What’s causing a crash when enabling a custom follower mod with load order?

[Steven_H]

I’ve been trying to get a custom follower mod to work with my existing load order, but every time I enable it, the game crashes right after the main menu. I’m not sure if it’s a conflict with another NPC overhaul or if the mod itself is just broken in my current version.

[LoganCL]

I had a similar issue last month. I could get to the main menu, but when the follower stuff started loading the game crashed. It felt like a conflict with an NPC overhaul I also run. I disabled that overhaul and shuffled the load order so the follower mod loaded after it, and the crash stopped.

[NathanS]

I tried a clean profile and redownloaded the mod, then I turned off other mods that touch NPCs one by one and re-enabled them later. Running LOOT to reorder helped a bit, but the crash still came back sometimes.

[Richard_L]

Could the real issue be a missing asset or script the mod expects, or a version mismatch between the mod and the game? If the mod is newer than your game, that could trigger startup crashes.

[Harper.J]

I tested by installing only the mod to see if it would work by itself, but the crash still appears when I enable it. Not sure if I’m chasing the wrong problem or if the mod is just unstable on my setup.