Basic Modding Guide for Cyberpunk 2077

what's up folks it's crust SG and I've received quite a few requests over the past few weeks to put out a modding guide of sorts for those new to modding and I got to be honest for a while I wasn't sure if I wanted to put one out you know I guess this kind of doubles as a disclaimer for the video too so despite my entire cyberp Punk collection of videos being almost exclusively moding related I am actually not the most experienced or knowledgeable person when it comes to modding games have I modded games before sure Skyrim The Witcher a little bit of reshade here and there but cyberp Punk is the first game that I've really gotten into modding regardless after much consideration I figured you know what a basic guide couldn't hurt I mean I've only had to reinstall my game like 11 times in the past month so I think I can manage a basic guide I'm joking of course or am I now you'll never know anyway here's my modding 101 guide for cyberpunk 2077 and this is going to be just the basic stuff installing uninstalling using the vortex mod manager that kind of thing also for the purposes of this video the only mod manager I'll be talking about is the vortex mod manager and the modding website I'll be referencing is Nexus mods there are other mod managers out there and other mod databases as well but these are the ones that I use personally so they are the ones that I'll talk about okay so first things first I've linked the official modding wiki page in the description of this video that page has all the possible instructions for modding and you really should check it out to learn more about how mods work in cyberpunk it'll do a much better job than I can any day of the week for those who'd rather watch the boring version though by all means stick around all right first or I guess second you will need red mod in some way or other so this is the first thing you should install red mod is cyberp Punk's official modding tool and it comes in the form of a free DLC whichever platform you're on Steam goog or epic it should have red mod listed as a DLC make sure to download it and install it okay so there are broadly speaking six types of mods in cyberpunk red mods Legacy mods plugins red script mods rate for extension mods and config edits as a general guideline mod on Nexus usually State whether they are red mods or not if nothing is stated you should assume that that mod is not a red mod now most mods come in a few formats that are generally in line with the type of mod that they are or what framework they use red mods and Legacy mods generally come in archive format and the rest come in those other formats respectively some mods will come with just one file type and some will come with multiple file F types depending on what the author wants to achieve and what Frameworks they use reshade presets are not actually mods by the way in the sense that they don't actually modify the game itself reshade is a third-party software overlay installed into the game folder and reshade presets are used to tell reshade what shaders and settings to activate in that overlay anyway for the purposes of this guide just know that red mod archives Legacy archives plugins scripts tweaks and config files all go into different locations within the main cyberpunk folder and of course we can't begin to talk about installation without first talking about mod requirements and mod compatibility yes many mods require other mods to function this is supremely important to understand always check the mod page for the requirements before installing any mod most mods that have requirements generally require some sort of modding resource or framework and these core Frameworks are shared across the board what this means is while many mods do have requirements a vast majority of them really end up requiring the same handful of six to S mod Frameworks like cyber engine tweaks or red script red for extension archive XL and such and then we have mod compatibility and this is why one of those things where you're going to have to trust the mod author initially most mod authors will try to list any known incompatible mods in the description of their mod over time though once you start understanding the ins and outs of modding you kind of have a decent idea of what mods tend to be compatible or incompatible with other mods an example would be lighting mods it is usually safe to assume that most lighting mods are incompatible with one another because because most of them have their own Luts and edit similar EnV files okay let's talk installation there are two common ways to install mods in cyberpunk you either install them manually or you use a mod manager like Vortex or mod organizer too once you know what you're doing though both ways work just fine manual installation gives you a little bit more control and customization but I personally feel that using a mod manager makes it easier to keep track of the mods that you use it helps with quickly swapping between mods as well as keeping mods up to date installation is identical regardless of what platform you're on the only difference being the exact location of the cyberpunk folders all right let's go over manual installation and first you want to familiarize yourself with the mod pages on Nexus mods a vast majority of mod authors will have installation instructions listed in the mods description page so if there are instructions there you'd do best to follow those Above All Else next you want to familiarize yourself with where all your various mod folders are located as I alluded to earlier these are the folder paths for each mod type the root folder is left empty because it changes depending on which platform you are on here's what it looks like for steam now most mod authors are kind enough to provide their mods with the exact appropriate folder structure and having the right folder structure allows users to then simply extract the downloaded zip directly into the main cyberpunk folder itself and the folder structure in the zip will then put the mod files exactly where they are supposed to go unfortunately not all authors do this some just give you a zip with just the archive or config file or whatever in it hence the importance of at least knowing where everything goes just in case anyway now that we understand all of that what do we do exactly well first ensure that you have closed the game you can't install mods while the game is running next obviously download the mod and all its requirements now if the mod page has instructions as mentioned earlier follow those instructions and you should be done if there are no instructions provided check that the zip folder has the correct folder structure for where the file should be going if it does then just extract it into the base cyberpunk folder and you are good to go now if it doesn't have to write folder structure you need to identify the types of files that are in the zip and then manually paste these files into the folders that I showed earlier and that was the installation part to uninstall the mods all you need to do is go into those folders and delete the files that you pasted in and that's why it's important to understand the folder structure