Load Order: Anything that LOOT is bad at and you should do manually?

[LucyTheSuccubus]

I was wondering if there are any mods that often get loaded in the incorrect order because LOOT messes up. What I for example noticed is, that it often sorts Weather mods not to the end, which usually makes them conflict with other mods and then you have bright weather in some cells.

 

Are there any other guidelines or problems known with LOOT that I should check myself? Any popular mods that tend to conflict in the load order even with LOOT?

[dubiousintent]

With thousands of mods, you are going to have to work from generalities primarily.

 

LOOT is designed to look for "dependencies" (plugins that require some other plugin to be loaded before them). It does that by examining the file headers and is generally reliable in that regard.

 

What it cannot do is tell if a plugin is going to conflict with another plugin that does not have such a dependency. That is where the "community" comes into play with reporting such conflicts to the "master list" so those "recommendations" can be added. LOOT handles those by putting them into several "groups" which organize the "load order", and are described in the documentation. Most of the popular mods have been reported and already included in it's master list. Newer or recently updated ones are more likely to have a conflict, but you are more likely to determine that from the mod "comments" page. You can create your own "groups" (under "metadata") to further customize plugins in a particular load order so you don't have to do so more than once. It's worth the time to read it's docs.

 

Merged plugins, when built properly, have already resolved dependencies within their own collection of plugins. That does not mean LOOT is going to know anything about them, dependencies not included in the "merge", or any "not directly dependent" conflicts and will tend to put all such "merges" at the bottom of the load order so they will "override" all others including it's own "last group". You can use LOOT "custom groups" to control that to some extent but will have to work out the issues yourself. Please see the wiki "Merged Plugin Guidelines for Personal Use" article if you are dealing with them.

You are going to find the most conflict with multiple mods that attempt to change the same or very similar things. Prime examples are "Weather", "Weapon Expansion", and "Race/Face/Hair/Beauty" mods. Best is to choose just one of a type. (It is possible to get multiple "Beauty" mods to work together, but they generate the most massive threads on the forum even today. Tackle such last.)

 

That you ask suggests to me you have some experience with modding other games. You may be used to "cleaning" other game main files and/or mods. That is not recommended as a general practice for FNV. It came along after that was a known issue and common practice, so it is something known to most modders and the assumption is ITMs are needed where found. The preferred approach is to contact the author and leave the published game files alone. Please see the wiki "XEdit - Sort & Clean 'master files' from a plugin" article.

-Dubious-