What if I unpack all .bsa archives into Data folder?

[KiCHo666]

This is totally dumb question... :P
But it recently came to me and I couldn't help but wonder, What would happen if I unpack all bsa files, copy them all in Data folder and then delete bsa archives afterwards?

So, what do you guys think will happen?
Will the game be seriously messed up or it will have some benefit?

[DrakeTheDragon]

All 'replacer' mods you installed so far will become undone and your game's assets revert to Vanilla.

Your drive space will suffer significantly.

Your loading times and resource load times will increase, or not, different people reported different results from different systems in the past.

You will have to disable the options in the INI instructing the game to load the BSAs, if you remove them.

You will never be able to uninstall a 'replacer' mod again simply by removing its files. Once it's installed the Vanilla files will be lost (=replaced).

And I think 'some' files were actually making trouble when not loaded from inside a BSA under certain circumstances... but that part of memory is too foggy now.

 

Others will know better/more.

[MarchUntoTorment]

I have a short, one-word answer -

 

Don't.

 

:P

[nivea]

You will ruin all the hair in your game, since it requires to be packed in a BSA for the egm to work.

[TrickyVein]

I have most of my .bsa archives unpacked as loose files for modding and don't experience any difference in performance when playing the game. It can be a lot to keep track of if you also have replacers. That said, there's no real reason why you can't.

[MartinPurvis]

As nivea has said, it makes all the headgear and hair models go loopy. I remember when I unpacked everything.

[nivea]

I personally have a large amount of the textures unpacked and installed with Wrye Flash, because I require them for modding. But if your not planning on using them for modding purposes I do not see the point to unpacking everything, it will make things harder to manage for a normal user.

[llamaRCA]

I personally have a large amount of the textures unpacked and installed with Wrye Flash, because I require them for modding. But if your not planning on using them for modding purposes I do not see the point to unpacking everything, it will make things harder to manage for a normal user.

Yeah, I agree. I unpack a lot of the bsas for modding too, just like Nivea and TrickyVein do, and it's useful for that, but when I'm not modding I take it all out again. It's a lot of clutter in your folders and if you are running a full mod list and then add in unpacked bsas as well, I think that's too much too keep in your data folder. I would never unpack the entire bsa unless I was using something from every single folder to mod.