and where each file goes cuz if you just blindly extract it into the main folder without knowing where the files go you're not going to be able to uninstall the mod cuz you don't know where the files are and that's it for manual installation it's a pretty straightforward thing so moving on we have the vortex mod manager installation and the first step is of course to download Vortex and install it I'll link The Vortex download in the description once you have installed and set up Vortex you are ready to start downloading mods go to Nexus mods and you'll notice that most mods will provide an option to directly install the mod via a mod manager if you see this button here or this button here on the mod page it means the author has enabled direct mod manager installation it is something the author has to explicitly enable if you use Vortex clicking either one of these buttons automatically downloads the file in Vortex and then Vortex handles the installation automatically now occasionally you might get a popup here and there asking you to confirm certain things 99% of the time the correct answer is just clicking yes to confirm and continue once the mod is installed it is as simple as clicking this button to toggle individual mods on or off now I did say that most mods provide this option but not all all of them do for various reasons maybe you need to manually choose from different files within the mod or different variance or some mod authors just play don't like mod managers claiming that Vortex doesn't play nice with their mods whatever the case if the mod manager option is not available then your only option is to install it manually which is why it's important to know how to manually install mods even if you do use a mod manager now another benefit of using a mod manager is the ability to group Mods together or customize mod loadouts so to speak this is what we call the collections feature on Vortex for example say you want all of Zilla monsters texture upscale mods to fall under a single toggle or maybe you want to pair a specific L with a specific EnV file with a specific weather mod just create the collection name it appropriately add all the mods you want into that collection and voila you have a custom mod group that you can now toggle on and off with just one button also another function of the collection feature is it allows you to download entire mod loadouts from Nexus mods that are curated and put together by someone else for any given purpose collections are an easier way to acquire a whole bunch of mods in just one place without having to download them individually the only caveat is you have to obviously trust the curator of the collection and actually like the mods included in any given collection anyway to browse for collections just go to the collections page on Nexus mods read the descriptions of each collection and if it suits your fancy add the collection to Vortex and it'll download all the mods in the collection and install it automatically from there toggling the collection on or off enables or disables the entire collection okay maybe that was a bit much much for a 101 guide but whatever it's a really useful feature so I thought I'd share it anyway from time to time you may encounter mods that come with their own built-in installers like faod examples would be mods like load beone or Cosmopolitan night City these installers would then trigger in Vortex once the mod is downloaded and will usually allow you to select from a bunch of options during the installation to help set the mod up such installers are not use for manual installation because in manual installation you just manually select the files that you want to install okay so now that you've finally installed your first few mods go ahead and launch the game and if you don't use a launcher skip command red launcher should start up click on the Cog wheel and select enable mods now start the game and you're golden now if you do use a launcher skip well you don't need to worry about that skipping the launcher automatically loads loads mods when the game launches what is a launcher skip well this is the launcher skip command for steam you right click on the game go to properties and enter this into the launch options now whenever you start the game up it'll just boot straight into the game byp passing red launcher I do have a second command in there that lets me skip the pesky start screen as well all right before we wrap things up I'll just talk briefly about load order the load order is exactly what the name says the order in which the mods load in the game this won't matter too much for the Casual modder only using a handful of non-conflicting mods but you will undoubtedly encounter this sooner or later as you start diving deeper into modding and start trying to override certain aspects of one mod with another the easiest example of this is trying to run a different L over another lighting mod depending on how the lighting mod is put together and what type of L is used it is usually possible to force a different l L to run with the same lighting mod by giving that new L priority over the lighting mod so there are three main ways to change the load order of mods in cyberpunk the first and safest way is to use a tool like archive conflict Checker which not only checks for conflicts but also allows you to change the load order of your mods the second way is to create a load order text file inside the archive folder to dictate the order in which the mods load but this is quite tedious on the whole you're honestly better off using the tool and the third way if you're a lazy caveman like I am is to just rename the archive files to change the load order the mod load order in cyberpunk is determined by the file name and it is in Sky alphabetical format meaning certain symbols take priority followed by numbers followed by more symbols and then finally letters in alphabetical order being higher in the load order means the mod loads first and in cyberpunk the mod that loads first always gets priority now it is important to note that the practice of renaming files to influence the load order is only applicable to cyberpunk and is generally frowned upon by the more serious modern community so this is a do as I say not as I do scenario nonetheless some authors themselves list renaming files in their own mod installation instructions so it's important for you to at least understand what renaming a file actually does all right folks that's it for my basic guide to modding in cyber punk I hope you found it useful as always all the applicable stuff is linked in the description as well as links to some of my other videos thumbs if you liked it sub if you want to see more and I'll catch you later take care folks

Channel: Krush SG

Views: 17,553

Keywords: Cyberpunk 2077, Phantom Liberty, Mod list, Cyberpunk 2.0, Nexus Mods, Ray tracing, RTX, 7900xtx, 5800x3d, graphics showcase, Reshade, Texture upscale, Ultrawide, Photorealistic, GITS, UWQHD, UWQHD+, 4K, 21:9, 12:5, NCLM, E3 Lighting Mod, E3VR, Lighting mod, Weather mod, Environment mod, Cyberpunk lighting mod

Id: xEChtsKTA2A

Length: 15min 51sec (951 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 09 2024