Can you mod only one character?

[tony]

ok so this is a dumb question but i'm new so please bear with me. i know you can have several characters/worlds at once, but can you mod only one world and leave everything else?

[Mr. Monday]

You could turn off all your mods, but then if you wanted to play with the PC that used them you'd have to exit the game and turn them all on again. This could become problematic if you wanted to have one PC with one set of mods, and another with a different set of mods. You'll run the risk of either forgetting to turn one off and ruining the other's save or forgetting to turn one on and ruining that save.

[Mr. Monday]

Plus if you have mods you want in both, but your load order is different because there's mods that go before them in one save you'd mess something up if you forget to resort the order each time you change your mod list.

[fauxpas]

Or in practical terms; not really.

[Rider]

Using MO, yes, you can. You can set up different profiles for different characters and then MO remembers the changes. The only difficulty is that if you use a bashed patch, you need to either change to the patch for that build, or re-run the patch. I have several profiles set up. It literally takes seconds to change from one character to another, except for re-building the patch.

You must set up an archive system for your saves, however, so that you load only saves for that particular profile. I offload my saves onto a flash drive and load the latest one for the profile I want to play.

Theorectically NMM was supposed to be able to do this, but it did not work. NMM is a dead program now. Don't use it.

[Rez Elwin]

Kind of, you should be able to create profiles in your Mod manager of choice, I know you can in NMM. You can choose what is installed on each profile even nothing. You will have to exit the game each time you wish to change. I have to ask though, why would you not want to mod a character?

[DrNewcenstein]

I think he means a particular set of mods specifically for a given playthrough = character.

The long and painful way to do it would be to duplicate your Data folder, and only have a particular set of mods loaded into each one, and each one named for each character.

However, you'd need to be aware of two critical points:
1. Each Data folder will most likely be huge, so you will need a ton of free storage space.
2. Mods with loose files will increase the PITA level exponentially, so you would be much better off with mods that only had ESPs and BSAs.

You would also need to rename each Data folder every time you switched out.

And then there's your Saves. While I doubt you'd have to move them, you would have to remember which character went with which Data folder.

In all, it's just entirely too much to keep track of, but if that's what creams your twinkie....

[tony]

Originally posted by DrNewcenstein:

I think he means a particular set of mods specifically for a given playthrough = character.

The long and painful way to do it would be to duplicate your Data folder, and only have a particular set of mods loaded into each one, and each one named for each character.

However, you'd need to be aware of two critical points:
1. Each Data folder will most likely be huge, so you will need a ton of free storage space.
2. Mods with loose files will increase the PITA level exponentially, so you would be much better off with mods that only had ESPs and BSAs.

You would also need to rename each Data folder every time you switched out.

And then there's your Saves. While I doubt you'd have to move them, you would have to remember which character went with which Data folder.

In all, it's just entirely too much to keep track of, but if that's what creams your twinkie....

thank you, i'll just stick to vanilla for now...............

[Luxia]

Using MO yeah, it's quite easy actually. You can even tell it to separate the saves on the given profile to avoid making a mess.

This is why MO is king. Sure, NMM may be capable of making a profile, but it physically installs the mods, MO doesn't. That's why NMM profile switching might take hours with a lot of mods, and it's less than a minute for MO.

For example, I have both Enderal and normal Skyrim installed via MO and can switch between them in an instant.

[Rider]

Originally posted by DrNewcenstein:

I think he means a particular set of mods specifically for a given playthrough = character.

The long and painful way to do it would be to duplicate your Data folder, and only have a particular set of mods loaded into each one, and each one named for each character.

However, you'd need to be aware of two critical points:
1. Each Data folder will most likely be huge, so you will need a ton of free storage space.
2. Mods with loose files will increase the PITA level exponentially, so you would be much better off with mods that only had ESPs and BSAs.

You would also need to rename each Data folder every time you switched out.

And then there's your Saves. While I doubt you'd have to move them, you would have to remember which character went with which Data folder.

In all, it's just entirely too much to keep track of, but if that's what creams your twinkie....

You again? Stop spreading mis-information. There is absolutely no need to duplicate data files.
With MO, you can set up different profiles with different mods for each character.

[Uncle64]

I will all day long go for MO and create virutal data folders then follow DrNewcsteins suggestion that will eat up your diskspace.

[Grumpy]

Originally posted by TheInifinityPizza:

Originally posted by DrNewcenstein:

I think he means a particular set of mods specifically for a given playthrough = character.

The long and painful way to do it would be to duplicate your Data folder, and only have a particular set of mods loaded into each one, and each one named for each character.

However, you'd need to be aware of two critical points:
1. Each Data folder will most likely be huge, so you will need a ton of free storage space.
2. Mods with loose files will increase the PITA level exponentially, so you would be much better off with mods that only had ESPs and BSAs.

You would also need to rename each Data folder every time you switched out.

And then there's your Saves. While I doubt you'd have to move them, you would have to remember which character went with which Data folder.

In all, it's just entirely too much to keep track of, but if that's what creams your twinkie....

thank you, i'll just stick to vanilla for now...............

you should not listen to that troll

#1 like other had suggested when using mod organizer, a mod manager, you can set profiles for different scenarios. only downside is to close the game and select a different profile. but this should be a minor inconvinience

#2 theoretically spoken, even when using the strategy mentioned above there are QoL stuff like naming the backups or the saves. its just like mentioned the long and painfull way.

#3 advantage of #1 is that you just need to install the mods once. the profiles just manage the activated mods and the setting files

[tony]

Originally posted by Grumpy:

Originally posted by TheInifinityPizza:

thank you, i'll just stick to vanilla for now...............

you should not listen to that troll

#1 like other had suggested when using mod organizer, a mod manager, you can set profiles for different scenarios. only downside is to close the game and select a different profile. but this should be a minor inconvinience

#2 theoretically spoken, even when using the strategy mentioned above there are QoL stuff like naming the backups or the saves. its just like mentioned the long and painfull way.

#3 advantage of #1 is that you just need to install the mods once. the profiles just manage the activated mods and the setting files

Thank you, MO seems nice I will probably get it.

[Ilja]

You can use either MO Legacy or Mod Organizer 2. Both will work. The main differnece between them:

- MO Legacy has archive management. It tries to treat all files as loose files. Benefits of that are ability to make virtually "impossible" combinations with resources. Downside is that it gets tedious for new users, if they are not used to manage these files manually.

- MO2 does not have extra archive management features. Archives are loaded with plugins, as with NMM. Left panel still manages loose files, if they are shared as loose files. Making custom combination is harder, but the manager is easier to approach than MO Legacy.

If you haven't used similar tools before, then I would recommend going with MO 2.