I decided it's about time I add Update.esm to my mod as a master. This would hopefully reduce conflict issues, make the mod more stable, and overall should just be a good thing.

However I've discovered that the simple act of adding it as a master completely breaks dialogue in my mod. Nobody will speak. No subtitles appear. Quests run, SQV shows all good, everything runs perfectly fine and in order except that anything dialogue completely fails to exist.

How I added it (might be wrong way?):

1. Open CK

2. Load Skyrim, Update, and my mod

3. Save my mod

This causes update to be added as a master.

Since adding it I've done about 9 days of work that I'd really like to avoid losing. Does anyone know how I can safely remove update.esm as a master? Or how I can otherwise fix my now broken dialogue?

At worst I'll revert and lose the work, but I'm truely baffled as to why it would break.

I've verified that it's adding the master, as I took the pre-master version, which worked fine, and did nothing to it other than adding the master, and the dialogue broke.

Thanks!

You can remove it with TESVEdit but you will get errors when you load into the creation kit (for you to fix). Given the amount of content in your mod this will probably create more work than it would take to resolve your problem mate.

Hopefully someone can chime in.

Couple of questions:

Have you generated a new SEQ, and verified it has the correct filename?

Have you made any changes to your skyrim ini files? There's a line in there that can break dialogue in BSA archives.