Starfield Beginner Tips for Modding on Xbox

Modifications, aka Mods or Bethesda's official term of Creations, have become an integral part of Bethesda games for awhile now. Skyrim and Fallout 4 have quite a few out there, and Starfield has a growing list of ones available through the in-game Creations menu as well as Nexus Mods for PC players.

The tips below focus primarily on modding for Xbox players that only have access to the Creations menu.

Basics: Load Order

When a Bethesda game loads, it spends time applying all your mods in a sequence one after the other. This order matters, and it's governed by your Load Order (LO). When you have multiple mods, you can decide which order they load in when loading your game. Those at the top will be loaded first, and those that come after can overwrite aspects of changes made by earlier mods.

Load order advice can get quite complex, but I'll keep this more general:

Top of List: Large master files, bug fixes, and game-wide overhauls.
Middle of List: New quests, landmasses, buildings, and gameplay changes.
Bottom of List: Individual weapons, armor, textures, and finally, performance "cleaner" mods that remove effects like fog.

Tips:

Always read mod descriptions since they sometimes tell you where to put the mod in your load order. It might say to put it at the top or bottom or relative to other mods. The mod authors tend to know best where it should go and whether there are any known conflicts.
Anything that mentions Patch in its title usually needs to go over the two mods it is meant be trying to integrate. For instance, there are many patches for Darkstar to work with other custom weapon/armor/clothing mods. Make sure a patch for those goes below both the Darkstar mod and the custom gear mod(s).
Archive your load order to Bethesda servers when you're happy with it (making sure it is stable). You can revert back to that archived load order in the future if needed.

Adding Mods for the First Time

Many mods are safe to add mid-playthrough, but it's essential that you read the mod author's description to see if there are any warnings against doing that. Some will say they must be added only to new games (or new game plus, aka NG+). Follow their instructions or your game will likely crash.

If you're adding mods to an existing vanilla save, you'll be warned about this before continuing with your game load. If you continue, you'll trigger a new character branch of saves. For instance, if you were playing as character John, you'll then see another character called John (Creations). This is the game's way to preserving your vanilla save in case you want to go back to that unmodded playthrough. I find this useful when they release a DLC that will include new achievements to unlock. You can return to your vanilla save to work toward those.

Achievement Friendly

Almost all free mods are NOT achievement-friendly. If that matters to you, you'll need to either focus on a vanilla (mod-free) playthrough first or purchase mods that give you a version of the mod that does not disable achievements. Just look for those that have the "Achievement Friendly" tag on them.

For PC players, I know there is a mod that restores achievement friendly status, but that is not available to Xbox players.

Add Mods Slowly

Add mods in smaller batches - aiming at 1-3 at a time unless it's a new character. If you add 20 or more mods and your game will not load, you have little chance of knowing what caused the issue. To test things, travel to denser areas like Akila City, Neon, or New Atlantis and make sure sure your game doesn't crash.

How Many Mods to Use

While Starfield was updated to support up to 100GB of space for mods, the total number of mods can still start to cause issues even if you're under that filespace limit. Opinions vary, and the scale of the mod changes can impact the levels of risk involved, but some say to aim for 100 mods or less.

Save in Safe Spaces

Many mods will alter fixed locations like New Atlantis, Neon, or Akila City. These almost always advise that you not be in those locations when adding or updating the mod. Therefore, it tends to be safest to create an outpost and station your character there or on some random world when performing an exit save before you add any mods - especially those altering a city.

Issue: Missing Textures

Whenever I go to Creations and add a mod or even just change my load order in any way, returning to the menu will trigger a reinitialization of the game (where you hear the BGS logo music play in the background). This is meant to make it safer to load the game with the new load order changes, but - in my experience - doing so will almost always result in some missing texture on someone's armor or clothing. When that happens, you or the other character(s) will appear to be wearing black, fuzzy material in place of the missing texture. It's more a cosmetic annoyance than anything. Best bet is to return to Xbox home, close the Starfield app, and restart it fresh. This has always fixed the missing texture issue for me.

Issue: Audio Bug

Some creations are known to cause issues with audio. It is a known issue that has not yet been addressed by Bethesda. Sometimes the audio glitch can be temporary and you just need to save and restart the game fresh. Other times it is persistently caused by a single mod you should try to disable through trial and error.

Issue: Stutter

I have run into issues before where some locations, like Neon, can lead to a stutter/lag in movement. Another common one is stutter on landing or taking off animations. It often becomes worse on planets with more dense foilage.

In both cases, (again, for myself) it tended to be centered around mods that added or changed ship parts or added ships to the vendors in the game. In the case of the Neon lag, I recall fixing it by simply changing my load order. The stutter during animations or denser planets, I only recently resolved by disabling almost all ship part mods. I am learning to appreciate vanilla ships again, but I will gradually add some of the ones I consider essential back during playthroughs and try to observe when/if the stutter returns.

What others am I forgetting? Please feel free to reply with additions or corrections to help others! I'll be linking to this post from the Mods lander.