ULTIMATE Starfield Modding Guide - Vortex & SFSE Setup

whether you are new to modding or an experienced veteran this video will be all you'll need to know to set up Starfield for modding I'll be breaking this video up into multiple steps with helpful timestamps so that you can navigate through or skip Parts you already know I recommend watching this video all the way through once to get the best understanding and then use timestamps if you get stuck we'll be going over how to actually enable modding for the game and get Starfield script extender setup then we will go over where to actually get mods for Starfield we'll get a mod manager set up to better organize your mods and also go through how to install a mod to the game lastly we'll go over some tips and things to note in order to get the smoothest modding experience to enable modding for Star field we'll be doing two things first is setting up a custom ini file to do that we'll be heading over to the documents folder and then scrolling down to my games here you'll see the Starfield folder and then in here you should see something similar to this right click click new and make a new text document we'll be naming this text document Starfield custom.ini press yes if you don't see the extension here you just go up to here and view show and click this right here so now open this file that we just created and we're just going to be putting one thing here I have this located in the description below just copy it and paste it into here and then simply close the file and we are done you now have modding enabled for Starfield in the future when we have official modding tools from Bethesda you won't need to do this step but not only is there no harm in having it some mods actually use it the next thing we need to do in order to enable modding for Starfield is download the Starfield script extender to make this simpler to understand all this is doing is adding additional functionality to your game as of recording this video we'll be using Nexus mods to install this but it should also be here in the future so I'll link this down below as well this will be where you'll be installing all of your mods you'll need to make an account there's a free one and a premium but for now the free one will be just fine head over to files and click on the manual download button here this is where if you get the premium account you can select fast download and download this a lot faster but for now we'll just hit slow download if your download doesn't start correctly you can click here and it should go into your downloads folder head over to your downloads folder and you'll see it right here you'll notice that it says 7z archive that is because you'll need 7-Zip or an archiver similar in order to open this folder the link for this will be down in the description as well after you have seven zip or something similarly installed you can just double click it and it will open like this open the folder within this archive and you'll see these files here drag this over to the side and now we're going to be locating the game files of Starfield as I don't have the game on Game Pass unfortunately I can't show you how to do this on Game Pass or if the functionality will even be there for game pass users so this tutorial is strictly for steam only head over to steam and search Star field in your library right click it manage and then click browse local files this is where your game files are move this over to the left with the script extender files on the right we're going to be highlighting these two files here the dll and the dot exe and drag them into the Starfield directory now this sfsc loader.exe here is what will be launching the game from from here on out the only problem with this is if you want to press the play button on Steam it will launch the original version of Starfield and your mods that you've installed won't load you also won't have steam overlay either so to get this functionality back we'll head back over to steam head over to Starfield in your steam library and right click it just like we did before but this time we're clicking properties then scrolling down you can see launch options there'll be a string of text that looks just like this one in the description simply paste this in and you are done if it's installed to the C drive however if your game is not installed to the C drive then you'll have to find out where your game files are and paste the correct directory for me mine is going to look like this mines installed on the H Drive and then steam Library steam apps common Starfield all this launch option is doing is telling steam to launch it through the sfsc loader instead of the normal starfield.exe we're next going to need a mod manager there are two here Vortex and mod organizer 2. as of recording this video mod organizer 2 hasn't got official support for Starfield so we will be using Vortex however Vortex is the most beginner-friendly mod manager out there so if you're a beginner I would highly recommend going with this option regardless of if the mod organizer 2 is out yet the link to Vortex is in the description below and all you need to do is download the latest version click manual download download again slow download just like we did before and you'll be installing this like any other program this is what Vortex should look like we'll head over to the game section on the left where we can type star field into this menu in order to start managing it just click the manage button and Vortex will pretty much do everything for you here let's install a mod using vortex in order to get an understanding of the mod manager for this example we'll be installing the achievement enabler simply go over to the Nexus mod page that's in the description click files and then here you can click mod manager download as you can see it requires the Starfield script extender which we already have installed just click download slow download again and then as you can see Google has asked us if we want to open Vortex if you tick this box it will do it all for you next time without pressing the open Vortex Button as you can see Vortex has pretty much done all the work for us here and all we have to do is click this little bell icon in the top right hand corner and click Elevate