WB or MO- Switching from STEP to SR

[Luisangre]

I am switching from STEP to SR and wanted to know if I should keep using WB to install my mods or follow the MO guide for SR.

I've always thought WB had more to offer and was more advanced.

Any suggestions?

[phazer11]

Personally I'd go with Mod Organizer. It's much easier to use and you can also run Wyre Bash through it to make your bashed patches.

[rootsrat]

I use MO for mod management, and I run WB through MO for bashed patch and conflict resolution.

[FCqt]

Definitely MO for mod management. It allows you to play around with multiple different mod setup easily. i.e. you can have both STEP and SR.

Only downside is a minor delay when launching Skyrim if you have a lot of mod installed.

[Luisangre]

Guess it's time to learn MO.

Hopefully easier to learn than WB was.

The one thing that bugs me about WB is that it can't automatically unpack bsa files like MO can...and that seems to be one of the necessary steps with SR.

Gonna miss my WB.

 

@rootsrat

We can still conflicts with WB even if we use MO to install mods?

[rootsrat]

Yes.

 

MO installs each mod in it's own directory. Mods that you activate for a given profile are then used to create a virtual Data folder. You can create multiple profiles with different mod set up - it's really helpful with multiple characters (I don't tend to use additional spell mods for my warrior char, or lots of weapon mods for my mage char etc.).

 

You can then run various applications (configurator, WB, TES5EDIT, BOSS etc.) through MO and they will recognise the virtual Data folder for the given profile.

 

Each profile has it's own INI files as well.

[Luisangre]

I'm a purist type a guy who would play the same Skyrim with 500+ mods on warrior or mage.

I don't see myself switching between profiles at all but the unpacking of bsa's and easier update tracking sure is interesting.

Does unpacking bsa's really make that much of a difference that I should learn MO or should an old dog like me just stick to WB?

[rootsrat]

Fair enough - depends on your playstyle. I have about 10 different characters planned, but because I use over 400 mods, I am utilising all 255 ESPs available for each profile, so I have to change profile dependant stuff to get what I want for given character. I.e. for my Khajiit explorer-merchant I have Wisplicker follower, Moonpath To Elsweyr quest mod and another quest mod + Your Market Stall mod and I used all 255 ESP slots, meaning I had to give up some weapon mods etc.

 

Anyway, BSA unpacking is helpful, if you unpack all of them, as loose files ALWAYS overwrite BSAs. On the other hand BSAs is better handled on HDD drives (faster access as far as I'm aware). So there are pros and cons. But generally with big amount of mods installed it's better to unpack them all, as if some mod provides loose files version only, these files will overwrite any relevant BSAs, even if the install order dictates otherwise.

[Luisangre]

@rootsrat

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'm beginning to like MO as it seems a bit more polished than WB.

I also used NMM to download my mods into my WB folder and this looks like it could kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

I do hope I can still see conflicts clearly like I did in WB.

[rootsrat]

It's easy with MO. If you double click on any installed mod, you get a pop up with multiple tabs, one of the being Conflicts. This is divided in 2 parts. The top half is the mods (individual files even) that are overwritten by the mod you selected, and the bottom half lists the files that overwrite the mod you selected. If you wish to change the order there is no need to reinstall a mod - all you do is just move the mod in the left pane in MO to a desired position in the install order and the overwrites will happen automatically. If the changes are not reflected, just right click the left pane and select Refresh.

[Luisangre]

Yea, it's amazing how all this virtual stuff happens.

I had to test out if it was really installing the mods by activating and deactivating ely's alt+f4 exit because I'm so used to actually going to my data folder and seeing a ton of files.

Wow.

[Luisangre]

Question about SR;

I am up to the Atlas Map Markers and it tells me that 2 esp's from this mod need cleaning.

After running BOSS, these 2 esp's appear to be clean.

Should I clean them anyways or is it possible that the mod author uploaded and cleaned version?

Thanks in advance.

[Aiyen]

You can always do the cleaning procedure just to make sure. If nothing needs cleaning then the files will not be altered in any way.

You can see this by the fact that it will not promt you to save the file at the end.

[phazer11]

Slightly off topic but doesn't Nitpick allow you to load more than 250 esp's? Or is that only to fix the bug where you'd have problems if there were a lot of esp's/esm's in the data directory?

[Neovalen]

Slightly off topic but doesn't Nitpick allow you to load more than 250 esp's? Or is that only to fix the bug where you'd have problems if there were a lot of esp's/esm's in the data directory?

 

Only fixes the overloaded data dir.

[Luisangre]

Out of curiosity, does anyone here have SR and SkyRe working side by side?

I know there's a thread attempting this.