How (not) to mod Skyrim

This is some­what dif­fer­ent from what I used to write on this blog, as it's not a re­view. Based on the ti­tle it sounds like a tu­to­r­i­al or how-to, but I think on­ly the most lu­natic peo­ple out there would want to fol­low it. It's more like a glimpse in­to how my de­ranged mind works, and de­scrib­ing my ad­ven­ture of try­ing to in­stall and play a Skyrim mod, the hard way.

The mod in ques­tion is The Trap­pings of Fate, rec­om­mend­ed by a friend. I could have found some­thing more fam­i­ly friend­ly, right? Well, sor­ry bro. Yes, I've heard about the pletho­ra of sex mods for Skyrim, but noth­ing man­aged to con­vince me to dive in­to the PI­TA mod­ding Skyrim en­tails. So this mod al­ready achieved some­thing, right?

LE SE AE WTF#

One of the first prob­lems you'll run in­to when mod­ding Skyrim is all the dif­fer­ent ver­sions out there, and de­spite be­ing such a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion, there's hard­ly any in­for­ma­tion about it on the in­ter­nets (or maybe I just don't know the cor­rect search terms). Even com­plete be­gin­ner Skyrim mod­ding tu­to­ri­als seem to skip over this. Prob­a­bly be­cause they ex­pect you to be a sea­soned Skyrim play­er who wants to mod his Skyrim in­stall, but I don't give a fly­ing fuck about Skyrim, it's a mediocre game at best, I'm here for the sex mods.

So any­way, the most im­por­tant part, there are 3 ma­jor ver­sions of the game. LE or Leg­endary Edi­tion is the OG Skyrim, re­leased a long time ago, it's 32-bits (so capped at 4 GiB of vir­tu­al RAM, which from what I read on the in­ter­nets can be a prob­lem if you mod it too hard), and us­es DirectX 9. SE or Spe­cial Edi­tion is a re­mas­ter of OG Skyrim, it's 64-bits and up­dat­ed to DirectX 11. So as you can ex­pect, mods made for one ver­sion will not nec­es­sar­i­ly work with the oth­er ver­sion. (Ac­tu­al­ly, the sit­u­a­tion is not too bad, as far as I can see the file for­mats used by the two en­gines are the same, so un­less the mod does some­thing low lev­el, it can work with both ver­sions). Then how does AE or An­niver­sary Edi­tion fit in­to this? Well, it's prac­ti­cal­ly SE with a bunch of DLCs bun­dled, but al­so with a slight­ly up­dat­ed en­gine. But to make things worse, Bethes­da then back­port­ed the new AE en­gine to SE, so new SE ver­sions use the AE en­gine. There's al­so some VR ver­sion, but I haven't looked in­to it as I have no equip­ment.

So what's the take-away? If you have LE, you'll have to look for mods for LE. If you have SE or AE... well, good luck. If the mod says AE, it ei­ther needs the full AE or just the AE en­gine. If the mod says SE, it like­ly works both with SE or AE en­gine. If the mod says some­thing like ver­sion 1.5.x, it needs the SE en­gine (which these days is prob­a­bly eas­i­er to pi­rate than to get le­git­i­mate­ly). If it says ver­sion 1.6.x, it needs the AE en­gine (whether it needs DLCs or not is a dif­fer­ent ques­tion).

But wait, there's a sec­ond ax­is to this prob­lem. Skyrim was re­leased on both Steam and GOG, and these two plat­forms have dif­fer­ent builds. The dif­fer­ences here are min­i­mal, so it on­ly mat­ters for a few mods, but for those few mods make sure you down­load the cor­rect ver­sion!

So what ver­sion of Skyrim should you get? Well, if you have A MOD you want to play no mat­ter what, look at what it re­quires. Oth­er­wise you can prob­a­bly just get AE un­less you want to try very old and aban­doned mods. I've read posts on­line where peo­ple com­plained about some mods not work­ing in the lat­est ver­sion, but they were made years ago, and from what can I see, the lat­est up­date for Skyrim was re­leased in 2022 Sep­tem­ber, giv­ing plen­ty of time for mod­ders to up­date their mods. So us­ing the lat­est ver­sion as of 2026 May should be most­ly safe (or at least I thought so). Of course, this might change if Bethes­da re­leas­es an­oth­er up­date. Steam ver­sion seems to be a tiny bit bet­ter sup­port­ed mod­ding wise, but since pi­rat­ing steam games sucks (and if you don't pi­rate you have to put up with their HTML5 bloat garbage which is even worse), I went with the GOG AE ver­sion.

mount.rb, aka my not mod manager#

I've been us­ing this tiny script for some mod­ding in the past with NFS, for ex­am­ple with NFS4, but I haven't writ­ten much about it. The main prob­lem I want­ed to solve was be­ing able to in­stall and re­move mods at will, with­out hav­ing to man­u­al­ly fudge around with the files, back­ing up and restor­ing every­thing. It's based on over­layfs (ei­ther the in ker­nel ver­sion in Lin­ux or the fuse one) to over­lay the mods on top of a base game in­stal­la­tion. Think what con­tain­ers do in Dock­er. But of course it's nev­er so sim­ple, in NFS games I had to patch trans­la­tion files so the tracks names are dis­played cor­rect­ly. Sim­i­lar­ly in case of Skyrim, I have to gen­er­ate a txt file with a list of mods in use.

My script in gen­er­al us­es three (sets) of di­rec­to­ries. ovrlay/base con­tains the base game in­stall, it is al­ways the low­est lev­el of the over­layfs hi­er­ar­chy. ovrlay/mod con­tains the avail­able mods, one sub­di­rec­to­ry for each mod, these are mount­ed over the base dir. Then fi­nal­ly overlay/save serves as a di­rec­to­ry to hold all changes in case a game mod­i­fies a file in its own di­rec­to­ry (old­er games like to do it a lot, new­er games com­pat­i­ble with mul­ti user in­stal­la­tions less so, but Skyrim mods like to do this again). mount.rb will then mount the over­layfs un­der ovrlay/mount, then a ciopfs over it to mount. Why the ex­tra ciopfs, when wine can han­dle case (in)sen­si­tiv­i­ty? Well, yes, wine han­dles it, but Lin­ux's un­zip/7z/etc. doesn't, and mod files are not dis­trib­uted with con­sis­tent cas­ing. If you don't want to use ciopfs you can man­u­al­ly fix up file­name cas­ing, but I warn you it's go­ing to be painful (I tried).

So if you want to use my mount.rb, you should make a new emp­ty di­rec­to­ry for Skyrim, then in­side a few more di­rec­to­ries.

mkdir -p ovrlay/base ovrlay/idiotism ovrlay/mod ovrlay/mount ovrlay/save mount

Don't for­get to put mount.rb in the same di­rec­to­ry.

