How do I nuke my skyrim folder and mods?

[A-Mac]

I have over 400 mods installed, and I havent played in a long, long time. at the time I knew how to make it so it didnt crash but its a tangled spaghetti mess. I just want to start out with a fresh, vanilla game, then add the best mods to it.

Removing mods can sometimes be tricky, and i want no trace of any mods left at all.

[Dexter]

Uninstall the game first by deleting local content. Then delete the Skyrim folder from the steamapps common folder for any leftovers.

Go to your documents, in the my games folder and delete the Skyrim folder from there to delete your saves and ini files.

There is a guide that is more informative that could help you uninstall the game more efficiently, but I don't know the link.

[Toby_Doomer]

If you use Nexus Mod manager you can simply disable all mods with 1 button. go to tab named plusgins and there is button "disable all active plugins" (this also disables skyrim, dawnguard and dragonborn esp. so you have to to reactivate them. its better to do this this way. when you want any mod back you just activate it instead of redownloading it.

[Roscaria]

http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Make_Skyrim_Vanilla_Again

[Zoron]

YOU HAVE HOW MANY MODS?! HOLY 5HIT!!!! damn. most people ive heard of try to keep below 150, not you eh? loading it full of crap every time XD

[ApocalypticAI]

The way to be 100% sure is to delete skyrim, and after that manually remove any files still left in the Skyrim folder under Steamapps->common (simpley remove skyrim map in it's whole). After that go to your steam account in steam, go to workshop and unsubscribe to all skyrim mods. Then you install skyrim again. This should clear you of any mods you have.

After that you can subscribe newly to mods. Since you haven;t played in a while, i really reccomend unsubscribing to all your old mods, for many of them will no longer work and mess up your system.

Also they advice to keep mods under 150, so it loads in decent speed and doesn;t put unneccesary stress on your hardware.

[Nazenn]

Originally posted by The Stealthy Doctor:

The way to be 100% sure is to delete skyrim, and after that manually remove any files still left in the Skyrim folder under Steamapps->common (simpley remove skyrim map in it's whole). After that go to your steam account in steam, go to workshop and unsubscribe to all skyrim mods. Then you install skyrim again. This should clear you of any mods you have.

After that you can subscribe newly to mods. Since you haven;t played in a while, i really reccomend unsubscribing to all your old mods, for many of them will no longer work and mess up your system.

Also they advice to keep mods under 150, so it loads in decent speed and doesn;t put unneccesary stress on your hardware.

Sorry but some of this is really poor advice. You dont need to delect your entire folder. Roscaria has linked to a method that leaves you with ONLY the vanilla files which if you then verify leaves your game in a vanilla state with minimal redownloading.
The workshop currently is extrememly buggy and not recommended for us, so if someone is going to wipe their installation its the best time to go to the nexus rather then subscribe to workshop mods and wait for it to ruin their game.
The number of mods is completely unimportaint. You can have 600 mods in your game (with esp merges) and be fine if those mods are small little things, but if you have 200 very very heavy mods youre likely to run into issues. Loading speed is about what the mods actually affect, not the number, as is how well they function

[A-Mac]

Originally posted by Roscaria:

http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Make_Skyrim_Vanilla_Again

Thanks ill try it out