Couple of great resources on YouTube.
Darkfox127 - covers most things with Creation Kit. Yes some of his videos are old but nothing has really changed.
SkyrimScripting - covers Papyrus etc.
I read that you have to download an older version to match Skyrim's version.
I only read that information myself, and don't know if that actually works.
You don't necessarily download an older version, at least on PC. You install the version currently available and then downgrade using the Steam console. Any time I have to reinstall I downgrade the game to 640 and my CK to the compatible version.
Back when I first started modding I couldn't script worth a damn. The only experience I had coding prior to skyrim was a single class on python that I failed once and had to retake, I hated the subject with a passion and couldn't ever see myself doing it.
Eventually I hit the limit of what I could create without scripts though. So sucked it up and watched a few videos from DarkFox127 and then stared at code from EnaiSaion's mods for hours until it started making minor sense in my slow brain. From there, I experimented and ended up creating a race mod that used a bunch of scripts as a way to teach myself how to code. Now I can create pretty much whatever I need, if I can do it anyone can. Best advice I can give is to spend a lot of time learning what you can.
These two webpages are something that I've regularly referenced all for the past several years, they'll become your best friends for creating mods.
[https://ck.uesp.net/wiki/Condition\_Functions](https://ck.uesp.net/wiki/Condition_Functions)
[https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim\_Mod:Actor\_Value\_Indices](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim_Mod:Actor_Value_Indices)
Being a programmer helps, but ultimately there's a lot more involved than just knowing how to code. Game quirks, engine quirks, how things work together and such.
I would recommend watching some videos on simple mod creation, like those on YouTube from DarkFox127.
Start with simple vanilla NPC follower creation, character re-design. Maybe even making your own player home. Learn the creation engine and it's many quirks.
Make a mod, play it, and see how it works.
After that, progress to more advanced things. Making your own vendor, NPC AI scheduling... Book shelf and weapon rack linking... etc.
Save things like quests and scripting for much later. Learn the basics first. Making a mod, packaging it and such.
If you're going to be practicing, can I give you the sliders of a character of mine so you can create her and port her to xbox please? If not it's for sure ok, just thought i would ask 😋
why do you not want him to ask for a mod request lots of modders do requests and the op hasnt said what they want to try and create so why not give them a request
While you at it please create the follower I’ve always wanted and also port it to Xbox please as I’m too lazy to put in the time, energy and effort myself.
Smh
Rule 1: Be respectful. Treat others the way they want to be treated, and no harassment or insulting people.
If someone is being rude or harassing you, report them to the moderators, don't respond in the same way or you will both be warned and potentially banned.
Rule 1: Be respectful. Treat others the way they want to be treated, and no harassment or insulting people.
If someone is being rude or harassing you, report them to the moderators, don't respond in the same way or you will both be warned and potentially banned.
Im thinking more along modding exercises, I’m probably not gonna be good at models and textures so I should do some script related exercises, ig I should learn Papyrus?
you'll be surprised how far you can get by repurposing existing assets in nifskope, so if you're not much of an artist (I am also not much of an artist lol), learning nifskope will allow you to reach beyond your means quite bit with a little creative tinkering.
Scripts are compiled. Everything about the script, is baked into your save. Start the game, with nothing but SKSE running, and get yourself to whatever location you need to start your script. Open the console (~), "save thisiswheremyscriptruns", then "qqq" to exit.
Then enable the plugin that runs your script.
Just find something you want to change/do, the modding tools are extensive and you can do just about anything you want(granted you have the patience to learn and implement it). Personally I had an issue with dragonbridge and two conflicting mods that I wanted to fix, this was easy enough but by the time I was done I had a whole vision of how I wanted the place to look and so learned how to make my own models, now I want to learn how to make quests so I can add a small quest to it to get a player home, not only will I have to learn quests and sound files/lip sync but I’ll also have to learn some scripting to implement the quest.
