This TAG is usually assigned to mods that are SKSE plugins or SKSE themselves and are there to inform you that the mod is known to break when SSE updates. This does not necessarily mean that the plugin is guaranteed to break when Special Edition updates (Although in the case of SKSE64, it is), just that previous updates have caused it to break in the past.

What is the purpose of [BʀᴇᴀᴋsOɴUᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ]?

The purpose of this TAG is mainly to inform you to keep your eye on this mod before updating your Skyrim runtime. In other words, I recommend that you make sure all mods in your load order that have this tag are updated to work with the newest version of Skyrim and SKSE64 before updating your game.

If you are a Journeyman and thus following my load order to the T, you do not need to worry. I will only update the guide to the newest version of Special Edition when every mod included is compatible. Just be sure to check the latest runtime version for this Modlist (it’s located at the top of the main page), because if you’re starting just after an update to the game you may have to actually downgrade versions.

Updating Mods

When the time finally comes to update your modlist, you will need to update each incompatible mod and SKSE64 individually. Luckily, this process is extremely easy! Simply follow the same installation procedure you followed the first time you installed the mod and select replace/overwrite in any menus that appear in File Explorer or Mod Organizer 2.

A few select mods out there do go beyond messing with the game data and actually require you to manually place files in the root Skyrim Special Edition directory. This is the base Skyrim path and where SkyrimSE.exe resides. We have to place files there by hand because Mod Organizer 2 cannot access anything above the data directory.

Getting to this folder is easy with MO2, simply hit the folder drop-down button above the modlist and select “Open Game folder” like so:

The files you have to place here vary from mod to mod so more detailed information will be provided after each [GᴀᴍᴇFᴏʟᴅᴇʀ] tag.

Certain game folder mods on Nexus do not have a “Mod Manager Download” button but still contain data folder files. Rather than installing those manually and ruining our pristine Data folder, we’re going to want to import the archive into Mod Organizer 2 after we’ve installed the game folder section (if one exists).

Method 1

After manually downloading the archive with the “Manual Download” button, be sure to first follow any prior installation procedures in the 2020 Modlist. Then simply drag the archive into the MO2 “Downloads” tab in the right pane. Be sure the “Downloads” tab is selected first (obviously). You may also have problems with the prior part if you are running MO2 as an administrator, so please don’t do that. The mod will now appear in your downloads tab with an exclamation point marker next to it. That simply means there is no Nexus mod or version information associated with the mod and you can query it by right clicking the mod and selecting “Query Info” then navigating through any additional windows (MO2 may ask which Skyrim Nexus it is from or what the mod ID is if it can’t figure it out from the filename). Keep in mind this will only work if the file is from Nexus. If your file is not from Nexus, you will have to type in the version manually after you install it.

From here you can follow the basic installation procedure to install the mod.

Method 2

Alternatively, if you want to just install a mod from an archive, you can hit the “CD Box” icon in the upper-left toolbar of MO2. It looks like this:

Then you can continue with the onscreen prompts to complete the installation. If you use this method, your mod will not appear in the “Downloads” pane.

Below is what’s known as a FoMod, it will appear during installation. Certain mods have these to tailor an installation to specific user preferences. Whenever a mod has a FoMod, I will let you know what I selected and if you should select the same thing or not.

Because Mod Oranizer 2 only builds out the data folder, mods must be archived in such a way so that no additional folders above data are present. Oftentimes though, authors improperly archive the data folder itself when packaging their mod or in the case of [GᴀᴍᴇFᴏʟᴅᴇʀ] mods, there is an additional layer of files. This causes MO2 to incorrectly set the data folder so we have to change it manually. After hitting the “Manual” button during the regular MO2 installation, you will be greeted with a red message that says “No game data on top level”. From there simply right click the correct data folder and select “Set data directory”. Note that sometimes the data folder isn’t clearly labeled at all, so for included mods I will always tell you what the correct data folder is.

