Clarification of "forced collection"?

[xivdev]

Clarification of "forced collection"?

[AncientAzem]

@PrincessRTFM the forced collection is applied to are characters regardless if they have a character collection set. If you have a character collection, it will ignore the default collection, apply the forced collection, then apply your character collection.

[PrincessRTFM]

Ah! Okay, the in-game tooltip was a little confusing, but that makes sense. Just to make sure I understand this: the forced collection is applied first before anything else, then either a character collection (if found) or the default (if not) is applied over it, and overrides any game paths that're also in the forced collection?

[Ottermandias]

XIV loads a path, penumbra checks if that path is manipulated.
It does so by going through a dictionary of your active collection, which is generally the Default Collection but may be temporarily switched to a Character Collection.
If it doesn't find the path XIV requests, it checks the Dictionary of the Forced Collection. If it also doesn't find it there, it uses the regular path.

You can interpret this as applying Forced first and then Default/Character, but technically nothing gets 'overwritten'.
Also there will be hard problems if you have mods with meta manipulations in Forced and something else, so I'd advise to use Forced only for stuff without meta manipulations, like UI mods.