I'm incredibly confused by Skyrim's in-game mod hub

[N3XUS12]

So I bought Skyrim Special Edition (without AE upgrade) for PC. I last played Oldrim like 10 years ago.

I found a webpage listing 'best Skyrim mods' and there is a list of around 30 of them. Half of them I can find with the search tool in the game menu itself, but the other half, I can't find.

Even the ones I can find, they are not listed first in the search options (you think it would be when I am searching their name verbatim).

For example, I can't find 'Amazing Follower Tweaks' in the game at all, but I can find it online.

So my question is: Are all mods findable in-game and I'm just missing them? Can I have some mods installed from, say, nexusmods, and others directly installed ingame? How would that affect the load order?

Honestly, it's rare I play a game on steam that doesn't have a workshop, so trying to get the mod list I want installed is proving to be a lot more confusing than I thought it would be.

[tulle040657]

Only mods that the mod maker put on the Bethesda mod site show up on the in game mod hub. Other sites like Nexus, AFKmods, and ModDB have more mods

[alexander_dougherty]

some are findable with the ingame modding system.
Most are not.

It is not advised to mix Bethesda mods with mods from the internet. The ingame modding system prioritises mods from the ingame modding system, meaning the load order is guaranteed to be wrong with a mixed load order.

I would advise you to use Nexus Mods, and follow a guide like Vlad's guides to modding Skyrim (you can find them in the guides section)

[Catalyst]

ladies and gentlemen, we got em

[Liquid Inc]

Originally posted by N3XUS12:

So I bought Skyrim Special Edition (without AE upgrade) for PC. I last played Oldrim like 10 years ago.

I found a webpage listing 'best Skyrim mods' and there is a list of around 30 of them. Half of them I can find with the search tool in the game menu itself, but the other half, I can't find.

Even the ones I can find, they are not listed first in the search options (you think it would be when I am searching their name verbatim).

So my question is: Are all mods findable in-game and I'm just missing them? Can I have some mods installed from, say, nexusmods, and others directly installed ingame? How would that affect the load order?

The In-Game mod menu only lists mods hosted by Bethesda's servers. It won't host other mods that require more than just "install".

"AFT" being one of those that's reliant on more than just the base game.

This same goes for things that rely on the Script Extender (which is an external tool) and will never be hosted by Bethesda. That means anything that uses it (which is a lot of mods) won't ever be on the In-Game Mod section, because they wouldn't work there.

Originally posted by N3XUS12:

Can I have some mods installed from, say, nexusmods, and others directly installed ingame? How would that affect the load order?

You can, with the Vortex Mod Manager, as it has an extension for it. I've not used the option myself though, so i have no idea how well it works, or if it works.

You can however, download them from the in-game menu, Copy the files to another location, and then delete them from the in-game menu again.
You would then add the files to Vortex, and have it handle everything.

Having both of them working together is a bit questionable. There is that extension available for Vortex ofcourse but as i said, i have no idea how well it works....