AMB, WACCF, CCOR and CACO... oh my

[ButchDiavolo]

Recently I have been taking a deep dive in the mods I have installed. I noticed that a lot of level-lists are overwriting each other, even when using WryeBash. The worst "offenders" are the mods by Kryptopyr, hence the topic title. The mods have levelled lists for pretty much the same things (weapons, armors, gems, food even). When using WryeBash, then checking xEdit, I see all the lists jostling for dominance for a lot of the same items. And the way WryeBash works, it adds ALL the changes of every shared item in it's levelled lists. Which explains now why I always find loads of loot everywhere. I suspect that in a general game (without a bashed patch) the last installed mod's lists simply take precedence. Unfortunately for me, not using a Bashed Patch is not an option.

After finding this out (due to the recent updated), I have decided to forward all changes from aMidianBorn to weapons and armor, forward WACCF changes that are not made by the other mods, only forward crafting changes from CCOR and only use the changes made by CACO for food and alchemy. I also deleted quite a few patches for the mods, since I am making manual changes.

Now, my question: is this a good way to go about it? Or is there a better way to deal with it? I did a short test-play to see the effects and I get a lot less loot now. Which I think is more vanilla Skyrim. Like 1 sword and maybe some armor, instead of swords, bows, food, gems from one victim/ chest.

I am interested what fellow modder opinions about this situation is.

Thanks in advance.

[Mousetick]

This is a vast and complicated subject, even more so when WACCF is used.

I'm surprised by your observations about loot. The approach you took to resolve specific leveled list conflicts should have no significant impact on the quantity of loot you find. In most cases, the edits that the aforementioned mods (WACCF, CACO, CCOR, AMB CA) make to leveled lists only affect the type of loot per level, not its quantity.

• For humanoid NPCs, the quantity of loot is determined by their inventory (defined in NPC_ record) and outfit (defined by OTFT record referenced by NPC_ record).
• For creatures and animals, the quantity of loot is determined by their death items (defined by DeathItem[...] leveled list referenced by NPC_ record).
• For chests, the quantity of loot is determined by their contents (defined by CONT record, itself referencing Loot[...] leveled lists).

CACO does make a lot of changes to some of the above but they're balanced and designed to work with the overall alchemy/cooking overhaul, and they typically don't conflict, so let's put it aside. Other than that, WACCF, CCOR and AMB CA either don't directly edit the above, or they edit them without changing the quantity of items found.

The leveled lists that WACCF, CCOR or AMB CA touch are typically referenced indirectly and they return only 1 item per level. Even if they were incorrectly merged with vanilla, or with USSEP changes, they would contain the wrong type of item per level, but they would still return only 1 item per level.

I suspect that the "too much loot" behavior before changing your patching methodology is caused by something else. The "much reduced loot" behavior you observed after might be a coincidence - it's hard to say.

But instead of trying to reason in generic terms, I find it easier to look at specific examples using the latest version of all mods:

• LItemGems [LVLI:00068525], LItemGems75 [LVLI:001046E3], LItemGemsSmall [LVLI:000F961D], LItemGemsSmall10 [LVLI:0010E0E0], LItemGemsSmall25 [LVLI:001046E2], LItemMiscVendorGems25 [LVLI:0009AF0C], LItemMiscVendorGems100 [LVLI:000C44A7]

Conflict between CACO and CCOR: both mods' additions should be merged, otherwise one or the other won't ever be found in loot or in merchant's inventory. It may look like the list contains more "stuff", but it still returns the same quantity of items per level. The quantity is determined by whatever is referencing those lists, not by the lists themselves.

The fact that both kryptopyr mods conflict and no patch is provided by kryptopyr is a bug. The bug was reported and acknowledged more than a year ago (see "Gemstone levelled list incompatibility with CCOR" in CACO bug section).

• LItemEnchArmorLightGauntlets [LVLI:000B4223] and LItemEnchArmorLightGauntletsNoDragon [LVLI:000FDA14]

Conflict between CACO and AMB CA: both mods' additions should be merged, otherwise CACO's unique enchanted alchemy gloves won't ever be found. Same as previous.

Likewise, looks like a bug to me.

