Tommy_H...when you start getting a sizable number of mods, you might want to start using 'Auto-ghost' (another right-click on mods list). It will hide merged and inactive mods from oblivion so that they wont count against the mod file limit number (255). But I just wanted to tell you that you should also uncheck that before BOSSing, and recheck afterwards. But WB itself can work with files even when they are ghosted.

And, hey...dont fret too much about mods that arent recognised by BOSS yet. There are always a few , and even ones you might like. I've got about 5 in my list. I just sort the Bashed Patch and a few other files that need to go last by hand after I BOSS, and then rebuild patch

Not that there is anything wrong with this approach, but personally I have never had lock times on. I just make sure to instantly add any unknown mods to my masterlist.txt, and always run BOSS after installation. So instead of having to reorder the unknown mods every time you add new mods and run BOSS, I need to add them to the masterlist once. Much simpler.

So BOSS is the only program that controls my load order, and locking times in Wrye Bash seems like unnecessary hassle to me.


You got this somewhat wrong. Merged and disabled mods do not count against the 255 limit whether they're ghosted or not. The 255 limit is for active plugins. However, there's also another, more mysterious limit that's somewhere in the 300-400 files range that counts all esm, esp and bsa files in your data folder, whether they're active or not. And ghosting helps against that because the non-active mods are moved outside the data folder.

Two sides of the same coin

For me, lock times is indispensable for keeping things straight when I'm working on stuff since I tend to play with mods I'm building and don't want them bouncing around in the active load order if they need to be in a certain place to work right. If I don't want the file date changed for packaging purposes, I just avoid clicking into Bash until I'm ready to. Of course, I don't use BOSS and I don't let OBMM touch my load order, so it's just inconvenient to have to move stuff back into place every time.

OK guys, great discussion. I think I get the picture about Lock Times and BOSS running and stuff.

Just to say it once: I am a player-user really, more than a modder. So my concern and interest is more about getting a nice game set up rather than trying and shuffling around things often - or start modding things myself. So from this viewpoint I don't think the file limits will be a problem I will run into anytime soon. But it's good to know anyway.

If there was the one mega-download of say FCOM configured in a default manner "the way it was intended by the authors" bundled in a self-install .exe file, I'd be more than happy to download that and pretty much forget about everything else. Now I know (from reading threads and readme's) why the FCOM team does not do it, and I understand that, you know, modularity and file maintenance. So this is why I somewhat reluctantly get into learning WB and mod-installing and stuff. I don't conside myself a chicken but the learning curve is very steep. Now for you folks who HAVE learned it already, it's of course no longer an issue, but for a somewhat-new player like me, really it is no fun. I always have the nagging thought that I might do something REALLY wrong or something is just not working right even though it SEEMS to work right... And I would definitely pass out at the sight of yellow exclamation marks (or question marks?) running around... that would be my undoing... :ahhh:

So thanks for your support so far, it is highly appreciated. I'll be around with more stuff later about WB functionality. :tops:

I have a pretty noobish question for you all. I've just installed Wrye Bash and I'm preparing to create my first Bash Patch. Should I only select the Merge Patches option or should I also Select all the IMPORT options as well?

when you rebuilt the patch right click on the rebuilt and you will see the import and merge list there

Generally, when a mod is tagged with something that can be imported, it is for a reason, so the general answer is "Yes". There may be some exceptions though, like me not selecting Feudal Empire in the "Import Graphics" section, as I don't want that mod's armor looks win over other mods I have installed.

Okay, I'll give the "Yes" method a shot. Thanks for your answers

So after a very short night of sleep I am asking myself: Are there some real, strong advantages when using BAIN vs. OBMM for installing mods? Because the user interface and presentation is nicer and more intuitive in OBMM, certainly for a casual user like me.

I heard a rumor (I read it somewhere, maybe not in this thread) that a guy had OBMM blewing up on him and messed the installation and since then he is using only BAIN. Any truth to that?

Don't get me wrong, I am totally sympathetic to BAIN. I would just like to understand why I should or would use one over the other. The advantage of less total HD footprint with BAIN is somewhat minor considering current HD capacities and prices. But then I also understand some folks use both installers depending on the mod at hand. So I guess there are good reasons for both tools, so I'd be really interested in your comments!

Here's my understanding:

BAIN advantages:
1. If mods A and B write to the same resource file (same texture etc.), it is easy to set up which one to win in BAIN and overwrite the other in BAIN. In OBMM you must either install B last (and overwrite all), or answer No to all the overwrites.

2. If you decide to uninstall B, BAIN will correctly automatically reinstall A's overwritten resources. OBMM keeps track that the resources are used by A too and therefore doesn't uninstall them, but will not revert to A's version. To do that (if you need to), you must reinstall A.

3. You will probably have to use Wrye Bash to rebuild your bashed patch anyway, so using BAIN meas one tool less to use.


OBMM advantages:
1. Has a powerful scripting language that makes installing complex mods, or mods with configurable ini files easier.

