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HELP!!!

-WIP-

Did your game crash? Or maybe you have experienced an infinite loading screen? What about an NPC whose facegen is…not acceptable? We have all been there; some of us many, many times. Now, I can’t solve all of your problems, mostly because I have no idea what your load order looks like or what steps you have already taken on your modding journey. BUT, I will try and offer up some ideas on where to begin diagnosing what the heck went wrong. If you don’t/didn’t find help here, but do/did find some long-lost post from the 1st Era which was helpful, please let me know so that I can add it to this list! People tend to frown upon necromancy, so rather than bothering those that have moved on, let’s see if we can figure out some of this stuff together.

Credit: this is a compilation of this post, random things I have found across all sorts of forums, and a few *ahem* reminders of things that can be overlooked in their simplicity.

Common Issues

Did you start up your game and can’t seem to find that new follower you added or that texture sure doesn’t look like the one you added? Here’s some questions to ask yourself:

  • Did you enable the mod in your mod manager (and the plugin if it has one)?
  • Did you start the game through your mod manager (specifically through SKSE)?
  • Is there another mod that is overwriting the mod you are missing?
  • Have you surpassed the plugin limit (which will cause some mods to be disabled)?
  • Do you have all applicable patches for that mod?

Did you start the game, go through the Bethesda logo and start getting pumped listening to the theme song, only to realize that, “Wait a second! I’ve been dancing around with a paper towel roll like a sword attacking Alduin (played by my very confused dog) for at least 10 minutes! There is no way this song is that long!”? No just me? Okay, fine, did you sit there patiently waiting for the loading circle to, well, load, but it never did? You, my friend, have experienced the dreaded “Infinite Loading Screen”. This circle of Hell is not as painful as some, but is still frustrating. Here are some of the reasons that myself and others have found that this happens:

  • First, make sure that you have actually waited long enough; if you have a lot of mods, especially graphical or ones that add a lot of references to the game, it could take awhile to load.
  • You might not have enough memory allocated. Make sure that you have the latest version of SKSE (and that it is configured correctly) and have installed either Crash Fixes (LE) or SSE Engine Fixes (SE).
  • Make sure that all of your plugins are clean (run LOOT to be sure) and that you do not have any outdated or duplicate patches. The second part is harder to figure out, but I can give you an example that I encountered: I was using Expanded Towns and Cities and RS Children. Both ETAC and the RSC Patch Compendium had a patch between the two, so I disabled one and voila! No more ILS.
  • You may have too many references loading into the game. Read this post to learn more about the reference limit and use this script in xEdit to see what your reference number is.
  • Also, I have experienced some random infinite loading screens when fast traveling. I never did figure out exactly what was causing mine, BUT at the time, there were a number of things that were buggy (user error and not enough conflict resolution), so it was hard to narrow down. If you follow good modding practices, your chances of having issues like this diminishes.
  • First, check for the same things listed in the ILS section: make sure your SKSE is the right version for your game version, that it was installed/configured correctly, that you don’t have any outdated/duplicate patches, that everything is clean, and that you don’t have too many references.
  • Second, make sure that you are not missing any masters. Your game won’t even start if you are missing any masters. (Your mod manager, LOOT, etc will tell you if you are missing a master).
  • Third, it is likely that there is a conflict between plugins that is resulting in your CTD. Use tools like xEdit to diagnose these.

This is something that you can fix, and quite easily by creating a custom NPC patch. This is how I do it (I’m sure there are easier and faster ways, but I like this way because it gives me total control over what ends up in the game). I use MO2, so this is specific to that mod manager, but the process should be similar in Vortex.

