit.
Record - An instance of a form in a plugin (including the base game plugins).
Field – A piece of information pertaining to a given record. Examples include things like the name or weight of a piece of gear.
Override – Referring to records and their fields, a single change to the default contained in the master file which is included by design in a plugin.
Conflict – In the context of xEdit, an override featuring 3 or more plugins, at least one of which is a master. These can be completely benign (and intended) but can often be the source of a problem in-game. If something isn’t showing up the way you expect, a conflict is very likely the culprit. In the context of mod manager, files in conflict mean that one file will overwrite another at runtime. Again, this can be perfectly acceptable, but might be the reason Ralof (or whoever) looks funny.
Identical to Master (ITM) – This concept is better explained in the xEdit documentation, but briefly it means that you have overrides (or conflicts) which return a record (or at least one of its fields) to the default value specified by the master file referenced, despite other plugins providing non-ITM changes.
FormID – The base form identifier for a person, place, or thing in game. This does not consider any sort of context whatsoever; basically the “fresh out of the box” feel.
RefID – The current reference identifier for a person, place, or thing in game, taking context and world state into account. This is typically the one you want to target with console commands.
Navigation Mesh (Navmesh) – This is a set of points creating a “grid” (mesh network) that tells NPC’s where they are and are not able to go by defining all the boundaries and paths available. If these get messed up, you will have problems (ranging from hilarious to infuriating all the way to game-breaking).
(Graphical) User Interface ((G)UI) – This should be well-known, but in case you’ve not seen it before, it’s simply the presentation and point of interaction for a system. In game, this comprises the menus, popups to pick up items or interact with objects, and other things like that.
Heads Up Display (HUD) – The part of the UI that shows pertinent info at a glance (so you can keep your “head up” instead of having to “look down” at a menu or other such panel). Things like your health, stamina, and magicka bars, the compass, widgets, and that sort of thing fit in here.
Widget – A handy condensed info item in the HUD. To my knowledge, these are yet to be well-understood in Skyrim VR, as there have been changes to how the UI is displayed. Previously, mods could add these to show active effects on the player, hunger/thirst, warmth level, time information, and so on at a glance.
Mod Configuration Menu (MCM) – This is an in-game GUI mod configuration editor, which allows you to view and change mod settings in-game. In Skyrim, this was rolled up into SkyUI (a UI mod) early on, but in other Bethesda games, like the Fallout series, it is offered as a standalone mod.
Crash to Desktop (CTD) – Our worst nightmare. The game locks up and the next thing you know, you’re staring at your desktop wallpaper. Usually caused by the game trying to load files it shouldn’t (incorrect meshes tend to cause this problem most often), but sometimes this is just the age of the engine showing as it tries to load too many files.
Infinite Loading Screen (ILS) – Our second worst nightmare. The game is trying to load the next area (inside, outside, next level of the dungeon, etc.) and there you sit, learning about Skyrim’s UI and controls, its flora and fauna, the Jarls, and the great Emperors of Tamriel (some of this info is from mods, such as Lore-Based Loading Screens). Nice, but not why we’re playing the game, is it? The reason for this is usually some sort of script loop that can’t exit, an inability to find a specified file (or script), or something related to display of landscapes or LOD (when exiting a place). There’s no way for the game to report to you why this happens, but some tools can occasionally help you identify the cause.
There are several different file types that can be included with any given mod, and this list will cover the main types you’ll likely see in your modding adventures.
Elder Scrolls Master (*.esm) – These are the master plugin files mentioned above. The base load order, with no mods, consists of only these six files:
in that order. Any additional masters will load immediately after these, in the order you specify in your mod manager… or in the plugins.txt and loadorder.txt files you tediously edited manually without one. Use a mod manager, folks!
Elder Scrolls Plugin (*.esp) – These modify the original “stuff” in the game and how it relates to all the other “stuff” in the game. The bulk of any load order, and the workhorse of modding. These plugins load last.
