Hi. My first question is... How do I open the CS with OBSE? I just installed ShadeMe's CS Extender and want to use it so I can put together a weapon/armor set for my character from a few different mods. Which brings me to my second question:

How do I use the CS and CS Extender to take a couple items from a few different mods, make copies of the items with different names and stats without affecting the mods they come from, and place them in the Oblivion worldspace so I can just go and grab them?

I tried this without the CS Extender at first to no avail. I did this by loading the Oblivion.esm and the mods that had the items I wanted into the CS without choosing an active mod so I didn't alter those mods and could create my own. I then double-clicked on the items in the Object window of the CS and changed their ID's. The CS asked me if I wanted to change the ID or copy and I would choose copy. I would find my copy, change it's name and stats to what I wanted and then click and drag it to the render screen in a location that was easy to go and pick up. Then I would click file, save, name my esp file what I wanted to be named and click save, and then the CS would crash, putting 2 files with the name I gave my esp in the Oblivion Data folder but they had no file size and didn't work with the CS or the game.

I was then told by 'display name already in use' that what I was doing was impossible without the CS Extender or another method more complex and not worth rementioning (lol). So I go to install it and the readme says I need to open the CS with OBSE, which I already have installed. I'm somewhat confused because I'm pretty sure that the obse_loader.exe activates Oblivion, and Oblivion has to be closed when using the CS. I'm not sure how to open the CS using OBSE.

Forgive me for I am new at this. Thanks.

To start CS with OBSE enabled, right-click on your shortcut to the CS, and in the "target" box, instead of the construction set executable, change it to obse_loader.exe -editor (this will also kinda mess with the icon for the shortcut, you can change that back if ya want.) Starting with OBSE will automagically load CSE.

Once that is up and running, (you will know it is working as CSE puts up its own little dialog window after the CS starts, and does its thing.) you should be able to load the various esps, copy what you want, and drop 'em into the world somewhere. Your mod should end up being dependent on the other esp files as well. I think.