Mod Organizer 2 Backup HELP!

[tabor.cote]

Hello,

The other day I made the unfortunate mistake of updating my Skyrim game, I tried upgrading my SKSE, which worked, and then I got cocky. I then tried to fix my mistake by downgrading my game which I have done in the past. I however somehow further ♥♥♥♥♥♥ it up. Long story short, I am learning I may need to just wipe my game and MO2 clean and start over.

I was wondering if there is a way to create a backup of my load order as it is around 600 mods that I custom-placed onto an SSD. Ideally, I would like to know if it's possible to create a backup with all the mods so I don't have to re-download them. However, I cannot find a solid answer online. So is there a way to back up just the list and I can redownload them myself at a later date?

Thank you!

[mikk011]

To avoid needing to re-download all your mods go to the Windows location of your MO2 "Downloads" folder and copy all the .zip and/or .rar folders to a safe location such as an external drive (this is a good idea in general, in case your game drive were ever damaged). If you decide to reinstall your MO2 you would then copy all the .zip/.rar files that you saved back into the new "Downloads" folder. Also, in MO2's directory in Windows go to Profiles, select the profile you want to rebuild and make a copy of modlist.txt. This at least gives you a list to work from when you are reinstalling your mods.

BTW, it is entirely possible that you don't actually need to reinstall MO2, but when I tried to write a roadmap for you to keep your current installation I kept coming up with scenarios where my advice could go sideways. Depending on your own skills with modding and MO2 you might be able to work through it on your own.

[tabor.cote]

Should I just try uninstalling skyrim and then re installing that then? Since the popup that I originally got is skse and mcm menu version are uncompatible with the skyrim version I have.

That's what I originally did but I couldn't get the mcm mod to work. (the esp file would show on my in-game modlist, but I couldn't activate it) while On the newest version of skyrim (the one with the new creation club buyable content)

Thank you!

[mikk011]

Reinstalling SkyrimSE won't do any permanent damage to your MO2 setup.
That said, here are some of the problems you are going to need to address (and there are probably others I'm not remembering off the top of my head, which is why I didn't bring up the following in my first reply). Some of these are precautionary. Last, since you seem to need help with your installation issues I would strongly suggest sticking to the most recent game version. Speaking as someone still using game version 1.5.97, maintaining an obsolete build is a giant pain in the neck that needs extremely precise attention to detail to manage compatibility issues and there is not a lot of constructive help available for backwards-compatibility problems.

After reinstalling your game (and instructions for a clean reinstallation are at the bottom of the post):

-You will need to go into the right pane dropdown and with the edit function point MO2 to the reinstalled SkyrimSE.exe and otherwise configure the executable properly.
-You will need to select the correct version of skse for your version of Skyrim, and again you will need to make sure MO2's right pane dropdown options for skse are pointing at your newly-installed skse64_loader.exe and otherwise correctly configured here.
-You will especially need to doublecheck that all of your skse dependencies are the correct version for your version of skse and are also compatible with your game version (see Altbert's guide below, which also has some .ini edits for some skse utilities including engine fixes and skyui--you need to pay attention to the skyui issues as this is the source for MCM. Remember that any .ini edits need to be made using MO2's .ini editor).
-Any file or application installed to the game directory (for example an enb) will need to be completely reinstalled.
-As a further warning about the last two points, any mod that installs directly in the game's directory (such as engine fixes) will need to be the correct version and completely reinstalled.
-If you run SkyrimSE 1.6.1170, doublecheck whether any of your ordinary mods are version dependent. For example, the most current version of USSEP needs game version 1.6.1130 or higher. Update as necessary.
-Any tools such as FNIS, LOOT or Bodyslide may need to be reconfigured in your right-pane dropdown. However you can simply check and see if they work right before messing around with that without hurting anything.

