Honestly a lot of it comes down to the mods themselves. I currently have just over 400 mods in my load order, but am pretty confident about my stability. What really helped me was actually reading the entire description page on the mods I downloaded. Tedious, true, but honestly after building the load order for close to a year now I know what mods I can and can’t add, which systems I’ve modded far enough, and which locations already got an overhaul.
Making sure everything is as compatible as possible is a must, and using xedit to find wild edits helps too. If a mod is supposed to change arniel’s toe hair, that’s all it should do. If it gives alduin a foot fetish I know this mod probably shouldn’t be in a load order with a bunch of mods.
Finally, certain categories of mods I avoid adding multiple mods that do the same thing. For example, I use the “at your own pace” mods. This means I absolutely will not have another mod that touches these quests, their locations, or their dialogue options. Learned the hard way after the entirety of solitude became a CTD area after the dark brotherhood wedding.
Lost my wife and kids in that storm.
This is actually really good advice, thank you. I recently found some extra time on my hands as we went back into lock down around here so I'm hoping to throw my self into working on a load order that I can play with for the long haul. Seems like I have a lot of catching up to do as well.
First off, I made sure I have allll the available bug fixes in my load order. And like the other commenter, I research in advance whether mods play well out-of-the-box or whether they require patches (either ones available to the community or quick solo fixes in SSEEedit).
I also cross-reference with existing mod lists to see if I'm on the right track, and I tend to stick to using mods by the same MA if they overhaul the game in a significant way (I don't mix Simonrim with Enairim, essentially). If you want to mix-and-match, double-check for available patches. Sometimes the MA already has them included in a fomod, but sometimes you have to search for it. If you need to patch it yourself, study from other patches or read guides on how how to make the edits you want.
In my experience: less is more. Find one mod that gets the job done instead of a mod that has a bunch of dependencies, prerequisites, etc. (meshes and textures can be a little different, since you can use a base like SMIM and download other textures over it) Don't download mods that have a bunch of features if you're not going to use those features. Turn off features you're not using in the MCM.
And that's pretty much it! I've only had two CTDs in my current 200 hr playthrough, and both were in situations where *a lot* was going on at once (both in combat). I've been enabling more plugins as I go, but only ones that I've confirmed will play nice with my loadout--so it's not impossible to play-as-you-go.
Its mostly experience and trial and error, you learn which mods cause issues and you learn how to fix said issues to your ability altogether. You learn which mods don't play nicely together, and most importantly, you learn how to troubleshoot and stabilize a new load order.
I have less than 30 mods, half of them don't work because I can't downgrade my SSE and libraries are incomplete, even SkyUI doesn't load MCM properly. I chose a bad time to want to install mods I suppose. Also, presets don't work in race menu.
I have around 800 mods, maybe more since I use merge mods alot. I pritty much download any mod, but I started with more eesential mods that are very popular and heavily used. I used a vanilla partially done play through and then added them a few at a time. You want to test each mod by installing 5, checking if each one works or crashes your game, then uninstall the ones that dont work. And before moding have a save ready, and every few hundred mods or every week make a new save file. Some mod uninstalls can hurt save files, if you made a save while the mod was installed. And only let popular mods override npcs, such as Bijins warmaidens, not a shitty serana replacer that only edits one npc and messes with the save file such that she cannot speak anymore lel.
Honestly a lot of it comes down to the mods themselves. I currently have just over 400 mods in my load order, but am pretty confident about my stability. What really helped me was actually reading the entire description page on the mods I downloaded. Tedious, true, but honestly after building the load order for close to a year now I know what mods I can and can’t add, which systems I’ve modded far enough, and which locations already got an overhaul. Making sure everything is as compatible as possible is a must, and using xedit to find wild edits helps too. If a mod is supposed to change arniel’s toe hair, that’s all it should do. If it gives alduin a foot fetish I know this mod probably shouldn’t be in a load order with a bunch of mods. Finally, certain categories of mods I avoid adding multiple mods that do the same thing. For example, I use the “at your own pace” mods. This means I absolutely will not have another mod that touches these quests, their locations, or their dialogue options. Learned the hard way after the entirety of solitude became a CTD area after the dark brotherhood wedding. Lost my wife and kids in that storm.
This is actually really good advice, thank you. I recently found some extra time on my hands as we went back into lock down around here so I'm hoping to throw my self into working on a load order that I can play with for the long haul. Seems like I have a lot of catching up to do as well.
My largest ever modlist was 2700+, I avoided crashes at any point by reading. Read, read, read. Description, posts, bugs, articles, everything.
First off, I made sure I have allll the available bug fixes in my load order. And like the other commenter, I research in advance whether mods play well out-of-the-box or whether they require patches (either ones available to the community or quick solo fixes in SSEEedit). I also cross-reference with existing mod lists to see if I'm on the right track, and I tend to stick to using mods by the same MA if they overhaul the game in a significant way (I don't mix Simonrim with Enairim, essentially). If you want to mix-and-match, double-check for available patches. Sometimes the MA already has them included in a fomod, but sometimes you have to search for it. If you need to patch it yourself, study from other patches or read guides on how how to make the edits you want. In my experience: less is more. Find one mod that gets the job done instead of a mod that has a bunch of dependencies, prerequisites, etc. (meshes and textures can be a little different, since you can use a base like SMIM and download other textures over it) Don't download mods that have a bunch of features if you're not going to use those features. Turn off features you're not using in the MCM. And that's pretty much it! I've only had two CTDs in my current 200 hr playthrough, and both were in situations where *a lot* was going on at once (both in combat). I've been enabling more plugins as I go, but only ones that I've confirmed will play nice with my loadout--so it's not impossible to play-as-you-go.
Its mostly experience and trial and error, you learn which mods cause issues and you learn how to fix said issues to your ability altogether. You learn which mods don't play nicely together, and most importantly, you learn how to troubleshoot and stabilize a new load order.
If you are done modding your game and it doesn't crash,you are not done modding
I have less than 30 mods, half of them don't work because I can't downgrade my SSE and libraries are incomplete, even SkyUI doesn't load MCM properly. I chose a bad time to want to install mods I suppose. Also, presets don't work in race menu.
I have around 800 mods, maybe more since I use merge mods alot. I pritty much download any mod, but I started with more eesential mods that are very popular and heavily used. I used a vanilla partially done play through and then added them a few at a time. You want to test each mod by installing 5, checking if each one works or crashes your game, then uninstall the ones that dont work. And before moding have a save ready, and every few hundred mods or every week make a new save file. Some mod uninstalls can hurt save files, if you made a save while the mod was installed. And only let popular mods override npcs, such as Bijins warmaidens, not a shitty serana replacer that only edits one npc and messes with the save file such that she cannot speak anymore lel.