Trying to understand/avoid dirty edit - just delete the item?

[WinsomeMinotaur]

So, been reading up on tes5edit cleaning and dirty edits, but one thing is unclear to me. If I made a change to an NPC, say Belethor, then later I want to revert to standard unchanged NPC, do I just delete him altogether? Is that the proper way to avoid a dirty edit, or am I misunderstanding?

[Offtherails]

The "proper" way is to not touch Belethor (or whatever) at all. The CK isn't really built with Bethesda didn't have to worry about dirty edits, because DLC load order is very well-defined and if Hearthfire touches something in Dawnguard, they just patch Hearthfire. They also, presumably, have an equivalent to TES5Edit that can strip out dirty edits if they're causing trouble.

 

The CK does not, so far as I know, provide the facility to clean a mod beyond writing down everything that you've changed, and putting together a new esp. A mod is just a list of records. The loader doesn't care about whether a particular record is identical to the master, it only knows that the esp is saying something about Belethor, a bookshelf, a spell or a whatever. Even if what it's saying is the same as what Skyrim.esm is saying, it still counts. If you delete him, you're not removing him from your esp; you're saying "delete Belethor".

 

Tes5Edit is the best way to go. It will strip out all references to Belethor from your mod, just as if you'd never touched him.

[Nephenee13]

So, been reading up on tes5edit cleaning and dirty edits, but one thing is unclear to me. If I made a change to an NPC, say Belethor, then later I want to revert to standard unchanged NPC, do I just delete him altogether? Is that the proper way to avoid a dirty edit, or am I misunderstanding?

 

A dirty edit is an edit that isn't necessary for your mod, and doesn't actually change anything.

You purposefully editing an NPC is not a dirty edit, but if you want to remove your edits to him from your mod, the easiest way to do so is also with TES5Edit, where you would just delete his record from your mode, which won't affect Skyrim.esm at all (and TES5Edit won't even let you edit Skyrim.esm anyway.)

 

The two types of Dirty Edits that TES5Edit can manually clean are "Identical to Master" (ITM) and "Deleted References" (UDR).

 

An ITM is when the CK marks something as edited in your mod, but there are no actual changes. It shows up in your ESP file, but is identical to the original record in Skyrim.esm. This is a problem because it can introduce conflicts with other mods that do edit that record. If they load before your mod, your mod would undo their changes, and could break that other mod. You should never release a mod that edits things it doesn't have to.

 

A UDR is when you "delete" a reference. This is bad because if a later-loading mod then tries to edit that same reference, it can cause a crash. Note: This is not the same as what I mentioned earlier about deleting an NPC record from your ESP, this is telling the game that something from Skyrim.esm has been deleted (its still in Skyrim.esm, but as far as the game knows once you load everything, its gone). So whats done is those deleted references are restored, then they are set to "Disabled" (meaning they are invisible) and moved to a position -30000 units below their origin, which effectively puts then at the very bottom of the game cell.

[WinsomeMinotaur]

OK, this is what I thought. Thanks!

[lofgren]

You can use the CK to remove dirty edits by clicking a button in the window where you select the active mod. I forget exactly what it is called, something like "view records." Right-click on the record that you want to remove and select "ignore." TES5Edit is easier for any sizeable mod, though.

[WinsomeMinotaur]

You can use the CK to remove dirty edits by clicking a button in the window where you select the active mod. I forget exactly what it is called, something like "view records." Right-click on the record that you want to remove and select "ignore." TES5Edit is easier for any sizeable mod, though.

My mod is pretty tiny, so a manual change in CK would be faster for me. However, I don't see anything like what you describe. In the load data window there is a "more info" button that lets you see the individual files affected, but it doesn't look like you can do anything from there, as far as I can see. Hmm, I'll investigate a little more. Thanks for pointing this out.

[Di0nysys]

Best course of action would be to use TES5edit. After opening the plugin, go to whatever entry u added and right-click, then remove. Doing so will not remove the object from the game, but only from your plugin.
I also do recommend u clean ur mod. The CK assumes u edited objects when u open them in it. Lets say u opened up Belethor and u changed his hair from type 01 to type 02 then back to type 01. Eventhough u did not change anything really, the CK will believe u did and write that change in ur mod plugin.

That's why, in order for ur mod as stable as possible, resort to cleaning it with TES5edit.

Load ur mod, then right click and select "apply filter for cleaning".
U will have to wait between half a minute up to 5 depending on mod size and PC power.
After that's done, right click and select "Remove identical to master records".
This will remove all offending entries in ur mod and makes sure any objects in the vanilla game are not touched and dirty edits removed.

Once ur done, save ur plugin.

(N.B. u may also wish to undelete whatever objects u actually deleted in the ck which cause severe CTS issues when loaded by the game)

Love Schopenhauer btw :)

Edited April 19, 2015 by lennykrapitz

[Boombro]

Read up on mod pages, some mods needs those! I mean gameplay changing mods mostly!

To be safe, just clean the esm files. If it stable, it stable.

If it an let say, eye replacer, then it safe.

[lofgren]

 

You can use the CK to remove dirty edits by clicking a button in the window where you select the active mod. I forget exactly what it is called, something like "view records." Right-click on the record that you want to remove and select "ignore." TES5Edit is easier for any sizeable mod, though.

My mod is pretty tiny, so a manual change in CK would be faster for me. However, I don't see anything like what you describe. In the load data window there is a "more info" button that lets you see the individual files affected, but it doesn't look like you can do anything from there, as far as I can see. Hmm, I'll investigate a little more. Thanks for pointing this out.

 

 

Well this is embarrassing. I could have sworn I have followed this process before. As you can see I even remember it in some detail. Yet it does appear that there is nothing at all like what I am talking about in the CK now that I am sitting in front of it and have a chance to test. That will teach me to open my big mouth.

[Nephenee13]

Use TES5Edit, it is far more reliable at this task than the CK.