Fallout 4 mods - merged patch and Vortex

[Chrome-master]

So since the Fallout Xedit tool has its comments disabled I thought I would put this question to the community to see if anyone knows.

Can you make the merged patch (leveled lists etc) with Fo4 and use it with Vortex? What do you call the patch so it works well with Vortex/LOOT?

I have been led to belive that Vortex comes with LOOT so apparently I need not use it seperately. But every time I make a fallout 4 merged patch using Xedit the Vortex mod manager and its Loot option does not understand the merge file.

Anyone else on here use merged patches from Xedit, or bashed patches to cobble their leveled lists/mod changes together a bit more for compatability? I see this as essential for large 200+ mod lists yet I cannot seem to get either Bashed patches or Merged patches working or sorting properly.

Any help would be appreciated :D

[Ilja]

I am using both xEdit Merged and Wrye Bash. I always name the file as FO4Merged.esp. However, I am using MO2 and not Vortex. This is the first time I ever hear about this issue, so let me ask around.

[Ilja]

Avrie had an insight in our Discord server.

I'm pretty sure the solution is to use the full version of LOOT and assign FO4Merged.ESP to the start me up group with a "Load After"

[Chrome-master]

Thanks, so the full version of loot is actually better/more up to Date than the one in Vortex?

Funnily enough I figuired out the "load after" mechanic myself after some tinkering. Did a merged+bash patch combo. So would you say this is certainly the best way for a more stable game with all the modded content?

I have played around both with and without the patches and feel my game may be more stable without them. I also get odd behaviour like some weapons not showing up with the patches although it is random.

For example I have mods that add guns to the Vault before you leave scattered around the level. Yet with the Merged/Bashed patch they disapeared in one instance of play, along with all weapons in the vault (including the non modded batons) which was weird :D

[Ilja]

That sounds like an issue with load order or leveled lists. It is also a main reason why xEdit says "Feature is unsupported", because managing the merged patch does require that player knows how to inspect records on their own.

Merged records carry over values and edits that would not otherwise get carried over the load order.

For example: I make a plugin that edits basic welding goggles, changing Perception +1 to Intelligence +1. Visual edit from another plugin touches same records will overwrite the change. In normal situation I could only have both.

In this case above, xEdit merged would end up creating a merged record for goggles, with visual changes and swapping PER to INT as intended.

It is a handy feature, but players need to know what that patch is actually doing. If there is an issue in records, then they need to know how to fix them from their end. This might be as easy than changing the load order and redoing the patch. Or, it might require that you go and edit records in the patch directly.

If you are loosing content from Vault, then it might simply be that added records in load order are overwriting cell records and causing the issue. xEdit "fixes" this, but has to choose which records to use. That is based on their relevance in your load order and might not be what you actually wanted.

We are currently having a conversation about if we even need xEdit merged, if we are using Wrye Bash. ElminsterAU has apparently noted that WB should currently have better support for these features. I am running both today to compare them.

I strongly recommend using WB for leveled lists in any case. Those lists will overwrite each other, unless they are merged. Otherwise you might want to inspect through xEdit merged and/or Bashed Patch in xEdit. That might reveal issues from your load order, or something that obviously would need patching to be compatible with other mods.

[Ilja]

I just compared FO4Merged.esp and Bashed Patch, 0.esp. I had not done that for FO4, due to being absent for a while.

I recommend doing both. WB merges leveled lists far better than xEditMerged, so I still recommend deleting those from FO4Merged.esp, before including that to Bashed Patch.