  • Run LOOT and then make manual adjustments as needed
  • Make sure you Mod Order (Left Pane) and Plugin Order (Right Pane) are in the same order for anything that touches an NPC record. You will also want to make sure this is in the order that you want it.
  • Load up your plugins (all of them) into xEdit and filter by conflict.
  • Go one by one down the list and expand only the NPC section of each plugin (many won’t even touch it). Mine were things like NPC overhauls (obviously), Guard Armor Replacer, AI Overhaul, and random quest mods that altered the items the NPCs had on them. Basically, the visuals of the NPC, the patterns they follow (so where they go and when), and items they have on them, all of these are affected.
  • There is a phrase you will hear often in conflict resolution for modding: There can be only one! No wait…that’s not quite right…The rule of one! There we go! So, what this means is that whatever plugin you have last in your load order, everything in it (or not in it) is what you see in the game. So, if Brynjolf is supposed to have a letter on him or an ebony dagger because you have a quest mod that adds those, but that is loaded before a mod that gives him a mullet, guess what? Unless you have a patch that combines all of that together, he’s not going to have the letter/dagger (but he will have a sweet mullet, so there’s that). If you have a mod that makes Nazeem swim in the water in front of Dragonsreach but your other mod that makes him wear a polka dot onesie is loaded after? Guess who won’t be doing backstrokes but rather still bugging you about the Cloud District (although in quite comfy clothing).
  • So; What do you do? Create a new plugin and copy over the parts that you want! This will make sure that you get all the parts that you want with no issues. I hope this all makes sense, but if not, I’d suggest going here: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/36840.

Less Common Issues

These are random things I have found digging through Reddit or Nexus posts and this list will grow as I find more (or as others suggest)

The mod Outlaws Refuge shows a deleted navmesh error when running LOOT. Here is how to fix it: (Credit to Teabag86)

  • Open the mod in SSEEdit and in the FormID search box (top left) type 0403B389.
  • Right click and “Remove” this deleted record from Outlaws Refuge.
  • Right Click on 0501F289 and select “Change FormID”. In the popup box enter 0403B389.
  • In the next popup box click to check “X” to update NAVI:0012FB4 Outlaws Refuge.esp. Hit OK.
  • Save and you are done. Congratulations you have just fixed the deleted navmesh.

    Edit* The 05 in the FormID 0501F289 is the position of Outlaws Refuge in your load order. 

The mod Treasure Hunter for SSE shows a deleted navmesh error when running LOOT. Here is my suggestion on what to do:

  • Download original mod and install/enable
  • Hide the .esp (in MO2, you can do this in the filetree view. I’m not sure how to do this in Vortex)
  • Download this fixed .esp and install/enable

The mod Books of Skyrim SE needs to be run through Quick Auto Clean, but also needs this record removed (similar to how the Dawnguard DLC was cleaned, so for more information, go to the cleaning masters section of the Beginner’s Guide) (Credit to DarkLadyLexy’s guide)

  • Worldspace: \ 00037EDF <SolitudeWorld> \ Block -1, 0 \ Sub-Block -2, 3 \ 00037EE9 <SolitudeOrigin>

Mac's Conflict Resolution 101

So, you installed multiple mods that edit the same thing? We have all been there (and continue to return time and time again). The best tool you can learn how to use to help with these situations is xEdit (aka SSEEdit). Below you will find the briefest introduction to conflict resolution via xEdit (at least the briefest I could manage):

I use Mod Organizer 2, so these instructions will be specific to that program.

Refer to this video on how to install xEdit in MO2: xEdit || Installation & Setup

Once you have installed xEdit, make sure that the plugins you want to do some conflict resolution for are active in both the left and right panes (you can have other plugins active, even your whole modlist, but I figured it would be easiest to show with a limited number of plugins):

In this case, I have the two patches I want to do CR for, as well as all of their masters.

Run xEdit from the executable:

Let it load in (you will have to hit OK at least once):

Now, you can find the records yourself by opening the trees in the left pane, but the easier way to find conflicts is to select the plugins you want to do CR for and choose “Apply filter to show Conflicts (selected files only)” (or you can do it for all plugins if you would rather):

When it finishes filtering, you will be left with something like this (this is a very small example, and often when doing CR, you will have MANY things show up here):

As many veteran modders will tell you, RED doesn’t always mean bad, it just means that there is a conflict. In this case, it is telling us that the MacAlternatePerspective-Campfire plugin is “losing” to the MacAlternatePerspective-Sunhelm plugin in regards to that specific container. If you select either of the containers in the left pane, you will be able to get more information about the container and the conflict in the right pane (before hiding no conflict and empty rows):

(and after hiding no conflict and empty rows):

