Hey gang! Wanna start by thanking everyone for the kind words, advice, and commiseration over the last few days. I managed to get it set up and I’m going to turn this edit into a short tutorial for what I did. Big thanks to Coleslaw4145@lemmy.world, they’re actually the suggestion that worked out best.

For background, I’m running bazzite on desktop PC.

ProtonUp QT is on the bazaar flatpack store and readily available for other distros in the same way. Install that, run it, pick STEAM TINKER LAUNCHER. It’s simple enough.

!IMPORTANT! You have to restart steam after you do this step or it won’t show up in the compatibility tool list.

Install your game, update it, and run it once so all the files are there and fresh. If you aren’t certain about the freshness of the files (like me after 4 different attempts with other software…) Just delete the whole game folder and have steam check the local files.

Go into the game setting, compatibility tools, tick the force compatibility and pick the Steam Tinker Launcher. Then launch the game.

If you’re like me, this will flash a window for STL and then launch the game. If you quit the game it will give you a chance to edit the STL settings. Just click the button for vortex.

This opens another window, where we click the install button. Now if you’re like me, this will immediately crash your computer. Hopefully you’re luckier. Upon rebooting and relaunching the game, vortex will inexplicably be working just fine.

Now, there are a few hangups in vortex, to download mods you’ll have to copy the URL and paste them in the download page. When you go to manage conflicts you’ll have to use arrow keys to make selections, and every so often it won’t let you drag and drop files into it until you restart.

Lastly, I suggest annually installing skse for Skyrim. Easy stuff, extract the file, rename the skse launcher to replace your Skyrim launcher, and dump all the files into the Skyrim folder. All your mods will complain, they think it’s not installed, but it is and it works fine.

I personally used a mod pack for the legacy of the dragonborn. It costs money to get those and it’s not required.

Anyways, thanks again everyone!!