Why won't Wrye Bash patch what I tell it to?

[Nord85]

I have tinkered with Skyrim Unleashed and a few armor and weapon mods plus an improved animal loot mod, and it seemed best to make a bashed patch to ensure the leveled lists play nice together. So I made a patch that merged all lists the program suggested. It worked otherwise well enough, but there were stupid things like bandits using enhanced crossbows and saber cats having three teeth to loot. No big, I thought, and rebuilt the patch, excluding everything but the armor and weapon packs and Unleashed. But when I read the report Wrye Bash makes, it listed a whole lot of Dawnguard and that animal loot mod leveled lists as merged along with the rest. And those were just the ones I didn't want to merge with anything!

So, my question is: What went wrong and how could I make a patch that actually merges the things that I want and those only?

[Finn Wolfshorn]

Hard to tell without looking over your shoulder. Could you post a screenshot of the pop-up window headed "Update Bashed Patch,0.esp" as it looks before you hit the button that says "Build Patch" (or whatever it says; I have the German version, but I think you know what I mean)? Especially which of your mods are listed in the list in the middle of the window?

Also, is it possible that Unleashed reintroduces some of the stuff from Dawnguard that you're trying to exclude? I'm asking because I know Requiem does things like distributing crossbows to bandits, and from what I know of Unleashed it may take a similar approach.

Also, did you merge any of your mods that WB said were mergeable (=showing green in the mod list) into the bashed patch itself?

If we can't clear it up here I'd suggest asking on the Nexus page for Wrye Bash, maybe they'll be able to help.

[Nord85]

I didn't merge any mods. Or so I think; when Wrye Bash suggested I deactivate some mods I hit "Skip" and then in the next window unchecked "Merge Patches". As for Unleashed introducing crossbows to bandits, I really don't know. The mod author doesn't mention anything of the sort in the description, although I do use the version for both Dragonborn and Dawnguard users. Maybe that's the reason crossbows pop up. I would actually be okay with the regular ones appearing now and then, but I came across an enhanced crossbow in bandit hands at lvl 10 and now fear the dwarven ones will come up in later levels. That would be like Oblivion glass-armor-bandits all over again.

Here are the screenshots:

1. This is what appears when I haven't done anything but let the program find mergeable lists automatically:

Spoiler:

2. This is just before hitting Build Patch button, after I've removed the mods I don't want merged:

Spoiler:

3. And this is a snippet of the merged lists reports, which, as you can see, lists Realistic Wildlife Loot and other things I never included in the list:

Spoiler:

Thanks for replying, Finn. I'll be even more grateful if you could point out what went wrong.

[Finn Wolfshorn]

Hmmm let me see, doesn't look like you did anything wrong. I'm not sure about the crossbows, I think the only way to find out more would be to have a look at all of your mods in TESVEDit and check which of them affect the distribution of crossbows, but I think I know why the Realistic Wildlife loot stuff keeps popping up. The purpose of the Bashed Patch, as you said yourself, is to make leveled lists from mods that would otherwise conflict and overwrite each other play together nicely; in your case it ensures that you get gear from all of your weapons and armour mods on bandits etc. The Realistic Wildlife stuff doesn't conflict with any of that - bandits don't carry saber cat hearts and meat, saber cats don't carry helms and axes - , so there's no need for the Bashed Patch to affect them at all. The loot lists from RW are still present because you still have the mod installed, simple as that - or at least that's my understanding of the matter. I'm not sure if it's possible to get rid of the loot lists only with Wrye Bash and keep the rest of the mod, but I'm no expert in WB, you'd have to ask someone more knowledgeable about that (or start with a look at the user's manual).

ETA: On second thought, what you could try is reinclude Realistic Wildlife and manually change the Bash Tags (right-click into the field in the lower right) to Delev only. This should in principle remove all items added by the mod from leveled lists, so I'd expect you to get vanilla loot only from animals after that; the problem is it may remove leveled creatures too, which would kind of defeat the purpose of the mod. Just check the report after rebuilding the Bashed Patch and revert if you think it removed too much.

The simplest solution to your wildlife problem, if a bit tedious, would probably be to go through the animal loot lists in TESVEdit and change the values that bother you (change 3 saber teeth to 2, etc.).