Better Sorting
Tired of spending half-an-hour trying to find that big restore health potion? Tired of looking through tons of crud to find that sweet Ebony Arrow to shoot right in the face of some two-bit bandit, rather than your crummy Falmer Arrow? Well look no further, and get Better Sorting!
Note 1: Please READ THE DESCRIPTION before asking me a question in the comments. It is very comprehensive and I even gave you a TOC so you can find the most relevant section quickly. I welcome comments, feedback, and ideas, BUT READ THE DESCRIPTION FIRST.
Note 2: Deutsche-Version von NayCom, Deutsche-Version von sheijian21, Version Française par Abribus
Note 3: There is also Valdacil’s Better Sorting mod, which also better-sorts things, but differently. I obviously prefer my version, but if you prefer Valdacil’s, I won’t cry.
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1 — Installation
Automatic (very-highly recommended)
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Requirements and Suggestions
* If you do not have the Nexus Mod Manager, get it now.
* I recommend that you use SkyUI and Categorized Favorites Menu along with Better Sorting, but they are not required.
1) If you have the Nexus Mod Manager installed, click “Download with Manager”, activate the mod, and follow the instructions.
2) Take your time to read things.
3) If you are asked to overwrite files, say “yes to all”.
To uninstall, you simply need to deactivate “Better Sorting” in your Nexus Mod Manager mod list. The next time you play the game (assuming you saved after installing my mod), you will get a message saying it’s possible that your save game is messed up. You can safely ignore this, and load your save game as usual.
Manual (I very highly recommended that you do not choose this path, especially if you are not familiar with how mods work)
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1) Open the archive and go into the \Data folder. You want to extract the relevant .esp files in your …\Skyrim\Data folder (i.e. where Skyrim.esm is located). By default, the full path is “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Skyrim\Data” but it can be different if you installed the game (or Steam) elsewhere. Here’s what each .esp does.
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Ammo.esp –> Affects arrows
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Books.esp –> Affects books
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Food (Normal Weight).esp –> Affects food (weights are as in vanilla)
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Food (Reduced Weight).esp –> Affects food (weights are capped at 0.5)
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Food (Light Weight).esp –> Affects food (weights are reduced to 0.1)
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Food (Weightless).esp –> Affects food (food is weightless)
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Ingredients.esp –> Affects ingredients
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Potions (Normal Weight).esp –> Affects alcohols and potions (weights as in vanilla)
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Potions (Half Weight).esp –> Alcohols & Potions (weights are half of vanilla)
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Potions (Light Weight).esp –> Alcohols & Potions (weights are reduced to 0.1)
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Potions (Weightless).esp –> Alcohols & Potions (alcohols and potions are weightless)
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Spells.esp –> Affects Spells, Spelltomes, Scrolls
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Soul Gems (Ranked).esp –> Affects soul gems (“Soul Gem – II” style)
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Soul Gems (PseudoVanilla).esp –> Affects soul gems (“Soul Gem – Lesser” style)
* Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Miscellaneous.esp –> Affects Ores, Ingots, and tons of miscellaneous items.
At the most, you want only one Food .esp, only one Potion .esp, and only one Soul Gem .esp.
2) If you want my custom CFM file, extract the \Interface folder in your …\Skyrim\Data folder
3) If you previously modified Skyrim_English.STRINGS you need to revert to the previous version. This step isn’t strictly required, but it will ensure the long-term good health of the file, especially if you stop using Better Sorting. If you already reverted, you don’t need to do this again.
3a) If you followed the steps I gave last time, you should have a backup (located in …\Skyrim\Data folder). Just delete your current Skyrim_English.STRINGS file and rename your backup “Skyrim_English.STRINGS”.
3b) If you don’t have a backup, get String Maker. Then use it to open Skyrim_English.STRINGS, and find the two strings with ID 57351 and ID 58002, which should be empty. Put “Potion of ” in ID 57351 and “Poison of ” in ID 58002 (don’t forget the spaces after “of”). Save the file… and you’re done. You can now delete all other backups as well as String Maker if you want, as Better Sorting will never need those again, nor will you ever need to those through these steps.
3c) If that still fails, you can download version 1.66 or later, and manually extract the backup from the .rar (should be in Data\Strings).
