Growing pains. CK use and modding other peoples mods

[lylesloudmouth]

so im finally growing a pair and starting to toy with the ck for personal use. i have a couple things in mind id like to do, but they seem a bit far fetched for my experience, so i have been altering mods that i love overall, but have minor qualms with. most of them are asthetic. for instance, i am running better villages for its overall awsomeness. i am also running expandedvillagesresource esm, dragonbridge esp and darkwatercrossing esp standalones because i really enjoy what those two in particular add. problem is dragonbridge. i ADORE dragonbridge south by expanded towns and villages, but better villages alters one house in particular that is also altered by expanded towns... sooooo pop open the CK and simply delete the addition from better villages i didnt care for. seems like problem solved. i dunno who here has ever been to boston, but theres one buliding on MIT campus that reminded me of the two mods working together. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9edHOpFxu7Y/UFIZvcWfaWI/AAAAAAAASaY/FWG3CeEFZDQ/s1600/MIT+Building.jpg. anyway, minus its hideous appearence, dragonbridge worked fine. sooo like i said, CK it away. one mods building gone, others still there, no ctds no anything.

 

so, my question for the endlessly wise and patient nexus forums members is, assuming this method is only used for minor details for conflicting mods, is this safe? what, if any, long term hinderances am i facing? because theres more than a few more that, now that ive taken the time to learn how to determine what cells are affected by what mods, im getting bonered over fixing my little problems.

 

any input welcome.

 

thanx ahead of time

[DizzasterJuice]

I don't think adding and deleting architecture will really hurt anything as long as it isn't quest related and you fix the navmesh. Navmeshes that don't match the cell will have your npcs walking into things and other unexpected navigation. If you have 2 plugins that modify the same thing the game will use the one that is loaded last.

[David Brasher]

You will want to be careful not to delete any vanilla Skyrim references or certain other things. This creates what the Wrye Bash folks refer to as a UDR reference and they can cause CTDs if another mod tries to edit the reference you deleted. If you upload any of your work, you will want to be sure that things are disabled or moved to where nobody can see them rather than deleted.

[lylesloudmouth]

thanx both of you.

 

@ david brasher, ive been careful so far, i do believe. so far to the best of my knowledge the only things ive deleted have been mod added. and i do not intend on uploading. i guess i could potentially try to make compatibility patches for people trying to use both the mods im working with, but do not at all trust myself to be responsible for other peoples games running smoothly. this is just personal usage were talking.

 

and @diazzasterjuice, i was under the same impression, and am sure that overall yes, the last loaded will "win", but i was having a weird case of the houses from both mods were loading and i got a freak house that looked like that link i posted. it was oddball s***

[lylesloudmouth]

by the way, 'nother question... if i accidentially deleted a vanilla navamesh, would the verify integrity of game cache option work for restoring them?

[David Brasher]

The way to restore parts of the game that are deleted by mods is to do modcleaning. The Navmesh is part of an .esm or an .esp. It is not an external file. So verifying game cache will do nothing for you in this case, but you can easily fix it by modcleaning with the CK. You just have to find the cell with the deleted navmesh, select the unwanted edit to "ignore" it, reload the mod in the CK, and then save again.

 

Here is an old Oblivion tutorial: Mod Cleaning Tutorial. It looks like the information on modcleaning with the CS/CK is still valid.

Edited September 15, 2012 by David Brasher

[lylesloudmouth]

hey thanx for the link. looking into it.