Vortex Manual Load Order

Vortex How To Manual Load Order
Vortex Manual Load Order Template

About this mod

Setting the right load order for your mods is a crucial step to enjoying a stable modded game. The Load Order Optimisation Tool (LOOT) can help with that, by providing automated load order sorting that's simple to use and fully customisable.

If this is actually true that there's no manual means of adjusting load order, Vortex will be one of the most user UNfriendly things made for modding in the last 15 years. As even the LOOT developers are likely to tell you, LOOT is only the beginning of load order, not the end. Choose to continuously mix or pulse samples with the Thermo Scientific LP Vortex Mixer. Vortex Lubrication System Owner’s Manual Removing the Vortex Hub for inspection or maintenance should be done in a safe location away from moving vehicles. Elevate the trailer on level ground using the manufacturer’s instructions. Always use jack stands or other solid supports. Do not rely on a jack to support the trailer.

Permissions and credits

Author's instructions

LOOT and its API are distributed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. The documentation is distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License v1.3. The full texts of both licenses are included in Copyright License Texts [ https://loot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/licenses/texts.html ].
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.
Copyright (C) 2012 WrinklyNinja

File credits

LOOT is developed on GitHub, and a full list of GitHub contributors may be found here [ https://loot.github.io/credits/ ].
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:
Original icon: jonwd7
Translations:
Brazilian Portuguese: Kassane
Chinese: bluesky404
Czech: ThePotatoChronicler
Danish: Freso
Finnish: 3ventic
French: Kaos
German: lpradel
Japanese: kuroko137
Korean: SteamB23
Polish: Łukasz Niemczyk
Russian: Tokc.D.K.
Spanish: Sharlikran
Swedish: Mikael Hiort af Ornäs
Beta testing: Too many to list, thank you all!
LOOT uses the Boost, cpptoml, github-api, Jed, Jed Gettext Parser, lodash, Marked, nlohmann/json, Polymer and spdlog libraries, and the Chromium Embedded Framework. Copyright license information for all these may be found here [ https://loot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/licenses/texts.html ].

Donation Points system

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Changelogs

Version 0.14.4
- [Fixed] Any instances of '.' in messages would be incorrectly displayed as '.'.
- [Fixed] LOOT would unnecessarily ignore intermediate plugins in a non-master to master cycle involving groups, leading to unexpected results when sorting plugins (via libloot).
- [Fixed] 'HearthFires.esm' was not recognised as a hardcoded plugin on case-sensitive filesystems, causing a cyclic interaction error when sorting Skyrim or Skyrim SE (via libloot).
- [Changed] Groups that contain installed plugins can no longer be deleted in the groups editor.
- [Changed] Clicking on a group in the groups editor will now display a list of the installed plugins in that group in the editor’s sidebar.
- [Changed] An error message is now displayed for each plugin that belongs to a nonexistent group.
- [Changed] Game configuration can now include the root Registry key when specifying a registry key. If no root key is specified, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE is used. The recognised root keys are: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG, HKEY_CURRENT_USER, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_USERS
- [Changed] Updated the Russian translation.
- [Changed] Updated libloot to v0.14.6.
- [Changed] Updated CEF to v74.1.16+ge20b240+chromium-74.0.3729.131.
- [Changed] Updated nlohmann/json to v3.6.1.
- [Changed] Updated spdlog to v1.3.1.
Version 0.14.3
- [Fixed] Plugin counters would be set to zero after cancelling a load order sort.
- [Fixed] The user interface would not display default values for some data if overriding values were removed (e.g. removing a plugin’s user metadata would not set its group back to the default if no group was set in the masterlist).
- [Fixed] Saving user metadata with the default group would store that group membership in user metadata even if the plugin was already in the default group.
- [Fixed] Condition parsing now errors if it does not consume the whole condition string, so invalid syntax is not silently ignored (via libloot).
- [Fixed] Conditions were not parsed past the first instance of 'file(<regex>)', 'active(<regex>)', 'many(<regex>)' or 'many_active(<regex>)' (via libloot).
- [Fixed] LOOT could crash on startup or changing game when trying to check if the game or data paths are symlinks. If a check fails, LOOT will now assume the path is not a symlink. Via libloot.
- [Changed] Updated libloot to v0.14.4.
Version 0.14.2
- [Fixed] An error when loading plugins with a file present in the plugins directory that has a filename containing characters that cannot be represented in the system code page. Via libloot.
- [Fixed] An error when trying to read the version of an executable that does not have a US English version information resource. Executable versions are now read from the file’s first version information resource, whatever its language. Via libloot.
- [Changed] Updated libloot to 0.14.2.
Version 0.14.1
- [Fixed] The LOOT update checker would fail when LOOT's version number was equal to the version number of the latest release.