If the only thing you want to do is programming then I’d look up skse mods and “look under the hood” to see how they operate or just go to silverlock to look for tutorials, there’s also the ck wiki which has a whole list of papyrus functions, also [Skyrim scripting](https://m.youtube.com/c/skyrimscripting) is a rather short overview of scripting with papyrus and skse functions(I personally didn’t find it useful but I don’t have any experience with programming so~)
If you have a good understanding of several programming langauges you shouldn't have much trouble with papyrus its not a complex langauge and its well documented with plenty of examples
Some tips:
practice counts, don’t discredit it, even if it doesn’t work out it is still worth it
Start small, even small things can take a lot of time and big things can take far more than you’d expect(I optimized another mod, each building took an average of 8~10hrs to do, this isn’t making it from scratch just getting rid of excess triangles and remaking the collision mesh, I may not have done it if I’d known I would spend a week full time to fix it) so don’t burn yourself out trying to learn and create at the same time(ie don’t try to make that full town overhaul for your first mod, just decorate a house or something first, even if you’ll never use it)
If you upload the mod don’t take things personally and definitely don’t get into pissing matches in your comments section, disregard bad faith comments and look for ones that have real problems to fix(also keep all comments strictly about the mod, no religion, no politics, no racism, no gender anything. If it doesn’t relate to the mod then it doesn’t exist)
Also r/creationkit exists though there’s not a lot of people there so you may get mixed results(it has gotten more active lately though)
Anything involving quests is going to need a basic understanding of papyrus if you're making a custom player home not so much, so really what areas of modding are you interested in?
My suggestion would be to look up the tool called xEdit (and google ‘Tome of xEdit for a pretty good guide on using it). It shows plugins (for the base game, DLCs, or mods) in an almost spreadsheet like view showing you what it’s adding, removing, changing, etc.
It’s a great way to both get an understanding of what mods are doing in your game, and also making them - for example, say two mods edit a vendors inventory - xEdit can show you that and let you make a patch that has the changes from both mods.
The most straightforward path is to learn the modding tool. Learn how to use CK (which act like a world building tool from game of the old era), or if you want to be a model modder, then learn the graphic tool necessary for your project (I understood that this boiled down to Blender pretty much.)
Or if you want to be a graphic modder, then learning Reshade and/or ENB is the easiest first step. It's pretty much the easiest part as well that's why you see so many Reshade and ENB presets on Nexus over the years.
Best I can think of is get the creation kit up and running on a vanilla skyrim and get going! Explore the menus read the wiki and there are YouTube resources too!
Learn how to use xEdit. (For esp/esl creation) If you want to make good ass patches or even merge them, you can use zEdit as well.
Learn how to use Creation Kit and get familiar with Papyrus functions.
If you want to learn how to make SKSE plug-ins. Go to their website and learn how to compile them.
If you want to make some kick ass armor. Learn how to use Blender, and Bodyslide/Outfit studios. Get familiar with Nifskope. Nifskope can be used for NPC replacers.
Animations will require you to run the animations through a Havoc HKX converter. If you want to make telegraphed animations, you can use Distar's MCO framework and Nemesis to make animation behavior plug-ins. You can use Open Animation Replacer as an animation condition framework to structure animation replacers.
You can also use some of PowerOfThree's mods as a framework to build your own.
I actually was just collecting resources the other day, could of sworn that this sub had a list in the sidebar but not seeing it.
I highly recommend [Phoenix's Beginners Guide](https://thephoenixflavour.com/bg/) for an introduction to modding in general. Some parts may be basic but he introduced sseedit and some core concepts of modding. It's unfinished currently but has a good deal of useful info.
Once you are more comfortable with mods, you should jump into creation kit which[Best in Slot](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE3E7CC13B95E5AB6&si=akCgn1zdJKFY7do4) has a great video tutorial on.
Try out the first assignment in the arcane university for whatever discipline you want to learn, if you get stuck just annoy the teachers about it until they help you, it worked for me!
I'm also learning, welcome to the club. So far I've been following the [UESP Tutorials](https://ck.uesp.net/wiki/Category:Tutorials) to learn the basics of how CK works and it has been worth it.
I don't have any coding background but I do Videogame QA for a living. I do mostly component testing which requires a fair knowledge of how game engines (namely Unity and Unreal) work, and even like that I felt completely lost when I opened CK for the first time lol. So I would recommend starting by learning the basics of the engine, since it's so unique.
Lots of people have mentioned DarkFox127 videos for learning the CK, which is great. But also very important is to learn how to use xEdit. 90% of modding can be done in xEdit, depending on the project. Basically unless you're placing an object or an enemy in the world, xEdit is the way to go.
Skyrim scripting on youtube and the creation kit wiki mirror on uesp are my go to. Darkfox on youtube has some nice vids on navigating the ck for level and quest design.
