Hi! In this “small” guide, I will tell you how to:
🔹 Optimize your modlist
🔹 Remove stutters
🔹 Remove crashes
🔹 Make your modlist more stable
1. A 40 GB Pagefile
First of all, you need to set up a pagefile. Without it, your modlist may stutter or even crash.
Here is a detailed video on how to do it — CLICK ME
2. Tip: Which Mods Should You Avoid?
If you have a weak PC, try to avoid mods that add a lot of new objects.
For example: mods by JK, Snazzy, and so on.
The same applies to tree mods. Instead of something like Nature of the Wildlands, I recommend choosing something more grounded, for example:
and so on.
You should also avoid heavy grass mods, for example:
freak’s floral fields, etc.
My personal recommendation for the best FPS would be one of these:
Overall, I recommend testing these mods specifically on your own setup, because the combination of trees + grass can give different FPS results on different PCs.
In my opinion, the most performance-friendly combination is:
Lightwood Trees + Folkvangr
3. Tip: Which Texture Mods Can You Install Without Losing FPS?
I recommend avoiding mods with a large number of polygons and mods with extremely high texture quality.
For Full HD, I recommend using textures up to 2K resolution. Anything higher than that will be barely noticeable on such a monitor.
However, for large objects like dragons or mountains, you can use up to 4K, but it depends on your PC overall.
If your graphics card has 2–4 GB of VRAM, I recommend using textures in 1K–2K resolution.
If your GPU has more VRAM than that, you can use everything in 2K.
4. Beginning the Optimization
First of all, I recommend that everyone install the program:
What Is This Program and Why Is It Needed?
This program allows you to selectively compress mods to the quality level you choose, which greatly affects FPS and stutters.
Overall, I do not think there is a need to give a super detailed guide on how to use it, but having this program in your modlist toolkit is absolutely necessary.
The main thing you need to pay attention to during compression is the size of the object whose texture you want to compress.
For example, if you want to compress a small object, the optimal resolution for it is:
512x512
or
256x256
if the object appears very often and can heavily load your VRAM.
If the object is large, for example a mountain or a dragon, I recommend leaving it at 2K, or 1K if your PC really cannot handle it.
5. Mods That Everyone Should Have
Now let’s go through the mods that should be installed in every modlist to increase FPS.
Disables the glow from magic and slightly increases FPS.
Bethini Pie
A program that allows you to configure your game’s.inifiles. I recommend choosing a profile based on your PC. There is a config selection there, but I recommend using Medium Settings. If the situation is really bad, choose a lower settingVRAMr
In many ways, it does the same thing as Cathedral Assets Optimizer. However, there is one very important difference between them: VRAMr creates a separate folder with compressed textures, which allows you to avoid changing your original textures in any way.Even though this is easier, I still strongly recommend manually compressing all textures first and adjusting them to the resolution you need, and only then finishing everything with VRAMr.
6. Mods That You Should Preferably NOT Use If You Have a Weak PC
However, in any case, you need to test everything yourself and decide whether to keep the mod or not.
Tree mods
City overhaul mods or mods that add a lot of objects
Mods with a large number of polygons, such as SMIM, High Poly Project, and so on
DynDOLOD
ENB or Community Shaders
Although Community Shaders can still be chosen if your PC allows it.
But if your goal is maximum FPS, it is better not to install graphics mods.
7. Tip: Reducing the Size of the Modlist
If you want to reduce the size of your modlist as much as possible, you need to pay attention to things like:
🔹 Removing Unnecessary Mods
This especially applies to quest mods that you are 100% not going to play.
For example, I had around 7 large quest mods in my modlist, and they took up about 20 GB.
I played them for about 20 minutes, realized that I did not need those quests at all, and deleted them.
As a result, the size of the modlist became about 20 GB smaller.
❗Before the next step, I recommend making a backup of your modlist so you can restore it if something goes wrong.
🔹 Removing Overwrites
What is an overwrite?
In the context of modding, an overwrite is a situation where one mod overwrites files from another mod, which makes those files unnecessary and means they are just taking up space.
It is better to get rid of such overwritten files right away so you do not forget about them.
But if your modlist contains hundreds or even thousands of mods, here is my advice. This works only with MO2, because I am not familiar with Vortex.
Next to a mod in MO2, you can see different lightning bolt icons.
A lightning bolt with a plus sign means that this mod overwrites another mod.
A lightning bolt with a minus sign means that this mod is overwritten by another mod, meaning some textures, files, and so on are not being used and are simply taking up space.
A gray lightning bolt means that the mod has been completely overwritten, is not being used at all, and is simply taking up space.
❗You need to check all of this before installing things like DynDOLOD, PGPatchers, or VRAMr, because they overwrite other files. So if you delete those overwritten files afterward, you may break the mod.
🔹 Back to Overwrites
MO2 has a feature called file hiding.
You need to double-click the mod that contains the files you want to delete.
Then go to the Conflicts tab, where you will see what is being overwritten by other mods.
❗You need to open not the mod that overwrites another mod, but the mod that is being overwritten by another mod.
Otherwise, you will delete files from the wrong mod.
Right-click the file that needs to be deleted and then click Hide.
For now, this will only hide the file, and it will still remain in the modlist as dead weight.
Hide all the necessary files this way, but do not touch mods like Lux, Lux Via, and so on.
In other words, you need to understand what you can hide and what you cannot.
In theory, you just need to think logically about which texture should be kept and which one should not.
After you have hidden all the necessary files, go to the folder with your modlist, meaning the folder where MO2 is stored.
In the search bar, type:
mohiddenAfter that, all the files you have hidden will appear.
Select them all with:
Ctrl + Aand delete them.
This way, you can save a lot of space and improve the performance of both the modlist and MO2 itself overall.
8. Cleaning Vanilla Skyrim Plugins
I do not see much point in explaining in detail how to do this
It is far from guaranteed that this will increase FPS, but at the very least, it will remove unnecessary junk from the plugins, which will improve stability.
9. Set bEnableLogging to 0 in skyrim.ini Through MO2
In the skyrim.ini settings in MO2, set the bEnableLogging parameter to 0.
It should look like this:
bEnableLogging=010. DDS Texture Scanner
A program that will help you find large .dds texture files.
11. Plugin Conflict Checker
Allows you to scan all your plugins for conflicts, which will help you find mods that may be completely overwritten by another mod.