A "mod" is a package (archive) of related files that make some change to the "vanilla" (unmodded; as delivered by the publisher) game. Within a "mod" package can be a number of "asset files" which add to or replace the existing vanilla assets (meshes, textures, sounds, animations, XML files, etc.), and one or more "plugin files" that tell the game about the existence and use of the new assets and where they are placed in the game. The "plugin" files are the only ones that appear in the "load order", which determines the sequence in which the game engine loads them into the game from the "top" (lowest numbered) to the "bottom" (highest numbered) position in the sequence. "Plugin" files have one of two possible file extensions: ESM and ESP. There is generally only one ESM file, but there may be any number of ESP files (including none). The ESM files are loaded first, and are considered "masters" to the ESP files that depend upon them.
Official game expansions ("downloadable content", known as "DLC") typically are provided as ESM files along with other "assets". They may or may not include ESPs. DLC are usually sequenced in the order they were released but this is not mandatory unless they depend upon an earlier DLC. All DLC depend upon the game's original ESM file (i.e. "FalloutNV.ESM") so it should always be first.
fallout nv missing master check mod load order
Download: https://byltly.com/2vAqhX
A "master file" is one which must be present for another plugin to be able to utilize it's resources. The files which require some "master file" are known as "dependencies", because they "depend" upon the assets of the "master". Typically these "masters" have an ESM file extension, but this is just a general guideline. A file is technically considered an "ESM" because it has that flag enabled in the file header, which is normally not visible to the player. Thus an ESP file can have the flag enabled and be treated as if an ESM file to include loading with other ESM files at the top of your "load order". In addition, an ESP file from one mod may be required by another ESP, in which case it is also considered a "master" even though in all other respects it is "just an ESP" and may appear lower in the "load order" ... but still should be above any dependent plugins.
The game engine requires that a "master" be loaded before a "dependency" or it generates an error. Usually this results in a "Crash To Desktop" (CTD). If a "master" file is missing when the game starts, this CTD can occur during or even before the "loading screens" are displayed. If you get as far as the game's main menu once it has finished "loading DLC content", you are not dealing with an actual missing file problem, but rather one that is out of proper sequence in your "load order". This will also cause the game engine to display that same error message.
"Dependency" files are supposed to include a list of their "master" files in the file header. This list can then be read in turn by tools for sorting the "load order", such as LOOT. Some plugins are "patch files" which modify other plugins. They depend upon the presence of the other plugins to effect their changes, yet may not have them as "direct masters" or otherwise included in their list of "masters". These "indirect masters" may need to be manually identified and either added to the plugin's list or that information provided to the sorting tool. (LOOT uses the "required" metadata field for this purpose only. It can find all listed masters by following the chain in the header of the file. See it's included documentation on the use of metadata.) If they are not included, the sorting tool cannot determine the proper file relationships, which leads to CTDs and plugin conflicts.
Finding which masters that a plugin depends upon are missing is fairly simple. However, first you must disable your "bashed" or "merged" patch file and enable any plugins they deactivated. (See the S.T.E.P. Guide to Merging Plugins which covers both the "bashed" and ""merged" approaches to "patch files".) Otherwise you may get much of your "load order" considered as "masters" simply because part of the plugin you are concerned with is in that patch file, and indirectly requiring all the other plugins included in it.
However, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't still check your "bashed" or "merged" patch file for it's own missing masters. In this instance, you can expect to see most (if not all) of your ESM and many ESP files listed as "masters" to your patch file. The patch file often doesn't include a list of all the masters, and adding them will make it so the patch file will build references correctly no matter how you change your "load order" sequence, or at least warn you when some are missing.
When the "background loader" is finished (message in the right-hand pane at the bottom of the "Messages" tab), in the left-hand pane you should see all the masters referenced by the plugin, along with the plugin name itself (which will be listed last).
When a "missing master" error is reported, it can mean one of two things. Either the file is not active/installed, or the name is not what is expected by the plugin. In the first instance, you must install or activate the missing plugin. In the latter instance, you may need to add or change the new name of the "missing" master.
Changing the name of a "missing master" most often occurs when a "merged" version of the master plugin has been created to reduce the number of active plugins required. The content is now in one instead of several files. A typical example of this is an "All DLC" version using one merged file instead of one for each of the individual DLCs. The plugin is still looking for the individual DLC files as masters.
If there are unresolved references then the plugin was made badly and cannot be fixed automatically. Perhaps you can get this kind of missing information added. GECK/CKIT will do this exact same error checking if you load and save the plugin in it (though possibly only with the tool's "Powerup" addon).
Mod quality is a community wide problem and needs to be addressed on that level. If everyone just tweaks their load order around and cleans mods they installed that's not going to move us forward as a community. It is important that if there are general issues with a mod that these be made public and the author of the mod fixes them. With many of the possibly conflicting changes that a mod makes, it becomes a question of intent when cleaning them up, and only the mod author can give an authoritative answer to that.
The records you are trying to clean are the records that override changes to vanilla values. It has always been explained that you can't load additional modules. It can turn identical to master into identical to master, but conflict winner where the later will not be cleaned from the module. When those are EXACTLY the records you want to clean. So cleaning while having additional modules loaded makes the complete process utterly pointless and a waste of time.
Cleaning with all your mods loaded would be like looking for someone through a crowd of people. You can't see through the crowd and with all the mods loaded xEdit can't see only the masters of the plugin. This prevents it from calculating ITMs accurately.
There are times in which the load order of Master files gets switched around when you add/change load orders. The, "Sort Masters" function corrects the master file load order in the Plugins master list, and correctly renumbers all file specific FormIDs
If a plugin has two masters that are siblings (one doesn't have the other as a master, so they can load in either order) and they are overriding the same record from an earlier master (e.g. both are overriding a record from the main game master file), then loading them in a different order will result in a different version of the overridden record being the "winner". But the plugin might depend on the winner being the one indicated by the order in which it references the masters.
To put it another way the header of a file is like a small history of how the mods were sorted when the module was created. If the masters are only the DLC it is probably safe to sort the masters. It is also safe when there is one .esp file as a master along with DLC. The only time you would want to closely examine the module is if it has more than one .esp file as a master. Because as mentioned above, the order of the masters may be important according to how the conflicts were resolved. If this is the case set these plugins to sort differently with LOOT.
When using Clean Masters if references are still in use the Master will not be removed from the master list. In order to list references we will be using a script named List records referencing specific plugin.pas. This may take a while depending on how many references there are in the Plugin.
In this example we found Unresolved Reference errors (Ouch!) These errors are very serious as they indicate a record from the mod is trying to reference something, but what it is looking for is missing from the mod or the master of the mod. Mod authors should never leave these uncorrected! They should be corrected by the mod author and not by you!
Identical to Master (ITM) edits are the most common type of dirty edit. They're where a mod has overwritten something in the game without making an actual change. If another mod higher up in the load order makes an intentional change to that thing, it will have its effect cancelled out by the ITM record, which can cause problems. ITM edits can be cleaned automatically using xEdit. 2ff7e9595c
Comments