"Lively, you talk about COBJs constantly and that's all well and good, but there's just one problem: I don't know what the hell a COBJ is."
I got you, fam.
Today we will be using Fallout 4 + all DLCs, in conjunction with Lively's Keyword Resource and Whisper's Standalone Workbenches. Let's just jump right in, shall we?
Launch xEdit.
Load all modules.
Wait until it says Background loader: finished.
Now you have a decision to make. Go through whatever records you want in whatever mods you want, and figure out what exactly you want to make craftable. For the purpose of this exercise, I've chosen the Fragmentation MIRV grenades from Nuka World. They're extremely powerful, extremely rare, and only three of them exist in the base game. I'm here to have fun and blow people up, dammit! I want more! I'll just make more, then!
In case you aren't aware, I am just...incredibly lazy. Seriously. I find the laziest possible way to do things, because they're fast and they work for me. So let's be lazy together.
Type 06033905 into the FormID search bar in the top left and press Enter. You'll jump down to the record for the grenaes.
Right click the record in the left pane and select Copy as override into...
Select a new ESP flagged as ESL and select OK.
Name it whatever you want and press OK.
Now we have a copy of this. Neat! Spoilers: we don't need this record. But now I have a new patch plugin to work with! Yayyyy. Right click your new plugin in the right pane and select Jump to.
You'll see the left pane has jumped down to our fancy new plugin. Nice. Right click that bad boy and select Add, then COBJ - Constructible Object.
Now we have a new category here.
Right click the new category, select Add, then COBJ - Constructible Object.
"But we JUST DID THAT." I know. The first time was to create the category for the new plugin, and the second time is to create a new record inside that category. Just roll with it and stop yelling at me.
The default FormID is fine. Just click OK.
Right click the EDID field in the new record and select Add.
Now it's white! Right click it again and select Edit.
Name it...almost whatever you want.
Let's quickly go over some rules and basic naming conventions for EDIDs. First, it's a good idea to use your own unique prefix - you'll see I often use liv, lkr, lwc, and lws, depending on what it is I'm making. This is to easily use a filter (usually in the Creation Kit) to find your own stuff. Next you'll notice co, which is pretty standard vanilla naming for Constructible. Then weap which is telling me it's a Weapon. Then the name of the weapon I'm crafting. So with a quick glance at just the EDID, I can see this is a COBJ I made to make MIRV grenades. Lastly, no spaces. EDIDs should all be one word, or have underscores, but they can't have spaces.
In other words, feel free to name your EDID CatsPlayingSoccer but don't name it Cats Playing Soccer.
...anyway, moving on.
Next, right click in the Components field and select Add.
Components are what the player will need in order to craft this thing. You can have as many or as few components as you like, and you can use pretty much anything in the game - or anything from any mod, if that mod is listed as a master for this patch. Since these grenades are so powerful and so rare, normally I would to make them a bit more difficult to craft. But for this lesson, I won't worry much about the actual components or balance here.
Let's start simple and say you're upgrading a grenade rather than crafting a new one. So, add a regular grenade to the components.
Add another component!
Just keep adding stuff until you're happy with your recipe. Easy. Feel free to change the amount of each component needed via editing the Count.
Do note that I don't particularly care about this, I'm simply picking random crap.
If you'd like to add Conditions to this (such as Perk Requirements, Quest Completion checks, or anything like that), now's the time to read up on my Conditions lesson.
For the Created Object, right click and Add, then select the object you want to be created when you craft this recipe - in this case, the MIRV grenade.
Now, right click in the INTV - Data field and select Add, and change the Created Object Count to 1 (or however many grenades you want to be given to the player when this recipe is crafted).
We're almost done - the last things we need are the BNAM, which dictates where this recipe is crafted, and the FNAM, which is the category this recipe will appear under. Since we are using Standalone Workbenches, we need this mod to be a master for this patch. Right click our plugin in the left pane and select Add Masters....
Select both Lively's Keyword Resource and Standalone Workbenches. Note: since we originally created this patch via copying a record from Nuka World, that DLC's esm is already listed as a master. Yay laziness!
Exit and save your patch.
I do this after adding masters because xEdit is finicky and doesn't like immediately allowing you to use assets from masters you just added. Closing and relaunching the program solves this problem and only takes a few seconds, so let's do that.
First, activate your new patch in your load order. Then launch xEdit, load all modules, wait for the background loader to finish, and scroll all the way back down to our fancy new COBJ.
You'll see we now have the masters we need in the File Header.
Anyway, head on down to that COBJ and add a BNAM. Change the BNAM to the workbench you want it to be crafted at - Whisper's benches all start with wsw, to make it easy.
Now add an FNAM and select a keyword. All of my keywords start with lkr, and are further sorted into subcategories per workbench. So in this case, lkr_exp will jump you to the section you (probably) want.
If you'd like to make your own category, then you'll need to add your own custom keyword for a new recipe filter. Lucky for you, I wrote a thing for that, too! I got you covered.
That's it! You can now craft fragmentation MIRV grenades at the Explosives Workbench under the GRENADES - SPECIAL category as long as you have Demolition Expert rank 4 and you've completed the Power Play quest. Wooooo!
