Help with Merging Mods

[ChocomintCA]

Alright, so. I have too many mods, or at least that's what a few other topics I read say. My game keeps crashing at the Dead Money Medical Clinic, and maybe one of the reasons might be having too many mods. I counted them all and its around 85. I've looked through FNV Edit a bit (I'm a complete noob at it though) and there wasn't too many conflicts. Just only with Project Nevada (Rebalance) and FOOK DLC. The only thing that was conflicting though were just food items or weapons, stuff like that. The next area loads up for maybe 0.1 seconds then crashes instantly. I'm not too sure what it could be, but I could post my mod load order if asked, even though I'm not really focusing on that. Right now my futile attempts are on merging mods together. After I got God/Dog, then that annoying Ghoul, I have to go get Christine. Like I said, the loading screen is fine, then it crashes, everytime. Since I don't really know too much about mods and how they work (I barely understand it), I'm not too sure what the problem could be. There doesn't seem to be conflicts in FNV Edit. My guess would have been Interior Lighting by Sarge (or whatever his/her name is), because it does edit 'areas'. Then again, what do I know? So I decided to come to the forums (for once), and ask for help.

 

What I was hoping to do was lower my mod count by merging all the useless ESPs together. Things like WMX, which have a bunch of DLC support esps, which make up half of my load order. Half of the load order is really mods, the rest is patches/support etc. I looked around at some other topics on asking this, and they said to try TESnip in FOMM, but I thought FNV Edit would be easier. I was hoping that maybe somebody could write a simplified version of merging stuff, but FNV Edit is probably as easy as it gets. Or maybe somebody might be able to save me the time of messing around with this, because it might not do anything? I'm not really sure what to do about the problem, other than panic and do the basic troubleshooting (which doesn't work), and hope it works. What really made me come here was questions about the Manual which has an ESM file out of nowhere, and since I'm new to this, I didn't know if I was to make one or something. So I thought maybe I could get a noob-friendly version of the manual version on the forums.

 

But if this isn't going to help at all, what might? Would 'optimizing' my load order help out? Or clearing out some of the useless mods, even though I have already done that. The things that are left are what I consider 'essential', but are not really needed, things like Armor, Readius, Enhanced Shaders, MRE's etc. I would really like to get this resolved soon, because I bought the DLCs to play them, not to have them sit in my Quests section forever. Also, I'm sorry if maybe the answer is painfully obvious, I'm not really the most updated person on modding etc. on the nexus. Another sorry if there might be a lack of information about the problem etc., I'm just not too sure what to include.

Edited August 4, 2011 by ChocomintCA

[JasonDangerously]

I've been seeing around here a lot is about 75 mods to keep it to, so you might try trimming it down further. Also, how many of your mods were recently installed?

[ChocomintCA]

I've been seeing around here a lot is about 75 mods to keep it to, so you might try trimming it down further. Also, how many of your mods were recently installed?

I've had them for a while, I updated them all a couple days ago and today. I haven't played the DLCs in a long time, and I've added some more mods after I had this problem the first time. So there's a big 'time gap' in between the mods I had back when Dead Money came out and now (Or lots of new mods), so I'm not sure what new ones might be causing the problem. If that's what you're getting at...

Recently though... I'd say three? I also got a couple Ojo textures packs etc.

[walrus2517]

You can try Wrye Flash NV and make a "Bashed Patch". It will do a lot of things that should help with stability, but most importantly in your case it should be able to merge several of your mods into the bashed patch so they can be deactivated.

 

Once you get everything setup, go into Data/Mopy/Extras and copy "Bashed Patch, 0.esp" to your Data directory (just copy, don't cut as you'll probably want to make another patch later). Open Wry Flash, move "Bashed Patch, 0.esp" to the bottom of your load order, right-click on it and select "Rebuild Patch". The first thing it will ask you is if you want to deactivate a selection of your mods (it will choose which ones) it will merge into the patch. Select "Yes". On the next window that comes up, make sure only "Alias Mod Names", "Merge Patches", and "Leveled Lists" are selected. Click on "Merge Patches" then on the right click "Select All". Then click "Build Patch" at the bottom.

 

EDIT: If you can't adjust your load order the first time you open Wrye Flash, right-click on the headers (File, Load Order, Rating, etc.) and make sure "Lock Times" isn't checked.

 

It probably won't get you down to 75 but keep in mind that is an arbitrary number people are recommending, not a fixed cap. You still won't be running a very stable game with that many mods.

 

Also, anytime you add or remove mods, you need to go through the above steps to make another bashed patch, including copying the blank esp from the Mopy/Extras directory.

 

Finally, if you are only having trouble with crashes in one area (particularly if it's an official DLC area), you probably only have one mod conflicting with that area, in which case you'll just have to activate/deactivate your mods through a process of elimination to determine which it is.

 

Best of luck!

[Jeux]

You can try Wrye Flash NV and make a "Bashed Patch". It will do a lot of things that should help with stability, but most importantly in your case it should be able to merge several of your mods into the bashed patch so they can be deactivated.

 

Once you get everything setup, go into Data/Mopy/Extras and copy "Bashed Patch, 0.esp" to your Data directory (just copy, don't cut as you'll probably want to make another patch later). Open Wry Flash, move "Bashed Patch, 0.esp" to the bottom of your load order, right-click on it and select "Rebuild Patch". The first thing it will ask you is if you want to deactivate a selection of your mods (it will choose which ones) it will merge into the patch. Select "Yes". On the next window that comes up, make sure only "Alias Mod Names", "Merge Patches", and "Leveled Lists" are selected. Click on "Merge Patches" then on the right click "Select All". Then click "Build Patch" at the bottom.

