What are the repercussions of this?

[Fixer]

What if I want to permanently merge mods into Oblivion.esm? What will happen?

[Lolasho]

I think you can't. CS is made to not allow you to modify the Oblivion.esm file. If you find a way to do it... well I don't know what will exactly happen.

[Jenrai]

Any attempt to mod the original game's ESM is quite likely to break the game. The ESM is always top of your load order (or at least it bloody should be ;) ) because it must load first, and in its entirity, before anything else starts to load.

Even the official DLCs don't touch the ESM, so I would definantly tend to think "Bad Idea!" right from the off.

 

Jenrai

[Fixer]

Hmmmmm...

*attempts to modify Oblivion.esm*

*causes singularity*

*escapes using GetMeOutOfHere!OhCrap!™ emergency exit device*

*watches implosion of the Earth from a safe distance*

----------------------------------------------------------

Seriously, though, I think I'll give it a try.

 

*backs up his directory first*

[Vagrant0]

Depending on what you're doing, it might not cause any problems initially. The problem however is that unlike with a .esp or .esm, there's no way to remove those changes after they've been merged, and any mods created from the altered .esm may not work for anyone else.

 

Really though, there's no reason to do anything like this. Ever. There's nothing that can be done by this that cannot be achieved with either a .esm, a .esp, or a combination of both, and usage of a .esm/.esp is much less prone to issues.