SSE Creation Kit - strange behavior after moving MO2

[37G]

Hello, bit of troubleshooting, or a puzzle if you will? Main questions:

 

• Does moving a portable MO2 installation, WITH corrected paths, break the CK, despite not breaking anything else?
• What ini files MUST be present, and paths set, for the CK to work through MO2?
• Does having MO2 on the same drive as Skyrim (but not in the Skyrim folder) cause problems?

 

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I'm running MO2 as a portable folder and have just moved it to an external hard drive. This hard drive is where my Skyrim SE lives, but the directory lives separate from that folder. The paths are corrected for its new location and the game runs smoothly.

 

For ages (in its previous location) Creation Kit has worked perfectly using these fixes in the initial setup:

• The 'CKScripts as a mod' trick: everything here
• 'SSE Creation Kit Fixes' mod by Nuukem, with the multiple masters fix
• Adjusted inis: CreationKit, CreationKitPrefs and skyrim64_test

When I moved directories, first, the CK took about 4-5 times longer to load archives. I guess that's normal if the external drive is slower than the internal. Then on loading an .esp, first I got a 'form ids don't match' or 'wrong # of form ids' error, something like that. No masters loaded, and it asked if I want to correct a file header, I said no - that .esp became unavailable afterwards (this makes no sense to me). Is any of this relevant to the move? I have no idea-

 

This brought me back to the initial setup, where I remember having to launch CK through Bethesda.net once, let it crash, and then it worked. So I did that, and it had no observed effect.

 

The next time I loaded up an .esp, it just gave me the multiple masters error and did nothing. Haven't gotten that one for over a year-

 

I then added CreationKitCustom.ini, which apparently didn't exist before, with the allow multiple masters line added. The CK now once again opens through its exe in MO2, can edit things, but it's extremely slow. A bit faster in a profile with almost no mods. I would assume this is just due to it reading from a slower drive, but how does that not affect gameplay or other programs?

 

Final note: SSedit runs perfectly as if nothing ever happened, and this is also on my external drive.

 

 

 

Update for posterity: editing the descriptions of ESPs in the CK seems to give errors in certain cases... maybe depending which masters are ticked... there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason except the side effects of a directory location-change

Edited September 20, 2021 by 37G