Version 0.14.0
- [Added] An error message will now be displayed for any light plugin that contains new records with FormIDs outside the valid range for light plugins.
- [Added] A warning message will now be displayed for any plugin that has a header version that is older than is used by the game, to help draw attention to plugins that have been incorrectly ported from older games. The header version checked is the value of the version field in the 'HEDR' subrecord of the plugin’s 'TES4' record.
- [Added] A section to the documentation that explains LOOT’s sorting algorithm.
- [Fixed] Creating a new group by pressing the Enter key after typing a name in the Groups Editor input field no longer leaves the group creation button enabled.
- [Fixed] Incorrect handling of non-ASCII characters in plugin filenames when getting their active load order indices, which could lead to incorrect indices being displayed in the sidebar.
- [Fixed] Incorrect handling of non-ASCII characters in games’ LOOT folder names. By default all folder names only contained ASCII characters, so this would only affect customised folder names.
- [Fixed] BSAs/BA2s loaded by non-ASCII plugins for Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4 may not have been detected due to incorrect case-insensitivity handling (via LOOT API).
- [Fixed] Fixed incorrect case-insensitivity handling for non-ASCII plugin filenames and File metadata names (via LOOT API).
- [Fixed] Path equivalence checks could be inaccurate as they were using case-insensitive string comparisons, which may not match filesystem behaviour. Filesystem equivalence checks are now used to improve correctness. (Via LOOT API).
- [Fixed] Errors due to filesystem permissions when cloning a new masterlist repository into an existing game directory. Deleting the temporary directory is now deferred until after its contents have been copied into the game directory, and if an error is encountered when deleting the temporary directory, it is logged but does not cause the masterlist update to fail. (Via LOOT API).
- [Fixed] The Czech translation mangled placeholders in message strings, causing errors when it was used.
- [Changed] LOOT now requires a C++17-compatible compiler, so Windows builds now require the MSVC 2017 x86 redistributable instead of the MSVC 2015 x86 redistributable.
- [Changed] The masterlist or default group for a plugin in the plugin editor’s group dropdown is now styled with bold dark blue text to make it easier to undo user customisation of a plugin’s group.
- [Changed] Cyclic interaction errors will now detail the data source of each interaction in the cyclic path, to make it easier to identify the problematic metadata and so fix it.
- [Changed] Updated the Japanese translation.
- [Changed] Updated the German translation.
- [Changed] LOOT now supports v0.14 of the metadata syntax (via LOOT API).
- [Changed] Updated LOOT API, which has been renamed to libloot, to 0.14.1.
- [Changed] Updated cpptoml to v0.1.1.
- [Changed] Updated spdlog to v1.3.0.
- [Changed] Updated nlohmann/json to v3.5.0.
- [Changed] Updated JavaScript GUI dependencies.
Version 0.13.6
- [Fixed] Load order indices in the sidebar were formatted incorrectly for light plugins.
Version 0.13.5
- [Fixed] Out-of-bounds memory read that caused corruption in LOOT's 'settings.toml' when LOOT is closed after having been unable to find any installed games.
- [Added] An '--auto-sort' parameter that can be passed to 'LOOT.exe' with '--game', and which will cause LOOT to automatically sort the game's load order and apply the sorted load order, then quit. If an error is encountered at any point, auto-sort is cancelled.
- [Added] A Czech translation by ThePotatoChronicler.
- [Added] A documentation section that describes the sorting algorithm.
- [Changed] Passing an invalid '--game' value as a parameter to 'LOOT.exe' now causes an error to be displayed.
- [Changed] The Groups Editor now uses a left-to-right layout when displaying the groups graph, which is clearer and more consistent than the previous layout.
- [Changed] Updated GUI dependencies.
- [Changed] Updated Japanese translation.
Version 0.13.4
- Fixed
  - Warnings were displayed for ghosted plugins saying they were invalid and would be ignored when they were not.
  - Filesystem errors when trying to set permissions during a masterlist update that clones a new repository (via LOOT API).
  Changed
  - The Group dropdown menu in the metadata editor now 'drops up' to reduce the amount of scrolling necesary by default to see the full list.
  - The GUI is now based on a mix of Polymer 3 and React elements.
  - Updated GUI dependencies.
  - Updated LOOT API to v0.13.8.
Version 0.13.3
- Fixed
  LOOT's 'check for updates' functionality was failing due to the latest release unexpectedly not appearing on the first page of results when fetching repository tag data.
Version 0.13.2
- Fixed
  - Plugins with a .esp file extension and the light master flag set no longer appear as masters.
  - Running LOOT outside of its executable's directory no longer results in a blank window.
  - Cursor displaying as text selector in dropdown lists.
  - Incompatibility messages not being displayed for non-plugin files.
  - Fallout 4's DLCUltraHighResolution.esm is now handled as a hardcoded plugin (via libloadorder via the LOOT API).
