Modding Bethesda games on Linux

Modding Guides

Getting started

First and fore most to due to variety in natures of distros and gpu drivers as well as kernels, this guide may not work %100 of the time reliably. Do your best to learn your specific system and identifying the root of your issues. It's trusted that if you're using Linux you will already be familiar with many aspects of this, such as what is WINE or Proton. For ES:Skyrim and Fallout4 you will need to find their WINE prefix that steam created for them in order to change the .ini files. For Fallout4 it would be

Steam_Games_folder/steamapps/compatdata/377160/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/My Documents/My Games/Fallout4/

and for ES:Skyrim

Steam_Games_folder/steamapps/compatdata/72850/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/My Documents/My Games/Skyrim/

remember to add to the FalloutCustom.ini and SkyrimCustom.ini this script. The script will enable the game to actually load the mod content.

[Archive]

bInvalidateOlderFiles=1

sResourceDataDirsFinal=

Performance Acknowledgement

You may experience stuttering or lag despite your best efforts, the cause is stated to be anything from how WINE loads information to CPU and GPU settings.

Lutris

Lutris is an Open Source gaming platform for Linux. It installs and launches games so you can start playing without the hassle of setting up your games. Connect your games from GOG, Steam, Battle.net, Origin, Uplay and many other sources to run on any Linux powered gaming machine. Lutris uses community contributed installation scripts to provide an optimal experience and setup. Once installed, games are launched with programs called runners. Those runners include RetroArch, Dosbox, customized Wine versions among others.

Download instructions https://lutris.net/downloads/

Vortex on linux

To install vortex on linux using Lutris, you must keep two things in mind, turn off your internet connection during installation (To forbid it from auto updating itself, so you can turn that feature off) and that it must be installed on the same drive or partition as the game you want it to mod.

https://lutris.net/games/vortex-mod-manager/

Mod Organizer 2

This is currently the best option by far for getting Mod Organizer 2 to work on your system. With the fewest quirks involved as long as you install it correctly with the right prerequisites it's almost as good as using it on windows.

https://github.com/rockerbacon/modorganizer2-linux-installer

One major warning about it however is you might have problems with having the correct dpi for the text.

Old

This project aims to make modding and playing Bethesda games on Linux as easy as possible. It does that by providing Lutris installers which automatically setup a working experience for the user.

While these installers may be available on Lutris.net, users are always recommended to use the latest stable release from this repository. The testers and maintainers of this project have little control over the content on Lutris and cannot assure that the installers available there are up to date nor that they haven't been incorrectly modified.

https://github.com/rockerbacon/lutris-skyrimse-installers

Proton Data Base

The goal of ProtonDB is to gather reports from other gamers as they test games with Proton on Linux and provide aggregate scores of how well games perform. A growing pool of suggestions provides tweaks that you can try to get games working while Proton continues development. In addition to this, you may explore the Steam game catalog on this site to browse and discover a wide range of titles that were previously unavailable for use on Linux.

Specific games will need their settings tweaked and adjusted, if a game is just not working for you, consider checking the db and seeing what version of WINE, Proton, or Lutris that they are using.

https://www.protondb.com/

https://www.protondb.com/app/365720 (skyrim)

https://www.protondb.com/app/377160 (Fallout 4)