Elder Scrolls Light Master (*.esl) – Also known as “light masters” or “light plugins”, depending on the contents, these are relatively new, lightweight plugins, which load along with masters, but in a larger memory space (FExxx). They were introduced by SSE v1.5.3. The most important thing to know: these don’t take up a plugin slot! (on PC, XB1 users don’t gain this benefit)
Bethesda Software Archive (*.bsa) – A compressed storage file designed by Bethesda to be used in conjunction with a plugin to store the asset files necessary for the plugin to work. Arthmoor (of Unofficial Patch fame) suggests to never unpack these, but we won’t tell if you decide loose files are more your flavor. :)
Bethesda Archive 2 (*.ba2) - Electric Boogaloo.
Textures (*.dds) – Textures will have at least one of the following types of files:
Meshes (*.nif) – Hopefully defined well enough in Terminology. :)
Papyrus Executable (*.pex) – The compiled version of a Papyrus script, used to provide additional scripting to the game at runtime via SKSE, and which make up the bulk of the base scripts for the game as seen in the Creation Kit. These are in a binary format that is unreadable in a text editor, but there are tools that can “decompile” them.
Papyrus Source Code (*.psc) – The source code file for a PEX file, which is human-readable, and thus editable. Changes to these will need to be recompiled to PEX to be used in-game.
Waveform Audio File (*.wav) – A raw (uncompressed) audio file format, used by Skyrim to play sounds and music in-game.
Initialization Files (*.ini) – These are text files in use since probably just after the dawn of computing (in conjunction with .cfg files). They are like an in-game menu for selecting settings, except they’re interacted with outside the game. While mods feature these occasionally, the SkyrimPrefs.ini and SkyrimCustom.ini (which overrides values in SkyrimVR.ini) files are the main two you’ll probably edit. /r/skyrimvr has a fantastic collaborative guide for a wide variety of settings adjustments.
Configuration Files (*.cfg) – These are like INI files, in that they are text option configuration files. You’ll occasionally see these with mods. Often (with SkyUI installed) you’ll be able to configure settings in these files via the MCM.
Dynamic-Linked Library (*.dll) – This is a general-purpose library of operations, allowing code to instruct the computer’s processor to do something different than it normally could in a given context. An example specific to Skyrim VR is SKSEVR, which allows the game engine access to a huge variety of scripting options not available at runtime by default.
Shockwave Flash (*.swf) – These files allow new elements (such as UI windows and widgets) to be rendered to the screen and interacted with. Scaleform UI development came and went in the video game industry, and honestly, “swf” doesn’t even stand for Shockwave Flash anymore, after some legal issues with that company, but Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Numerous tools exist for modding. We’ll cover the essentials and a couple of extras here, in what I feel is the order of importance to guide you.
To ensure your experience is as good as possible, it’s recommended that you use a mod manager program at a minimum. The reason for this is the VFS, a feature of all modern mod managers. Without that, you will otherwise have to place all your mods’ files directly in the Skyrim Data directory, which then necessarily overwrite your base data files installed with the game. If everything goes okay, this is not really a problem, but if for any reason you decide to uninstall a mod, you will have to verify your game files using Steam (or restore a backed-up version, if you had good foresight) to get the originals back for the game to work. Not impossible, but not much fun, either. Furthermore, without one you cannot easily detect any file conflicts, which for load orders with more than a handful of plugins, can cause CTD.
Additional benefits are numerous. Virtualization and file conflict detection aside, depending on your manager of choice, you can have granular control over which files are included in the game from a group of mods. For example, if you like all of the creatures in “Mod A” except the wolves, which you like better from “Mod B”, you can set the priority of “Mod B” above (before) that of “Mod A” and hide its files (in MO2) for wolves, allowing those from “Mod B” to appear in game whenever you see a wolf. This is not impossible without a manager, but it requires more foresight and fiddling.
The ability to run other tools (like LOOT, FNIS, xEdit, etc.) from the mod manager using VFS means that you can get all the benefit of those tools on your modded LO. This has been standard practice since the at least the Oldrim modding days. This takes a little setup, but fortunately there is already great documentation for all the popular mod managers to explain how to do it.
