I'm curious, say I have 2 esps: one has all the levelled lists changed so that everytime I go to the wilderness, plains etc, I will always encounter 3-5 wolves, mountain lions etc etc. The other esp simply adds an enchanted sword to the player's chest in his/her house in Bruma.

Now, the esp that just gives the enchanted weapon still has all the other things (like levelled lists) unchanged. Looking into that esp, I can see that the levelled lists are purely vanilla.

So... when I tried loading the levelled esp first (using OBMM to change the load order) the levelled lists were altered. The same thing also happens when loading that esp last.

So how does Oblivion KNOW which esp it should load? The enchanted sword still has the levelled lists purely vanilla, and when loaded last OR first the levelled lists from the other esp were active. So how does this happen? I'm guessing it's a game mechanics thing or something, but no one has been able to tell me (as of yet) HOW and WHY.

Any takers?

easy.

an esp is a modifier, it will only change the things it has modified. If you never changed the LLs in that esp, then it will read back to the last mod that did change those LLs. If none did, then it reads all the way back to the Olbivion.esm

If you open up a mod with tes4edit or something, only the modifications that makes that esp different from oblivion.esm are shown, cause thats the only data stored in an esp, the things that different from whatever esm it is mastered to.


When you load up an esp, it will always load up the esp, and the esm's it is mastered to. what you end up seeing in the CS is all the data from the esm, plus all the modifications from the esp.

Thanks for answering but...

TES4Edit?

Also, I know that in my enchanted sword esp the levelled lists ARE the defaults. They exist! Why are the defaults not overrwriting the levelled list esp I created when I load it last OR first? Please explain as I was a little confused by your answer.

Just because something shows up in the CS, doesn't mean that the information for it is in the active file. It will show the information resulting from all selected files in their load order.

TES4Edit is a utility that is used to separate that information (not in the sense of changing it, just in the sense of how it's shown to the user). It shows the data on a per-plugin basis.

http://www.gamesas.com/?showtopic=775917

-> http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/TES4Edit/Mod_cleaning_tutorial_with_TES4Edit

TES4Edit is an external program that is used to view mod contents.

When you load up your sword mod in the CS you will have everything from Oblivion.esm get loaded in aswell. However, the esp that you save will only contain your sword, as everything else (including the LLs) are untouched. Only things that get edited, or added are stored in an esp.

So then in your load order, when your mod is loaded it only has the single bit of info in it about your sword. Thats why the LLs are uneffected, they were never saved into your esp.

Whenever I make a new plugin in the CS (or the GECK, since I do Fallout 3 mods too) I always run it through TES4Edit (or FO3Edit) to check for unintended changes and other oddities, before loading it into the game for the first time.

IF you think about it that is the only way the game modding could work !! --- If every .esp file reverted everything that it did not touch back to default (ie. your mod that does not adjust the Leveled list reverted the other mods leveled list changes back to default) then you could only use 1 mod at a time because only the last one to load would change anything since every other change made by other .esps would revert to default unless the last .esp also included all of those changes.

For further clarification, take a look into the details when you're selecting data files to load in the CS. These will list all records you touched when working in your ESP. Also I wouldn't take it granted that everything the same as Vanilla will not be marked as an actual touched entry in your ESP. You "can" make an ESP intentionally revert settings back to Vanilla, for when a different plugin changed things beforehand in your load order, after all. I think altering anything of a certain entry and changing it back to its original state might already be enough to mark this entry as "intentionally set the way it is", no matter if the way it is equals Vanilla or not.

That has been my experience as well.

That is where cleaning mods comes in - what described here if unintentional is called a dirty edit.