Safely Uninstalling Mods from a Single-Player World

[ddtraveler]

Pretty much what the topic title says. I was looking through my mods and realized that I had accidentally installed a few with overlapping or conflicting roles (Kraken's Better Dinos and DarkEdge's Breedable Rock Drakes both allow for Rock Drake breeding, Dino Storage v2 does everything that Pokeballs - Dino Storage does with some .ini tweaks, etc.) and I'd like to remove some of the redundant mods.

I have no idea if this is possible, just figured it wouldn't hurt to check. I'm a Skyrim veteran, and 90% of the mods I've seen from there go "never uninstall this mid-save or everything will explode horribly" so it wouldn't be a surprise if it turns out that it isn't possible.

[KitsuneShiro]

Are they installed and active on your save game?

[ddtraveler]

Yes.

If it matters at all for the ones that I mentioned, I am currently on the Island and not using any mods that add Rock Drakes to other maps, but several of the mods I have installed do add or modify creatures present on the Island.

[margalus]

Like most games I would assume that you would want to get rid of any assets in game from the mod before saving the game and then removing the mod.

If it's just a creature mod it shouldn't matter, as long as you don't have a mod animal as a tame.

[Lethal]

Generally the only thing that would happen is the mod's content would vanish - depending on which one you remove. It would be a good idea to unball any dinos stored in the pokeball mod you wish to remove - if you want to keep those dinos since the pokeballs will vanish.

As for dinos, well it's a mixed bag. Dino Storage v2 could preserve them in balls, to be released only if the dino's mod is installed later. Some dino mods, like Kraken's Better Dinos, is designed where they will convert to vanilla when the mod is removed but I'm not sure if Rock Drakes specifically are set up like that. You would need them unballed for the conversion to take place properly on server starts. Most dino modders, however, tend to remap and uniquely name their dinos and they would simply poof unfortunately.

Create a backup of your world before you make any major changes. If something goes astray, you can always reload the backed up world =)

PS: I've heard horror stories about Skyrim mods "blowing up". Rest assured, Ark handles mods much better than the stories that I've heard from Skyrim. My collaborators are well versed with Skyrim mod experiences - but not so much myself on a personal level.