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General
Can I update ECO mid-playthrough?
Yes, updates in a running play-through are possible and recommended unless the changelog specifically says otherwise. So, for your own good, form a habit of reading Patch Notes / Change Logs before updating any mod. That saves you from a lot of trouble in the long term.
How do I update ECO?
The same way as any other mod. Your mod manager (usually Vortex or Mod Organizer 2) can update mods automatically. In addition to that make sure to read the changelog before you update ECO. In some rare cases updates in an already running play-through should be done with caution. There is a warning in the changelog when that case applies.
If you're managing your mods manually then simply override the files of ECO's previous version with the new one but I won't provide any support in that case.
Where can I find patches and expansions for ECO?
Go to ECO's description page, click on the Requirements tab and under the "Mods requiring this file" section you can find all sorts of mod pages with patches and expansions potentially relevant for you.
I'm currently using Crafting Framework. How do I upgrade to ECO?
If you start a new game/play-through then simply uninstall ACO and/or Crafting Framework and install ECO instead. But if you're mid-playthrough, read this article.
I want to use ECO but some of my mods require AWKCR to work and I intend to keep them. Is there a solution for that problem?
You could keep using it but the usual performance impact from using AWKCR won't suddenly improve by slapping ECO on top of it. There are a couple minor conflicts that shouldn't cause any trouble. But if you want to be safe you have to create a patch yourself.
Besides that, basically any AWKCR-dependent mod can be altered to be stand-alone. In a lot of cases they work even better that way. Then you no longer have to run that heavyweight of a mod. If you're inexperienced in using FO4Edit and doing those kinds of alterations to a plugin you could use a prebuilt patch. Most of the prominent AWKCR-dependent mods already have a No-AWKCR patch available. Simply check the requirement tabs (more specifically the "Mods requiring this file" section) of those mods. In a lot of cases a patch like that is listed there. Sometimes even the creator of a AWKCR-dependent mod provides a Non-AWKCR version directly in the original download section. There's also a huge repository of those patches: No AWKCR and AE For Mods File Dump
Is ECO compatible with X?
First check the Compatibility article. If those mods you're speaking of modify vanilla legendary effects it's almost a given that those mods won't pair well without using a patch. If they don't modify any of those forms there's nothing that could prevent them from working alongside ECO. Aside from that, it's always best to use FO4Edit's "Filter for Conflicts" feature to check for compatibility.
In case you want to switch from another legendary overhaul/crafting mod or one that modifies/overhauls vanilla armour and clothing to ECO while currently being mid-playthrough you should read this article before you make any move.
MCM reports a missing plugin and there are no new additions to the workbench crafting menu even though my load order shows ECO.esp to be active. What's wrong?
Bethesda updated both the game engine and the Creation Kit. Plugins created or changed after that update use a new format (header) that renders them incompatible with older game versions. ECO was made with the updated engine. If you use one of those versions with an older version of the game this is probably the cause for your issue.
There are workarounds for this like the Fallout 4 Version Check Patcher but I'm not sure if it works in this case. If not, you have to update your game.
Will you add feature X?
No, this mod is meant to be a framework and I consider it feature-complete by now, aside from smaller additions. It already has a lot of features and I don't want it to become bloated with stuff only a few people would use but impact the performance/experience for everyone. If you think it is missing something important to you feel free to create an expansion and publish it so other users could enjoy your work as well.
Will you create a patch for X?
No, I only create patches for mods I use personally, with some rare exceptions. ECO has open modification permissions, though. So, anyone is free to create and release patches.
Will you create a non-DLC version?
No, I'm not willing to invest twice the amount of time needed to maintain two slightly different versions. Many other popular mods for this game require the DLCs (many of those mods require even all of them) as well, so by not buying them you miss out on a lot of great mods. Besides that, this game is now several years old and there were and still are numerous sales on Steam and other websites that offer the game plus all DLCs for next to nothing. If you still can't afford the Game of the Year Edition or the DLCs individually then this mod isn't for you.
Will you implement a colour/material swap option for armour and clothing at some point?
No, doing that would directly go against my design philosophy of having a lightweight and performant mod. That framework in AWKCR contributes a lot to one of AWKCR's major problems, that is the heavy impact on game performance/stability. I don't want ECO to become another AWKCR or a similar performance hog.
