Hello! I am new to the world of creating/editing mods and have chosen to try to edit existing ones before I venture out to try my own.

I am currently editing a mod I found on Nexus I enjoy, a dragon follower mod, but the level the character was made at over shadows my character far too much and the fact it was set to take up an animal follower slot conflicts with a follower overhaul mod I'm using.

I need to fix these things. So I made a copy and edited from there. First I found the character under actors and brought up edit, I saw it has "creature" in us factions in addition to the usual Follower stuff so assuming that was a problem I removed it then adjusted the level.

I disabled the orginal mod and have reloaded the game with the edited version as the only version enabled, but the character will not active any dialogue screens simply responds generic statements.

Did I forget to do something in the edit? I thought that maybe I should delete where they placed him in the world and replace him somewhere else or something.

Thank you in advance.

You shouldn't have edited anything but the level. Delete your copy, duplicate the old .esp (or just edit it directly - it's not like you can't redownload it), and JUST touch the actor's level. NOTHING else.

If you don't know it's broken for certain and you're not experienced at messing around in the CK, don't try to fix it.
That's not to say you won't get there, but there's generally a reason for these things and if you don't understand it you probably shouldn't just delete it.