Quick question for those that know more than me (that will be most of you):

I downloaded and installed Bantari's Ravenloft manor mod. Works great, love it, etc. However, I would like to make a mod that removes some of the more mature tapestries in the home.

I know I could just edit the Ravenloft .esp, but I'd like to make this a separate mod so I could potentially upload it as an addon for Ravenloft for anyone else who might want to use it.

Anyway, I got into the CS, loaded up Ravenloft (didn't set it as active), made the edits I wanted, saved the esp and made sure it was loading after the main Ravenloft file.

But in game, the changes haven't been made.

What am I missing? Any advice would be appreciated.

Do the changes that you made occur if you start a New Game?
Because chances are your Save file just is remembering the old references that have already been made, and therefore overriding/conflicting with your modded esp .
But if you Update/Repair your Save with Wrye Mash, it should fix those old references.

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it.

However, the changes don't occur in a new game. I've updated/repaired with Wrye mash, but that doesn't do anything either.

Any other possibilities?

A mod can delete any reference (object in the game) placed by a master file (morrowind.esm, bloodmoon.esm, The Facepack Compilation.esm).

A mod can place a new reference of an object created by a plugin file. So if you had Ravenloft loaded you could put one of the new tapestries in the house of earthly delights.

A mod can not delete a reference to an object placed by a plug in file. What this means is that you can not delete the offending tapestry with another mod. The game would load the tapestry then when it loaded your mod it would complain that the tapestry does not exist, because that tapestry is not part of any master file. The load would complete and the tapestry is still present.

To get rid of the tapestry you would have to either alter the model or the original plug-in file. To alter the model all that it would be required would be to rename another tapestry model with the offending tapestry model's name and overwrite the original. You could also replace the original image with another picture in the same way.

Ok, that makes sense. So a mod can add things to an existing ESP, but not remove them?

I wondered if it had something to do with Ravenloft not being a master. Seems I'll have to edit the original ESP after all.

Thanks for your insight, I really appreciate your time.

I've just posted this in another thread on a very similar matter:


Edit: updated the quoted post

Is Wrye Mash able to do something along those lines? And I'm assuming you're then able to distribute the mod (i.e., changes.esp) without end users having to modify the file with the enchanted editor (or anything else)?

As far as I know, Mash is not capable of adding new masters to a file; I've always used the Enchanted Editor to achieve that. And your assumption is correct: when you distribute your mod, end users won't have to modify it in order to make it work.

Ok, thanks. Would you be able to give me brief walkthrough on how to do that? I've got enchanted editor installed, but I'm not totally sure where to do go from here. Or if there's a better place for that info, could you point me in the right direction?

Much appreciated, thanks.

Actually, there is a very similar thread going on in the Construction Set Forum. I'll quote the reply I wrote there:

Hmm. Ok, I did all described above, and still having trouble getting this to work. I used enchanted editor to add the new master, and it loads correctly without any errors. Made the changes in the construction set with [original].esp and [changes].esp checked, with [changes.esp] as active file.

Removed some of the tapestries, updated/repaired the save with Wrye, and loaded the game...

But the tapestries are still there.

Did I miss a step?

Well this is the second time i have typed this lol.


You can always move the tapestries out of the cell behind the walls a bit far out though so there is no clipping or bleeding and then place the tapestries you want where you want them.

Of course there will be the people who complain saying its not clean and so on...but hey who cares it's your mod and they can download it if they want to nobody is forcing them lol

Hope this helps you and fixes your problem!

I could do that, and I prolly will if I can't get anything else to work. It's not as clean a solution as I would like, however. Thanks, though, I'll keep it in mind as a last resort.

Did you save the mod in the CS while still working on it? Here's a bit of information I didn't remember yesterday:


Edit: While I'm at it, here's an older thread about this topic: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/998821-setting-esp-as-master-file/

There was an even more informative thread a couple of months earlier which has been purged from the forum. Here's a copy: http://www.mediafire.com/?vdpgm29csgk6cc5

Thanks for saving that. I'd looked for it before, but couldn't find it. So much good stuff has been purged.