General questions and installation best practices

[Tempest]

Hi guys, I decided to reinstall Skyrim about a week and a half ago and after a grueling week of researching mods, reading guides, getting half-way done with NMM and then restarting with MO and figuring out how to use TES5Edit, Wrye Bash etc for Perma, I finally started playing on Sunday. I even killed a dragon. Then my game started crashing. Repeatedly. So I decided to do a clean reinstall using the STEP guidelines. I found STEP halfway through doing my first install or I'd have followed it sooner.

 

Anyway, I have some questions.

 

1. How closely do I need to adhere to the Core list? There are a few mods on there that I don't particularly care to use. There are also mods I'd rather use instead of the ones on the list (eg Skyrim HD). I get that this is a guide and not a rule-set but I am curious as to how much deviation is too much.
2. Is there an unsafe number of mods to load? I vaguely remember reading that once you got into the 200+ esp range, things could start to get wobbly. Conversely, I also remember that guide being really old so how accurate is this?
3. Regarding the memory patch thing; SKSE does this by itself now right? I don't have to make the edits that change those memory numbers?
4. Best practices: I get that ideally, you want to install a few mods at a time and test them out to make sure nothing catches fire before you install some more. I did this over the past week and found that while I was dicking around Riverwood and testing stuff out, everything was fine. Once I finally settled on a final set of mods/load order, I started a new game and barely made it past Riverwood before throwing my hands up in frustration. Basically, everything that could cause a crash, did. Hunterborn did. Frostfall did. Walking back to Whiterun after the first dragon fight did. Quick save and quick load did. So how the hell do you test these things?
5. LOOT: It seems that guide says you should just let LOOT do it's thing. In my experience, LOOT can go full ******. For example, it regularly recommended moving mod esps well above the ones that required them eg (Frostfall perma patch above Frostfall). It also recommended moving weapon and armor mods after PERMA esps which, I am under the impression, is the wrong way to do it. So, what gives?
6. Regarding merged patch and bashed patch: This is going to sound stupid but once you've created the merged, bashed and finally perma patch, can you disable mods that add weapons and armor? It seems that the merged patch would merge these things right?

I'm sure I have more questions but this is all I can think of for now. Will probably start reinstalling things tonight and I will pop back here if I have more questions.

[Nozzer66]

1) It would depend on what mods in the CORE list you don't want. If any of them are masters in the CORE patch then you'll need to do a little work in TES5Edit, but it's not hard.

 

2) The max plugin limit is 255. I currently have mine in the 240's and I'm fine. 

 

3) All you need to make is the SKSE.ini file. It's easy to do so.

 

4) That's how you test stuff. Essentially walking around and seeing what goes phut. But I never use quick save and quick load anyway as it's known to be a problem. What you're describing sounds like either out of memory issues or some scripting SNAFUs.

 

5) LOOT's not perfect, true. Sometimes you'll need to massage things. I always use the LOOT given order as a basis first and tweak what needs to be done. Adding a few LOOT rules and tweaking the priorities will massage things for you.

 

6) Nope. Leave them enabled if the Bash Patch didn't already disable them.

[Tempest]

Thanks for responding so soon! I would like to think it was a scripting thing since I manually put in the SKSE.ini file and still had the crashes. Anyway, after making that first post, I continued perusing the Extended packs and found that SRLE and REGS are a lot closer to what I'd planned on in terms of content. Additionally the length of the lists make me believe that these are really more like replacements for the Core list instead of additions so I should be ok just following that right? Hopefully my computer doesn't melt trying to run this >.>

[Nozzer66]

SRLE and REGS work together nicely. Just take your time, be painstaking and read everything.    All should come good.

[Tempest]

I noticed you posted in the SRLE subforum so I will probably be around to pick your brain :P