Sorting mods are great, but sometimes they don't really help you find the items that matter; if they do, they use all sorts of ugly brackets and symbols. What can you do?!


New to IFS 4.0:

• No FOMOD yet. Disable or delete patches you don't need.
• BOOK item types have been changed. Titles of books are more accurate; notes have locations or important designations added; letters are sorted by who they are for, and who they are from.
• KEYS now have locations added to them.
• Food & Drink: all mods now use the Alcohol, Drink, Cooked, etc. prefixes.
• All available patches have been reviewed and updated if necessary.
• Patches for mods that are no longer available have been removed.
• Cross-patches are still under review, and not available.
  

IFS is designed to be easy to navigate. Everything follows a pattern specific to its type; weapons and armor aren't the same, so why treat their sorting the same? Less mess, less time-consuming, more time for killing and looting.

Weapons
Weapons are now sorted by type, not material (ex. Greatsword: Ebony). If I have the perks for greatswords, I want to see all the greatswords together, not scroll through a bunch of slow daedric warhammers!

Armor
Armor doesn't have sub-skill separation like weapons. You just want to know if it's light, heavy, cloth, or a shield, and if it is a set. Now it is!

Potions & Poisons
Potions and poisons are easy to organize. Since I spend a lot of time making gold off alchemy, I wanted to make them easier to sell. This may seem selfish when making a sorting mod, but it also makes sense. Animal venoms are now a separate type.

Spells & Powers
Spells are listed by skill and level, then name (Des II: Firebolt). Only a few spell names are changed for sorting, namely runes (Rune, Frost) and cloaks (Cloak, Frost). I refrained from further changes to keep the names immersion/lore friendly.

Enchantments
Weapon and armor enchants are now separate. "Weapon:" & "Armor:" denote weapon and armor enchants, respectively. Special weapon enchants (Lunar Damage, Fiery Soul Trap, etc) have been given the asterisk. This puts them at the top.

Scrolls
Scrolls are simple: "Scroll, Skill - Spell Name" with only limited effect type added before the name for easier sorting. While I haven't found any evidence that scrolls are affected by perks in vanilla Skyrim, there are mods which do affect them.

Food & Drink
Alcohol, Cooked food, Baked food, Cooking materials, non-alcoholic Drinks, Stew; these are the affixes for everything now.

Ingredients
Specifically, this is alchemy ingredients. I use a lot of out-of-game tools for alchemy, since it is my prime gold maker, so changing the names makes this a lot more time-consuming. That said, I didn't really change anything other than adding an affix ("Reagent"). They sort together, which is what matters.

Books, Journals, Notes, Recipes, Tomes
They are separated with simple affixes: Book; Journal; Letter; Note; Tome. Book titles are based on the actual title in the book; journals have names, or locations to help differentiate; letters show sender and receiver (unless written to player character); notes include locations or related NPC; Tomes are sorted like spells.

Keys
Even the keys are sorted! General locations are added.

Miscellaneous
Special items, quest items, or unique items are given affixes that relate to their use or acquisition. Most of these are sorted into sub-types to help other mods.

Other Stuff
Many other little changes were made to ensure items would sort. Changes were made to quest items that are just renames of regular items (Aela's Shield, Fresh Meat). There's probably more stuff I'm forgetting.

Patches

Primary Patches


IFS has only one requirement:

• Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch - There is no reason for a modded SSE not to be using this. Changes are carried over into IFS.
  

That said, IFS has a couple highly recommended mods:

• SkyUI - Without this, some of the names will be too long to read.
  

Wrye Bash is useful again. When creating the Bashed Patch, deselect all non-IFS mods in the "Import Names" section and it should be good.


Without these tools and mods, IFS would never have been possible (or it would have taken months to make).

• SSEEdit Tool
• Auto Patching - VIS - JOP - Disenchant All - Weightless xEdit script for massive renaming
• Automation Tools for TES5Edit xEdit scripts for fine-tuning naming
• Valdacil's Item Sorting Mod used as inspiration
• Notepad++ Tool for script editing
  

If anything I've done is considered "taking without permission," please let me know; I don't want to be one of those users who don't give credit. Just know that I don't remember everything I have worked with, but it should only be record edits.


I welcome suggestions for improving IFS; but I am also a teacher, and cannot abide whining. If you don't like IFS, that's fine--don't download it! If you want to tell me you hate it, find something better to do with your time.

Remember: it is only "constructive" criticism if you provide possible solutions; otherwise it's just complaining.

Feel free to point out any mistakes made along the way, or missing information. These aren't considered criticism; they're bugs.

If I forgot something, please let me know.