Hey guys, I have made a massive mistake while working on my house mod. I put in some chests (not all playerhousechests) and in order to make sure they were empty and non-respawning, I went and edited the base items, deleted all the content and checked off non-respawning. That resulted in all chests of that type becoming empty in various dungeons throughout the game, which is a major issue as it impacts anyone using the mod.

Is there any way I can return those chests to their original state?? I really need some good advice on this =/

Open your plugin, File > Data > Details, sort by FormID, then "Ignore" anything you want to revert/remove the override to with the delete key. Save/Close CK.

Oh man, it's that easy?! I seriously hope so and I'm gonna try it as soon as I get home. Thanks!!!

Hm, I'm not sure this does exactly what I need it to do. Basically I messed up these chests, the actual base item, which is located in many many locations throughout the game, and I need it reverted to its original form, with random content, respawning etc. This solution seems to only affect my mod?

If your mod has an override to the base object then you'd want to remove the override so the engine reads the Skyrim.ESM iteration. Make sure, with the details window, that the CONT forms are actually gone? Also, you might need to wait a reset cycle out before the reversion will be evident as it's possible the containers just haven't yet respawned.

When you say FormID, do you mean EditorID? I see no Form ID under details? Will ignoring it in my plugin convert all the Skyrim.ESP ones back to original state?

I meant FormID, the hex code each form has. In most of the CK's windows, there's a column to sort by FormID, but it's usually hidden until you spread it's column up top.

Edit; If there aren't any CONT forms, there can be no overrides to the base containers, so you probably just have to wait in game until the containers respawn before they'll have their original contents.

Ignoring them just removed them from my mod it seems. Will that fix the default chest in the rest of Skyrim?

Sorry, I see the FormID, it was just minimized. I do not see any CONT forms tho? I'm totally distressed by this =/. How do I make the Skyrim.ESP form of those chests be the default? Can you put it in laymans terms, this is my first time modding, and I'm worried I effed something up that can't be fixed.

Edit: What if I outright delete them from the mod, will that affect the base item that I altered, or does that stay the way I edited it, i.e. removing all the items? Cause I deleted that random base stuff and they are not set to respawn.

Yes, but they might need to respawn before their reversion is evident.

it can be fixed, don't worry. the only thing is damage conrtol. if you already released your mod, you should instruct all your users to evacuate the house of all goods temporarily while you release the patched version. whatever they placed in those containers will be wiped out from their save games forever.so let them know ahead of time to clear out the chests and save before installing the update.

you may want to hunt down the offending records in a program such as tesvsnip. i find it much easier to sort through the form records in tessnip than trying to fish through the details window in the ck.

Thanks, I was planning on making an announcement with the update, but I'm just not sure yet that 'ignoring' will do the trick. So far I've ignored and then replaced those chests with safe playerhousechests. I'm about to go find one of the dungeon chests that I know was locked and empty and wait around for a full cycle to see if it respawns, cause I had them set to not respawn.

I did find all the chests in the FormID cause I didn't have that many. I'm just worried if this will actually fix the base object.