Conflicts & Load Order

Two different kinds of ordering

Modding has two independent ordering systems, and conflating them is the single most common source of confusion:

Install priority decides what lands on disk (textures, meshes, scripts, configs). Plugin load order decides how the game engine merges plugin records at runtime. A mod can win the file fight and still need its plugin sorted correctly — these are orthogonal. The first half of this page is install-priority conflicts; the second half is Bethesda plugin order.

Mod conflicts (install priority)

When multiple enabled mods provide the same relative path, only one version can be deployed. modde resolves this by load order priority: walking the resolved order, the last (highest-priority) provider of a path wins. Hidden files and profile overrides shift the winner, exactly as in deployment.

Analysing conflicts

# Show config and dangerous collisions
modde collisions --profile my-skyrim

# Include cosmetic collisions too
modde collisions --profile my-skyrim --all

By default, pairs whose worst severity is purely cosmetic are hidden; --all shows them. The report contains:

• Collision pairs — [SEVERITY] loser vs winner (N files), each followed by per-file lines
• Per-file detail — path -> winner: <mod> with origin/hidden tags
• Shadowed mods — mods whose every file is overridden by higher-priority mods
• Loose vs archive conflicts — a loose file overriding archive contents (or vice versa)
• Redundant files — files that never win (always overridden)

Collision severity

Severity is classified per file from its extension by the game’s classifier. The four levels, lowest to highest risk:

A mod pair’s reported severity is the worst severity among its colliding files. Pairs are sorted most-severe first, then by file count.

Per-game classifiers

Each game supplies its own classifier — both the severity table and which extensions count as indexable archives:

Note that for Bethesda games the archive container extensions (bsa, ba2) classify as cosmetic — the danger is judged by what is inside the archive, not the wrapper.

Archive-aware conflicts (BSA / BA2 / pak)

modde does not stop at loose files. For each mod it walks loose files and, for any file whose extension is an archive extension, asks the classifier to index the archive’s contents. Every entry inside the archive is registered into the conflict map under its normalised internal path, so a loose textures/sky.dds in one mod correctly collides with a textures/sky.dds packed inside another mod’s .bsa.

When a conflict spans a loose file and an archived one, the per-file line is tagged so you can see which form won:

• [loose > archive] — a loose file beat an archived one
• [archive > loose] — an archived file beat a loose one

These are also collected separately under Loose vs archive conflicts in the report.

Indexing support is classifier-specific and not uniform:

• Bethesda .bsa/.ba2 are read and their contents indexed.
• Cyberpunk .archive is listed as an archive extension but its proprietary format is not yet indexed — Cyberpunk conflicts are detected at the loose file level only.
• If an archive fails to index, modde warns and treats it as contributing no internal entries (it still counts as a loose-file collision on the archive itself).

Shadowed mods and redundant files

Two pre-deploy optimisation signals fall out of the analysis:

• A shadowed mod is one where every file it provides is overridden by a higher-priority mod. It contributes nothing to the deployed VFS. The report lists it as "<mod>" (N files, all overridden by <mods>); a diagnostic also suggests disabling it to shrink the deployment.
• A redundant file is a single path from a mod that always loses. The count is reported, and --suggest-hides turns each into an actionable hide command.

Suggesting hides

modde collisions --profile my-skyrim --suggest-hides

For every redundant file this prints a ready-to-run command, e.g.:

Suggested hide commands:
  modde profile hide "SomeTextureMod" "textures/landscape/dirt.dds"

Without --suggest-hides, the report just notes how many redundant files exist and reminds you of the flag.

Reading the output

A trimmed modde collisions --profile my-skyrim run might look like:

Collision Report for profile "my-skyrim" (skyrim-se)
============================================================
7 file collisions across 3 mod pairs

[DANGEROUS] CombatOverhaulB vs CombatOverhaulA (1 files)
  scripts/combat.pex  ->  winner: CombatOverhaulA

[CONFIG] BaseINI vs TweakedINI (1 files)
  SkyrimPrefs.ini  ->  winner: TweakedINI

[COSMETIC] HiResTextures vs CustomSky (2 files)
  textures/sky/clouds.dds  ->  winner: CustomSky [archive > loose]
  textures/sky/stars.dds   ->  winner: CustomSky (hidden)

