Load order management with xEdit - am I doing it right or am I breaking my game?

[Fayhe]

So for the longest time I have been using LOOT to sort my load order, since it's really convenient, but by now I have almost 400 esp's thanks to the magic of espfe, and I felt like it was time to start manually sorting using xEdit/SSEEdit.

I am however relatively new to this so I would appreciate if some experienced modders could answer some of my questions regarding xEdit and how to generally sort mods with it.

 

- how should I be comparing mods? should I just load my entire load order, filter for conflicts and then simply look into every single conflict myself? or should I only load specific mods and then compare them? if so, which mods should I generally look out for?

 

- is it a good idea to fix conflicts myself, either by making a patch or even editing records if it is an obvious problem? for example:

I use Realistic Water 2, a patch for RW2+iNeed, and RW2's watercolor addon. the iNeed patch changes some records to make the two compatible, and the Watercolor patch changes the same record but only changes some visual things. if I simply drag and drop the changes from the iNeed patch over to watercolor(which loads after the iNeed patch), do I end up with watercolor and iNeed compatibility? or do I simply break my game somehow? also, should I edit the record directly, or should I always make a compatibility patch in a separate esp/espfe?

 

-any mods that are notoriously load order sensitive that I should be aware of?

 

-should I still be making a merged patch if I do manual patches myself? what about a bash/smash patch?

 

appreciate your help!