As it stands now, if we loaded into the game as is, we would only get the Empty Waterskin in the container. If we rearranged the plugins so that the Campfire one was higher priority than (i.e. loaded after) the Sunhelm patch, then only the campfire items would show up in the container. In order to have all of the items from both plugins appear in the container, we will need to make a patch for them. To do that, we start with right-clicking the heading of either plugin in the right pane, and selecting the “copy as override into” option (it doesn’t matter much which plugin you select, but I always pick the one that has the most “stuff” that would need to be moved to the patch; in this case the Campfire plugin):

A big scary window will pop up asking if you are sure; you are! (this can feel scary the first few times, but remember a couple of things: 1) you are going to be creating a patch, so not editing an existing plugin, 2) if you do accidentally edit an existing plugin, and don’t mean to, you can always exit out of xEdit without saving, and 3) if you do accidentally save a plugin with changes you made and didn’t want to, as long as the “Backup Plugins” option is checked, you will have a backup, and 4) you can usually just re-download a mod if you really screw things up!)

Another window will pop up after, asking which plugin you want to add the overriding record info into, and also giving you an option to create a new plugin for the record information. In this case (and in the case of most patches you will create), we are going to select the third option, which is an ESP plugin that is flagged as ESL. We choose this because the ESP functionality will allow us to put it nearly anywhere in our load order and the ESL functionality will prevent it from using a plugin slot:

Name your plugin something (I usually use something that has a prefix I can use to easily find my created plugins as well as general info about what the new plugin will be doing); in this case, I chose Mac (my chosen prefix) AlternatePerspective (the original mod these plugins are for) CampfireSunhelm (the two specific patches my new patch is patching (patchCEPTION!) and Patch just in case I’m not sure what this plugin is doing (lol):

You can really name it whatever you want, but remember that you want to name it something helpful for future reference.

Hit OK.

You aren’t done yet, because all you really did was make sure that the plugin you chose for the override “wins” (which in some cases is exactly what you want for a patch, but not in this case). We are still not getting the empty waterskin:

It is generally not advised to edit plugins for mods that you download. This is because of a few reasons, one of the most important being that if the original mod updates, you will lose that work you did changing it if you choose to download/install the update. Creating patches instead of directly editing others’ plugins is generally considered a better modding practice. Since this newly created patch is our baby, we can edit it however we want! We could change the quantities of items in the container or add/remove items, or in this case, just carry over the poor Empty Waterskin so that it doesn’t get left out. To do that, all you have to do is drag it from the original plugin to the empty spot in our patch:

In most cases, it will ask if you want to add a master (or multiple) to your new patch. You will select yes.

 

To save the plugin, you can manually save (usually done if you have more to do in xEdit) or just leave the program, making sure to hit OK on the window that pops up prompting you to save the edited plugins. (I always check to make sure that only the plugins I intended on editing are listed. This is also where you can uncheck any that you didn’t mean to change, or that you changed your mind about):

When you are back in Mod Organizer 2, you will see your plugin at the bottom of your right pane, but you will still need to add it to a “mod” in the left pane. To do that, go to the little wrench/screwdriver/spanner/whatever and select “create Empty Mod”:

You can call this whatever you want, but I usually choose something similar to what the patch is called. Once you have the empty mod, right click on it and select “Open in Explorer”:

In the right pane of MO2, right click the plugin you created and select “Open Origin in Explorer” (the plugin will be found in whatever folder you designated as your xEdit output; if you didn’t designate any, the default is “Overwrite”):

Drag the plugin from the output folder into the new mod folder:

To make sure it is working, make sure both the mod in the left pane and the plugin in the right pane are active (and where they should be in the load order). Load into the game and you should have all of the items in the container!

 

This is obviously a very rudimentary example of conflict resolution in xEdit, but the principle applies to many situations and can be expanded upon to make your own patches for all kinds of things.

 

One final note, anytime I make a plugin, whether it is an original or a patch (or a patch of a patch….etc), I do run the “Check for errors” option on the plugin in xEdit. This just makes sure that I didn’t do anything unexpected or miss any steps. For simple patches, it rarely brings up anything, but I like to be thorough.

 

Hope this helps and please, as always, let me know if you have any questions or if I can help in any way!

Please remember to endorse any mods you download and like, and if you appreciate all the hard work that goes into creating a mod, consider giving kudos to the author on Nexus as well (the Give Kudos button can be found on the user’s page).