Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 - The Modding Dungeon Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Modding General Nexus mods

Well well, can't find any info all over this forum, so I'll bring the question forth myself. How do I install Nexus mods correctly? I'm using Vortex and it acts, like it installed the mods on it's own, but nothing new shows in the mod menu after launching the game (and in case of UI mods, nothing changes ingame as well, like that "no background in containers" mod, all containers still have backgrounds, so apparently nothing works here). Workshop mods are easy, you just subscribe to them and there they are (after being automatically downloaded), but looking into the mods folder in Documents, Vortex made two new folders there and non of the mods in them is in the "pak" format, like those from Workshop are.
So is there an idiot proof way to install those Nexus mods? Every help will be greatly appreciated (no, you can't buy anything for it, but still, you'd make one forum user happy, that's worth it, isn't it?).

There should be instructions in the download, or on the mod page. In general, mods distributed as pak files get copied to the '..\Documents\Larian Studios\Divinity Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition\Mods' folder, while files/folders are copied (or extracted) into the game's install folder (usually '..\Divinity Original Sin 2\DefEd\Data' or one of the subfolders in the Data folder).

I must be doing something wrong, I've put the stuff from the downloads into those DefEd folders, even let it overwrite the original things in there, when it asks and after loading the game, it still looks as it did, no changes whatsoever. Do saves load stuff from a buffer, cache, or a temporary folder? Do I have to start a new game for the changes?

My wild guess that you are using wrong version of the mod. Mods for D:OS2 don't work with D:OS2DE. reverse is also true. If your game is definitive edition you should probably try to look for the mods here.

*Second guess that you are putting mods in the wrong folder. They all should be not in the folder with the game, but in the path : (C:\Users\Admin\Documents\Larian Studios\Divinity Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition\Mods) or wherever os you are using. If there no folder "mods" just create one.

Well the ones, that are in the "pak" file format, go to Documents\Larian Studios\...\Mods of course, but some of those downloaded from Nexus aren't in that format (they have the extension "swf" or "dds" depends on what exactly it's about) and are in a folder, mostly either "Shared", or "BaseMod", or "Public", or "NativeMod", Vortex itself creates those folders in the Documents\...\Mods, but they don't work in the game, nor do they appear in the mod options menu. So I assume those go in the game folder and overwrite the game's original files. And then again, they don't seem to work. I downloaded the DefEd version of these, so there shouldn't be problem, unless putting them into a wrong destination.

Well, at least we found your problem - VORTEX. It's absolutely sh***** mod manager and for some reason it's creates folders in D:OS2, not D:OS2DE. I installed all mods manually and they working just fine. You should do the same, it's not hard and will save you space on HD and some RAM.

I've already lost every illusions about Vortex to this day, but it's the only mod manager that I have. And as you can see I'm not good with manual installations (wouldn't ask such questions, if I was).

Easy peasy : enter your documents and follow Larian path with Documents\Larian Studios\Divinity Original Sin 2, copy entire folder "Mods" from here with your mods which you got from Vortex and paste into Documents\Larian Studios\Divinity Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition). All must work from now.

Sorry for misleading you there, I have the mod folder already in "Documents\Larian Studios\Divinity Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition\Mods", it's the same folder as those "pak" files are in, Vortex might be anything, but for once did it right. But it created folders called "Public" and "Shared" and "NativeMods" and whatnot and in game it doesn't even show up, that there should be some "No background in containers" mod and others. The "pak" mods (all from Steam Workshop) are in the mod menu in the game, but nothing from Nexus. These don't work for me from the Mod folder in Divinity Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition in the Documents section.

Well Vortex in fact didn't create those folders on it's own, it COPIED them from the downloaded mods, it extracted the mods there into the Definitive Edition mods folder in the Documents. I guess if I was to extract them manually, I would do that the same way. But they don't work from there.
And it's not just that they aren't shown in the mod menu ingame, they don't work at all, the containers still look vanilla, have backgrounds and stuff. Unless it's like you said before, the mods being for the Classic edition and don't work in the Definitive. But I'm downloading from the DefEd section on Nexus.

Do you have a link to that mod? The Nexus site is giving me zero results, even if I just search for 'container' or 'background'.

What is the path to the mod? Hold Shift when right clicking file(s)/folder(s) and you will get an option to copy the full path(s) to the clipboard.
Mods installed to the install folder would not show up in the mod list, but should override the original file(s) if they are in the right place in the Data folder.

I think I may have found the fix, as I was having to mess around with the same issue. Vortex didn't Deploy my mods so they hadn't been showing up in game. Try doing that.