MSM_Alice Posted July 16, 2025 Posted July 16, 2025 (edited) Hello! I am building a mod that I would ideally want to work equally on NG and OG. As soon as I add a unique persistent NPC to an existing vanilla location, the creation kit decides to create some data that overrides vanilla records, that cause problems, specifically: For Instance I don't understand, if I add NPCs to a vanilla location , I get that that location now holds a new NPC reference ,and needs to be updated, by why does the CK also alters almost all vanilla records of that thing? Moving entire sets of entries from one category to another, messing a lot of thigs up.? I would expect those added record to just add my extra NPC in an additive manner in a few spots. Not to also mess up all the other vanilla records to the extent they it does ? It is normal that my new NPC to be added to ActorCellPersistent Reference. Also normal for ActorCell Unique to also have my new NPC. But why oh why all the those vanilla records in Location Cell Persistent reference are deleted? And why do I find them in my mod, slightly modified, moved to an entire different section (Actor Cell Static Reference) I did not asked for no such thing (not consciously anyway) Similarly records from LCSR in the vanilla game, are now moved over to ACSR Record from LCID (Location Cell Marker reference) are deleted from LCID section and some of them now appear in ACID (Actor Cell Marker reference section) And not even all of them make it over, from 9 in the vanilla game, now there are only 5.?! Creation kit 1.10.162.0 Can someone help me understand why this happens ? At first I thought " Well the Creation Kit must know why it is doing why it is doing, I should just trust...." but if I leave it like this, all of this this actually messes with the vanilla story, and some quests in the vanilla story just no longer work right. I had to manually go in xEdit delete all the new echoed location records from my mod (that the creation kit created), so that the original/vanilla ones were the ones who would endure. Then and only then did in-game experience reverted to normal (except that naturally now I get warning that my mod specific NPCs are in the location but cannot be found in the reference unload data, and the unique actor data all in all, a legitimate error- but I can't really add them there, because as soon as I do remove and re-add the NPCs so that they get added to those lists, the entire location record is also rewritten with all these " mistakes" and that location's vanilla content stops working right. Also A Carbon copy of the Worldspace record (why, I do not know): Seems identical and entirely unneeded (maybe because I have added a new interior cell somewhere, but that cell section is separate). I don' t know why it tries to do that. Anyway that is a small problem (and perhaps easy to fix delete the redundant custom record in xEdit and call it a day) Can someone please help me understand what on Earth is happening and how I can tell the Creation Kit to stop messing with the vanilla data, when it is not wanted nor needed, and only add my NPC in an additive manner, and not touch ANYTHING else? I hope the answer is not that the only way to add custom NPCs is to add them to a secret room/custom location and just move them over in vanilla locations manually, via papyrus scripts? Is that really the only way to preserve original location records in a working state? Thank you so much! Thank you so much for your time. Edited July 16, 2025 by MSM_Alice
Heinzelman Posted July 16, 2025 Posted July 16, 2025 6 hours ago, MSM_Alice said: Hello! I am building a mod that I would ideally want to work equally on NG and OG. As soon as I add a unique persistent NPC to an existing vanilla location, the creation kit decides to create some data that overrides vanilla records, that cause problems, specifically: For Instance I don't understand, if I add NPCs to a vanilla location , I get that that location now holds a new NPC reference ,and needs to be updated, by why does the CK also alters almost all vanilla records of that thing? Moving entire sets of entries from one category to another, messing a lot of thigs up.? I would expect those added record to just add my extra NPC in an additive manner in a few spots. Not to also mess up all the other vanilla records to the extent they it does ? It is normal that my new NPC to be added to ActorCellPersistent Reference. Also normal for ActorCell Unique to also have my new NPC. But why oh why all the those vanilla records in Location Cell Persistent reference are deleted? And why do I find them in my mod, slightly modified, moved to an entire different section (Actor Cell Static Reference) I did not asked for no such thing (not consciously anyway) Similarly records from LCSR in the vanilla game, are now moved over to ACSR Record from LCID (Location Cell Marker reference) are deleted from LCID section and some of them now appear in ACID (Actor Cell Marker reference section) And not even all of them make it over, from 9 in the vanilla game, now there are only 5.?! Creation kit 1.10.162.0 Can someone help me understand why this happens ? At first I thought " Well the Creation Kit must know why it is doing why it is doing, I should just trust...." but if I leave it like this, all of this this actually messes with the vanilla story, and some quests in the vanilla story just no longer work right. I had to manually go in xEdit delete all the new echoed location records from my mod (that the creation kit created), so that the original/vanilla ones were the ones who would endure. Then and only then did in-game experience reverted to normal (except that naturally now I get warning that my mod specific NPCs are in the location but cannot be found in the reference unload data, and the unique actor data all in all, a legitimate error- but I can't really add them there, because as soon as I do remove and re-add the NPCs so that they get added to those lists, the entire location record is also rewritten with all these " mistakes" and that location's