Guide to make a patch for solving conflicts

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Guide to make a patch for solving conflicts This is how I do it. It works for me, and I could make around 200 mods compatible (I’m not gonna count them) To give an example, I downloaded the mod “Queen of the Damned Deadlier Serana” and tried to make it compatible.

Note: You will probably notice there are MANY ‘conflicts’ between your mods. But if you have a good load order, and didn’t picked mods that will clash in many ways. Then you should be fine with only patching the mods you know that needs them.

random screenshot, to make front page more colorful. Irrelevant? Nah, I had to patch all my weather and sound mods, the armor is also edited to work with requiem. And the city has also a patch cause I’m using Open Cities.

Inhoud 1.

Search for Conflicts .......................................................................................................................... 3

2.

Making the Patch.............................................................................................................................. 5

3.

More examples, cause we need MOAARRR!!! .................................................................................. 8 a.

Other examples for Queen of the Damned - Deadlier Serana .................................................... 8 Example 1: Follower......................................................................................................................... 8 Example 2: Spells for NPC ............................................................................................................... 9 Example 3: Spell Power ................................................................................................................. 10

b.

Examples from my mod list......................................................................................................... 11 Example 1: New weapon/armor (for requiem/skyRe …) ............................................................. 11 Example 2: Creatures (Heimfeigr) .................................................................................................. 13 Example 3: New follower (Sofia) .................................................................................................. 14 Example 4: Multiple factions (falskaar – undeath – marriable Serana) ........................................ 15 Example: 5: Equipment for NPC (Immersive weapons) ................................................................... 16

A word of Appreciation ......................................................................................................................... 17

1. Search for Conflicts Open Tes5Edit, and just load everything. You never know if another mod could also conflict.

Click OK to continue Wait until you see: Background Loader: finished (It can take several minutes if you have many mods) Then right click on the list, and choose apply filter. Make sure you only check the follow things.

Click on Filter to apply the filter. Again, this can take a while to load. Now find the esp you want to make compatible in the list on the left, and expand it so you see some of the records inside it. The filter we applied will help you with finding the conflicts. Info: Red means that it’s the conflict loser. So another mod just overrides the changes. The text in orange and khaki means that it’s the conflict winner, but another mod is the loser. You probably want to look into it, cause otherwise the other mod won’t work like intended. Text colored in black, green or purple can be ignored (they don’t have conflicts you need to worry about)

In my case, we have to check every record … Now click on the formID that you want to check for conflicts. And you will see that new things appeared in the right column. At the top you will see every esp that edits something about that specific ID. The column loaded last will be the one loaded in your game. This makes it so important to have a good load order. If you notice that there is always the same mod that has conflicts on places you don’t want, you should change your load order first Tip: Right click, and then choose hide no conflict rows to make it less cluttered.

This is how my screen looks like for the first record

2. Making the Patch Note: When you want to close without saving anything. Uncheck everything after hitting the x button Now it is important that you know from which mod every esp comes, and what every mod does generally. The next part can be different for every person. It also depends on your preferences. And keep track of what record you are actually editing (magic effect, NPC, etc) You want to make your changes in a new file, cause otherwise you have to do everything again when you update or reinstall the mod.

right click on your main esp and choose Copy as override into…. For me, requiem is an important mod, it’s an overhaul, so I like to give it more priority. That’s why I choose to make it the base of the patch. You will get a warning message. Choose Yes if you are absolutely sure Info: At the end Tes5Edit will always make a backup of the original files. So if you messed up you can still go back.

Check , click OK to continue. And then choose a name Tip: You can choose to copy it in an existing patch, in place of a new file to reduce your number of files. For example, I could paste it into my self-made Requiem – conflict.esp It will ask to add the masters. Click Yes to continue. You have to do this for every new master. Now you have to add/change/delete records to make it compatible with your other mods. But it is different for every mod, and also differs for everyone’s preferences. So I will state my reasons for the changes I made.

Requiem changes the magic effect drain health so that it will be silent and doesn’t has a resist value. I want to keep that so I copy it. The easiest way to copy something, is drag and drop. Tip: You can drag/drop a whole branch at once. So in place of both dragging the Resist value: none and Casting sound level: silent, you can drag the Magic effect Data at once. Requiem isn’t build to be compatible with the Unofficial patches. (But still works fine without though) And both the unofficial patch and the Serana mod delete 2 conditions. So I chose to delete the ActorTypeDwarven/Undead. You can remove things, or just drag and drop the whole branch of the esp you prefer like said before.

