DynDOLOD's, Merged/Bashed Patch Confusion

[Murielkai]

I have gone through this in the past and always found different answers. I have also search many different forums and everyone seems to have there own opinion about what to do or the order to create these patches.

 

I found this guide here:

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1335770-bashed-or-merged-patches-and-you/

 

...and tried to follow along but it doesn't say anything about DynDOLOD's. So if anyone skilled modders are hanging around, please throw me a bone here...

 

The reason I am asking this (again) after many years of modding is because of recent weirdness in my game that I am trying to root out. What I have BEEN doing is 1) Creating the Merged Patch with TESVEdit then unchecking it and creating a Bashed Patch and unchecking it... then running DynDOLOD's and turn everything back on in MO before launching the game. So my load order has been:

 

Merged Patch

Bashed Patch

DynDOLOD's

 

But I am reading now that I need to delete the leveled lists from the Merged Patch because Wrye Bash adds those to the Bashed Patch... that's not a problem but I am uncertain if I am creating my patches in the right order or whether or not I should turn them off and make one at a time.

 

What I am reading is saying to create the Bashed Patch FIRST then create the Merged Patch but delete the Merged Patch leveled lists ( I assume that is for NPC's and Items) THEN run DynDOLOD's. So my main question is... do I create each patch independently (meaning make the bashed patch then "uncheck" it and make the merged patch) or do I merged the bashed patch into the merged patch also?

 

And for DynDOLOD's I believe it said to turn OFF both merged and bashed patch before running it.

 

Any advice would be fantastic, thanks!

Edited May 18, 2016 by Murielkai

[IsharaMeradin]

Your order is fine. That's how I did mine at any rate. More specifically...

 

I'd delete any existing merge patch.

Deactivate the bashed patch.

Deactivate dyndolod.

Rebuild the merge patch.

Delete all leveled lists from the merge patch.

Rebuild the bashed patch (with merged patch active).

Reset & rebuild dyndolod (with both merged and bashed active)

 

I would also check the resultant plugins in TES5Edit just to make sure nothing funky was going on between them.

 

If you'd rather, you can do each with the others inactive. Still would be good to load all 3 together in TES5Edit just to ensure that there are no unwanted conflicts.

[Murielkai]

Alright, thanks! It seems the important thing is to delete the leveled lists from the merged patch, I never knew to do that in the past. For Oblivion I think I got away with just using a bashed patch and never had too many issues, for Fallout it was just a merged patch I believe. Someone said you should use both patches for all the games. Either way I appreciate you confirming this for me, I needed to root out my patches as being the culprit for my weirdness.

[Gl17chM0D]

I've been Modding for over 3 years now, but have NEVER used a merged OR bashed patch! LOL. I'm currently working on learning how, and thanks to you guys, as well as all the other helpers like Gopher and Gamer Poets on YouTube, I've now got a much better idea of how this process goes. It's way more complicated that I ever thought, but I think I'm getting the hang of it now! Thanks for being awesome Modding community!