3d) If that STILL fails, then you can try re-validating the game archive with Steam.
3e) And if none of that works, your only option is pretty much to reinstall the game and think about the importance of backups.
4) Launch the game with your favored launcher. When the launcher is up, make sure all the relevant “Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Foobar.esp” are ticked.
4a) If “Data Files” is greyed out in the Vanilla Launcher, you need to go into your SkyrimPrefs.ini (located in C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Games\Skyrim) and add “bEnableFileSelection=1” under the line that reads “[Launcher]” (without the quotes).
5) Play the game as usual.
To uninstall, just delete all the Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Foobar.esp files, update your CFM config file (if you used mine). The next time you play the game (assuming you saved after installing my mod), you will get a message saying it’s possible that your save game is messed up. You can safely ignore this, and load your save game as usual.
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2 — Overview
This mod basically takes several items, and renames them so they sort better. Instead of something like
* Falmer Arrow (190)
* Iron Arrow (25)
* Potion of Extreme Healing
* Potion of Extreme Magicka
* Potion of Healing
* Potion of Magicka
* Potion of Minor Healing
* Potion of Minor Magicka
* Steel Arrow (47)
You get something like
* Arrow – Falmer (190)
* Arrow – Iron (26)
* Arrow – Steel (47)
* Restore Health – I
* Restore Health – II
* Restore Health – V
* Restore Magicka – I
* Restore Magicka – II
* Restore Magicka – V
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3 — Note regarding spells
Most of the Better Sorting stuff concerning spells is rather straightforward. Instead of “Raise Zombie” and “Reanimate Corpse”, you have “Raise Dead. I” and “Raise Dead. III”. However, in some few cases, stuff might be a little bit different than what you expect, so here’s the little stuff that you may need to be warned about. This mostly concerns the Destruction School.
* The “Conjure/Summon/…”, “Flame/Fire/…”, “Ice/Frost/…”, “Lightning/Shock/…” variations are gone. Now it’s all “Summon”, “Fire” , “Ice, “Lightning”, etc.
* “Flames”, “Frostbite” and “Sparks” are now “Fire Hands”, “Ice Hands”, and “Lightning Hands”.
* “Blizzard” is now “Ice Storm” for consistency with “Fire Storm” and “Lightning Storm”. Note that this is NOT the vanilla “Ice Storm” spell, which is now called “Ice Bolt – II”.
Spells, Scrolls and Spell Tomes are all consistent between each other, with the exception of the separators. Spells used period-space-rank, while Scrolls and Spell Tomes use space-hyphen-space-rank, see section 9 — Support for Categorized Favorites Menu for why this difference exists. Unless you don’t care about CFM.
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4 — Note regarding potions
1) Alcohols are now consistently considered potions instead of random mish-mash of foods and potions.
2) Potions found as loot are modified directly with Headbomb’s Better Sorting – Potions (Foobar).esp
2a) The scheme for loot potions is basically “Effect – Rank”, e.g. “Restore Health – V”
2) Certain alchemy effects were renamed so the associated potions would match the loot potions.
2a) To distinguish between alchemy and loot potions, you only need to check if there is a rank or a star. If it’s a ranked potion (e.g. Restore Health – II), it’s from loot. If it has a star (e.g. Restore Health *), it’s player-created.
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5 — Things affected in the current version
* Alchemical Ingredients
* Alcohols & Empty Bottles
* Arrows
* Books & Journals
* Crafting materials (ingots, ores, hides, pelts, Dwemer scrap)
* Dragon Claws
* Food (cheeses & meats mostly)
* Gems
* Kitchenware (cups, jugs, plates,…)
* Letters & Notes (Treasure Maps, Recipes, Letters, Notes, etc…)
* Potions (both loot potions and self-made potions)
* Spells, Scrolls & Spell Tomes
* Soul Gems (Finally!)
* Various miscellaneous items (ruined books, Dwemer clutter, skulls… and several more)
Note: Some minor liberties were taken with certain items to make them sort better. For example, two types of Alto Wine exist (fiasco bottles, which look like a bottle in a little straw basket, and regular bottles). So I named the fiasco bottle “Wine – Alto Reserve” and the regular bottle “Wine – Alto”. Or for example “Mammoth Snout” and “Mammoth Steak” are now “Mammoth – Raw” and “Mammoth – Cooked”.
