Skyrim modder helps combat pesky mod-based bugs and glitches by changing the way saves are loaded

Modders have put an awful lot of effort into making sure Skyrim has continually evolved and expanded in the years since it was first released into the world.

Many have focused on changing the game by adding everything from interesting quests, subtle immersive details, and even new alchemy recipes to it, with a few even going as far as switching up how its spells sound or serving giant sweetrolls to the province’s populace.

If you’re sick of seeing your game break or develop bugs whenever you try to add one of these fresh expansions to a save that you’ve been building up progress on for a while, a new mod might be worth adding to your load order.

Are you sick of having to head back to Helgen whenever you mix up your load order?

The mod in question is called ‘Save Unbaker’, and is the work of prolific modder powerofthree. Some of their previous projects have helped add seasons to the game and ensured that rain will wash the bloodstains off your armour.

This time, at the request of fellow modder wSkeever, they’ve made some interesting changes to the way the game loads saves in order to make installing certain mods midway through a playthrough less likely to cause game-breaking or immersion-killing issues.

The mod accomplishes this by ‘unbaking’ records of things like NPC weights and animations in order to ensure they’ll be loaded from plugins rather than save files, solving issues caused by discrepancies between the data attached to a save upon its creation and the mod you’ve installed after that point.

This means that not starting a new game after installing mods such as those that change the shape of NPC bodies should no longer cause glitches like those NPCs suddenly developing massive gaps in their necks due to the save not accounting for the mod’s changes properly, though it won’t solve the likes of the infamous NPC black face bug, which aren’t caused by issues with save loading.

However, it might come in handy if you’re trying to switch between minor overhauls to locations that don’t have quests affiliated with them, as the static objects making up these places can be ‘unbaked’, though if you’re switching between larger city overhauls like those included in JPSteel2’s ‘Cities of the North’ and jkrojmal’s ‘JK's Skyrim’, you’ll likely encounter issues related to quest makers, which powerofthree’s mod can’t touch.

It also requires the Skyrim Script Extender and meh321’s ‘Address Library for SKSE Plugins’ to work as intended, so make sure you’ve grabbed those prior to giving it a go.

Regardless of whether your Dragonborn is now glad they won’t have face execution every time you yassify Skyrim’s populace, make sure to follow us for more updates on The Elder Scrolls 6 and the interesting world of Skyrim modding.

You can also check out our mods of the month for January 2023 or our new series where we delve into the rich history of The Elder Scrolls 5’s setting: