Okay, so I'm trudging through BAIN trying to make all my archives BAIN friendly. I have come across the idea of cleaning mods. In Morrowind this was essential for a heavily modded game. How important is it for Oblivion? Am I really going to have to go through my 200+ mods and clean them all?

Some will say very essential.
Others slightly essential.

I have not done it yet... I run 200+ mods including FCOM and my game is stable, 2-3 hour Game sessions. I do occasionally crash but most times I chose to leave the Game. Guess it depends on the Mods also...

Cleaning plugins is very important, but not all mods should or need to be cleaned. Stick to the plugin cleaning list on the TESCS Wiki pages until you really know what you are doing.

IF it is that important why are the MODS not already cleaned.??

IF bethesda owns the rights to all mods created with their CS then nobody has a right to complain?? I just don't get it?

ALSO why does the OFFICIAL forum For Bethesda think that is misspelled?

Many mods are already cleaned and many also do not need cleaning. Mods become dirty because mod maker forget that the CS adds random junk depending on the type of edits made, and the CS' mastering issues make it harder to remember to remove duplicates and the like. You can make clean mods in the CS, but it is very easy to accidentally include a dirty edit. I do not know what your other questions have to do with this. Who is complaining? Some people just prefer to have mods that do not contain wild edits as a potential source of crashes. I am all for a more stable game, but you can do as you like...

Can you give me a link to this page? I'm searching the wiki in vain trying to find the list I'll need to clean.

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/TES4Edit_Cleaning_Guide

It is by no means a comprehensive list, there are just too many mods out there.

Do not worry about cleaning the plugins until you get your mod configuration together, but you can find the link to that list on the http://sites.google.com/site/oblivionpoinfo/tunesetup/cleaning.

Never mind...
The 2 different times i tried this I Failed..the game wouldn't load, I gave up. I just diden't get it .did something wrong . Point is WE the User don't know about these things and can really mess things up!!

That is why I wrote a guide that stressed only cleaning mods that are safe to clean and emphasized only the safest methods. Unless you know a mod really well, unless it is listed in the list linked on that page, leave it alone. Just so everyone reading know, DO NOT CLEAN FCOM COMPONENTS. According to Shikishima, no plugins that depend on ESMs should be cleaned either. The ESM would have to be cleaned and all that mess, and that is really a job for the author. For the most part, mod authors should be the ones to do the cleaning because they know the mod best. Some duplicates of vanilla records are intentional, and other edits exist because some plugins are created with the intent to override other plugins. You have to be careful, so stick strictly to the guidelines unless you seriously know the significance of the changes made by the cleaning process.

Don't I need to clean mods while I'm re-packaging my archives? I'm reading Psymon's BAIN help article (here: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1084204-bain-mod-installation-projects/ ) and he recommends cleaning while repackaging.

I guess it that might be more convenient...It does not make a big difference as far as I am concerned, but Psymon and I do not agree on everything. His methods are fine too. Doing that may help pass the time or something I guess...I do not clean plugins until I figure out what I am installing, and rarely ever modify the original contents of a mod beyond rearranging it in a BAIN-friendly manner. I have cleaned plugins in a separate project that has the highest priority in my Installers tab. I leave the original plugins in their respective BAIN packages.

Generally good advice, mainly because the FCOM guys are aware of cleaning and have probably already done it.



However, this is without merit. A mod dependent on a second ESM has no real issue to fear from being cleaned.



An ESM with dirty edits is generally not kosher. There shouldn't be any real reason to edit vanilla records in one, without some very specific reasons - such as the way Frans edits into the vanilla leveled lists. Otherwise if it's a dirty edit, it's a dirty edit, period. I'm sure I'll be told I'm wrong about this, but I've examined in detail some of the claimed ones that should not be touched and I have seen no valid reason for it. Any hope of preserving something via an intentional dirty edit in an ESM is likely to be undone by half the ESPs on the planet, including the UOP.



True, and it's getting a lot better these days as awareness of the issue grows. Having come from Morrowind I already knew this was an issue to start with. It's even still an issue in FO3, and 99% of the time the modder has no idea the CS is making junk edits.

There are also certain highly outspoken individuals who will claim cleaning absolutely breaks everything about their mods. No verifiable evidence has ever been provided to prove this. One would be very hard pressed to provide anything solid to suggest gross dirty edits all over half the landscape and path grids will have any impact at all, other than deliberately causing compatibility issues with everyone else's mods.

