Aonghus

Good advice from Dakier (I use FOMM, but am more ambivalent about NMM. I have heard good things about it.) If you have the GOTY edition (through disc or steam,) you are already patched at 1.7, so that step is redundant.

Starting with point 2 in your list above: 2). Good luck with finding that. If you do, please post on the Nexus and you will instantly become a God. 3). Not only is installing to the non-default path possible, it almost seems to be obligatory in getting Fallout 3 to run on newer systems. (Know this is the case for 7, not sure with 8, as I have avoided it like it was a deathclaw with a toothache.) 4). Yes. You should use a mod manager. Both FOMM and NMM have things to recommend them. In the end, pick one, you won't go wrong with either. 5). Review the readmes for the mods you want to install. They should give you a list of any other mods that are required to make them work. If you still have a question, check the file on the Nexus. Some modders are still bad about not listing all mods required to make their creation run. (Fortunately this is becoming less and less common.) 6). BOSS will provide you with the best answer for that question. For the unrecognized mods, don't forget the "User Rules" feature of BOSS. It provides the ability to create a basic framework to sort unrecognized mods. 7). Some will disagree with me on this (often quite vehemently,) but I view a merged patch and Master Update as essential to getting heavily modded game to run. The Bash series of programs provides similar functionality, but as I do not use them, I cannot offer any advice about them. 8). Yes, you should be tweaking your fallout3.ini file. This site will walk you through step-by-step (as well as providing some nifty pointers on optimizing the graphics.) : http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_1.html. Hope this helps.

Not sure about trying to merge four, but I have merged Willow and Wendy Gilbert without breaking anything.

Glad to hear it was something so simple. Actually, I'm not entirely sure the quest item behavior you mentioned is a bug rather than a feature, but I don't recall ever having run across any mention of it.

Just on a run through, I had a major problem with the Crowded Cities mod and ended up having to drop it from my game. IIRC, it does modify the Talon Company, so that might be a good place to start looking.

Been watching this debate with amusement for a while. Those of us old enough to remember the 1992 US Presidential race already know the facts. There are intelligent aliens, and they do walk among us. One of the candidates that year kept going on about "alien this" and "alien that", when it was pretty obvious he was an alien himself. For your consideration: and: Any questions?

The only ones that cross platforms are FOMM and BOSS. FNVEdit is the version for New Vegas. (My apologies, I try to help out with both FO3 and FNV, and sometimes forget which forum I'm in.)

Whoa! What's with the hostility, I'm not trying to start a fight! I'm just sharing my experience. The post I linked to was from a New Vegas Mod that was the first time I encountered the "MasterUpdate breaks mods meme." The early versions of New Vegas Bounties would indeed fail to fire if Master Update. Lo and behold, the QuestItem/PersistentReference Flag issue was discovered, and suddenly New Vegas Bounties works when Master Updated! For my game, Master Updating is essential. Many of the mods I run make heavy changes to not just lists, but also to Vanilla assets as well. I have not seen the Gamebro source code, but my feeling on the matter is that if the G.E.C.K. has an issue with something, (In this case, a plugin (rather than a master) modifying another plugin,) then the game probably does as well. In short I'm sharing my experience playing, and modifying, the game. (Although I am getting a little sick of the contention that's been bouncing around that Masterupdate will rot your mind, curve your spine and bring us, God help us, peace without honor.)

There's a known bug with FWE and the Talon company loot lists, but that shouldn't affect you until you're looting the corpses. Two questions: 1). (A perennial favorite:) WHAT'S YOUR LOAD ORDER!?!. Without knowing what's running, it's almost impossible to diagnose a problem. 2). Have you looked at the Talon Company (NPCs, armor and weapons) with FO3 Edit? Just seeing what is modifying the assets used will usually point you towards the problem.

What you're looking at is not a mod at all, it's the default "nude" skin for the game. It sounds to me like the type3 body is incorrectly installed, or you have a later mod that modifies the default races. Take a look in FNVEdit to see which mods are modifying the races, particularly the "body data" section of the records, and you'll find your culprit, or, failing that, know that Type3 is incorrectly installed.

I must heartily disagree with your statement. Master Update is not necessary to make a merged patch. It is recommended by the FO3Edit developers but not necessary. I have never used Master Update but I have always used a merged patch and then resolved any conflicts. I currently have 109 files in my load list and this does not count the texture files that are loaded directly when the game is launched. There are some mods that you cannot Master Update. Two that come to mind are "Fallout Remastered" and "Blackened". Then we must agree to disagree. In my experience, A merged patch that is not masterupdated causes a host of issues, from severe FPS drop all the way up to CTDs. In my personal lexicon, the mods you mentioned are in the category of "does not play well with others." They might have interesting ideas, but if they end up killing functionality on mods I consider to be "must have" then they are not worth it.

A FNVEdit Merged patch or Bashed Patch would probably help here.

Try re-installing FOMM outside of the default ("Program Files") Directory.

No, Masterupdate does not merge a leveled list. A FNVEdit Merged patch, however, can.

Not sure about a custom script (the respawn option should take care of it.) My only thought is have you assigned ownership of both versions of the chest to your vendor? This tutorial may be of help: http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/mods/6825/?