• LootCitizenChildToysList [LVLI:001046E7] and LootCitizenChildToysList75 [LVLI:001046E9]

Conflict between WACCF and CACO: both mods add their own version of BugsInJarList, only one of them should be kept. Doesn't matter which one, as their contents are identical. CACO is one kryptopyr mod that (strangely) doesn't require WACCF, so it duplicates WACCF here. If you keep both BugsInJarLists you'll find a Bug In Jar item twice as often as if you keep only one, but you'll still find the same number of Bug In Jar at a time. This list is referenced by children NPC inventories, so unless you routinely pickpocket children, it won't matter much at all in the end.

• LItemFoodInnCommon [LVLI:00098E5F], LItemFoodInnCommon10 [LVLI:0010E0E1] and LItemIngredientFoodPrepared [LVLI:00087135]

Conflict between CACO and USSEP: the USKP Meat Pie should be added to CACO's version of the list, otherwise it won't ever be found in Innkeepers' or Food Vendors' inventory.

This is covered by the USSEP - CACO patch from kryptopyr's patch hub, in a different way, but the end result in-game is the same.

• RecipeArmorGildedElvenCuirass [COBJ:000DCA0A], TemperArmorGildedElvenBoots [COBJ:000EB789] and other TemperArmorGildedElven[...]

Conflict between CCOR and AMB CA: AMB CA should win and CCOR should be ignored. You could let CCOR win the crafting recipe, but then it would be inconsistent with the other Elven Gilded recipes added by AMB CA. Also even though CCOR changes temper recipes these recipes produce nothing in vanilla or CCOR because the corresponding armor pieces don't exist. Regardless, it would make no sense to merge them (this is true in general for COBJ records).

Since AMB CA should be sorted after CCOR, there is really no patching necessary here.

• LItemBlacksmithArrows75 [LVLI:0009BC2F] and LItemWeaponBowBlacksmith [LVLI:0009BC3F]

Conflict between WACCF and AMB CA: WACCF additions should be kept and forwarded to AMB CA's version of the list, otherwise crossbow and bolts won't ever be found in Blacksmiths' inventory (even if the crossbow integration option is enabled in CCOR).

This looks like a bug to me again. Might be a consequence of the recent leveled list shuffle in WACCF/CCOR/AMB and the decoupling of AMB from CCOR.

• DLC2LItemEnchArmorLightHelmet [LVLI:0402BBFE], DLC2LItemEnchArmorLightHelmetSpecial [LVLI:0402BC2B] and DLC2LItemEnchArmorLightHelmetNoDragon [LVLI:0403750B]

Conflict between WACCF and AMB CA: AMB CA removes the sublists added by WACCF and replaces them by its own sublists containing "Morrowind-flavored" versions of the enchanted glass helmets, to be found specifically in loot on Solstheim. You could merge the additions from both if you wanted (although it's not the result intended by AMB CA), it wouldn't break anything: both sublists have the same quantity and level, so it would just mean you could still find plain Skyrim enchanted glass helmets on Solstheim.

As you can see the conflicts are few and relatively minor. Even if the conflicting leveled lists were incorrectly patched, this would make no difference in the quantity of loot found. Only the type of loot encountered, or never encountered as the case may be.

So I'm not sure where the perceived difference in quantity of loot is coming from. Furthermore I don't understand why you stopped using patches. Typically the patches from kryptopyr patch hub are quite good and necessary to patch weapon/armor mods that are not WACCF-dependent or WACCF-compatible. Even mods that claim to be WACCF-compatible manage to mess things up in some way or other. You don't have to keep the patches in your load order: you can simply use them as "blueprints" while incorporating their changes into your manual patch, then remove them.

You can ask about specific conflicts or mods you're using, if you want, so we can take a look at what might be going on.

Lastly as regards to Bashed Patches and WACCF:

WACCF comes with a special plugin WACCF_BashedPatchLvlListFix.esp that is intended to correct WryeBash's mistakes processing leveled lists edited by WACCF (see Installation section on the WACCF mod page for usage details). I don't use WryeBash so I can't speak to the effectiveness of this special plugin, but I suppose it may be adequate. I wonder what happens when adding AMB Content Addon into the mix though, for example, since AMB CA is intended to override some WACCF changes, or when adding other mods into the mix, for that matter.

[TechAngel85]

Moved topic out of Guide-related forum to a general forum.

We handle this stuff within the Step Patches by merging the lists within xEdit manually. It's really the only way to get everything forwarded properly unless you want to spend a lot of time messing with custom rules for a Bashed Patch, which Step no longer uses since it always results in a mess of incorrect resolutions (unless you spend a lot of time setting it up).

[ButchDiavolo]

1 hour ago, TechAngel85 said:

 (unless you spend a lot of time setting it up).