Getting the base game running#

You should ob­vi­ous­ly start with get­ting vanil­la Skyrim run­ning be­fore at­tempt­ing to mod it. I made a new WINEPREFIX as al­ways (but since AE is 64-bit, do not add WINEARCH=win32 from mus­cle mem­o­ry). Where you in­stall Skyrim doesn't mat­ter much, as you can move Skyrim in­stall dir post in­stall with­out prob­lems, but if you want to use mount.rb (or just save your­self from a lot of trou­ble), you should use ciopfs. (Con­vert­ing to ciopfs af­ter the in­stal­la­tion is pos­si­ble but prob­lem­at­ic, ciopfs as­sumes on­ly low­er-case char­ac­ters are found in file­names in the un­der­ly­ing di­rec­to­ry, and the re­al cas­ing of the file­names are stored in xat­trs. So you ei­ther have to find a script which con­verts to low­er­case every­thing, or mount a ciopfs on an emp­ty di­rec­to­ry, move every­thing on­to the ciopfs mount, then you can un­mount and move things back in place.)

ciopfs ovrlay/base mount

Then in­stall Skyrim in­to the mount dir. With the GOG ver­sion, you have to in­stall Spe­cial Edi­tion first, then in­stall the An­niver­sary Up­grade af­ter the base game is in­stalled. Do it in one go, be­cause while Skyrim works if you move the in­stall fold­er, the GOG in­staller doesn't. When done, cd in­to the in­stall dir and wine SkyrimSELauncher.exe. Now, tech­ni­cal­ly you don't have to cd in­to the in­stall dir and you can just launch the launch­er, it'll work, but a) Skyrim will place some Debug.log in­to your work­ing di­rec­to­ry, so it's best if it lit­ters its own di­rec­to­ry, and b) SKSE (to be in­stalled lat­er) chokes if it launch­es with a work­ing di­rec­to­ry dif­fer­ent to the in­stall di­rec­to­ry. Yes, Win­dows de­vel­op­ers still can't imag­ine a sit­u­a­tion where a user wants to launch an app not us­ing an ug­ly desk­top icon.

Af­ter start­ing the launch­er, it will greet you with a mes­sage about au­to­mat­i­cal­ly set­ting up your card, it de­cid­ed to use Ul­tra qual­i­ty on my mas­sive 5120x1440 mon­i­tor with a not so mas­sive GPU... so yeah, check them. It has win­dowed mode, but well... I im­me­di­ate­ly ran in­to two is­sues.

First, start­ing the game it de­cid­ed I'm play­ing with a con­troller, when in fact I didn't. When I se­lect­ed new game, it told me A to start, B to back. Thanks? En­ter start­ed the game, but then it want­ed me to look around with the right stick. I tried every but­ton on my key­board, but noth­ing helped. I couldn't even get in­to the pause menu... So I killed Skyrim, wine control joy.cpl, see it de­tect­ed my key­board as a con­troller, so I dis­abled it, and re­launched Skyrim... same re­sults. What helped is to go to winecfg, em­u­late a vir­tu­al desk­top, then in the launch­er set Skyrim to full screen. This made Skyrim re­al­ize I'm us­ing a key­board and mouse. I have no fuck­ing idea what does run­ning in fullscreen have to do with us­ing KBM, but what­ev­er. As an added bonus, run­ning wine/Skyrim makes the mouse ac­tu­al­ly un­grab­bable from Skyrim's win­dow, which is use­ful if you have more than one screen.

The sec­ond prob­lem is, graph­ics looked like this:

JXL (1.751 MiB) PNG (2.645 MiB)JXL (1.767 MiB) PNG (2.660 MiB)

Umm, close, but not quite. The Z fight­ing on the shad­ows is es­pe­cial­ly jar­ring. Then I looked at the ter­mi­nal out­put and saw a lot of mes­sages from WineD3D, when I re­al­ized why the heck I'm not us­ing DXVK. So I in­stalled DXVK (if the in­stall seems stuck, dis­able vir­tu­al desk­top tem­porar­i­ly) and...

JXL (1.560 MiB) PNG (2.355 MiB)JXL (1.590 MiB) PNG (2.439 MiB)

much bet­ter. Prob­a­bly you should play at least un­til you get con­trol of your char­ac­ter and can save, so you can quick­ly skip the in­tro while try­ing mods.

Warming up: getting SKSE#

If there's some­thing which is a pre­req­ui­site of al­most every mod, it's SKSE. And it's a bit spe­cial, so it makes sense to start with this. The mod has its own web­site, from the down­load sec­tion care­ful­ly se­lect the ver­sion of Skyrim you have (2.2.6 GOG for me).

How do you check the ver­sion of Skyrim you have? Good ques­tion. Un­der Win­dows, you can prob­a­bly just right click on the exe and se­lect Prop­er­ties, but un­der Lin­ux? Askubun­tu.com has some leads, but the sim­plest method with­out need­ing to in­stall weird pack­ages is prob­a­bly

exiftool -FileVersion SkyrimSE.exe

You need the ver­sion of Skyrim, not the launch­er.

If you're us­ing my mount.rb script, you should make a di­rec­to­ry for the mod and mount it:

mkdir ovrlay/mod/skse
./mount.rb --no-save skse

What it does in­ter­nal­ly is cre­at­ing a union mount of the base game in ovrlay/mount, then a ciopfs mount over it:

sudo mount -t overlay -o lowerdir=ovrlay/base,upperdir=ovrlay/mod/skse,workdir=ovrlay/idiotism nothing ovrlay/mount
ciopfs ovrlay/mount mount

And I don't want to go in­to a rant about the workdir pa­ra­me­ter, but you need to spec­i­fy a di­rec­to­ry which is on the same FS as upperdir and you don't care about over­layfs fuck­ing it all over the place, in­clud­ing mak­ing it so you can't delete it with­out root. If you don't want root, you can use fuse-overlayfs in­stead, both works, but be con­sis­tent, they mark some meta­da­ta dif­fer­ent­ly, so if you start­ed with the ker­nel/fuse ver­sion, stick to it.

The ef­fect of the above is that you end up with a copy of Skyrim un­der mount which is case sen­si­tive, and any changes you make will be saved to ovrlay/mod/skse in­stead of ovrlay/base. The re­al ben­e­fit here is you can stack mul­ti­ple low­er dirs (in case of ker­nel over­layfs you have to use lowerdir+=a,lowerdir+=b syn­tax in this case, while with the fuse ver­sion you use lowerdir=a:b), thus get­ting a base mod man­ag­er on the FS lev­el, with­out hav­ing to man­u­al­ly copy/move files all over the place like it's still 1991.

No mat­ter if you use my mount.rb, do it man­u­al­ly, or not do any FS mag­ic at all and you just YOLO your Skyrim in­stall, in the end you should end up with a di­rec­to­ry which has your Skyrim in­stall (mount if you use mount.rb, yes, I'm very good at nam­ing things). Open skse64_*.7z with the file man­ag­er of your choice, and copy Data, skse64_loader.exe, skse64_*.dll to your Skyrim in­stall dir. There should be al­ready a Data di­rec­to­ry there, so you should let your file man­ag­er merge the two di­rec­to­ries.