That said, it's possible to build such a framework on top of ECO but I won't force that upon every user and I'm also not interested in building it. So, you either have to create it yourself in form of an expansion for ECO or wait for another user implementing it.
ECO causes armour and weapons to behave weirdly. Can you fix it?
ECO definitely isn't the cause of your problem, it's physically impossible because my mod doesn't modify any armour or weapon forms on its own. If something isn't working as intended then you have another mod installed that causes that behaviour. And no, I can't fix your load order / mod setup.
After updating ECO from v2.x.x to v3.x.x my vanilla clothing can't be modified the same way as before. What's going on?
First of all, you didn't read the changelog. If you would have, you'd know what's going on and what to do. Secondly, v3.0 (and more recent versions) had its armour form overrides removed from ECO's plugin. This was done to reduce the potential for conflicts with other mods.
If you just update ECO's main plugin without doing anything else then the vanilla armour and clothing pieces in your game will revert back to their vanilla state, which means some of those items won't have any attachment points, not even a legendary one and can't be modified further. If you want to get back full functionality there are two options:
- The best option is to run the ECO Patcher part of Complex Item Sorter. That renders most of those hard edits and overrides and therefore most "patches" obsolete.
- Or you could install one of the two optional "Armor Overrides" from the ECO's installer package. They are identical to the armour overrides from pre-3.0 versions, just in a separate ESL-flagged plugin now.
General Crafting
When crafting weapons some preview models are missing or items only appear partially. Is this a bug?
No, that's normal because the devs used mod collection forms instead of fixed parts to generate certain parts/attachments dynamically (depending on player level). The actual parts you get on your weapon are determined when you craft the item. Before that point the engine can't show a full weapon model because it doesn't exist yet. Once crafted the model appears as usual in your inventory.
I can't modify certain armour/clothing at all. How to fix?
Some vanilla pieces don't offer any modification options by default and therefore won't show up on an Armorer Workbench. If there's nothing to do/change, why show it? The only fix is to add attachment points (what most users call "slots") to those items. This can be done manually in FO4Edit or Creation Kit, or you use the ECO Patcher part of Complex Item Sorter (actual item sorting is optional, you don't have to use it in order to use the ECO plugins).
Legendary Slots & Effects
Where do you get Legendary Microchips from?
Read the description page of this mod. Everything is explained in detail in the "In Detail" section. If you want to cheat use console commands or the mod In Game ESP Explorer.
How do I get the Legendary Specialist perks required for the legendary recipes?
Buy: Myrna/Percy (Diamond City) and Daisy (Goodneighbor).
Find: Overseer's desks in Vault 114 (Mag #1), Vault 81 (Mag #2), Vault 75 (Mag #3) and Vault 95 (Mag #4)
The holotape and MCM also have a cheat/debug option to enabled the perks without finding the magazines.
Why am I unable to scrap legendary items? /
Why is the L1 prefix missing on some legendary effects? /
Why are there no loose mod returns when I detach a legendary effect?
That's most likely a mod conflict. Try to load ECO dead last (at the bottom) in your load order. If that fixes the problem you have to do some trial and error to determine the mod/plugin causing it. Or you could use xEdit (Filter for Conflicts) to do that automatically for you. The Compatibility article on this page could give you an idea what's the causing factor.
I don't get Legendary Microchips from scrapping legendary items. Why is that?
You might be running another mod that adds recipes for the vanilla legendary effects. Most other forms/records in a mod report back a conflict when two plugins modify the same record. The last one loaded wins. That's why load order management is important in a lot of cases. When it comes to crafting recipes (Constructible Object or COBJ records internally) this isn't necessarily the case. Two or more recipes for the same item or effect can coexist since they are considered separate entities with separate IDs. All they do is referencing the same item (record/form). So the engine won't register a conflict and allows both instances, but usually when in doubt, the first recipe loaded wins, contrary to direct conflicts where it's the last one loaded. You get the recipes (including crafting cost/requirements and scrapping returns) from the first mod loaded and effects from the last mod loaded. Here's a guide that explains how to resolve this issue in a few simple steps.
How do I enable legendary mods and ECO's functionality on equipment that is missing a legendary slot?
I wrote a detailed guide for you.
Why is the Freefall legendary effect missing? Other legendary crafting mods did include it.
