Books disappearing from bookshelves ??

[Black Album]

Sometime ago, in my Lakeview home, I noticed books disappearing from my bookshelves.
I'd just built my library and was starting to store all of my books.
I have an "unlimited bookshelves" mod BTW
I'd placed all off my notes on one shelf, gone off to do other things, returned to retrieve a note but although the shelf looked full ... when I activated it ... there were only 2 or 3 notes listed.
When I closed the activation, all the books disappeared from the shelf (barring the 2 or 3 listed).
They were just gone !!!
I booted up an earlier save and the books were there.

So I removed all my books from the bookshelves and stuffed them into a chest ... where they've been safe ever since.

Now I've just installed the "Breezehome Fully Upgradable" mod and want to bring my books from Lakeview to Breezehome.
This seems to be the time to get some information about this problem ... before I just bung all these books into a different chest and my new library still looks rubbish.

And so ... does anyone know why this happened?

[Roscaria]

Having Unlimited Bookshelves for years from Workshop never had any problems.

However just recently transferred the mod over to Nexus and found that while I could put books on the shelves they were not visible. If you activated the shelves again you would get the list of invisible books and could retrieve them.

Problem was the load order for this mod had been changed in transfer despite using LOOT afterwards. Moving it further down the mod list manually cured the problem.

[Nazenn]

Ive actually been trying to track down the exact cause of this bug for some time after several reports of it came to my attention, primarily through the Unlimited Bookshelves page (which I spend a fair bit of time on trying to help out where I can as its a unsupported mod now)

It has two forms:
Bookshelf appearing empty, but the actual container for it being full once you open it.
Bookshelf appearing full, but deleting items once you open it.

However, through some research, it appears that both versions are indeed vanilla bugs as Ive actually seen some reports of it happening on xbox and playstation versions of skyrim as well.
It was supposedly fixed in the 1.4 offical patch, but like many of the fixes included (cough cough green water fix) doesn't appear to actually work. The bug itself usually crops up in Hearthfire affected areas, either the vanilla houses, or mods that use hearthfire resources, (hearthfires broke breezehome in a pretty big way originally because of how it messed up the navmeshes so theres that as well), but it has been known to affect completely vanilla areas as well.

Theres no other known fixes it for unfortunetly, and it hasnt been patched via mods either, I suspect because its a pain in the ass to do so or no one knows how.

[Nazenn]

Originally posted by Roscaria:

Problem was the load order for this mod had been changed in transfer despite using LOOT afterwards. Moving it further down the mod list manually cured the problem.

If youre going to put Unlimited Bookshelves low down in your load order, I suggest you quickly learn some tes5edit skills and patch some of the records. Unlimited Bookshelves edits some things such as armors and items so that it can add or maintain object bounds for them, so that the physics don't get screwy when you place an item on a bookshelf, but because of this it can override some of your other mods if you aren't careful :)

[Black Album]

I'll have to look into maybe ... and I mean maybe ... cleaning it ... I know I get a report in LOOT.
As it is ... I'm not using the mod if everythings in a chest.

Anyway ....
Are bookshelves the same as bookcases?
i.e. are bookcases extensions of chests?

My items have been safe in chests so far and I've a few bookcases in my new place and would therefore keep books in one, notes, level up books spells in another etc and know they're still safe

[Nazenn]

Do not clean Unlimited Bookshelves if you don't know what you are doing.
Removing some of its ITMs can remove some of the object bounds that other mods might accidentally be removing. While the UDRs are technically safe to clean, NOTHING else should be referancing them in your load order anyway. If there is something else referancing it in your load order, you have two incompatable mods anyway and one should be removed.
If you clean the mod wrong, you CAN break it. If you are familar with tes5edit I do recommend manually patching it (when I release my tes5edit guide I will be showing how to do this) but cleaning it is a risky endeavor.

And as I said, its not the cause of the bug anyway so cleaning it won't fix your bug....

Bookshelves and Bookcases use the same code for storage so on a technical level as far as a display mechanism yes they are the same.
No, bookshelves are not the same as chests. While they do use a similar container function, as do many other things in the world, the additional code that displays the objects for bookshelves, instead of hiding them, makes them functionally different to chests as far as bugs and implimentations.

[SpeedFreak1972]

I really won't recommend unlimited bookshelves it shot 2 saves from me in the past it overwrites some important stuff from other mods AND the unofficial patches. I use this far more friendly however it can do only books: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49770/?

[Nazenn]

Originally posted by SpeedFreak:

I really won't recommend unlimited bookshelves it shot 2 saves from me in the past it overwrites some important stuff from other mods AND the unofficial patches. I use this far more friendly however it can do only books: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49770/?

How did it break your saves in detail?
Genuining curious as I'm trying to gather all information about the mod that I can but people aren't particularly forthcoming a lot of the time XD

[SpeedFreak1972]

don't know exactly however no house ingame was accessible anymore (mod or vanilla) it just ctd. Removing the mod and clean the save didn't work either.

[Roscaria]

I just zipped around the Hearthfires three houses I have. No problems there with entering and leaving. Bookcases working OK too.

[Black Album]

Originally posted by SpeedFreak:

I really won't recommend unlimited bookshelves it shot 2 saves from me in the past it overwrites some important stuff from other mods AND the unofficial patches. I use this far more friendly however it can do only books: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49770/?

So ... with all the rules regarding not removing mods mid-game ....

Would I be able to replace unlimited bookshelves with the mod Speed recommended ... mid-game ....

[Roscaria]

That has SKSE scripts. I do not have SKSE. You need Nazenn to answer your question.

[Black Album]

It's not that important ... not if it affects my game stability ... as I said ... I keep all my books in a chest atm

[Nazenn]

Sorry for the slow reply, I wandered off to do some reading.

No, I do not think that would be safe to replace.
Unlimited Bookshelves runs on scripts, and also replaces all of the book activator objects in the game so that it can replace them with its new scripted versions which is what allows the mod to work (thats what those UDRs are)
The other mod (Bookshelves Updated SKSE) also runs on scripts and replaces the activator objects as well. Reading the comments, it also appears to be buggy and not have anyone supporting it in any manner.

While generally we talk about mods as just do not uninstall mid game as being an absolute thing for safely reasons and to prevent confusion for new modders, they can be broken down more like this for advanced players: (Please note for visitors to this thread, i still do not recommend uninstallation of esps mid game I am only detailing this out for the sake of discussion and clarity because I know the people in this discussion are people I know won't go blindly messing with this information :) )

- No risk : Mods that ONLY replace models or textures.
- Low Risk : Mods that change item stats, model directories, change areas that you haven't been too yet, etc
- Meduim Risk : Very lightly scripted mods (think Skyrim encumberance mod), anything with an mcm, changing locations you have already been too, npcs, etc
- High Risk : Anything adding quests, Higher scripted mods, anything with a higher potential for bugs, mods needing a lot of patches, etc
- Impossible : Anything touching the civil war, overhauls, etc

Both unlimited bookshelves and bookshelves updated skse I would fit into the high risk catagory because they are both unsupported, scripted and replace in game objects with their own versions that load a seperate set of data.

[Black Album]

Thanks you .... again ... Naz
I'm glad you got a little downtime for yourself ...

Once again ... great info ..... your knowledge never ceases to amaze me.

You don't, by chance, happen to know where I left my phone charger last week, do you?

[SpeedFreak1972]

Yea I uninstalled it midgame ... and disaster however If I can't use any house ingame anymore the save is already shot imho. Generally I wouldn't uninstall it midgame.