Typically, mod managers separate downloads, plugins, and mods (with or without plugins as appropriate) so that each can be viewed independently. Further, this allows you re-download, re-install, and enable/disable mods/plugins at will directly from the manager. Some managers give more information or options for handling them, and some give less information and options to provide a more streamlined experience. For example, NMM has a very simple, intuitive interface where downloads and installs are at the bottom (while fresh), mods are in the main right-hand tab, and plugins are in the left-hand tab. There is no option to sort the mods (they’re alphabetical), but you can sort the plugins by hand. In contrast, Mod Organizer 2 shows downloads, archives, the data directory as it stands with your current LO and installed mods, your save files, and the LO In the right pane, all installed mods (enabled or disabled) in the left pane, and allows you to drill into the mod to hide/show mods’ files to the game at startup, indicating file conflicts in a dedicated tab in the mod’s properties window, select between multiple Optional ESP’s and so on. Furthermore, NMM will ask you to overwrite files of the same name during install, whereas MO2 will install both, and use the priority to determine which files are loaded at runtime.
Another handy feature is categorization/grouping that you can do within certain managers. For example, MO2 now offers the ability to make a separator (which is effectively a blank mod), and all of them allow you to either import categories from NexusMods or define your own. This allows you to organize groups of mods affecting similar things like NPC’s, Weapons and Armor, Landscape, Immersion, etc.
One final nice feature is distinct profiles. Having profiles for different playthroughs, a base profile, a base + landscape + lighting profile, and so on, can make it very easy to test, and help keep you organized. Further, some managers allow you to set your saves on a per-profile basis, preventing you from accidentally trying to load a game with XYZ mods baked into the save, without them enabled.
Preference reigns supreme when it comes to mod managers, but you should definitely use one.
As mentioned earlier, this is a very powerful tool, and deserves a lofty place in any serious modder’s toolkit. Elminster created this tool back in the Oblivion days because a group of mods he installed weren’t playing nicely together (a fact I learned in the xEdit Discord!) It has grown to support all Bethesda games (including Skyrim VR with the appropriate command line argument ‘-tes5vr’) and is invaluable for ensuring that mods work together to give you the experience for which you’ve installed them.
One of the best things you can do with xEdit is to filter your plugins to show conflicts. This applies a filter to show only conflicted records and will show you exactly which fields are in conflict, and which plugins are providing the conflicting data. It has a very thorough color-coding system (background and foreground color) to indicate what overrides what, among other things. This allows you to identify troublesome records, and to create Conflict Resolution (CR) patches to stitch everything together nicely.
Another nice thing you can do with it is clean ITM references and undelete deleted references. Many of the problems with these two issues have been suitably solved in SSE, and since SVR uses SSE as a base, this is becoming a thing of the past. However, some mods may still require or benefit from having a look-see.
There are numerous guides for using xEdit, but I’ll link three of the best of them I’ve found here:
A final note on xEdit: If you’ve used this tool for any reason in the past and it has made your modding experience better, you really should consider donating or becoming a patron on Patreon for this project. Elminster (not to mention the rest of the team) has done amazing work for free (and the occasional Flattr donation, shyly tucked away in the bottom right corner of the program) and would now like to move to developing xEdit full-time, meaning new features, regular bugfixes, and continued support for the tool. This isn’t feasible without many of the 100k+ endorsers (for TES5Edit alone) on Nexus donating a small amount of their monthly income. If everyone pledged, we could pay back a tiny fraction of what he has given us all and help enable continued awesomeness. I’m a poverty-stricken grad student with a family and a cat and I’ve pledged $1/month; what’s your excuse?
LOOT (created by WrinklyNinja to replace BOSS and maintained by a team of devs on GitHub) is a very smartly-designed, but not perfect or in any way fire-and-forget tool in our toolkit that is used to double-check the load order and ensure that conflicts are minimized, records are created before they are modified, necessary patches are installed, and xEdit cleaning/undeleting is all done before we load the game. It does all this by checking your plugins against a “Masterlist”, which is hand-updated and maintained as mods are added and tested. A very intricate system of rules for checking mods against one another is in place, and there are even features for tie-breaking in the case that it can’t figure out which should go first from masters and context alone. Unless you are following a very detailed, prescriptive guide (like AerowynX’s awesome guide here in /r/skyrimvr), you’ll probably want to give this a go before loading the game after installing mods to ensure that you’ve not missed any patches, and that things load in the “correct” order. You’ll also want to circle back after it runs to double-check that it didn’t make a mistake. There are literally thousands upon thousands of mods, and LOOT does not know your LO like you do (should…).
