This guide will give a general overview of how to handle Mod Load Orders. It’s not meant to be a strict prescription, but it will assist in ensuring your load order has minimal issues and is easier to troubleshoot.
If playing in Multiplayer, it’s important to note that you must have the exact same mods and load order as the other player, including mods listed in the inactive pane or loose-file mods, or you may run into problems.
Do not load/delete these entries:
- Honour.pak
- DiceSet_06.pak
These are base game files that show in the Inactive Mods pane. They should stay in the Inactive Mods pane.
A note on Mod Load Order: There are a lot of ways people reference the order in which mods load. You’ll often hear things like:
- Higher/Lower on your Load Order
- Earlier/Later on your Load Order
- Biggest/Smallest Number
- Top/Bottom of your Load Order
The most important thing to be aware of is that the lower the number, the earlier a mod loads. To that end, I recommend talking about Load Order in terms of Early to Late loading mods, to clear up confusion. 0 is the Earliest mod to load, and mods loaded later than other mods may overwrite the earlier mod’s changes.
Load orders should be set up in an order following the below structure. As always, if a mod’s page recommends a specific placement load order, go with the author’s suggestion.
The first types of mods you should have on your list are Library mods and Single-Purpose SE mods.
Next are mods that provide playable actions, items, and dyes, and mods that fix base-game content and/or affect general gameplay (ex. Concentration Failsafe, Shields Overhaul) should go next. Often these will rely on Early Loaders, or are mods that are expected to get overridden or referenced by other mods as well.
The third chunk of mods you should place in your order are those that provide new content to existing structures (ex. FeatsExtra, Metamagic Extended, WildMagicD100)
I recommend ordering these by type
These types of mods also fall under this category:
UI mods like the Better Hotbar 2 mod can go here!
I recommend ordering them like this:
Visual mods can technically go anywhere in the load order, but I’ve found having them load just before Late Loaders to be the most reliable.
I recommend ordering these by type
Examples of these include:
If you want more information on how to use Unique Tav, refer to the UT Guide.
Mods that override the appearance of Tav or Companions, such as Unique Tav, have a very specific load order. You will know that it is incorrectly installed if you have issues such as blue or black skin, missing limbs, torso, or head.
The following suggested load order for visual mods is only needed if you have UT or Appearance Override mods. Note that you must check all your visual mods to download UT patches or determine if they are compatible with UT.
Examples of these include:
These types of mods should always be near the bottom of your load order. They either overwrite existing content, or rely on the existence of other content.
Minor patches should go closer to their primary mods - like the WarlockUndead5eSpells patch should go next to WarlockUndead
Examples of Late Loaders include: