People have recently been reporting CTDs in the exterior area of my http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9541. I have never had issues with that in the past, but after doing some research it sounds like it could be some kind of bug with the exterior navmesh (which looks fine to me, but I digress). I used Wrye Bash to convert my mod to an esm and it works great - no more CTDs.

The problem is that now the original landscape shows up through the exterior statics as if I had never removed them. I picked a random outdoor spot to build on and had to remove the trees and boulders, but now it seems they've made a comeback. When I load the mod in the CK it looks normal, no issues. Ingame the house exterior is there but so are the original trees and boulders I removed. Does anyone know why that's happening or how I can fix it? If I load the mod as an esp there are no issues (aside from incessant CTDs..).

Thanks!

How did you remove them? Did you just delete them, as that's a big no-no. Also, deleting tree's causes their tree LOD to be loaded at all times unless you regenerate the LOD.

If you must clear out an object, move it underground/nearby, or set it to initially disabled.

Yeah I did delete them... didn't know that was a bad thing. Oops, thanks! This is literally my first mod ever so I'm picking things up as I go. I know enough to create separate instances of anything I plan to edit but it didn't occur to me not to delete vanilla landscape statics. Haven't ever had issues in the exterior before this week though. The trees and rocks stayed deleted and I haven't noticed any weird LOD issues so far.

My problem right now is that, after converting to an ESM, the various rocks, shrubs and trees which once occupied my courtyard (and were deleted) have returned. It's like the vanilla game scenery is overlayed onto my mod. This doesn't happen at all when it's an esp file. If I didn't have the CTD problem I would keep it as an esp but unfortunately that doesn't appear to be an option.

Right now I'm thinking I could have an esp to go along with the new esm that simply removes said scenery and nothing else (by disabling it if it deleting causes problems).

Edit: That worked, I just load the separate tree-disabling esp after my esm. It feels like a dirty, quick fix but it seems to work... >.> If anyone has some other suggestions I would be very grateful!