MO2 load order hell—when does it stop being worth it?

[WhiterunModder]

I'm sitting here with 287 mods across three different load orders and I genuinely don't know if I'm optimizing anymore or just moving things around and hoping. Like, at what point do you accept that your game is stable enough and stop tweaking? Because I keep seeing people talk about their "perfect" load order like it's some holy grail, but every time I think I've nailed it, I find out some texture mod is conflicting with a quest mod I didn't even know was active.

The worst part is MO2 makes it SO easy to just keep adding stuff. You're in the mod browser, you see something cool, you throw it in, run LOOT, and suddenly you're debugging why your follower framework is breaking Follower Dialogue Edits or whatever. I've spent more time in the Creation Kit looking at conflicts than actually playing the game this week.

Do you guys have like a stopping point? Or do you just accept that modding IS the game at a certain point?

 

[DragonbornVet]

Yeah, 287 is the point where you've crossed over from "playing Skyrim with mods" into "maintaining a mod list as a full-time job." I get it though - MO2 is so frictionless that you don't feel the weight of each addition until you're suddenly troubleshooting why your dialogue is broken at 2 AM.

The stopping point for me is when I can't play for more than 30 minutes without hitting a CTD or a quest-breaking bug. That's the line. Before that, stability is subjective - you can have a "stable" list that still has minor jank, and honestly? That's fine. You'll never have a perfect load order. Someone's always gonna find a conflict you didn't know existed, and that's just how it is with this many mods interacting.

My advice: pick a core set of mods you actually care about - quest overhauls, gameplay tweaks, whatever - and stop there. Don't browse the mod page. Don't think about what else you could add. Just play. If you hit a problem, fix it. Otherwise leave it alone. The game doesn't get better at 287 mods than it does at 100. You're just adding complexity.

Also, LOOT is a starting point, not gospel. If you're hitting conflicts, you might need to manually sort some stuff or actually read what's conflicting instead of just letting LOOT arrange everything. Creation Kit is useful but if you're spending more time there than in-game, you've already lost.