STEP Cleaning Vanilla Masters

[Hyperiel]

Hi! First, a million thanks to everyone that built this up over the years. And providing this support forum.

Full disclosure: I hadn't modded heavily in many many years and no longer have a clue what I'm doing. Having said that, I am good at following clear instructions, when I decide to. Which is how I find myself in my current situation.

I tried, ignorantly, to use the guide with 1.6.640, as that was the last published guide. Only after finishing the models/textures section did I realize I had gotten this far without the Anniversary Upgrade, and trying to finagle around that was beyond me.

So I accepted fate, let the game update to 1170, and am currently trying to get working what I can and learn as much as I can until a stable build is made.

I had uninstalled Skyrim SE completely, I had uninstalled MO2 completely. Really started from scratch with 1170. One of the first things to do is clean the vanilla masters. I noticed they are already clean according to LOOT. How is that possible in a fresh install?

I see the note about having to disable or delete the cleaned ones because LOOT will only see those, however I am not competent enough to figure out where they are, and I am fearful of recklessly deleting anything.

I am eternally grateful for any education or clarification that may shine some light in my head on this. The note would imply LOOT saying they are clean is misleading. but /shrug idk....

 

I am all apologies if this question annoys anyone.

[Hyperiel]

uninstalled literally everything. sse, steam, all tools. removed any related documents folders and appdata folders.

fresh install of steam game and tools.. opening LOOT and the vanilla masters are clean.  

im too ignorant atm.

what thing am I not doing to be able to start over completely?

[Mousetick]

1 hour ago, Hyperiel said:

what thing am I not doing to be able to start over completely?

Your freshly reinstalled from scratch Skyrim SE is version 1.6.1170 which was released on Steam just a few hours ago.

LOOT doesn't know (yet) about this new version, so it may look like the vanilla masters are clean, even though they are not.

Do not rely on LOOT to determine if vanilla master plugins are clean or not. It's not a reliable source (see spoiler below for details).

Run xEdit QuickAutoClean on all the vanilla master plugins anytime the game or the CC content is updated.

Spoiler

LOOT doesn't actually analyze your plugins to determine if they're clean or not. It relies on metadata (bits of information about the data) authored and provided by the modding community. This information may be inaccurate or out of date as it is created by humans and not updated in real time.

The only thing LOOT knows how to do reliably is sort plugins in the load order based on their master dependencies and user-defined rules, and it can detect cycles or missing masters. That's it.

Every other bit of diagnosis and advice (such as plugins being redundant or available patches) it provides is pulled from community-provided metadata that it just spits back out to the user without actually knowing whether it's valid or not.

xEdit is the tool that can tell whether plugins are clean or not by actually analyzing them. It produces a report that is then fed by the modding community into the metadata sourced by LOOT. The manual steps involved and the induced delay means LOOT can be out of step with game updates.

 

[Hyperiel]

oh man thank you.  xEdit will reveal the truth, not LOOT. thank you!

[z929669]

5 hours ago, Mousetick said:

Your freshly reinstalled from scratch Skyrim SE is version 1.6.1170 which was released on Steam just a few hours ago.

LOOT doesn't know (yet) about this new version, so it may look like the vanilla masters are clean, even though they are not.

Do not rely on LOOT to determine if vanilla master plugins are clean or not. It's not a reliable source (see spoiler below for details).

Run xEdit QuickAutoClean on all the vanilla master plugins anytime the game or the CC content is updated.

  Hide contents

LOOT doesn't actually analyze your plugins to determine if they're clean or not. It relies on metadata (bits of information about the data) authored and provided by the modding community. This information may be inaccurate or out of date as it is created by humans and not updated in real time.

The only thing LOOT knows how to do reliably is sort plugins in the load order based on their master dependencies and user-defined rules, and it can detect cycles or missing masters. That's it.

Every other bit of diagnosis and advice (such as plugins being redundant or available patches) it provides is pulled from community-provided metadata that it just spits back out to the user without actually knowing whether it's valid or not.

xEdit is the tool that can tell whether plugins are clean or not by actually analyzing them. It produces a report that is then fed by the modding community into the metadata sourced by LOOT. The manual steps involved and the induced delay means LOOT can be out of step with game updates.

 

I trust the LOOT metadata on this. Those closest to the update source will have LOOT metadata high on the list of release to-dos, methinks.

EDIT: 'this' being version tracking of the vanilla files.

... but I do understand the latency problem.