Managing healty save file

[Faivon]

Surely by now we all have a lots of mods in our data files and whenever there's a new interesting mods out, we're tempted to install and try it.

I start a character from a vanilla save game and keep on adding mods to improve him but now I notice there's a lot of errors and bugs in the save game and I don't want to lose any items that I collected and my progress due to the frequent crash.

Is there any way to maintain a healthy save game when you are always want to try new mods?

Backups? I don't know what to backup anymore :wallbash:

[bben46]

The easiest way is to copy your saved game folder to another location with a new name,

 

Example: Original file is C:\Documents and Settings\your user name\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion\Saves

 

create a new folder under the \Oblivion named OldSaves (or whatever you want to call it)

 

copy (Don't move) your \saves folder to: C:\Documents and Settings\your user name\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion\OldSaves

 

If you have a lot of saves it will take a while, but now your saved games are preserved up to that point.

 

If you do this every time you start a mod that you aren't sure will work right, you can go back to your saved saves by renaming the \Oblivion\Saves folder to something else like \Oblivion\saves 4-10-08 By using todays date you will know when you did it. Then copy over the Oldsaves and rename saves.

 

I have multiple hard drives and keep a folder on my F: drive labeled Oblivion Backups where I put copies of the save folder and the data folder with all of my mods. (C: drive has the regular game and D: drive has the version of the game I use for working on mods.)

[nosisab]

Beside the advices from bben46 you can try the 'Character management' and the performance purpose 'Streamline' utilities

 

The first will place your different characters in its own folders and optionally permit you choose one as the active, so all saves will be done on the correct folder.

 

The second will boost FPS and have some others nice features too, one being ring shifting the quicksave into up to 6, say streamsave, streamsave1...., very handy (I use 6, don't certain if this is the limit, but is enough for sure)

 

Edit: sometimes is useful saving via console, click the leftest key above the TAB one, most of time the '~' key, to open it. So use the command: save xyz where xyz is the name of your choice, just don't use blank spaces or special chars. Click the same key again, to close the console, and it's done.

[SickleYield]

All of these can help prevent permanent character loss, but no, there's no real way to keep a "healthy" string of saves that you won't have to ditch and start over. If you're careful how you install and uninstall mods, you can decrease the probability that your saves will go wonky.

 

Do's and Don'ts:

 

-Consider carefully which mods you need and/or want. If you're just wondering what

something looks like, see screenshots and ask others first. Google "problems with -name of mod-" to see what the worst-case scenario is. Just this has saved me many a time.

 

-Never download a mod whose description says 'a todal converssin i made all bi myself' and has no pictures. I.E., if it looks like it was made by an idiot, it probably was. Leave it be no matter how amazing the description claims it is.

 

-Consider starting a test character profile (Wrye Bash makes an excellent character organizer, among other things) just for trying new mods before you add them "permanently" to your "real" characters.

 

-ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS READ THE README! Most mods that will break your saves on uninstall will say so! Some will require elaborate procedures and clean saves to rescue your characters afterwards. A LONG README USUALLY MEANS THE MOD IS COMPLICATED. READ IT ANYWAY OR DON'T INSTALL THE MOD.

 

-Know your mod types. Things that make big gameplay changes or use massive amounts of scripting, like Deadly Reflexes and FCOM, are more likely to cause save breaks on uninstall. Things that just add an item usually won't. Beware of .esms if you think you might want to uninstall the mod later.

 

-If you uninstall an item such as armor or a weapon, make sure you make a save that is "clean" of it first - i.e., have your character sell or drop it and save with them in a different cell, THEN uninstall. Same with houses or estates. This gets annoying with multiple characters, but it pays off in the long run.

 

Hope that helps! I have one character whose face I've transferred to new saves twice now because I kept breaking her savegames. Note to self: Never install anything to do with Reich Parkeep if you EVER want to uninstall it again. :P

[Faivon]

All of these can help prevent permanent character loss, but no, there's no real way to keep a "healthy" string of saves that you won't have to ditch and start over. If you're careful how you install and uninstall mods, you can decrease the probability that your saves will go wonky.

 

Do's and Don'ts:

 

-Consider carefully which mods you need and/or want. If you're just wondering what

something looks like, see screenshots and ask others first. Google "problems with -name of mod-" to see what the worst-case scenario is. Just this has saved me many a time.