vanilla content stops working right. Also A Carbon copy of the Worldspace record (why, I do not know): Seems identical and entirely unneeded (maybe because I have added a new interior cell somewhere, but that cell section is separate). I don' t know why it tries to do that. Anyway that is a small problem (and perhaps easy to fix delete the redundant custom record in xEdit and call it a day) Can someone please help me understand what on Earth is happening and how I can tell the Creation Kit to stop messing with the vanilla data, when it is not wanted nor needed, and only add my NPC in an additive manner, and not touch ANYTHING else? I hope the answer is not that the only way to add custom NPCs is to add them to a secret room/custom location and just move them over in vanilla locations manually, via papyrus scripts? Is that really the only way to preserve original location records in a working state? Thank you so much! Thank you so much for your time. As far as I know this is what most mods or even DLCs look like in FO4Edit when they place NPCs directly into vanilla cells (just look at some of them). I don't really think that's a problem, but that CK just works that way in such cases. The game wants to know where these NPCs are, if the cell isnt loaded. The NPCs who seem like being overwritten by empty entries are loaded anyway. And the commonwealth gets a lot of carbon copies just for the DLCs. I myself use a separate cell where most of my NPCs are stored and only moved when necessary. However, this will also create persistent records to the vanilla cell, as the CK flags the target reference accordingly. It may look cleaner, but it probably isn't really. Maybe more tidier. You can try to remove these entries manually, but as far as i understand, you risk that they may not work correctly if the cell is unloaded. But if it s just a few, and everything else around there is working fine, I wouldnt bother. 1
MSM_Alice Posted July 16, 2025 Author Posted July 16, 2025 (edited) 22 minutes ago, Heinzelman said: As far as I know this is what most mods or even DLCs look like in FO4Edit when they place NPCs directly into vanilla cells (just look at some of them). I don't really think that's a problem, but that CK just works that way in such cases. The game wants to know where these NPCs are, if the cell isnt loaded. The NPCs who seem like being overwritten by empty entries are loaded anyway. And the commonwealth gets a lot of carbon copies just for the DLCs. I myself use a separate cell where most of my NPCs are stored and only moved when necessary. However, this will also create persistent records to the vanilla cell, as the CK flags the target reference accordingly. It may look cleaner, but it probably isn't really. Maybe more tidier. You can try to remove these entries manually, but as far as i understand, you risk that they may not work correctly if the cell is unloaded. But if it s just a few, and everything else around there is working fine, I wouldnt bother. Thank you so much. I got some feedback from Nexus too on the topic. Help With Creation Kit creating redundant faulty Records - Creation Kit and Modders - Nexus Mods Forums I'll probably put all content (NPCs and maybe other Object Instances too that need to sit in the vanilla world, everything except markers) in its own interior cell and move them to Vanilla location in the papyrus script to avoid Location Records being duplicated. Markers apparently can be placed in the vanilla world and do not create headaches. If I didn't delete in XEdit the new location records that the CK generated (and placed in my ESP), this changed data for the vanilla entities was actually breaking the base game in a pretty significant way The Quest to save Preston would miss some raiders and would never complete, Piper wouldn't initiate her Gate dialogue with Danny Sullivan and so on. So do I need to do something about it. Either a. place the NPCs in CK, save mod, then delete the new mod-centric location records in XEdit (not ideal because then I get all these warnings of the NPCs being in the location, yet not being in some key lists of said location) b. put all content (NPCs and maybe other Object Instances too that need to sit in the vanilla world, everything except markers) in its own interior cell and move them to Vanilla location in the papyrus script to avoid Location Records on the vanilla world being duplicated/altered in any way. Probably will move to method b. Edited July 16, 2025 by MSM_Alice
MSM_Alice Posted July 16, 2025 Author Posted July 16, 2025 38 minutes ago, Heinzelman said: As far as I know this is what most mods or even DLCs look like in FO4Edit when they place NPCs directly into vanilla cells (just look at some of them). I don't really think that's a problem, but that CK just works that way in such cases. The game wants to know where these NPCs are, if the cell isnt loaded. The NPCs who seem like being overwritten by empty entries are loaded anyway. And the commonwealth gets a lot of carbon copies just for the DLCs. I myself use a separate cell where most of my NPCs are stored and only moved when necessary. However, this will also create persistent records to the vanilla cell, as the CK flags the target reference accordingly. It may look cleaner, but it probably isn't really. Maybe more tidier. You can try to remove these entries manually, but as far as i understand, you risk that they may not work correctly if the cell is unloaded. But if it s just a few, and everything else around there is working fine, I wouldnt bother. Also I assume I *might* have my share of guilt here, as I started building this mod on a NG Fallout 4 dev enviro, in the NG CK, and then moved to an OG fallout 4 OG enviro, on the OG CK. I did ask around and many people said that the header on ESP files and their versions are identical, so there's no reason why an ESP edited on the NG version of the CK wouldn't work on the OG version and viceversa. It all seemed to work pretty seamlessly, so far but maybe there are some latent side effects like for instance this one.