  - Plugins that are corrupt past their TES4 header are now handled gracefully when sorting and removed from the UI, with a warning message displayed for each removed plugin.
  - Metadata editor text fields now trim whitespace to avoid unexpected metadata mismatches.
  Changed
  - Updated Boost to v1.67.0.
  - Updated spdlog to v1.1.0.
  - Updated Google Test to v1.8.1.
  - Updated cpptoml v0.1.0.
  - Updated CEF to v3.3440.1806.g65046b7.
  - Updated nlohmann/json to v3.2.0.
  - Updated LOOT API to v0.13.7 which should carry a number of performance improvements with it.
  - Updated Danish translation.
Version 0.13.1
- Changed
  - Sorting now enforces hardcoded plugin positions without the need for LOOT metadata. This helps LOOT avoid producing invalid load orders, particularly those involving Creation Club plugins (via LOOT API).
  - Updated LOOT API to v0.13.5.
  - Updated spdlog to v0.17.0.
Version 0.13.0
- Added
  - Support for Skyrim VR.
  - Support for plugin groups. Each plugin belongs to a group, and groups can load after zero or more other groups, providing a concise way to load groups of plugins after other groups of plugins. The group a plugin belongs to can be set in the metadata editor, and groups can be edited in the new Groups Editor accessible through the main menu.
  - LOOT's update checking on startup can now be toggled from the settings dialog.
  Changed
  - Bash Tag suggestions now display tags that are present in the plugin's description field in silver text.
  - Sorting error messages now includes the full path to 'plugins.txt' when suggesting it may be read-only.
  - Updated the LOOT API to v0.13.4.
  - Updated CEF to v3.3325.1758.g9aea513.
  - Updated nlohmann/json to v3.1.2.
  Removed
  - Support for local and global priority metadata. Priorities have been superseded by groups, which provide similar functionality more accessibly.
  Fixed
  - 'Cannot read property 'status' of undefined' errors could occur when LOOT attempted to check for updated and no Internet connection was available.
  - An error that occurred when attempting to apply edits to clean or dirty plugin metadata.
  - A potential error during sorting if the number of plugins installed changed since LOOT was started or its content was last refreshed.
  - An error when applying a load order for Oblivion, Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas involving a plugin with a timestamp earlier than 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (via LOOT API).
  - An error when loading the current load order for Skyrim with a 'loadorder.txt' incorrectly encoded in Windows-1252 (via LOOT API).
  - Various filesystem-related issues that could be encountered when updating masterlists, including failure due to file handles being left open while attempting to remove the files they referenced (via LOOT API).
  - Incorrect load order positions were given for light-master-flagged '.esp' plugins when getting the load order (via LOOT API).
  - Closing LOOT with the metadata editor open or unapplied sorting results displayed would not display a confirmation dialog.
  - Editable table rows for non-user metadata were not being made read-only.
  - User metadata was not used when checking the validity of a plugin's install environment (e.g. if any incompatible plugins are present).
  - Bash Tag removal suggestions were treated as addition suggestions unless the tag name was prefixed by an additional '-'.
  - File metadata's 'display' field wasn't used in generated UI messages.
  - The top divider in a scrollable dialog could be hidden when scrolling.
Version 0.12.5
- Fixed
  - LOOT now checks that its game subdirectories are actually directories, not just that they exist, erroring earlier and more helpfully when there is somehow a file with the same name in the LOOT data directory.
  - Windows 7 users can now update their masterlists again without having to manually enable system-wide TLS 1.2 support. This was an issue after GitHub disabled support for older, insecure versions of TLS encryption because Microsoft didn’t enable TLS 1.2 support in Windows 7 by default. Fixed via the LOOT API.
  Changed
  - Migrated all non-Polymer GUI dependencies from Bower to NPM.
  - Refactored GUI JavaScript and custom elements into ES2015 modules.
  - Introduced Webpack to bundle JavaScript and CSS for the GUI.
  - Updated Polymer to v2.5.0.
  - Updated the LOOT API to v0.12.5.
Version 0.12.4
- Fixed
  - Loading or saving a load order could be very slow because the plugins directory was scanned recursively, which is unnecessary. In the reported case, this fix caused saving a load order to go from 23 seconds to 43 milliseconds (via the LOOT API).
  - Plugin parsing errors were being logged with trace severity, they are now logged as errors (via the LOOT API).
  - Chromium console messages are now logged with severity levels that better match the severity with which they appear in the console (via the LOOT API).
  - Saving a load order for Oblivion, Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas now updates plugin access times to the current time for correctness (via the LOOT API).
  Changed
  - Added a specific message for sorting errors that mentions plugins.txt probably being read-only, as it’s the most common cause of issues filed.
  - Added missing mentions of Fallout 4 VR support.
  - Performance improvement for load order operations (via the LOOT API).
  - Updated the LOOT API to v0.12.4.
  - Updated spdlog to v0.16.3.