Re: BAIN - It makes sense to package the cleaned ESP with the original archive. BAIN won't sit there with it's orange square telling you something is in conflict that way.

OK since this is about cleaning mods...this is from the Guide on your Site tomlong....


pertaining to # 9 So when you Click the X and are promted to save...OK so the saved file is the new esp? and the Backup is the Old version ?

@ # 10) IF I were to Drop all the Cleaned Plugins in that folder how would the Game run? Does that mean the New Back-up or a copy of the Original or a copy of the new and the Old?

RE: Repackaging.

I actually prefer repackaging my cleaned .esp's in a separate archive, just so I have the originals handy in their original archives. You know. Just in case. Comes out to be the same thing in the end

Yup, the plugins in the data folder with all of those date numbers attached to the end are TES4Edit backups. You cannot miss them. There is no reason to leave those backup in the data folder if you still have the original plugins in their respective packages or OMODs. A backup, basically by definition, is the pre-changes version. Whatever you went into TES4Edit with is what got backed up. Also, I recommend adding cleaned plugins to a new archive or folder and installing them through BAIN (even though they are already installed) so that BAIN does not complain about them (orange highlighted original packages and whatnot.) Give your cleaned plugins package high install priority.

Ahhhh..now i get it....Hey im old...but in my defense it does not say that in the Guide!

Well, that is not exactly pertinent to cleaning plugins. That is more just my suggestion for BAIN users, also keeping preservation of original content in mind. I hoard older mods that I no longer use for legacy sake. Except for useless the useless omod conversion data folder and the super out of data OBMM BSA settings jpg files, I pretty much keep everything that a mod's download comes with.

I think the only crashes I will get now is the ram crash. So yeah cleaning is important.

Well as most know I highly recommend repackaging with the cleaned esp and following the safer protocols - but really even so after all packaging is done - it is nothing to repackage again if you find more dirt or make more edits. By doing that, and as Arthmoor pointed out, BAIN will provide better information about conflicts and changes.

Now as far as other esm and cleaning - I thought the safer protocol was to load the esp to be cleaned in edit and if it brings up other esp as master to not clean it ... if it brings up other esm (that oblivion.esm) then right click on those other esm and choose hide so that the filter only runs against the main oblivion.esm and the cleaning process completely ignores them.

Is that now not the case?

Quote from here: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1079933-50-steps-to-ctd-almost-free-fcom-game/page__view__findpost__p__15725164


Edit: Do NOT clean plugins that depend on ESMs. It is okay to clean plugins that depend on other plugins, but you have to clean the dependency plugin first. The safest route is to preserve the original plugin, in case you did not clean a plugin properly or the cleaning tool is later updated. Hiding plugins does not make the cleaning process safer.

I still don't understand why you shouldn't clean plugins that depend on ESMs. I'm pretty sure that in the past I have cleaned plugins that depend on Cobl's ESM without problems. Any more details on this?

Edit: Looking through the cleaning guide on the CSwiki I saw Cobl Glue was listed as needing to be cleaned. Obviously that depends on Cobl's ESM :huh:

I am too tired to pull out that kind of explanation right now. Maybe Shikishima will check in and save the day...I am trying to keep my eyes open long enough to make some final posts. Part of the problem...I really am too tired to do this, morning...yeah...

Well I NEED a more in depth explanation because this is not good news to me if true.

And it contradicts information found at http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes4Mod:Tes4Edit#Cleaning_a_Dirty_Plugin. So it backs the position that you should not clean esp with other esp as masters and it says nothing of the esm mastered plugins.

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/TES4Edit/Mod_cleaning_tutorial_with_TES4Edit does not mention this at all.

If you hide an esm prior to running the filter doesn't that mean that only the main Oblivon.esm will be referenced and hence only those records that depend upon that esm will be filtered/dealt with while records that depend upon any other esm will not even be filtered or available to purge if found as duplicates or deletions.

Is my thinking incorrect on this and if so how?

Mods that depend on multiple ESM files are perfectly safe to clean. If you want it REALLY clean, clean each ESM first. There should be very little reason for most ESM files to have dirty edits. Even Frans hasn't got any reason to have them, and I cleaned it without any consequence. There's no need to hide the parent ESM files from their child ESPs. That just doesn't make any sense at all.

It's when you get into ESPs that have other ESPs as masters that things get a bit less clear. The general rule is don't do it. The child ESP may well be making an intentional dirty edit as a patch against TWO mods, even if only one is listed as a master. This happens a lot with landscaping patches.