Sorry, Ipatow, but you're totally lost me with what you wrote in your post.

I do the best I can in my mods, but I'm no expert, so I don't understand your points, or what I did wrong, or how to go about fixing them.

Umm... Well, I see this great deal of excellent work you put into your Realism Tweaks mod, and it's simply impossible to think you to be anybody but an expert. Anyhow, I'll try to be less vague.

A little note. Why am I caring about how good, efficient and flawless are Arwen's Realism Tweaks? Because I've read your "My Vision of The Wasteland" statement, and your approach outshines others. Others try to make a better Wasteland, while you're trying to make this Wasteland better.

Now, to the business. What I see when I open Arwen_GOTY_Med-Tec.esp in GECK? There are 12 objects in Game Effects Ingestible category. Alien Epoxy should be rather in Arwen_GOTY_Realism_Core since it isn't medicine, it fixes weapons and not people.. Well, it's not Alien Epoxy that's having a problem. Actually, both Biogel versions are also OK, since they don't use your Base Effects.. That leaves us with 9 problematic objects.

Let's look at Aqua Cura (EditorID is "DLC03WQ02AquaCura", BaseID is [BrokenSteel.esm load ##]006F62). What we see? There are no more RestoreHealth effects (you removed them), there are now two DamageRadiationLevel effects (two checks for Sanitizer are a bit less efficient than one.. it works, so no complaints here) instead of original one. And that's all. Where is "12oz Good Water" effect? Well, you referenced it as 05122256, but there's no 5th master specified in Arwen_GOTY_Med-Tec.esp - and neither GECK nor game can guess that you had Arwen_Med-Tec.esp loaded then and you meant to reference object with EditorID "ArwenGoodWater12". No ESP can directly reference another ESP.

How to fix that problem? Make a copy of Arwen_Med-Tec.esp. Delete from that copy everything that does not need to be referenced by more than one module. At the moment, only Base Effects "ArwenFood2", "ArwenFood3", "ArwenPureWater16", "ArwenGoodWater12", "ArwenDirtyWater8", "ArwenDehy04", "ArwenRestoreFatigue" and "ArwenEatFruit01" are referenced from outside. 8 objects would be a small ESP. Then you make this small ESP an ESM - just set "ESM" record flag in header with FO3Edit or any other tool (it's a good idea to also change the filename extension to .esm). Having done that, you load Arwen_GOTY_Med-Tec.esp into FO3Edit, add your brand new ESM to the list of masters - and if you didn't change local IDs (last six numbers of BaseID), your references become correct. Then you need to make changes to Arwen_Med-Tec.esp for it to also use master's objects. Load Arwen_Med-Tec.esp into FO3Edit, add your new ESM to the list of masters, then perform FormID change on all the objects you placed into ESM.

How to do that? Since Arwen_Med-Tec.esp had only one master, yours will be second, that is #1. Let's start with "ArwenGoodWater12" - it's now XX122256. Right-click on the ID, "change referencing records", we are asked for new FormID, it's now 01122256, then we see a list of referencing objects (this time just one entry in the list - former Dirty Water, now known as Good Water Full), check all boxes, OK, changed - now all references point into ESM. Right-click on the ID again, "change FormID", again we enter 01122256 - now all mods are referencing the same ArwenGoodWater12 from ESM, edited by Arwen_Med-Tec.esp. Repeat these steps for each of objects in your new ESM - and you get everything working as you intended.

I would be glad to do all this for you, if you like me to. If you agree to my help, I'd need actual version of ART (you certainly already made some changes towards 5.6) - and you should choose which parts of ART are to be placed into masterfile for everybody (and of course each of your modules) to reference. That could be all your own objects, only those that are already cross-referenced or anything in between. I'd suggest to put FormID lists like "ArwenTraumaWeapons" into masterfile and have it edited twice: Arwen_Med-Tec.esp would provide classic entries, and Arwen_GOTY_Med-Tec.esp edition would be all that plus GOTY items - so all weapons would make correct wounds both in classic setup and in GOTY as long as GOTY module is loaded after base one. I'd suggest to not put messages into masterfile, as they are hardly would be referenced from outside... Base effects probably should all be there, as well as your Ingestibles - they are useful for fellow modders - but not scripts of armor tokens. And, of course, you are the one to make these decisions.

Thanks for explaining this better.

But I'm still a bit confused.

With my current method, my Arwen_Med-Tec.esp is a master for my Arwen_GOTY_Med-Tec.esp

How would turning my Arwen_Med-Tec.esp into an esm, and having that as a master for my Arwen_GOTY_Med-Tec.esp be any better?

I would have to also turn my Arwen_Realism_Core.esp into an esm.

I like esps because they are easier to work with, and they can be placed anywhere in the load order.

I do really appreciate your offer to help . . . I'm just not convinced that I need to make these changes.