Two questions: One easy, one not so much...

[Lardtree3]

1. Okay, so my first question, which I think is the easier of the two. I used to run MMM (3.7.3) by itself and had made some edits to the creatures to my liking and saved them in a separate esp called MMMEdits that I had load after all the MMM files. I recently installed Fran's which seemed to overwrite my edits despite loading before MMM in load order. Fran's ESM loaded after MMM though, but I fixed that and it didn't seem to solve it. So I did the same thing, went in Fran's ESM, made some edits and saved it as an ESP called Fran's Edits and had it load after MMMEdits. The one edit I was unable to make is what has me stuck. One of my original changes was to make it so Balrogs from MMM were no longer 100% immune to normal weapons (I'm not much of a caster so that makes fights with them impossible). It was an easy change for MMM and made things considerably enjoyable. The problem is, I can't find Balrog's or any reference to them in any of the Fran files, yet somehow Fran's has overwritten my edit and they are now immune to my bow and sword again. The few measly spells I do know do little to their considerable HP (they are classified as Bosses in Fran's) so sadly, I am forced to console kill them, which really disappoints me. I have no idea where in Fran's files the Balrog data is stored and I fear the manipulating the load order so that MMM takes precedence would screw with Fran's leveled lists. Anyone willing to dive into the CS with me and point me in the right direction?

 

2. Okay, second problem, the tricky one, involves a mix up of animations. I believe 3 mods are involved: DR5, UV2, and DMC Stylish. I had DR and DMC installed and thought I'd give UV a shot as well. I activated, but deactivated it before actually using it at all in game. Here's where things get a little weird. Another mod problem caused me to run ACV to try and fix some replacement problems. This resulted in all of my 1st person animations going away except for the DR Standing Thrust power attack. Don't ask what caused me to take this next step, but I reactivated UV2 in mod manager, and deactivated it again without going in game. This fixed my first person animations, but took away the DR thrust animation. However, the timing on when the attacks hit is still tied to the Stylish animations. Example: What would normally be the standing thrust from DR/DMC is the vanilla standing power attack, however the attack hits before the animation goes through because it seems to be using the timing from the Thrust. The same seems to be true of other power attacks, some hitting early or late.

 

At this point I tried reinstalling DR manually by copying everything over again. Big mistake. There go my 1st person animations again. So I reactivate/deactivate UV2 (which, keep in mind, has never actually been run in game yet) and I'm back to where I was. Vanilla animations with the timing from Stylish/DR attacks. Note here that in 3rd person all of the DMC attacks look and time just fine, including the DR thrust. Another oddity is that while in first person, the backwards powerattack has vanilla animation and Stylish timing, but doesn't rush you forward. In 3rd person the timing and animation line up, but the animation thrusts you forward like it's supposed to. I'm out of ideas on how to fix this, but as it isn't game breaking I've just put up with it. All the trouble seemed to occur after I ran ACV.

 

Phew. Long post. Hope someone can help with one or both of these problems.

[MShoap13]

Fran's won't have any information on Balrogs as it doesn't add them to the game, MMM does. You could try copying the Balrog's information from MMMedits to Fransedits but this may or may not work as it's probably more than one entry and you'd probably have to copy all of them.

 

However, magically enchanting your weapon or using silver/daedric weapons they should ignore the immunity to normal weapons. I don't even think magically enchanted weapons have to have any charge for this to work but I could be wrong about that.

 

Both of your problems sound like WIndows UAC is having fun with your Oblivion install. Are you on Windows Vista/7 and is Oblivion installed in the default location (C:\Program FIles)? If so you either need to disable UAC or move your Oblivion install following Bben's Guide. The latter is highly recommended.

[Lardtree3]

Fran's won't have any information on Balrogs as it doesn't add them to the game, MMM does. You could try copying the Balrog's information from MMMedits to Fransedits but this may or may not work as it's probably more than one entry and you'd probably have to copy all of them.

 

However, magically enchanting your weapon or using silver/daedric weapons they should ignore the immunity to normal weapons. I don't even think magically enchanted weapons have to have any charge for this to work but I could be wrong about that.

 

Both of your problems sound like WIndows UAC is having fun with your Oblivion install. Are you on Windows Vista/7 and is Oblivion installed in the default location (C:\Program FIles)? If so you either need to disable UAC or move your Oblivion install following Bben's Guide. The latter is highly recommended.

 

Thanks for the quick reply! Oddly enough, all the weapons I used are set in the CS to 'ignore normal weapon resitance' and this never seemed to have any effect on the Balrogs. When I edited it in MMM, it was a simply ability in CS that, among other things, granted them 100% reistance to normal weapons. Removing that attribute from it fixed it for MMM. I'll play around with the esps some more unless anyone else has more ideas.

 

UAC is completely disabled on my machine, I know what I'm doing well enough that I don't need Windows 7 policing me. I guess a possible solution I hadn't thought of would be to deactivate DMC stylish as well. Is there a way to restore all of my animation meshes to their vanilla state? Then I can start from scratch and just reinstall DMC and DR since those two were working together just fine.

[MShoap13]

Just delete everything in the folder(s) the animations are in. The vanilla anims are stored in a .bsa archive.

[Lardtree3]

Oh. Well...that simplifies things. I'll give that a try. Thanks!

[Lardtree3]

No such luck, can't get the animations working right. I don't really want to do a fresh install just to fix this so I guess I can just deal with it.