How to mod Skyrim on the PC without making yourself suicidal

[Dog Botherer]

have now sunk several evenings into modding this piece of shit and no matter what i do i'm left with a glitchy mess of a game that can barely make it through the opening scene, and then promptly crashes every time i load a save.

there has to be a simpler way than spending hours installing various small programs (every single guide is pretty different which adds to the confusion) before hitting play and hoping you're not going to see a horse and cart glitch into a tree while the horse rotates at high speeds.

am i just stupid? i've modded many games in my time but none have been the nightmare Skyrim has become.

[Mister Six]

I used the Nexus mod manager for New Vegas. I believe it also works for Skyrim.

Also check the details on the mods - sometimes they have to be loaded in a particular order, while others are incompatible with one another.

[Kryton]

The order of your mods also dictate how badly shit might get bugged. Try researching order compatibility for your selected mods. It can be a bloody nightmare when some mods conflict with others.

[Lemming]

Launch the game after installing every 5 or so mods to check it works. Use LOOT to sort the load order for you, and ensure that you don't have any esp files that are missing corresponding esm files.

Also instead of arsing about with 500 different gameplay-affecting mods that all conflict with each other and turn the game into a clusterfuck (if it loads at all), just pick between Skyrim Redone and Requiem. See which sounds best and go with it. The rest of your mods should mainly be graphical adjustments, "immersion" stuff, and Interesting NPCs because Interesting NPCs fucking rocks.

EDIT: Oh and get the unofficial patches for sure, and always start with a fresh new game when you finally finish getting all your mods together, because trying to load a save with a different load order is just asking for trouble.

[Dog Botherer]

thanks for the input folks, was definitely trying to do far too much with the mods. gonna do a fresh install and mod setup when i get a chance.

incidentally if anyone has any mods they recommend i'd appreciate it.

[Zetetic]

Interesting NPCs

Another vote for this. Wonderfully diverse writing, and generally good enough to merge with the world (if anything, the issue is that Interesting NPCs are ... interesting in ways that so little of the game itself is).

[Sherman Krank]

I'd recommend using Vortex. It's the replacement for Nexus Mod Manager designed by the guy who made Mod Organizer. It's advantages over MO2 are that it's a bit easier to use, it's fully integrated with the Nexus and it has a built in version of LOOT for setting the loading order. (Comprehensive tutorials are available on youtube.)
The best way to get all your mods working properly is to (fully) read the descriptions on the mod pages as there's a drop down bit on every mod page listing the requirements and they'll also usually tell you if you need any compatibility patches and if any other mods are incompatible with it.

Also, if I'm remembering correctly (some?) Skyrim mods don't work with Skyrim Special Edition and vice versa so you need to have the correct version.

As Lemming already mentioned the unofficial patch is pretty much mandatory but other than that it would depend on what you want out of the game. Probably worth going to the Nexus, selecting all mods, sorting by most popular and seeing what you fancy (Nudey mods are hidden by default so if you want to see them you have to enable them in your account prefs).

If you've played the game before and want to skip all the bollocks at the start then I'd recommend Alternate Start - Live Another Life (basically you start in a cell in the abandoned prison, click on a shrine, bint says some stuff then you choose from a bunch of different start locations). When/If you want to start the main quest you just go to what's left of Helgen.

If you want to piss about and have a laugh then I'd recommend the Levelers Tower. Outwardly it's a small tower just off the road between Whiterun and Riverwood but that's just the entrance to a vast underground complex, basically the Skyrim equivalent of a Bond Villain's lair. It contains everything you could possibly want including an arena where you can spawn any npc or creature then kill them or just watch them fight each other, if you ever wondered how 2 Master Vampires would do against 20 bandits this is the mod for you.

If you choose the campsite/hunter option in Live another life then you start just down the hill from the tower entrance.

Finally be aware that you need a CBT physics mod if you want the boobs to bounce.

[Dog Botherer]

okay so i think my mods are fine, now it's just mod manager 2 being a fucking cunt. keeps telling me the directory name is invalid. won't start for anything. disabled antivirus, restarted, nothing.

i'm gonna have to wipe again and do all this shit through Vortex aren't. fucks sake.