LOOT is a plugin load order optimiser for TES IV: Oblivion, TES V: Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. It is designed to assist mod users in avoiding detrimental conflicts, by automatically calculating a load order that satisfies all plugin dependencies and maximises each plugin's impact on the user's game.
LOOT also provides some load order error checking, including checks for requirements, incompatibilities and cyclic dependencies. In addition, it provides a large number of plugin-specific usage notes, bug warnings and Bash Tag suggestions for Wrye Bash.
While LOOT is able to calculate correct load order positions for the vast majority of plugins using only their content, it cannot do so for all plugins. As such, LOOT provides a mechanism for supplying additional plugin metadata so that it may sort them correctly.
LOOT is intended to make using mods easier, and mod users should still possess a working knowledge of mod load ordering. See Introduction To Load Orders for an overview.
LOOT does not support Windows XP or earlier.
LOOT can be installed either using its automated installer or manually. To install LOOT manually, extract the downloaded archive to a location of your choice.
If LOOT was installed using the installer, then use the uninstaller linked to in the Start Menu to uninstall LOOT. If LOOT was installed manually:
LOOTfolder in your local application data folder, which can be accessed by entering
%LOCALAPPDATA%
into Windows' File Explorer.
When LOOT is run, it will attempt to detect which of the supported games are installed. If a default game has been set, LOOT will run for it, otherwise it will run for the same game as it last ran for. If the relevant game cannot be detected, if there is no record of the last game LOOT ran for, it will run for the first detected game.
LOOT can also be launched with the LOOT.exe [--game=<game folder name>]
command line parameter to set the game to run for. If the supplied game folder name is valid, the default and last game values are ignored. The default folder names are Oblivion
, Skyrim
, Fallout3
and FalloutNV
.
If LOOT cannot detect any supported game installs, it will immediately open the Settings dialog. There you can edit LOOT's settings to provide a path to a supported game, after which you can select it from the Game menu.
Once a game has been set, LOOT will scan its plugins and load the game's masterlist, if one is present. The plugins and any metadata they have are then listed in their current load order.
Each plugin is displayed on its own card
.
If LOOT suggests any Bash Tags to be added, they will be displayed in green text, while any Bash Tags to be removed will be displayed in red text.
LOOT will also display the plugin's CRC value and extract its version if found in the plugin's description field.
LOOT will display the version numbers of any plugins that provide them in their description fields. If a plugin supplies no version number, it cannot be displayed.
LOOT's plugin messages are a valuable resource, acting as a means of providing users with information that they might otherwise not obtain. It is important for a stable, healthy game that you act on any messages that require action.
If you think a message suggests an unnecessary action, report it to an official LOOT thread. If you encounter a message that is non-conditional, ie. it suggests an action but is still displayed on subsequent runs of LOOT after the action has been carried out, also report it to an official LOOT thread, so that it can be made conditional.
The menu's Redate Plugins
option is provided so that Skyrim modders may set the load order for the Creation Kit. It is only enabled for Skyrim, and changes the timestamps of the plugins in its Data folder to match their current load order. A side effect of changing the timestamps is that any Steam Workshop mods installed will be re-downloaded.
The Game
menu allows you to change which game LOOT is running for. Games that LOOT cannot find are greyed out, and the the one LOOT is running for is marked with a double chevron. To change the active game, simply select another game in the list.
Each plugin's card
has a menu button in its top-right corner. Clicking on it will reveal the plugin's menu.
The Show Only Conflicts
option filters the plugin cards displayed so that only plugins which conflict with the menu plugin will be visible. If the selected plugin loads a BSA, other plugins that load BSAs which may contain conflicting resources are also displayed. While the filter is active, the plugin for which conflicts are displayed is highlighted, and enabling the filter for another plugin will deactivate the current filter before applying it again for the new plugin.
The Edit Metadata
option flips the plugin card over to reveal its metadata editor, where you can make changes to the metadata that LOOT uses to sort the plugin, and display its messages and Bash Tags.