To remove: right click the condition below the new made patch. And choose remove That’s all that I’m going to change for this magic effect. The Req_SpellConcentration is already added because I choose the requiem.esp when I was overriding it into the new file. But I might want to delete the DLC1VampireDrainEffect. I’m not sure what for impact it will have, so I keep it for requiem’s sake. I will post some ‘rules’ I use to decide what to add and what not. 

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Try to be consistent, and pick some mods that you want to be superior. Most of the time the records of overhaul mods shouldn’t be overwritten by others. Don’t copy blindly. Always know what you are doing. I already said it, but if you know what the mod does, and what it should change. You can know what you should keep and what not. If every other mod have the same values for a specific record as the skyrim/dawnguard/dragonborn/heartfire.esm only 1 does something different. Then you should add that one record most of the times. Some records doesn’t need to be added cause they are automatically merged at startup. Like DOBJ, DIAL, LCTN, IDLE records. Source: http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/3940-skyrim-tes5edit-records-thatmerge-at-runtime/ Don’t change counters like perk counts. They are automatically calculated. And they should reflect the amount of perks the npc has. If you don’t know to what something is referring too. Press ctrl + click on it. And it will bring you to it. Maybe it gives you more information. Some things just doesn’t work together. Deal with it (■_■¬) Use your brains and common sense, I know you have them. You don’t always have to copy, maybe you find another value that works better.

Keep doing this for everything else. If you need a few more examples, then go to the last section of this ‘guide’ There is most likely an example similar to your mod. But once you are finished, you can close Tes5Edit, just hit the

button at the top right

corner. After you did this a new window will popup.

Normally, only the new .esp should be listed here. If not, you most likely changed something accidently in another file. (even if you added something, and then removed it again) But nonetheless, if your intention was to only make a patch. Then only that specific esp should be checked. Also don’t change the Backup plugins, it should always be checked. Info: If you messed up something and just want to close the program, so you can try again. Then leave everything unchecked. So nothing will be saved. In addition, (as long as you didn’t touched the Backup plugins. Tes5Edit always make backups in your skyrim/data/Tes5Edit Backups folder. They are named x.esp.backup.YYYY_MM_DD_hh_mm_ss so you can find the right backup, if you know the time when you did your edits wrong. Just drop them back in your Skyrim/data folder, and remove the everything after .esp in the name. Your computer will say something about extensions, choose yes/ok. Don’t forget to sort the new file in your load order, run patchers like ASIS again and make rebuild your bashed patch if you use Wrye smash (highly recommended) Irrelevant to this guide, but if you use requiem. DON’T check import names/stats when building your bashed patch with wrye smash.

3. More examples, cause we need MOAARRR!!! I always hate it when I experience something different then described in the guide. So I will give a few more scenarios. Beware that this part co tai s the ost te t. It’s just ecessar to cover as much of possible of all the occasions. I still come across new things I need to figure out constantly.

a. Other examples for Queen of the Damned - Deadlier Serana Example 1: Follower

Requiem just completely removes a whole part. The Serana mod not only adds the script from dawnguard again, but changes it a little. Notice the name of the script DLC1SeranaLevelingScript Requiem is know for deleveling the world. So you have to decide if you want to keep Serana deleveled. Or not, but add the magicscaling of some spells that the mod introduced. If you scroll down you will also see this:

So if you didn’t added the script in the patch, then make sure you didn’t flag Serana with the PC Level Mult, and that she is already level 50 with some extra magicka and stamina. Choose and stay consistent. Don’t mix things.

Example 2: Spells for NPC

For all things like items and spells you can choose which you want to be added. I will add the spells of the Serana mod to the patch. But notice that this mod also removed the RaiseZombie spell. My guts tells me that the UDS_CorpseCurse is a similar spell. But this is an example why you should check the mod page. (I haven’t done that, cause I only downloaded the mod for this guide) It’s the same for perks. But a bit more tricky. Cause perks isn’t always to make the npc only stronger. Some perks are required to do something else. If a perk starts with a weird prefex you should add them.

The AA000Xarrian prefix is from requiem. You definitely need those, cause otherwise the follower will be too weak in the world of requiem. The UDS_SeranaPerlk “Coldharbour’s Strenght will increase the overall strength of the npc. Which is safe to assume, cause that was the whole point of the mod. If you think she is too weak, add it. If not, then don’t (but why did you needed the mod then? :p) I know it will work without the perk, cause I checked the other spells etc the mod alters. And none of them added the condition that the perk is required. Note: On the first screenshot you could see that ASIS hasn’t been repatched yet. So remember to do that after you made the patch.

