Patching Skyrim (Merged, Bashed Patch, etc) - Updated Knowledge?

[NymphoElf]

PLEASE READ ENTIRE POST BEFORE ANSWERING

(Maybe even re-read just to be 100% sure you understand where I'm at)

 

Hello all,

 

I am curious about what the current knowledge is concerning patches for Skyrim - aka Marged/Bashed patches and so forth.

 

My current understanding is as follows:

 

Merged Patch - NOT Merged Mods

 

These are made in xEdit and allow users to specify which changes from which mods are actually applied to objects such as Weapons, Armor, NPCs, and so on.

 

For example: Steel Sword is modified in the following ways

Mod A - 20 Damage | 45 Gold | 10 Weight
Mod B -  8 Damage | 45 Gold |  0 Weight
Mod C -  8 Damage | 90 Gold | 10 Weight

Patch - 20 Damage | 90 Gold |  0 Weight

 

As you can see, no single mod makes the Steel Sword have those 3 attributes, and without a Merged Patch I would have to pick one to be the "winner" and effectively choose which attribute I wanted modified more. Therefore, the Merged Patch makes these changes all happen by "merging" the changes into one plugin.

 

However, I am currently with the understanding that xEdit is not the ideal tool for Levelled Lists which is where Bashed Patches come in.

 

Bashed Patch

 

As stated above, I use this for Levelled List patching. I know it does other things, but I don't currently understand those things.

 

What I'm asking for

 

So far, I've been making both Merged and Bashed Patches for my game, but after discussing with another Skyrim player, it seems this may be inefficient or unnecessary?

 

Is there a better way to go about setting up these kinds of patches? If so, what should I be doing?

 

Thanks in advance for any advice and assistance in understanding anyone may provide

[Grey Cloud]

For your steel sword example you don't need a patch. Just copy the values you want (the 20, 90 and 0) into the other mods so that they all have the same values.

 

Personally never had the need for levelled lists so no suggestions there.

[NymphoElf]

51 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

For your steel sword example you don't need a patch. Just copy the values you want (the 20, 90 and 0) into the other mods so that they all have the same values.

 

I understand that, it was just a simplified example. Merged Patches allow for more complex interactions to be resolved in a way you desire.

 

Plus using a patch allows you to preserve the original values in case you forgot what they were or want to revert.

Edited November 6, 2025 by NymphoElf

[d1ouji]

There's a guide for how to do it on the nexus, been a while since I looked but pretty sure it's on the bash page.

Ultimately wrye/bash does pretty much what you said, while merging does what it sounds like it does - it merges mods together so you don't hit the limit of 255 or whatever it is from having a heavy load order.

[shrtjsrtj]

There are a lot of tools for doing some of what those patches do, and maybe all of it for leveled lists, but frustratingly I don't think they cover everything and since they use a different mechanism than creating .esp's, they don't mesh all that well with also using traditional merged patches.

 

e.g.

 

Skypatcher: "Modify ammos, npcs, races, weapons, modify leveled lists, formlists, containers and more" via .ini files.

 

Keyword Item Distributor: Add keywords to things that have keywords, also via .ini files.

 

Spell Perk Item Distributor:  "Add spells/perks/items/shouts/packages/outfits/keywords/factions to every NPC in the game, using config files."

 

Quick Armor Rebalance: "Quickly and easily take any custom armor or weapon mod and change the stats, add or modify recipes, and/or distribute as loot from within Skyrim itself by using vanilla items as a base template." Requires restarting Skyrim for it to take effect, but it's still nice to be able to see issues in game and fix them in game.

 

Synthesis: "allows modders to develop mods via code, rather than by hand. These are often referred to as "patchers".

As a user creating a modded load order, Synthesis lets you add as many of these patcher mods as you like, and bundle them together into one single mod file: Synthesis.esp. You should rerun the Synthesis pipeline any time you add/remove mods so the patchers can change and adapt to the new content."

 

-I haven't used this much but my understanding is this is similar to using an xedit script or making a smashed patch, run code over you mod list to tweak things.

 

And probably a lot more I'm forgetting, like the blackface fixers and whatnot. For the first 3 you can download other peoples work for a lot of it, or just use them as templates/ideas for you own configs.