Nexus Mod Manager With Steam Workshop
One of PC gaming’s biggest strengths is its flexibility, and that advantage shines brightest when you mod your PC games. While console games remain restricted to the gameplay and features shipped by developers, many PC games can be modified by the community to tweak almost any aspect of the experience. Mods can offer enhanced graphics, bug fixes, fresh quests, you name it. The best PC mods can change games completely—and sometimes kickstart whole new genres of their own.
Nexus Mod Manager - Open Beta The Nexus Mod Manager (NMM) is a free and open source piece of software that allows you to download, install, update and manage your files through an easy to use interface. It integrates with the Nexus sites to provide you with a fast, efficient and much less hassled modding experience.
This guide will teach you how to mod PC games, explaining the various resources available to find and install mods, as well as how to manage your mods to avoid potential conflicts. Welcome to the next stage of your adventure.
Note: We’ll start this article by explaining how to use mods in PC games, but since this is a beginner’s guide, we’ve got the why covered too. The second page details reasons you may want to mod your PC games, along with screenshots and examples of some of the more popular mods available.
How to mod a PC game
Before we begin, be aware that many multiplayer games, including Grand Theft Auto Online, will ban you if join an online session with modified files. (They’re allowed in GTA V’s single player though.) Other online games allow the use of quality-of-life mods like graphical enhancers, but ban gameplay mods. Do your homework if you want to run mods while playing online!
Got it? Good. Let’s dig in.
Modding PC games doesn’t follow a universal process. The required steps differ game to game and mod to mod. Generally, modding requires some kind of change to the existing game, such as tweaks to an .ini file or replacing texture files completely. Some mods may need more in-depth preparation, such as decompressing a game’s executable, swapping in some very specific files, and then repackaging it. Most mods will have install instructions in their readme files or on their host sites.
Fortunately, some of the biggest mod communities offer custom tools that greatly simplify the installation process. In the best cases, you’ll only need to click a button and the modding tool does everything else for you.
Nexus Mod Manager
The Nexus Mod Manager, which is still in open beta, works alongside the popular Nexus Mods site by handling mod file storage location, downloads management, and many installation paths. For the mods that support it, this allows you to just download and install from a single location instead of having to navigate a bunch of different game folders to make sure all the pieces are in place.
Steam
It should be no surprise that if you want to use Steam Workshop mods, you need to use Steam. The Workshop features within Steam allow you to subscribe to mods for games you own on the platform. Once you do, Steam will handle the installation part, then keep your mods automatically updated, just like the rest of your games library. Not all Steam games support Workshop, though.
Twitch Desktop App (previously Curse)
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The Twitch Desktop App has a handful of Twitch and community features, but recently, the mods application features from the previous Curse app has been rolled into it. Much like the Nexus Mod Manager, you can install mods through the app instead of dealing with each mod installation effort individually.
Finding game mods
Finding mods for games is the easy part. It’s picking and choosing which specific mods you want that can get difficult. Regardless, there are all kinds of sites and services that host mods for gamers to download and use. Here are some of the largest repositories.
Nexus Mods
Nexus Mods is one of the most popular mod hosting sites, particularly for Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls and Fallout games. The Nexus sites are primarily community-driven, with free hosting and distribution of mods made by just about anyone.
Mod DB
Mod DB is one of the oldest modding resource sites out there. It’s typically known for being the popular host for mods of older games (like the original Half-Life) or being the primary distributor of the very popular Brutal Doom. In 2016, Mod DB acquired GameFront—which used to be the largest mod hosting site in the world—after GameFront shut itself down.
Steam Workshop
If you couldn’t already guess, the Steam Workshop is a mod hosting resource for games on the Steam platform. Game developers can support the Steam Workshop for their games, which then allows communities to create and change the game, while handling all mod hosting and sorting through Steam directly. Steam Workshop makes modding dead simple.
Curse Mods
Curse, recently acquired by Twitch, is a multimedia organization that holds a wide range of gaming-centric media. Curse has been most popular for hosting add-ons for World of Warcraft and other MMOs.
Bethesda Creation Club
At E3 2017, game publisher Bethesda introduced the Bethesda Creation Club, a curated marketplace for mod creators to be able to make and sell content for Fallout 4 and Skyrim Special Edition. You’ll find the Creation Club baked right inside those games. The idea of paid mods may be a touchy subject for some, though.
Game specific resources
Several games and series have specific community sites where most of their mods originate. The popular mods from these sources may be rehosted elsewhere, but these niche sites tend to be the primary community for the games. Here are some examples:
- Fallout 1 and 2 - No Mutants Allowed
- Minecraft - MinecraftMods
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - Deadly Stream
On the other hand, some especially useful mods support many different games. Two notable multi-game mods are ENBseries, which enhances the graphics in many modern titles, and the_bigg’s Widescreen Mod, which adds much-needed widescreen support to classic CRPGs like Planescape: Torment, Baldur’s Gate, and Icewind Dale.
