Is Setting a Data Directory Always Necessary if MO says 'No game data on top level?'

[DeadByDefault]

Hello everyone,

 

With both the mods 'Civil War Overhaul' (CWO) and 'Climates of Tamriel' (CoT) I get the message 'No game data on top level'. Even after watching Gopher's quite helpful and extensive tutorials, however, I am not sure whether it is always necessary to set a data directory in such cases. Apparently, the message can be ignored in some cases, such as with 'PerMa'. How do I know whether it can be ignored, though? Neither the description of CWO nor that of CoT mention anything related to this, as they appear to assume that you use Nexus Mod Manager.

 

Thank you very much for your time.

 

Regards,

 

DeadByDefault

[Greg]

Which file in PerMa is prompting you for the data directory? I downloaded and installed the current version PerMa files and found that two are FOMOD installers and Mod Organizer 1.3.8 installed the third file without any prompts other than for the mod name.

[kylhwch]

MO, by default, installs everything into the ../Skyrim/data/ folder. Sometimes, if the mod is zipped up in a way that preserves the folder structure strangely, MO can't determine where the data folder starts. So if you see a folder structure that looks like this:

 

<data>

_____ [DataFolder]

_____ Readme.txt

_____ Screenshot.jpg

 

Then you'd want to click on [DataFolder] and set that as the data directory for MO. This helps MO know what the folder structure looks like so that MO can place the subfolders and esp file correctly.

 

99.99 times out of 100, you will want to do this.

 

There are a few mods out these that need to go in a different folder, notably ENBs & SKSE, but the exceptions will tell you what their instructions are and you'll need to follow them closely.