Too many mods -- can I merge some?

[chaospearl]

Sooo... I'm approaching the magic 255 mod limit, and in my greed, I still want more! I'm using Wrye Bash, but it seems that only a tiny handful of my mods appear in green text indicating that they can be merged into my bash patch. I was expecting a bit more help than that... everybody keeps pointing towards Bash as the miracle program to enable you to crush the mod limit, but I'm not all that enthusiastic if it can evidently only squeeze about 10 of my esp files together. Is there any other way to combine a few mods? I can bumble my way around the CS and would be willing to learn more if it means being able to do this safely.

[Wolfhound646]

The answer issssssssss.......

 

YES!!! (I think)

 

But I don't know how. Somebody out there does, so just keep on bumping untill somebody tells you.

 

By the way, couldn't you just bash a bunch of them into a groups of ten?

[TodaY]

if you can mod and some of your mods are just mods that add armor weapons or clothing with no quest (that you'd like to keep) to the game, you could make your own mod that adds them all in one esp, and delete the others

[Jenrai]

Everybodies right!

Yes its possible.

Yes Bash is the ultimate tool for using more mods than the limit. But thats not because it merges loads. Its because it makes them work together better, as in not against each other.

No, you can't just "Bash groups of ten"... oh, so I guess not everyone's right then. nvm. We were close.

 

Basically, rather than botching them together using the CS, get TES4 Gecko or Edit. Unless you're 99% certain you know what you're doing. Or just want an easy life. These two are much, much quicker than individually merging mods.

 

Words of caution:

Don't merge UL. There's a damn good reason all the Unique Landscapes have their own esps. Some of them can be merged with their own patches. They cannot be merged with one and other. You've been warned.

Don't merge mods that change the same people:

This would seem to make sense, wouldn't it? Two mods that make changes to say, Audens Avidius? Merge em.

Well it doesn't make sense. Particularly not if they are scripted. Whilst both Edit and Gecko can merge scripts ( I think) I've seen some funky affects therein. Dun do it.

 

Now the good news:

Got 50 armor mods? Merge em. Especially if they are litterally, just armour and/or weapons. These aren't generally huge mods, and the esps are relatively small and quite straightforward. Works like a charm. As long as the all have independant IDs and filenames. Which they should.

Got quest mods?

These are mergable too. As long as they aren't making changes to the same people (see above) or areas, yep, quest mods can be safely merged.

 

Of course, making 20 - 30 merged esps is going to shoot your load order apart as far as Boss is concerned (because you are best giving them new names so you know what you're doing... and for pity's sake, please don't delete the original esps if you've not kept the zips! :D ) so the best bet would likely be to merge them following your load order, and add entries as needed to your Masterlist.txt (yep, that one that comes with Boss). Its really easy to edit, all you need is any text editor program (including windows own wordpad. Yes its cr*p but it'll work for this) and the name of the first mod in your merge. Be aware though that animation mods made with the CT template will all overwrite each other's crystals and spells, leaving you with only the ones last in the merge (or set as the primary) and that if you merge race mods your saves are gonna look messed up. They're not, you just need to point the save to rely on the new merged mod, rather than the individual race, but they'll appear screwed at first if you don't.

Of course, if you're confident in the CS (sorry if that sounds like a dig, but "I can bumble my way around" doesn't exactly scream confidence to me) you'll be more able to fix any problems you might accidentally create... and merging them, whilst it takes more time (read - a LOT more time) by hand means you're more likely to know exactly whats going on and where, you're also much more likely break something critical if you don't know exactly what you're doing, whereas Gecko and Edit have failsafes to prevent that (I'm not saaying they're flawless. Don't go thinking you can botch together your entire load order into one uber-esp and if it lets you merge them it'll work)

 

Anyways... long story short (bit late for that, I know. =) ) Yes, its possible. I normally use Gecko to merge and currently have, I would estimate, about 340 to 350 mods loading, if you count merges.

Good luck. And take it easy. Less haste more speed. :D

Jenrai

[bben46]

Here is a suggestion. Before you go on a merge rampage, make a copy of your current data folder. Be sure to include the date in the name so you will know when it was done. (Data_Backup_4-16-10)You can also include your own little read me text file in it to tell you what it is six months from now give it a name like 001_Information.txt so it will be the first thing in the folder.

 

Given the size of your current data folder, it will take quite a while. But replacing it - if you need to will only take seconds as all you will have to do is rename it.

[Slawter500]

I know the feeling. I should be way over the limit by now. I asked a similar question about merging once. I use TES4:Geck though.

 

Anyway, merging armour,weapon,clothes mods, is a good way to save space and should be ok. I would advise against merging global mods(things that would affect the world/character in general.) i.e Don't merge say OOO and another mod which changes the combat system for instance.

[chaospearl]

Wow, thanks for all the replies. Time to add Gecko to my list of Oblivion helpers, it seems.

 

Fortunately, as it so happens I already have a copy of my current Data folder backed onto a flash drive. I did that a few nights ago after a separate issue pissed me off so much I ended up reinstalling from scratch (kind of like shooting ants with a bazooka, but it did work).

 

I have a few dozen mods that don't change much besides adding a small tweak here or an alchemist's reference there... with luck, I can merge at least some of those and get myself below 200 active esp files. Then I can shop for more without guilt!

 

Edit the First: Sooo... very first noob attempt = fail. I merged together a couple of armor mods as a test, logged into the game, and immediately saw that my armor had gone missing. Hmph. My hope is that merging the files changed the IDs so anything I already had in my inventory went poof, but with luck perhaps I can go to the places\shops I originally got it from and get it back. I'll give that a shot and keep my fingers crossed. I foresee several more edits of this post, heh.

 

Edit the Second: Yeah, that seems to be the problem. Anything I had in my inventory vanished, but I'm able to re-buy the stuff from the shops without trouble. Now to go hunt up the "gimme gold" console command and embark on a massively non-immersive fast traveling spree across Cyrodiil to get my stuff back. Wheeee!

 

Edit the Third: Much better. After some blatant console abuse, I'm back where I began, in the same place and owning\carrying the same items and gold I had before all this merging. Everything works as it should; no missing items or yellow triangles or weird land tearing. Only now I've got roughly 170 active esp's instead of 230. Yes! The only oddity is that somehow my account at the Bank of Cyrodiil got completely wiped, although the bank mod isn't one of the ones I merged. I didn't touch that file at all, how odd. Happily this was easily fixed by checking an earlier savegame to see how much had been in my account, and console'ing it back in there.

 

Thanks again, everyone. This was incredibly helpful and I wish I'd asked a month ago. Now I feel like I can add back in a handful of mods I'd downloaded, tried out, and then sadly relegated to the "perhaps later" folder because they were neat, but not quite neat enough to justify keeping when I was only 10 esp's away from meltdown. I can put back some of the Cyrodiilic real estate and let my character choose which homes she'd like to own as she adventures, rather than deciding ahead of time outside the game and only installing those mods I've chosen in advance. Aaaand last but not least, I can brew up a fresh pot of coffee, settle back comfortably into my featherbed, take a deep breath and type "Partner" into the Nexus search box... then watch the next few hours of my life vanish into a black hole as I sort through the 1000s of results until I've found one or two absolutely perfect companions. Sounds like a contented evening. Wow, I'm a huge nerd.