The Copy Metadata As Text
option copies the plugin's metadata to the clipboard. This makes it easier to share your metadata changes with the LOOT team, as they can then paste this text directly into the masterlist, and also avoids any typos being introduced. If posting the text in an online forum that supports BBCode (as most forums do), be sure to wrap it in [code]
tags, eg. [code]copied text[/code]
, so that the spaces are not removed by the forum software.
LOOT's masterlists are metadata databases that LOOT uses to provide messages and help sort plugins. By default, LOOT uses a separate masterlist for each game, with each masterlist being hosted online and maintained by the LOOT team.
Clicking the Update Masterlist
button updates LOOT's masterlist for the current game to the latest available revision. If the latest revision cannot be parsed (eg. due to typos), then LOOT will roll back until it finds a revision that works.
Clicking the Sort
button will begin the sorting process. By default, sorting first updates the masterlist. LOOT then sorts your plugins according to a combination of data from the plugins themselves, and any metadata they may have. If a cyclic interaction is detected (eg. A depends on B depends on A), then sorting will fail.
Once sorting has calculated a new load order, the plugin cards are sorted into that order, and the Update Masterlist
and Sort
buttons are replaced with Apply
and Cancel
buttons.
If the Apply
button is clicked, LOOT applies the load order. If the Cancel
button is clicked, then the load order and any edits made are discarded.
LOOT is able to sort plugins ghosted by Wrye Bash, and can extract Bash Tags and version numbers from plugin descriptions. Provided that they have the Filter
Bash Tag present in their description, LOOT can recognise filter patches and so avoid displaying unnecessary error messages for any of their masters that may be missing.
Clicking the Filters
button at the bottom of the sidebar will replace the sidebar's plugin list with a list of filters that can be applied to hide various combinations of plugins and metadata. Click the button again to hide the filter list and show the plugin list again. The available filters are:
Do not clean..
There is also a conflict filter that can be accessed through each plugin's menu.
LOOT uses metadata to supply plugins with messages and Bash Tag suggestions, and to help it sort plugins that it otherwise can't sort correctly. Users can add to their plugins' metadata through each plugin's metadata editor panel, and plugins with user metadata are labelled with a icon.
A plugin's editor panel is accessed by clicking the Edit Metadata
item in the plugin's menu. Multiple plugins can have their editor panels open at once, but everything in LOOT's menu bar is disabled while there is at least one panel open.
Table rows that are for masterlist metadata cannot be edited or deleted. User metadata rows can be deleted by clicking their icon.
Rows can be added to the Requirements
, Incompatibilities
and Load After
tables by dragging and dropping plugins from the sidebar into the table area.
The Apply
button will save any changes made, then exit the editor panel. The Cancel
button will exit the editor panel without saving any changes.
Control | Description |
---|---|
Enable User Changes | If this is checked, LOOT will use the metadata you supplied. Otherwise, your metadata will be ignored. |
Priority | Modifies plugin position relative to others. Plugins with higher priority values load after plugins with lower priority values. Plugins have a default priority of 0. Plugin priorities are only compared if:
|
Requirements | This is a list of files that are required by the current plugin for it to function correctly. The current plugin will be loaded after any plugins listed. LOOT will also display an error message if any of the listed files are missing. Any file, not just plugins, can be listed here, and each entry has three fields:
Note that listing a plugin's masters as requirements is unnecessary, as LOOT already checks them. |
Incompatibilities | This is a list of files that are incompatible with the plugin. LOOT will display an error message if any of the listed files are found. Any file, not just plugins, can be listed here, and each entry has the same three fields as for the requirements table. |
Load After | This is a list of plugins which, if present, the current plugin must load after, but which are not required. This metadata can be used for resolving specific compatibility issues. Each entry has the same three fields as for the requirements table. |
Messages | A list of messages that are to be displayed for the plugin in LOOT's report. These have no bearing on a plugin's position in the load order.