  - Updated nlohmann/json to v3.1.1.
  - Updated CEF to v3.3282.1733.g9091548.
Version 0.12.3
- Fixed
  - LOOT wouldn’t start when run by a user with a %LOCALAPPDATA path containing non-ASCII characters, which was a regression introduced in v0.12.0.
  - The log buffer is flushed after every statement, fixing the regression introduced in v0.12.2.
  - The uninstaller didn’t remove settings.toml.
  Changed
  - Disabled CEF debug logging, as the CEFDebugLog.txt has generally been more misleading than helpful.
Version 0.12.2
- Added
  - Support for Fallout 4 VR.
  - Support for configuring games’ local paths, i.e. the directory in which their plugins.txt is stored. Each game entry in LOOT’s settings.toml now has a local_path variable that is blank by default, which leaves it up to libloadorder (via the LOOT API) to determine the path. There is no GUI option to configure the value.
  - Chromium console messages are now logged to LOOTDebugLog.txt to help when debugging.
  Changed
  - Updated LOOT API to v0.12.3.
  - Replaced Protocol Buffers serialisation dependency with nlohmann/json v2.1.1.
  - Replaced Boost.Log with spdlog v0.14.0.
  - Downgraded Boost to 1.63.0 to take advantage of pre-built binaries on AppVeyor.
  - Updated Japanese translation.
  Removed
  - The --game-appdata-path CLI parameter, which set the local path to use for all games, and which has been superceded by game-specific local_path configuration variables.
  Fixed
  - Plugins with a .esp file extension and the light master flag set are no longer treated as masters when sorting, so they can have other .esp files as masters without causing cyclic interaction sorting errors (via LOOT API).
  - Sorting didn’t update sidebar indices.
Version 0.12.1
- Fixed
  - Settings would not save correctly with debug logging disabled.
  - LOOT API logging was disabled on Linux.
  - Typos in the v0.12.0 changelog.
Version 0.12.0
- Added
  - Support for light master (.esl) plugins.
  > Light masters are indicated by a new icon on their plugin cards, and the “Master File” icon is suppressed for light masters.
  > In the sidebar, light masters all have the in-game load order index FE, followed by the hexadecimal index of the light master relative to only other light masters.
  > A new general warning message will be displayed when 255 normal plugins and at least one light master are active.
  > A new error message will be displayed for light masters that depend on a non-master plugin.
  - Support for specifying the game local app data path using the --game-appdata-path=<path> command line parameter.
  - Japanese translation by kuroko137.
  Changed
  - LOOT now stores its settings in a settings.toml file instead of a settings.yaml file. It cannot upgrade from the latter to the former itself, but a converter is available online:
  https://loot.github.io/convert-settings/
  - “Copy Load Order” now includes a third column for the index of light masters relative to other light masters.
  - Updated the UI to use Polymer v2 and updated LOOT’s custom elements to use the Custom Elements v1 syntax.
  - LOOT API log messages are now included in the LOOTDebugLog.txt file, and are no longer written to LOOTAPIDebugLog.txt.
  - Updated the Chinese translation.
  - Updated the Danish translation.
  - Updated the Russian translation.
  - Updated the LOOT API to v0.12.1.
  - Updated Lodash to b4.17.4.
  - Updated Octokat to v0.8.0.
  - Updated CEF to v3.3163.1671.g700dc25.
  Fixed
  - Error when adding a Bash Tag with no condition using the metadata editor.
  - Detection of Skyrim and Skyrim SE when LOOT is installed in the same directory as both.
  - General messages disappearing when cancelling a sort.
  - Blank messages’ content in the metadata editor after updating the masterlist.
  - LOOT window size/position not restoring maximised state correctly.
  - “Cannot read property of ‘text’ of undefined” error messages when something went wrong.
  - The “new version available” message is no longer displayed for snapshot builds built from code newer than the latest release.
  - Significant fixes in the LOOT API:
  > A crash would occur when loading an plugin that had invalid data past its header. Such plugins are now just silently ignored.
  > LOOT would not resolve game or local data paths that are junction links correctly, which caused problems later when trying to perform actions such as loading plugins.
  > Performing a masterlist update on a branch where the remote and local histories had diverged would fail. The existing local branch is now discarded and the remote branch checked out anew, as intended.
Version 0.11.0
- Changed
  - The LOOT application now uses the LOOT API, rather than sharing internal code with it.
  - LOOT now writes to an additional log file: LOOTAPIDebugLog.txt
  - If LOOT is closed while maximised, it will now start maximised.
  - Log timestamps now have microsecond precision.
  - Updated to CEF v3.2924.1561.g06fde99.
  - The LOOT API has had its code split into its own repository. (https://github.com/loot/loot-api) Its documentation, along with the metadata syntax documentation, is now hosted separately. (https://loot-api.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)
  Fixed
  - A few inaccurate logging statements.
