Skryim woes...

So anybody who has played Skyrim on the PC and added even more than one mod knows the headaches that can result with managing mods in the game.  Now add over 350+ mods and you'll begin to see some of the issues I've had to deal with.

I have not played Skyrim in over 6 months...the last time I played the Dragonborn DLC had just come out, but I had started a new game with Cerise and she currently was starting out some of the quests in Riften, having already passed through Whiterun and Ivardstead.

So there's been a shitload of mod updates, Nexus Mod Manager updates, and a bunch of other updates for scripting engines and all the tools I had been familiar with using since I've last played the game.

Add to that I have also changed computers...

Ugh, what a nightmare.

I loaded up Skyrim for the first time today and Cerise was naked and alone in Riften.

I had forgotten how sparse the cities were without mods adding NPC's and companions, and all the gear she had been wearing were from mods.

So at that point, I realized all my mods had not loaded.  Easy enough fix...I fired up Nexus Mod Manager.  After updating to the latest version it showed I had NO MODS INSTALLED!!!!  WTF?

Go back to "I have since changed machines" and you'll begin to see some of the problems.  With the new machine, I am in a new domain, so even though I copied all my data to the new system, the directory paths and whatnot were all wrong.  The mods were in the correct directories for Skyrim, but nothing was registered or even visible because of the path changes.

An hour later and I was able to SEE all my mods once again...but that was just the tip of the iceberg.  Apparently the installation information for the mods did not transfer to the new machine (and old machine is since wiped), so although I could SEE my mods...they were not INSTALLED or ENABLED.

I could just enable the mods, since I could now see them, but nothing could be that simple, right?  After investigating things further, I found the mods were not installed per Nexus Mod Manager, but the ESP's and ESM's WERE INSTALLED and visible to Skyrim!

So everything is half-assed at this point...mods are installed, and although the ESP's and such are enabled, the mods themselves are inactive. What I am going to have to do is go through each and every mod (I have over ONE THOUSAND mods downloaded) and do the following:

1. Check to see if the mod has been updated.  If so, I need to download the new version and read the README files to see if it is compatible with everything else.
2. Check to see if I used the mod previously, if so, I'll need to reinstall the mod and overwrite any older files.

Then there's the issue that Skyrim only allows 255 mods to be loaded.  I had previously gone through over 300 armor mods and combined them manually into a single file.  I'll now have to do the same thing again with the UPDATED mods since some of the older versions are incompatible with the newer version of Skyrim.

As I said, what a nightmare!  It will take some time to get everything all settled out again where I can play the game and pick up where I left off in Riften.

The good news is I have Chapters 3 (Whiterun) and 4 (Ivardstead) already written, as well as most of the screenshots taken--I just need to review the storyline and make some edits as well as insert the pictures.  I may have to settle on not having screenshots from some scenes as I can not go back until everything is straightened out, but at least I can get SOMETHING out for those chapters.  But it's still going to be an uphill battle before I can get back into the game comfortably....or get anything past Chapter 4 in the future...