Each message has four fields:
If a message's condition determines that it should not be displayed, then it will not be displayed, no matter the language. However, if a message's condition determines that it should be displayed, but the language is specified and doesn't match the language LOOT is running in, the message will not be displayed. |
Bash Tags | A list of Bash Tags. These are used by Wrye Bash when generating a Bashed Patch. LOOT's metadata includes Bash Tag addition and removal suggestions, and any Bash Tags that came with the plugin are also displayed.
As LOOT can suggest Bash Tags be added or removed, it is possible for the same Tag to appear twice, being suggested for addition and removal. In such cases, removal overrides addition. Each Bash Tag has three sub-fields:
If a plugin's masters are missing, an error message will be displayed for it. Filter patches are special mods designed for use with a Bashed Patch that do not require all their masters to be present, and so any plugin with the |
LOOT's settings may be accessed by clicking Settings
button in LOOT's menu bar. The settings are detailed in the table below.
Setting | Description |
---|---|
Default Game | If set to something other than Autodetect, this overrides game autodetection. If the game specified is not detected, LOOT falls back to autodetection. |
Language | Controls the language LOOT uses in its interfaces. Debug messages are always displayed in English, and any plugin messages that do not have translations in the selected language will be displayed in English instead. |
Debug Verbosity | Controls the verbosity of the debug output, which is written to %LOCALAPPDATA%\LOOT\LOOTDebugLog.txt .
|
Update masterlist before sorting | If checked, LOOT will update its masterlist, should an update be available, before sorting plugins. |
LOOT's game-specific settings can be customised in the games table. Settings can also be added for additional game instances, making it easy to use LOOT across multiple copies of a game, including total conversion mods. LOOT ships with settings for the Nehrim - At Fate's Edge
total conversion mod as an example.
The games instances defined in this table are displayed in LOOT's Game
menu, and can be selected there if detected. Game instance settings may be deleted by clicking the icon at the end of the game's row. The current game cannot have its settings deleted. If you delete the settings for one of LOOT's core four supported games (Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas), they will be recreated when LOOT is next run.
The game settings are explained in the table below.
Game Setting | Description |
---|---|
Name | The name of the game, or another identifying string, that is displayed in menus and the LOOT's title bar. |
Base Game Type | Every game LOOT runs for must use the plugin file format and load order system of one of the following games:
|
LOOT Folder Name | The sub-folder which LOOT uses to store the game's files in. Each game must be given a unique sub-folder. |
Master File | The game's main master file. This is specified as it must load before all other plugins. Note that Skyrim-based games will always load Skyrim.esm first, so this column must always be set to Skyrim.esmfor such games. |
Masterlist Repository URL | The URL of the repository that LOOT uses to update its local copy of the masterlist. If set to an empty string, masterlist updating will be skipped.
Masterlist repositories are Git repositories that are configured to allow unauthenticated read access and contain a masterlist file named masterlist.yaml in their root directory. The LOOT team maintains a set of official repositories for the games that LOOT supports by default.
|
Masterlist Repository Branch | The branch of the masterlist repository that LOOT should get masterlist updates from. |
Install Path | The path to the game's folder, in which the Data folder lies. Either this or a registry key must be supplied. |
Install Path Registry Key | The registry key, in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE , that contains the install path of the game. This is used to obtain the install path if LOOT has no previous record of the game's install path, or LOOT's stored install path is invalid. Either this or an install path must be supplied.
|
LOOT is very much a community project, and contributions from its users are vital to its upkeep, whether they be metadata, translations, code or anything else. The best way to contribute is to make changes yourself at GitHub! It's the fastest way to get changes you want applied, and you'll get your name automatically immortalised in our credits.
If you encounter an issue with LOOT, check the Frequently Asked Questions wiki page in case a solution is available there.
Otherwise, general discussion and support takes place in LOOT's official forum threads. These are linked to at the bottom of LOOT's homepage.