  - Menu text wrapping during opening animation.
  - Inconsistent editor priority values handling, causing priority values user metadata to not trigger the “Has User Metadata” icon appearing in certain circumstances.
  - The LOOT window’s title is now set on Linux.
  - The LOOT window’s size and position is now saved and restored on Linux.
  - Clipboard operations are now supported on Linux (requires xclip to be installed).
Version 0.10.3
- Added
  - LOOT now creates a backup of the existing load order when applying a sorted load order. The backup is stored in LOOT’s folder for the current game, and up to the three most recent backups are retained.
  Changed
  - If no game is detected when LOOT is launched and a valid game path or Registry key pointing to a game path is added in the Settings dialog, LOOT will select that game and refresh its content when the new settings are applied.
  - Most exception-derived errors now display a generic error message, as exception messages are no longer translatable. Only metadata syntax exceptions still have their message displayed in the UI.
  - Improved robustness of error handling when calculating file CRCs.
  - Improved consistency of error logging.
  - Errors and warnings are now always logged, even when debug logging is disabled.
  - The First Time Tips and About dialogs are now fully translatable, with the exception of the legal text in the About dialog.
  - Updated Russian translation.
  Fixed
  - A crash on startup if none of the supported games were detected.
  - A crash when applying settings when none of the supported games are detected.
  - Buttons and menu items for performing game-specific operations are now disabled while none of the supported games are detected.
  - Initialisation error messages were formatted incorrectly.
  - An error message reading Cannot read property 'textContent' of undefined could be displayed on startup due to UI elements initialising later than expected.
  - The texts of the first plugin card and sidebar item were not being translated.
  - LOOT now logs being unable to find a game’s registry entry as [info], not [error].
  - If an error was encountered while loading a userlist, constructing the error message produced a boost::too_many_args error that obscured the original error.
  - The installer now checks for v14.0.24215 of the MSVC Redistributable, it was previously checking for v14.0.24212, which some users found insufficient.
Version 0.10.2
- Added
  - Support for specifying the path to use for LOOT's local data storage, via the --loot-data-path parameter.
  Changed
  - The metadata editor now displays an error message when the user inputs invalid priority values, in addition to the input's existing red underline styling for invalid values, and instead of validating the values when trying to save the metadata.
  - LOOT's icon now scales better for high-DPI displays.
  - LOOT's UI is now built as many loose files instead of one large HTML file, to aid debugging and development.
  - Updated Chinese translation.
  - Updated Chromium Embedded Framework to 3.2840.1517.gd7afec5.
  - Updated libgit2 to 0.24.3.
  - Updated Polymer to 1.7.0, and also updated various Polymer elements.
  Fixed
  - A crash could occur if some plugins that are hardcoded to always load were missing. Fixed by updating to libloadorder v9.5.4.
  - Plugin cleaning metadata with no 'info' value generated a warning message with no text.
  - The LOOT update checker will no longer display an empty error dialog if the update check is unable to connect to the GitHub API (eg. if offline).
  - Redate Plugins was accidentally disabled for Skyrim SE in v0.10.1, and had no effect for Skyrim SE in v0.10.0.
  - Having more than ~ 100 plugins installed could make the sidebar's plugin list appear on top of dialogs.
  - More UI text has been made available for translation.
  - Tweak some text formatting to include more context for translators.
  - Dirty plugin warning messages now distinguish between singular and plural forms for their ITM, deleted reference and deleted navmesh counts, to allow the construction of more grammatically-correct messages in English and other languages.
  - The UI text for the metadata editor was always displayed in English even when LOOT was set to use another language, despite translations being available.
  - It was possible to open the metadata editor during sorting by double-clicking a plugin in the sidebar.
  - Removed a duplicate section in the documentation for editing metadata.
Version 0.10.1
- Changed
  - When saving a load order for Fallout 4 or Skyrim SE, the official plugins (including DLC plugins) are no longer written to plugins.txt to match game behaviour and improve interoperability with other modding utilities.
  - LOOT now uses Skyrim Special Edition as the folder name for storing its Skyrim SE data, to mirror the game’s own folder naming and improve interoperability with other modding utilities, and automatically renames any SkyrimSE folder created by LOOT v0.10.0.
  - Updated Russian translation.
  - Updated Chinese translation.
  Fixed
  - When saving a load order for Fallout 4 or Skyrim SE, the positions of official plugins (including DLC plugins) in plugins.txt are now ignored if they are present and a hardcoded order used instead. Note that there is a bug in Skyrim SE v1.2.39 that causes the DLC plugins to be loaded in timestamp order: this behaviour is ignored.
  - If the LOOT installer installed the MSVC redistributable, the latter would silently force a restart, leading to possible data loss.
  - It was possible to open the metadata editor between sorting and applying/cancelling a sorted load order, which would then cause an error when trying to close the editor. The editor is now correctly disabled during the sort process.
