Does a save made right before exting Vault 111 count as a new save in regards to mods?

[Badass_Ben]

I would rather not have to do the intro portion over and over as I am tweaking my mods around

[pedantic_roc]

It'll give you the ol' "This save relies on content.. yadda, yadda", if you change your load order, but it works without issue. Because, you haven't yet entered any modded cells or otherwise. I have one I use all the time, both for testing my mod creations and starting new games - right before the exit.

Edit: Of course, scripted mods are a whole new bag of mischief so that's not gonna work.

[Judge Lazar]

Make a copy of that save and store it on yourdesktop or somewhere safe as well

[pedantic_roc]

Originally posted by Judge Lazar:

Make a copy of that save and store it on yourdesktop or somewhere safe as well

heh - had yours become unavailable in-game, too? The game does sometimes renumber it! :D

Edit: That's a tad misleading. The game doesn't renumber your save. It generates a new number for your new save, sometimes, I've noticed. Probably when LO changes?

[Incunabulum]

Originally posted by Badass_Ben:

I would rather not have to do the intro portion over and over as I am tweaking my mods around

Well, to start with - no. If your game has mods activated then changing them around or removing them is bad no matter when you do it.

But you shouldn't be installing mods until you've exited the vault. Start a clean game with no mods installed until you are standing on the platform outside the vault. Save there and start modding.

[Xyzzy]

All you can do with that is change Special and name. Can't change sex with it, that was set when Vault tec knocked on your door. Make a Save after exit vault it is ok for mods then and normal.

[pedantic_roc]

Originally posted by Xyzzy:

All you can do with that is change Special and name. Can't change sex with it, that was set when Vault tec knocked on your door. Make a Save after exit vault it is ok for mods then and normal.

Yeah, that REALLY helps with play-testing, not!

[Randox]

No. Go through the intro with no mods installed and save that.

I guess, more to the point, none of us should endorse it. Whether it's a chance worth taking depends in part on which mods you've installed, but if anything is scripted, I'd certainly recommend just doing the intro over.

Also, unless specifically stated otherwise, it's generally best to not run scripted mods during the intro. That's when the game sets itself up, and it's best not to let anything disrupt that process.

At the end of the day, the game has no mechanism for removing assets or scripts that belong to deactivated mods from the save file. It assumes that the necessary plugins and assets exist. Removed mods can cause more benign quirks (like missing textures), it can performance issues or semi game breaking bugs if the scripting engine gets full of orphaned scripts stealing all the CPU time (scripts may be delayed, or they may fail to run entirely, usually noticed as quests becoming impossible to progress/complete), or it can cause unfixable CTD issues.

So the rule of thumb is to always revert to a save from before the mod was installed when removing it.

[pedantic_roc]

@Randox - you're right about scripted mods. I already put a little caveat in about that. Tbh, atm, I'm no longer using anything scripted anyway.

Edit: I suppose I ought to add, When I'm done play-testing, and altering my load out and LO, I do actually restart from the very beginning of the game. I still leave all my mods active, though. Never had any issues with my game - apart from the Cabot House quest which most folk seem to have had issues with at some point. I even mod cells I've never visited, on the fly, during my play-through's. It's knowing what you're editing or changing that matters. :D