It seems that many people think that GMSTs are the bane of the construction set, and that they are just an inevitable trial to be endured. Clean them out using a seperate program any time you make a change to a .esp file, because it is impossible to save a mod without them (or without adding both expansion dependencies). This is completely untrue.

There is a quite simple way to AVOID the GMST contamination in the first place, and you never have to clean them out of a .esp file using an external program.

Step 1: Open the construction set and load Morrowind.esm
Step 2: Without doing anything else, save a new mod (I call mine "GMST Blocker")
Step 3: Load this file (but do NOT make it active) any time you're working on a mod.

This tricks the construction set into thinking those compatibility GMSTs are already there (and technically, they ARE... they're just not in your active file!), so the construction set doesn't add them into your .esp when it saves. Also, since the GMST Blocker is created using only the morrowind.esm file, it doesn't add any additional file dependencies to your mod either, unless you're working on a TC that has NO dependencies at all (In which case, you should use TESDTK to remove the morrowind dependency from your GMST blocker and that will fix that problem as well.)

Note that this doesn't in any way prevent you from changing a GMST if you need to do so for your mod. Any game settings that you intentionally change while your mod is active will still be saved into your active file. It just prevents the construction set from *automatically* doing it without your consent.

To use the GMST Blocker to clean GMSTs from a mod without an external program, just load the blocker, and select the mod you wish to clean and make it active. Then click the "file details" button, select all the GMSTs in the mod you need to clean and press the delete key. The construction set will then ignore those GMSTs when you load the file in, and because the blocker is active the will NOT be re-added when you save the mod (which will be saved clean!)

The only time the GMST blocker will not block compatibility GMSTs is if you are merging mods. That's because you only have two choices:
1) include the GMST blocker, and the dirty GMSTs will be merged in.
2) DON'T include the GMST blocker, and the construction set will add them anyway.

The solution is to merge the mods, then using the blocker as described above, you can clean them back out and the merged file will be clean and stay that way.

Don't waste valuable time cleaning a mod every time you edit it! Just avoid GMSTs entirely. It's not only possible, it's incredibly easy. Note that this .esp is a tool for the construction set only, and you would obviously never want to activate it as a mod the game actually loads.

I think you're the third person to independantly discover this now.

Good advice none the less.

Well, the tech notes linked in a sticky at the top of this forum still say that avoiding them is impossible. And given the number of people that STILL have dirty GMSTs in their mods and the number of people that don't know how to avoid them or how to get rid of them, it really needed to be said again.

Well, if people keep reinventing the wheel, it's because there's not enough publicity about the existence of the wheel! (This from the second(?) person to reinvent this particular wheel.)

The standard GMST pointers and topics need to be updated so that there's a bit more publicity about this.

I already wrote docs on my version, but hadn't really announced it. I'll put it up and try to get Telesphoros, etc. to link to it.

True, I only heard about this idea yesterday, I think, by sheer chance in another unrelated thread...

Okay, I've got docs and zip at Wrye Morrowind. If anyone sees any errors, let me know. I've also included Manauser's GMST Fix in the zip file because some people may prefer that.

Should probably include other well known things (like that gold bug :sigh: ) to Wyre. :grin:

Thanks, I suspect it's too late for my current mod, but I've downloaded it for future use - what a superb service! Have you "advertised" it on the mods board yet? I imagine it will be very popular...