Cleaning mods, do or don't?

[lts940]

Hi, I used to play skyrim when it came out but had to stop playing due to personal issue/family business/desktop being broken.

 

Now that I built myself a sweet rig, I just wanted to get back to it.

 

What I realized in the first was how much skyrim tools are changed (back when I played, I only worried about load order, now it seems thats not the case).

 

So, since I have some mods installed (around 110 ish esm/esp excluding the mainfiles), it was causing some CTD during the game (not on the start up).

 

I used LOOT to get the order as straight as possible, created batch using wyre bash and cleaned the official files (update.esm, dawnguard.esm, hearthfire.esm, dragonborn.esm) with TES5Edit.

 

However, I realized that I have some ITM and UDRs in my other mod files based on my LOOT report.

 

I tried to look for ways to fix that, but it didn't really have a clear guide on how to clean the 3rd party mods.

 

I was just thinking of spotting the 3rd party mods that has ITM and UDRs and manually clean them myself.

 

 

So here is my question (after long introduction), should I clean the ITM and UDRs from 3rd party mods? I heard some might cause error because some of ITMs and UDRs are created intentionally by mod developers, so I wasn't so clear if I should be cleaning the other files.

 

So I just wanted to hear you guys opinion/answer about this problem.

 

 

Thank you in advance

[toynbeeidea]

YES.  You should almost always clean your mods, especially and including dawnguard.esm, hearthfires.esm, and dragonborn.esm.

 

There are a RARE handful of mods that require dirty edits.  Per Arthmoor, though, for the most part if your mod "requires" dirty edits it means you're doing something wrong.

[Varithina]

If you have not already done so, it might be worth while checking to see if the third party mods generating those errors have been updated or not, if they have it may well solve the problem.

 

And the procedure for cleaning 3rd party mods is just the same as you did with the official mods, this is the web page I use for a guide on how to clean mods;

 

http://www.creationkit.com/TES5Edit_Mod_Cleaning_Tutorial

 

But if they are generating errors its a good idea to clean them, unless the mod author says not to, which is not too common at present.  If in doubt then it may be well worth posting to the mod authors forum or web page, blog or whatever with posts on what errors are being generated.

[lts940]

YES.  You should almost always clean your mods, especially and including dawnguard.esm, hearthfires.esm, and dragonborn.esm.

 

There are a RARE handful of mods that require dirty edits.  Per Arthmoor, though, for the most part if your mod "requires" dirty edits it means you're doing something wrong.

Thanks for clear answer!

 

should I clean them just like how I cleaned dawnguard, hearthfires and dragonborn? (well maybe excluding dawnguard since that required 2 times of cleaning.)

 

 

Also, I rarely touch the load order (I only follow whatever LOOT suggests), but I realized that my patchus Maximus (from perkus maximus) will change my carryweight mod and MBWSLGF (mod that changes the look of pre-existing followers). Should I be worried about it? Or should I just put those 2 mods below patchus Maximus?

[lts940]

If you have not already done so, it might be worth while checking to see if the third party mods generating those errors have been updated or not, if they have it may well solve the problem.

 

And the procedure for cleaning 3rd party mods is just the same as you did with the official mods, this is the web page I use for a guide on how to clean mods;

 

http://www.creationkit.com/TES5Edit_Mod_Cleaning_Tutorial

 

But if they are generating errors its a good idea to clean them, unless the mod author says not to, which is not too common at present.  If in doubt then it may be well worth posting to the mod authors forum or web page, blog or whatever with posts on what errors are being generated.

Thanks for the link! I will look more into it.

[lts940]

EDIT: I just cleaned out every third party mods as well but I realized that my LOOT and sort function from MO provides different output, "sort" from MO says I still have ITM and UDR to do on few of the mods that required cleaning. Is there any reason why this is happening? maybe the LOOT within sort function is either better or outdated compare to the LOOT itself.

[gvman3670]

It told me Dawnguard needs cleaned after it was cleaned. So I did it again.

[srayesmanll]

EDIT: I just cleaned out every third party mods as well but I realized that my LOOT and sort function from MO provides different output, "sort" from MO says I still have ITM and UDR to do on few of the mods that required cleaning. Is there any reason why this is happening? maybe the LOOT within sort function is either better or outdated compare to the LOOT itself.

If I remember correctly, the "Sort" function in MO is an older version of LOOT.  Your best bet is to use the current LOOT and not the MO sort feature - follow the instructions for running LOOT from within MO ( http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Mod_Organizer )

 

It told me Dawnguard needs cleaned after it was cleaned. So I did it again.

 

That's normal.  6 ITM records appear after the first cleaning.  I found a link a while back that explained why, but can't seem to find it now.  Believe that when doing the "undelete and disable" portion of the cleaning, it undeletes some ITMs that show on the second pass.

[RebelInfernal]

You should clean but I always check the mod description first to see if they say to not clean it.