Redirecting novice modders away from bad resources and towards good alternatives seems like the neighborly thing to do, as well as guiding question-askers toward the convention of using Load Order Library or Mod.watch, and Pastebin, for questions about load order or crash reports.
My thought is that such a list could eventually be stickied somewhere that’s easy for newcomers to find.
I’ll start with a small handful, in no particular order, and hopefully others will chime in with their suggestions. If this gets any traction I’ll edit/polish this text body with all recommendations.
I got your beginner’s guide(s) right here
So you’ve decided to mod Skyrim. You are strong and wise, and I am very proud of you.
Maybe you like to read. Here are the three indisputable kings of written guides on the subject, in (my own, subjective) ascending order of complexity.
Note: these guides assume that you’ll be following them to the letter, and depending on your level of experience that isn’t an awful idea. However, know that when it comes to graphics mods the choices shown in these lists are their authors’ own, and you can substitute as you like.
The S.T.E.P. Modifications Guide
The granddaddy of modding how-to lists. The STEP guide will hold your hand through the entire modding process, from the first launch of your game all the way through finishing touches like running DynDOLOD.
STEP is designed by committee to be accessible to readers of any experience level. The site is rudimentary and simple to navigate.
A more retail-ready suite of guides, with several versions ranging from “bare necessities” to “modded out the wazoo.” TPF is an established walkthrough that has, with the advent of Wabbajack, branched out into fully downloadable modlists. As such, the lists’ installation instructions are tailored to Wabbajack users, but the list “The Phoenix Flavor” itself is still a useful reading reference (despite a header that declares itself out of date at the moment).
The site is a little more whiz-bang than STEP’s, and I find it a bit unintuitive to navigate if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
“Lexy’s guide” has been around for as long as I’ve been modding the game, and it remains the best deep-dive walkthrough for those who want to set up their modding environment by thoroughly following a written guide. As it says on the tin: “It is strongly advised that new modders install everything without deviation.”
If you’d like something a bit more conversational, and a bit less click-thru, than STEP, and if you aren’t interested in using Wabbajack, then I suggest using Lexy’s exhaustive guide. It may take you a day or two. The familiarity that you will have with your modding environment on the other side is worth it.
The site is slick, with a logical start-to-finish structure that makes it easy to stay oriented.
xEdit, known as SSEEdit to Skyrim SE players, is the most important tool you can undertake to learn in order to make your modding journey as painless as possible. My own knowledge of SSEEdit is admittedly wafer-thin and I’m not equipped to provide any information about it.
Those who are may be found at Tome of xEdit and they will be pleased to take you through The Method.
It cannot be overstated that SSEEdit is the tool that will enable you to answer for yourself many, if not most, of the questions that will arise on your modding journey. Learn it and love it more than I have; I wish I understood it better.
xLODGen, DynDOLOD, Grass LODs and how to avoid losing your mind.
The author of DynDOLOD, Sheson, is a helpful fellow who is much, much smarter than me. I believe /u/yausd when he has said countless times on reddit that the official documentation is the absolute best resource for those with questions about the DynDOLOD tools and generating LODs.
But I also agree with every user I’ve seen gripe to /u/yausd that Sheson’s prose is dizzyingly, even impenetrably detailed. My long-term suspicion is that /u/yausd is Sheson, and that he is simply operating on a level beyond that of mere mortals, with (it must be said) godlike patience for our questions.
Gamerpoets, as always, has an instructive video on the topic that will get you up and running in no time. For those of us who prefer a written guide, however, the absolute best that I have found is LivelyDismay’s, located here on github. This is a very well put together walkthrough, accessibly written with logical steps, plenty of illustrations, and plenty of hyperlinks in the text for fast navigation.
Like all the other inclusions here, it’s not just my personal recommendation to use LivelyDismay’s guide; it has been recommended by other users many times over.
Sharing your mod list
Load Order Library and Modwat.ch are two easy-to-use hosts for posting your whole modlist, including your game .ini files. It’s helpful to use these instead of copy/pasting your entire modlist as comment text, because other users will be able to see your load order and still be able to navigate the comments here without a wall of text smothering their answers.
I’d love to be told that I’m just misusing Modwat.ch, but in my experience it only seems to post your modlist in descending order, and without a clear presentation of any custom separators that you’re using. Load Order Library otoh posts your list in ascending order with separators intact.