There are some handy built-in tools you can use to help it out in this regard, however. The first of these is User Metadata. Editing User Metadata allows you to indicate that one plugin should be loaded after another plugin, or to set a global load order “weight”, among other things. Another such tool is the newer Mod Groups tool, which allows you to create groups of mods that should load at a specific time during startup, relative to other groups of mods in the LO. To assign a mod to a Mod Group, you use the User Metadata editor and select the appropriate group from the drop-down list.
So, you’ve got your load order all put together, everything is modded to the hilt (even the hilts, why not) and you’re ready to roll. Why do the trees look different far away than they do up close? Why does Whiterun’s wall texture just change suddenly on approach, multiple times? Why don’t I get any of those cool weapons I put in chests? How come the ladies (fellas) don’t do their sexy walks/poses? The solution to these problems is a group of awesome tools known collectively as dynamic patchers, so-called because they patch the game based on a changing (dynamic) list of assets.
DynDOLOD (created by Sheson, sheson on NexusMods) handles LOD for distant objects dynamically… hence the name (Dynamic Distant Object LOD). It does this by using provided billboards (or some tools that can generate billboards for you), so keep an eye out for these if you’re downloading landscape or architecture mods.
Fore’s New Idles in Skyrim (FNIS) (by fore on NexusMods) applies animations not provided by the base game. This typically requires a skeleton mod.
The Bashed Patch (created using Wrye Bash) handles leveled lists, which are lists of items appearing on dead enemies and in containers. When you add a bunch of new gear and/or items to the game, it’s not sure what to give you at what times in the playthrough by default. The Bashed Patch rectifies this by checking the records for these items for DELEV (remove) and RELEV (add) tags and the values associated with them, generating a new list of loot available for the game to choose from to reward the player for killin’ and takin’, appropriate to the player’s level (or the de-leveled world). It also acts on a couple other minor things, and give you access to some game options that are out of the way otherwise.
There are other such tools, but these are the three you’re most likely to encounter. If you do any de-leveling of the world or add additional spawns, you’ll need to look the tools for those up.
These tools are all run from within your mod manager, so that they see your setup as-is.
This is where you get yourself unstuck from inside that wall, fix stuck/bugged quests, give yourself a million cheese wheels, or whatever. There is a whole guide on the UESP wiki about it, so please avail yourself of that.
This is the official development kit for additional content in Skyrim, which you can get via Steam Library - Tools, or from the Bethesda Launcher. The main reason you as a mod user will use it for SVR is to update Oldrim mods from Form 43 to Form 44. There are already guides on how to do this, so I’ll just link to a few of those.
A few years back, a fellow came into the Skyrim modding scene by the name of mator on reddit and matortheeternal on NexusMods and GitHub. He brought fresh ideas and a new way of looking at how we use mods together and applied his obvious intellect to xEdit and other supporting tools. We ended up with a group of new tools, beloved by many, accepted by most, ignored by some, and despised by a small group of legit haters. You should have no trouble looking for more info on that history if you want, as he and his supporters and detractors were very vocal in all the usual places.
In terms of tools, there are some great ones, some good ones, and some that may or may not have been necessary (see above history). Regardless of your stance on this, for better or worse, we now have:
Personally, I’m an avid supporter, but I understand and respect the opinion of those who are not. The arguments range from insane to very compelling on both sides, and it really is one of the juiciest dramas the scene has seen since the introduction of the Cathedral/Parlor paradigm split.
