What should I know before installing SKSE?

[Nord85]

So, I'm finally starting to rethink my decision not to install SKSE. There are simply too many interesting mods that require it. For instance, I'd like to install one that would make smashing locks possible. The last straw was to see that a mod which makes ordering smithing and enchanting services possible requires SKSE. That kind of thing is what I've always wanted in Skyrim (hey, you could pay for enchanting stuff in Morrowind, why not in Skyrim?). But before I get SKSE, I'd like to have a few questions cleared:

1. Is there any risk SKSE could mess up my game files or even PC operating system? The last thing I want is to reinstall Skyrim or Windows 7 just because I wanted a few nifty mods. To clarify, at start I only intend to use a few mods that use SKSE, including the interface overhaul. So I'm not going to install 150 mods at once and then blame the program.
2. If I want to uninstall SKSE, can I do that cleanly and easily, so that I won't be required to reinstall the whole game?
3. Does the program need anything else installed before it can be used? I don't want to get a bunch of otherwise useless programs just to run one.
4. Any other bugs/pitfalls/problems I should be aware of before starting to use SKSE?

Please explain in as simple manner as you can, as I'm only semi-literate in computer matters.

[Finn Wolfshorn]

1. As far as I can tell from two and a half years of using it there is no risk whatsoever of SKSE messing up your game files, much less your OS; on the contrary, the memory allocation patch included in the current version (1.7.1) will improve the way Skyrim uses RAM and thus reduce the risk of the game crashing.

That said, scripted mods ( i.e. the ones that use SKSE) may mess up your savegames if you uninstall them in the middle of a playthrough, because orphaned scripts (i.e. scripts belonging to mods which are no longer active) remain baked into your save and bloat it; too much of this, and your save can become unplayable. (Think of the game having to drag along too much garbage left over from uninstalled mods in addition to doing what it's supposed to do; at some point it just gives up.) Fortunately there are tools nowadays which remove these leftover scripts; I use Save game script cleaner, works nicely.

2. If you want to uninstall SKSE itself (no idea why you'd want to do this, it's worth having for the memory patch alone) you can do that and do it cleanly, but it's non-trivial compared to just having to hit a button on the Nexus Mod Manager like you do with most mods that depend on it. You'll have to manually remove all files you extracted into your Skyrim folder (most likely ...\Steam\SteamApps\common\Skyrim) when you installed it - not just the ones in the main Skyrim folder (which are easy to identify, as they all begin with skse) but also the .pex files in ...\Steam\SteamApps\common\Skyrim\Data\Scripts. What I do is keep a separate copy of the SKSE archive so I can go look up which of the .pex files belong to SKSE in the improbable case that I have to uninstall it.

What I'd caution against is uninstalling SKSE in the middle of a playthrough, especially if you aren't 100 % sure you have previously removed any vestiges of mods that depend on it. Don't do that! (Updating from one version of SKSE to a newer one should be no problem on the other hand, unless the authors say otherwise. Always read the readme.)

3. All you need is love a program which can extract compressed archives, like 7-zip or WinZip (useful to have anyway). There's also an installer for SKSE which you can download from the same site if you don't feel up to doing it manually, but I haven't used that, so I can't speak to how hard/easy it is to use; but seriously, if you know how to find a specific folder in Windows Explorer you should have no problem doing this.

4. No. Go ahead, you'll be fine.

[Zephyr]

1. As far as I can tell from two and a half years of using it there is no risk whatsoever of SKSE messing up your game files, much less your OS; on the contrary, the memory allocation patch included in the current version (1.7.1) will improve the way Skyrim uses RAM and thus reduce the risk of the game crashing.

Do you know if the memory patch is present by default? I've been using Memory Blocks Log in conjunction, and the block size is still 256.

What I do is keep a separate copy of the SKSE archive so I can go look up which of the .pex files belong to SKSE in the improbable case that I have to uninstall it.

Another way is to pack the scripts folder into an archive, and then install it with a mod manager.

[Finn Wolfshorn]

Do you know if the memory patch is present by default? I've been using Memory Blocks Log in conjunction, and the block size is still 256.

Thanks for reminding me, I plain forgot about this. You've got to create a simple text file in Notepad, Editor or whatever, name it skse.ini and put the following into it:

[General]
ClearInvalidRegistrations=1

[Memory]
DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB=768
ScrapHeapSizeMB=256

Then dump the whole thing into your ...\Steam\SteamApps\common\Skyrim\Data\SKSE folder (if the folder doesn't exist yet just make it). The [General] part helps cleaning up after uninstalling mods, the [Memory] part activates the memory patch. Why they wouldn't include the ini file in the download is beyond me, I hope they will in future versions.

Another way is to pack the scripts folder into an archive, and then install it with a mod manager.

That is actually vastly more practical than what I wrote, thanks for the hint!

[Zephyr]

Thanks for that layout, Finn. As for the script installation idea, I owe it to Gopher's video on the subject.

[Nord85]

Thanks for the replies, guys! I asked because back in the Oblivion days, I recall reading all kinds of complaints how OBSE messed up this or that, especially save games. Also, I hazily remembered it needing some Python program or whatever to run (but now that I thought about it, I might have mixed OBSE and Oldblivion up in that regard). All in all, in the light of some forum posts and such it seemed to be an endless hassle to install and properly use. So, I've been wary of script extenders.

But if installing SKSE really isn't more difficult than what you said, then it's no problem at all. I'll install it soon with the installer. As I've tweaked ES ini files before, the memory patch thing too is easy as pie. Well, to modding I go then.