Heinzelman Posted July 16, 2025 Posted July 16, 2025 10 minutes ago, MSM_Alice said: Also I assume I *might* have my share of guilt here, as I started building this mod on a NG Fallout 4 dev enviro, in the NG CK, and then moved to an OG fallout 4 OG enviro, on the OG CK. I did ask around and many people said that the header on ESP files and their versions are identical, so there's no reason why an ESP edited on the NG version of the CK wouldn't work on the OG version and viceversa. It all seemed to work pretty seamlessly, so far but maybe there are some latent side effects like for instance this one. I don't know it for sure, but I can't imagine that a NG esp edited in Old CK would cause any weird or even gamebreaking entries. If so, it would likely be known, think of all the people who create patches/translations and so on. Regarding the actor entries in your mod, it looks similar to the mechanist dlc edits or the TftC mod. I dont understand why your directly placed NPC would cause the problems you described. It should still work 2
MSM_Alice Posted July 16, 2025 Author Posted July 16, 2025 48 minutes ago, Heinzelman said: I don't know it for sure, but I can't imagine that a NG esp edited in Old CK would cause any weird or even gamebreaking entries. If so, it would likely be known, think of all the people who create patches/translations and so on. Regarding the actor entries in your mod, it looks similar to the mechanist dlc edits or the TftC mod. I dont understand why your directly placed NPC would cause the problems you described. It should still work Very interesting. Initially, I too trusted the changes, but when I started seeing all that strangeness in the broken vanilla quests (which did turn out okay after I deleted the changed location records in mymod), I don't know what to think anymore.
teto24 Posted July 16, 2025 Posted July 16, 2025 Thank you for the fun MOD! I'd like to share one thing I've noticed. The version updates are so complicated, it's taking a lot of time for us to keep up with them. Could you please put everything together a bit more before updating? I'm looking forward to your future work! Keep it up!
MSM_Alice Posted July 17, 2025 Author Posted July 17, 2025 5 hours ago, teto24 said: Thank you for the fun MOD! I'd like to share one thing I've noticed. The version updates are so complicated, it's taking a lot of time for us to keep up with them. Could you please put everything together a bit more before updating? I'm looking forward to your future work! Keep it up! Will try my best. I will keep interim version on the thread and make the ones on the main page sparser. The problem is there are some sneaky bugs in the latest versions, and I keep trying new approaches to improve stability.
MSM_Alice Posted July 17, 2025 Author Posted July 17, 2025 17 hours ago, Heinzelman said: I don't know it for sure, but I can't imagine that a NG esp edited in Old CK would cause any weird or even gamebreaking entries. If so, it would likely be known, think of all the people who create patches/translations and so on. Regarding the actor entries in your mod, it looks similar to the mechanist dlc edits or the TftC mod. I dont understand why your directly placed NPC would cause the problems you described. It should still work I made another attempt today to do things " correctly" , all CK with no xEdit, and re added the npcs in the vanilla locations, saved the ESP from the CK, left the newly generated records alone. Played the game, and again Piper wouldn't run her dialogue with Danny Sullivan to unlock Diamond city. Deleted the echoed world record in XEdit, then : Piper was working again. For sure something is different here than what is happening for the official DLCs.
Heinzelman Posted July 17, 2025 Posted July 17, 2025 Thank you for sharing this weird behaviour. Something to be aware of to avoid bugs. I still dont understand it, but the CK seems to have its ways 1
MSM_Alice Posted July 17, 2025 Author Posted July 17, 2025 Update on this: I think the cause for the vanilla behavior breaking, it might have been the unprompted navmesh edits that the CK was doing (in cells that I never touched in any way). Less so the auto-edits to the Location Records alone. Those were different too, yes, with data being moved from one category to another, but maybe were somehow compatible nevertheless. Or maybe a combination of the two.
MSM_Alice Posted July 18, 2025 Author Posted July 18, 2025 (edited) To learn more of how or why this happened. I did a clean test with a brand new esp file, to see if that replicates that just placed a static object and a unique NPC in the world. That change alone did not prompt the CK to generate any navmesh records and save them in my ESP, just a location record change (with all the strangeness of the category swapping), and ofc the word space change. Then I opened that new ESP up in the CK once more, loaded up an existing vanilla interior cell (what's interesting is navmesh warnings started pouring in in the CK as I was doing that did that, complaining how that navmesh of that unedited vanilla interior cell needs to be " re-finalized") and I simply duplicated that vanilla interior cell, and saved again. Now if inspect that newly saved ESP in xEdit, suddenly it has all these extraneous record entries in navmesh info, that seem to have nothing to do with the vanilla interior cell I opened, or its clone. That actually might explain better what might cause vanilla quest breaking in far away areas that I never deliberately touched. Edited July 18, 2025 by MSM_Alice 1
Here4SlootyMods Posted July 19, 2025 Posted July 19, 2025 A bit off-topic and I mean in no way to hijack your thread but how did you get an OG Creation Kit? I'd like to do the same.