A tool created by jonwd7 (creator of NifSkope). As labeled on the tin, BAE allows you to extract bsa and ba2 files to get at the files inside. This can be very handy if you need to edit some of the files inside (ex. updating an Oldrim mod to SE), or if you prefer loose files. Arthmoor strongly advises against this because ESP files are designed to be used with BSA’s, but the fact that you can do it means at least some will. I advise being very careful mentioning this if you ask for help with a mod you’ve done this to, as you could risk an argument or a straight-up deletion of your comments from NexusMods page.
Created by ousnius, SSE introduced a much-needed new compression scheme for models (both meshes and textures), and many Oldrim mod files didn’t use it. In fact, some ported SSE mods are not using it! If you’re worried about this, or if you have poor performance only when certain models are loaded, or if a guide directs you to do so, you might want to use this tool to fix your meshes and textures. Check out the description on NexusMods, without a doubt.
Before we get into how to pick mods, there is one that you really can’t do without: Arthmoor and team’s Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch (and the SkyrimVR USSEP Fixes)[1]. This mod has been a dependency of other mods for so many years, that its use is now compulsory; aside from that it offers a very detailed revision of many small bugs and inconsistencies throughout the game, some of which can cause CTD!
There are basically two ways to choose mods: browse and select them one-by-one (for example, check the top 100 or so mods on NexusMods and pick your faves), or follow a guide. These can also be combined once you get your chops! Personally, I’m a fan of comprehensive guides, because they generally cover every piece of the game (so that you don’t have, for example, gorgeous textures everywhere except that fugly bowl of soup because you forgot or didn’t know you needed to mod it), and often provide some level of introduction and/or instruction as to how to use some of the other tools. Legendary examples from vanilla and SE include the Skyrim Total Enhancement Project (STEP), Skyrim Revisited: Legendary Edition (SR:LE), Lexy’s Legacy of the Dragonborn (LotD) Special Edition (a revision and expansion of the older DarthMathias SR:LE Extended LotD guide), and for VR of course, we have the great guides on /r/skyrimvr by Cangar, RallyEator, and AerowynX, specifically for our version of the game.
When picking mods à la carte, it is important that you keep compatibility with your other mods in mind. Most mods with any possible issues in that regard will have information in their descriptions on NexusMods and may even feature their own patches. A fan or other author who uses those mods may have made an “Unofficial” patch for compatibility too, worth a search on NexusMods. If not, you might need to create the necessary patches yourself, so keep that in mind when selecting multiple mods that change the same type of thing, or if you have very large mods (ex. LotD, Morrowloot Ultimate (MLU), Organized Bandits in Skyrim (OBIS), and stuff like that). Furthermore, you may need to convert them to the new plugin format (if they’re Oldrim mods) or optimize textures to make use of the features added in later versions of the game. Definitely read the description page, check the list of files, and perhaps even read the last handful or two of posts and any bug reports on NexusMods.
When using a guide, depending on its quality, it will either simply not have noticeable conflicts, it will detail how to resolve conflicts, or it will have some but make no mention of them and leave you to your own devices (yuck). Guides can be of any quality, so be sure to look for this kind of thing when following one, as it’s a very good indicator. Additional indicators are obvious intention-driven formatting, links to the mods on their Nexus page (as authors should get views and downloads, AND endorsements for their work), and a section that either says “This guide assumes familiarity with modding…” or an introduction to some subset of the tools mentioned above. Further, guide formats can be broadly categorized into two groups: prescriptive or suggestive. A prescriptive guide may offer some options, but for the most part it will prescribe a very particular set of mods, install options, priority, and/or settings. A suggestive guide will usually suggest that you install this or that, or that these mods work well together, or even just present a list of mods that the author thinks are cool, but will leave much of the decision-making process up to you. Both formats can be of any quality, so caveat emptor (“buyer beware”).
If you use a guide as a base and install additional mods on top of it (my usual process), all the prior warnings apply regarding conflicts and general compatibility. Profiles come in very hand for this type of thing, as does frequent testing during installation. You know what else comes in handy? Reading the mods’ descriptions.
The first step when installing a mod is to read the description on the mod’s page. I also like to read about a dozen or so of the most recent posts, and any bug reports while the file is downloading, but you do you. The importance of this step cannot be overstated. If you don’t do this, and you run into problems, you have only yourself to blame. Read the description.