And from now on, when you want to launch Skyrim, you shouldn't use the launch­er, but skse64_loader.exe in­stead. You should go and give it a try: wine skse64_loader.exe. If you did every­thing right, Skyrim should launch just as be­fore. How do you know it worked? The on­ly ef­fect I no­ticed is two new log files un­der $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/users/$USER/Documents/My Games/Skyrim Special Edition GOG/SKSE, skse64_loader.log and skse64.log. If they ex­ist and doesn't con­tain any­thing scary, SKSE prob­a­bly works.

DLL dependency hell#

Mod­ding Skyrim is pret­ty dif­fer­ent to mod­ding all the oth­er games I've en­coun­tered so far. For most games, most mods are pret­ty self con­tained, some­times you need some tool or mod loader to be able to use mods, but af­ter the ini­tial set­up all you have to do is down­load and in­stall the mods you need. But not here. Skyrim mods are more like a Lin­ux pack­ages. Your av­er­age mod de­pends on about 5 oth­er mods, and each of those mods de­pends on a bunch of oth­er mods, each hav­ing their own de­pen­den­cies... it can get ug­ly very fast.

And get­ting those mods are not easy ei­ther. Most mods are on­ly avail­able on nexus mods, which site, if you didn't en­counter it yet, is prob­a­bly the nig­ger­est go­ril­la site in the known uni­verse (and maybe even out­side it). Let's start with Ad­dress Li­brary, one of the de­pen­den­cies we will short­ly in­stall. You open the site, click on files, se­lect the file you want to down­load—not so fast goy­im, reg­is­ter on our nig­ger web­site first. Fuck you was my re­ac­tion, and I went to bug­menot.com, and checked the lo­gins there—they were all banned, even one which was reg­is­tered a few days ago. You're not mak­ing my life easy. So I tried a few dis­pos­able email providers, noth­ing worked. But af­ter some search­ing I found the so­lu­tion: ac­tu­al­ly there are more dis­pos­able mail providers than they can ban, so just avoid the pop­u­lar ones. So open start­page or bing or what­ev­er, search for "dis­pos­able email" and go to page 5 or 12 or some­thing, and start try­ing. What worked for me is temp­mail.ing, but see­ing how fast they ban every­one in the world, don't be sur­prised if it doesn't work for you. I'm pret­ty sure they have a po­si­tion called "Cus­tomer Frus­tra­tion Max­i­miza­tion Spe­cial­ist".

If you're plan­ning to use this piece of shit site ex­ten­sive­ly, you might bite the bul­let and reg­is­ter us­ing a more per­ma­nent mail, but I would nev­er trust them with any­thing re­mote­ly per­son­al. They will al­so an­noy you to sub­scribe to get faster down­loads and re­move the 5 sec de­lay be­fore down­load, peo­ple bitch about this on the in­ter­net, but I have a feel­ing they nev­er had to deal with free up­load sites where you have 60 sec­ond time­out and un­solv­able re­captcha and one down­load per IP ad­dress to down­load a 10 GiB game split in­to 20 archives just be­cause.

One oth­er site which will come up fre­quent­ly is lover­slab, and it's the same, ex­cept it's com­plete­ly banned from bug­menot. One day I'll re­al­ly have to start my bug­menot.com al­ter­na­tive. But any­way, the above temp mail worked here too. I just won­der what kind of brain­rot do you need to have to use these sites and think every­thing is fine? Well, de­cid­ing a Bethes­da game is a good base to use for mod­ding is prob­a­bly al­ready a tell­tale...

Address Library for SKSE Plugins#

Af­ter the above rant, time to get pro­duc­tive. If you check The Trap­pings of Fate's de­scrip­tion, the first de­pen­den­cy is Sexlab, and there's no link for it, but you can find it af­ter some search­ing: SexLab. It has a bunch of de­pen­den­cies, SKSE we al­ready have, then the ad­dress li­brary (v11, 2026-02-14). I've down­loaded "All in one (1.6.X)" as I don't need 1.5 com­pat­i­bil­i­ty. Us­ing my mount.rb, you'll want some­thing like this:

mkdir ovrlay/mod/address
./mount.rb --no-save skse address

I'm us­ing both skse and address here, since this mod tech­ni­cal­ly de­pends on SKSE. The mount com­mand will look like this:

sudo mount -t overlay -o lowerdir+=ovrlay/mod/skse,lowerdir+=ovrlay/base,upperdir=ovrlay/mod/address,workdir=ovrlay/idiotism nothing ovrlay/mount

Yes, you have to spec­i­fy lowerdirs in re­verse or­der, whichev­er you spec­i­fy first will be at the top of the stack (on­ly upperdir be­ing above it).

In the 7z file, you find an SKSE di­rec­to­ry, this needs to go in­to the Data di­rec­to­ry of Skyrim. Just un­pack it and you're done.

SkyUI#

I'm go­ing to skip over FNIS for now and jump straight on­to SkyUI (v6.11, 2026-05-05), as this mod ac­tu­al­ly has some vis­i­ble ef­fect ingame.

mkdir ovrlay/mod/skyui
./mount.rb --no-save skse skyui

The 7z has two files, SkyUI_SE.bsa and SkyUI_SE.esp, both go in­to the Data dir. If done, you might want to test it:

./mount.rb skse skyui

then you can start skse64_loader.exe. The SkyUI doc­u­men­ta­tion says as the last step of the man­u­al in­stal­la­tion you should "Open the Cre­ations menu in-game and en­sure SkyUI_SE.esp is en­abled." Where is the cre­ations menu? I've looked every­where but didn't find it. Some search­ing led me to a led­dit post, where they say cre­ations menu is sim­ply not avail­able in the GOG ver­sion. And SkyUI lists "Full sup­port for all game ver­sions from Steam and GOG" un­der fea­tures. Thank you re­tards. So sec­ond idea, launch the game and find this Mod Con­fig­u­ra­tion Menu un­der Sys­tem set­tings. If you used my mount.rb you'll see it, but with­out it, it will be miss­ing. Some search­ing led me to a GOG fo­rum top­ic, and the last post on the first page gave me the an­swer. You'll need to look at $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/users/$USER/AppData/Local/Skyrim Special Edition GOG/Plugins.txt, it should look like this:

# This file is used by Skyrim to keep track of your downloaded content.
# Please do not modify this file.
SkyUI_SE.esp

It tells you to not mod­i­fy this file, but I don't know how the hell you can en­able a mod be­sides mod­i­fy­ing this file. Per the GOG fo­rum post, you have to put an as­ter­isk (*) be­fore the mods you want to en­able. If you do it and restart Skyrim, the MCM in set­tings should show up.

Now edit­ing this file man­u­al­ly is pret­ty an­noy­ing. First it seems like just start­ing Skyrim is not enough to up­date it, it on­ly up­dates when you start/load a game. Sec­ond, if you re­move a mod from Skyrim's fold­er, it "help­ful­ly" re­moves it from the txt, but of course it won't put it back en­abled when you put the file back. So in the end I added a lit­tle fea­ture to my mount.rb, which au­to­mat­i­cal­ly finds all *.es[pm] not added by base Skyrim, and adds them to Plugins.txt as en­abled. This is some­what sim­i­lar to how I rewrote Track names for some Need for Speed ver­sions.