MSM_Alice Posted July 19, 2025 Author Posted July 19, 2025 (edited) 6 hours ago, Here4SlootyMods said: A bit off-topic and I mean in no way to hijack your thread but how did you get an OG Creation Kit? I'd like to do the same. Rollback via "manually downloading" (Steam console) the old Steam repositories method. then setting that repo to read-only so Steam does not update it again. Edit: This is the guide, and the same can be done for the Steam CK : Downgrading Fallout 4 from 1.10.984.0 to 1.10.163.0 (Steam) - Discussion - Nexus Mods Forums Edited July 19, 2025 by MSM_Alice 1
MSM_Alice Posted July 19, 2025 Author Posted July 19, 2025 (edited) 6 hours ago, Here4SlootyMods said: A bit off-topic and I mean in no way to hijack your thread but how did you get an OG Creation Kit? I'd like to do the same. More specifically here is what I have in my app manifest for the CK: The depot id's you want are in "installed depots" "appid" "1946160" .... "InstalledDepots" { "1946161" { "manifest" "3810583382935075576" "size" "68193792" } "1946162" { "manifest" "5337866012219044366" "size" "142758692" } } "UserConfig" { "language" "english" } "MountedConfig" { "language" "english" } } And this for the main game "appid" "377160" "InstalledDepots" { "377161" { "manifest" "7332110922360867314" "size" "6093409141" } "377162" { "manifest" "5698952341602575696" "size" "52552472" } "377163" { "manifest" "8681102885670959037" "size" "20446066951" } "377164" { "manifest" "8492427313392140315" "size" "3815537394" } "435870" { "manifest" "1213339795579796878" "size" "616387982" "dlcappid" "435870" } "435871" { "manifest" "7785009542965564688" "size" "130988561" "dlcappid" "435870" } "435880" { "manifest" "366079256218893805" "size" "79350969" "dlcappid" "435880" } "435881" { "manifest" "1207717296920736193" "size" "2890058024" "dlcappid" "435881" } "435882" { "manifest" "8482181819175811242" "size" "599590846" "dlcappid" "435881" } "480630" { "manifest" "5527412439359349504" "size" "265010956" "dlcappid" "480630" } "480631" { "manifest" "6588493486198824788" "size" "432439632" "dlcappid" "480631" } "393885" { "manifest" "5000262035721758737" "size" "54722008" "dlcappid" "480631" } "490650" { "manifest" "4873048792354485093" "size" "3946502119" "dlcappid" "490650" } "393895" { "manifest" "7677765994120765493" "size" "374503550" "dlcappid" "490650" } } Edited July 19, 2025 by MSM_Alice 1
Heinzelman Posted July 28, 2025 Posted July 28, 2025 On 7/18/2025 at 12:15 PM, MSM_Alice said: To learn more of how or why this happened. I did a clean test with a brand new esp file, to see if that replicates that just placed a static object and a unique NPC in the world. That change alone did not prompt the CK to generate any navmesh records and save them in my ESP, just a location record change (with all the strangeness of the category swapping), and ofc the word space change. Then I opened that new ESP up in the CK once more, loaded up an existing vanilla interior cell (what's interesting is navmesh warnings started pouring in in the CK as I was doing that did that, complaining how that navmesh of that unedited vanilla interior cell needs to be " re-finalized") and I simply duplicated that vanilla interior cell, and saved again. Now if inspect that newly saved ESP in xEdit, suddenly it has all these extraneous record entries in navmesh info, that seem to have nothing to do with the vanilla interior cell I opened, or its clone. That actually might explain better what might cause vanilla quest breaking in far away areas that I never deliberately touched. Thanks again for pointing that out. In the mod I'm working on, I also got this weird Navmesh entry, even though I never changed the vanilla Navmesh and there are many areas where my mod has no effect. I have no idea why the CK is doing this.
MSM_Alice Posted July 28, 2025 Author Posted July 28, 2025 (edited) 14 hours ago, Heinzelman said: Thanks again for pointing that out. In the mod I'm working on, I also got this weird Navmesh entry, even though I never changed the vanilla Navmesh and there are many areas where my mod has no effect. I have no idea why the CK is doing this. Happy it helped in any way. It is mind boggling, if you look in my screenshot there's even an entry about DLC03FarHarbor, which FOR SURE I never edited. Edited July 28, 2025 by MSM_Alice
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now