Coven of Crones: only for new start-ups?

[linda6943]

When I last played Elder Scrolls SE (i.e. before installing Coven of Crones) I had some real neat mods, as did my husband on his computer. (He got me onto C of C.) Now the instructions for the new mods say to always start without any mods you might have lying around, lest you have something that might conflict. He seems to be able to play with at least one mansion or two that he had before installing C of C. So is he courting disaster, or am I missing out on a lot of experience and really great possessions? (Having already become Dragonborn, it really stings to go back to barely able to aim an arrow or wield an ax.)

[R4ndomG4mer]

A lot of people are just strangely over-zealous about the whole modding process. I very much doubt you would have any issues. I would suggest you just try it and see what happens. If there does end up being a problem, you can just go through a process of testing and figure out what conflicts with what. You might have to remove some things for the sake of Coven of Crones, but I doubt it would conflict with much else, since it mostly adds an entirely new region to the game, and hardly affects anything that's already present (apart from Anise's Cabin.)

[hawklaser]

You might be able to get away with it, but no guarantees. It all depends on if there are any conflicts that arise.

The reason why its often recommended to start with a fresh slate when using large mod packs, is unless you have put together the mod collection yourself its quite easy to encounter various conflicts and issues due to multiple mods altering the same game aspects in different ways.

Now its not impossible to add or remove things from pre-made mod packs and collections, but it doesn't always go smoothly. And not just because of the aforementioned conflicts. A mod pack or collection might also be using tweaked config files, which could be pointing towards a mod you decide to remove or a mod you add could change those config files, either of which can result in a number of issues down the road.

Then add on top of that, an existing playthrough will have pre-existing data that gets referenced. And depending on how things got changed, it can break quests, or just flat out crash the game when the existing data gets pulled and doesn't fit into what it is now expecting.

These kind of issues can even arise when adding lone mods to existing playthroughs.

So, if you want to try and see if it works with your existing mods and playthrough, you really should make a backup beforehand that you can restore to if some kind of major issue does arise. Though, depending on if and when an issue occurs, you could be set back even more hours than what you currently have into your playthrough.