I didn't include Freefall as a craftable option because it's identical to Acrobat's legendary effect, both reduce fall damage by 50% per piece. Just the name and description are different. I enabled ECO's additional crafting slots on Freefall, though, in case you're using equipment pieces that use that effect by default.
Why can I craft melee legendary effects on guns and vice versa?
The engine doesn't differentiate between guns and melee weapons on its own. I could artificially limit some recipes (i.e. via keyword checks) but that would cause all sorts of new problems like worse performance and mod-added weapons requiring patches. That's not worth it. Most effects work on any type of weapon anyway.
Would you make legendary enemies spawn with items that have multiple legendaries as well?
I have no interest in doing that. That would require to rework the entire legendary quest script and how it distributes those effects with almost countless variations to make it feel natural.
Ultimately, if you want to use multiple legendaries per item the option is there and you can decide for yourself if you want to affect game balance that way. But I won't force changes to game balances upon every user of the mod.
The 40% increased melee swing speed legendary effects from FO76 is missing. Will you add it at some point?
My best guess is that the effect involves animations being modified. I'm no 3D artist and can't create animations. Besides that, I don't play FO76, I have no interest in spending in a lot of time on a game I dislike. So, you have to live without it for now.
Legendary effects or rather their loose mods converted for another slot (L2, L3, etc.) behave weirdly when trying to attach them. What can I do?
For some reason unknown to me the engine sometimes doesn't immediately recognize those converted loose mods properly. Drop them on the ground after the conversion and pick them back up. Then workbenches should list them properly.
Which legendary effects stack with each other and which ones allow only a single instance to be active?
In general, if an object/legendary effect applies a perk, then that effect isn't accumulative with other effects that apply the same perk. Perks can only have a single instance applied to a given actor, in this case the player character.
However, if a perk references an actor or global value in order to determine the effect strength while that value is modified additive or multiplicative by the object effect (or rather object mod), then the perk itself won't stack but the effect's power might increase nonetheless.
Equipment Modification
Additional mod slots won't appear or they suddenly disappeared and I can't reapply them. What happened and how to fix it?
- If this applies to all your items while you've applied a vanilla legendary effect to them it could be related to a mod conflict. Those can usually be fixed by moving ECO further down in your load order.
- If it's specific to only a few items you're most likely encountering a vanilla engine quirk. Don't worry it's just a visual bug. When having multiple weapons or armour of the same type (e.g. several vanilla 10mm pistols) in your inventory the engine can't differentiate between them anymore because they all share the same base ID engine-side even when they are modified to have different attachments. This results in the engine removing all dynamically attached mod slots (visual only). Simply equip the item you want to modify before going to the workbench and then all options should be available again.
Why do gun stats and projectiles in some cases behave weirdly when using ammo conversions and/or projectile overrides (at the same time)?
It depends on what weapon you're modifying and the ammo/projectile type chosen. Usually, the projectile is visual only. But in some cases, an additional damage value or another type of secondary effect is directly attached to a projectile (e.g. missiles, nukes, explosive ones, auto-targeting systems or special types created by mod authors). By default, a weapon has a predefined ammo type and there's a specific projectile attached to that ammo type. By first selecting an ammo conversion you change the ammo used for that gun but also indirectly the projectile. If you then also apply one of my projectile overrides it may happen that you experience what was described above. The ammo conversion overrides the default ammo and projectile while the projectile override does it another time for the projectile only. If you then also apply e.g. the Targeting System for missile launchers or the explosive legendary effect (those are projectile overrides as well) the system goes completely nuts. Only the last applied ammo/projectile override will stick. That's how the engine handles those forms. Unfortunately, there's no way to change this in a somewhat general approach. The only way to have some sort of workaround is to create a patch for a weapon/projectile of that kind by overhauling said weapon/projectile.
Why do some modifiers, that say +x%, don't actually increase that value by +x%?
Modifiers only affect base values. That is e.g. a gun without any parts/attachments (receiver, barrel, grip, etc.) applied, including the base parts. Then the different parts will apply modifiers themselves before any of ECO's modifiers come into play. So, you get base value + gun part values. Finally, ECO's modifiers apply but the gun part values are already in play and can't be altered anymore.
