I posted about an issue relating to this the other day, though that one was resolved. Before, after merging the files we discovered an issue with the file names that prevented quests from working properly.

That is resolved, and when I run the quest in game with a coc, it works just fine. The problem now is that I made a new .esp file to make changes to the mod. In that esp, the only thing I did was add aliases for all of the npcs and quest items.

The quest no longer auto-starts when I open Skyrim with the .ESP and the .esm both loaded. With just the .esm everything still works.

I tried generating a SEQ file, TES5Edit said the esp didnt need one, and I generated one with steam anyways and that had no effect.

I changed one npc's dialogue conditions to be "GetIsAliasRef" instead of GetIsID. That had no effect on the conversation happening or not. The quest stopped initiating as well.

Anyone know why this is happening? Is there something else you have to do to link aliases up or do you think it may be something else?

Another note, I tried the save/load method to see if it behaved like a SEQ file problem, and that had no effect as well, the npcs still won't open dialogue, and the quest doesn't initiate either.