 

EDIT: If you can't adjust your load order the first time you open Wrye Flash, right-click on the headers (File, Load Order, Rating, etc.) and make sure "Lock Times" isn't checked.

 

 

If that doesn't work, not sure what will. my knowledge of FNVEdit is limited. Try reviewing this:

 

[ChocomintCA]

I tried Wrye Flash/Bash (Whatever it is called) when I had nVamp for a short time. I didn't really see much of a difference, but I'll try it again. I did have trouble installing it because I had to get something from the Oblivion Nexus, and mess around with the installer etc., and I only got it installed out of luck. Either way I'll try it again.

Also would it be possible to have a merged patch, and a bashed patch together? I saw something about that a couple months ago but didn't really bother to look into it.

 

Edit : I seriously don't get how to install Wrye Bash, or Python, or flash, I honestly don't know what to do. -.-

Edited August 4, 2011 by ChocomintCA

[barrettsfloyd]

Personally, I think that 75 plugin max is a fake. I have 85 plugins ATM (75 active) and whether or not I have all of them active makes no difference in the stability of my game. I have relatively recently reinstalled my OS and am still in the process of re-acquiring my mods...Mostly meaning that I plan on adding more to my list.

 

I believe that the physical limit is still 255 plugins, but people have reported hitting their max before that. You can try disabling mods (hopefully) until you hit on the offending mod(s) (yes, I believe you have a conflict), then deal with it by making a merged/bashed patch.

 

I use both merged and bashed patches, but will not bash one of my merged patches.

 

Hope some of this makes sense and is helpful.

[n0t0ryczny]

Mod cap is limited mostly by speed of your HDD. If you keep your drive defragmented, less than 100 save files (it must read the whole list before saving), virtual memory file (pagefile.sys) on another physical drive, and also use as few large .bsa files as possible you may be able to go much higher than 75. Hires terrain texture packs seem to have the biggest hit on performance, large .bsa are next to them - game has to read whole archive to use a tiny mesh. Mods like Vurt's Flora Overhaul, EVE or Electro-City change a lot of content so performance hit is also considerable. New radio stations with large audio files are always risky. IWS and Populated Wasteland add a lot of stuff for CPU to handle, try to find 'creatures per cell' in mod's settings and decrease it to ~20. 30 ghouls in short corridor are evenmore likely to CTD than a 10 25mb texture files. I've hit 5b plugins, DLCs included and it seems to be a limit on my PC, because some of these are really resource hungry (not mentioning theoretically CTD-forcing MoMod + Very Voracious Vermin combo). Edited August 4, 2011 by n0t0ryczny

[barrettsfloyd]

Mod cap is limited mostly by speed of your HDD. If you keep your drive defragmented, less than 100 save files (it must read the whole list before saving), virtual memory file (pagefile.sys) on another physical drive, and also use as few large .bsa files as possible you may be able to go much higher than 75. Hires terrain texture packs seem to have the biggest hit on performance, large .bsa are next to them - game has to read whole archive to use a tiny mesh. Mods like Vurt's Flora Overhaul, EVE or Lumenarium change a lot of content so performance hit is also considerable. New radio stations with large audio files are always risky. IWS and Populated Wasteland add a lot of stuff for CPU to handle, try to find 'creatures per cell' in mod's settings and decrease it to ~20. 30 ghouls in short corridor are evenmore likely to CTD than a 10 25mb texture files. I've hit 5b plugins, DLCs included and it seems to be a limit on my PC, because some of these are really resource hungry (not mentioning theoretically CTD-forcing MoMod + Very Voracious Vermin combo).

See that's the funny thing, I use most of the mods that you've mentioned. Now sitting at 88 plugins (76 active) and still stable whether or not I've got all active.

 

You also didn't mention anything about GPU or the processor, which has a big impact on performance. A lower end GPU and/or processor won't be able to handle as much as a higher end card/cpu. I have NV and FO3 installed on a WD Caviar Black 1TB 7200 rpm HDD...I don't think speed of the HDD the biggest issue, Defragging however, is excellent advice, as is keeping your save file from getting too large...which reminds me that I need to delete a few.

[n0t0ryczny]

I didn't mention graph card or CPU because they are kinda obvious. RAM is a non-issue because of outdated Gamebryo engine, assorted memory leaks and, you know, 4gb enabler. As for defragging - imagine 19 gigs of FNV in tiny files, each in tiny pieces (say, a little 178 kb texture in 900 fragments) and the horror of loading a new worldspace. As for save file list - just keep 300 fragmented files and check how long it takes from hitting ESC during game and selecting SAVE in main menu to actually see that little picture on first save file. And then just try to scroll down to the last one.

 

EDIT: One of Steam's undoing is that it forces you to install all games on the system partition. Since now your HDD must now co-exist with your OS and share the HDD transfer rate this is, to put it mildly, suboptimal solution.

 

As for WD Black drives - if you have a 10FALS, watch out. Those like to die or even DOA when you buy one. Had two of these, one DOA and one two-weeks-wonder. OTOH I have 4 older blue 640s , 2 green 1 TBs and 500 GB blue and they are just fine.

Edited August 4, 2011 by n0t0ryczny