How To Download Mods With Mod Organizer 2
Josephina Blincoe
Starting out with MO2 can be a bit intimidating. Several things about the tool may be unintuitive. There are some hidden features that affect how you mod your games. It is strongly recommended to do a little bit of research before jumping feet first into modding.
Outdated TV is the author of the TUCOGUIDE (see below) and produces tutorial videos on some of the more in-depth uses of MO2. Clicking the images below will take you to videos on how to use FNIS, Dual Sheath Redux, and xLODGEN with MO2.
The basic, and not-so-basic, uses of MO2 are covered above with the video tutorials above. That will definitely get you going but might not help much with figuring out the whole picture. What do you name mods? Which mods do you merge and not merge in MO2? Some people also prefer text to video and these guides provide a lot of text!
GitHub is used as our issue tracker. This is used to document and discuss serious issues with MO2 and possible feature requests for the future. While the GitHub issue tracker is open to the public, we ask that you refrain from creating issues unless asked to. You can usually be helped much quicker by jumping on Discord and asking us directly.
Mod Organizer (MO) is a tool for managing mod collections of arbitrary size. It is specifically designed for people who like to experiment with mods and thus need an easy and reliable way to install and uninstall them.
So I wanted to use a favorite mod of mine from LE on SE for a new playthrough, only I just found out that the mod in question has a requirement mod that is now only available on Bethesda.net. (The mod in question is the Uchiha Clan mod, with the required Naruto Overhaul Mod being exclusive to Bethesda.net for some reason, something about it being unfairly removed from Nexus and moderators refused to let them repost it, or so I've heard).
The thing is, I have no idea how Bethesda.net mods work with Mod Organizer. Is it similar to Steam mods in LE where it would pop up in the overwrite section, then you could "create a mod" from it and have Mod Organizer control it even after you uninstalled it?
Since one of the big things about Steam mods and Mod Organizer was that unless you did that chain of events it would be present on all your profiles, I assume the same thing is probably true for Bethesda.net mods.
As a rule of thumb: If you install a new version of the main file "replace". If you install a "patch" for the main file "merge". If you install an option (as in: mod works correctly with or without it), "rename".
Afterwards you can increment the version of I. manually to get rid of the update notice but if the mod author later decides to make an actual update to "main" with the exact same version number you get no notice. This should be rather rare though.
I too was confused on options of mods. I was originally doing them as Merge because they did come up with the same name as the original main mod, so, logically I would think merge. I did read thoroughly (perhaps I did miss something) but I don't recall the MO guide discussing specifially 'optional' mods and how to handle if they are the same name (i believe it talked about if unsure just give it a unique name). So I guess my question, so I better understand the why is: Why would a main file and an optional file try to install with the same mod name? Is that because of a configuration from the mod author which caused the mod manager (MO) to interpret the mod name given?
Another question. When you have a mod, say for example: Tobes Highres Textures 1_2 1024 main file and the Tobes Highres Textures 1_2b SMIM Patch optional file per STEP core. When installing the SIMM patch, it shows up with the same name. Do we 'merge' in this case scenario (case scenario being the patch is not for the main file, but for another mod), or do we give it a unique name (safe bet)?
1. If I download (Tobes Highres Textures 1_2 1024 main file and the Tobes Highres Textures 1_2b SMIM Patch) aligned with STEP core; when installing both (main and SMIM patch) they default to install with the same name. In this particular case: would I merge, or would i have the SMIM patch installed under a different name? Remember the main mod is Tobes Hires.... and the optional is a patch for a different mod, not the main mod.
2. Why would a main file and an optional file try to install with the same mod name? Is that because of a configuration from the mod author which caused the mod manager (MO) to interpret the mod name given? (because I like to understand how things work, not just know what to click and what to type and what to hide...)
2. The reason it installs with the same name is it is from the same mod! This is indeed different from NMM, which installs all optional files, etc., as separate mods. MO gives you the option to combine the optional files into the main mod.
I recently made the switch from NMM to MO and I have a bunch of unmanaged mods. I already transferred all my mods over to MO and cannot stand the clutter of having the unmanaged mods present. Does anyone know a way of removing these from my list?
MO needs to have a clean Data folder to avoid issues with management so you will need to uninstall all your NMM installed mods and possibly do a Steam refresh, just to be sure, and then have MO install those mods for you into a "profile" of your choice.
I've spent several days looking around trying to find an answer to the question of how to remove unmanaged mods from my MO installed mods list. I try to find the answers to my questions on my own so I can learn better, but this one has me stumped. I've found mods that do the same thing plus additional things and I want to use them instead of the unmanaged mods. Would someone be kind enough to point me in the right direction so I can read up on it myself ( preferably ) or tell me how to do it if there is no explanation posted?
I've been having occasional CTDs and want to first eliminate these unmanaged mods as a possibility. I'm also thinking about installing USLEEP ( Is this a good thing? ) and want to ensure that I have a good clean set of mods installed prior to doing that.
It is quite simple, ALL mods must be managed by MO to avoid the "unmanaged" indicator appearing next to them. You must remove them all, whether installed via Steam, NMM or manually and re-install them with MO. Until you restore your game folder to a clean "vanilla" state you face the problem of conflict and possible CTDs.
Unmanaged mods are mods that are stored in Skyrim's Data folder. The only files that should be in the Data folder are the vanilla mods (Skyrim.esm, Update.esm, Dawnguard.esm, Hearthfires.em, Dragonborn.esm) and the vanilla *.bsa files). If you have files installed in Skyrim's Data folder that did not come with the game, delete them all and then use Steam to validate cache to restore the data folder to a vanilla state with the DLCs.
The situation is quite a bit different with mods downloaded via Steam so you'll want to subscribe to the mod on Steam, get Steam to download the files, move the files into Mod Organizer as a mod, and unsubscribe from the mod so Steam doesn't download it again when you least expect it. There are instructions floating around here for dealing with mods on Steam.
Thank you very much. Are these steps so different due to the engine being different, or are these processes just different as an evolution of the older processes? With tes3 most if not all of the work was done in mash where it seems that very little is being done with bash these days.
Ouch. I have some unmanaged mods because I am pretty much 100% sure I followed videos at the time telling me to put them in the skyrim folder, namely skyUI, IpSleep......and my Mo always ran just fine. So, I now need to delete these from skyrim folder and re-download them via MO?? (I am again fairly certain that at the time I couldn't do them via MO which is why I put them in skyrim folder. Seems a bit of a faff on to steam revalidate cache and stuffs, etc etc for the tech challenged like myself, especially as these two mods have not caused me any problems to date.
Whenever I run the game from MO (I know you're meant to load the game's main executable, not the NVSE launcher), it starts to load the game and brings up the launcher window, with all the data files from mods visible, but then when I hit Play, it comes up with a number of flashes of command windows before Mod Organizer fails and the locked message disappears. Then the launcher window re-opens, but this time it has none of the mods' data files visible. it's as if it's instead ran straight from the disk and not from MO.
The game open and runs fine, it just won't actually run through MO and runs from the disk instead as described above. But I've gotten past the opening cutscenes and character creation without crashes or anything.
Even if I disable all mods, it still does the same thing. I even created an entire new instance and installed just one mod that was not likely to cause an issue just to test it, and the same issue occurs every time.
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