Stories of early modding mishaps

[Mallomar42]

So if you look on any good load order or installation instruction for lovers pk somebody will tell you that you need a bash patch. I did that i patched and merged everything together with wrye bash and then moved it into place into my load order (well truth be told i did that months ago but you get the picture). Anyways way back when I did this and booted up the game it promptly ctd'd. Now at the time I was new to wrye bash (and modding in general, I decided to try modding oblivion after my first foray into modding with skyrim, cause I see that oblivion has some, let us say "particular", mods that skyrim doesn't and I want to use them) anyway for the next few hours I fiddle with my load order troll the forums activate and deactivate mods with no success finally I say "fuck it everything more or less worked before i installed the bash patch, I'll just deactivate the damn thing screw the rules I have no shits to give" I deactivate the thing and everything works perfectly. Things that didn't work, now work better than one would expect them to considering I just bulk installed most of the lovers with pk system without much thought. I haven't activated the bash patch since, I mean i continued to update the patch and go through motions of giving a shit about it but I kind of stopped doing that about a month ago...anyway every time I look on the trouble shooting forums or at recommended load orders and crash problems I inevitably see somebody mention something about their bash patch and i finally "think I know and I've been on the forum long enough hey I'll post some stuff and help people out cause I use to be in their position" only I don't know what to tell people "I don't know what to tell you about that I don't use the fucking thing and everything seems to run alright anyways" probably isn't what they want to hear. 

[myuhinny]

If you have mods that effect the same thing more than once then you need it.

 

Say you have a NPC and 3 mods effecting that NPC

Mod 1 = gives NPC a new hat

Mod 2= gives NPC a new shirt

Mod 3 = gives NPC new shoes

 

With bashed patch NPC gets hat, shirt and shoes. Without the patch NPC only gets shoe. This is how it works for all things not just NPCs. They will only get the shoes as the shoes are the last one in the list meaning the top one gets overridden by the 2nd one the 2nd one gets overridden by the 3rd one and the 3rd one becomes the winner as it has now overridden the other 2.

 

Merging you could of did something wrong that was causing problems. 

 

Don't Merge:

things that do modify many cells or world spaces (i.e., ULs)

mods where doing a clean save would result in unwanted loss of progress  (i.e., quest mods or item mods with quests to gain the items)

mods that are updated frequently (i.e., Reneer's Guard Overhaul)

mods with conflicting scripts (i.e., some pose mods)

mods with conflicting cell edits (i.e, some quest mods and landscape mods)

mods that are patched for compatibility with other mods (i.e., ThisMod+AnotherMod patches)

 

What Is Left:

game tweaks (i.e., hotkey mods)

graphical enhancements (i.e., face overrides, loading screens, retextures)

weather mods

Bash mergeable patches

mod optional add-ons (i.e., Supreme Magicka add-ons)

new item|weapon|clothes|armor mods that don't have item quests

patches for same mod or mod groups (i.e., Unofficial Official Mod Patches)

 

So something might of been done wrong it's hard to say as I have never really did any bashs/merging except from whatever wrye bash did.

 

[3m4041]

Before installing any mod you should a)Read the readme and see what they have to say.   b)look at pics posted by the mod author, and by users.  You might be familiar with something in the pics, that tells you this mod is going to conflict with a mod you already have in that same location.   c)read forum posts, and comments about the mod.  A lot of times it looks good on paper, but destroys your savegames, and crashes your game (keychain)   d)see what wrye bash and BOSS have to say about the mod.  "Contains dirty edits" etc.  e)see tutorial on cleaning mods, before you install them.  f)Google search the name of the mod.  You might find the aurthor's web-page and discover that there's a newer version, or that there are compatability patches available for popular mods.  Or you might find that the mod is on an "obsolete mod list" and discover a recommended replacement. g)open the mod all by itself in the CS before you activate it in game.  see what the mod does, what worldspaces it affects, or NPCs it changes, etc.  If you don't like what the mod does, you can change it, or make a patch for it.  You can't re-release someone else's mod that you've changed without permission, but you can do whatever you want with their mod, in your own game.  Making a patch is a little bit trickier, but preferred, if you intend on sharing your work.  g)Mod Manager, makes it simple to move mods in load order.

 

As you get more familiar with how the game works, the CS, and other available modding tools, it will be easier for you to get your game how you want it, and add/remove mods with ease. 

 

Now that we have other tools available to help us merge mods, the "Bash patch" is less and less needed.  

 

You don't have to bash patch your game, it's optional.   Only do it if you need to, and never, ever -"bash everything".