FNIS#

The next vic­tim is FNIS (v7.6, 2020-02-18). This has mul­ti­ple files to down­load, the Be­hav­ior one is re­quired, Crea­ture pack and Spells are op­tion­al. I couldn't fig­ure out if any down­stream mod need the op­tion­al pack­ages or not, but since I wasn't run­ning out of disk space, I down­loaded them all.

mkdir ovrlay/mod/fnis
./mount.rb --no-save skse fnis

The first part of the in­stall is easy, un­pack the Data di­rec­to­ry in each 7z in­to Skyrim's Data di­rec­to­ry. The sec­ond part is, less so. You'll have to run Data/tools/GenerateFNIS_for_Users/GenerateFNISforUsers.exe, but not just now, but every time you in­stall (or unin­stall) a mod us­ing FNIS. This is not how I want to use my mod man­ag­er, so for the time be­ing I'm not run­ning the gen­er­a­tor.

XP32#

On­to XP32 (v5.06, 2024-02-11), the last de­pen­den­cy of SexLab, you should know the drill:

mkdir ovrlay/mod/xp32
./mount.rb --no-save skse fnis xp32

Open the 7z, and un­pack... wait, what the fuck­ing hell is this mod file?! The doc­u­men­ta­tion states "Use a Mod Man­ag­er with Fo­mod Sup­port:" Thanks? I don't have a mod man­ag­er. And what the fuck is Fo­mod? Ap­par­ent­ly this. Some XML based en­ter­prise garbage. And be­sides, I'm not go­ing to in­stall a mod man­ag­er just for a fuck­ing mod.

So here is how you in­stall a Fo­mod mod man­u­al­ly. First you get Fomod/ModuleConfig.xml from the archive. In XP32's case it's UTF-16 for ex­tra mi­croshit abom­i­na­tion. It's a 638 lines long crap, as ver­bose as an XML file can get. At first I de­cid­ed to try the Ba­sic ver­sion of this mod, so the im­por­tant part of the XML is this:

                        <plugin name="Basic">
                            <description>Basic installer&#13;&#10;
Installs a basic version of XPMS(S)E with full animation support.&#13;&#10;
Requires FNIS or Nemesis.</description>
                            <conditionFlags>
                                <flag name="Ext">Off</flag>
                            </conditionFlags>
                            <files>
                                <folder source="Skeleton Meshes" destination="" priority="0" />
                                <folder source="Creature Meshes" destination="" priority="0" />
                                <folder source="Skeleton Rig\HDT" destination="" priority="0" />
                                <folder source="Creature Rig\HDT" destination="" priority="0" />
                                <folder source="Character Creation\None" destination="" priority="0" />
                            </files>
                            <typeDescriptor>
                                <type name="Optional"/>
                            </typeDescriptor>
                        </plugin>

What it tells that you need to get the fol­low­ing fold­ers: Skeleton Meshes, Creature Meshes, Skeleton Rig/HDT, Creature Rig/HDT, Character Creation/None, and copy their con­tents in­to Data (ap­par­ent­ly destination="" means Data).

SexLab#

Fi­nal­ly we can move on­to SexLab (v166b, 2024-03-14). At this point we're get­ting a tad too many mods, so to try and make things a bit less chaot­ic, I've added pre­set/list sup­port to mount.rb. Cre­ate a file lists/xp32 with the fol­low­ing con­tent:

skse
fnis
xp32

What this means, if you run ./mount.rb xp32 it will be equiv­a­lent to run­ning ./mount.rb skse fnis xp32 with­out lists. Let's make a sec­ond list for SexLab (lists/sexlab):

skse
address
fnis
skyui
xp32
sexlab

No­tice how it de­pends on xp32. List in­clu­sion is re­cur­sive! Avoid cir­cu­lar de­pen­den­cies...

Armed with this, we can get back to the usu­al drill:

mkdir ovrlay/mod/sexlab
./mount.rb --no-save sexlab

And un­pack the 7z in­to Data (make sure you down­load the cor­rect ver­sion!).

I want­ed to test this mod be­fore mov­ing on, but this needs FNIS so it's not so sim­ple. To avoid the FNIS gen­er­a­tor pol­lut­ing SexLab's mod dir, I cre­at­ed a new "mod":

mkdir ovrlay/mod/test
./mount.rb --no-save sexlab test

Then run Data/tools/GenerateFNIS_for_Users/GenerateFNISforUsers.exe. Per SexLab's doc­u­men­ta­tion check "SKELE­TON Arm Fix" un­der avail­able patch­es then click on the big "Up­date FNIS Be­hav­ior" but­ton. Then SexLab's in­staller says "DO NOT ig­nore any warn­ings or er­rors you see in the FNIS win­dow". Well, I get one warn­ing, "Warn­ing: Gen­er­a­tor not run from a le­gal (Steam) Skyrim in­stal­la­tion di­rec­to­ry. If you use SKSE, this can be fixed by start­ing Skyrim once through Steam." Yes, dum­b­ass, I use the GOG ver­sion, not the bloat Steam. FNIS au­thor is a fuck­ing an­noy­ing moralfag, but at least I don't have to patch his id­iot tool to work.

Hav­ing done this, you can run ./mount.rb sexlab test then start Skyrim nor­mal­ly, and load an old game. Now, in­stalling this can be a bit finicky. Af­ter load­ing, wait un­til you see a MCM: Registered 1 new menu(s). mes­sage in the top left menu. Then you can press Esc, Sys­tem, Mod Con­fig­u­ra­tion, then se­lect SexLab, then see some ? warn­ings. To fix them, ex­it the menu, and use your mouse's scroll wheel to switch in­to 3rd per­son view (be­fore this I didn't even know Skyrim has 3rd per­son view), then try again. If every­thing is OK, click on "IN­STALL/UP­DATE SEXLAB". Then you'll no­tice noth­ing is hap­pen­ing. You have to press Tab to ex­it the menu, and wait a lit­tle. Af­ter a few sec­onds or min­utes (you have no progress dis­play) you should re­ceive a SexLab Ready mes­sage. Con­grat­u­la­tions! Un­for­tu­nate­ly, SexLab in it­self doesn't do any­thing, oth­er than adding a con­fig menu.

Time to pat your­self on the back, the first de­pen­den­cy is in­stalled!

SexLab Aroused#

Down­load SexLab Aroused (v29 2.9, 2018-03-21) and in­stall as usu­al.

mkdir ovrlay/mod/sexlab_aroused
./mount.rb --no-save sexlab sexlab_aroused

The next mod, De­vi­ous De­vices has a bunch of new de­pen­den­cies.

RaceMenu#

Down­load RaceMenu (v0.4.20.0 GOG, 2026-04-20) and in­stall as usu­al.

mkdir ovrlay/mod/racemenu
./mount.rb --no-save skse racemenu

(Here I on­ly in­clude SKSE, since RacemMenu on­ly re­quires SKSE.)

