Skip Navigation
Linux Gaming @lemmy.world
drislands @lemmy.world

How much success have you had with modded Skyrim specifically?

I've been using ModOrganizer2 via SteamTinkerLaunch, but the performance is not great.

I haven't tried tweaking anything to get it better, mostly because I don't know where to start.

Does anyone have advice on modding Skyrim (especially with SKSE) on Linux effectively?

23 comments

  • I have just recently reinstalled and remodded skyrim with MO2! I chose MO2 specifically because it has a linux version which I downloaded off the github.

    I have found that MO2 has a lot of functionality built in that just isn't well explained in the tutorial. and it can be quite daunting to start.

    For one, you don't have to worry about skse. it comes with that when you choose Skyrim as the instance of MO2 you want to make. MO2 will then launch every time you launch Skyrim. And once it launches, you have all the options!

    From MO2, you can choose to run different versions of skyrim. it can run the vanilla PC launcher for you if you want to manually set your graphics settings.

    It can launch directly with SKSE, which is what you'll need for most mods. (if you're playing modded skyrim, you'll likely be launching from here most times unless there's specific settings in the basic launcher you want to change)

    It also comes with LOOT (which is a load order optimizer) already preinstalled. You just have to click the button to have it sort your load order for you. The load order is usually decent enough for most modlists (depending on size) but there are many guides to load orders for skyrim if you're interested in changing things around to be better optimized for your needs.

    my advice is honestly sit down and take some time to kinda go over where everything is. Before MO2 I was a vortex person. I am considering never going back.

    if you have any specific questions, I can maybe try to help.

  • It started with me manually downloading a mod and shoving the files into the Steam game directly.

    Then I installed the windows version of Nexus Mods Manager using Wine and pointed it to the Skyrim in Linux Steam that runs as a Flatpak.

    Yes, it is a dumb hack. But it works.

  • I haven't used it recently, but last time I did, I used MO2 with vanilla WINE, just setting my WINE prefix to the Skyrim Proton prefix. WINE and Proton would convert the registry in the WINE prefix back and forth each time one launched. I haven't used SteamTinkerLaunch.

    Prior to that, I used Wrye Bash, which was a mess to get working in Linux -- but could run natively, at least at one point, with some prodding. I've also run it under WINE. It took a lot of massaging. I don't recommend that route unless you can program, know Python and are willing to get your hands dirty.

    And I also had a stint where I wrote my own scripts to reconstruct the modded environment from scratch.

    My most-recent attempt for Bethesda modding was in Starfield, with a much-simpler CLI mod manager, this. I have gotten some mods working but not others; don't know if it's a case-folding issue. Will need more experimentation. It doesn't have the conflict-diagnosis tools that Wrye Bash does, or I assume MO2 probably does (though I haven't run into). I don't think it supports Skyrim, Fallout 4, or Fallout 76; that probably matters at least insofar as mod managers for those need to merge leveled lists. My (brief) impression is that the Starfield modding community is heading down the direction of avoiding needing the mod manager to do that, having a mod that merges that stuff dynamically at game runtime.

    the performance is not great.

    Uh. The performance of MO2 or Skyrim?

    MO2...I don't recall, it might not have been snappy, but I don't recall it being especially unusable. Certainly not at the level that I wouldn't use the software. I was using a reasonably high-end system, but I don't think that it's particularly resource-intensive. I was running off SSD, and maybe some of the stuff might have been I/O intensive.

    Skyrim was fine from a performance standpoint. I mean, you can obviously kill performance with the right mods, but I assume that you mean "modding at all".

    EDIT: If you put a lot of mods into Skyrim, like, hundreds, it can take a while to launch. IIRC, one problem -- not Linux-specific -- there is that loose files aggravate launch performance issues. My understanding is that, where possible, use mods that merge files into a .BSA rather than loose files. A number of mods have multiple versions; pick the .BSA one.

    EDIT2: Skyrim, Fallout 4, and the Fallout 76 versions of Bethesda's engine don't really take much advantage of multiple cores the way the way the Starfield version does. I get buttery-smooth performance in Starfield; Fallout 76 invariably is a bit jerky when loading resources in a new cell. I don't get a pretty consistent framerate at 165 Hz in Fallout 76 the way I can in Starfield. But I don't know if that's what you're running into, without specifics of the performance issues. And that's not gonna be a Linux-specific issue or anything that can realistically be resolved short of forward-porting the Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 games to the Starfield engine.

  • Here are the super special keywords if you know what you're doing with Wine: Wine 9.0+ (otherwise the newest MO2 doesn't work), winetricks vcrun2022 dotnet48 faudio, install .NET 7.0 SDK manually with the exe. Set up a prefix with those components and you can run all the modding tools. Don't bother with the convoluted MO2 installer script.

    Synthesis was having issues compiling patches using the latest Kron4ek wine builds, so I started using the latest Proton-GE and that resolved it. I'm not sure if Wine-GE would have fixed the same problem, but Wine-GE is no longer being updated, and we need at least 9.0+. Install Proton-GE for Steam through e.g. ProtonUp-Qt, and then Lutris can select it as a runner option and will run it through the new UMU project.

    I use Lutris to create and run the prefix, and I have an isolated copy of Skyrim that is patched with Goldberg emulator because I find that easier to manage so it's not at risk of being auto-updated by Steam. If you use a Steam copy directly you probably just need Protontricks and do the same thing.

    To capture NexusMods links to MO2, I made an application in my start menu and told Firefox to use it to handle nxm links:

    Env Variables: WINEESYNC=1 WINEFSYNC=1 'WINEPREFIX=/mnt/Games/The Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim/Prefix/'

    Program: /home/user/.steam/steam/compatibilitytools.d/GE-Proton9-7/files/bin/wine

    Arguments: '/mnt/Games/The Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim/Prefix/drive_c/Games/ModOrganizer2/nxmhandler.exe' %u

    Note that allowing the nxmhandler.exe call to start MO2 is bad because it won't start with the special UMU launcher framework, but if MO2 is already running it's fine.

    Performance is great, and everything "just works" with MO2. My only issue is that Pandora and Synthesis (at least) sometimes do not seem to end their process appropriately after running, so I sometimes need to manually stop them via a process manager.

  • one of the few hurdles gaming on linux hasnt fully managed to climb over is modding gamebryo games. Mostly because the mod managers themselves are a pita.

  • I've been playing Enderal (a Skyrim total conversion) with some added QoL mods on my Deck

    Got MO2 working with Enderal on wine by using this. The script (and MO2 itself) is a bit janky but it does function. The only thing I couldn't get working was the nexus mods URL integration thingie, had to download mod packages and add them manually.

    The game itself runs like a charm on the Deck (after setting up a control profile anyway).

    But there is the catch that being a Total Conversion mod that is available on Steam... Enderal itself points steam to SKSE on launch. Don't know how it'd work if your starting point is Vanilla Skyrim.

23 comments