Dubbyk

Thanks to everyone for sharing their info, it does not sound nearly as bad as I thought it would be, I guess I'll be getting back into it then. If anyone has anymore new "must have" or important framework mods I should look into when I start rebuilding my mod list please feel free to share them. I'm hoping a lot of the old workshop item mods have maybe consolidated into fewer bigger mods, was always a chore installing all the workshop mods and then having to test all your menus after each one to make some one didn't bork a keyword and make one of your menus go missing. I'll also have to do some research into that .BA2 limit

I remembering have to make precombine patches in the CK and it being a pain in the butt. I'm hoping all the stuff I've forgotten about using the CK and FO4edit will come back to me once I start poking around in them again. Good to hear the .ESL limit is so high, I take it that applies to .ESL Flagged .ESPs as well?

The CC stuff popping up never really bothered me over much, I never bought anything from the CC and would just ignore the little pop ups when I left vault 101. Hearing that mods that don't have .DLLs mostly still work is good news, many of old mods that I used to have that haven't been updated in forever according to my tracking center are mostly location based mods, stuff that adds new buildings and settlement locations and workshop mods, checking their file lists most of them don't have any .dlls. Looking at the old mods it does make me sad to see most of the assets outside of .BA2 files, I take it's still recommended to pack your assets into .BA2 files for better performance? Was always just a slog having to repack all of the stuff lol.

So I last played and heavily modded fallout 4 in 2019, I have some questions about how things have changed and if it's worth getting back into it. 1: The Next Gen Patch: How bad did this break everything? And like in some other mod heavy games like Stellaris did the player base and modders break into Pre and Post update community's where half the people never get the patch and the other half do, if you update the active mods get updated but all the older mods that had worked just fine are left in the dust bin? If this did happen, do you guys think it's better to update to latest version and give up on the older mods? Or stay with the older version and have access to the older mods. Preferred method of mod installation: Vortex was still pretty new when I last played around with fallout 4 and many people still used NMM and MO2, has a consensus been reached and one method risen to the top? .ESLs: They where still pretty new when I stopped playing and many many mods that could be turned into .ESLs had not been and you pretty much had to trial and error converting them and see if they ran, have people embraced .ESLs more as being released as such by the modders directly or is it still pretty much on the end users to convert them if they fit the requirements? Mod limit: There was an open debate on how many .ESLs you could have on top of the 254 limit, was there every a answer reached on just how many .ESLs you could have on top of 254 .ESP / .ESMs? Linchpin / Framework mods: It looks like many of the old major framework mods like Armor-smith Extended, Armor Keywords, Settlement Keywords ect have not been updated since 2018/2019. Are all of these projects dead and no longer work with modern mods or have they just have had no need to update? And overall do you guys think it's feasible to get back into modding Fallout 4 in 2025 or should I just play Fallout London and let Fallout rest until Fallout 5 comes along.

Now that you bring it up I do remember having to flag files and run some sort of "checker" program that would look into the file and count the ID's and see if it was eligible for .esl flagging. And MMM was marts mutant mod but I derped out and forgot that was a FO3 mod not FO4, I'd have to go into my nexus history to find what the big mutant overhaul mod I used for FO4 was, luckily I was pretty dedicated to liking and following all the mods I used so I could use that as a starting point on rebuilding.

So I played Fallout 4 for god knows how many hours, most of it spent modding, bug hunting and playing around in the shallow end of GECK to make incompatible mods run together. (I never actually finished the story lol) Then .ESL's came out and blew the lid off the normal 255 mod limit and then I spent even more hours trying to see what mods I could turn into .ESLs to cram more mods into my load order, I think at one point I had almost 400 plugins running (granted many where tiny one weapon mods or .ini tweaks) And then my hard drive crashed........... Uncounted hours of modding and testing down the tubes and I just could not bear to do all that work again after just doing it. So now it's years later and I've foolishly starting watching some Fallout lore videos on Youtube and that's gotten me wanting to try it again. So my question is, how is the state of modding in Fallout 4 now years later? Has .ESL's become the standard for small mods or do end user's still have to convert them? So is normal to still have to clean mods with FO4 edit and look for deleted nav meshes? Have the bigger staple mods like MMM, Raider Overhaul and Sim Settlement's died off? Also with the coming news of the "Next Gen" patch coming in 2023 is it better to wait to get back in? Is it known if the patch will destroy modding for weeks / months after it's release and or kill older mods that are no longer being worked on as there has not been a patch in so long for the PC and while the mods may have been working fine for years this new patch will blow them all up. So please share with me your thoughts on if it's a good time to come back to the game or if I should just preserve my sanity and wait for Fallout 5 sometime in ten years.

So I was merging a bunch of location / dungeon mods and was going around in the CK fixing landscape seams. Then for some reason I got a wild hair and decided to re-sculpt Sanctuary Hills, I have now spent enough time and changed enough there it might as well be a mod of it's own. So now the problem I have is since I was doing all this editing in a merged plugin of dozens of other mods I need to find out if I can somehow just get my changes to Sanctuary into a separate .ESP Is it just a matter of opening the merged .ESP in Xedit and "Copy Records" of the cells dealing with Sanctuary or is there more too it?

