Need help with a modded game

[InvictusAnimus]

Hi there,
I'm new to playing on PC, and I'm not sure I'm in the right place for help-- any help finding the appropriate forum appreciated.

About a year and a half ago, I was playing a working, modded game with just under 100 mods. My friend set up the configurations and I asked as many questions as I could but I didn't fully understand what we were doing. Then I put the game down for a year as I moved IRL houses a couple times in a row, and when I came back, the game updated, and I tried to update mods as well. But clearly... as I'm finding out now... that was a Bad Plan.

I've spent probably 50 hours uninstalling the entire game and all mods (a few times over now), and reinstalling with Vortex (which apparently replaced NMM). This morning, I actually got the game to run, stably, for a few hours. It only had 5 missing mod files, 4 of which were things disabled in my old save anyway, and the 5th was a clothing mod. So nothing critical to my playthrough. When I went back to play tonight, I tried to install the 5 missing mod files, and now, I'm getting a "perpetual loading screen" on the main menu.


These are the five files I was missing along with the error message:
"This save relies on content that is no longer present...
ELFX - Weathers.esp {disabled due to Vortex indicating it conflicts with an asset overwritten by, I think, Vivid Weathers?}
RichMerchantsSkyrim_x2.esp {RichMerchantsSkyrim: I chose the RichMerchants x5 option during installation instead.}
Obsidian Weathers.esp {disabled in the original save anyway I think due to conflict with Vivid Weathers}
OpulentOutfits_2017_SSE Standalone.esp {This happened to be the outfit my character was wearing when the save file was made, so my character showed up nakie, but... not the biggest deal. I'd just go buy some better clothes.}
Obsidian Weathers - Supreme Ashstorms Patch.esp {disabled since Obsidian Weathers was disabled}"

And a separate error message saying that the "SOS dll was missing or an old version". I will say, I don't much give a hawk's feather whether I have SOS or not, but one of the mods I was downloading seemed to newly require it as I recall. So I had gone to download it, remembering I avoided it last time due to it seeming too complicated, and somewhere between installing it and updating all the dependencies, I starting getting messages from Vortex about FNIS being unable to update due to being in use... then deploying mods took an absurdly long time and would pause longest on "updating FNIS animations". All of those I feel might be pieces of the puzzle.

Hopefully anyone can help, and if you need more info, please let me know (and you might have to help me figure out how to pull that info!)
Thank you in advance!

[ĿIFE oƒ ƤIE]

Quite a pickle, but no worries smr1957 will likely be along soon to educate you. One of the things he would say is that you don't remove mods during the middle of a playthrough (in other words if you remove any mods that you use in any save file, you can now consider that save file to be borked).

By the sounds of things you are missing file dependencies, mods needing other mods to work correctly and so on. So imo you need to install all the prerequisite mods OR start fresh with no mods at all and just play vanilla. Then try installing mods 1 by 1, or maybe try a pre-prepared mod bundle.

[Vlad 254]

ĿIFE oƒ ƤIE is correct regarding removing mods mid-playthrough as many can not be.
See this:
You CANNOT Remove Mods Mid-Playthrough -
http://steamcommunity.com/app/489830/discussions/0/1520386297681801135/

Your best bet at this point is to perform more than a simple uninstall/reinstall as you need to make sure you have no lingering files in places you normally would not look. You also need the latest version of Micrsoft Visual C++

Use this guide and follow it step by step without skipping anything (including the video).
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2743619856

Then to mod your game here's a guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2636368499

[InvictusAnimus]

I don't think I was understood-- I never saved a game with missing mods. I was playing a working game that updated itself, and I updated the mods accordingly, which apparently broke everything. But I never saved the game after everything broke; that save file has never been overwritten since the break.

I am trying to rebuild the mods list and game exactly as they were when the game chose to update itself and broke everything. But since the mod manager of choice has now changed to Vortex, it recommends lots of new mods as necessary to fulfill requirements of the ones I had. When I added those in, it made a working file stop working.

I have already completely uninstalled and reinstalled Skyrim and every mod, even removing Steam and all my Steam games completely from my computer down to the registry, following guides recommended on this forum.

I've been troubleshooting on my own all day. When I again delete all my mods, the game starts, loads the main menu, and allows character creation. The old save file does not load-- which is expected, considering it uses all manner of mods no longer available. When I reinstall the mods slowly in batches, the game continues to load the main menu, and allow character creation/allow me to load the old save file, albeit with errors about missing hairdos, player homes, etc(expected). As I continued to install more batches of mods, I did finally find one batch that failed to load the main menu properly; I got it to recreate the perpetual load behavior, and I've traced the issue to some conflict between

Vortex's building FNIS Data,
this mod Ancient Falmer Snow Elf Race [www.nexusmods.com],
and this mod Ancient Falmer SE Patch Center [www.nexusmods.com].

The Ancient Falmer Snow Elf Race, during installation forces you to choose between radio buttons that indicate CBBE presets, like CBBE Curvy, which I did not install (I chose CBBE Slim). Then later in the installation, it forces you to choose SOS, or Tempered Skins with CBBE Curvy. I don't have SOS and I don't really want it. I chose Tempered Skins with CBBE Curvy, even though I have CBBE on slim settings.

At that point, the game then began to do a perpetual load screen on Main Menu. I exited, disabled the plugins associated with Ancient Falmer Snow Elf Race and Ancient Falmer SE Patch Center, Disabled those mods, and re-deployed per Vortex's suggestion. This did not prompt Vortex to rebuild FNIS Data; I watched the processes. I then configured FNIS and redeployed, which caused Vortex to freeze as it loaded FNIS and tried to update animations. After about 15 seconds, a screen came up separately from Vortex, showing FNIS settings including "consistence check" and "Update FNIS behavior", like the screen on Gamer Poet's FNIS Tutorial, which if I'm following should only be showing up if I'm using MO2. I am not using MO2; I am using Vortex. When I clicked Consistence Check and Update FNIS behavior, it indicated one warning, 0 conflicts, and updated successfully. The FNIS Data in Vortex then updated successfully, and the notification bell in Vortex silenced. However, the game now continues to give a perpetual loading circle on the main menu, and will not start.