Thanks for all the tips and help, fellas! I've definitely learned something in all this mess and I feel a lot more capable now, having taught myself some useful things for modding the game. Troubleshooting was a BIG PITA not knowing that I should have OpenIV closed when using Windows File Explorer for backing up and restoring my mods folder. Most importantly: F*CK OIV installers. Never again 😅

I did end up completely starting again. While making a new mods folder though, I noticed that even freshly copying over x64 and update into the new one, while OpenIV was running, was causing certain files to copy over completely blank. The assembly.xml files all seemed to be ok, and I have used them in the past with no issues, so I'm going to assume this is a weird new issue with OpenIV.

I closed OpenIV, copied over a clean mods folder, and THEN manually installed things. VWE does have a game crash issue currently though, as I've learned via the VanillaWorks Discord. I now know to backup my mods folder before installing anything to it as well.

Yep, so OIV mods are literally just corrupting my mod folder... Same PC, newest version of OpenIV, latest game version, fresh mod folder, wtf.

When installing mods with OIV installers, OpenIV is leaving the files they modify or replace blank, and even dlclist.xml was missing the last two, very crucial lines. For example: Realistic Gun Sounds replaces weapons.meta. Instead of replacing it, it deletes everything from it leaving it blank.

I managed to find and fix most of this by manually re-installing the mods but the game is still crashing with the "ERR_PACK_FIL_3" error. I've literally been trying to fix this for 9 hours straight. I tried a full new mods folder, I tried turning off edit mode before using the OIV, I now tried manually reinstalling every bit of the mod, even including going in and manually editing several lines in several files.

At this point, unless theres a way to fix this blank file BS I guess I have to try another fresh mods folder and manually installing the mods again... Anyone know why the OIVs aren't working right?