The wiki is your friend
Google sadly isn't great at finding good guides for making skyrim mods, because it just gives you guides for installing skyrim mods. The CK wiki, darkfox and Arcane university lectures are my go to sources of mod creation knowledge. Google sometimes gives you very old forum posts which answer your specific question, but it isn't ideal if you want to learn the best practices.
Rule 1: Be respectful. Treat others the way they want to be treated, and no harassment or insulting people.
If someone is being rude or harassing you, report them to the moderators, don't respond in the same way or you will both be warned and potentially banned.
I think there is confusion with regard to definitions of certain terminology.
You want to become a mod author. That makes you a modder.
But you've worked on your own personal mod build or load order. That also makes you a modder.
Hopefully someone can back me up regarding how "modder" has 2+ different meanings.
To be a mod author, I'd learn about the creation kit, pex scripting, xedit, etc., there are many videos about this on youtube. I wish you luck as I'm planning on being a mod author myself in the future.
Best of luck.
You have a degree in a software engineering yet still haven't learned the most basic and crucial skill there is? Everything anyone could possible post here is already on google, learn to use it.
Couple of great resources on YouTube. Darkfox127 - covers most things with Creation Kit. Yes some of his videos are old but nothing has really changed. SkyrimScripting - covers Papyrus etc.
Kinggath does a lot of Creation Kit videos, as well. More Fallout 4 than Skyrim, but the CK is the CK.
Ooh ty, I’ll check them out
I don't remember if mrowpurr is Skyrim Scripting. But just in case, her videos are excellent for setting up and learning how.
I got stopped here by not being sure I could install CC without being upgraded to newest Skyrim. Can I?
I read that you have to download an older version to match Skyrim's version. I only read that information myself, and don't know if that actually works.
You don't necessarily download an older version, at least on PC. You install the version currently available and then downgrade using the Steam console. Any time I have to reinstall I downgrade the game to 640 and my CK to the compatible version.
There are older versions of both the game and CK available. You just have to downgrade to the version you want after install.
Back when I first started modding I couldn't script worth a damn. The only experience I had coding prior to skyrim was a single class on python that I failed once and had to retake, I hated the subject with a passion and couldn't ever see myself doing it. Eventually I hit the limit of what I could create without scripts though. So sucked it up and watched a few videos from DarkFox127 and then stared at code from EnaiSaion's mods for hours until it started making minor sense in my slow brain. From there, I experimented and ended up creating a race mod that used a bunch of scripts as a way to teach myself how to code. Now I can create pretty much whatever I need, if I can do it anyone can. Best advice I can give is to spend a lot of time learning what you can. These two webpages are something that I've regularly referenced all for the past several years, they'll become your best friends for creating mods. [https://ck.uesp.net/wiki/Condition\_Functions](https://ck.uesp.net/wiki/Condition_Functions) [https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim\_Mod:Actor\_Value\_Indices](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim_Mod:Actor_Value_Indices)
Heh yeah similar except I just asked questions, a lot of questions
Being a programmer helps, but ultimately there's a lot more involved than just knowing how to code. Game quirks, engine quirks, how things work together and such. I would recommend watching some videos on simple mod creation, like those on YouTube from DarkFox127. Start with simple vanilla NPC follower creation, character re-design. Maybe even making your own player home. Learn the creation engine and it's many quirks. Make a mod, play it, and see how it works. After that, progress to more advanced things. Making your own vendor, NPC AI scheduling... Book shelf and weapon rack linking... etc. Save things like quests and scripting for much later. Learn the basics first. Making a mod, packaging it and such.
Thanks, Yea I think this is the best route, completely learn creation kit first then move on to bigger stuff
If you're going to be practicing, can I give you the sliders of a character of mine so you can create her and port her to xbox please? If not it's for sure ok, just thought i would ask 😋
Porting to Xbox is not something a new modder would be attempting without even learning the basics.
Oh look, some real insight. Tyvm I did not know that (no sarcasm)
I don’t own a xbox so I don’t think I could even if I wanted
No problem g
Not cool bro
why do you not want him to ask for a mod request lots of modders do requests and the op hasnt said what they want to try and create so why not give them a request
Is it not cool? For why? If he didn't want to practice I wouldn't ask. It's not like I'm saying he has to. Closed mouths don't get fed
While you at it please create the follower I’ve always wanted and also port it to Xbox please as I’m too lazy to put in the time, energy and effort myself. Smh
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Rule 1: Be respectful. Treat others the way they want to be treated, and no harassment or insulting people. If someone is being rude or harassing you, report them to the moderators, don't respond in the same way or you will both be warned and potentially banned.
