I've created a custom merchant with an empty inventory because I want to take all the mods I have requiring questing all over the map and dump them all into this new merchant's inventory so I can go buy the items in one location.

It seems to be working so far - she has probably 20+ custom items in her inventory (merchant containter) to sell. Now though it's starting to become crash-happy when I add in any more. I thought it was custom enchantments on some of the weapons, so I tried adding a different custom weapon which has no enchantments or scripts, and it's still crashing. I checked the .nif file and it's not looking for any textures I don't have. I'm now wondering if there is a limit of some type to the actual number of items the character can sell. Anyone know?

Also, no matter what I do I can't get this merchant to sell the human blood bottles, despite having every sellable option checked aside from spells.

Edit: I'm starting to think there is indeed a limit. I made a second merchant and merchant container and now it's taking the extra weapon without crashing. I'm still curious about the blood thing though.

I don't think there is a limit to the number of items.

I did have about 1000 items in Diviine Elegance Palonyria's inventory while testing my mod.

The only limiting thing is your patience waiting for the buy/sell menu to open when it gets above 150-200 items.

Did you have to use multiple merchant containers to accomplish that? I just discovered that I could assign this new merchant container to the original merchant and get rid of the second merchant.

There is no limit on merchants. As far as I know, the only negative effect of having alot of item on a single merchant is that it takes longer for the shop screen to open.

As for the reason of the crash, if you have a slower processor (less than 1.8ghz), low ram (less than 1gb free), the issue above certainly has the potential of making any existing instabilities worse. However, depending on what modded items you were using, and how you added them in, the problem could be happening entirely because of those items being added to a vendor. You should try and make sure that none of the items added have anything set to happen within an onadd player block. You should also make sure that any scripts on the items are changed or removed in a way which does not affect the quests related to them. This is really why this sort of thing is a bad idea, often items which are given as quest rewards are given special scripting which is meant for that quest. This means that to add these items as you are doing, you need to take the time to understand all the scripting involved with each quest, and how it pertains to the quest reward.

My mod only finds and uses merchant containers placed in the shop by other mods.

But the answer is that a merchant may have many containers to sell from. As an example, Growlfs Hot Clothes & Armor adds around 400 items in three chests to the Divine Elegance shop.

If I remember correctly, a merchant will sell items from any container that he owns, either directly (container ownership) or indirectly (container is in a room owned by the merchant) .
He also sell items placed in his shop (on the counter, etc)

I'm sure that isn't the issue. I have a pretty decent computer (2.4 ghz quad core) and 4 gb of ram.



I was hoping to avoid errors by removing all custom scripts, enchantments and spells, but it may turn out I won't even be able to port over the templates with the directory path to the models. I was hoping to avoid having to do it all manually. Ah well. Thanks for your advice.

Edit: I think I figured it out. For whatever reason, it doesn't like it when I open the two .esp files together (mine and the one I'm trying to port over) and then simply rename the weapon templates so it will save into my .esp. It wants me to create a new template even if that new template is just the result of renaming the existing one and thereby cloning it. Dunno why it makes a difference, but if that's how it will cooperate that's how I'll do it. I hope I'm explaining in the right terminology. Anyway, thanks for the help you two.

It makes a difference because that method is technically making your .esp dependant on the other .esp, and due to how the game changes form IDs around based on load orders, making one .esp link to another .esp usually ends up causing problems unless you know what you are doing, and even then there are some issues which may affect what it is you are wanting to do.

Your best option would probably to either use TESGecko to split those mods so that you have a new mod with only the item/enchantment information, and then merge all those into your mod. You can do this manually with TESsnip or within the CS, but TESGecko ends up working a bit better.

Ah okay. I think I understand now. Just renaming doesn't change the formID for each item, does it? By creating a new template I create a new formID which is not dependent on the original .esp. Ever since I started doing this I've had no problems adding items and it also doesn't appear that I need the second merchant container (though I think I'll keep it and make a second merchant to go with it and sell armors instead of weapons).

You know, as frustrating as errors can be, I find that trying to figure them out makes me learn how to do things. Thanks for all your help, Vagrant0 and QQuix. I've given you both kudos.