Everytime I rebuild my Bashed Patch a message pops up giving me the advice to deactivate a couple of mods and merge them into the Bashed Patch. Am I safe merging all of them into the Bashed Patch? I`ve read the short info on merging mods into the Bashed Patch in the Wrye Bash "How To", but didn`t learn a lot from it. The following ESPs are marked for merging:

- Enhanced Water v2.0 HD - SI Addon.esp
- Better Wine SI.esp
- Brighter Torches_v1.2.esp
- ForeverView.esp
- VA_BetterGold.esp
- SM Plugin Refurbish - VileLair.esp
- DLCSpellTomes - Unofficial Patch.esp
- MaleBodyReplacerV4.esp
- OOO-DLT_Remover.esp
- SM Plugin Refurbish - Knights.esp
- Harvest [Flora] - Shivering Isles.esp
- Harvest [Flora] - DLCVileLair.esp
- boh_dungeonbgone.esp
- EVE_KhajitFix.esp
- bgMagicSpellTomes_for_WryeBash.esp
- bgMagicItemSigil.esp
- bgMagicEVStartspells.esp
- bgMagicEVAddEnVar.esp
- bgMagicShaderLifeDetect.esp

What do you think?

By the way: I`m nowhere near the 255 ESP limit, but I want to keep things clean, that`s why I`m asking.

If it's recommended to do so then it's usually for a reason, or at the very least is safe. The mod maker has to manually add a tag to the description of the mod for Wrye to recommend this, so it's never likely to be a mistake or a bad idea. Not sure about all the specific mods listed there, but generally it is safe to do this.

Can anyone else experienced with Wrye Bash make a statement too? I think I don`t fully understand what this kind of merging actually does and what the consequences and maybe downsides are. What about the load order? If they can get merged into the Bashed Patch it must be irrelevant where these merged ESPs come in the load order, as they are at the end after merging. What if I often make changes to these ESPs? That means I need to rebuild the Bashed Patch every time I make change to a merged ESP, right?

As I understand it (and I have tried, successfully or not), Merging and Importing are OK, but you have to be careful with Tweaking. As a major example, selecting 'Tweak Actors - Mayu's Animation Overhaul etc...' when you don't have that installed, will definitely crash the game and cause you days or more of grief (personal experience).

I also think you should probably start with a default empty Bashed Patch when you rebuild. Copy it from \Mopy and then Rebuild.

And, as I understand it, most if not all of the Tags are added by BOSS.

When WB merges a mod, it copies most of the content from that mod into the Bashed Patch. I write "most of", because WB is smart and only copies the parts of a mod that is not overridden by a later-loading mod. There are a number of advantages to this. One is that you have less active mods, but the most important one is that WB is able to combine parts of different mods into one record.

E.g. ModA changes the damage of a sword while ModB changes its textures. Normally, due to the rule of one, only the latest-loading mod that changes one record (the weapon) wins, so the damage change of ModA is lost due to ModB loading later. But when the Bashed Patch merges those mods, it is able to take the damage from ModA and the texture from ModB and merge both into the weapon's record in the Bashed Patch.

Note that WB can only merge mods that add no new content, but only changes content from its master (like ModA and ModB above do). WB can also import from a mod instead of fully merging it. Importing is more or less the same, except that only certain aspects of a mod (like textures) are imported into the Bashed Patch, instead of merging the whole mod.

There aren't many downsides, though one is that other mods can check for whether a certain mod is active in order to establish compatibility, and if this mod is merged and deactivated, the check will fail. Another is that bsa files are only loaded if there is an active esp whose name matches the start of the bsa's name. If the esp is deactivated, the bsa is no longer loaded - but this can easily be fixed by renaming the bsa to match another active esp.

Load order is important. If two mods both change the same stats of a record, the last-loading will win, and in this case, be merged into the bashed patch.

Generally, yes.

TNO pretty much hit it right on the money. Just a few things to note: WB will refuse to merge a mod that has a BSA, to avoid the BSA loading problems. And finally, merging in CBash mode may or may not work 100%. Everything seems to be ok, but as with everything CBash, there are some bugs left to be worked out (though no none merge bugs).

Thanks to everyone for the detailed information!