Version 0.10.0
- Added
  - Support for TES V: Skyrim Special Edition.
  - Swedish translation by Mikael Hiort af Ornäs (Lakrits).
  - More robust update checker, so now LOOT will notify users of an update without needing a masterlist to be present or for it to be updated for the new release, and will also detect when the user is using a non-release build with the same version number.
  Changed
  - LOOT now supports v0.10 of the metadata syntax. This breaks compatibility with existing syntax, which may cause existing user metadata to fail to load. See the syntax version history for the details:
  https://loot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/metadata/changelog.html
  - The Global Priority toggle button in the metadata editor has been replaced with an input field to reflect the change in syntax for global priorities.
  - Added a “Clean Plugin Info” tab to the metadata editor, for editing metadata that identifies a plugin as being clean.
  - Added a “Verified clean” icon to plugin cards that is displayed for plugins that are identified as clean.
  - All operations triggered from the UI are now processed asynchronously, which may have a minor positive effect on perceived performance.
  - Error messages displayed in dialog boxes no longer include an error code.
  - Rewrote the documentation, which is now hosted online at Read The Docs.
  https://loot.readthedocs.io/
  - Updated Simplified Chinese translation.
  - Updated Russian translation.
  - Updated German translation.
  - Updated Danish translation.
  - Updated CEF to 3.2840.1511.gb345083 and libgit2 to 0.24.2.
  Fixed
  - Cached plugin CRCs causing checksum conditions to always evaluate to false.
  - Data being loaded twice when launching LOOT.
  - Updating the masterlist when the user’s TEMP and TMP environmental variables point to a different drive than the one LOOT is installed on.
  - Incorrect error message display when there was an issue during initialisation.
  - Sidebar plugin load order indices not updating when sorting changed plugin positions.
  - The 'Has User Metadata' icon not displaying when priority metadata was changed.
Version 0.9.2
- - Fixed error when applying filters on startup.
  - Fixed hidden plugin and message counters not updating correctly after sorting.
  - Fixed an error occurring when the user's temporary files directory didn't exist and updating the masterlist tried to create a directory there.
  - Fixed the installer failing if LOOT was previously installed on a drive that no longer exists. The installer now always gives the option to change the default install path it selects.
  - Fixed startup errors being reported incorrectly and causing additional errors that prevented the user from being informed of the original issue.
  - Fixed the metadata editor's CRC input field being too short to fully display its validation error message.
  - Fixed errors when reading some Oblivion plugins during sorting, including the official DLC.
  - Fixed some cases where LOOT would fail to start.
  - Fixed the conflict filter not including the Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch's plugin (and any other plugin that overrides a very large number of records) in results.
  - Fixed the 'not sorted' message reappearing if the load order was sorted twice in one session and cancelled the second time.
  - Fixed version numbers where a digit was immediately followed by a letter not being detected.
  - Theming support and the dark theme have been reimplemented and reintroduced.
  - Plugin filename and Bash Tag name fields will now autocomplete in the metadata editor.
  - The in-game load order indices of active plugins are now displayed in the sidebar.
  - Most URLs now use HTTPS.
  - The Danish and French translations have been updated.
  - The CEF (3.2743.1442.ge29124d), libespm (2.5.5), Polymer (1.6.0) and Pseudosem (1.1.0) dependencies have been updated to the versions given in brackets.
Version 0.9.1
- - Removed support for Windows Vista.
  - Added support for Fallout 4's Contraptions Workshop DLC, and the upcoming Vault-Tec Workshop and Nuka-World DLC. Support for the latter two is based on their probable but unconfirmed plugin names, which may be subject to change.
  - Fixed user dirty metadata being read-only in the metadata editor.
  - Fixed LOOT incorrectly reading a tag with no name from plugin descriptions containing {{BASH:}}.
  - The content refresh menu item is now disabled during sorting.
  - The conflicts filter toggle buttons have been removed from the plugin card menus, and the filter re-implemented as a dropdown menu of plugin names in the Filters sidebar tab.
  - Enabling the conflicts filter now scrolls to the target plugin, which is no longer highlighted with a blue border.
  - The layout of the Filters sidebar tab has been improved.
  - The CEF (3.2704.1427.g95055fe), and libloadorder (9.4.0) dependencies have been updated to the versions given in brackets.
  - Some code has been refactored to improve its quality.
Version 0.9.0
- Fixes
  - Redate Plugins attempted to redate plugins that were missing, causing an error.
  - LOOT would not launch when run by a user with a non-ASCII local application data path.
  - Sorting processed priority value inheritance throughout the load order incorrectly, leading to some plugins being positioned incorrectly.
  - The conflict filter displayed only the target plugin when enabled for the first time in a session.
  - The behaviour of the search functionality was inconsistent.
