Merging mods

[finestanonymous]

Hiya im almost at my peek in mods (not yet but just in case)... -_- and im thinking of merging some to create more room .. i would like a little info on it please .. i know how to work it that sought of thing, i just need some pointers like - what kind of mods can be merged into one ... can i do this for instance: all armour mods into one big armour mod? :mellow: just wondering?

 

Thanks :thumbsup:

[David Brasher]

You will want to merge mods that do not conflict with each other. But I guess it is sort of lame to say that, because if you are running all these mods, then they presumably do not conflict.

 

I guess to be more specific, you will want to watch out for mods that edit the same thing. Load order solves your problem currently, but if you merge three conflicting mods and the one from earlier in the load order wins, you will have a bug in your game, and load order won't be able to fix it. You will have to delete that bad merged mod and start over. When merging in TES4 Gecko, you can key in a number for priority, but you still may need to be cautious and inspect your work well.

 

Modularity might be one concern. Like maybe you have a bunch of mods to help you play righteous characters and a bunch of mods to help you play evil characters. If one set of mods messes up your experience when you are playing the other type of character, then it is good to be able to easily disable them. So in this example you could have a righteous mod and an evil mod, but don't merge all those mods into one.

 

Your big armor mod should work great.

 

Patching and compatibility might be one concern. If one mod out of a merged mod conflicts with something, than the entire merged mod conflicts. If you find a new mod you want to download and play, but it has a fatal conflict with your merged mod, you will either have to give up on playing it, remove your merged mod, or rebuild your merged mod from scratch.

 

Your best bet is probably to start with things like a big armor mod, a big weapons mod, a big clothing mod, etc. And be sure to save unmerged copies of your mods somewhere in case anything ever goes wrong.

[finestanonymous]

You will want to merge mods that do not conflict with each other. But I guess it is sort of lame to say that, because if you are running all these mods, then they presumably do not conflict.

 

I guess to be more specific, you will want to watch out for mods that edit the same thing. Load order solves your problem currently, but if you merge three conflicting mods and the one from earlier in the load order wins, you will have a bug in your game, and load order won't be able to fix it. You will have to delete that bad merged mod and start over. When merging in TES4 Gecko, you can key in a number for priority, but you still may need to be cautious and inspect your work well.

 

Modularity might be one concern. Like maybe you have a bunch of mods to help you play righteous characters and a bunch of mods to help you play evil characters. If one set of mods messes up your experience when you are playing the other type of character, then it is good to be able to easily disable them. So in this example you could have a righteous mod and an evil mod, but don't merge all those mods into one.

 

Your big armor mod should work great.

 

Patching and compatibility might be one concern. If one mod out of a merged mod conflicts with something, than the entire merged mod conflicts. If you find a new mod you want to download and play, but it has a fatal conflict with your merged mod, you will either have to give up on playing it, remove your merged mod, or rebuild your merged mod from scratch.

 

Your best bet is probably to start with things like a big armor mod, a big weapons mod, a big clothing mod, etc. And be sure to save unmerged copies of your mods somewhere in case anything ever goes wrong.

Hey thanks for the help that was the answer i was looking for! :thumbsup: that should be alright for me then .. most of my mods consist of armours .. and weapons ... im like a magpie... i like my shiny toys :tongue: so simple mods are the way to go with merging then?

[chaospearl]

In a general sense, the best mods to merge are the kind that just add some items to the game. They rarely conflict with anything. Make sure you keep track of which mods you put into a merged file -- what I do is take the ESP files and put them into a single folder called "Merged Armor" or something. That way I still have all the original mods, and I know with a glance that all the mods I merged into "Merged Armor.esp" are the ones in that folder. Makes it easier to fix things if you realize after a test run that you shouldn't have put Mod ABC into that merge.