Introduction
A Beginner’s Guide
Welcome!
In this section of the website you can find resources and step-by-step tutorials as part of a semi-modular Beginner’s Guide to modding Skyrim SE. This guide is the official successor to my old The Phoenix Flavour project before it became Wabbajack-exclusive and is intended to offer a comprehensive introduction to and knowledge base for Skyrim modding.
The Modding Journey
Getting into Skyrim modding can be a daunting experience. Beckoned by the sheer volume of high quality mods, many newcomers quickly feel overwhelmed by seemingly inexplicable issues cropping up left and right. Googling for a fix rarely yields a tailor-made solution.
The good news is: There is no magic involved in modding Skyrim. If there is a problem, there is a reason for it, and with at least a basic understanding of how mods are structured and how they function you can painlessly fix most issues or prevent them from occurring to begin with. All it takes is some patience and the willingness to read.
But that is the catch. Learning how to mod requires time and effort. The more ambitious you are, the bigger and the more complex your dream modlist, the more time and effort it will take. Modding, like any other skill, requires a degree of commitment.
Where to begin?
Still here? Awesome!
Regardless of whether you are at the start of your journey or already have some modding experience under your belt, this guide endeavours to provide you with the tools and knowledge to realise your dream modlist - eventually.
To that end it offers two approaches.
Step-by-Step
For newcomers to the modding scene, the Core Module offers step-by-step introduction into the basics of modding. It assumes no pre-existing knowledge and will take you through the process from the very beginning with each step building onto the previous one. It does require you to follow the instructions to the letter (unless otherwise specified) so that by the end of it you are ready to strike out on your own.
Specifically, the Core Module teaches you:
- How to properly set up Skyrim & tools for modding
- Mod Organizer 2 usage and best practices
- Basic mod structure and functionality with emphasis on plugins
Modular
If you are not entirely new to modding, much of the ground covered in the Core Module may already be familiar to you. Instead, you may be interested in referencing the Additional Modules and Knowledge Base on your own modding journey.
Caveats & Notes
First, the ethos appeal: I have been modding Skyrim for over a decade, writing modding tutorials since 2017, and curating large Wabbajack lists since 2020. While I am nowhere near as knowledgable as the brightest minds in the community, I have picked up many tips and tricks over the years that I believe are valuable and worth sharing. I would also like to think that I have become quite efficient at breaking down complex processes into small steps that are easy to follow.
That being said, I am very thorough, perhaps obsessively so, in managing my setups. I like doing things properly and in a clean fashion, because it helps me orient myself and keep a good overview. When tinkering with some 2,000 separate mod folders in TPF I find this to be absolutely essential.
This also means that I will be bringing a good amount of relatively minor steps and personal idiosyncrasies into my instructions. As such, they are often “How To Mod Skyrim Phoenix’s Sometimes Unnecessarily Thorough Way” which is by no means the most efficient or objectively “best” way.
Use your own brain, come up with your own little quirks and tricks, and take whatever you find helpful from my process, because my process is all I can offer you.
Tool Preferences
For various reasons that I will bore you with another time I am very strict about using Mod Organizer 2 with Root Builder. As for LOOT, I only ever install it for quickly checking with plugins need “cleaning” for DynDOLOD NG. If you think Vortex is great for modding, Root Builder unnecessary, and LOOT totally essential, we will have to respectfully disagree with each other and my resources will be of limited use to you.
Comparison to TPF
While I described this Beginner’s Guide as the successor to my old manual guide, it is, in fact, quite different in various regards.
A traditional manual modding guide is intended to talk you through the creation of a complete setup. This is what TPF did and it is what the STEP guide and what Lexy’s LOTD still do. The Core Module of my Beginner’s Guide is closest to that experience; however, it will not yield anything close to a complete setup. Quite the opposite: It will aid you in building a solid foundation for your own setup which you need to build yourself while teaching you (many of) the necessary skills to do so.
The obvious advantage is that you are not tied to a guide writer’s preferences. With an emphasis on explaining the underlying reasons for taking certain steps and going through certain processes, my instructions here are both more elaborate but also require more active thinking and memorising on the part of the reader.
About me
Hi! I’m Phoenix (24/nb). At the time of this writing, I have been modding Skyrim for about ten years which makes me feel extremely old in the way that only 20-something people can. Gosh, look at me, I’m practically ancient.
Once upon a time, I was modding Skyrim with Nexus Mod Manager and LOOT on my crappy old laptop, feeling very accomplished when I incorporated Bashed Patches and Merged Patches into my workflow. I ran Climates of Tamriel and Realistic Lighting Overhaul with RealVision ENB (good old days) and I routinely failed at properly installing SKSE or ENBSeries. But I kept at it because I really, really enjoyed modding and eventually I got better at it.
In December 2017 I finally realised a dream of mine by publishing my own modding guide, The Phoenix Flavour. I will be honest with you, it was pretty terrible at first. I had no idea what I was doing! In the following years, TPF moved several times, off the Nexus to Wordpress-based websites and finally to much more sophisticated Hugo-based static site (that’s where you are right now!). The guide steadily grew in scope and quality thanks to generous community feedback.
The release of Wabbajack in 2019 changed the modding world, especially for guide authors. Suddenly we could share setups in a fraction of the time, but at the cost of the “educational” benefits we previously offered. For a time, I took a hybrid approach by continuing the manual guide alongside a Wabbajack version which only worked thanks to zDas, Lively, and especially Cody who maintained the Wabbajack version at various points in time.
I finally discontinued the TPF manual guide in the fall of 2021 when I realised that the Wabbajack version was far more popular and that my own ambitions for the setup would continue to be held back by having to minutely document everything.
While the long-promised Wabbajack-only version of TPF 5.0 is still in development hell, I have in the meantime published and maintained several other lists, including Skyrim Modding Essentials, Legends of the Frost, and Aurora for Skyrim SE as well as Welcome to Paradise for Fallout 4.
I never regretted my decision to retire the TPF manual guide, but I have greatly missed the process of guide-writing. Believe it or not, I feel much more confident and qualified for writing instructions than I do for actual modding. Since I do not have the time nor energy to maintain a traditional modding guide, I have decided instead to try and realise another ambition of mine: A proper beginner’s guide as a springboard for newcomers to the modding scene.
And here we are.