Managing PC game mods
Steam, Nexus Mod Manager, and the Twitch Desktop App are also tools for managing your mods. They show you the mods you have installed, include abilities to enable or disable individual mods, and can help let you know when an update is available.
That said, there are some mod management tools available that help in specific games. If your game of choice has enough mods, chances are someone has developed a manager for them. Here are a few popular ones:
Bethesda’s role-playing games have been a modding favorite for years now, and legions of mods are available all of them. Because of that, modders also created several key Bethesda-focused management tools.
Mod Organizer
Once the preferred mod manager for Elder Scrolls and modern Fallout games, the Mod Organizer offered much of what the Nexus Mod Manager can do with some additional features, such as being able to open up game’s data archives and save files for direct manipulation. Fun fact: Nexus Mods hired Tannin42, the creator of Mod Organizer, to work on the Nexus Mod Manager in late 2016.
LOOT: The Load Order Optimisation Tool
When you’re trying to play with a large number of mods in modern Bethesda games, the order in which they load up can be important. LOOT helps you organize your mod list and load order, saving you the time and energy of having to learn what most of the order needs to be yourself. Additionally, LOOT can help point out opportunities for optimization in some mods, such as redundant components or dirty edits that will only slow things down.
Wrye Bash
Think of this as the manual version of LOOT, with some Mod Organizer features on steroids. Wrye Bash helps you get into the thick of things in terms of mod management by helping you access the parts of mods that might need cleaning or even file merging.
Now that you’ve learned how to mod PC games, it’s time to dig into why you’d mod PC games.
Next page: What is game modding? Why you’d want to mod PC games.
Vortex supports a full migration of your mods from Nexus Mod Manager and Mod Organizer 2. This guide will discuss how to do this and any optional steps to follow after you’ve got set up in Vortex.Importing from NMM has certain limitations and is not recommended for more complex mod setups. Please note the related article: Importing_from_Nexus_Mod_Manager:_Things_to_consider.
Prepare and Install Vortex
Ensure your current Mod Manager isn’t downloading or installing anything and close it. In the case of Mod Organizer, if you want to save files in the overwrite folder ensure you either create a new mod or add them to an existing one.
Nexus Mod Manager With Steam Workshop Pdf
You should also ensure you have enough Hard Drive storage to duplicate both your installed mods and download folders into Vortex. The migration copies the data and does not remove it from your old manager.
Download Vortex and install it onto your PC. Then login to your Nexus Mods account. On the Games tab of Vortex, ensure the game you are migrating is currently in the “Managed” section. If you haven't set up your current game to be managed, see section titled: 'How do I add a new game to Vortex?'
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Importing your mods
Now you have the current game selected, head to the “Mods” section. Along the toolbar at the top, you will find “Import from…” which will show the import options available.
On the first page of the Import Tool, Vortex will attempt to auto-detect the mod manager you’re importing from. If it can’t find it, or you have more than one version of the mod manager installed, you can change is the mod manager install path.
Step 2 will show a list of currently installed mods in NMM. You can manually change the “Import” drop-down next to each file in order to stop Vortex from adding the mod. Another important checkbox is found at the bottom left - “Import Archives” will pull the original archives for the selected mods. This is highly recommended because you may need to reinstall the mod from its archive if you remove your old mod manager. Archives will be stored in the Vortex download folder, which can be defined before running this tool if required.
At this next stage, it is important you wait patiently for the process to run. If you have a lot of complex mods installed it will take some time. Vortex may appear to freeze when processing big mods.
DO NOT OPEN ANY OTHER MOD MANAGER DURING THIS PROCESS.
Congratulations, you’ve now imported all of your mods into Vortex. There are a few final considerations which are optional from this point, but worth reading if you’re new to Vortex.
Nexus Mod Manager Considerations
This section is optional, but recommended. Removing Nexus Mod Manager will remove all mods for all games managed by the application. |
Removing Nexus Mod Manager without breaking Vortex Due to the way Nexus Mod Manager (NMM) handles mods, there are a few extra steps to remove it, to ensure you don’t get any headaches. The safest way to remove your NMM installation without impacting Vortex would be to do the following:
- In Vortex, on the “Mods” tab, select all your mods with Ctrl + A. Then using the toolbar at the bottom click “Disable all”. This pulls all Vortex controlled files out of your game folder.
- Open Nexus Mod Manager (NMM), and click the 'switch mod manager view' button so you see only your mods and not the categories.
- Select all mods with Ctrl + A and press the delete key. Confirm your selection, this will remove the installed mod files and archives from NMM which will release the hard drive space it’s using.
- (Optional) Use the NMM tool “Purge Unmanaged files” which will delete any leftover fragments of mods that NMM may have left behind.*
- Uninstall Nexus Mod Manager from your system.
- Open Vortex and enable the mods you want to use again.
- If you use the purge option, this may remove externally installed files such as script extenders, ENBs and Steam Workshop mods. These files will need to be reinstalled if your load order requires them. You may also want to revalidate your game installation if you have problems after completing this step.
BigBizkit 16:21, 24 October 2018 (BST)