Each mod on Nexus is flagged with its most recent version number and Mod Organizer 2 is able utilize this information to flag outdated versions in red. The problem occurs when mod authors use non-sequential versions when updating their mods or simply have multiple version choices for the user. When this happens, MO2 will flag the version in red even though it is up to date. If this happens in any Included mods, I will always let you know if we will change the version number manually or simply let it be.

Manually Changing a Mod’s Version

To change the version number of a mod manually, simply double click it in the modlist and go the “Nexus Info” tab. In the version box, simply enter the desired version. The text will automatically change to green if it is the mod’s most recent listed version.

Sometimes I will recommend that you write Notes for certain mods to remember some important information. This can be easily done in MO2 with the following steps: Double click on the mod you want to write a note for in your modlist and open the “Notes” tab. My preferred method is to use the bottom text box rather than the top so a note flag will appear for the mod. This allows you to shorten the width of your mod list considerably without loosing valuable information. Anyway, simply write the note there. Because these are mod specific I will always have more information with this tag.

Some mods contain files that aren’t used by the engine but are instead there for your convenience. Certain mods also just come with excess files because reasons (author negligence). Although there is an argument to be made that Readme text files and source code should remain in a mod’s installed files, most people (myself included) will never look at them and they will just visually clutter up our virtual data folder. For this reason I recommend removing them during or after installation. To remove files from a mod, follow the steps below. The specific files will be listed after this tag for each mod.

Removing Files During Installation

After hitting the “Manual” button during a regular installation, simply untick any files or folders which you don’t want to install.

Removing Files After Installation

Double click on the mod in question and go to the “Filetree” tab. Then simply right click and delete the files or folders.

Some mods generate files as part of their normal running process. In MO2 this behavior is a little more intrusive however because any new files are placed automatically into the “Overwrite” folder at the bottom of your left-side modlist. Because it is best practice to keep the Overwrite folder clear, we will want to move the file into the mod it belongs in. Once it is in there, any new file with the same name will simply overwrite the existing one already located in our mod. When doing this the important thing to keep in mind is that the folder structure must be the same as it was in Overwrite.

Moving Files out of Overwrite

Moving mods out of the Overwrite folder is an easy process. Simply open Overwrite by double clicking on it then drag the files from the window that appears to the mod they are from in your modlist. Alternatively, you could right click Overwrite and select “Move content to mod…”.

Dirty and Wild Edits occur normally during development in the Creation Kit. You can think of these as accidental or unintended changes in a mod that are not needed for core functionality. Usually, most mod authors will take the time to clean their mod from these edits but sometimes this isn’t the case. When this happens, we have to do it ourselves and fortunately its an extremely easy process.

Watch: DLC Cleaning

What you want to do is open up SSEEditQuickAutoClean.exe from within MO2 and check the plugin (and only the plugin) you want to clean. Any masters will be automatically loaded by xEdit so you don’t need to worry about that. Next, simply allow the application to run until it says “Quick Clean mode finished.” near the bottom of the message log. If you want to see a video example where I clean the official DLC plugins click the video title above. Note that we will clean the DLC in the Clean Install section so you don’t have to worry about doing that now.

Form 43 refers to the version of the record structure inside a plugin. As Special Edition was updated, new recorders were added and some of the existing ones were changed. This caused an issue with some mods, but for this reason we will be updating any Form 43 mods to Form 44, the latest SSE Form version.

Updating to Form 44

Open up the Creation Kit from within MO2 and make sure that the Form 43 plugin isn’t open in another application (like xEdit). Go to “File” in the top left and hit “Data…” or hit the open folder button just below it. Hit the tick box next to the Form 43 mod, press “Set as Active File” and “Ok”. Wait for the CK to load the mod then simply hit the floppy disk button in the top left to save or Ctrl + S if you prefer. Bam, done, easy!

For certain mods, we will be making our own record changes. We’ll do this to forward changes made by the Unofficial Patch to mods that don’t have them and to make changes where appropriate. Obviously we can do a lot of things with this so the specific records that will need changing will be listed under each mod. Overall, editing records isn’t too difficult. About the only thing you will need to do is enter information into the spreadsheet that is xEdit manually.