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6 — Things that will be affected in upcoming versions
* Armors & Weapons (I’ll probably need the Creation Kit)
* Keys (These should be possible prior to the Creation Kit’s release)
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7 — Currently working on:
It seems with SkyEdit 0.046a, it is possible to edit certain weapons and armors, but it’s not very reliable yet. A later version will be required for serious work, plus I need to try certain popular weapons mod to think of a way to maximize compatibility.
In the meantime, it seems only Keys are left to sort, so you can expect keys at some point.
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8 — Compatibility
Since it’s a recurring question, here’s what the mod is compatible with the default installation (see note below about how to fix conflicts), with some popular examples.
* Any mod that doesn’t mess with item, or spells properties (such as weight, value, magicka cost, etc…)
** Categorized Favorites Menu
** Craftable Arrows (must load BEFORE Better Sorting)
** Combine Potions
** Container Categorization
** Lost Art of the Blacksmith
** Midas Spells
** QD Inventory
** SkyUI (which I highly recommend)
** Val’s Crafting Meltdown (must load BEFORE Better Sorting)
* Audio mods (sound/music replacements)
* Visual mods (texture/mesh replacements)
* Skill mods
* 4GB, ENBSeries, FXAA injector, etc…
In general, the default installation will conflict with
* Any mod that does modify item and spells properties (weight, value, magicka cost, …)
** Balanced Magic (however there is a Compatibility patch, created and maintained by Apethnatos)
** Reweighted Potions or similar mods, but you can customize potion weights in Better Sorting.
** Tytanis’ Ultimate Mod [However, Tytanis is working on including Better Sorting in future versions of TUM]
* Non-English versions of the game (but see note 3, at the top of the description)
** Note to translators: Translation efforts can be centralized here.
If you use mods that DO change item/spell properties, there will be a conflict. This might not be the end of the world however, but this depends on what exactly the conflicting mod does. You can also simply remove the part of Better Sorting that conflicts with those mods, and get better sorting for the rest of the stuff.
THAT BEING SAID, conflicts can probably (I haven’t tested this myself) be resolved via Wrye Bash. You’ll want to keep what the other mods do, and then use my item/spell names and whatever you liked about Better Sorting. I’m not an expert with Wrye Bash, so if you have questions about it, the first place to look would be Wrye Bash’s documentation, and if that doesn’t answer your question, try the official Wrye Bash support thread. Don’t ask me anything related to Wrye Bash, because I don’t know anything about it. People are welcomed to post detailed instructions on how to resolve Better Sorting conflicts with Wrye Bash in the comments, and I’ll update this section with them.
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9 — Support for Categorized Favorites Menu
Starting with version 1.65, Better Sorting now supports Categorized Favorites Menu
* Get Better Sorting 1.65 or later. Version 2.00 or later is recommended as it will set everything up for you.
* Get Weapons and Armor fixes.
** This is not strictly required, but some weapons will be in the wrong categories if you don’t. And you should play with Weapons and Armor fixes anyway.
* A documentation thread exists for FAQ and support related to Better Sorting.
For those who want to make their own custom version, the trick is that alchemy potions are marked with a *, that loot potion have space-hyphen-space-rank separator, and that spells have period-space-rank separator.
* Frenzy * –> Alchemy potion
* Frenzy. II —> Spell
* Frenzy – II –> Loot potion
This difference in separators makes Categorized Favorites fix for Better Sorting unnecessary.
Unlike Better Sorting itself (Headbomb’s Better Sorting.esp — i.e the main file), you can take ideas from my config file and distribute it freely without attribution. In fact, if you want to do this, I *specifically ask* that you make it clear that I’m not responsible for *your* custom CFM file. You can also post your configs in the documentation thread if you want, or upload them anywhere you feel like.
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10 — Customization
With Better Sorting 2.00 and later, customization is now possible. It’s all straightforward if you use the automated install. If choose to do things manually, you’re probably insane, but I tried to explain what everything does in the Manual Install section nonetheless.
