Problems with merging armor mods

[ShangWang1]

So after learning a bit about ESL flagging and getting into mod merging I have successfully created several merges with merged plugins for followers and player homes. My latest merge initiative was to merge a ton of armor mods together. I have merged about 15 or so armor mods without error and activated my new armor merge and deactivated (did not delete) the individual esp files that are contained in my armor merge. The problem is that when i load into the game, the merged armors do not show up. If i disable the armor merge esp and re-enable the individual armor esps that the merge contains then everything goes back to normal and the armors exist. I am not sure why they won't show up? I tried to both install the armor merge manually and with my mod manager but nothing seems to work. I even deleted the merged mod and re-merged everything again, and still no success. I also tried doing the merge with zmerge and it still produced the same outcome, merged armors not in the game. If it helps I will paste a screen shot of the mods in my load order that I merged, as well as the contents of the new armor merge info and the merge log file of my latest attempt. I would greatly appreciate any help that can be provided. I would also like to add that after looking through the file contents of the merged zip, that there are no mesh or texture folders. For some reason merged plugins did not create them. I am not sure why. When I open some of the zips of some of the mods contained in the merge, those files are in fact present. Is there any way i can add these manually? if so then how? Also is that something that I should even do to fix this problem? I'm seriously out of ideas.

[ShangWang1]

Update: After yet another troubleshooting session, it turned out that when using my merged armor mod, the items were still in the game. For some reason unknown to me, when i disabled the individual esps to enable my merged mod, the items in my inventory and chests pertaining to the disabled esps disappeared. I found a mod called additemmenuse that allows you to add any item you want from esp files contained in your load order. I used this mod to test my merged mod, low and behold, i was able to add the items that i originally thought that i lost. I guess when merging mods that contain inventory items, any items already in your inventory disappear when disabling their esp files. Even though a merged mod may contain the same esps, the items still need to be acquired once again. However, as long as you have made a successful merge, those items should still exist in the game. Though to prove this some kind of mod such as additemmenuse may be necessary. My conclusion is based on my experimentation thus far with merging mods, and i believe that my findings are verified. If i am wrong however, then this is all likely a coincidence. I hope this might help someone someday who may have a similar problem. Happy modding to all!

[Algabar]

Well, what you experienced is to be expected.

 

Each item in game has a form ID. Part of this ID is the mod an item belongs to. If you merge plugins, you change these IDs. For the game, this means that your stuff (which had IDs based on the original single mods) does no longer exist. That's just how the game works. In short: You can't merge your armor or weapon mods and expect to keep your stuff.

 

In general, I wouldn't recommend merging plugins anyway. It's potentially dangerous and an outdated method of saving plugin slots. The way to go nowadays are .esl files. They don't count towards the 255 plugins limit, so you can have (almos) as many .esl files as you want. So, don't merge - "eslify" your plugins.

 

On a side note: When "eslifying" plugins, you can also loose items. Simply flagging a plugin as "esl" doesn't change form IDs. If you have to "compact form IDs" however, the new ESL file will have different form IDs than the original - which will result in lost gear again.

[scorrp10]

What you are doing is a pretty good way to end up with a corrupted save.

 

If you had an .esp loaded that added a new item to game, that item would have a FormID comprised of that.esp assigned slot, and relative ID within the .esp.

An instance of such item in your inventory would be referenced by that FormID, written to your save game.

If you move that item entry to another .esp, it will be in a different slot, and likely get assigned a different relative ID. In other words, it will have new FormID, and old one will no longer be there. So what happens when you try to load a save and it has FormIDs not referencing something valid?

Best case, you'll be missing stuff. Items may be gone from inventory, Follower might go missing, or your follower pretty hairdo might go ugly vanilla. Worst case, you get a crash. Lets say you just end up missing stuff. Thing is, those dangling references are still in your save, polluting it. They can bite you in the rear a couple hundred gameplay hours later.

 

Flagging an esp as esl has about same effect as moving its entries to another .esp. FormIDs will be different and those already referenced in a save will go undefined. Not an issue starting a new game, but merging or esl-flagging mods midgame is asking for trouble.

At the very least what you should do:

1. Unequip any items from mods you plan to merge, and prefferably dump them into a chest you don't use often. Any new custom added followers should be dismissed, reset if using AFT.

2. Disable all the mods you plan to merge or ESL-flag. Load your save, do nothing for a minute or so, save again and exit.

3. Use Fallrim Tools ReSaver to clean your save.

Enable the new merged/flagged mod(s).