Try to run it, and it will just crash. Fine. Doc­u­men­ta­tion says "If you are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing crash­ing on start­up, you like­ly have a prob­lem with an­oth­er mod, please take those com­plaints else­where as this mod should not ever con­flict." Ar­ro­gance lev­el 999. The on­ly oth­er mod I have is SKSE which is a de­pen­den­cy. Look­ing at the fo­rum con­firms RaceMenu mod is a bug­gy piece of this which doesn't even work on its own. You had one job you lit­er­al re­tard id­iot shit­head. Any­way, the so­lu­tion is al­so there, in­stall a fix. I didn't make a sep­a­rate mod for this in mount.rb, as RaceMenu is prac­ti­cal­ly un­us­able with­out the fix, just copy both to the same mod. The fix will over­write a dll from the orig­i­nal RaceMenu mod, let it be. (Don't try the OverlayFix mod men­tioned in the fourth post, it doesn't work.)

To check if it works, ei­ther start a new game and wait un­til you get to chose your char­ac­ter, or open con­sole us­ing back­tick and type showracemenu. The dif­fer­ence should be rather no­tice­able.

JXL (2.673 MiB) PNG (3.796 MiB)JXL (2.514 MiB) PNG (3.684 MiB)

ConsoleUtil, PapyrusUtil, JContainers, Mfg Fix#

I'm skip­ping for­ward in DD's re­quire­ments again, to HDT, be­cause CBBE will re­quire it. Or more ex­act­ly, HDT's de­pen­den­cies, be­cause there are a few. ConsoleUtil (v1.5.1, 2024-01-01), PapyrusUtil (v4.6 GOG, 2024-02-26), JContainers (v4.2.12 GOG, 2024-03-19). Al­so Mfg Fix (v1.6.1, 2022-09-30) is the odd out here, as it's not a HDT de­pen­den­cy, but it's a SKSE on­ly mod, so fits the theme. Make sure to down­load the cor­rect ver­sion (GOG, 1.6.1179)! These are plain SKSE mods, so in­stall them as usu­al, I called the mods consoleutil, papyrusutil, jcontainers, mfg_fix re­spec­tive­ly.

HDT/FSMP#

The HDT mod which still works with AE is FSMP (v3.0.6, 2026-05-24). Since this mod al­so has a bunch of de­pen­den­cies, I'm mak­ing a list file for it too (lists/fsmp):

skse
address
consoleutil
papyrusutil
jcontainers
fsmp

(Ad­dress is re­quired for the util mods.) Then you can mount it eas­i­ly.

mkdir ovrlay/mod/fsmp
./mount.rb --no-save fsmp

In­stalling is not easy, though, it's an­oth­er Fo­mod garbage. But it's al­so some garbage on which Lin­ux un­zip chokes (it throws "need PK com­pat. v6.3 (can do v4.6)" er­rors). 7z can de­com­press it though. The XML file here is short­er, but more com­pli­cat­ed.

    <requiredInstallFiles>
        <file source="LICENSE" destination="LICENSE" />
        <file source="Readme.txt" destination="Readme.txt" />
        <file source="DynamicHDTOriginalWorkLicense.txt" destination="DynamicHDTOriginalWorkLicense.txt" />
        <folder source="Scripts" destination="Scripts" priority="1" />
        <folder source="SKSE" destination="SKSE" priority="1" />
        <folder source="Source" destination="Source" priority="1" />
    </requiredInstallFiles>

So you have to copy Scripts, SKSE and Source fold­ers to Skyrim's Data fold­er un­con­di­tion­al­ly. I thought sources are on­ly need­ed if you want to de­vel­op mods, not for us­ing. Al­so the XML says you should copy the li­cense files, you can of course do it. Then you'll find some wall of text about what AVX is for peo­ple who don't know what grep avx /proc/cpuinfo is. Then hid­den in the garbage, an­oth­er set of files you should copy:

                            <files>
                                <folder source="FSMPM\Scripts" destination="Scripts" priority="1" />
                                <folder source="FSMPM\SKSE" destination="SKSE" priority="1" />
                                <folder source="FSMPM\Source" destination="Source" priority="1" />
                                <folder source="FSMPM\interface" destination="interface" priority="1" />
                                <file source="FSMPM\FSMPM - The FSMP MCM.esp" destination=".\FSMPM - The FSMP MCM.esp" priority="1" />
                                <file source="FSMPV\hdtSMP64.xsd" destination="SKSE\Plugins\hdtSMP64.xsd" priority="1" />
                            </files>

So ba­si­cal­ly every­thing un­der FSMPM goes in­to the Data dir, and FSMPV/hdtSMP64.xsd (a sin­gle file) goes to Data/SKSE/Plugins. Then at the very end of the file, the ac­tu­al files for the AVX mess:

    <conditionalFileInstalls>
        <patterns>
            <pattern>
                <dependencies>
                    <flagDependency flag="NOAVX" value="On" />
                </dependencies>
                <files>
                    <folder source="raw-vs2022-windows\SKSE" destination="SKSE" priority="0" />
                </files>
            </pattern>
            <pattern>
                <dependencies>
                    <flagDependency flag="AVX" value="On" />
                </dependencies>
                <files>
                    <folder source="raw-vs2022-windows-avx\SKSE" destination="SKSE" priority="0" />
                </files>
            </pattern>
            <pattern>
                <dependencies>
                    <flagDependency flag="AVX2" value="On" />
                </dependencies>
                <files>
                    <folder source="raw-vs2022-windows-avx2\SKSE" destination="SKSE" priority="0" />
                </files>
            </pattern>
            <pattern>
                <dependencies>
                    <flagDependency flag="AVX512" value="On" />
                </dependencies>
                <files>
                    <folder source="raw-vs2022-windows-avx512\SKSE" destination="SKSE" priority="0" />
                </files>
            </pattern>
        </patterns>
    </conditionalFileInstalls>

But if you're too lazy, AVX-512 is gen­er­al­ly on­ly avail­able or very new CPUs (un­less you're us­ing a serv­er CPU), and can cause throt­tling which some­times makes mat­ters worse, so caveat emp­tor. For­tu­nate­ly my CPU doesn't sup­port AVX-512, so I didn't have to think about this. AVX2 should be avail­able in any X86 CPU made in the last 10 years (un­less it's a cheap in­tel Celeron/Pen­tium CPU). NOAVX is prob­a­bly a joke, as I doubt any CPU lack­ing AVX could run Skyrim with any mean­ing­ful speed.

BodySlide#

We're get­ting near the end! The last big piece on DD's dep list are BodySlide and CBBE/UNP. Let's start with BodySlide (v5.7.1, 2025-07-25).

mkdir ovrlay/mod/bodyslide
./mount.rb --no-save bodyslide

This is a weird mod be­cause it has a FOMod di­rec­to­ry, but no ModuleConfig.xml. But in­stall is easy, just copy the CalienteTools di­rec­to­ry to Skyrim's Data di­rec­to­ry, and ig­nore Fo­mod. (There's a Textures di­rec­to­ry, but it's emp­ty, and the man­u­al in­stall in­struc­tions don't men­tion it ei­ther.) This mod is sim­i­lar to FNIS as it's just an ex­e­cutable (Data/CalienteTools/BodySlide/BodySlide x64.exe) which you're sup­posed to run af­ter in­stalling all mods, so just leave things as is for now, and move along.