With that out of the way, one of the biggest mistakes people make when installing a big ol’ mod wad is to just dump all of them in, run their favorite tools, and jump into the game headfirst. Why? Maybe they’ve had success with this method before, and maybe they think it’s too much work to test the intermediate LO. Not testing your mods while you’re installing is a great way to leave yourself confused when you do start if something doesn’t work. Which mod was it? Is it a file or plugin issue? Do I need to forward a record somewhere? Even when testing during installation, it’s not hard to miss things without some sort of comprehensive testing process… why would you risk it? On modern systems, the game starts pretty quickly, at least until your load order starts getting big so it’s only a little longer than a straight-shot and it can save you quite a lot of debugging time.
A compromise to the “test every mod” method is to test groups of mods as you install them. Install all your landscape mods, for example, then test to make sure you don’t have raw billboards up close or purple textures or some other sort of garbage, then move on to the creatures, etc. or whatever is appropriate for your LO.
Testing depends on the mod. You can use the console command coc <cell name> (which is an initialism for “center on cell”) to test specific places, or you can head over to qasmoke to test spawning NPC’s, creatures, weapons and armor, etc. You can also toggle clipping with the console command tcl and fly around to load a bunch of scenery. This should give you a basic idea of how to test mods.
Something interesting to consider, specifically when using MO2, is that mod authors package their mods variously. What I mean by this is, mods should be installed such that the various folders in your SkyrimVR Data directory are at the top level (Interface, Scripts, (DLL)Plugins, etc.), but sometimes you’ll find that the archive contains a Readmes folder, an Optionals folder, a Data folder, etc. During the install, I always choose the Manual button at the bottom left of the installation prompt so that I can make sure I’m only installing the Data (or whatever directory is appropriate), and not all the fluff. How? Easy-peasy: just open the drop-down next to the top-level folder, and if you see the right stuff, go ahead. If not, keep going until you find the Data folder and right-click it to set Data directory. MO2 will also warn you from the get-go that this mod is not packaged correctly.
A final note, some mods come with ultra-cool installers (previously BAIN, an abbreviation for BAsh INstaller for Wrye Bash, now more often FOMOD, a portmanteau of FallOut Mod). These will often check your existing load order to see if any patches are needed and will typically offer you many options from which to choose to customize your setup.
Do this! If you install a mod, play with it for a while, and generally enjoy it (or it at least doesn’t annoy the heck out of you), endorse it! Mod authors deserve recognition for good mods! Honestly, it’s generally all they’re going to get since no one is paying them. There are exceptions, but endorsements are the primary currency of the modding world.
To troubleshoot mods, you will generally need to use your head: what is having the problems, what mods are installed, how could they cause what I’m seeing? You’ll also want to double-check the description and now you’ll really want to read forum posts. You can use the ideas in the previous section to test your troubleshooting steps.
When all else fails and you just aren’t sure where the problems are coming from, you can perform a binary search. What/how? A binary search (generally applied to sorted lists of enumerables) can be (loosely) performed on any set by following this recursive process:
You will need to ensure that any dependencies are still enabled at each step, so it won’t be a clean binary, but you can almost certainly find the problem this way. Occasionally you will have an “edge case” (where your division splits two or more mods which only cause the problem together), but aside from that you’re essentially guaranteed to find which mod is troubling you.
Resolving conflicts may be more or less important depending on your LO and its size and contents. Since this is not an in-depth guide, I’ll just make some notes here and provide a couple of links.
First, you’ll benefit from learning about conflict resolution in the mod manager. It can often be a very quick fix to hide a conflicting file in a mod in MO2, for example. See the documentation for your mod manager for how to do it. This is great for those wolves from earlier.
Second, you’ll definitely want to learn how to Apply Filter to show Conflicts in xEdit. The documentation is indispensable, and identifying key conflicts well can lead to you making a minimum number of conflict resolution patches or mod merges.
