Hey everyone,

I am still quite new to the Skyrim community and was wondering what are the best tools for creating and unpacking BSA files?

Thanls

I usually use Archive.exe (found in \Skyrim\) for packing and BSAOpt for unpacking.

How is TES Mod Manager? I just DL'd it as it looked very similar to old FOMM - which was what I was used to. It probably makes no difference, I bet.

NMM is made by the guys who made FOMM. Dark0ne (Nexus) hired them and now it's the official tool for the site. It's very similar, just has a lot of new features and is integrated with the site.

I believe it no longer comes with an archive tool. I use FOMM still to browse and extract Skyrim's BSA's, but I use BSAopt to actually pack them and work with them.

I use http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/1395/? to unpack. Have used BSAopt in the past and found it didn't unpack everything for some reason - may have been updated since

I originally got NMM, since it was made by the FOMM people, thinking it would have similar features. But alas, it didn't seem to support a SKSE launch nor did it have a BSA unpacker. So I scrapped it in favor of of the TESMM, which seems to have both. It's good to know that Skyrim's BSAs can be unpacked with FOMM; no format changes to the file structure, I suppose.

I didn't know that the game came with it's own BSA packer, Archive.exe, cool!

It looks like I have more tools than I need now. Thanks again for all the good advice.

NMM supports SKSE launch, as well as all four games. (Ob, Fo3, NV, Skyrim) So you only need one tool and you can manage all of the games. And yes, FOMM still unpacks because while the compression has probably gotten more efficient, the BSA header hasn't changed much.

Skyrim comes with it to support the Steam Workshop, wherein you pack up your BSA to upload there. But BSAopt is better and avoids issues that Archive.exe has been known to cause.