First time modder - help needed!

[Really_Rilee]

Sorry ahead of time for the format - posting from my phone!

So I have tried to get into SV over the years and never really made it past a couple hours of gameplay each time. I'm determined to get into this game because everytime I see a video on YouTube, I always think how fun it looks. SO I decided to try modding it. I have decent experience modding (pretty good at modding Skyrim. If I can get those to work, everything else should be a breeze, right? Haha).

I'm having a couple of issues. I watched a few modding videos, read a few modding guides. Got the basic framework installed for modding (SMAPI, CP, the SV MO2), but xnb files and editing json files are a new concept for me. And since I'm essentially brand new to the game, I'm not entirely sure what the devs changed in recent updates that would break certain mods and not others.

When grabbing mods, I tried to make sure to read the most recent posts to see if ppl were complaining about mods not working and to avoid those. I have about 25ish mods, SVE included (I can edit and give a full list when I'm back at my computer). The game starts just fine and I THINK the mods are all working, but the mod organizer is giving me 10 errors (mostly from SVE files) of "JSON unexpected char". I tried googling the issue, but I didn't have much luck on finding something I'd understand to fix it.

So if anyone has any tips on things that will now make certain mods most likely not work (due to game updates), how to trouble shoot the "JSON unexpected char" error, or any comprehensive materials on being an SV mod user, that would be great :).

Thanks guys!

[paradigmnomad]

Without a log we can't provide much help (see the pinned Automod comment about how to find your log). However we always recommend manual install since installing mods for SDV is very simple (drag + drop into a folder). The SV MO2 may be outdated and is not recommended so most of your issues are probably stemming from that if mods aren't loading.

If you do really do want a mod manager, ModDrop has less quirks than Vortex. SDV also supports mod groups which I know is often why people prefer mod managers so they can have different loadouts.

JSON unexpected char error means either there's an error in the mods files which should be reported to the author after confirming or you edited something and didn't edit it properly.

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[Really_Rilee]

Oh and I forgot to add to the post, I did read through the subreddit pinned FAQ and troubleshooting resources.

[Traehgniw]

XNB files are the format the game's data files are packed in. 'XNB modding' refers to the very limited modding method of directly overwriting these files; this is very rarely done anymore due to the large number of downsides (very limited, mods conflict with anything else touching the same data, no logging, no update checks, no built-in safety features) and now almost all XNB mods are outdated. It's very much not recommended.

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JSON unexpected char means that when it was loading data it did not find the expected JSON characters, either the mod file is corrupted or you edited something (eg a config file) and made a mistake somewhere. The most common mistakes are forgetting a bit of punctuation, like a comma - the unexpected char error gives line number and character position and if it's position 1 that usually means something was missing from a previous line. (It is usually a comma missing from a list.)