A GUIDE FOR NOT USING LOOT
The following is a Load Order guide composed of tips from Tgspy (Frontier Dev), Roy Batty (TTW Dev), and the XEdit Team. You should not use LOOT with TTW or FNV, and this is how you manage load order effectivelly.
Whilst LOOT is a powerful tool for modding many Bethesda titles, it shouldn't be used as a crutch for bad modding; Hence, it's better to learn how to maintain your setup yourself, rather than having a program try do it for you.
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Reason being is that it’s no better than a pinch of non magical fairy dust. Using LOOT will not magically fix your game.
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Here is an incredibly easy way to sort your load offset. This can be applied for FO3, NV, TTW, or even FO4.
Load Order:
FalloutNV.esm
DeadMoney.esm
HonestHearts.esm
OldWorldBlues.esm
LonesomeRoad.esm
GunRunnersArsenal.esm
Fallout3.esm*
Anchorage.esm*
ThePitt.esm*
BrokenSteel.esm*
PointLookout.esm*
Zeta.esm*
CaravanPack.esm
ClassicPack.esm
MercenaryPack.esm
TribalPack.esm
TaleOfTwoWastelands.esm*
YUPTTW.esm*
UI Mods
Scripted mods
New world / quest mods
Armor / weapon mods
Mods that make significant changes to the landscape / terrain
ONE weather mod
Merge patch**
*Ignore the TTW related files if you don't use it (duh); in that case, use normal YUP inplace of YUPTTW.esm
*Some weather mod's (like Nevada Skies and RWL) advise to put their esp after your merged patch. If you have issues with the above, try that.
Merge Patches
Everyone is more than capable of making a simple merge patch; here is a guide on making a merge patch if you don’t know how to. You will need to follow "The Method" in FNVEdit.
Initially:
1. Start with just your vanilla TTW load order and TTWYUP
2. Create a mod group for all now installed files to get you to show 0 conflicts after running -veryquickshowconflicts
Then, for each mod you install repeat:
1. Install the mod as usual
2. Run FNVEdit with -veryquickshowconflicts (will ONLY show conflicts caused by that new mod now)
3. Look at conflicts to see if they can be fixed or minimized by changing load order (on the new mod or another). If yes, do so, and then run -veryquickshowconflicts again
4. Look at conflicts to see what needs to be patched (you can also check if any pre-made patches are available by the mod authors, and install them).
5. After everything has been patched and you are sure everything now showing as conflicts are false positives, create mod groups to hide them (again, small focused mod groups for particular conflicts between 2 mods, not one huge one for everything)
6. Run -veryquickshowconflicts one last time to make sure you are back to 0 conflicts showing
7. repeat for next mod.
This is all any basic mod user would need to do. If you are having issues with some mods conflicting with each other, swapping positions aren’t necessarily going to make a difference unless one mod has bad dirty edits. You’ll need to learn how to fix things in FNVEdit if you want to prevent compatibility issues.
Other Tips
- Use Mod Organizer 2 (MO2) . While a bit complicated at first, it is by far the most powerful tool for managing your Load Order
- Use separators to group your mods, making them easier to manage
- LOOT will tell you to clean the FNV plugins. Never do this.
- Try not to exceed 90 plugins. The actual limit depends on your hardware, but this is around where things start to turn upside down.
- Read the mod description. Sometimes an author may stipulate that his or her mod requires a specific position in a load order to work (See RWL and Nevada Skies above). If that's the case, then do as they say.
- "The Method"
- Tgspy's guide on not using LOOT
- TTW Discord (Roy's pinned message in #troubleshooting channel)
