TES5Edit, combing ESP files question

[Neodarkside]

So question about combining ESP files using TES5edit, got a plugin (merged plugin 1.9) that allows you to merge multiple ESP files into 1 single file to help cut down on the 255 file max. Once the files are combined, do the ESP files need to remain in the Data folder? I know once they are merged you can deactivate them in NMM (and possibly in MO), but I was curious if I can simple put the disabled ESP files into a separate folder?

[EdinMG]

Once the plugins are merged you can delete them, no need to keep them in the data folder !!!

[Neodarkside]

Ah perfect thanks! I'll probably just throw them in folder instead.

[Varithina]

One thing you might want to be aware of is even though the Tes5Edit and standalone merge program say they are copying all the assets sometimes they do miss them for whatever reason, usually it textures I find they miss.

[Neodarkside]

I've had a few in the past miss a few files when merged. Tried combining all my hair, eyes, and makeup/tattoo files into one, it missed a lot of hair files. Quite a few times armor mods merged would be missing full sets of armor. Haven't had a texture vanish yet tho. I normally merge them and then load a game and test, if they work, I proceed, if they fail, I unmerge them. Reason I want to know if they can be deleted is once or twice when I tried loading Skyrim it kept crashing, couldn't figure out why untill I looked at my Mod installer and saw it had 270 ESP activated, anything over 255 causes a instant crash on start up. I found that alot of merged files had become active again and it was a pain trying to sort thru and find 40-50 armor mods that were merged and deactivate them.

[Varithina]

My normal way of making a merge pack is to move all the zipped armour mods I intend to include into a working directory, unzip them all, sort out folder layouts so meshes\textures\bodyslide go where they should, make sure there are bodyslide files for each armour, re-name read-me's to match the mods esp and move them into the read-me folder, make seperate folders for screenshots and re-name or create folders under that for each mods screenshot's.  Re-zip the whole lot, install that zip as a mod, edit each esp for consistencey, when I have done all the mods included, I will then create a merged esp, activate that, then move all the original esp to a seperate folder in the mod called original esp or something like that, then I will use add all items in a small cell to check to make sure meshes/textures work, then I will archive that folder and store it in my mod archives.

 

Normally each merged armour mod for me will be 50 armour mods, some of which may well have dozens of armour pieces.

 

Its damn tedious mostly sorting out the keywords/armour values, and armour rating/types and adding male meshes where the creator of the mod has not done so, usually using vanilla male armours, if you do no and use lootificiation you end up with invisible torsos or even naked males, or worse males that have a female torso, and the rest being male which is ack, to say the least.  The creating light/heavy/clothing or whichever of them is not already there, adding crafting/tempering recipes where not already present, editing existing recipes to match their keywords.