Two last cautionary notes:
-The in-game modloader works badly with MO2. It leaves you with "Unmanaged" mods in MO2, and all by itself tends to foul up skyui. The better practice if you use bethesda mods is to copy those mod files to a safe location, uninstall and delete the bethesda mods, unsubscribe from the mod on bethesda.net, and then reinstall those mods using MO2 so they get managed properly without BGS functions fouling up the works.
-Start a new game. After all these hijinks, your old savegames are probably compromised (and you won't have them anyway if you follow the clean reinstallation instructions correctly).


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3111663148

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2743619856&insideModal=0

[Death Approaches]

it basically depends on you, how you set it up, how you planned for changes... you shouldn't HAVE to re-download any of them, unless you wiped out your downloads. And as mikk told you, you can probably forget about those saves and just delete them, if you don't have a saved copy of your load order, the odds a given save will work again with the same exact ~600 mods in a different load order is... questionable. It's one of those long involved "it depends" answers.

if you downloaded them all through MO2, they're still there. If you want to move mods you manually downloaded into MO2s download directory, so it knows about them, that's s smart idea as well. You can always just make a new profile and "start over" leaving the broken one alone for now. That's the magic of MO2!

some people put their nexus credentials into MO2 and download that way, like Vortex, others manually d/l through a browser like any other download, and manage their downloading separately from MO2... my downloads are in a specific SkyrimDownloads tree, segregated by version directories, 1.5.097, 1.6.640, 1.6.1130, etc. because you cannot count on mod creators to update version numbers in a logical way... "higher equals newer", is about the most you can hope for. But you shouldn't have to re-download mods in either scenario, unless you got heavy-handed and whacked your MO2 directory.

some have global MO2 installs and manage all games in one instance, others keep multiple MO2 installs directly in the game directory so each setup is game-specific and version-specific; it's like using profiles, but more isolated. You can then symlink the download directory under MO2 to the various sorted download repositories you've stored somewhere else.

why would someone do this? Well mostly managing one game, with one download directory, with mixed edition files, can drive you crazy once you get to a certain point. And as you've seen it's quite easy to mess up if you're not careful. You can partition downloads within MO2 as well, though. But you need to plan for this.

but if you did a standard <drive>:\Modding\MO2 it's separate from your game already, just back all that up, and it backs up everything needed to recreate the virtual filesystem, for every game and every profile, including your overrides and load orders and ini settings. That's why we love MO2.

course if you want to back up the GAME in that specific state, you can do what is called assisted manual modding, too... you can launch Explorer++ within MO2 which will mount the VFS to the game profile you're using, and then navigate to Skyrim and just copy that to another location. (from inside Explorer++ ONLY or other file manager you've set up within MO2; the VFS system is not a global mapping, only things launched within MO2 will see these files.)

so then you'll have a static copy of the game; if you copy your $APPDATA\local\Skyrim\ files, this has the mod structure, your definitions and categories and splitter bars, as well as Plugins.txt load order, then back up $USER\Documents\Skyrim for the .ini files and any of the saves that you KNOW for sure go with this profile... now you have a fully manually modded static, 100% unmanaged Skyrim copy.

the best thing about this, it becomes portable. you could copy it to linux or to your Deck, and it'll just run. No mod manager necessary. You could copy it to another Steam account, and it'd just run. Your machine could die and you could hook that drive up via USB3 and copy it back or run it directly, it'll just run. It's fairly easy to make a 150+GB zip file with everything needed to bring a working game back to life after something catastrophic happens. But the same could be said about MO2, too.

the worse thing about this, it totally defeats MO2... basically you used MO2 to get everything working and LOOT to sort it, but now they're all literal files under Data\; with likely 10s or 100s of thousands of loose files, and to turn it back into a managed game profile is much more involved than just wiping it and starting over. It's a snapshot of things, right now as they are, it's not meant to be edited much or further added to.

I know this is a lot. I'm not trying to confuse you. I want you to understand there's just so many different ways to go about things depending on how technical you are, and how willing you are to learn the things you don't know. And if you find this interesting at all, enjoy learning about the structure of the game and MO2, or it's just wasting your gaming time. :-)

The absolute worst thing you can do is just wing it, and learn as you go. It's great for the learning process, you'll repeatedly break stuff, and learn to not do. But it can be really, really frustrating.