Third, not all conflicts are bad. Technically, any mod you add is already likely conflicting with at least Skyrim.esm and Update.esm, and this is completely desirable! What may not be desirable is when you install multiple armor mods, for example, and one overwrites a set of armor you liked from another, meaning you don’t get to see it in game. Overwriting water levels, light levels, text lines, locations of items, and so on may or may not be part of what you were looking for when you downloaded the “offending” mod; keep this in mind as you use the following, and when in doubt, TO NEXUSMODS!
Hopefully you’ve gained a bit of insight into how all this works, what the file types and various tools everyone talks about are, and how to make the best of your modding experience using that information. I’m grateful to the Bethesda modding community for all of the information above, all of it I’ve forgotten, and all of it I will learn from now on, and for how much understanding modding has enabled the games to brighten my life. It’s because we work together that we’re able to enjoy this hobby so much, and I wouldn’t know thing one if it weren’t for all those who commented, posted, hosted, and shared. I hope this is a good start to your own journey. If you find any inaccuracies, omissions, or broken links, please feel free to comment or message me directly for corrections. I hope each of you has an awesome modding experience and may The Nine bless you and guide your path through Skyrim!
[1] Skyrim VR, https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimvr/, Accessed 01JAN19
[2] Nexus mods and community, https://www.nexusmods.com/, Accessed 01JAN19
[3] Mod Organizer 2, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/6194, Accessed 01JAN19
[4] Tannin42’s profile, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/1100552, Accessed 01JAN19
[5] LePresidente’s profile, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/users/40762840, Accessed 01JAN19
[6] ModOrganizer2/modorganizer, https://github.com/ModOrganizer2/modorganizer, Accessed 01JAN19
[7] Vortex - Beta, https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/1, Accessed 01JAN19
[8] Nexus Mod Manager, https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/4, Accessed 01JAN19
[9] Nexus-Mods/Nexus-Mod-Manager, https://github.com/Nexus-Mods/Nexus-Mod-Manager, Accessed 01JAN19
[10] Wrye Bash, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/1840, Accessed 01JAN19
[11] lojack’s profile, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/215411, Accessed 01JAN19
[12] wrye-bash/wrye-bash: The main Wrye Bash repository, https://github.com/wrye-bash/wrye-bash/, Accessed 01JAN19
[13] TES5Edit, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/25859, Accessed 01JAN19
[14] ElminsterAU’s profile, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/167469, Accessed 01JAN19
[15] TES5Edit/TES5Edit: xEdit by Elminster; Updated and maintained by Sharlikran, Zilav, and Hlp, https://github.com/TES5Edit/TES5Edit, Accessed 01JAN19
[16] Basic Mod Troubleshooting Guide with a minor intro to xEdit, https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimvr/comments/8t57i4/basic_mod_troubleshooting_guide_with_a_minor/, Accessed 01JAN19
[17] Skyrim Mod Tutorials Part 1: Editing Leveled Lists in TES5Edit (basic), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqU2U3NK7qo&t=291s, Accessed 01JAN19
[18] Skyrim Mod Tutorials Part 2: TES5Edit 101 - Basic Editing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQi7vnqXySc&feature=youtu.be, Accessed 01JAN19
[19] Guide:XEdit, https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:XEdit, Accessed 01JAN19
[20] Tome of xEdit, https://tes5edit.github.io/docs/, Accessed 01JAN19
[21] ElminsterAU is creating xEdit, https://www.patreon.com/ElminsterAU/posts, Accessed 01JAN19
[22] LOOT: The Load Order Optimisation Tool, https://loot.github.io/, Accessed 01JAN19
[23] loot/loot: A load order optimisation tool for the Elder Scrolls (Oblivion and later) and Fallout (3 and later) games, https://github.com/loot/loot, Accessed 01JAN19
[24] LOOT — LOOT latest documentation, https://loot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/, Accessed 01JAN19
