Invisible wall glitches are way more common with mods and I can't figure out why

[WhiterunModder]

I've been running a 200+ mod load order for about three weeks now and I keep hitting invisible walls in places that should be open. Mostly in dungeons and around outdoor transitions. Vanilla Skyrim had this occasionally but it's ridiculous now. I'm using MO2, load order looks clean, no reported conflicts in SSEdit that I can see.

My first instinct was "something's overwriting the navmesh" but I don't have any major terrain or dungeon overhauls running. Just USSEP, some lighting mods, a few quest additions, and some NPC/follower stuff. Nothing that should touch collision geometry.

Has anyone else dealt with this? Is it just inevitable bloat from having too many mods, or is there a specific category of mod that tends to cause it? I'd rather not nuke my load order if I can help it but I'm getting tired of getting stuck in Bleak Falls Barrow for the tenth time.

 

[DragonbornVet]

Invisible walls are almost always a navmesh issue, even if you don't think you're running anything that touches it. The problem is a lot of mods quietly overwrite navmesh data without advertising it - lighting mods especially can do this if they're moving objects around, quest mods sometimes add NPCs or markers that require navmesh tweaks, and follower mods can mess with it too if they add AI packages.

SSEdit won't necessarily flag navmesh conflicts the same way it does for other record types, so a clean load order report doesn't mean much here. I'd start by disabling your quest addition mods one at a time and testing in those problem areas - Bleak Falls Barrow especially gets touched by a ton of community fixes and small quest additions. If that doesn't work, try disabling all your NPC/follower stuff since those can have hidden dependencies.

Also - and I know this sucks - but if you've got 200+ mods, you might just have a genuine mod conflict that SSEdit can't see. Sometimes it takes trial and error. Disable half your load order, test, narrow it down from there. It's tedious but faster than going one-by-one.