CBBE#

The last item in DD's deps, and the on­ly one where you have any ob­vi­ous choice. CBBE (v2.0.3, 2024-04-09) or UNP, WTF you might ask. They're two dif­fer­ent body mods for the game. Which one is the bet­ter? I have no freakin' idea, they look some­what dif­fer­ent (UNP is bit more re­al­is­tic), and mod com­pat­i­bil­i­ty is all over the place, this is what I fig­ured out af­ter read­ing a bunch of posts about them. How­ev­er, lit­tle spoil­er alert, but I think UNP will not be com­pat­i­ble with some mods we will in­stall lat­er, so stick with CBBE.

mkdir ovrlay/mod/cbbe
./mount.rb --no-save bodyslide cbbe

Un­der in­stal­la­tion the man­u­al says down­load the main file... but there are two main files! But based on file con­tents and the rest of the de­scrip­tion, the main file is not the out­fits one, but the sec­ond ("Caliente's Beau­ti­ful Bod­ies En­hancer CBBE - v2.0.3"). It's an­oth­er Fo­mod stuff, but you can just fol­low the man­u­al. You have to copy 00 Required (Slim) to Data, and the rest is up to your tastes and lack of doc­u­men­ta­tion. Hon­est­ly you might want to re­fer to the im­ages in the FOmod di­rec­to­ry, Slim.jpg, Curvy.jpg and Vanilla.jpg to help you de­cide. If you want curvy, copy over 01 Curvy too to Data (I didn't, flat is jus­tice). Ig­nore the NeverNude, we're here to play sex not moral­i­ty po­lice.

For the out­fit, I think it's enough if you copy over just 09 Outfits BodySlide, DD re­quires BodySlide any­way. FacePack's de­scrip­tion in the XML says "Re­quired if you don't use an­oth­er CBBE com­pat­i­ble set of head and body tex­tures al­ready.", so you should copy that too. 11 Pubic Hair if you want pu­bic hair. For the brows op­tions, see files Thin\ +\ Trimmed\ Brows* Trimmed\ Brows* Bushier\ Brows*, I went with 13 Trimmed Brows (Light). 15 Dirt to Beauty Marks al­so looks like a good op­tion. Un­der­wear op­tions are prob­a­bly on­ly if you don't want nude peo­ple, so skip them. You prob­a­bly want the morphs too (all three dirs).

What about the rest of the files? I'm not sure, I've un­packed al­so "CBBE AE-CC Out­fits", "RoughSpun Tu­nic and Pris­on­er Bloody Fix" and "Nor­mal Map Op­tions - v1.4". First two are sim­ple mods, Nor­mal Map is an­oth­er Fo­mod shit though. For­tu­nate­ly this is pret­ty sim­ple, just se­lect one fold­er to your lik­ing and copy it over. No im­age pre­views here as far as I can tell.

To test it, cre­ate a new list file (lists/cbbe):

xp32
fsmp
racemenu
bodyslide
cbbe

And mount it:

mkdir ovrlay/mod/test
./mount.rb --no-save cbbe test

Then you need to re­gen­er­ate FNIS (Data/tools/GenerateFNIS_for_Users/GenerateFNISforUsers.exe) and Out­fit Stu­dio (Data/CalienteTools/BodySlide/BodySlide x64.exe). Go to Skyrim Spe­cial edi­tion in the list, browse to find the game (why the fuck can't it find the game when it's launched from the game's di­rec­to­ry). De­spite what the app says, you have to chose Data dir in­side the game in­stall dir, not the game in­stall dir. If you chose Skyrim's di­rec­to­ry, it will ap­pear to work, but it will gen­er­ate out­put files in the wrong di­rec­to­ry. Qual­i­ty soft­ware. Any­way, when fin­ished click chose game. And dun­no, the wi­ki doesn't say much about BodySlide, and I don't watch jew­tube videos of re­tards try­ing to ex­plain in 30 hours what can be done in 5 sen­tences. So what I did here was to chose a Pre­set, check Build Morphs, then click Batch Build, and re­build every­thing. "The fol­low­ing sets will over­ride the same files" Uh oh. Can't I just ig­nore this? Turns out not, as I fig­ured out from an ar­ro­gant id­iot's fo­rum posts who were try­ing re­al­ly hard to push the poor guy ask­ing ques­tions in­to watch­ing a use­less video again. What you have to do here is type "physics" in­to the search box, and hit en­ter. This will se­lect all the physics mod/over­rides/what­ev­er. Then find "mesh­es\ac­tors\char­ac­ter\char­ac­ter as­sets\fe­male­body" in the list (it was the first for me), and make sure it se­lect­ed the "CBBE Body Physics" one. Not the NeverNude or Un­der­wear op­tion, they will force you in­to un­der­wear.

Then run Skyrim. It shouldn't crash. If you re­move your out­fit, you should be naked. Morph and ex­pres­sion op­tions in RaceMenu should work cor­rect­ly. If it is, con­grats!

Try (and fail) to get Devious Devices running#

Now you should have all the mods in­stalled re­quired by De­vi­ous De­vices (v5.2, 2023-02-14). Down­load it, open it, see it's a Fo­mod crap again. But there's worse! Looks like it on­ly sup­ports 1.6.659 ver­sion of the GOG ver­sion. So I have to ei­ther find an old ver­sion of Skyrim and try again, or get a mod to fix it. Such mod ex­ists, it's called De­vi­ous De­vices NG (v0.4.2, 2025-10-26), but if you look at its project page, it has a bunch ex­tra de­pen­den­cies. Ah shit, here we go again.

Open Animation Replacer and deps#

Get An­i­ma­tion Queue Fix (v1.0.1, 2023-01-10), Paired An­i­ma­tion Im­prove­ments (v1.0.2, 2024-01-31), Open An­i­ma­tion Re­plac­er (v3.1.5, 2026-05-12). For the lat­ter I made a lists file (lists/open_animation_replacer):

skse
address
animation_queue_fix
paired_animation_improvements
open_animation_replacer

While here al­so in­stall Pa­pyrus Tweaks NG (v4.1.1, 2025-10-22), an­oth­er sim­ple SKSE plu­g­in (I named the mod papyrus_tweaks_ng). Dy­nam­ic Ar­mor Vari­ants (v1.0.5, 2022-10-08) is a rec­om­mend­ed mod. It's Fo­mod, so it's bit more com­pli­cat­ed, you need Data and SkyrimSE from the archive. HiddenEquipment and UIExtensions_Menu re­quire oth­er mods which I can't be both­ered to in­stall.

CBPC#

CBPC (v1.6.4, 2024-02-16) is a de­pen­den­cy of CBBE 3BA and an­oth­er Fo­mod garbage, and it's a fuck­ing mess.

