Easier way for different worlds/saves to have different mods?

[No0ne]

At the moment I play in some worlds/saves on my laptop that have different modpacks to run the world. Depending on which save I want to play in, I go to "Manage mods" and activate/deactivate the required mods.

This procedure has a few issues:
-I need to remember which mod is for which save. (And my brain capacity has problems keeping up with that since some of my worlds require multiple mods)
-I have the fear of logging in to one of the worlds with an additional mod that changes the world permanently which I didn't want for that world.
-Switching between worlds and/or preparing for a play session is time consuming, which reduces the opportunities for me to play, which sadly aren't many to begin with, furthermore.

Is there a way to connect a specific save with specific mods so that they automatically load whenever I load the world?
I thought about adding the modpacks to the save of the world like you can add to a save of the other block game e.g. a new crafting recipe, but it seems a save is one file instead of a bunch of files in a folder.

I do look forward to your answers, please be patient with me for I can't guarantee an answer within a week due to variing energy levels.

[Diff]

You could do a different data directory for each world/modsets, is this kind of what you're thinking?

 

[No0ne]

That sounds like a solution, as in the question is similar to mine; but I don't know how to do it technically.

Is there perhaps an easier way to combine the different modpacks (and if I want the same ones, I can download it twice and put one into each pack) than basically installing a second version of the game (which was pointed to in that thread)?

[Moa]

This doesn't avoid installing another instance of the game, but after installing another instance, you can just copy past the mod .zip files from your current instance into the new one.

If you're using windows:

First, make a folder like "Vintage Story Backup" somewhere, and copy both your vanilla install folder (right click on your Vintage Story shortcut, if you have one, and click Open File Location, to see where it is) and your vintagestoryData folder (either hit windows key + R, type %Appdata%, hit enter, or enable "View Hidden Files" in File Explorer and manually navigate to C:\Users\YourWindowsUsernameGoesHere\Appdata\Roaming\VintagestoryData) into it, just in case.

Then download the Vintage Story installer and install to a new custom location, for example "C:\Vintage Story 2", separate from your current install. It'll automatically (annoyingly) assign %Appdata%\VintagestoryData as its data folder - shared with your current install - which you don't want.

So next you make an empty folder, say "C:\Vintage Story 2 Data", wherever you want (near your new install folder is probably convenient). Then go to the Vintage Story .exe in the new "C:\Vintage Story 2" folder, right click on the .exe to see the dropdown menu, and make a shortcut.

Rename the shortcut to whatever you want (you will always launch this instance of the game using this shortcut). Then right click the shortcut and select properties. In the editable "Target:" field at the top of the properties window, it should show the path to your new .exe. Leave that there, but scroll to the end of the line and add a space followed by

--dataPath "C:\Vintage Story 2 Data" --modPath "C:\Vintage Story 2 Data\Mods"

(You can replace "C:\Vintage Story 2 Data" with the path to whatever folder you made to be your new data folder.)

Then click Apply and then OK.

Then launch the game from the shortcut. It'll make you log in again. Check the mods menu in-game: if all is working, you should see only vanilla mods (VS Essentials, VS Survival, VS Creative). Exit the game.

If you go to your new Vintage Story 2 Data (or whatever you named it) folder, you should see it now populated with subfolders. One of them is Mods. Open that.

Now, to copy your mods, or a subset of them, into this instance of the game, you can go to your original VintagestoryData\Mods folder. Hit Windows Key + R to bring up the Run window, and type %Appdata%, then hit enter. This should open a new file explorer window with your Appdata\Roaming folder open, with the VintagestoryData folder in it. Open the VintagestoryData folder, then open the Mods folder inside that.

Then use shift click or cntrl click to select the mods you want to copy, and right click and select copy from the dropdown menu. Then, back in your new C:\Vintage Story 2 Data\Mods folder, right click on blank space in the folder and select paste.

If you want to keep custom mod settings the same, you can copy-paste the corresponding files from the VintagestoryData ModConfig folder to C:\Vintage Story 2 Data\ModConfig, as well.

Then you should be good to go. Just make sure to launch the game using the shortcut you made, rather than directly from the .exe.

It'll make you log in again every time you switch from one instance/install of the game to another, but it should keep them separate.

You can make as many instances as you want, this way.

If you want to install new mods from Mod DB as well, then download the mod zip file and add it to the Mods folder of whichever instance you want to install it to, rather than using the "One Click Install" button. I think the One Click Install button will just automatically put it in the default VintagestoryData folder.

Mod management definitely should be easier than this, but at least most of the annoyance is in the setup, rather than on-going.

There *are* some mod managers on Mod DB (just search for "mod manager"), but when I was looking for myself, they all seemed to be in early stages or haven't been updated recently enough. Fingers crossed that one will mature sooner or later though, as has happened for Minecraft. But you can try one out if you want, anyway; just make sure to back up your Vintage Story and VintagestoryData folders first.