question in the title. I would like to create a nice little personal house somewhere using the construction set, for my current character. Could I do this without breaking my save, as long as I choose an empty area? I am an absolute noob with the CS, but I can just about manage to construct fairly decent houses, as I have done so a couple of time before.

Of course you can, no worries

hmm.. so I don't need to worry about cleaning saves, and uhh something to do with references that I've heard people talk about when doing with new mods (cleaning references was it?). Sorry if that is complete jargon, but I sware I've heard these things mentioned before. Either way I think I'll start devising a cool telvanni house somewhere : D (yes Im very excited)

Yes, you will need to clean references, but it's not to difficult if you know what you're doing. First, if you have Tribunal and Bloodmoon, select both as master files. This will avoid a lot of messing around later and will give you more stuff to use, although you will need to http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/?p=modding_data/tutorials§ion=2156 to skip all the annoying but harmless and perfectly normal error messages you get when loading both. Then, once you are done download http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=other.detail&id=53. Clean any objects you did not make yourself and all cells except the one you edited. If you edited ground textures do not edit any of the ground texture entries .

You only need to clean a save after you update a mod that had already been loaded in your game when the save was made. If you want to add a new plugin you don't need to worry about it.

However, you shouldn't update mods "on the fly" because that can easily cause doubling of object references (you can do it, just be sure to keep a backup save in case something goes wrong). If you want to update or improve your mod, it is safest to first unload it from your game and re-save your save game, and then update the mod.

So I need to clean my references with tesame, but I don't need to worry about cleaning the save. And I need to clean all objects (related to the mod?) that I haven't created myself ( as im not planning on creating any new objects of my own), and then clean all cells *not* effected by the mod? Concerning ground textures - if I simply place a new building in the wilderness somewhere, thats not effecting the ground textures is it? Sorry I'm pretty badly informed about these things...

Adul - surely the doubling thing will not be a problem, as I am simply creating a mod for an existing save game, not updating one?

thanks for all the help guys

All correct. Simply placing a building will not edit land textures, although you may wish to do this to add a road or something like that.

I don't think saves should be effected or have any kind of problem.

cheers mate! now to try my luck...


edit - oooh forgot to mention - are there any special rules if I wanted to place it on the TR map?

so I've now completed building the entire exterior and interior to the house, but I haven't changed any of the object IDs, and I've just now read that I need to change the name of every single object and cell etc I used, to unique names. Is this true?

Depends. If you place a chest inside your home with the same ID as other chests in the game, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you alter what's inside this chest without changing the object ID, then all the other copies of this chest was used in the world will also have their contents changed.

I thought the reason to rename everything was so that you could see in tesame which objects etc are yours, so you can more easily identify and delete the ones that aren't used by the mod? What you're saying seems to be something different, no?

You only need to rename the ID of an object if you alter it in any way that will effect every reference of that object in the game.
It's perfectly safe to use as many objects as you want normally, with no need to rename.

If you do rename the ID of an object after altering it, you will have to clean out the original with EE or TESAME. (otherwise it remains altered)