LOOT & Cleaning DLC's yes or no?

[KarmaPowered]

I've always cleaned Bethesda's DLCs, on every game since Oblivion, without any issue.

 

I can't vouch for Fallout4 yet, but I know for sure that cleaning a certain official Knight DLC did save me from many a headache and issues in-game if I hadn't done it.

 

Anyway, it all boils down to two questions to me :

 

- does it do any harm to clean ? No, it even can potentially be beneficial.

- does it take long to do ? No. It takes a couple of minutes if done properly, and I think it's a sane investment given how long the game lasts me.

 

Unless its author explicitly specifies otherwise, it's always a good idea to clean mods downloaded from the Nexus.

 

You would be surprised how many of them contain redundant references or deleted vanilla nav-meshes, even among the most endorsed ones.

 

Last, don't forget to use the UFO4P, and ask mod authors to forward its fixes in their mods.

Edited March 25, 2018 by KarmaPowered

[KahvozeinsFang]

I was wondering this same thing because vortex is telling me the DLC's are dirty. I dont believe it's that big of a deal though, since I've never experienced a crash that didn't involve a mod causing it.

 

And my game launcher doesn't even recognize my video card. It's too new for it to know what the video card is. Or so I've been told.

[parchedgoose]

Was wondering the same since LOOT says all of the DLC's from Bethesda are dirty even though its a clean install. Wonder if this is a steam issue?

[DaughertyUSMC]

I have in fact cleaned my DLC esm's a few times with no alarming results (worked just fine) What I did NOT do is rely on any auto-backup save. Keep it simple, says I. Just copy/paste the dang things AND a copy of several of yur latest saves to yur desktop, then clean away and have done. Something goes awry in-game, post-cleaning, well then yur desktop now holds the easy solution. Piece of cake :)

 

NOTE!!

 

Oftentimes a mod author will warn against cleaning his or her mod - that the "dirty edits" Loot will find, are in fact, supposed to be as they are, and cleaning them will break the mod, and likely, yur game with a now corrupted save file(s). Another damn good reason to ALWAYS read the complete description page for any mod before installing.

[DjinnKiller]

I've done both and haven't noticed anything either way. But (my usual disclaimer) ymmv. Just make a backup, test and if it goes pear shaped, roll it back.

[Zzyxzz]

Regardless of the nay-sayers, I've cleaned DLC files according to the small tutorial I found here on Nexus. Never ran into problems. On the contrary, I used to have quite a lot of crashes and none since I did the cleaning...

 

I'm not a modder myself, but when folks like Arthmoor (co-developer of LOOT and the Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch) says it's better to clean the lot and that there's no consequences when doing so, then I have a tendency to believe the guy, as opposed to people coming along and just saying "bad idea" without further explanation.

 

I've never cleaned any DLCs and I'm playing Skyrim SE + Fallout 4 without any crashes, they work are rock solid. The only crashes I had in Skyrim SE were due to a skeleton mod, but with https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/21294 you can find those crashes.

 

But if you clean DLCs and people use those refs in their mod, your game will crash. You won't gain any performance or something else from cleaning, only a weak spot that may crash your game at some point. The more you fiddle with files, the more issues may arise.

 

Crashes and other issues are always connected to mods that are not well created and bloat your game or incompatibility issues with other mods. It also depends on what the mods you installed do. Adding 5 mods that cause a lot of stress to papyrus will also make your game very unstable and can cause freezes or crashes. Yes, a lot of scripted mods can kill your game.

[Perraine]

 

Regardless of the nay-sayers, I've cleaned DLC files according to the small tutorial I found here on Nexus. Never ran into problems. On the contrary, I used to have quite a lot of crashes and none since I did the cleaning...

 

I'm not a modder myself, but when folks like Arthmoor (co-developer of LOOT and the Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch) says it's better to clean the lot and that there's no consequences when doing so, then I have a tendency to believe the guy, as opposed to people coming along and just saying "bad idea" without further explanation.

 

I've never cleaned any DLCs and I'm playing Skyrim SE + Fallout 4 without any crashes, they work are rock solid. The only crashes I had in Skyrim SE were due to a skeleton mod, but with https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/21294 you can find those crashes.

 

But if you clean DLCs and people use those refs in their mod, your game will crash. You won't gain any performance or something else from cleaning, only a weak spot that may crash your game at some point. The more you fiddle with files, the more issues may arise.

 

Crashes and other issues are always connected to mods that are not well created and bloat your game or incompatibility issues with other mods. It also depends on what the mods you installed do. Adding 5 mods that cause a lot of stress to papyrus will also make your game very unstable and can cause freezes or crashes. Yes, a lot of scripted mods can kill your game.

 

BS!

 

1) Even Bugthesda knows their game is a buggy nightmare with random crashes, bad optimisation and sometimes unplayable content. (The whole reason for the "pre-combined" mesh system was to try and combat the woefully outdated game engine) Anyone claiming Skyrim or FO4 are "rock solid" is outright lying. And even Bethesda happily host the Unofficial Patches for those games, because why would they bother wasting time and money fixing the game themselves, when someone else will do it for them.

 

You also need only open the CK for either game to know how many issues the games have.

 

2) "Cleaning" DLC's with FO4Edit does NO SUCH THING!

 

It does two main things only - It removes "identical to master" records (i.e if the exact same record is also in the main fallout4.esm, then it's pointless for the game to load the same data twice, and in fact may even cause issues) and secondly it "un-deletes" any deleted records that it can and simply "hides" them from view. In other words it actually PREVENTS crashes from mods referencing deleted data.

 

3) Crashes and other issues "may" be caused by mods or mod conflicts, and yes, to many "script heavy" mods can be a disaster, but with the advent of both FO4Edit and LOOT, problems with badly made mods are now far less frequent.

[Deleted2146844User]

Though some how by cleaning it removes 95.3 MB, though weird it has been crashing on start menu. I just had to verify the integrity of the files and after cleaning that many files were reinstalled.

[kestrelhawk]

I have always cleaned the DLC's in both Skyrim and FO4, and never had any issues. On the contrary, I even got minor performance increases in FO4. I wish I still had the article from years ago that recommended cleaning, but it was from the old BethSoft forum and is long gone. (you even have to clean Dawnguard twice as it does not get all the ITMs the first go 'round.) I just clean'em all.

[Athanatos173]

Late to the discussion but I had cleaned all the files and was having problems with the Nuka World DLC, with some textures not loading and a few other problems, enough that I was basically just going in every play-through and just killing all the raiders right off the bat just to get out of there as fast as possible.

I am running with over 250 mods and couldn't figure out which if any was causing my problems.

Turns out simply using the "dirty" DLC files solved my issues.