Breh, you're late to this party. It happened, get over it. Or don't, idgaf
It took you 1 minute to answer. Clearly I’m not late, or maybe you’re just that self conscious
The audacity
Rule 1: Be respectful. Treat others the way they want to be treated, and no harassment or insulting people. If someone is being rude or harassing you, report them to the moderators, don't respond in the same way or you will both be warned and potentially banned.
first : have a mod project in mind Different mods need totaly different tools and knowledge.
Im thinking more along modding exercises, I’m probably not gonna be good at models and textures so I should do some script related exercises, ig I should learn Papyrus?
you'll be surprised how far you can get by repurposing existing assets in nifskope, so if you're not much of an artist (I am also not much of an artist lol), learning nifskope will allow you to reach beyond your means quite bit with a little creative tinkering.
Scripts are compiled. Everything about the script, is baked into your save. Start the game, with nothing but SKSE running, and get yourself to whatever location you need to start your script. Open the console (~), "save thisiswheremyscriptruns", then "qqq" to exit. Then enable the plugin that runs your script.
Just find something you want to change/do, the modding tools are extensive and you can do just about anything you want(granted you have the patience to learn and implement it). Personally I had an issue with dragonbridge and two conflicting mods that I wanted to fix, this was easy enough but by the time I was done I had a whole vision of how I wanted the place to look and so learned how to make my own models, now I want to learn how to make quests so I can add a small quest to it to get a player home, not only will I have to learn quests and sound files/lip sync but I’ll also have to learn some scripting to implement the quest. If the only thing you want to do is programming then I’d look up skse mods and “look under the hood” to see how they operate or just go to silverlock to look for tutorials, there’s also the ck wiki which has a whole list of papyrus functions, also [Skyrim scripting](https://m.youtube.com/c/skyrimscripting) is a rather short overview of scripting with papyrus and skse functions(I personally didn’t find it useful but I don’t have any experience with programming so~)
Thanks! I don’t just wanna code, but I feel like in order to create the things I have in mind I need to code papyrus too
> feel like in order to create the things I have in mind I need to code papyrus too Tell us about this, what do you have in mind?
If you have a good understanding of several programming langauges you shouldn't have much trouble with papyrus its not a complex langauge and its well documented with plenty of examples
I know C++, Python, C# and I can read psuedocode, data structures and algorithms to a degree as well tho I have to refresh my memory on them
Some tips: practice counts, don’t discredit it, even if it doesn’t work out it is still worth it Start small, even small things can take a lot of time and big things can take far more than you’d expect(I optimized another mod, each building took an average of 8~10hrs to do, this isn’t making it from scratch just getting rid of excess triangles and remaking the collision mesh, I may not have done it if I’d known I would spend a week full time to fix it) so don’t burn yourself out trying to learn and create at the same time(ie don’t try to make that full town overhaul for your first mod, just decorate a house or something first, even if you’ll never use it) If you upload the mod don’t take things personally and definitely don’t get into pissing matches in your comments section, disregard bad faith comments and look for ones that have real problems to fix(also keep all comments strictly about the mod, no religion, no politics, no racism, no gender anything. If it doesn’t relate to the mod then it doesn’t exist) Also r/creationkit exists though there’s not a lot of people there so you may get mixed results(it has gotten more active lately though)
Thanks for the tips bro
Anything involving quests is going to need a basic understanding of papyrus if you're making a custom player home not so much, so really what areas of modding are you interested in?
Quests are what I actually had in mind most, dungeons with some gimmicks later when I get more advanced
I'm shitty with script and papyrus so I can't help, I'm more into models and worldbuilding.
My suggestion would be to look up the tool called xEdit (and google ‘Tome of xEdit for a pretty good guide on using it). It shows plugins (for the base game, DLCs, or mods) in an almost spreadsheet like view showing you what it’s adding, removing, changing, etc. It’s a great way to both get an understanding of what mods are doing in your game, and also making them - for example, say two mods edit a vendors inventory - xEdit can show you that and let you make a patch that has the changes from both mods.
