AV mentioned, "If your mod does not use Update.esm as a master, you should still be able to load and work on your mod with the 1.8 game right now, as it uses no updated incompatabile files."

I checked Skyrim, then my mod, and set it as the active file--same as with several others before it...haven't messed with the "update.esm".

Yesterday, I was messing around with modding Ysolda--new outfit, hair style, etc. Yesterday, the changes worked. Today, after 1.8 installs itself, the only changes I can make to her, are hairstyles. The clothing changes show up in the preview window ok, but no longer "in game". I tried deleting the mod, and starting over, but it came back to the hair as the only thing I can change. Regardless of outfit picked in the CK, she's stuck with the farm outfit in game--yesterday, I was able to try other outfits on her with no problems--make a change, start the game, and the changes were there--but not after 1.8 installed.

Thats kind of like what I've experienced when editing Serana but this was before the 1.8 update. I changed her lvl and stats, but it doesn't change in game(I have her lvl80 but GetLevel returns 50, he max, even though I changed that), but I can add abilities to her and stuff.

Isn't it weird how..updates screw with something they aren't intended to mess with?

Does this have impact on custom NPCs or only the ones in the base game?

Serana I know has a leveling script of sorts on her, which could be overriding editor changes.

Such changes are stored in the saved game and obviously will not change no matter how much you try to edit them.

Start a new game and you will see your changes take effect.

Yeah keep in mind that once data is saved into a save, no amount of modding or editing in the CK will change that data. (Unless you add a mod script that specifically changes it, etc)

So far I have yet to notice any issues with my mod. Though NONE of what I'm editing is vanilla. All of my changes since the 1.8 patch show up and take effect no problem.

Even stuff as simple as AI packs can bake in immediately after your mod loads.

I think I can confirm that 1.8 breaks any and all mods that change anything race-related. I was using a modified version of the mod "A Race Overhaul Project," and I am no longer getting the unique powers from the mod, and I am getting the vanilla version of the original racial power instead of the scaling version that the mod uses. The only things that seem to have been retained are anything that bakes into the savegame.

..thats so not fair man ~_~

It's always been like that. It's simply a "Dirty save". Skyrim just makes saves dirtier a lot more easily than previous BGS games did. But it's still the exact same concept. When you go to test your mod (Especially changes!) load a save from before the mod was EVER active.

Whenever I play for legit, whenever I save I do it in a new slot. Each 'session' of me playing, whether it's 10 minutes or 5 hours, has it's own save slot. That way if I accidently save my legit play with my mod active, I simply go back one save slot. Yes I lose a bit of playtime, but I'm not screwed. It's a great system that has allowed me to easily avoid dirty saves.

^^ That.

Skyrim means you need to be far more cautious about what loads into your game that could potentially pollute the save.

Save that I beta tested the UDGP and 1.8 and those race changes went through alright.

It may depend on what sorts of changes the esp file in question is trying to make. Stuff in the UDGP may be going through okay, but AROP isn't working properly at all for whatever reason. The powers the mod adds are gone completely, and the modified racial powers have been reverted back to the vanilla versions. At least some of the active effects from that mod are still there, just that other features got borked somehow.

Well from testing, I found out that the main stuff of AROP is working fine for the regular versions of the races, but it's not working for the vampire race that I added the AROP abilities to. I have no idea at all why this is happening, since I don't think I modified the esp file lately.