how does mod support differ from the original skyrim?

[VibroKnife]

I have Skyrim in my library, haven't played in years, but would like to play again with mods. I'm guessing mod support from the original isnt compatible with this special edition version? or if both are supported separately, perhaps someone can give me a recommendation breakdown.

[mikk011]

Just to be sure we are on the same page, by "Original Skyrim" (also referred to as "Oldrim") I assume you mean 2011, 32-bit Skyrim as opposed to 64-bit SE/AE.

There is plenty of mod support for SE/AE. You wouldn't be losing anything by buying the newer game version.

Mods for Oldrim are still available via the Steam Workshop (which is not a good way to install and manage mods because of the limitations of the workshop). Mods for Oldrim are also available on nexusmods.com and other websites. Nexus, AFKmods, LL, and other reputable sites keep the Oldrim mods separate from the SE/AE mods. If a website does not distinguish between the old and new game versions, do not trust that website.

As far as interoperability goes:

No mod for SE/AE will work in Oldrim.
No skse-based mod for Oldrim will work for SE/AE.
An Oldrim mod that contains ONLY a .esp or ONLY loose meshes and textures MIGHT work out of the box in SE/AE.*
No Oldrim mod that contains an archive (.bsa file) will work in SE/AE.

*There are techniques for converting Oldrim mods to work in SE/AE. How to do that is outside the scope of this reply.

If your finances and your hardware are good enough, consider buying Special Edition (with or without the Anniversary Upgrade--very few mods use the Upgrade items as masters and the content is mostly meh). 64-bit Special Edition makes much better use of modern hardware (largely because it is not memory-limited like 32-bit Oldrim).

[VibroKnife]

Originally posted by mikk011:

Just to be sure we are on the same page, by "Original Skyrim" (also referred to as "Oldrim") I assume you mean 2011, 32-bit Skyrim as opposed to 64-bit SE/AE.

There is plenty of mod support for SE/AE. You wouldn't be losing anything by buying the newer game version.

Mods for Oldrim are still available via the Steam Workshop (which is not a good way to install and manage mods because of the limitations of the workshop). Mods for Oldrim are also available on nexusmods.com and other websites. Nexus, AFKmods, LL, and other reputable sites keep the Oldrim mods separate from the SE/AE mods. If a website does not distinguish between the old and new game versions, do not trust that website.

As far as interoperability goes:

No mod for SE/AE will work in Oldrim.
No skse-based mod for Oldrim will work for SE/AE.
An Oldrim mod that contains ONLY a .esp or ONLY loose meshes and textures MIGHT work out of the box in SE/AE.*
No Oldrim mod that contains an archive (.bsa file) will work in SE/AE.

*There are techniques for converting Oldrim mods to work in SE/AE. How to do that is outside the scope of this reply.

If your finances and your hardware are good enough, consider buying Special Edition (with or without the Anniversary Upgrade--very few mods use the Upgrade items as masters and the content is mostly meh). 64-bit Special Edition makes much better use of modern hardware (largely because it is not memory-limited like 32-bit Oldrim).

Huge thanks for writing this! That answers everything I needed to know.

[mikk011]

Glad to help. :)

[Sairek Ceareste]

Another bonus is that Oldrim had a mod limit of 256 "mods".

With SE/AE, this limit goes up to over 2500, and if that still isn't enough, there's ways to boost it up to 4096. And if that still isn't enough, there's ways to convert those mods into a different format (doesn't work for all of them) to milk the possible amount of mods to even more. Scripting optimizations and fixes have made running the game with this many mods fairly possible and quite stable if done correctly.

There's also ways to improve the amount of data allowed for saves. Save corruption tends to happen when saves reach a certain file size. There's mods for SE/AE to increase this limit This is usually only an issue for very long playthroughs, but if you ARE doing a long playthrough, having a way to fix the issue and not lose said long-playthrough is very much a boon in my opinion.