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If it ain't broke don't mess with it.
That said you do need modern features occasionally
I wish there were a public list of BEST builds stating why you want the version (major bug fix X or feature X implemented) with notes that many people are stable for at least 30 days. I simply cant keep up with the daily\weekly builds nor do I want to... I'll have others do the experimentation. (Thank you to those that do!)
I had many of the same questions.
I was running v3.0-r30796 std (10/25/16) up to last month and often had up times well exceeding 200 days.
I made the jump over to v3.0-r39884 std (05/30/19) and currently have an uptime of 25 days with no issues
You want to clear NVRAM because my understanding is that unlike firmware (which there are two and you can switch) there is only one set of NVRAM. Need to clear it so you're not polluting the startup.
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And I'm still running that build today uptime 93 days as I write this note. Had to bounce it when I changed ISP's otherwise it's been up 100% for about a year with no issues.
That said you can look at the change log
https://svn.dd-wrt.com/log/src
Going back to the version I'm running there have been dozens of kernel changes and 100's of patches (maybe I should bump up )
Didn't do a full review but unless there's a big reason (security patch or large fix) I see no reason to change versions... I just went with what was current at the time because my version (a year ago) was like 3 years out of date and figured there was some significant patches\fixes.
Most new releases have forum announcement... give it a couple weeks to see if anyone has any significant issues and if nothing is reported I'm sure it's fine.