Disclaimer[edit | edit source]
I am in no way involved in the development of Mod Organizer (MO) and do not know the internal workings of the program. Only Tannin42, the creator / developer of this program knows for sure. The information presented here is accurate as I interpret it and may be prone to error in my interpretation of it. Any information provided by Tannin later on should be considered as accurate and should supersede mine. Any future updated to MO may well break this workaround.
The version of Mod Organizer being used is v1.0.12 and is run on Windows 8.1 64bit. Steam and MO are installed out of the default location to a second SSD to avoid Windows UAC problems. You have been warned, your results may differ if you version of Windows is different or Steam is installed in its default location.
Background[edit | edit source]
Overview[edit | edit source]
Mod Organizers “Overwrite” folder should be thought of as a temporary storage folder. Every mod and tool that changes data must use the overwrite folder. This is accomplished by using the Windows Move Folder function, “Move From” and “Move To” and should be transparent to the user. It all breaks down when a mod that changes data uses Copy and Delete folder instead. MO cannot track changes that way.
Testing[edit | edit source]
Mods used in the testing[edit | edit source]
Interface Hard Coded Key Tweaks, Fores New Idles in Skyrim - FNIS at, WRYE Smash, TES5Edit, ASIS, Dual Sheath Redux and NPC enchant Fix. Skyproc patcher SUM was tested later on and will be included.
Mods not used in testing[edit | edit source]
Any mod that writes to the data folder after the game is run. In the past I have seen some SKSE mods do this.
Automatic Variants. I have always had trouble with this mod and the way it moves files around without much success with MO, so I don’t use it.
Preparation[edit | edit source]
Make note on the load order of the ESPs starting with bashed patch, 0.esp. This should be the way BOSS sorts them. Write this down for future reference and as a guide to running the tools. If you use FNIS this can be run at any time. When I mod Skyrim I install all my FNIS files first so that when I test mod interaction I will not have the frozen NPC problem.
Populated Overwrite folder[edit | edit source]
While this method will not separate out each mod in an already populated overwrite folder, it will get you there as you will be running each tool and then creating a mod from the output afterwards. This should be followed if you are modding a new playthrough of the game or are starting to mod the game and there are no files in the overwrite folder.
If there are files in the overwrite folder right click it and create a mod from it and give it a name for backup purposes, like “Overwrite Backup old”. When MO finishes creating “Overwrite Backup old” mod just leave it alone and do not enable it. We will not really use the files in here as we will create everything from scratch and it can be deleted later on when this is done.
