Tutorial - Cleaning Mods with the CK

[mgbeach]

This is something that I just couldn't wrap my head around and I know other people are having issues with it as well. Finally after a lot of staring at the screen and trial-and-error I've figured out how to use the CK to clean mods. Now, as this is something I've come up with myself, if anyone sees something I'm doing that is crazy-wrong please don't hesitate to let me know. As always when dealing with something new like this, please make a backup of your mod before proceeding.

 

I'll say that again... make a backup of your mod before going any further.

 

Now, open up the CK as usual and go to File.. Data like you would to open your mod for editing.

 

Load Skyrim.esm (the reason for this will be clear in a second)

 

Once Skyrim.esm finishes loading go back to File..Data and set your mod as the active file but do not click OK

 

Click the Data button and a window will pop up looking something like the image below (without the colors and markup). If you had not loaded Skyrim.esm first, the Editor ID column would be filled with item ID numbers instead of names.

 

http://i.imgur.com/yNBYV.jpg

 

Resist the urge to change the sorting in any way. It is set up perfectly for our purposes by default.

 

The items at top that I've highlighted in blue are those that you have added to the game in this mod, in most cases by duplicating other items and editing their properties. So, these are good to go and should not be touched.

 

Now go down the Type column until you come to the first CELL entry.

 

In the example above, from my Drakehelm Manor and Grotto house mod, the first CELL entry is for GrottoShip. This is one of the interior cells which is part of the mod, and all the entries below it down to the next CELL entry are changes the mod makes to the GrottoShip cell. So, they are also good to go and nothing needs to be done.

 

As you may have figured out by now, we want to continue scrolling down the list looking for each CELL entry. If it is a cell that should be affected by the mod, continue down to the next CELL entry.

 

When you come to a CELL that should not be affected by your mod, select it by left clicking and then go down to the last line before the next CELL entry and shift+left click to select all the lines in between.

 

Press DELETE on your keyboard and a warning window will pop up asking if you really want to mark multiple items as Ignored. Click YES and then you will see changes in the Ignored column, as below (again I've added color and markup to differentiate the "clean" and "dirty" parts of the list, as well as to point out the CELL entries)

 

http://i.imgur.com/kpEQ9.jpg

 

Continue in this manner until you've marked all the entries that are not a part of your mod as Ignored.

 

Then hit the Close button at the bottom of the Details window.

 

Again make sure that your mod is Set As Active and now open it up.

 

Save your mod to commit the changes you've made. Check everything out in-game to make sure you didn't accidentally set some critical part of your mod to Ignore.

 

If you did make a mistake somewhere, you should have your backup file to revert back to and try again.

 

This method worked for me, and I'm pretty certain it is a proper way of going about things. Again, I welcome any comments as to better ways to do things, errors in my methods, etc.

 

I hope this helps someone!

[jimhsu]

Quick note: for exterior edits, be sure to NOT accidentally delete the GRUP (world) records above the cell that you want to keep.

 

Example attached (the cell I want to delete is highlighted).

 

http://i.imgur.com/nYdm2.png

 

Notice that the GRUPs that you want to delete all have "Cell" in the name (with some exceptions like "Exterior Cells" which should NOT be deleted).

Edited March 2, 2012 by jimhsu

[jet4571]

You can also use TesVsnip to clean your mod, and I actualy find it easier than the CK. Is what I do is have TesVsnip open with the mod loaded and the CK. I scroll through the list of cells and look for an asterisk at the end of a name or coordinates for Tamriel in the CK so i can open it in the render window to see if its part of my mod or not. If I fiind one that I didnt want changed then In TesVsnip I delete the record and everything is deleted at once without the need to remove each change in the cell itself. you just delete the cell name and the grup directly below and sometimes the grup itself if it contains just that one cell.

 

examples:

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f257/JET-WTF/tesvsnipexample1.jpg

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f257/JET-WTF/tevsnipexample2.jpg

[Sunnie]

I don't recommend using TESVSnip at this point, it's still in a rather early state. It is much safer and reliable to use the toolset to clean mods for now. Edited March 2, 2012 by Sunnie

[jet4571]

I do though. The CK is riddled with more bugs than an entomologists display case as is and you are more likely to have a game breaking change from the CK before deleting parts of a mod the CK added without the modder actually making a change with TesVsnip. If the CK was the best tool for every job then we wouldn't need to clean a mod just because you copied a bookshelf from a cell and put it into yours. Or copying the Whiterun stables because it is already put together. Or my favorite putting a building in Tamriel to see how it would look in that spot then deleting and moving to a new cell and yet the last cell is now included in your mod with NO changes to default.

 

Remember It is the CK creating the dirty cells requiring the cleaning..

[David Brasher]

The CK is more convenient than the TESVSnip because you have been modding and already have the CK there and open. But just as there was mod dirt that the Oblivion CS could not remove that had to be removed with TES4Edit, it seems that there is sometimes mod dirt that the CK is not powerful enough to remove, so you have to use TESVSnip.

[kane4355]

I have had to use both in some instances. when cleaning through the CK i got some errors that were corrupting my mod files (dont ask me why?) but when i did the same changes theough TESVsnip it worked fine. So a juggle of both has been helpful. I have also found the one for the CK to be easier to use and understand once you get an idea of how its laid out. there are still a few things im not to sure about but i havent had to mess with them. Like right under worldspaces even before the cells, there are references listed. I dont know what those are for?! and maybe i overlooked this item in your tutorial but it seems you had the jist of this.

 

Also on a side note you can quickly scroll through all the cells and world spaces or even all the lines of data by just clicking the first letter of the data line on your keyboard. for example, to scroll the world spaces click "W". for cells, click "C".

 

and does anyone elses CK crash when you accidently click details when Skyrim.esm is selected?

[nosisab]

By principle Skyrim.esm should never be edited, and actually CK does not allow editing it :)

 

About using TES4Edit... well, is for TES4 (Oblivion) and most headers are different, is risky to use it to clean a mod at this point, to say the least.

[jet4571]

Nobody suggested using TES4Edit with Skyrim. I suggested using TESVSnip as well as the CK suggestion Jimhsu and MGBeach said and David made a comment about it and how with Oblivion he had to use TES4Edit to clean Oblivion mods. Also where do you get we are suggesting someone change Skyrim.esm? Edited March 4, 2012 by jet4571

[SoLoMaGiK]

This tutorial has been extremely helpful to me, thank you!