FOMM is does use a small amount of system resources, but nothing on the order of Steam. My installation takes 26k (yes k) memory when running. It was initially designed as a mod installer but has grown since then. It is indeed compatible with Steam (I use it to launch my NVSE modded New Vegas all the time.) The initial screen of FOMM gives you a list of all plugins, active and inactive, (including showing their load order number, which was referenced above,) with the ability to turn them on and off with a checkbox and re-order their load order my simply dragging.) It includes a rudimentary auto sort and conflict checker (although neither work very well and better utilities are available.) Several modding tools (TESsnip, a BSA unpacker/creator, and an SDP Editor) are built in, as is the ability to toggle Archive Invalidation on and off without having to mess with editing the file manually. Available for download here: http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/36901/?. The other program that will accomplish the load order task is FNVedit, (found here:http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/34703/?.) Unlike FOMM, it is possible to mess up you game (To the point of being unable to play) with FNVEdit, so careful reading/following of the instruction manual is highly recommended. (Manual found here: http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/38413/? ) Finally worth mentioning is BOSS (Found here: http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/35999/? ) Boss is a load order sorter par excellance, and can remove many headaches by its action alone.

The advice about not Master updating is not, as such, correct. I first became aware of the problem some mods were having with MU over on the New Vegas side of things where one of the most popular mods, New Vegas Bounties would not work with MU. When the problem first appeared, it was assumed that somehow Master Update was breaking scripts, at least on the Vegas version of the Gamebro engine. What turned out to be actually going on was an issue with Quest Items/Persistent Reference flags. (Reference post here: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/263415-new-vegas-bounties-i/page-174&do=findComment&comment=6245932) The issue is not with Master Update breaking mods, it is with a design error in the mods that Master Update brings out. Master update is necessary to run a merged patch, and a merged patch is necessary to run any but the most lightly modded games.

It comes down to modding technique. If an item is simply inserted into an existing Leveled List in Geck, any mod that comes later in the load order will overwrite the changes made to that leveled list, rendering the initial mod's changes moot. A more advanced technique is to inject an item into a list via a script, but this is a fairly advanced technique, so a a lot of new/less experienced modders don't use it. FNVEdit/Masterupdate is designed to fix this problem (contrary to reports bouncing around the Nexus, It seems to be a problem with mod design, not the MasterUpdate (See this post by hairylegs222: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/263415-new-vegas-bounties-i/page-174&do=findComment&comment=6245932)

I mentioned the K-Lite codex pack because with some versions, there is a conflict with the games, and you have to put the games on the exceptions list telling K-Lite not to try to run with them.

There is a thread over on the FO3 end of things that talks about this. I don't remember the exact specifics, but I involves installing an earlier version of FOMM in a non-standard (i.e. not in "Program Files") location and then updating to the current version in the new location. A quick search should guide you there.

You've been given a solution. If you don't want to download and install FOMM, NMM, or FO3Edit, there's really nothing that can be done to help you as there appears to be no other way to get your load order, and without that you cannot use any of the commands to make it work.

You might want to look at CASM http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/36730/?. It takes the place of the glitchy autosaves, and allows you to have a continuous stream of backups. On a side note, I was speculating, having never tried what I was proposing but just using my experience as to what might work. Would you mind terribly sharing what you did?

You don't need a mod. Console commands do it just fine. (player.setav)

Voice acting is nice and any mod that says it's voice acted grabs my attention. That being said, I've run into some real dogs that were voice acted. Nothing mentioned here, but one quest (which I will leave nameless) which featured fifty different variations on "find this article and bring it back to me." If I had blanket advice I could give to mod authors, recognizing the effort that goes into crafting a mod of any type, much less one of any complexity, it would be: If English is not your first language, you probably don't speak/write it as well as you think you do. and, Unless you're a professional impressionist, don't try to fake an accent to voice different characters in your mod: It ends up sounding like nails on a chalkboard.Willow, mentioned above, is a prefect example of how to do it right, a varied interesting quest, only one really voiced character (discounting the minor character who give short monosylabic grunts in response to questions asked.) And enough change to make it compelling throughout it's run. I mention Willow because it is one of the best mods I've seen on the Nexus. If you're going to hold out for that level of quality in all your mods, you're going to find a very small pool to pick from. Over on the Fallout 3 end of things, one of the mods that made my jaw hit the floor was the "A Quest for Heaven" series by Firelady. I believe she and most of here team are Romanian, and it shows in the dialogue (there are sections of dialogue that made me stop and have to work at picking apart what was being said), but the rest of the Quest more than makes up for the deficiency. In short, don't set a single criteria to judge all mods by, or you'll miss out on some truly amazing stuff. Also remember, we're all hobbyists here and all the work on the Nexus is a labor of love. So if you're going to hold out for professional quality work, you're going to find yourself in a very lonely place.

As I alluded to earlier, I recognized the glitch because I had tried something similar with an identical result in Fallout 3. I've been wracking my brain trying to remember the exact details of my incident, but they're alluding to me. So, in response to your question, the short answer is, "I don't know." The longer, but I fear not much more enlightening answer is, If you're going to try it, I would take the following steps: Don't touch the DLCs. Looking at Honest Hearts, there are indeed some deleted but undisabled references in there, but I have confirmed through experience that poking around inside a DLC with FNVEdit is a recipe for disaster. Follow the suggestion to clean the mods one at a time. I haven't seen the code for FNVEdit, but Elminster makes a big deal about cleaning only one mod at a time, and as he has seen the code, I'm inclined to trust his advice. Before you start the cleaning process, (after you have fresh copies of the mods installed,) open FNVEdit and look to see which mods have a conflict with Honest Hearts, paying particular attention to to the "Cell", "Navmesh" and "Worldspace" sections. I believe that the a change in these sections is what is responsible for the Navmesh Glitch. Make a backup of all your esps, esms, & bsas. If there is a disaster, it's much easier to just drop a new copy into your data directory than it is to completely re-install the mod. (I can't imagine the program touching the bsas, but as I'm only speculating here, I'd tend to err on the side of caution.)That's really all the advice I can give you, hope it helps.