Here is my list on both sites as an example. If you click “show inactive/disabled” you can even see all my disabled graphics mods, because I’m running a plain-Jane vanilla game atm:
Both sites are free to use. Modwat.ch requires you to install a small uploader; LOL does not. For the several reasons I’ve mentioned, I prefer LOL.
Sharing crash reports & papyrus logs
Pastebin is the best way to share any kind of lengthy text document without copy/pasting directly here. Again, this is recommended for ease of navigation by other users who will be trying to answer your questions. A free account is not required to use the site. May I also wholeheartedly recommend using this to post crash logs on Nexus.
Help, I need a video tutorial
You want to watch a video about all this stuff, and somehow in 2023 you’ve still managed to find yourself in front of a Sinitar guide.
Stop.
Please, please navigate to Gamerpoets’ YT channel instead, and bathe yourself in the healing waters of Michael’s dulcet voice. In case it needs saying, I am not affiliated in any way.
Disclaimer: right this second Michael seems to be updating a number of his videos, so quite a few are wearing an “Archived” banner. Don’t be discouraged. Gamerpoets is the most oft-recommended, universally beloved modding channel on YT. He will get you where you want to go.
How tf do I use BodySlide
We see this one a lot, for good reason. My personal favorite guide that I’ve found is the HIMBO Installation doc on Nexus, but it’s been so long since I’ve needed it that there may be a far better alternative at this point. LMK if there’s one that you like!
So that gets the thread seeded. There’s obviously room for many, many more. Hopefully some others will weigh in. :)
edit: added the written guides. Revised the title to make it more obviously useful. Removed some editorial snark about Sinitar.
Thank you @[email protected]
Great idea.
May be also a good idea to link to other modding guides and resources? Like, the STEP guide, Lexy’s guide, phoenix’s guide, the Tome of xEdit, etc?
Yes, thank you. I’ll add those, with clarifications to Phoenix’s sub-lists since SMEFT, Frost etc might not be immediately understood to be Phoenix’s by newcomers.
Do you happen to know if Lexy has re-organized her list to reflect stuff like Nexus Collections/Wabbajack? Or is it still just the main guide?
edit: looks like Lexy still just has the one
No worries. I have another tentative suggesion. Lively’s learn to mod wiki. . It’s only tentative, because it is mostly focused on FO4, not skyrim. However, it is still relevant and useful. Maybe as a more ‘advanced’ resource?
Ah, well that’s the same Lively whose LOD tutorial I linked above! Definitely relevant. :)
I pinned your post! I would recommend also adding a wabbajack section torwards the bottom for people who simple just want to jump in. This is a great resource though thank you!
Very cool! I wondered if I’d done this right, since I’m in a different instance!
I’ve actually not used Wabbajack – that was a detail I was hoping that somebody more experienced than I am would be able to contribute!
But I agree that any introductory guide requires a WJ/Nexus Collections walkthrough. Speaking of WJ vs Nexus Collections, I suppose it bears talking about the differences between Vortex & MO2 for those who have used neither before.
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/c/skyrimmods is officially in session with this wonderful guide.
I have to ask though…for a novice modder, is DynDoLOD even necessary? There is an awful lot of pain and tears with your first couple of times, and personally I never thought it was worth it. There’s been many a time where I’ve stood on a mountaintop, turned it on and off, and asked myself, ‘is that it’?
It’s definitely not necessary, but I include it for anybody who wants to learn!
I take your point though – if your individual mod list doesn’t add new, large models to the exterior worldspace then DynDOLOD isn’t going to do much. It’s mainly for pixel peepers, and if you use mods that add lots of fog, or if you use an ENB with really shallow DoF, then those LOD transitions aren’t going to be all that noticeable, anyway.
I followed the Gamerpoets video the first time I used DynDOLOD (it was DynDOLOD 2 at that time) and thanks to Michael’s excellent guidance I didn’t actually experience too much pain. I know that isn’t the universal experience. :P
The program was a hell of a lot slower then – TexGen would routinely take half an hour, and DynDOLOD itself would take 45+ minutes at least. DynDOLOD 3 completes both in under 20min for me; TexGen in particular seems to get faster with every update.