Why merge mods?

[aaltair]

Hey,

I'm just wondering, is there any reason to merge ESPs other than to save space in the load order? Does it make for a more stable game or anything like that?

[Kesta]

From a strictly technical point of view, no (except maybe a few millisecondes when launching the game). However, this allow for a way "cleaner" load order, which is more often than not synonym of ease to customize, maintain and enhance. (Pretty much the same as MO allow you to keep your whole install much more organized than other mod managers).

[Teabag86]

Once you have a solid base of mods in your game it makes sense (to me anyway) to merge them. I manually sort my load order grouping mods by what they do, ie locations, NPC's, armors, weather, lighting sound, etc. I then merge them in groups. For example all my weather, lighting and sound mods are merged into 1 esp. I like to see how all my mods work together in a given group. So I spend time making sure conflict resolution is optimised and I often create a patch for a group which I will then include in a merge. Once merged it's locked solid, fully functional, conflict and error free. I then just need to enable that 1 merged esp for each group when I start a new game.

 

Finally, in MO you can set up a profile for each merged group so if a mod updates it is a simple process of creating a new merge for that group. You only need to do this for large merges.

[aaltair]

I guess if I ever have a final final base I may do it :)