What modding tools are needed these days?

[Octopuss]

I haven't touched Skyrim since 2014 and have been thinking about at least building up the game again for now, but I forgot almost everything since then.
What modding tools do I need these days?
I am aware of SSDEDIT, SKSE, LOOT and Dyndolod, but I also have a vague memory of something that needed to be generated manually, something about "T pose"-something something, something called Mator and who knows what else. Of course the modding folders from LE days are long gone from my PC and I can't take that as a baseline (which would probably be irrelevant after ten years anyway).

[Mercury71]

Maby it is FNIS you think about? Today we use Nemesis instead for animations. (Pandora is an upcoming alternative for Nemesis)

Take a look at the latest Step Guide and what tools there are in there. It is in my book the minimum you need.

Wrye Bash is still around to crate Bashed Patch and a new alternative/complement is Synthesis.

[Octopuss]

Ah yes, FNIS, that's right.

What about the other two tools, are they still WIP or are they officially released?

 

[DoubleYou]

Pandora should be the better tool, but I haven't used it.

[Octopuss]

Looks like alpha according to Github, so a while to be safe to use I guess.

Oh and I've remembered the last thing: it was Mator smashed patch or something. I think it replaced that Wrye weirdsness? Right? But that seems to have since been abandoned, seeing there were no updates since 2018 (on Github at least). Does anyone know what happened to it?

[z929669]

4 hours ago, Octopuss said:

Looks like alpha according to Github, so a while to be safe to use I guess.

Oh and I've remembered the last thing: it was Mator smashed patch or something. I think it replaced that Wrye weirdsness? Right? But that seems to have since been abandoned, seeing there were no updates since 2018 (on Github at least). Does anyone know what happened to it?

Mator Smash and zEdit are deprecated and no longer maintained, AFAIK. Synthesis/Mutagen are the modern patchers these days as well as the Bashed Patch. We don't use either in our SSE guide at this point. THe dust from the last BGS update is finally settling though.

[Octopuss]

Ah ok.

What's the difference beween Synthesis and Mutagen though? Which one am I supposed to use for this use case?

[Mercury71]

1 hour ago, Octopuss said:

Ah ok.

What's the difference beween Synthesis and Mutagen though? Which one am I supposed to use for this use case?

As a basic user you would use Synthesis. Inside Synthesis you can select different patches and run them. You run the Synthesis.exe trough MO2 just like with Wrye Bash for a Bashed Patch.

[Octopuss]

Thanks.

And what's Mutagen used for then?

[z929669]

Mutagen is the basis of Synthesis. If you don't want to resolve conflicts yourself using xEdit, then Synthesis is the 'modern' patcher these days.

[Octopuss]

Oh the conflict resolution. I'm not looking forward to that. But first I need to figure out how to set all this up, heh. Ten years wipes your memory pretty cleanly.

Anyway, when I'm adding all these external programs in MO, do I need to specify anything in the relevant window, like "start in", or do I just add path to the .exe and that's it?

[DoubleYou]

Typically leave Start In blank. 

[Mercury71]

You also need Bethini PIE. An amazing tool.

[z929669]

Just follow the SSE 2.2.0 guide as a refresher. It includes all these details.