creation kit Attempting to Change Mod-Added Armor

[shar181]

What I am trying to accomplish:

 

I am trying to change some mod-added armor. Specifically, I am trying to change it from Heavy Armor to "Clothing", so that it won't count as "armor" and interfere with my Mage Armor perk (from Ordinator).

 

The armor I'm trying to change comes from the greatest armor mod that exists for Skyrim, The Amazing World of Bikini Armor. This mod contains multitudes of armor pieces, which can be mixed and matched as the user desires. Among these pieces are "harnesses"; basically just leather straps made to look like they're holding the various pieces of armor in place. Unfortunately, these harnesses count as armor and have an armor rating, which means that wearing them disables the benefit of my Mage Armor perk. Why do I want these harnesses at all, if I can't wear armor? Because my character is forced to be naked for lewd reasons, but still sometimes wears a backpack. And a backpack floating behind a naked bimbo looks silly! I want the harness so it looks like the backpack is attached to something other than bare skin.

 

What I've attempted so far:

 

I thought it would be a simple matter to load TAWoBA in the Creation Kit, find the entries for these harnesses, and change their stats. And I did just that... I think. However, the changes I made had no effect in-game.

 

Here's what I did, as close to step-by-step as I can manage:

 

1. Opened the Creation Kit, and loaded "TheAmazingWorldofBikiniArmor.esp". I did not mark it as active, so that my changes could be saved as a separate esp.
2. Located the entries for the for "harness items". They were located under Items > Armor > shitty, though curiously not mentioned in the Dwarven, Ebony, or Wolf sections.
3. Opened each of the four Harness entries and made the following adjustments: Beside "Weight", I changed "heavy" to "none". Reduced "Armor Rating" to zero. That's it, because keywords scare me and I didn't want to mess anything up by making unnecessary changes.
4. Saved the changes as a new esp.
5. Closed the Creation Kit, then opened Vortex to activate the new esp.
6. Opened LOOT, changed the metadata for the new esp to load it after "TheAmazingWorldofBikiniArmor.esp", then sorted.
7. Ran Skyrim, checked my characters inventory, and found that the items had not been changed at all.
8. Ran crying to LoversLab for help.
9. Made tea, and finished writing this post.

 

And here we are. I have no idea why the changes I made didn't work... but then, the last time I tried modding armor in a Bethesda game was Morrowind, almost 15 years ago. My experience modding Skyrim is limited to making custom perks and other small-scale tweaks to the base game. I've never tried making changes to a mod before. If anyone can help... I am getting desperate. :c

 

 

Incidentally, if anyone is interested I made a mod for myself to limit XP gain in all skills. It has to be added via console, but unlike the version I made back in Oldrim it does not force you to use the Lover Stone!