"Shorting down" mods with TES5EDIT: Does it actually work?

[JustTankIt]

Frequently I find myself using only one or few features of a mod, such as a sword from a weapon collection. In such cases I try to reduce the mod's strain on the game by opening the mod in TES5EDIT and removing anything unnecessary to the feature(s) I want (which is a very risky process, I know). Exploring the mod with the AddItemMenu afterwards readily shows many entries to have been removed, but is this merely "superficial"? Can anyone verify if this process actually can be used to optimize mods?

[Guest]

It is extremely risky.

If you remove an item that is supposed to be in a cell you make an invalid reference. And this can cause CDTs.

If a script of the mod has for property one of the items removed, the mod may slow down the game or also CDT (depending on what the script does.)

 

If you really want to do something like this use the Creation Kit.

[Veladarius]

There is a lot of information that TES5Edit does not give you and, as CPU said, you run the risk of breaking any scripts or quests. I have made copies of standard items so I can use it in a quest and it required attaching a script to it or customized it in some other way.

[JustTankIt]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I was under the impression that TES5EDIT could somewhat subsitute Creation Kit in these matters, but if it omits important information then I'm better off learning the Creation Kit way. It is especially unfortunate that removing entries with TES5EDIT may oppositely slow down the game instead of speeding it up.

[RitualClarity]

I remember somewhere where TESedit could be used to copy a record and paste it into your custom esp. Then you can copy single records, armors, weapons etc into a custom mod that you can use. Then just place those items into a container list / or manually call it from id.

[Shirobako]

I remove cells/worldspace stuff all the time and have not encountered anything. Considering all the stuff I've installed, my game would be too cluttered/won't even load if I didn't remove those all the time. I haven't tried removing items though.

 

You might as well just take the nif/dds and make an esp out of that if the only thing you cared about is 1 item.

[Guest]

If the mod respects the golden rule: "have every object id with the code of the mod", then the quickest way to do it is in CK.

Open the mod you want, put the code of the mod in the filter at the top, click on "All Objects" at the bottom, select everything that you don't want, and click Del on the keyboard.

Save the mod and you are done.

 

Works just fine with basic armor/weapons mods. (But a few of them do not use a code for the objects, so it is pretty impossible to follow this rule.)

 

[JustTankIt]

@ritualclarity

Thanks for the tip, I'll have to look into that. It sounds a lot simpler and safer than what I'm doing now.

 

@Shirobako

Haha, glad to hear I'm not the only one playing the TES5EDIT game. As for deleting items, it appears to me that the entries one normally has to delete are the [Armor addon] + [Armor] for armor/clothing and [static] + [Weapon] for weapons. If I shorten a mod to only feature an item (which must be obtained via console or AddItemMenu) then these records are usually what's left. Sometimes there might be things like [Texture set] involved as well. Whenever I do this process I always have to browse the records to determine what's connected and what's not (usually given away by record names and .nif usage). Thanks for the tip about making custom esp's, that could work too.

 

@CPU

Thanks for the instructions, it sounds pretty simple. I'll give it a go the next time I decide to shorten a mod. All in all there seems to be several alternatives to using TES5EDIT-shortening.

[Guest]

You welcome @JustTankIt, good luck with your tries.