Merge x Import on Wrye Bash

[HikariWS]

I'm learning Wrye Bash. Recently I reinstalled Oblivion and uses MOM to save a vanilla setup and started installing everything with Wrye Bash.

 

I've risked merging a few esp on Bashed Patch and noticed some changes just by doing that. In example, Colourwheels Sexy Oblivion OverHaul HGEC has great features but make female argonians turn into greenish imperials. I didn't even merge it, but somehow now their eyes are moved from imperial's place back to argonian place.

 

Anyway, I still don't understand the difference of merge and import.

 

And I don't understand why some esp are green in WB and most aren't. What makes an esp mergeable and how WB decides it?

[malonn]

Merging is importing the ENTIRE mod into the patch. Importing in only bringing some of the records in the mod into the patch. Those that have thje appropriate tags have those records merged into the patch IF there arte conflicts with other mods. If not there's no need to merge them and they don't get touched. Use BOSS (or LOOT, but I recommend BOSS for Oblivion). These load order tools have tags assigned to many plugins already, and they will "work better" with a large load order.

[HikariWS]

So, merge allows an esp to not need to be loaded anymore. And Import is useful when there are conflicts?

 

So if there's no conflict then there's no use for importing? And how to know if a conflict is happening?

 

I have BOSS. But the fist time I tried to create a bashed patch, with default settings, game started to crash and I had to revert it. I've been slowly merging esps one by one from bottom of load order. I've seen differences as I said.

[malonn]

Yes, the merged ESP will then be in the Bashed Patch. You can then deactivate the original.

Yep, improting helps to solve conflicts.

The best way to tell if there a conflict with two or more plugins is to load them in TES4Edit. You can then solve most conflicts manually, or let Bash solve some of then auto-magically. Bash will not solve all conflicts though. For example if there are 2 mods that add a script to the same NPC, and both mods have the "import scripts" bash tag, the later loading mod will "win" out, and that script is the one that will be imported into the Bashed Patch. That's when manual tweaking is required to get the best of both mods in that case.

[HikariWS]

Thanks a lot.

 

I'm learning how to use Wrye Bash and have almost 100 esp installed. I never used CS or TES4Edit.

 

Could you point me a tutorial that teaches how to use TES4Edit specifically for finding and solving conflicts?

 

Just now I was trying to do a quest for mages guild. I had to go to a fort and couldn't fast travel to there yet. In the trip, I started to face crashes, always in the same place. I found the cause to be MMM, when it's disable I'm able to pass the hill without crashing.

 

I managed to solve it without creating a save without MMM. I warped back home, waited for 4 days then used movetoqt to go directly to the fort door. I didn't wanna disable MMM because I'd lose the loots that requre it.

 

Anyway, Bashed Patch was has MMM as master. If I was unable to surpass the crash and had to disable MMM, I'd have to disable A LOT of mods too...

 

Because of that I'm even more interested now in underestand when merging and importing esps is useful, find when conflicts are happening, so that I don't mess with the whole game.

[HikariWS]

Ok I installed CS, TES4Edit and TES4Gecko.

 

I used TES4Gecko to merge some esp from Less Annoying Magic Experience. I merged 4 of them that WB marked green. Then I used CS to tag the new esp as NoMerge and added it after Bashed Patch.

 

I used TES4Edit to see what it changes and if there was any conflict.

 

I also used TES4Edit to edit Colourwheels Sexy Oblivion Overhaul, I remove some argonian and kajiit NPCs from it because I don't like his new races for them.

 

That was fun lol I also found A beginner's guide that will teach the basics.

 

I still don't understand a few things. How WB identifies that an esp is mergeable and marks it green? Or, why it leaves most esps as not mergeable? What may happen if I use TES4Gecko to merge esps that WB says aren't mergeable?

 

My aim ATM is to create a custom esp to customize some things in the game, and to create custom "bashed patches" that are more modular and stable than the one that WB creates every time.

[HikariWS]

I discovered a plugin for TES4Edit that seems to be better than TES4Gecko.

 

Anyway I've been inspecting Bashed Patch and saw that it undoes things done right by some mods, and keeps things that should be removed.

 

Of course, it's an automated software aiming to do more good things than bad, for players not wanting to edit and merge plugins by themselves. But I want to, at least a minimum.

 

ATM I'm trying to figure out how to copy an entry from an esp and paste it into another. I'll use it to fix issues and manually merge plugins.

 

In example, Colourwheel did a great job overhauling woman and "womer" to make them sexier, but his female beat races tried to do the same but failed. I deleted all these NPCs from his esp, but rather I'd like to copy oblivion.esm's version of these NPCs and paste it into a new esp, and add it after Colourwheel. This way I'd not need to edit his esp and would undo what I didn't like on it.

 

Another issue I have is the missing hair and eyes on a lot of NPCs. I saw there are some of them missing, I don't remember now which esp does that. I could leave the NPC in the esp and revert only hair and eyes back to original.

 

Another advancement I did. I was really worried to have to disable MMM due to creatures added by it crashing the game. If I'd disable it, I'd lose all my looted items added by it. I was able to solve the crash by going to a house and waiting 4 days for them to reset, but I know it will happen again. I found that these items are in MMM.esm, I believe that leaving just this esm will keep these resources existing and remove everything else related to mod's esps. Anyway, I'll try to merge most of its esps and make bashed patch totally distinct from it.