[25] LOOT/Meta Rule Instructions, https://wiki.step-project.com/LOOT/Meta_Rule_Instructions, Accessed 01JAN19
[26] DynDOLOD 2.54 Skyrim SE/VR BETA, https://forum.step-project.com/topic/13029-dyndolod-254-skyrim-sevr-beta/, Accessed 01JAN19
[27] sheson’s profile, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/3155782, Accessed 01JAN19
[28] Fores New Idles in Skyrim SE -= FNIS SE, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/3038, Accessed 01JAN19
[29] fore’s profile, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/users/8120, Accessed 01JAN19
[30] Bashed Patch, https://wiki.step-project.com/Bashed_Patch, Accessed 01JAN19
[31] Skyrim Bashed Patch Pictorial Guide, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/36189/, Accessed 01JAN19
[32] Skyrim:Console, https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Console, Accessed 01JAN19
[33] User:TechAngel85/SSE Guide/v2, https://wiki.step-project.com/User:TechAngel85/SSE_Guide/v2#Converting_Old_Plugins, Accessed 01JAN19
[34] User:DarkladyLexy/Lexys LOTD SE, A Note about Converting Old Plugins, https://wiki.step-project.com/User:DarkladyLexy/Lexys_LOTD_SE#A_Note_about_Converting_Old_Plugins, Accessed 01JAN19
[35] How to port (almost) any Oldrim mod to Skyrim SE (For Dummies), https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17990, Accessed 01JAN19
[36] mator (u/mator), https://www.reddit.com/user/mator, Accessed 01JAN19
[37] matortheeternal’s profile, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/3900618, Accessed 01JAN19
[38] Merge Plugins, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/69905, Accessed 01JAN19
[39] Mator Smash, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/90987, Accessed 01JAN19
[40] Mod Picker, https://modpicker.com/, Accessed 01JAN19
[41] B.A.E. - Bethesda Archive Extractor, https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/78/, Accessed 01JAN19
[42] jonwd7’s profile, https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/users/2492841, Accessed 01JAN19
[43] SSE NIF Optimizer, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4089/, Accessed 01JAN19
[44] ousnius’s profile, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/users/4291759, Accessed 01JAN19
[45] Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/266, Accessed 01JAN19
[46] SkyrimVR - USSEP Fixes, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/16768, Accessed 01JAN19
[47] STEP:2.2.9.2, https://wiki.step-project.com/STEP:2.2.9.2, Accessed 01JAN19
[48] User:Neovalen/Skyrim Revisited - Legendary Edition, https://wiki.step-project.com/User:Neovalen/Skyrim_Revisited_-_Legendary_Edition, Accessed 01JAN19
[49] User:DarkladyLexy/Lexys LOTD SE, https://wiki.step-project.com/User:DarkladyLexy/Lexys_LOTD_SE, Accessed 01JAN19
[50] User:Darth mathias/SRLE Extended Legacy of the Dragonborn, https://wiki.step-project.com/User:Darth_mathias/SRLE_Extended_Legacy_of_The_Dragonborn, Accessed 01JAN19
[51] The Lightweight Laxy List - An Incremental Modding Guide, https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimvr/comments/8sd09s/the_lightweight_lazy_list_an_incremental_modding/, Accessed 01JAN19
[52] ...and refined my Texture and Modding Guide, 140 hours Playthrough, https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimvr/comments/8riiqk/and_refined_my_texture_and_modding_guide_140/, Accessed 01JAN19
[53] Heavyweight and Hearty SkyrimVR Graphics and Sound Guide, https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimvr/comments/9osq5o/heavyweight_and_hearty_skyrimvr_graphics_and/, Accessed 01JAN19
[54] Conflicts, https://www.youtube.com/embed/rqAvJKGdPbU?autoplay=1&autohide=1&rel=0, Accessed 01JAN19
[55] Basics of Resolving Conflicts, https://wiki.step-project.com/Basics_of_Resolving_Conflicts, Accessed 01JAN19
[56] SkyrimVR - USSEP Fixes, Posts, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/16768?tab=posts, Accessed 02JAN19
[1] There are reports that not all problems are fixed by the VR Fixes mod (version 1.2) in the latest version of USSEP (4.16 at the time of writing). Please see the posts on SkyrimVR - USSEP Fixes for more information, including information about which version of USSEP works with SVR.