Yeah, no kidding. Only took me 2 hours. The STEP Patches do work, but I have quite a few extra mods, so it still turns into a mess. Guess that is what you get for for wanting to mod much further than a standard STEP set-up.

Anyway, thanks for your input

[ButchDiavolo]

2 hours ago, Mousetick said:

This is a vast and complicated subject, even more so when WACCF is used.

I'm surprised by your observations about loot. The approach you took to resolve specific leveled list conflicts should have no significant impact on the quantity of loot you find. In most cases, the edits that the aforementioned mods (WACCF, CACO, CCOR, AMB CA) make to leveled lists only affect the type of loot per level, not its quantity.

• For humanoid NPCs, the quantity of loot is determined by their inventory (defined in NPC_ record) and outfit (defined by OTFT record referenced by NPC_ record).
• For creatures and animals, the quantity of loot is determined by their death items (defined by DeathItem[...] leveled list referenced by NPC_ record).
• For chests, the quantity of loot is determined by their contents (defined by CONT record, itself referencing Loot[...] leveled lists).

CACO does make a lot of changes to some of the above but they're balanced and designed to work with the overall alchemy/cooking overhaul, and they typically don't conflict, so let's put it aside. Other than that, WACCF, CCOR and AMB CA either don't directly edit the above, or they edit them without changing the quantity of items found.

[snipped for brevity]

Thank you so much for this break down! this is exactly what I was looking for. And (thankfully) exactly how I handled the "bugs" and discrepancies.

I looked at each item on each levelled list and based on what they do/ are, I decided to either forward or merge relevant items in the bashed patch. In very broad strokes, this came down to the generic description of how I handled it. I of course kept the entries that are unique to the respective mods (i.e. CACO's enchanted gloves). But for the general overlap I basically did what you are listing. So thank you. I am glad to hear that I didn't completely screw up the levelled lists.

As for the difference in amounts of loot, I have no idea what could be causing that nor have it corrected itself. I can't think of any mod that I have/ had installed that would cause it. But it is interesting that it corrected itself after I dove into the levelled list for the Kryptopyr's Grand Four (well Five with ACE), even though they couldn't be causing it.

[Mousetick]

If you find that the game still gives out too much loot overall, despite having resolved whatever issue you had before, I'd heartily recommend you give Simply Reduced Loot a try. It's extremely lightweight (no scripts) and simple. It works by increasing the chance that a loot leveled list returns nothing. So for example if a loot chest asks for 1 leveled gem, 1 leveled scroll, 1 leveled weapon and 1 leveled potion, it might only be filled with 1 leveled gem and 1 leveled potion, or 1 leveled weapon and 1 leveled potion, randomly. This only affects generic loot, not unique artifacts, so you can still obtain them as usual.

There are 2 versions: 33% or 66% reduction (that is statistically speaking - you can still get a full set of loot items depending on RNG - but on average across the entire game you'll get one or two thirds less loot than vanilla).

There are 2 modules: one for loot per se (found in chests or in boss inventories), and the other one for merchants' inventory. I've not used the merchant module but it works exactly the same way.

The bad news is that it edits a lot of leveled lists. The good news is that it doesn't modify the contents of the lists, only the probability to return nothing. There are compatibility patches available but they're probably outdated and cover very few mods. Since you're now patching leveled lists manually rather than relying on WryeBash, you can simply ignore the leveled list contents and only forward the 'LVLG - Global' field from Simply Reduced Loot to your custom patch, which is straightforward and doesn't require any thought. If you wish to use another rate of reduction than 33 or 66%, you could adjust the probability to your liking by editing a small set of global variables that are used throughout the leveled lists.

 

Other mods, such as Morrowloot or Open World Loot, limit the quality of loot rather than its quantity throughout the game, including the type of equipment carried by NPCs. But they provide other features (e.g. deleveling the world or increasing encounter zone levels) which may be undesirable, and their leveled list implementation is more complex, making patches more difficult to find or to make. I've been using OWL because it's lightweight, it's designed for WACCF weapon tiers so it fits naturally, and I could find patches for the weapon/armor mods I use. It can be used together with Simply Reduced Loot as they do and modify different things (quality vs. quantity).

Yet other mods, such as Don't Roll In That - NPC Loot Reduction, limit the quantity of common loot by preventing equipment from being looted off corpses. I don't have any experience with those.

[ButchDiavolo]

I will keep those in mind if I still find ridiculous amounts of loot. Thanks.