I need advice/help regarding a bashed patch

[exeworks]

Hello folks,

I've finally gathered all the mods I want to use for my planned Skyrim playthrough and already did my research on how to create a merged and bashed patch.

I've already created a merged patch with TES5Edit, cleaned masters and deleted leveled lists from it and resolved the leftover conflicts. So far so good.

Now I do have a couple of question about the bashed patch...

First and foremost: Can I trust Wrye Bash to know what mods are safe to merge?

Here's an example of what gives me second thoughts about it: https://postimg.cc/cKbBMMWL

Specifically The Barenziah and Jiubs Opus page quest marker .esps do involve a quest script (I would assume) and I'm hesitant to just merge them into the bashed patch. Is it safe to merge all these and load the bashed patch after the merged patch?

And secondly: Several video tutorials about making a bashed patch suggested to just leave all the ticked on boxes such as import keywords, names etc. just the way they are and dont change anything. So I'm guessing they get selected automatically by Wrye Bash depending on what the mods it wants to merge contain and need to have imported into the bashed patch ...right? How do I know if i need to tick another box or even remove one?

I know that the point of merging these mods into the bashed patch is to reduce the load order size and I've tried following the video tutorials to the letter but ended up with a bashed patch that when viewed in TES5Edit comes with an absolute boatload of red/conflicting data records... so what gives?

For now I've decided to not merge any mods and just left the leveled lists checkbox ticked, to get a "pure leveled lists bashed patch" and loaded it after my TES5Merged.esp at the very bottom of my load order. This seems to work fine from what I've seen during play testing. But before I invest to much time into a playthrough just to find out I made an irreversible mistake that messed up my game I'd like to get some clarification/info on this matter.

Thanks in advance!

Edited July 16, 2021 by exeworks

[IsharaMeradin]

It is fine to have a bashed patch that is just the leveled lists.

 

It is also fine to leave everything that comes up checked and build the patch. Though you may need to examine the patch in xEdit and make a few tweaks depending upon what you want to take priority. This is because things will carry over from one mod that had a tag and override a change from another mod that did not have the tag. Unfortunately the bashed patch does not take the default wining record and change the specific entries to the tag wining data. Instead it takes the tag wining record and completely overrides what would have been the default wining record.

 

What I end up doing is checking the bashed patch in xEdit, seeing what mods are getting overwritten by an earlier loading mod and then decide which one I want to "win". At that point, the first thing I try is adding the "offending" tag to the mod I want to "win" and re-running the bashed patch. If all else fails, I either delete records from the bashed patch or drag the desired data from the plugin I want to "win" into the bashed patch.

 

The easiest thing to do, however, would be to just do the leveled lists only.

 

As far as merging plugins into the bashed patch it should be acceptable but should always be tested to ensure that those mods still function as intended.

[exeworks]

It is fine to have a bashed patch that is just the leveled lists.

 

It is also fine to leave everything that comes up checked and build the patch. Though you may need to examine the patch in xEdit and make a few tweaks depending upon what you want to take priority. This is because things will carry over from one mod that had a tag and override a change from another mod that did not have the tag. Unfortunately the bashed patch does not take the default wining record and change the specific entries to the tag wining data. Instead it takes the tag wining record and completely overrides what would have been the default wining record.

 

What I end up doing is checking the bashed patch in xEdit, seeing what mods are getting overwritten by an earlier loading mod and then decide which one I want to "win". At that point, the first thing I try is adding the "offending" tag to the mod I want to "win" and re-running the bashed patch. If all else fails, I either delete records from the bashed patch or drag the desired data from the plugin I want to "win" into the bashed patch.

 

The easiest thing to do, however, would be to just do the leveled lists only.

 

As far as merging plugins into the bashed patch it should be acceptable but should always be tested to ensure that those mods still function as intended.

Thank you very much for the explanation. I figured something like might be the case when I had read/heard about the relev/delev tags. Oh well, since everything seems to work fine so far with the tes5merged patch I might as well just stick with the pure leveled list bashed patch under it then. My game is running surprisingly stable and without any crashes or errors so far and all the mods that come with MCM menus and scripting seem to work fine as well, plus I already found some mod added loot with mod added enchantments on it so I'd say the bashed patch works as intended. I guess I'm good to go then.

 

Many thanks!

 

Edited July 16, 2021 by exeworks