It will take me some time to update the pinned topic. I will bring this up here in the mean time, because it pops up on occasion in discussions.

Every now and again people rant against LOOT, telling people to sort their load orders with xEdit instead. The instruction itself is not bad, but it does not take account that people gaining this advice do not usually fully understand what load order does.

Load order sets the order for plugins (ESM, ESP and to some extent ESL). Records in these plugins win conflicts based on where they load. Files loaded last in the load order win conflicts against files above.

This is natural and understandable order, if you think that you are editing official ESM files, which are being loaded first files.

This matter is usually understood correctly. What is often missed in the conversation is the second part.

Records are not the only things sorted for your game. You are sorting resources as well.

Resources are your meshes, textures and especially scripts. The script part is notably important and the reason why I am writing this post.

Resources come in two forms:
- Archived (included in to BSA/BA2 archives)
- Loose files (shared and installed outside of archives, which will "physically" overwrite each other, is placed in to Data folder.)

Resource archives are being loaded according to your load order. Each of them is associated to a plugin in your load order. The order where plugins are being loaded is also the order where your resources are being loaded. This is a very important thing to realize, because mods can have various versions of scripts. Wrong version of a named script may cause a big mess in VM, because it is winning conflict against correct one, which was needed by a mod in your game.

The load order you are setting through xEdit might look correct, but it might also break your game. If you do not know why LOOT is sorting some conflicts otherwise that you would prefer, then it is very likely that reason can be found from resources.

xEdit deals with records. It does not directly deal with resources.

Information in LOOT takes account mod author and user information, which helps it to sort resource conflicts as well as record conflicts. It may not always look sensible from xEdit, but that does not mean it is wrong.

If you are seeing conflicts with mods having scripts in their archives, then there are three ways to handle that.

1. Ask from mod author, or experienced community members.
   
2. If script sources are present in the folder and you know how to read them, then determine if the order is correct.
   
3. Hands down easiest path: just create a new empty plugin with xEdit, copy conflict record over and change values to your liking. Community can show you how.

I am not saying that xEdit wouldn't be excellent tool for modding and sorting the load order. It is.

I am underlining that people using it to sort their load orders also need to know what is in their archives, and not base the sorting merely on record conflicts visible at xEdit.