Tes3Mod:Dirty Saves

If you add or remove mods from a game in progress, you're likely to end up with a dirty save. In brief, a save is dirty when it contains information that is mismatched with the current load list. The symptoms of a dirty save include: doubling, headless corpses, missing items, and crashes.

Reference Problems

• Most serious doubling related problems are due to mismatches in reference ids between the savegames and the mods they depend on.
• For more info, see Doubling.

World Map Corruption

• When mods are added to the game, the world map is updated to show any new landmasses those mods have added. However, those landmasses are not removed when the mod is removed.
• For more info, see World Map.

Clean Save taken from the BE-Lite readme by Slartibartfast

• In addition to using Wrye Mash on the savegame file itself, there is a procedure to take in game to prepare a save game for mod changes.
  • Move your character into a small interior cell and remove all items and clothing from body and inventory onto the floor. Then save and exit the game.
  • This is called a 'clean save'. While it will not eliminate all problems, it is a simple enough precaution that all players should habitualize this practice.
  • Certain mods may describe in their readmes additional procedures to take when desiring to add it to or remove it from an ongoing playthrough.