 

-Never download a mod whose description says 'a todal converssin i made all bi myself' and has no pictures. I.E., if it looks like it was made by an idiot, it probably was. Leave it be no matter how amazing the description claims it is.

 

-Consider starting a test character profile (Wrye Bash makes an excellent character organizer, among other things) just for trying new mods before you add them "permanently" to your "real" characters.

 

-ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS READ THE README! Most mods that will break your saves on uninstall will say so! Some will require elaborate procedures and clean saves to rescue your characters afterwards. A LONG README USUALLY MEANS THE MOD IS COMPLICATED. READ IT ANYWAY OR DON'T INSTALL THE MOD.

 

-Know your mod types. Things that make big gameplay changes or use massive amounts of scripting, like Deadly Reflexes and FCOM, are more likely to cause save breaks on uninstall. Things that just add an item usually won't. Beware of .esms if you think you might want to uninstall the mod later.

 

-If you uninstall an item such as armor or a weapon, make sure you make a save that is "clean" of it first - i.e., have your character sell or drop it and save with them in a different cell, THEN uninstall. Same with houses or estates. This gets annoying with multiple characters, but it pays off in the long run.

 

Hope that helps! I have one character whose face I've transferred to new saves twice now because I kept breaking her savegames. Note to self: Never install anything to do with Reich Parkeep if you EVER want to uninstall it again. :P

 

@bben46: Thank you, it may be a bit tedious but the most disastrous thing that could happen is that you lose all of your character progression (guild quests, max attribute, high level) provided that you didn't use any cheats or god mods. I'm backing one up now just in case anything funny happens in the future! :D

 

@noisisab: Uhm, are both of them mods? I can't find the first one and Streamline mod update has been stop last year I think which is version 3, I can't find the comments though

 

@Sickleyield: Definitely agree with the second point! Never agree anything with a picture! hehe...Another thing though, how to manage characters in Wrye Bash? I have it installed and I mainly used it for managing my mods (checking compatibility and some other stuffs) and sometime use it to import a character face into my character but I'll try to play around with it some more ;)

[SickleYield]

There's a huge not-particularly-easy-to-read readme with Wrye Bash, but in brief:

 

If you go to the "saves" tab and right click on the unlabeled plain bar at the top, you'll see some options, one of which is "profiles." Hovering your mouse over this lets you add or remove a profile. This will create a new folder in your my documents/my games/Oblivion/Saves directory. You can then either start a new game with the new profile selected in Wrye Bash, or if you're parceling out existing saves, cut and paste them between the actual folders.

 

You can switch between profiles in Wrye Bash by doing the right-click-on-bar thing, then choose the profile you want to use. Then close Wrye Bash and start Oblivion, and you'll only see the saves of that profile.

[nosisab]

You are right, the name is Oblivion Character Manager and they are all utilities, not exactly mods. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6386

 

About streamline http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10400

 

I'm using both of then for a time now without any troubles and under a very heavily modded environment, and since it can be useful, there is yet another utility 'The OBSE Launcher' that does more than the name says

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6696

 

this triad will make your life as oblivion player a bit easier, but there are more in the utilities category than just then, some others are real must have. Like Bash, Tes4Geko, Tes4view... these, as you become used with then, will advise you if a mod is dirty, conflicting and the like, before even you 'run' a suspected one.

 

Editing> As Sickleyeld said (well remembered), bash can do the profile management, but Oblivion char manager does it in a more friendly way and integrates with OBSE launcher as OBMM does too, putting all under one single starter. Anyway this feature in bash is just a little sidekick to the real power of the utility.

Both have a 'drawback' too, Bash relies on Python (not a bad thing) and OBSE launcher received critics for using .net2 (not a very good thing). Well... there are things that come with a price, and yet are worthy the pain.

[nosisab]

I just remembered a important 'issue' if using Oblivion Character Manager and Bash editing savegames features. Bash creates backups of the savegames, by default in the same folder where the normal 'saves' folder is. As OCM automatize the process it will create as much folders as much different characters are in the /save and any other subfolder it founds. That will include the bash backups, that will be seem as the same as the active ones and prompt to overwrite. Is advised to NOT accept this, for obvious reasons. Once I'm sure the bashed are functionals I just delete the backups or move the bash folder out of 'My Documents/' ... to avoid the warnings on OCM startup.