How to troubleshoot and generate a patch for incompatible mods

[SeizureSalads5871]

I have a horrible habit of using far too many mods and, inevitably, there's going to be jank. I don't know how to solve this jank.
Usually I make do with equally janky solutions that boil down to console commands or directly editing mod files in xEdit.
This is a bandaid patch at best since the second I change my load order everything'll be broken again, including the mod I edited.

How do I figure out what exactly is causing a problem and how do I generate a patch to fix it? I can't make heads or tails of most of xEdit and I couldn't find any resources on what to do.

My specific issue is that a mod isn't behaving how I expect it to. Dragons die as normal, which they shouldn't be doing. Lowering it to the bottom of my load order didn't work either. Judging from the description of the mod, it seems to be a script that runs whenever a dragon's health hits zero, but I can't find the exact script or anything related to it in xEdit. How do I use xEdit to learn what causes the intended behavior, and how do I use this to find the conflicting mod(s)? Then, how do I create a patch mod?

[radiusrsatti]

long story short, xEdit references the scripts included in mods, but does not display their contents... you'd have to load into CK for script editing/investigation

 

your load order may or may not be at fault, but changing the position of the mod to try to correct an issue, especially scripted mods, should only be done if you intend to start a new game, not recommended to do in the middle of a playthrough... ensure that the dragon mod scripts are overwriting any copies from other mods in your load order

 

depending on your final patches, you'd also need to ensure that the mod in question is overwriting all other records in xEdit, or create a patch to be final overwrite... patching is as simple as right clicking the record in question, copying to a new plugin (esl, as it's an existing record and this will save a plugin slot), confirming the final record (your new plugin) has all the changes you want to keep, and ensuring that patch is loaded absolutely last, or is at least the final record overwrite