How to make SSEEDIT patches for mods as a beginner ?

[Tinxi]

Thanks.

[Tlam99]

Good start, learn how to use xedit. Most things will explain itself then.

[traison]

Typically what I do is load the mods that are conflicting and then pick one of them to act as the patch and just copy over all the conflicted values into that plugin. Obviously that plugin then has to be loaded last of the plugins that are conflicting. I track these changes by always making notes of the changes that have been made. Perhaps the more correct way of creating an actual patch would be to copy the conflicted values into a new plugin (can also be done with xEdit), then making sure it loads last.

[belegost]

You want the prosess or methodology?

 

For methodology I create a new plugin in xEdit named SSEMerged (for SE, for LE I believe its TES5Merged). The name is important, since both LOOT and Vortex will auto-sort a plugin with that name to the very end of plugin load order, thus it saves me time having to manually set the sorting rules every time a mod with "late loader" rule is installed. I then put all of my own changes and merges in there for the entire load order. I do not elsify it and keep it as regular plugin, just in case.

 

For process is best to watch a video on YT, but in a nutshell I compare records between two plugins, then copy one of them entirely to merged plugin, then copy only the records I want to merge from the other plugin. Thus the merged plugin has records from both, and only those that matter. However you can't just do it blindly for all records, you actually need to know what records are important and that's case by case every  time. There is no blanket rule. Watch a few tutorials on merging and making compatibility patches to get the grasp on what might be important.

 

xEdit has a function that creates a merged plugin automatically but THAT IS A VERY BAD PRACTICE AND DO NOT DO IT. Even if some tutorials, which might be right on other matters advocate this method, DO NOT EVER DO IT, those tutorials are wrong in this regard. And I don't care if GamerPoets himself does it (I know he doesn't), just DON'T.DO.IT.

Automated process will merge literally everything,  even records that shouldn't be in the same plugin, and that is not what you want. That's a sure way for conflicts and problems down the way, possibly CTDs and save corruption. Any merges need to be made manually and you need to pick records that matter for you and what you want.

Edited January 15, 2023 by belegost