Editing npc's in a mod

[marcusvorenus]

first off I am horrible at modding. Second I am using a ton of mods (probably some 200+) and would like to thank everyone who is at least decent at modding and has allowed me to mooch off of their work. Now to the point. Basically I wanted to personallize a couple of mods for my own game, but everytime I try it either does nothing, or messes something up horribly. For example, I would really like to use the cosmetic comiliation with the Rhianna companion mod and edit her appearance...possibley even her race, but every time I try either the changes don't take effect, somehow when the changes are loaded they aren't loaded correctly so instead of the face I want I get some god awful face, often times her voice drops out..., and occasionnally and intermittently she will no longer activate when I try to activate her. The other mod I was really looking to mix up a bit was vile lair, I really wanted to change the dark minion to a female and possibly put some more miniony style clothes on her, namely exnems shadowsilks. However whenever I try the minion just turns into a naked version of himself, which is unsatisfactory. Thanks in advance anyone who can assist me.

[Vagrant0]

Are you loading up the mod you want to change as the active file (make a copy of it first), or are you saving a new mod containing the changes you made? Is the mod a .esp or a .esm? You cannot change anything within a .esp without that mod being active and you can only change those things within that .esp, not anything within any of the other loaded mods. If it is a .esm, you cannot load it as active so would have to save your changes as a new mod with that .esm loaded, and adjust the loading order so that your changes are loaded after the .esm it was based on. Additionally, altering mods can change their loading order, if you have multiple mods that add hair, change races, the same NPCs, and in some cases dialogues changing the loading order can cause these to work improperly.