Help with making a non-vanilla merchant

[cewsmoke]

I am making a personal mod that I am having difficulty with. I have tried searching these forums and google and do not seem to be able to find any discussions about it. I have a HUGE number of clothing and armor mods by various authors. I am trying to make a store where two or three merchants will sell all of them. I have the store done and the first merchant is operational. The problem is that none of the non-vanilla clothes or armor I selected in TES show up on the merchant. If I add original Oblivion items, they show up just fine. I add all of the armor/clothes I want to the unique merchant container and they do show up while inside of TES. I of course have ALL those mods selected when I am working on my mod. I also ensured that my mod is the last thing that loads in the load order using OMM (to make sure the clothes/armor already exist before my mod comes into play). Still no luck. The strange thing is when I go back into TES and reselect all of the clothing and armor mods and make my mod the active one and then open the merchant container again it is now empty (or contains only the vanilla Oblivion items I put in). Why does my mod keep "forgetting" the non-vanilla items in the merchant container? Obviously I am missing something really dumb, or I am really dumb (both very likely). Is what I want to do simply not possible or do I need to attack this differently? Any help would be sincerely appreciated.

[David Brasher]

For beginning modders it is simplest to say that mods cannot see other mods. Mods cannot communicate with other mods. These statements are overturned at higher modding levels.

 

So your mod cannot see the clothing because it does not reside in your mod. So if you want to have your merchants sell the clothing, here are some approaches you might take:

 

(1) Merge your mod with the mod that has the clothing in it and add the clothing to the merchant chest once again, but for the last time.

 

(2) Copy all the clothing into your mod by renaming each and every clothing item you want with a new form ID. That way the clothing resides in your mod and will be there even when the other mod is not active. After you have done this, you can just open your own mod to work with the clothing and don't even need the other mod open in the CS.

 

(3) Take a quantum leap into the big stuff and learn how to create mastered patches using Wrye Bash and other tools. This would make it so the clothing would not have to reside in your mod, but you would be required to have the clothing mod your mod depends on installed and active in order for your mod to work.

[cewsmoke]

I'd like to thank you for three things. First, for your excellent reply. I know exactly what I need to do now. Secondly, I really appreciate you offering a thorough explanation regarding my issue. Your time is valuable and you took the time in providing a very helpful answer. That is a very nice thing to do. Thirdly, and probably most of all I appreciate that you did not talk down to me. I am fairly new at modding and it was nice to get an informative answer without even a hint of being patronizing or trying to make me feel dumb. You, sir, are a true gentleman. I wish you the best.