Can someone elaborate the exact step by step way to do this?

E.g., when I open the "Merge to Master" in Gecko, it looks for an esm file. All I have are esp files for DLCs.

I have the following questions:
1) Should I select the master file as one of the DLCs, say DLC Thieves Den.esp - I can do this by looking for "All Files" in the browse drop down for "Merge to Master".
2) Should I select the DLC Thieves Den - Unofficial Patch as the esp to be merged "into" the master?
3) Click merge etc., to get a new DLC Thieves Den Plugin?
4) What happens to the BSAs - I guess they get loaded as the DLC esp name is the same.
5) Same thing with the VWalk (From Surazal's Sensual Walk patches) - they have DLCs as their masters, and as the file name is the same, it should not matter and they should load fine.

So is this method OK, or am I screwing up somewhere?

You use drop down box and select All Files.

This was told to me last week when I asked.

:goodjob:

How did the merge to master for LDCs and their unoffical patches go for you? Does your game load fine without any issues?

I haven't noticed much of indirect issues since I haven't had any time to use the DLC content.

Thanks for resopnding ITPaladin and Vargr - now I am off to do some mod merging to get some esp slots free...

By the way, I notice that I can get Oblivion to load only when 254 mods are active (including Bashed Patch). If I go with 255 (no matter what mod it is), OBSE+Oblivion will just not load (OBSE window pops up,a nd then returns to desktop). I've seen some other load orders (PetrusOctavianius comes to mind) that also have 254 mods (going all the way to FD in hexadecimal), but never 255.

Anyone else notice this?

Your saved game is number 255...

Boy! I learn something new everyday - thanks for this tidbit aellis

A lot of people don't realize it, but the game handles 255 total esms / esps + one ess (a byte of address registers).
Oblivion.esm is #1 (00 hex), your save is #256 (FF hex).

I have just uninstalled all mods, redoing WB to 290, and starting from scratch...not that I have done much yet anyway.
This will be my second restart of a character, never reaching past level 6 since getting the game in August.
I still haven't decided what graphics foundation I will do with 512 ram - QTP3 redim and reduced for certain items? I tried the ampol caves which were ok but it seemed everything had a wet sheen to it. Not all caves have to be wet.
I will clean plugins and merge as I go. I will probably merge all of Duke's mods together, possibly keeping Hypothermia seperate to merge it with Campfire Behavior since there really isn't any other reason to use CB that I can think of.

I am still having trouble understanding if you can merge "green" bash mergables with another plugin that is not bash mergable.
Some things that have patches such as Thieves Arsenal I would like definitive answer as it is not covered by Tomalong's merging guide. TA's compatibility patch is green-mergable but TA itself is not.

Is it safe if a patch or the "main" file has bash tags to just copy those over to the new merged plugin?

Another example: Cobl tweaks is mergable green, but Cobl SI/Glue are not. Can I merge all these together?

DLC Knights and its patch has various bash tags. SM Plugin Refurbish - Knights.esp has the green-mergable text but the previous two do not. Can I merge these all together?

I noticed when trying to merge Knights and the patch with Gecko, allowing for intervention, it asks about "Exterior Cells to be Merged". I have no idea what to do here.

Why would you merge the green files???
Wrye Bash already merges them automatically, so there is absolutely no need to make thing needlessly complicated.

What Petrus said ^^

By the way, while merging with Gecko, allowing for intervention, it asks about "Exterior Cells to be Merged" while merging DLCs Frostcrag, Battlehorn and Mehrunes Razor with their respective Unofficial patches. What should I do here - merge all without bothering?

If it's any consolation I've been putting a mod list together since September 4 (according to the date on the folder I created to stash new mods in). In all this time I've only seen the game for a few minutes at a time, for testing purposes.

Well I am trying to restart with a better foundation, cleaning, merging, but still confused on these things like Ani is. I would like to merge things as much as possible.
I figure if it is safe to merge to non-bash mergable plugins with a green text bash mergable plugin, then I have saved myself 2 slots with the above example where a DLC has a patch that is green but the main file and the refurb are not.
Another example: Spell tomes not, its patch is. I assume it would be safe to merge, keeping the Relev tag on the merged plugin from the main file, and keeping the new merged file active.

So I tried merging the unofficial DLC patches to masters for
DLCHorseArmor.esp
DLCMehrunesRazor.esp
DLCOrrery.esp or DLCSpellTomes.esp (one of these 2, I forget which - the other one is already merged with the bashed patch)
DLCThievesDen.esp
DLCVileLair.esp
DLCBattlehornCastle.esp
DLCFrostcrag.esp

and I got some major land tear issues near Bravil (I was in that area at the time) - heck, even th emain bridge to the Bravil entrance disappeared! Returning to the original dlcs and the unoffical patches made things return to normal.

Does anyone know which dlc plugins can be safely merged to the unofficial patches through Gecko's "Merge to master"?

Sounds like that exterior cell merge went wrong which is why I didn't do any merges without better knowledge.

I was wondering if it was safe to merge the various Cobl esps: Glue and SI since they are right next to each other.