eureka. all fixed. Ididi two things, not sure which did it, but , I made sure i ahd version 1.65 of the merge script. LAst night I said I had v1.6, which i must have. I did it so quickly today im not sure if i wrote over the v1.6 script, or if i already had v.165. I know the file sizes were the same. regardless, Im using v1.65 now. Then i systmatically merged the mods i wanted, to see if one of the esps was to blame. sure enough, a few of the esps were not merging correctly, even though it said merge succesful and no immediate errors. I dont understand why it corrupte dthe entire merged plugin, but it did. anyways, i have now succesfully meged 56!! armor mods. I was way off when i said about 20 last night it seems. Now to add edit values and add them to the level list. My plan is to add more diversty to the armor found in skyrim, so for instance, leather armor, maybe 8 or so different types taht would be considered leather, and that spawn on npcs randomly. Thanks for all the feedback!