The Concise Skyrim Transformation Guide 2020

How to mod Skyrim SE in 2020. Step-by-step guide, as simple and clear as possible. Includes carefully curated "Vanilla Plus" mod lists and links.

NOTE: This is a newly updated special edition version of my old guide - "Concise Skyrim Modding Guide 2019".

introduce

This is a performance-friendly step-by-step guide based on over 3000 hours of experience modding and playing Skyrim.

I wrote this article because (in my opinion) many other guides are not clear or concise enough and tend to assume that the user has unlimited free time and a powerful PC. To keep this guide simple and performance-friendly, I will only cover the basics, so no ENB etc. will be covered. I hope this guide helps you save time and frustration when modding Skyrim.

Avoid unrealistic expectations:

“Changes are easy and fast. Anyone can do it”

“You can install over 200 mods that are 100% stable”

"My 100+ graphics mods and ENB make Skyrim look epic with no performance penalty"

“Mods fix and improve various aspects of the game”

"If you follow all instructions and use common sense, you should not have a problem"

While the above statements are sometimes true, they are also highly misleading. Modding takes time, only maintains 99% stability at best, and can impact performance. Even today in 2020, there are still many things about the mod that cannot be fixed or improved. Sometimes, regardless of whether you follow this guide carefully or not, something will go wrong.

Prerequisites (you will need):

Skyrim Special Edition on Steam, installed in a location other than Program Files (to avoid Windows 10 security issues).

Your PC should be able to run vanilla Skyrim smoothly on high settings (consistent 60 FPS, any latest 4-core CPU + GTX 1650 + 8GB RAM).

If you plan to download and install all the mods in this guide, you will have at least 50GB of storage available (after installing Skyrim). .com free account for downloading mods.

A lot of free time and perseverance.

A note about the screenshots:

I know the visuals aren't very impressive, but they're still much better than vanilla with almost no performance penalty. When trade-offs come up, this guide prioritizes gameplay and performance over graphics. Also note that no landscape texture pack was used in the screenshot. These are mostly vanilla textures with lighting mods and ini editing etc.

Preparing mods for Skyrim

Before installing the mod, you must follow these steps:

• Download and install Skyrim Special Edition from Steam.
• (Optional) Delete or rename the game intro video at:

Steam \ steamapps \ common \ Skyrim Special Edition \ Data \ Video

• Run Skyrim once - select "Play" in the launcher and exit from the main menu. (This way the engine will generate an ini file)
• Create a folder where you will store your modding resources (not in Skyrim's directory, but on the same drive). For example: "C:\Skyrim Mods"
• Get SKSE (Skyrim Script Extension).

​ ​ ​ ​ Please follow the installation instructions displayed on this page.

• Download and unzip SSEEdit (also known as xEdit). To make Skylines more stable after modifications, clean up Bethesda's main file as follows:

Open SSEEditQuickAutoClean.exe, select Update.esm, and click OK. Wait 5-10 minutes until it completes, then close SSEEdit.

​ ​ ​ ​ Now, reopen SSEEditQuickAutoClean.exe and repeat "dawnguard.esm", "hearthfires.esm" and "dragonborn.esm".

(If Skyrim gets an official update via Steam, the master files may be updated and you will have to clean them again)

• You will soon be installing "Mod Organizer 2", but before you do that, I recommend that you edit the graphics settings in the default game launcher to your liking, because once you install MO, you have to edit the graphics settings inside MO using its ini. edit. (Once you start using MO, any changes you make to the default launcher …