Let's assume a gun has a base damage of 10. The gun parts, legendary effects, etc. in total add ten times or +1000% additional damage which translated to +100 damage. If you then increase gun damage by another 100% via ECO's modifier that would only be an additional 10 damage while the other parts do way more.
In some cases, modifications to gun stats (e.g. reload speed) don't seem to apply. Why is that?
I'm still not 100% sure what happens behind the scenes. It seems when you fast travel, load a new cell or load a save the game sometimes will only remember the first instance for a specific modifier. E.g. reload speed gets modified by almost every magazine for your gun in the game, that's the first instance. If you then add one of ECO's modular reload speed modifiers it won't notice this mod right away. Un-equipping and re-equipping the item in question should resolve the issue for the time being.
The same issue occurs with other popular mods on Nexus, I noticed it happening even with See Through Scopes.
The following mod might fix the reload speed bug: Reload Speed Fix
Quick Modification
When I use the quick modification menu to switch weapon attachments I can't reapply the attachment I used previously. What's going on?
The engine's function used to attach different mods to a weapon doesn't actually apply the loose mod in your inventory but instead just overrides the attachment currently in use on the attachment point you try to attach the new mod to. Therefore, the currently attached mod doesn't get detached and converted into a loose mod. The best way to circumvent this behaviour is to craft all attachments you want to use for a given weapon and detach all of them by changing to the most basic attachment the workbench offers you. Then you can switch between them freely without losing a loose mod.
How do I add new options to the Quick Modification menu?
Here you go: Guide: Adding new options to the Quick Gun Modification menu
Why is it that guns have full ammo after a quick modification even though the gun had ammo missing (was shot) previously?
That's a technical limitation introduced by the engine. The native engine function used for attaching the selected mods re-equips the weapon and reloads the weapon model. That causes the gun's ammunition to be refilled the same way as if you'd manually switch to another weapon in your inventory.
You can read more about that here: AttachModToInventoryItem - ObjectReference
Workbenches
The mobile workbenches don't access/use items stored in workshop/settlement. Is this intended behaviour?
Yes, that's intended. That's also the reason why there is a separate workshop version of the Universal Workbench.
Will you add a junk scrapper (breaking down junk into components) mode to ECO?
No, there are already multiple mods on Nexus that add that feature. My personal favourites, SKK's Global Stash and its predecessor SKK Junk Scrapper, even dynamically connect to ECO's Universal Workbench. There's no need for this to be added to ECO.
Why does the first time I try to access a workbench mode always fails while the second time works just fine?
I've only seen this kind of behaviour with SKK's Global Stash mod, more specifically its "Stash link stand-alone workbenches" mode/option being enabled. SKK is aware of that, there's a bug report called "Crafting menus rapidly open and close" on his mod page. It isn't a bug but rather the intended behaviour for his mod or rather the script that links those containers in the background.
With ECO's multi-workbench this behaviour is exaggerated because you can quickly switch between different modes. Every time you place the mobile workbench the game and SKK's script consider that workbench a new reference and reconnects with each mode separately. If you don't like that, simply disable that function in SKK's holotape.
There might be other mods that implement similar behaviour but SKK's is the only one I'm aware of.
I use mods that add hotkeys to workbenches but their keys don't show up on the Universal Workbench or PA Station. How to fix?
Fallout 4's UI can only display a finite number of keys on a given item. If you add too many of them, any keys that exceed that limit simply won't get displayed and therefore can't be used. If you're just short of one of those slots you can disable the Pick Up key part of ECO's benches via holotape or MCM.
How do I add new modes to the Universal Workbench?
This tutorial explains how to do that: Guide: Adding new workbenches (modes) to the Universal Workbench
Is there something I have to consider when using a mod with settlement export function?
Transfer Settlements and probably also to the same function within Workshop Framework cause problems when you export your settlement setup with objects that spawn additional objects, like in case of ECO's Universal Workbench (UW). They export the UW (activator) and also the invisible workbench modes individually. So, when you import that layout it'll place the UW and the exported set of modes and then the UW spawns its own set of modes via script. You'll end up with two sets of modes stacked in the same spot. That doesn't cause any problems but once you scrap or move the UW it'll leave the individually exported set of modes behind while those can only be removed by console commands. To circumvent that either remove the UW before exporting or clean the exported layout file from the invisible workbench modes.