                            <files>
                                <file source="00 Data\CBPCSystem.ini" destination="SKSE\Plugins\CBPCSystem.ini" priority="0" />
                                <file source="00 Data\Scripts\CBPCPluginScript.pex" destination="Scripts\CBPCPluginScript.pex" priority="0" />
                                <file source="00 Data\Scripts\Source\CBPCPluginScript.psc" destination="Scripts\Source\CBPCPluginScript.psc" priority="0" />
                                <file source="00 Data\CBPCPlayerCollisionEventConfig.txt" destination="SKSE\Plugins\CBPCPlayerCollisionEventConfig.txt" priority="0" />
                                <file source="00 Data\CBPCBounceinterpolationconfig_Test.txt" destination="SKSE\Plugins\CBPCBounceinterpolationconfig_Test.txt" priority="0" />
                                <file source="00 Data\CBPCCollisioninterpolationconfig_Test.txt" destination="SKSE\Plugins\CBPCCollisioninterpolationconfig_Test.txt" priority="0" />
                            </files>

I think copy­ing 00 Data/Scripts to Data and CBPCSystem.ini, CBPCPlayerCollisionEventConfig.txt, CBPCBounceinterpolationconfig_Test.txt, CBPCCollisioninterpolationconfig_Test.txt to Data/SKSE/Plugins is OK.

Then GOG stuff:

                            <files>
                                <file source="00 Data\GOG 1.6.1179\cbp.dll" destination="SKSE\Plugins\cbp.dll" priority="0" />
                                <file source="00 Data\GOG 1.6.1179\cbp.pdb" destination="SKSE\Plugins\cbp.pdb" priority="0" />
                                <file source="00 Data\cbpc.log" destination="SKSE\Plugins\cbpc.log" priority="0" />
                                <file source="00 Data\CBPCMasterConfig.txt" destination="SKSE\Plugins\CBPCMasterConfig.txt" priority="0" />
                                <file source="00 Data\CBPCollisionConfig_Yuriana.txt" destination="SKSE\Plugins\CBPCollisionConfig_Yuriana.txt" priority="0" />
                            </files>

Then comes the "Se­lect Your Body Shape", where I'm not com­plete­ly sure what I have to do. I went with "CBBE Fetish" be­cause that's what I tried to use.

                            <files>
                                <file source="00 Data\CBBE Fetish\SKSE\Plugins\CBPCollisionConfig.txt" destination="SKSE\Plugins\CBPCollisionConfig.txt" priority="0" />
                            </files>

For bounce con­fig, de­scrip­tion says "Choose whichev­er if you are us­ing 3BA or BHUNP.", so I just went with lev­el 5 (00 Data/Bounce5) and de­fault am­pli­tudes (00 Data/amplitude1). I re­al­ly start­ing to feel these peo­ple are us­ing a very wrong tool for a task. I skipped grav­i­ty, I don't want sag­gy breasts.

Check if things still work:

rm -rf ovrlay/mod/test
mkdir ovrlay/mod/test
./mount.rb --no-save cbbe cbpc test

Run FNIS, BodySlide, then Skyrim. I don't know what to look for, but it prob­a­bly shouldn't crash.

CBBE 3BA#

I hope you didn't drown in the al­pha­bet soup yet, the next mod is CBBE 3BA (v2.48, 2025-02-28). I've cre­at­ed a list for it (lists/cbbe_3ba):

cbbe
cbpc
papyrusutil
cbbe_3ba

It's Fo­mod again, and be pre­pared, and it's mas­sive. Start with 00 Base/CalienteTools, and I don't think you need any­thing else from the "CBBE 3BBB Ad­vanced Main" step. For "Base CBPC", you'll need 10 Physics Patch/11 Type B, 10 Physics Patch/00 CBPC Base, 10 Physics Patch/75 CBPC Separation (this looks like a hard de­pen­den­cy). For CBPC ini, I went with Bal­anced (10 Physics Patch/05 CBPCSystem02).

For "Physics Se­lect­ing" I went with the rec­om­mend­ed Lite: 10 Physics Patch/01 SMP Base, 20 Compatible/00 with MCM/23 Physics - Lite "CBPC Physics Pre­set Type" new: 10 Physics Patch/75 CBPC Separation/SKSE/Plugins/CBPConfig_BBP.txt, but wait, I al­ready copied this over? Car­ry on...

Boob Pre­set? I went with elas­tic and medi­um jig­gle: 10 Physics Patch/91 CBPC Very High Elasticity, 10 Physics Patch/91 CBPC Very High Elasticity - AntiGravity (plus it sets a bunch of flags). Small col­li­sion box: 10 Physics Patch/82 CBPC Collision B-B I've added grav­i­ty: 10 Physics Patch/94 CBPC BBP - Gravity, but no more grav­i­ty: 10 Physics Patch/97 CBPC NoMoreGravity, pushup: 10 Physics Patch/94 CBPC PushUp.

For "(CBPC-NewType) Bel­ly, Butt, Leg Physics Pre­set" I went with elas­tic big jig­gle, prob­a­bly the eas­i­est is to copy over 10 Physics Patch/77 CBPC M - BBL and 10 Physics Patch/78 CBPC BBL - Normal to get all 3 at once.

For "(SMP) Play­er Physics Pre­set", I went with Option2, Ccup. I skipped SOS since I don't have that mod. No vagi­na stuff: 10 Physics Patch/86 CBPC NoVagina, and no anal: 10 Physics Patch/87 CBPC NoAnal.

For pussy tex­ture I went with the de­fault: 30 Vagina Texture/00 base - 2K, 30 Vagina Texture/11 pink - 2K. Who the fuck needs a 4K pussy tex­ture?... I skipped the bronze shine fix, I dun­no what it is.

No com­pat­i­bil­i­ty patch­es, I don't use any of those mods. But I added RaceMenu sup­port: 15 RaceMenuMorphs/00 RaceMenuMorphs - CBBE.

Then the mas­sive conditionalFileInstalls at the end of the list. I went with Lite and Option2, so 10 Physics Patch/62 3BCA SMP and CBPC Lite - 2 it is. Lite, Option2, Ccup: 10 Physics Patch/33 Ccup SMP and CBPC Lite - 2. Elas, Grav­i­ty: 10 Physics Patch/91 CBPC Very High Elasticity - Gravity. BreastPhysicsHighC, BreastPhysicsLowC: 10 Physics Patch\81 CBPC Breast C-C.

I hope I didn't miss any­thing...

To test, make a test mod as usu­al, and mount, run FNIS and BodySlide. For the lat­ter fol­low the tu­to­r­i­al, click on the fry­ing pan un­der fil­ter groups, chose groups, 3BBB, Build Morphs, Batch Build and re­build. I'm not sure if you should re­build the nor­mal CBBE stuff or not...

Devious Devices again#

So make a list (lists/dd):

sexlab
sexlab_aroused
cbbe
cbbe_3ba
mfg_fix
open_animation_replacer
papyrus_tweaks_ng
dynamic_armor_variants
dd

Then mount it with --no-save, and we can try in­stalling it. Start with the orig­i­nal DD, al­so Fo­mod, but this is eas­i­er. You need 00 Base, ig­nore the DLLs (they're in­com­pat­i­ble and would be over­writ­ten by DD NG any­way). "Body Sup­port": CBBE, so set BS to 2 -> 01 CBBE. For an­i­ma­tion I went with the de­faults: AO 0, HSA 0 -> no ex­tra files to in­stall. I don't have DD for him or beasts. Sup­port files are not re­al­ly need­ed, but I'll copy the source just in case -> 90 Source Scripts.

