Guide to cleaning your save and cleaning mods (save corruption, save bloat, uninstall mods)

A guide to cleaning and saving your save (heh get it :P) from corruption, bloat or just from uninstalling mods mid-way through. Provided are a list of tools to use (this isn't how to install mods, so mod organizer isn't listed) to clean your saves and how to get a (mostly) bug/crash free game. Keep in mind, some mods just increase or cause ctds and so you may still end up with crashes or mods corrupting saves.

However, this should help a lot in fixing your Skyrim.

Tools to use and a walkthrough on using them

First part of the guide is a list of tools to use while modding.

The first, and arguably most important tool is LOOT.
It can be found: https://loot.github.io/

I used BOSS, and it corrupted my saves after a while and LOOT fixed it up...more on that later.

LOOT provides a list of mods that need cleaning, any errors within the mods and sorts them to a mostly proper load order (some mods may still need to be manually moved). Its pretty easy to use, so I won't go into that.

Next is to get TES5Edit and Wrye Bash.

TES5Edit is an incredibly important tool alongside LOOT. From here, if LOOT says a mod needs cleaning...open up TES5Edit and get that mod cleaned! Dirty edits can slowly corrupt your Skyrim.

It is however, the most tedious part.

First, open TES5Edit and unselect all mods. Now select only the mod that needs cleaning (it may open other mods that mod uses as masters, that is normal) and wait for it to load everything. Then right click that mod, click apply filter for cleaning (may need to wait again) and then remove identical masters and then do undelete and disable references.

Close TES5Edit (save the mod of course) and then open it again and repeat if any other mod needs cleaning. Each time a mod is cleaned, you have to close TES5Edit again. Boring and like I said, tedious, but needed part of modding.

Now when you have done that. Open Wrye Bash and you may see some mods are marked in orange (if any mods are red, you missed a step in installing the mod, go look at the mod page and get the required mods)...it will say masters have been re-ordered.

More tedium.

Go through TES5Edit and open each mod (one at a time, so when you fix the mod, close and open again with each mod) that says masters re-ordered. Then just press sort masters after right clicking the mod and again, close TES5Edit and repeat for each out of order mod listed by Wrye Bash.

What out of order mods do...honestly don't know and I couldn't find it googling at all. I did a lot of searching, and no one says anything about out of order mods or what happens if they are. It may do nothing, or it may cause errors if out of order. But, it is a lot nicer knowing each mod in Wrye Bash is a nice green (healthy) color.

Now when you see all mods green, and there are no dirty edits. Open TES5Edit (again, you may notice its used a lot) and select all mods (but de-select bashed patch.esp) and wait for things to fully load. Then right click one of the mods (doesn't really matter which), go to other and then select create merged patch. Wait for that to make, then exit TES5Edit and save the patch.

Now go back to Wrye Bash, and put your merged patch directly above (no other mod above/below) bashed patch. Then right click bashed patch and click rebuild patch.

There, the boring and challenging part is over. Your game should be vastly more stable.

The next part of the guide is on how to clean your save if its corrupted, save bloated or if you re-ordered your mods (through LOOT if you used BOSS) or uninstalled mods half-way through.

Cleaning your save from corruption, save bloat or removing/organizing mods mid-game

Now first. This isn't bullet proof. If you have mods that are just badly made (hey it happens), even if LOOT says there are no dirty mods...mods can still damage your game (especially older mods that never got updated to the newest Skyrim).

This, however should fix a lot of saves.

First, I didn't include this tool in the last section. Since every person should have it and this is not really a install mod walkthrough (the first part is as far as that goes). And more of save cleaning. But, assuming you have SKSE (you should)

Go into skyrim/data/skse and open SKSE.ini

add this line

[General]
ClearInvalidRegistrations=1

This slowly (very slowly) removes scripts and other things from uninstalled mods or other sources. For example, a real life friend save was 294 mb (no idea how he was able to play at 40 fps with little crashes...) and he went into an interior (go to a house or small store or other interior with less npcs) and left the game running for 12 or so hours and it dropped to 9 mb.

Now, what happens if you have a bad mod order (say you did it manually or used BOSS) with no dirty mods and a perfectly green Wrye Bash? Well, in my game...my save went from 14mb to 15mb (that is pretty normal in a heavy mod list...you do not want a 50+ mb save). However, something was corrupting it. It would jump after 5-10 minutes to 50 mb (I managed to save it at that point) and it crashed the game.

First, get this very useful mod
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12625/?

Now. I used LOOT to fix the mod order, and did the following save cleaning.

First, open console with ~

Type PCB

Then I closed console (press ~ again), and waited inside a store for 31 days (with the mod it makes waiting a lot easier...no need to keep pressing wait 30+ times)

I then stood in a corner (naughty corner, I was on timeout) for 9-10 hours and my save went from 50 mb back to 14mb.

Once you let the game run for 5+ hours in your naughty corner, you'll want to save and exit Skyrim.

The next thing to do is get this save cleaner:
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/31675/?

And open your most recent save you just cleaned with that tool. There are basic usage instructions within the tool. But, you'll only need to use remove unattached references and remove instances. Sometimes doing the above is all that is needed and there is nothing to clean.

Optionally, you can also get
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/31724/?

Which is a bit simpler to use.

Now load up your new save (the papyrus cleaner creates a new one) and it should be good to go. :)

Again, if you have badly made script mods...you may still run into problems. However, this should fix a majority of your issues.

Hope this saves your saves. :)

[The Senate]

is that supposed to happen

[The Senate]

ok. When i did sort masters nothing happens. when i exit theres no save pop up

[AlexTRONIC]

@A Salty Person, Identical to master means identical / copy files which can be removed in cleaning, and disabling the references which are not used by the master. The colour doesnt matter, while cleaning always remove identical to master and disable references

[The Senate]

what does "remove identical masters and then undelete and disable references" mean? what color should i delete stuff from?\

[AjaxSawdy]

Found a way to get TES5Edit, I downloaded it on my phone, which isn't protected and then uploaded it to onedrive. ^_^

[AjaxSawdy]

Why is TES5Edit NOT avalible on steam? Normally I wouldnt care, I'd just go to nexus and get it, but my new web filter blocks out nexus entirely, and I don't have the password to disable the web protection program. (No point in having a site blocker if you can just disable it willy-nilly.) So far I've been able to find a round-about way of getting all the other mods you suggested so that I can start cleaning up my mods (before they become an actual problem), but for some god-awful reason the only website in the world that has TES5Edit is one that I cannot get too. So if you happen to know any way at all of getting the mods without using nexus, that would be great! :D

[AjaxSawdy]

Any links to the recommended mods?

[Espresso]

You can however use BOSS to sort your mod list and LOOT to find dirty mods. I just had bad experiences with BOSS.

However...LOOT tends to do better on smaller mod lists and BOSS tends to do better on the larger ones (but you have more mods to manually move yourself, which in a big mod list is better).