This is another mod I created to in order to make an excellent mod, Legendary Skyrim Crossbows and Bows SSE by Kelsenellenelvian,  better fit into my heavily modded environment. As such it has several requirements and isn't super user friendly: a compacted version of Legendary Skyrim Crossbows, CCOR, WACCF, and OWL (Open World Loot). Optionally I also support Dawnguard Arsenal and Creation Club.

I noticed months ago that Open World Loot had level list entries for bolts, crossbow and MissileCrossbow (crossbow with bolt ammo) at every tier, but none of them were in use, even the Steel and Dwarven tiers which are in Dawnguard. I wanted to slot the weapons and ammunition from "Legendary Crossbows", "CC Expanded Crossbow Pack", "CC Elite Crossbows", "CC Rare Curios" and the mod "Rare Curios - Bolts Expanded" by Jelidity. It too considerable longer than expected to set up all of the level list changes (I had to add new lists as well as to populated and/or modify the OWL and Vanilla ones), but now that I have the system in place, it is a snap to work with - you just pick a tier for your crossbow and add an entry.

I found a few errors in Legendary Crossbow's esp and fixed them (mistakes are easy to make in large mods).  The general consensus among crossbow modders is that the best way to balance crossbows' slower reload is to make them do 2 points more damage than a bow of equivalent tier. To do this with Legendary Crossbows I sometimes had to make small tweaks, usually no more than 1 point, but to fit in with WACCF's balancing system I swapped several tiers around in terms of damage and where they show up in level lists. The 2 point jump that formerly occurred between Orc and Dwarven tiers now occurs between Steel and dwarven tiers (1 point felt too low for hyped 'made in Germany quality' dwemer tech.) I have reverted the Dawnguard crossbow quest to it's original form (2 parts were cut in legendary Crossbow). There are now 2 Dwarven Crossbow tiers. The crossbows having Dawnguard formids are renamed with the Advanced prefix, and do damage in between Glass and Ebony as well as having slightly higher supplementary stats. This keeps a sense of reward. Advanced Dwarven XBows are extremely rare in level lists so unless you are lucky the Dawnguard are still the only way to acquire the crafting skill or to purchase them. There is a second dwarven tier, common in level lists, that fits in with vanilla WACCF progression, above Steel and below Elven in damage. These have no crafting requirements other then Dwarven Smithing.

I changed the stats and/or crafting requirements of several of the non-tier crossbows and bow to what I felt was more appropriate (usually I base stats on visual appearance eg wooden means low tier). I added several stat variants (Legendary Crossbow assets, different stats, such as replica and unenchanted versions). I weakened enhchantments a bit since I was worried the artifact weapons would be unbalancing. Legendary Crossbows already had impressive world integration, and I increased it a bit more. Dawnguard, Viligant, Silverhand and Imperial NPCs (from the NPCs section in the esp) can have crossbows. In shops and loot level lists, crossbows and bows should be as common, or almost as common, as bows and arrows. However, NPCs drawing their equipped gear from level lists will be much more likely to be equipped with bows and arrows (average xbow to bow ratio of 1 to 5). Enhanced versions of the crossbows will spawn very rarely, like 1%, so there is still a reason to do the Dawnguard quest and upgrade them yourself. Also, explosive bolts have a lowish chance of spawning (about 5%).

CCOR conditions have been added to crafting recipes, and Breakdown recipes added. The Creation Club variant requires 3 of the Creations installed, and additionally I have added the extra bolt variants from "Rare Curios - Bolts Expanded" by Jelidity, an open permissions mod. For many tiers there are now 2 types of crossbows and bolts. Since I like diversity I decided to keep both and add them as possibilities to the level lists, the Creation Club/Bolts Enhanced version having a (CC) suffix. The exception was the Legendary Crossbow's silver bolt, which was dropped in favour of CC's because it only had a .5k texture.

Compacting notes: 90% of people who find this, a mod of a mod, will know how to do this. When I was halfway through working on this mod, I realized there was a possibility that the Legendary Crossbows esp was not an esl but might have been compacted months ago, soon after I installed the mod (250 slots sounds like alot, but can be quickly exhausted unless you merge and/or eslify). Unfortunately I checked the original and realized this was correct. I don't think there is an magical way to undo compacting (just boring timing consuming comparing records and changing FormIDs one by one). Hence I require a compacted version of "Legendary Skyrim Crossbows.esp". To do this, you open the esp in XEdit, right click on the Legendary Skyrim Crossbows.esp line in the left pane, choose "Compact Forms for esl". Then click the plus icon, click on file header, double click to the right of "Record Flags Sorted" in the right pane, tick ESL, exit Xedit and save.

Update: Added a Saints and Seducers Bolts version, bolts changed to have the same gravity and speed as the others and added to the appropriate tiered Bolts level lists with about a 1 in 6 change of spawning. As mentioned, I like diversity.

Note that the Rare Curios Bolts Expanded and Saints and Seducers Bolts mods are only required for their assets (and only if you are using the plugin variants with CC and SS in their names). Don't use the esps, at best you will end up with doubled crafting recipes.