  - Duplicate messages could be displayed under certain circumstances.
  - Opening the metadata editor for one plugin displayed the metadata for another plugin under certain circumstances.
  - Changing the current game quickly could leave the UI unresponsive.
  - Applying a filter then scrolling the plugin card list would display some cards with no content.
  - Plugin cards would disappearing when jumping to a plugin card near the bottom of the load order using the sidebar.
  - Clicking on a disabled element in a dropdown menu would cause the menu to close.
  - The UI font size was too large, due to a misunderstanding of the Material Design guidelines.
  - Attempting to build native Linux and 64-bit executables produced errors. Such builds are unsupported and no official builds are planned.
  Additions
  - Support for Fallout 4.
  - A warning message is displayed in the General Information card if the user has not sorted their load order in the current LOOT session.
  - An error message is displayed in the General Information card when a cyclic interaction sorting error is encountered, and remains there until sorting is next attempted.
  Changes
  - Improve sorting performance by only reading the header when loading game's main master file.
  - References to 'BSAs' have been replaced with the more generic 'Archives' as Fallout 4's BSA equivalents use a different file extension.
  - The sorting process now recognises when the sorted load order is identical to the existing load order and informs the user, avoiding unnecessary filesystem interaction.
  - The metadata editor has been reimplemented as a single resizeable panel displayed below the plugin card list instead of a separate editor for each plugin card.
  - Editable table styling has been improved to more closely align to the Material Design guidelines.
  - Minor UI changes have been made to scrollbar and focus outline styling to improve accessibility.
  - UI interaction performance has been improved, especially when scrolling the plugin card list.
  - The PayPal donation link now points to the PayPal.Me service, which has a more polished UX and lower fees.
  - LOOT's settings file handling has been reimplemented, fixing crashes due to invalid settings values and allowing missing settings to use their default values.
  - Plugin version string extraction has been reimplemented, improving its accuracy and maintainability.
  - Plugin CRC, file and version condition evaluation has been optimised to use cached data where it exists, avoiding unnecessary filesystem interaction.
  - The French and Danish translations have been updated.
  - The installer now only creates one shortcut for LOOT in the Start menu, following Microsoft guidelines.
  - A lot of code has been refactored and improved to increase its quality.
  - The Boost (1.60), CEF (3.2623.1401.gb90a3be), libespm (2.5.2), libgit2 (0.24.1), libloadorder (9.3.0) and Polymer (1.4) dependencies have been updated to the versions given in brackets.
  Removals
  - The Flattr donation link.
  - The experimental theming support, as its implementation was incompatible with Polymer 1.2's styling mechanisms.
Version 0.8.1
- - Fixed crash when loading plugins due to lack of thread safety.
  - Fixed masterlist updater and validator not checking for valid condition and regex syntax.
  - Check for safe file paths when parsing conditions.
  - Updated Chinese translation.
  - Updated Boost (1.59.0), libgit2 (0.23.2) and CEF (branch 2454) dependencies. This fixes the masterlist updater not working correctly for Windows Vista users.
Version 0.8.0
- - Fixed 'Cannot read property 'push' of undefined' errors when sorting.
  - Fixed many miscellaneous bugs, including initialisation crashes and incorrect metadata input/output handling.
  - Fixed metadata editors not clearing unsaved edits when editing is cancelled.
  - Fixed LOOT silently discarding some non-unique metadata: an error message will now be displayed when loading or attempting to apply such metadata.
  - Fixed userlist parsing errors being saved as general messages in the userlist.
  - Fixed and improved LOOT's version comparison behaviour for a wide variety of version string formats. This involved removing LOOT's usage of the Alphanum code library.
  - Improved detail of metadata syntax error messages.
  - Improved plugin loading performance for computers with weaker multithreading capabilities (eg. non-hyperthreaded dual-core or single-core CPUs).
  - LOOT no longer displays validity warnings for inactive plugins.
  - LOOT now displays a more user-friendly error when a syntax error is encountered in an updated masterlist.
  - Added support for loading custom user interface themes, and added a dark theme.
  - Metadata syntax support changes, see the metadata syntax document for details.
  - LOOT's installer now uses Inno Setup instead of NSIS.
  - LOOT's installer now uninstalls previous versions of LOOT silently, preserving user data, instead of displaying the uninstaller UI.
  - Updated German and Russian translations.
  - Updated libgit2 to v0.23.0.
Version 0.7.1
- - Fixed LOOT UI opening in default browser on launch.
  - Fixed No existing load order position errors when sorting.
  - Fixed message filters being ignored by plugin cards after navigating the list.
  - Fixed output of Bash Tag removal suggestions in userlists and the API's `loot_write_minimal_list()`.
  - Fixed display of masterlist revisions where they were wrongly interpreted as numbers.
  - LOOT now uses versioned masterlists, so that new features can be used without breaking LOOT for users who haven't yet updated.