Shadowed mods (all files overridden):
  - "OldTexturePack" (2 files, all overridden by HiResTextures, CustomSky)

Loose vs archive conflicts: 1 files

Redundant files (never win): 3
  Run with --suggest-hides to get hide commands

How to read it:

• The header line reports total file-level collisions and how many mod pairs they span.
• [DANGEROUS] CombatOverhaulB vs CombatOverhaulA — the second name is the winner. Here a .pex script collides, which is high-risk, so verify this is intentional.
• [archive > loose] on clouds.dds means CustomSky won via a packed archive entry over a loose file in HiResTextures.
• (hidden) on stars.dds means the loser was explicitly hidden by you.
• OldTexturePack is fully shadowed — disabling it changes nothing on disk.

Per-file hiding

Hide a single file from a mod without disabling the whole mod:

modde profile hide "mod_id" "path/to/file.nif"

Hidden files are recorded per profile and excluded during the VFS build phase: the next-highest provider of that path wins instead. This is modde’s equivalent of MO2’s .mohidden system. In the collision report, a hidden loser is tagged (hidden) so you can confirm the override took effect.

Bethesda plugin load order

For Bethesda games, plugin load order (.esp, .esm, .esl) is managed separately from mod install priority. These commands read the game’s real plugins.txt for the active plugin set.

LOOT sorting

modde loot sort --game skyrim-se

modde parses the community LOOT masterlist (a YAML file of per-plugin after / requires / incompatible rules) and derives load-order rules for the plugins you actually have active:

• after and requires both become load-after rules (a requires whose target is not in the active set is logged as a dependency gap).
• incompatible becomes an incompatible rule.
• Rules referencing plugins that are not active are dropped.

The masterlist must be cached locally first; if it is missing, sort prints the exact curl command (and target path) to fetch the right masterlist for your game. Masterlists are available for skyrim-se/skyrim-ae, fallout4, fallout76, and starfield. sort prints the generated rules (X loads after Y, INCOMPATIBLE: A <-> B) so you can review what the masterlist implies for your setup.

Validating plugins

modde loot validate --game skyrim-se

modde reads only the first ~1 KB of each active plugin’s TES4 header — it never loads multi-GB plugins in full — and reports:

• Form 43 plugins — [FORM43] <plugin> (vX.XX) — Oldrim format, may cause CTDs in SSE. Form 43 (version 0.94) is the old Skyrim LE record format; using it in SSE/AE (which expects Form 44, 1.70) can crash the game. The fix is to resave the plugin in the Creation Kit. This check only runs for skyrim-se / skyrim-ae.
• Missing masters — [MISSING] <plugin> requires '<master>' which is not loaded. A plugin depends on a master that is not in the active load order; the game will crash on load. Matching is case-insensitive.

A clean run prints All N plugins are valid.

Plugin order backup and restore

Take a restore point before reordering, and roll back if a sort goes wrong:

# Save the current plugin order
modde backup plugins --profile my-skyrim --game skyrim-se

# Restore the saved order
modde backup restore-plugins --profile my-skyrim --game skyrim-se

Diagnostics

modde diagnostics runs a rule engine over the fully analysed profile — resolved load order, the archive-aware conflict map, and the collision report together:

modde diagnostics --game skyrim-se --profile my-skyrim

Each finding carries a severity (ERROR, WARN, INFO), a title and detail, the affected mod (when applicable), and a suggested fix. Findings are sorted with errors first. Built-in rules include:

• Empty / missing store mod (WARN) — an enabled mod with no files in the store; suggests re-installing or disabling it.
• Completely shadowed mod (WARN) — every file is overridden; suggests disabling to shrink the deploy.
• Dangerous collision (WARN) — a mod pair whose worst collision is a script/plugin/DLL file; suggests reviewing that the winner is intentional.
• Bethesda plugin rules — Form 43 and missing-master findings surfaced as diagnostics for Bethesda games.

Diagnostics are advisory: they never change your load order or files on their own.

See also

• Deployment & VFS — how the winning file is projected on disk
• Profiles — enabling/disabling mods, overrides, hidden files
• Wabbajack — modlists ship a pre-resolved layout
• Troubleshooting — CTDs, missing masters, broken links
• Parity reference — conflict tooling coverage vs MO2
• Supported games — which games ship a classifier