Then on­to NG, which has a sim­i­lar struc­ture. 00 Base is manda­to­ry, an­i­ma­tion ques­tions are es­sen­tial­ly the same. All the rest is op­tion­al patch­es. I think we're done here!

One last bit from the readme, you should delete Devious Devices SE patch.esp.

Make a test mod again, start BodySlide, DD Framework 3BA group, se­lect (HDT) for con­flicts, batch build, and wait a long time (it was 10 min­utes for me). Then do the same for DDNG 3BA (for some­thing like 12 min­utes). Or at least this is what the readme said. I rec­om­mend you al­so re­build­ing 3BBA with the same pre­set to pre­vent clip­ping is­sues. Then FNIS as usu­al.

Try­ing this mod I no­ticed RaceMenu is not work­ing. Looks like you have to load SkyUI be­fore RaceMenu. mount.rb has a very ad-hoc workaround for this.

DD readme says start a new game to use DD, but for a quick test and old saveg­ame will do to. Load it, in­stall SexLab, save and re­load, you should re­ceive a mes­sage about DD loaded. But how do you test it works? In the end I used Sim­ple Mod Item Spawn­er (v1.50, 2022-05-26) to get some ran­dom DD items eas­i­ly. Just note in the fo­rum sec­tion they say this mod can slow down your Skyrim if you have a lot of mods, rec­om­mend­ing SearchUI in­stead, but it has ex­tra deps and for some quick test­ing SMIS should be enough.

Fuz Ro D-oh#

Fuz Ro D-oh (v2.5 GOG, 2024-04-20) is a sim­ple SKSE mod, I named it fuz_ro_doh.

The Trappings of Fate#

Fi­nal­ly, the rea­son I start­ed the whole ad­ven­ture! The Trap­pings of Fate (v2.3.0, 2026-04-26)! The lists file is pret­ty sim­ple (lists/the_trappings_of_fate):

dd
fuz_ro_doh
the_trappings_of_fate

Un­pack the 7z file in­to Data, this is a sim­ple mod. You can get the AI voic­es too if you want it.

I made a new mod (the_trappings_of_fate_gen) so I can put the gen­er­at­ed files there, and ran FNIS and BodySlide like above. Re­mount it with­out --no-save, start Skyrim... and it crash­es. Start it again, it works. I dun­no why it crashed first time.

But now what? The mod says, "You'll be hand­ed a Let­ter of Thanks by the couri­er af­ter trav­el to any lo­ca­tion af­ter you've reached lev­el 9." Thanks, but I rather not grind my­self to lev­el 9 in this bor­ing game. And I should prob­a­bly start from a fresh game to pre­vent prob­lems, but I don't want to go through the in­tro part again. Do­ing it once was al­ready 1 time more than I want­ed it. The an­swer is?

More mods, of course#

First one is an al­ter­nate start mod. There are a bunch of them, I have no idea which is the best, there's a led­dit thread about it. Skyrim Un­bound (v3.0.15, 2026-04-07) and Realm of Lorkhan seem like a good choice, I went with the for­mer be­cause a bor­ing menu is more than enough for me, I don't need a fan­cy new lo­ca­tion. (Al­ter­nate Start and Al­ter­nate Per­spec­tive were al­so men­tioned in the thread, but from a quick look they look like they want to give you some al­ter­nate start se­quence in­stead of just dump­ing you in­to free roam.)

Un­bound is an­oth­er mas­sive fo­mod crap, but I think it's enough if you copy just main and SkyUILib over. Every­thing else seems to be ran­dom mod fix­es/in­te­gra­tion.

For lev­el­ing up, I tried Im­mer­sive Cheat Menu (v2.1, 2023-06-29). This is a sim­ple mod, no fo­mod bull­shit.

If you're done, you can try it.

./mount.rb the_trappings_of_fate the_trappings_of_fate_gen unbound immersive_cheat_menu

Start new game, make a char­ac­ter to your lik­ing. Then hit es­cape, from MCM in­stall SexLab, and wait un­til it's done. Save and re­load to get De­vi­ous De­vices. Then you can go in­to Un­bound set­tings, I set Drag­onborn to yes (as it's the more vanil­la Skyrim set­ting) and went to start lo­ca­tion, and un­der Towns I se­lect­ed Drag­on Bridge. Why? Be­cause the first task in the quest is to go to Drag­on Bridge. If asked about sur­vival mode, dis­able it.

Then you can open Cheat Menu, un­der "Set Play­er Lev­el" se­lect "# to set to", set it to 10. Then click on the "Ac­cept" but­ton in cheat menu (you need to se­lect ac­cept twice, once when en­ter­ing 10, then in the cheat menu again!). Hav­ing done this en­ter any build­ing and leave, the couri­er should show up in a few sec­onds and hand you the let­ter to start the mod's quest. Walk to the bar, talk with the innkeep­er, drink the wine, and wake up like this~ (Yes, it's very dark.)

JXL (2.393 MiB) PNG (3.937 MiB)JXL (2.839 MiB) PNG (4.390 MiB)

I don't want to spoil too much of the mod (and I haven't even fin­ished it yet), so I just have a few very gener­ic sug­ges­tions. If some­thing was not us­able in the past, doesn't mean af­ter a point it won't be. Some pix­el hunt­ing in­volved.

If you can't seem to start the sec­ond quest of mod (The Gor­dian Bind): the mod is a bit gay and un­like in the first quest, you don't re­ceive im­me­di­ate­ly the quest name in the jour­nal. If you re­ceive a let­ter from a couri­er about killing some ban­dit leader and re­turn­ing the loot for some re­ward, that's it.

Future/conclusion#

One prob­lem I have with this set­up is when I start Skyrim, I get wine's vir­tu­al screen, and noth­ing hap­pens for a minute or so. Look­ing at htop I see ciopfs us­ing 100% CPU. SO I'll have to ei­ther fig­ure out how to use this with­out ciopfs (wine should han­dle it, just have to make sure it nev­er cre­ates a file with cap­i­tal let­ters some­how), or im­prove the per­for­mance of ciopfs (for ex­am­ple by us­ing FUSE Passthrough).

The sec­ond thing I should look in­to is the Fo­mod crap. Yes, I in­stalled Fo­mod mods man­u­al­ly, but it's an­oth­er PI­TA. There's a mod man­ag­er which works on Lin­ux, ModSanity. But 1) call­ing some­thing writ­ten in Rust san­i­ty is to­tal de­range­ment; 2) it's an­oth­er bloat­ed mod man­ag­er, all I need is to copy the files with the cor­rect set­tings to a dir, I can han­dle the rest; 3) its Fo­mod sup­port is so bug­gy it's use­less. So I'll like­ly have to write my min­i­mal Fo­mod "in­staller" in Ru­by to piss off as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble.

Files#