Best way to merge esp/plugins for AE?

[roldoi1911]

I have a few outfit mods that don’t really warrant a dedicated plugin in my load order. Tries to merge them in xedit, but it failed. Any other method work? I tries to look up way, but only SE methods show up, and i don’t know how up to date they are.

[traison]

1 hour ago, roldoi1911 said:

Tries to merge them in xedit, but it failed. Any other method work?

 

No reason why merging with xEdit would fail with any 2 mods, I do this all the time with my hand-made merged mods plugin.

 

You pretty much just need to be aware that if you for instance copy over an ARMO record, that new ARMO record will still reference the original ARMA record; hence why xEdit will usually prompt you to add the source plugin as a master. This could perhaps be made more convenient with a script, but I just clean these up by hand afterwards.

 

Another thing to keep in mind could be the light plugin address space size. Can't merge 2 light plugins into 1 light plugin if you run out of usable form ids. This obviously also applies to non-light plugins, but you're less likely to see this. There is nothing stopping you from converting a light plugin to a regular one though.

 

1 hour ago, roldoi1911 said:

I tries to look up way, but only SE methods show up...

 

As long as the tool you're using can read form 44 and is aware of light plugins, it shouldn't matter where the plugin comes from.

 

Edit: To answer your direct question, isn't Wrye Bash what the kids use? That's been around since Morrowind/Oblivion. While there's been CTDs posted to these forums over the past 4 years that were caused by a merged patch, they're quite rare I'd say. Can't rule out user error either really. If your question now is why am I doing it by hand if this tool does it automatically then the answer is: 1) I only merge small and permanent mods and 2) I don't like that Wrye has a mod manager built into it; I think it would benefit from separating its merger from everything else.

Edited February 3 by traison

[Anunya]

Gamer Poet has a video tutorial on merging mods with zEdit (which is not the same as xEdit). It's easy to follow. I used it earlier today, and it works fine for AE. The tutorial includes how to install zEdit on MO2 and Vortex.