After hours of messing with my 15 year old game. . .

I am playing Arcanum Multiverse Edition and extracted gamelevel.mes from the arcanum4.dat file into \data\rules, where any changes should override the DAT archive. No such luck. Any place I can go with this?

I tried deleting and importing the file using datbuilder, but that was a bust. Is there a tutorial for overwriting a file inside a DAT file? Is there a command that says "override from data files outside the DAT file?"

I've not noticed such major issues with editing gamelevel.mes and saving the edited file in the /data/rules folder.

The only issue I've noticed is on companions who'll not start with edited skills.
Example : I edited Jayna scheme with bow 1 but she'll still start with melee 1, then she'll level her bow skill as edited.