LOOT - Load Order Optimization Tool

LOOT is a plugin order optimizer for Starfield, TES III: Morrowind, TES IV: Oblivion, TES IV: Oblivion Remastered, Nehrim: At Fate’s Edge, TES V: Skyrim, Enderal: Forgotten Stories, TES V: Skyrim Special Edition, TES V: Skyrim VR, Enderal: Forgotten Stories, Fallout: Fallout (Special Edition), New Vegas 3, Fallout: Fallout, 4 and 4 VR. It is designed to help mod users avoid harmful conflicts by automatically calculating a loading order that satisfies all plugin dependencies and maximizes the impact of each plugin on the user's game.

LOOT also provides some functionality to check for errors in boot order, including requirements, incompatibilities, and circular dependencies. In addition, it provides a large number of plugin-specific usage notes, error warnings, and Bash Tag suggestions for Wrye Bash.

Although LOOT is able to calculate the correct download order positions for the vast majority of plugins using only their contents, it cannot do this for all plugins. Therefore, LOOT provides a mechanism for providing additional plugin metadata so that it can sort them correctly. An online list is provided to provide metadata for many plugins that need it, and users can add their own metadata that is stored in their user list.

LOOT is designed to simplify the use of mods, and mod users should still have practical knowledge of the mod loading order.

See Introduction to Loading Order for Overview and LOOT Sort Algorithm for a detailed article on how LOOT works.

Documentation

To learn more about LOOT, read its documentation on Read The Docs:

- Application documentation

- API documentation

Downloads

The official version of LOOT, as well as all related files, can be downloaded from the official website or from this Nexus page, although Nexus only provides the installer executable, which is all you need. If you prefer preconfigured .7z archives instead of installer binaries, go to the official LOOT website.

Unofficial LOOT builds from developers are available as GitHub Actions artifacts in our LOOT repository.

Installation and Removal

Windows

LOOT requires 64-bit version of Windows 10 (1809) or later.

LOOT can be installed using the automatic installer or manually from the release archive. If you are using an installer, simply run it and follow the instructions in the wizard. If you are installing manually, extract the downloaded archive to the location of your choice.

MSVC 2022 x64 redistributable must be installed in order for LOOT to work.

The installer will automatically download and install redistributable if it is not already installed, but if you are using the release archive, you will need to do so manually.

If you installed LOOT using the installer, use the uninstaller referenced on the Start menu to uninstall it. If LOOT was manually installed:

Delete the files you have checked out from the location you selected.

Delete the LOOT folder in the local application data folder, which you can access by typing %LOCALAPPDATA% in Windows Explorer.

Linux

LOOT requires a 64-bit version of Linux.

LOOT can be installed as a Flatpak application or from the release archive. It is recommended to use Flatpak instead of the release archive, as the latter does not contain any third-party dependencies that need to be installed separately.

For detailed instructions, see this section of our documentation.