If you want to submit metadata, the easiest way to do so is to add the metadata to your own LOOT install, then use the Copy Metadata As Text feature to easily get it in a form that you can then edit into a masterlist on GitHub or post in the official forum threads.
Information on dirty plugins is very welcome, but for such information to be useful we require at least the filename and the CRC of the dirty plugin. The CRC may be calculated using Wrye Bash or 7-Zip, with other sources being unverified as correct. In the case of 7-Zip, the CRC checksum for data
is the one required. In addition to the CRC, the number of records removed (the ITM count) and/or undeleted (the UDR count) are also welcome.
LOOT is developed by a team on GitHub, with contributions from users. A full list of GitHub contributors may be found here. An up-to-date list of team members may be viewed on the project wiki. Unless otherwise noted, team members can be contacted on the Bethesda Softworks Forums or on The Nexus Forums via the private messaging system.
LOOT's masterlists were largely converted from BOSS's masterlists, and so credit is due to the very large number of sources and people who have contributed to them.
In addition, the following are credited with application-related support:
LOOT is written in C++, HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, and uses the Alphanum, Boost, Marked, libespm, libgit2, libloadorder, RequireJS and yaml-cpp libraries, the Chromium Embedded Framework, and the FontAwesome icon font. Copyright license information for all these may be found here.
LOOT is distributed under the GNU General Public License v3.0, aside from the documentation, which is distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License v1.3. The full texts of the licenses are included with LOOT in the accompanying GNU GPL v3.txt and GNU FDL v1.3.txt files.
While the GPL license allows anyone to make derivative works of LOOT, the LOOT Team encourages those thinking of doing so to first discuss their reasoning for such an endeavour with the Team. It may be that what the derivative work would do differently is already planned for a future version of LOOT or would be happily integrated into LOOT, thus avoiding any extra effort by others.
LOOT has been specifically designed to prevent it being locked into the LOOT Team's official masterlist repositories. Nevertheless, the LOOT Team appeals to the community to avoid the distribution of unofficial masterlists, as this would only hamper the effort to create one set of stores for load order information. Any issues with a masterlist are best brought to the attention of the LOOT Team so that they may be remedied.
GNU Free Documentation License Version 1.3 Notice:
Copyright (C) 2012—2014 WrinklyNinja
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license is included in the file named "GNU FDL v1.3.txt".
This appendix provides a general overview of load ordering in the games LOOT supports for those who are unfamiliar with the concept. For simplicity, the game
will be used when the text refers to any of the games that LOOT supports.
Mod plugins for the game are files that end in .esp
or .esm
. These files are created by the game's official editing tools, or by third-party modders' tools. They contain various data records, which cover almost all aspects of what is in the game – NPCs, items, races, interiors, worlds, quests, etc. – and can either be new or changes to the records added by another plugin.
When the game is run, it loads each installed plugin one by one in a certain load order. The load order is important for two reasons:
There are a few hardcoded rules related to load order:
.esm
stands for Elder Scrolls Master).
Skyrim.esm
always loads before all other plugins.
Update.esm
is present, it is always loaded. It loads after all other master plugins, unless it has another position explicitly set.
A plugin's position in the load order is often displayed by mod managers as a hexadecimal number, from 00 to FE (0 to 255 in decimal). The plugin with position 00 loads first, and the plugin with position FE is loaded last. Hexadecimal numbers are used to display the load order positions of plugins because these numbers form the first two digits of the code that the game uses to reference the records that the plugin adds, so knowing the numbers allows modders and mod users to determine from which plugin a record is from.
In Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, load order is determined by plugin timestamps, and the plugins you have accessed are listed in %LOCALAPPDATA%\<game>\plugins.txt
. As such, it's best to use a mod manager to create a backup of your load order. In Skyrim, the load order of active plugins is stored in %LOCALAPPDATA%\<game>\plugins.txt
, and modding utilities generally use %LOCALAPPDATA%\<game>\loadorder.txt
to store the load order of all plugins. This makes backing up your load order as easy as making copies of those two files.