I'm trying to bug hunt some messed up dialog in a mod I down loaded, but after opening up the plugin in Xedit, i can't see them find where dialog records are, thought it would be under NPC's or quest but I don't see it there. Can some one point me in the direction (tab) where dialog records are?

If anyone has been watching this thread, I found the issue, it was Private-Profle-Redirector : https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/33947 completely uninstalling this fixed the CK, and lucky since it's just a FOSE plugin I can easily uninstall and reinstall as I need to use the CK.

And just to clarify what I am looking for, I'm looking for mods that replace a vanilla file outright, so mod added BA2 files don't count, and overwrites via .ESP don't count, just things that hard replace a file?

Swapped back to the original BA2 files, still wont open, uninstalled any mod I could think of that changed vanilla files but with 1000+ mods it's impossible to know them all really. What Drives me nuts is i USED to be able to open the CK with my insane mod order all the time. The only reason I have been able to merge and make compatible so many mods is with the CK, I just don't understand what changed, The "scan and repair" on the Beth launcher says my files are fine, but opening the CK says to scan them again. I know form experience if I run Steam's validate files it will WRECK my modded folder and I will have to start all over. Do you guys think if I install a fresh copy of FO4 on an other hard drive I can get the CK to try to open from their and leave my modded folder alone? I can then just move the .ESPS of the mods I want to change over to the other HDD, edit them and move them back. Think my plan will work?

In response to Thirdstorm The CK wont open at all, if I open from the .exe it self i Just get a small loading icon on the mouse for a second and then nothing. If i try to open from the Beth Launcher it say's it failed to open a and to validate files. To BlahBlahDEEBlahBlah I think you maybe on to something, I use a texture re-placer that actually replaces the Fallout Texture BA2 files, sounds like that might be a good place to start my search. (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/27038)

Every time I go to load the CK it says it failed to do so and I need to verify my files, I've attempted reinstalling the CK, no help. I am very reluctant to use steam to verify my files as I am sure it will screw up my heavily modded fallout 4 folder. I think I remember reading on some mod pages a long time ago that some mods that use .DLLs can cause issues with the CK. Does anyone know if this even a possibility? And if so anyone know any off the top of their head so I can try and narrow down the issue. Guess my other alternative would be to make a 2nd non modded installation of FO4, would having two installs of FO4 on the same computer freak out NMM and the CK? *edit some additional info, I used to be able to load up the CK just fine even with all of my mods, not sure when the CK issue happened as it's been months since I needed to open it, maybe game / CCC updates broke something?

Yes I use the BA2 tool quite a lot. I Tested my theory last night on my ArmorMerge2.esp file, within this merge is "Eli's Armour Compendium", that mod contains custom voice acting for her shop NPC. The voice files are in a self named folder like I describe above. Without changing the folder name the NPC was mute and the conversation is glitchy. So I went and renamed the file path from: X:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Fallout 4\Data\Sound\Voice\Eli_Armour_Compendium.esp to X:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Fallout 4\Data\Sound\Voice\Armormerge2.esp and it worked. The NPC is now fully voice acted again. I will need to test more to see if this fixes the issues with animations that are in self named folders as well. This leads me to a new question now: If you use the self named folder system, and it's so easily broken by merging or ESL conversion, why use it? Why not just have your files load like this: X:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Fallout 4\Data\Sound\Voice and leave out the .ESP specific folder altogether? I've seen bunches of other mods that use loose file just place their assets into the main folders and they merge / ESL convert no issues. So is their some advantage to using .ESP specific folder names I am missing? *edit oh and in regard to your question about why I am going through all this effort monkeying with file paths ect, it's not just to save a FEW .ESP slots, it's to save a great many. Using my ArmorMege2.esp for example. I have over 50 armor and power armor related mods merged saving me upwards of 70ish .ESP slots. And about 5-6 of them off the top of my head have some sort of folder specific files, seemly mostly voice files. Using the renaming tactic I talked about above I was also able to get the ambient music and radio transmissions from several of the power armor mods to play again.

OK so mod's that have folder set ups like this: X:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Fallout 4\Data\Sound\Voice\MODNAMEHERE If you rename or merge a plug in do you need to change the folder path? Seems to effect VOICE and ANIMATION files the most, Meshes and Textures seem to almost always work when I merge plugins but then again I am normally building a custom BA2 file for the new merged plug in. Will I get the voice files working again if I folder path to something like this: X:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Fallout 4\Data\Sound\Voice\MERGEDMODNAMEHERE ? Or is this folder path some how hard coded into the .ESP when it's made, and I would need to go into the .ESP and change the file path for each file? *edit I've also been keeping voice files out of my BA2 because I have heard the compression of BA2 files messes them up. Not sure if that extra info helps.