2. OBMM automatically understands non-standard packaging of archives. "Mymod\data\myMod.esp", "data\myMod.esp" and "myMod.esp" inside the archive is fine for OBMM, but with BAIN you must repackage to the latter.

3. OBMM can be used to install non-standard files like shaders or dlls.

I've read that people have had both OBMM and BAIN blewing up, just as with any other tool

NiceOne, you're really a nice one! Thanks for the exhaustive reply. OK so I see that BAIN is better for installing textures. Well I'll be doing those in due course, so I definitely want to keep learing more of WB/BAIN.


This whole thing about the "Bashed Patch" is another one of the big mysteries to me. Borrowing from Return to the Future these are the Universe, Women and now the Bashed Patch... But I have to get to that later on, so please for now nobody bother to explain me anything on that. I want to read some more and try some self-education first.

Ahh, and NiceOne: Is there a dedicated thread for your MMM OMOD installer? I want to install MMM soon as my next step towards FCOM, now that OOO 1.34 is under my belt. I'm sure I'll be having questions then...

The base reason for the bashed patch is this:

Assume Mod A changes a specific NPC's eyes, Mod B add's a weapon to its inventory and Mod C changes its level. Since all three mods change the same record (the NPC), the one loading last (Mod C) will win and overwrite the changes from Mod A and Mod B. So the NPC gets vanilla eyes and weapons, but changed level. When building the bashed patch, you effectively create a new mod (the bashed patch is an esp file just like any other) that contains three changes for that NPC, the eye from A, weapon from B and level from C. Since the bashed patch loads after the three other mods, it wins over all three and makes all the three changes apply to your game.

It also has more advanced features like merging leveled lists: if Mod A adds the possibility of finding a dagger in a chest, and Mod B adds the possibility of finding a scroll, the bashed patch will add the possibility of finding both. This is cruicial for FCOM, because OOO, MMM, Frans and WarCry all tend to add their weapons or creatures to leveled lists (a leveled list is a list of what you can find a certain place). Without the bashed patch, the last-loading of the 4 would wipe out the other 3, but the bashed patch reads the additions to each leveled list from all 4 (or other mods that do the same), and combines it to one bigger leveled list stored in the bashed patch.

There's of course more to it than that, but this is the main reason for using a bashed patch.


It's http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=995334

You're really too nice! :hugs:

I've been having trouble for a while with Wrye Bash deselecting the Tweak Assorted/Max Weight Potions [0.1] setting every time I go to rebuild my patch. I can manually reselect it to keep it active for the patch that's currently being built, when when I go to rebuild my patch, it is deselected again. This is the only option that gets deselected, and this only started happening in the most recent few versions of Wrye Bash. Has anyone else seen this behavior?

Yes, it is a known bug. You may consider to add my http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1013259 mod instead of using this tweak, as Lightweight Potions dynamically adjusts the weight of all new player-made potions so that you don't have to apply the tweak again in Wrye every time you have created new potion types ingame.

That is really recommended.

TheNiceOne: Nomen est Omen

@Crashpilot, @TheNiceOne: Thanks. I'll give it a try.

Hi, I've spent the past hour and a half reading through different topics and threads looking for an answer to my problem to no avail. I am now hoping that by posting it someone will be able to help me. I have recently installed Oblivion on a new computer and spent two days sorting through mods and checking load orders etc to make sure it works. Played through the dungeon area and reached the sewer gate clicked to leave. CTD. I got a pop up box but didn't think to save the data. However on restarting through bash I got a message saying autosave.ess and .bak had corrupted headers. Made a new character and once again worked through to the sewer gate. Same result. Cheated and moved to a quest target which went ok. Tried to fast travel CTD. Took off bash patch and most of my mods leaving only the basic ones that didn't need cobl, obse, pluggy etc, same thing. Can anyone help please as I'm now totally stumped.

Turn off autosave when waiting, travelling, resting in the gameplay options. Also, post your load order using Wrye Bash (right-click the file header in the mods window > list mods), but perhaps you should do it in appropriate thread (FCOM if using it etc.) as this doesn't seem to be a Wrye Bash issue specifically.

This is what happens when I run Remove bloat from a save:

And because the bloat was 300 kB, bg2408 advised me to ignore it.

But this is what he added:

Is there a fix?

Feature Request : Import Spells. Similar to Import inventory.

Possible ? Great! You sure ? Really!? Brilliant! What's the ETA ?

and if it's done...
maybe merging spelllist from birthsigns? (import spells from various birtsign mods)

I'm getting a weird BAIN error:

WindowsError: [Error 5] Access is denied: 'InstallerTemp\\40 Misc. - Footfalls of Heroism\\sound\\fx\\fst\\earth\\fst_earth_01.wav'

What does this mean? It's very frustrating as this prevents installation of all mods, which.... well, svcks.

Is it possible to put the Bash Installers folder elsewhere than the default location?

I'm pretty sure instructions for this were given a couple of threads ago.

I was wondering if it would be possible to have BAIN copy modified files back into the archive on request?