Example 3: Spell Power

Here we are looking at conflicts of a spell. More specific about the magnitude of the spell (=strength) Requiem makes the world hard. So the spells also needed to be a little stronger. Using the changes of the mod that makes Serana stronger, will in this case NOT make here stronger. So if you still felt that here spells are too weak in requiem, then you have to override it to the patch, and change the values yourself. (double click, and type the numbers)

b. Examples from my mod list Example 1: New weapon/armor (for requiem/skyRe …)

First, it’s not a patch, but I merged all my armors together. (I don’t recommend this, cause if you have that many mods, without the knowledge to merge mods. You should uninstall some mods) But I can still explain how you can make your new weapons compatible with mods like SkyRe or Requiem. Open the armor mod, and then open the branch weapon/armor, click your item. And then search for the keywords. This armor has the keyword ArmorMaterialGlass. Then look for an existing armor that is also from the glass category. And see what the overhaul mod changes on it.

glass armor: skyrim – requiem – Weapons and armor fixes Requiem changes the weight a little. And also the value. Another mod adds a new keyword. So I could add that keyword too. Note: even when an armor is made from the same material, it can still be slightly different.

So you could add these records in the patch.

For requiem it is more noticeable when you have dragon or daedric items. Cause requiem makes them much stronger (Surprisingly, I just don’t have an armor mod of this type)

Daedric armor: skyrim - requiem For requiem it’s mostly only the gold Value, weight, armor rating, and sometimes an extra/missing keywords that should be added. But it doesn’t hurt to check the other thing quickly. For SkyRe there is the reproccer iirc. If you don’t have dawnguard you can still do it this way. And I heard stories that some mods aren’t changed even with the reproccer. For what I know the reproccer works according to the keywords the items have. So I think it misses an important keyword. But don’t hunt me down if I’m wrong about that. I have only installed that mod for a short time, and that was a year ago.

Example 2: Creatures (Heimfeigr)

You immediately see there are a lot of perks missing for the Heimfeigr.esp Cause they aren’t there in the original skyrim for the dragonpriest. You can do the same for new creatures. But you have to find them, cause they doesn’t conflict. (Turn off the filter, cause it won’t be visible otherwise) And compare them with similar creatures (ctrl + c/ctrl + v works for copying, cause you can’t drag/drop in this case) Not recommend for creature overhaul mods, they mostly already have a patch somewhere. But it works for quest mods that adds a few enemies. Tip: You can open 2 windows of Tes5Edit at once. Just be sure to only edit in 1 of them. Otherwise it can cause confusion, and sometimes it doesn’t safe properly if you are editing in both. But it does make a backup with the changes somewhere iirc.

Example 3: New follower (Sofia)

I compared sofia with a light armored follower that requiem altered. I added the same perks (the alchemy and perkskillboost are from Requiem – Hard times) And lowered the skill values. I noticed they are almost always 10 levels lower.

Example 4: Multiple factions (falskaar – undeath – marriable Serana)

This is pretty straightforward. To make the every mod works properly, I just added all the factions in one esp … I know the patch is called requiem – conflict, and has nothing to do with requiem.

Example: 5: Equipment for NPC (Immersive weapons)

If you use multiple mods, even their patches can start to conflict. I have Immersive weapons, and Ethereal elves. Both have a requiem patch. But the patch for Ethereal elves is loaded later, so the npc won’t have the sword if I don’t add it. Changing the load order will solve this also, but you won’t have the changes ethereal elves made to the look. If the load order was reverted, adding these changes will solve it too:

This is actually a good example from what I said in the intro “Note: You will probably notice there are MANY ‘conflicts’ between your mods. But if you have a good load order, and didn’t picked mods that will clash in many ways. Then you should be fine with only patching the mods you know that needs them.” It’s a minor ‘conflict’ and only 1 thing will revert back to default, depending on your load order.

A word of Appreciation Thank you if you made it this far. I hope you learned something and can make your game more to your liking. I tried my best to make this guide informative, understandable for everyone, without wall of texst. I wasn’t really succesfull in that. But I don’t think I could make it better.

For now, nobody else helped with the guide then myself (Zrynoth) But I still want to thank Arthmoor which I found several useful information from around the nexus. And Missjennabee for a usefull guide to merge patches. But this also give me a better insight of Tes5Edit. Link to guide: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?showtopic=1775296 Also the makers of skyrim, Tes5Edit, Wrye bash, LOOT ofcourse :p But if you found any ideas, improvement, lay-out, errors (also grammatical, English isn’t my mother language) feel free to tell me How? … I actually don’t know. I’m not really planning to post it on many places. Most likely I just posted it if asked for it, so responds back then. Or mail to [email protected] (I’m not really active on this account though) Just so that I certainly won’t spread wrong information.