when using mod organizer 2 these are the steps you should follow before you try to mod your game



setup your mo2 categories

having categories setup helps you to organize and prioritize your mods, this is useful because it helps to eliminate potential mod conflicts by prioritizing which mods are loaded first and which mods get loaded last or midway through.

it also makes using LOOT (load order optimisation tool) easier, loot controlss when a plugin gets loaded but it does very little to control when the mod files themselves gets loaded MO2 bypasses this limitation by using a virtual filesystem that allows the user to specify when specific mod files get loaded

for this reason the mod order used in mo2 is every bit as important the load order used in  MO2 and MO2 & LOOT should always be used together


install the files form the Data folder using MO2


using 7zip or winrar create a archive of the files contained within the Data folder, after that install the archive using MO2 and remove everything that is contained within the Data folder.

after that your Data folder should always remain empty and all mods should be installed using MO2 (there are only 2 mods that i know of that actually have to be installed directly into the Data folder, however it should be noted that the mods in question alos use special loaders that are not seen or used by MO2).


install skse

when using skse with MO2 everything should be installed as normal except for the scripts, the scripts need to be installed into MO2. the easiest way to do so is by extracting the scripts into the Data folder and then creating a new archive from the scripts within the Data folder using 7zip or winrar and then installing them into MO2

again once the process is completed the Data folder should still be empty

a quick note regarding MO2 the main files from the Data folder & the skse scripts should always be loaded before everything else when using MO2, they should never under any circumstances ever be loaded last inside MO2 (loading them last creates massive problems and weird glitches, i once tried to do so to see what would happen and it literally caused the game to be unplayable in addition to producing  a lot of purple textures and causing lots of lag. also if the skse scripts are loaded last it will actually cause some mods to not work because scripted mods need skse to be activated before they themselves are activated).

congratulations you are now finished and ready to start modding your game