Merging Leveled Lists

[dstansberry]

I've used TES5Edit for some time now to do simple mod cleaning, and I've been happy enough to limit my abilities to that.

 

Lately, however, I've been doing tons of merging with Matortheetnernal's fantastic utility, which got me to thinking about the kinds of mods I would like to merge, and how some of them include adding items to various leveled lists as a means of distributing them throughout the game world. Since the MergePlugin Standalone utility doesn't "merge" the lists itself, I've been advised that I should create a patch for the leveled lists for the mods I want to merge, and then to merge that patch in with the mods.

 

I'm looking for some simple instructions on how best to do this.

 

One theory would be to use Wyre Smash to create a bashed patch for only those mods and only leveled lists, then rename it and merge it with the remaining mods, but I'm not sure that works as simply as I'm making it sound.

 

Another theory is to create a "copy as override" into a new plugin, and select.... what... exactly? from each of the mods.

 

As you can probably tell, I'm going to need some fairly specific instructions for some fairly generic merges. *LOL*

 

Thanks to any who are able and willing to help!

[dstansberry]

Okay - so I decided to wing it and just see what would happen...

 

I started up TES5Edit, selected three mods and their masters (in this case, Omegared99's Armor Compilation (with the "Standard-15 Percent.esp that actually adds the armor to the lists), Immersive Weapons, and a merged mod I'd already made).

 

I took the Standard-15 Percent.esp, found the Leveled Item section, and selected "Copy as deep override into..." and selected the <New File> option, which I imaginatively named "TestLeveledListMerge".

I then repeated the process with the "Leveled Item" section of Immersive Weapons and my merged file, adding both into TestLeveledListMerge.esp, and accepting all the related masters.

 

As I look at the mods in TES5Edit, I see that my TestLeveledListMerge shows LLCT Count's for each item in the Leveled Item section that corresponds to item count from the last .esp copied that contained a record for that item type. I'm not sure that's an actual problem, but should I be using the "copy as new record" instead?

 

And...is that really all there is to it? It can't possibly be that simple, can it?

[EssArrBee]

For merging leveled lists you should use a patcher. Wrye Bash does it better. You can make a Bashed Patch, 0.esp and then make a copy of it. Rename the copy to w/e you want, load it in xEdit and then delete all the records that aren't Level Lists. 

[dstansberry]

For merging leveled lists you should use a patcher. Wrye Bash does it better. You can make a Bashed Patch, 0.esp and then make a copy of it. Rename the copy to w/e you want, load it in xEdit and then delete all the records that aren't Level Lists. 

 

I wondered if that would work! Thanks very much - it sounds MUCH easier than wading through all of the TES5Edit things. I was worried that I was actually modifying the lists themselves, rather than simply adding to them. I appreciate your advice!

 

Once I've made the patch, I can merge it with the original mods using Mator's tool, I assume? And it should be the last one in the contiguous list of merged mods, so that it's leveled list isn't overwritten by one of the other mods, correct?

 

Thanks again!

[EssArrBee]

Should be fine to merge. I don't know exactly how the merging tool merges leveled lists because that utility is clearly black magic, but it should be fine. You could even merge that plugin, then rerun your real Bashed Patch again after you are done to make sure the leveled lists are good to go.