Switching from Vortex to MO2

[Katarsi]

I have to be perfectly honest: I've had it with Vortex.   

[spoiler=Ranting]Nearly every update breaks something. Whenever I ask for support, the answers are along the line "you should change this and that in your computer settings" - even though it used to work fine before. If a piece of software is forcing you to modify your established setup after every update, it simply isn't worth it. Not to mention other persistent issues, like messing up my load order (LOOT integration sucks) and flagging perfectly good plugins as incompatible (example: sosracemenu.esp). Their "ease of access" is more trouble than it's worth, which is what I know now that I'm more familiar with modding.

 

 

Ever since I installed Skyrim SE, I've only used Vortex, so I'll have to get very familiar with MO2.

 

Before that, I'll have to safely migrate my mods from Vortex to MO2.

I have found several suggestions on how to do this and nearly all of them indicate that I should reinstall my game from scratch. I sincerely hope that is not the case because I've done that recently and the process is tedious at the very least, if we consider the time consumed and additional cleaning... But if I gotta, then I gotta, I guess 

It is also unclear to me how I could retain my current mods without them being deleted from the system when I uninstall Vortex. Also, there are other important tools to consider, such as SKSE, SSEEdit, LOOT, FNIS and other that I was able to access via Vortex Dashboard.

 

In short, I would like to retain my entire Skyrim directory as it is. Without __folder_managed_by_vortex files, of course. I understand that the Purge function can do this, but I dread to think what will happen to the directory when I hit Uninstall Vortex.

 

If anyone is familiar with the correct and hopefully detailed process on how to switch from Vortex to MO2, please help me. I am bound to do something wrong if left to my own devices / mixed suggestions from other places on the net.

I figured this is the safest place to ask for guidance. I've received excellent advice and guidance here before, and I hope others who would like to make the same transition would find my thread very useful - even if you guys merely provide links to other places. At least I will confirm what works and what are the outcomes.

[GSDFan]

Well welcome to MO2. if you go to the MO2 discord server and search "vortex import" you will find some answers.

 

I have not used Vortex, but I would bet the mod archive files downloaded from the Nexus reside somewhere on your hard drive. Before you do any uninstall find them and to be safe copy them to another folder. Later you can point MO to this folder and avoid downloading them again.

 

I should say at this point that the sole purpose of Mod Organizer is to keep the games DATA folder clean and free of installed mods through the use of a "User Space Virtual File System" or USVFS, which does not write to the game data folder. If anything is there then you will most likely have some sort of problems.

 

If after you have MO2 running and it shows any unamnaged mods installed with Vortex in the game folder then Vortex did not remove everything. You should only see the game and any DLC files.

 

I hope this is of some help. Keep asking questions.