Dirty edits are often a side-effect of mod creation, and are often due to bugs in the utilities Bethesda has provided to create mods, rather than bad practice by mod authors. Dirty edits can cause a wide range of issues, including incorrect game settings, missing content, broken quests and crashing to desktop. The more dirty edits there are in a mod, and the more mods with dirty edits you use, the more likely you are to experience issues.
Thankfully there is a way to remove dirty edits from mods relatively easily, a process known as mod cleaning, using TES4Edit, FO3Edit, FNVEdit or TES5Edit (for Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim respectively). Detailed instructions and information on mod cleaning are available for Oblivion and Skyrim, with the process being largely the same for the others.
The problem of dirty edits is largely a problem of ignorance on the part of mod authors and users alike of the problems dirty mods can cause. As such, there are community efforts to raise awareness of dirty edits and cleaning. LOOT plays a key role in these efforts, as it holds the complete list of all known dirty mods (as does BOSS), and it uses this information to provide notification messages to users for any dirty mods they have installed.
LOOT identifies and describes unclean plugins using four key pieces of information. They are:
In addition to the above, there is another type of dirty edit known as a wild edit. These are any edit that is unrelated to the purpose of the mod, and so provide unnecessary opportunity for conflicts with other mods that do need to change the same thing. It can be difficult to tell if an edit is a wild edit, and so they cannot be automatically cleaned. LOOT can still notify users of wild edits and link to information on fixing them if the CRCs of plugins with wild edits are reported, along with details on what needs cleaning.
LOOT and the modding communities rely on user contribution of this information to progress. For information on how to contribute, see Contributing To LOOT. If you find that a mod contains dirty edits, you should also report this to the mod's author so that they can fix it.
Note: TES4Edit et al. will include a variety of junk records in the ITM count for a plugin, such as new empty cells that are automatically generated and are almost impossible to remove. These junk records are non-harmful, and LOOT may inform users when a mod contains these and no true ITMs to avoid confusion.
If you are running Windows Vista or a later version of Windows, LOOT (and other modding programs) may be prevented from working correctly by the UAC security feature. There are four common workarounds to this problem:
Program Files(or
Program Files (x86)if on 64-bit Windows). UAC prevents unauthorised edits to these folders, so by installing the game outside of them, you remove it from UAC's reach, allowing you to use mods more easily.
Full Controlpermissions over your game install folder. This will allow you to make any edits you desire while keeping UAC active and on guard for any edits made by programs you do not run, and also means that you do not need to reinstall your game to a new location.
Run as administrator.
For those that wish to take the third option and give themselves Full Control
permissions, here is a guide:
Properties.
Properties, select the
Securitytab, and click the
Edit...button. A UAC prompt may appear, simply allow yourself to continue.
Group or user namesbox, select the
Usersoption.
Full Controlin the
Allowcolumn. Press OK to exit. If a UAC prompt appears, allow the change.
Propertieswindow, select OK to exit. You should now have Full Control permissions over your chosen folder.
Only program history is recorded here. The masterlists are updated far too frequently for their changes to be concisely recorded here, but a full history of changes to them may be viewed by browsing the GitHub repositories.
settings.yaml
included with the installer was very old.
OKbutton, leading to conditional messages being wrongly displayed or hidden.
Copy Content As Textmenu item to copy the plugin list and all information it contains to the clipboard as YAML-formatted text.
Remove All User-Added Metadatamenu item has been renamed to
Clear All User Metadataand moved into the
Filemenu.
Remove Plugin User-Added Metadatamenu item has been renamed to
Clear User Metadataand moved into the plugin menu.
Show only conflicting pluginsfilter has been renamed to
Show Only Conflictsand moved into the plugin menu.
View Debug Logmenu item has been replaced with a
Open Debug Log Locationmenu item to make it easier to upload the file itself.
OKbutton.
Copy Namemenu item has been removed, as plugin names can now be selected and copied using
Ctrl-C
.
Ctrl-F
keyboard shortcut.