Start by running SSEEdit from MO2, hit ok on the plugins window to load your entire load order and don’t tick anything on the modgroups window. On the left side are drop down lists for each loaded plugin. When you find the one in question, you can upon it up to see all the records it contains. From there, you can hit a specific record to view it.

Watch: Manually Cleaning Dawnguard by Editing Records

One of the first things you should do if we are dealing with record conflicts, is to right click the plugin list and select “Apply Filter to show Conflicts”. This will filter out only records with duplicates. A few handy thing to know is that above each column in xEdit is the name of the plugin the record is a part of and that records further right win out over those to the left. You will see this wen the background is red. Obviously if a row is green that means the record is the same through all the overwrites so it’s safe to ignore. Also don’t be fooled that red overwrites are bad, that is certainly not the case. It just means a value is being changed, nothing more nothing less. If you want to see an example of using xEdit to edit records, check out the video above where I clean the Dawnguard DlC manually. Note that we will do this down below.

In the Essentials section we will utilize a nifty mod called 60 FPS Interface that has already patched this for in most instances. However, there will still be times that we will need to manually update interface files to 60 FPS. Interface files, by the way, are any of the menus that you see in-game. By default these values are set to 30 FPS but patching them is a simple process. Firstly you will need to install a free application called Jpexs Free Flash Decompiler from this link. Download the “ZIP” version as seen below:

As it is unlikely that most of you will use this application outside of modding, you can unpack it your Modding Tools folder, just keep in mind this doesn’t need to be run from MO2. You can name it FFDec.

Next double click the mod in question in your modlist, go to the “Filetree” tab and hit “Open Mod in Explorer”. From there, navigate to the file in question and right click it. Select “open with…”, “More apps”, scroll all the way down and “Look for another app on this PC”. Also don’t forget to check “Always use this app to open .swf files” to save you this arduous journey in the future. Navigate to where you unpackaged the Free Flash Decompiler and double click “ffdec.exe”.

Editing the Interface FPS in FFDec

When the Free Flash Decompiler opens the .swf file in question, select “No to all” for any URL loading prompts. From here, simply click on the “header” in the left pane and hit “Edit” at the bottom. In the “Frame rate:” value, enter 60 and hit save at the bottom. Then hit the big save button in the top left for good measure and exit out of the application. The interface file in question is now 60 FPS!

As you may or may not already know, Skyrim has a plugin limit of 255 after which the game will simply crash. Luckily, Skyrim Special Edition has introduced the ‘light’ plugin format which allows us flag ESPs or ESMs to allow them to be loaded in their own plugin space, effectively allowing us to bypass the 255 plugin cap so long as certain conditions within the plugin are met.

Finding Which Plugins are ESLable

If you are following along as a Journeyman, you can skip this process as I have already gone through and flagged all the included mods with the [ESLᴀʙʟᴇ] tag so you can simply follow the steps below the next header.

Figuring out which plugins can be easily flagged as ESL is simple, we just run a script in xEdit which will manually check for us. Start by loading in all your plugins in xEdit. Then right-click the left-side plugin list and select “Apply Script…”

In the dialogue box that appears, type “find esp plugins” in the filter box to locate the “Find ESP plugins which could be turned into ESL” script in the drop down list. Then hit OK to run.

After the script finishes running, the Messages window will display all the plugins that have the potential to be flagged as ESL. We’re only looking for are the ones that say “Can be turned into ESL by adding ESL flag in TES4 header”. Compacting form IDs requires you to load any other plugins which depend on it. So we’ll avoid doing that for now. Also make sure that there is no Cell warning present.

Flagging Plugins as ESLs

This process is really straightforward. First, simply load the plugin or plugins that you need to flag as ESLs in xEdit. Ignore the modgroups window. When xEdit finishes loading, find the plugin in the left hand plugin list and click on it. In this example I am using SkyUI. Find the “Record Flags row” and right-click the empty cell then select edit. Select “Yes I’m absolutely sure” in the popup window and tick the ESL option, then hit OK.

That’s it. You can now hit Ctrl + S to save the plugin or close out of the application and save on the prompt then.