I’ve been trying to get into modding my favorite RPG lately, but I keep hitting a wall with the tools. I spent a whole weekend just trying to get one custom companion to work properly, and it ended up breaking half my other mods. I guess I’m wondering if anyone else has felt totally overwhelmed at the start, especially when it comes to load order. How did you figure out what to tackle first without getting completely discouraged?
I get the feeling. I spent a whole weekend chasing a single companion, and yeah it wrecked half my other mods. My fix was simple: start over with a clean vanilla profile, set up a basic mod manager profile, and treat load order as a tiny experiment not a prophecy. I would test by adding one thing, boot the game, load a couple of saves, and if it held I moved on. Small wins built momentum.
Here's one practical path that worked for me. Build a stable baseline with a few reliable mods, then methodically layer in new stuff one at a time. Keep a simple note of where you place each mod in the load order and what you tested. If things crash, backtrack to the last known good state and try different dependencies instead of brute forcing more patches.
I used to think load order was a sacred ritual you perform to appease a capricious game. Turns out it just means these two mods conflict and you catch it by testing in chunks. I started logging changes and kept a separate save for testing, which kept the panic down even when chaos happened.
Maybe the obsession with perfect load order is overrated. Some games tolerate chaos, others melt. Focus on a core set of mods you actually use and learn to roll back quickly. The rest can wait while you get comfy with a baseline you trust.
Reframe it as a project with milestones instead of a sprint. Milestone one get the companion to work in a tiny sandbox, milestone two make sure it doesn't break the core UI, milestone three test with a clean save and a few quick swaps. The idea of load order becomes a practical checklist rather than a mystery.
Quick offhand note: I once dumped a bunch of patches at once and then just paused. I started again with one mod at a time and a fresh save. The sense of progress came when I could point to a moment where things didn't crash and I had a working setup to build on, and the load order suddenly felt navigable.
What tiny win helped you feel progress when you were starting with load order and modding?