Introduction
I’ve been meaning to reformat the Survival Guide for quite some time as it didn’t look very professional and was not organized in a way that made sense. I’m so sorry to the people who were reading while I was editing this past week! That first day of edits was probably all over the place.
You can find Guide here.
Changes
I’m still not done. Will make another post when complete. Now that theJeepDriver is back and playing and maintaining the load order thread, the category titles are probably going to be updated like they should have been last year. I couldn’t do much in regards to them since they’re directly linked from the parent thread and there’s a lot of new mods now.
New Sections
Copyright Notice
- The master list is never to be used for modpacks. The ‘list’ is just a guide of starting points for load order testing. Every load order is unique and has its own quirks
Foreword
- blurb defining the six parts of the document
- Parent Thread Information moved to Foreword and renamed Load Order Parent Thread
- Console-specific Information and PC-Specific Information sections added to Foreword
- PC-Specific Information section linked to patching and conflict resolution Appendices
- Wrote a tiny blurb about myself, but it will probably be deleted. I only do this to help so who I am does not matter
Weapons, Level Lists, and Game Engine Limitations
- Still being written
- After speaking with several MAs on Discord, a friend who’d broken his LO with weapon level list edits, and going through several older posts on the Parent Thread, I added this section so I can just link a bookmark to it and stop repeating myself. lol
Software “Bugs” and You
- Things to take into consideration if one comes across a problem with a mod that isn’t load order.
Appendices
- Analysis of a Load Order added as Appendix A
- oddlittleturtle’s Dec 2017 Mod Load Order Spot post (finally) added to document and formatted to fit (no grammar corrections at this time)
- I didn’t realize I hadn’t done any more – will try to do more soon – sorry guys
- PC-related issues added as Appendix B
- NOTE: These are still being written.
- I’d been meaning to do a PC conflict resolution section after doing the xEdit patch tutorial for Helga, but have been putting it off because I really wasn’t sure where it needed to go. After speaking with MAs about weapon level lists and the hard-coded game engine limitation for them, opted to add how-tos for conflict resolution on PC
- How to analyze a mod in xEdit to search for conflict resolution
- How to revert previs back to vanilla
- How to revert previs back to modded state after accidental disabling
- How to update the visibility optimization for the load order
- How to clean a mod using xEdit
- Level list patching – brief tutorial for both hard and scripted edits using xEdit and vanilla scripts
- Loose file archival and why it is a good thing
- How to Patch a scripted workshop mod to use Settlement Menu Manager
- Note: These are only briefly explained tutorials, there are more in-depth tutorials in other places that may be more beneficial to the more advanced user. They are intended for personal conflict resolution patches only. Shame on you if you upload your patches to modding sites without the MA’s permission.
Sections Moved
What are Mods?
- What are Mods? section moved to Modding Your Game 101
Table of Contents
- Table of Contents moved to second page, followed by Foreword and Important Information Regarding Creation Club, and then Useful Links
Searching This Document
- Searching This Document moved just below Last Update so as not to be lost
Sections updated
Downtown Boston
- Added blurb to A Note Regarding Downtown Boston in regards to weapons mods and their level lists after confirming with Arthmoor the hard-coded limit on level lists
- Changed Credits to Acknowledgements because thesaurus
- Introduction renamed to About This Document to clarify the intent of the section
About This Document
- Added Using Google Documents to About This Document
- Updated 6 things to keep in mind, to 7 after re-reading VagorDacil’s Working Load Order Thread: “There is no such thing as a 100% stable load order.”
Master List Corrections
- Dave’s Poses, Tactical Animation Nexus Port, Girly Animation, mcgFemaleWalk, Smokable Cigars and Cigarettes, and Have a Beer have been moved to new starting positions under Character Model Replacers just above Body Mods (as with all mods on the list, these are just starting positions and need to be tested specifically with your load order)
- Removed Quests (Completed) as a category and merged into New World Spaces/Landmasses/Quests – It never really made any sense to move things up there, and it has always been a bad modding practice to move things in the middle a playthrough as a quest could be calling a reference in the middle of save or something and quite possibly get a null return before the engine processes everything. Big huge quest mods would go as high in the order as possible for any scripts to run anyway.
Other
- Grammar fixes
- Other minor changes as I was moving things around and found issues with wording and instructions