How do I actually create a custom plugin load order with MO2 and LOOT ?

[Lucas2703]

Sorry in advance for the long post...

I have been updating my Skyrim SE load order and patching a lot of stuff over the past few weeks and am finally at a point where I'd like to draw a line and wrap it all up so I can hopefully finally start playing soon™. But I have a few points which I really want to address before that (also to prepare for any future uncontrollable modding addiction relapses I might encounter at any given time...) and haven't found any solutions through googling, yet.

I currently have 875 active plugins and have never manually sorted them without LOOT (aside from custom metadata for some mods of course) because it just works™ and I basically never encounter CTDs with my whole setup but it is extremely difficult to keep up with which record overwrites which record in xEdit and I therefore want to implement "The Method" and create a custom load order in conjunction with that.

I kow this is a whole new mountain of work I need to do in order to achieve this goal but since I actually have fun modding and working things out in xEdit, I don't really mind, tbh.

But now my question: How do I start?

Since I can't see direct record conflicts in LOOT and can't sort plugins in xEdit I'm currently at a loss at determining the most efficient way to tackle this problem. I want to use LOOT as a base for my LO but don't know where to go from there and also already have some issues with that.

Mainly, because for some reason LOOT groups don't seem to work for me and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. For example: I want to group all JKs interior mods together to declutter my LO a little since LOOT doesn't seem to care (even with custom metadata) and just throws most of those in the list seemingly without any order. Creating a group and placing it before groups which would contain lighting patches for Lux doesn't work and LOOT also doesn't give any info as to why despite telling me with its "couldn't sort" warning about a "General Informations" tab which doesn't exist. And I'm also sometimes encountering another issue where I locked the LO of the first say 50 manually sorted plugins in MO2 but then sorting with LOOT places some mods in between those locked mods for some reason.

I'm no expert and still don't know how some of this works since I never really manually sorted my mods but I'm willing to learn! And apologies, if some of the stuff I wrote doesn't make 100% sense, I might've already become a little insane through modding Skyrim. But if anybody kinda understands where I want to go and could give me some tips for an efficient workflow, I would greatly appreciate it!

[z929669]

In MO, you can drag/drop plugins before loading into xEdit where you can then confirm LO, drag/drop some more and validate.

Once you have your LO, you can grab %LocalAppData%\ModOrganizer\{InstanceName}\profiles\{ProfileName}\loadorder.txt as a reference (save it as another file name). Then sort with LOOT and check that file again and compare the diff in WinMerge. Then use LOOT rules to set changes to LOOT behavior such that LOOT sorts with your key prioritizations.

The full LO doesn't matter really, It's always key mods you need to change.

If you want certain mods to sort together, then you can merge them into a single mod or create a patch to effectively accomplish the same.

The downside to all of this is constant upkeep as mods are changed with updates. You could also miss some important details and get it wrong. We advise using LOOT for sorting regardless, since it is programmatic and won't miss things. If a change in sorting behavior is really needed, you can submit a report to the LOOT team to consider adding a new rule.

Also review this article for other methods and some good practices with LOOT

[Greg]

I think the conflict you are running into is that you either use LOOT to sort your load order or you follow the method and never use LOOT for any reason. I think you're on the right track by grouping e.g. all of the JK interior mods together and then ordering the mods within each "group" to resolve as many conflicts as possible. The elephant in the room (so to speak) is that you never start the method with 875 mods in your load order because you'll just get lost and can't figure out what to do next. The method recommends going through the initial pass with nothing more than the base game DLCs and Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch and add one mod at a time. You'll also need to create a mod group after creating each patch to assert you have viewed and resolved all conflicts with plugins in this mod group and this generally means you'll end up with a lot of small(ish) patches instead of one big patch.

For more information, read The Method. You may also consider join the xEdit server and following the cathedral-of-the-method channel. It's a lot of information to wrap your head around.