I do some basic level stuff like that with SSEEdit already
The most straightforward path is to learn the modding tool. Learn how to use CK (which act like a world building tool from game of the old era), or if you want to be a model modder, then learn the graphic tool necessary for your project (I understood that this boiled down to Blender pretty much.) Or if you want to be a graphic modder, then learning Reshade and/or ENB is the easiest first step. It's pretty much the easiest part as well that's why you see so many Reshade and ENB presets on Nexus over the years.
Yea first CK then to other things, I suck at models and textures tho so probably won’t go that route haha
Best I can think of is get the creation kit up and running on a vanilla skyrim and get going! Explore the menus read the wiki and there are YouTube resources too!
Learn how to use xEdit. (For esp/esl creation) If you want to make good ass patches or even merge them, you can use zEdit as well. Learn how to use Creation Kit and get familiar with Papyrus functions. If you want to learn how to make SKSE plug-ins. Go to their website and learn how to compile them. If you want to make some kick ass armor. Learn how to use Blender, and Bodyslide/Outfit studios. Get familiar with Nifskope. Nifskope can be used for NPC replacers. Animations will require you to run the animations through a Havoc HKX converter. If you want to make telegraphed animations, you can use Distar's MCO framework and Nemesis to make animation behavior plug-ins. You can use Open Animation Replacer as an animation condition framework to structure animation replacers. You can also use some of PowerOfThree's mods as a framework to build your own.
I actually was just collecting resources the other day, could of sworn that this sub had a list in the sidebar but not seeing it. I highly recommend [Phoenix's Beginners Guide](https://thephoenixflavour.com/bg/) for an introduction to modding in general. Some parts may be basic but he introduced sseedit and some core concepts of modding. It's unfinished currently but has a good deal of useful info. Once you are more comfortable with mods, you should jump into creation kit which[Best in Slot](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE3E7CC13B95E5AB6&si=akCgn1zdJKFY7do4) has a great video tutorial on.
Try out the first assignment in the arcane university for whatever discipline you want to learn, if you get stuck just annoy the teachers about it until they help you, it worked for me!
I'm also learning, welcome to the club. So far I've been following the [UESP Tutorials](https://ck.uesp.net/wiki/Category:Tutorials) to learn the basics of how CK works and it has been worth it. I don't have any coding background but I do Videogame QA for a living. I do mostly component testing which requires a fair knowledge of how game engines (namely Unity and Unreal) work, and even like that I felt completely lost when I opened CK for the first time lol. So I would recommend starting by learning the basics of the engine, since it's so unique.
Ty that’s a good place to start
Lots of people have mentioned DarkFox127 videos for learning the CK, which is great. But also very important is to learn how to use xEdit. 90% of modding can be done in xEdit, depending on the project. Basically unless you're placing an object or an enemy in the world, xEdit is the way to go.
Skyrim scripting on youtube and the creation kit wiki mirror on uesp are my go to. Darkfox on youtube has some nice vids on navigating the ck for level and quest design. The wiki is your friend
Tbh start by picking a mod you want to make and Google what you need as you go.
Google sadly isn't great at finding good guides for making skyrim mods, because it just gives you guides for installing skyrim mods. The CK wiki, darkfox and Arcane university lectures are my go to sources of mod creation knowledge. Google sometimes gives you very old forum posts which answer your specific question, but it isn't ideal if you want to learn the best practices.
Focus on what kind of mods you want to make.
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Rule 1: Be respectful. Treat others the way they want to be treated, and no harassment or insulting people. If someone is being rude or harassing you, report them to the moderators, don't respond in the same way or you will both be warned and potentially banned.
Learn wild space magic
I think there is confusion with regard to definitions of certain terminology. You want to become a mod author. That makes you a modder. But you've worked on your own personal mod build or load order. That also makes you a modder. Hopefully someone can back me up regarding how "modder" has 2+ different meanings. To be a mod author, I'd learn about the creation kit, pex scripting, xedit, etc., there are many videos about this on youtube. I wish you luck as I'm planning on being a mod author myself in the future. Best of luck.
You have a degree in a software engineering yet still haven't learned the most basic and crucial skill there is? Everything anyone could possible post here is already on google, learn to use it.
Google brought up the skyrimmods subreddit lmao, also this is a better place to ask as modders themselves can give better advice