now if we head over to mods on the left you'll see that the achievement enabler has been installed correctly this simple mod makes it so that no commands or mods will ever disable achievements now all we have to do is open up the game and make sure this mod works and if it does we'll know that the mod is installed correctly as well as star field script extender if you want to open the game using this launch button in the top left of Vortex we'll need to do one more step head over to dashboard and you'll see tools right here with a big plus button click the plus button and then click new you can name this whatever you want but for now we're just going to name it sfse then for the Target click this folder icon here and you want to navigate to where Starfield is installed once you've got there you'll click the sfse loader.exe now simply hit save click the free dots on the right here and click set as primary this means whenever you press this play button up here it will open using the FSC loader instead of the starfield.exe I'm going to be launching through Steam so that I get the steam overlay as mentioned before once the game is loaded up simply just load your save and then to check that you've installed everything correctly open up the console command menu using the tilde key and as you can see nothing has shown up here before you would get a menu pop-up here saying that you can't use commands without your achievements being disabled you have now successfully installed not only Starfield script extender but your first mod some important tips here for first time modders is that you never should install a bunch of mods and never read the descriptions you should always be reading the descriptions here on how to install the mod as this will give you an insight to what kind of mod you're installing and if it conflicts with any other mods you might have installed conflicts are another tricky thing to get your head around when starting to mod I have an extreme example set up here but pretty much I have a smooth UI mod that Smooths the entire UI to 120 FPS and then another mod that only does the ship reticle as you can see if I install these two mods you'll see it says there are unresolved file conflicts if you click more it'll show you that the smooth ship reticle and the smooth UI are both conflicting with each other if you click show it will ask you which one you want to load before or after the simplest way to put it is whatever loads after the other mod is just going to overwrite all the file that it edits for example the smooth UI edits every single UI in the game to be 120 FPS whereas the smooth ship reticle only adjusts the ship reticle UI so the smooth UI mod will overwrite everything that this mod does nine times out of ten this is actually personal preference on which mod you want overwriting the other but in certain cases these kind of conflicts can cause crashing or the game just not to Star once you've made your mind up you can just click save and Vortex will sort all that out for you as you can see because this is an extreme example Vortex is notifying me that some mods are made redundant as because I made the smoother I overwrite the smooth ship reticle there's no point having this mod anymore I can just click disable selected and it will get rid of the mod for me there's also a difference between mods being disabled and uninstalled for example the smooth ship reticle that we just talked about isn't actually uninstalled it's just disabled meaning I can come back here anytime and just click enable and Vortex will place those files back in the games directory if you want to completely uninstall a mod you need to right click and click remove this will give you two options you can either just remove the mod but keep the archive stored if you might change your mind later or to save space just completely delete the mod from your PC entirely one last thing I want to go over is because we're in such early days of modding there are a lot of mods here that don't install traditionally an example here would be the star filled upscaler this kind of mod is what's known as an engine injector if you scroll down and read the installation here you'll see that it wants you to install files into the main directory of Starfield if we head into the Starfield directory you'll see this is exactly where this mod wants to install but most mods will actually install in this data folder right here so to tell Vortex to not install these kind of mods here and instead install them here we'll do the following simply go to the engine injector mod that you want to install and head over to files and install them like you would any other mod once Vortex is done installing that simply deploy and Elevate like you would normally and now double-click the mod this right panel will come up here where you can scroll down and select the mod type if you select the mod type to engine injector it will do exactly what we're talking about now the files will be going into the main directory not data so if you launch the game you'll see that this upscaler now works perfectly if you have further problems with modding another good thing to do is check the posts and bugs tab on Nexus mods here you'll be able to get help with any problem you have and also see other people with similar problems to you and maybe how they fixed it I'll be in the comments of this video helping anyone out with any problems that they might have so if you have a problem please just comment below but apart from that now you know the fundamental basics of modding Starfield if you want some ideas on mods that you should be installing first head over to this video where I talk about the 10 must-have mods for Starfield [Music] foreign

Channel: Loukeyo

Views: 7,075

Keywords: loukeyo, Starfield, mods, modding, starfield mod, Beginner’s Guide to Modding Starfield (SFSE Update), Beginner friendly, beginner's guide, modding starfield, sfse, setting up sfse, starfield script extender, where to get mods, setup mod manager, setup vortex, vortex, nexus mods, tips, best practices for modding, tips for modding, newb friendly, new to modding, brand new, easy to follow, detailed guide

Id: j4HSZzwMslY

Length: 11min 22sec (682 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 06 2023