  - Moved content filter into Filters sidebar tab. The CTRL-F keyboard shortcut no longer focusses the content filter.
  - Checkbox-toggled filters now have their last state restored on launch.
  - Darkened background behind cards to increase contrast.
  - Added content search, accessible from an icon button in the header bar, and using the CTRL-F keyboard shortcut.
  - Added Copy Load Order feature to main menu.
  - Updated French translation.
Version 0.7.0
- Fixes
  - The Settings.yaml included with the installer was very old.
  - Inactive incompatibilities were displayed as error messages. They are now displayed as warnings.
  - Masterlist entries that matched the same plugin were not being merged. Now one exact match and any number of regex matches will be merged.
  - Masterlist updating failed when a fast-forward merge was not possible (eg. when remote has been rebased, or a different repository is used). Such cases are now handled by deleting the local repository and re-cloning the remote.
  - Masterlist updating failed when the path to LOOT's folder included a junction link.
  - Masterlists would not 'update' to older revisions. This can be useful for testing, so now they can do so.
  - Crashes when trying to read corrupt plugins and after masterlist update completion.
  - LOOT would crash when trying to detect a game installed to a location in which the user does not have read permissions, now such games are treated as not being installed.
  - Plugins with non-ASCII description text would cause 'codecvt to wstring' errors.
  - LOOT would accept any file with a .esp or .esm extension as a plugin. It now checks more thoroughly, by attempting to parse such files' headers.
  - LOOT would only detect Skyrim plugins as loading BSAs. Plugins for the other games that also load BSAs are now correctly detected as such.
  - Depending on the plugins involved, sorting could produce a different load order every time it was run. Sorting now produces unchanging load orders, using existing load order position where there is no reason to move a plugin.
  Additions
  - Danish and Korean translations.
  - If LOOT can't detect any installed games, it now launches to the settings dialog, where the game settings can be edited to allow a game to be detected.
  - A Copy Content item in the main menu, to copy the plugin list and all information it contains to the clipboard as YAML-formatted text.
  - A Refresh Content item in the main menu, which re-scans plugin headers and updates LOOT's content.
  - LOOT is now built with High DPI display support.
  - Masterlist updates can now be performed independently of sorting.
  - A First-Time Tips dialog will be displayed on the first run of any particular version of LOOT.
  - Attempting to close LOOT with an unapplied sorted load order or an open plugin editor will trigger a confirmation dialog.
  - Support for GitHub Flavored Markdown in messages, minus features specific to the GitHub site, such as @mentions and emoji.
  - Support for message content substitution metadata syntax in the masterlist.
  - Display of LOOT's build revision has been added to the About dialog.
  - Plugin location metadata can now be added through the user interface.
  - A content filter, which hides plugins that don't have the filter text present in their filenames, versions, CRCs, Bash Tags or messages.
  Changes
  - New single-window HTML5-based interface and a new icon, based on Google's Material Design.
  - LOOT now parses the masterlist and plugin headers on startup, and the resulting content is displayed with the plugins in their current load order.
  - Each plugin now has its own editor, and multiple editors can be opened at once.
  - Drag 'n' drop of plugins from the sidebar into metadata editor tables no longer requires the conflicts filter to be enabled.
  - CRCs are calculated during conflict filtering or sorting, so are not displayed until either process has been performed.
  - The View Debug Log menu item has been replaced with a Open Debug Log Location menu item to make it easier to share the file itself.
  - Debug logging control has been simplified to enable/disable, replacing the Debug Verbosity setting with an Enable Debug Logging toggle.
  - Changes to game settings now take immediate effect.
  - Masterlist updating now exits earlier if the masterlist is already up-to-date.
  - Masterlist revisions are now displayed using the shortest unique substring that is at least 7 characters long.
  - Making edits to plugin metadata before applying a calculated load order no longer causes LOOT to recalculate the load order. Instead, the displayed load order is applied, and the metadata edits will be applied the next time sorting is performed.
  - All references to UDRs have been replaced by the more technically-correct Deleted References term.
  - The Hide inactive plugin messages filter has been replaced by a Hide inactive plugins filter.
  - Copied metadata is now wrapped in BBCode [ spoiler ][ code ].. [ /code ][ /spoiler ] tags for easier pasting into forum posts.
  - The Summary and General Messages cards have been combined into a General Information card.
  - Sorting performance improvements.
  - Updated Boost (1.58.0), libgit2 (0.22.2) and libloadorder dependencies.
  Removals
  - Messages with multiple language strings can no longer be created through the user interface. User-added multiple-language messages will be converted to single-language strings if their plugin's editor is opened then closed using the OK button.
  - The Copy Name menu item has been removed, as plugin names can now be selected and copied using CTRL+C.
  - As LOOT no longer generates reports, it doesn't save them either.
  API
  - Fixed some documentation errors.
  - Fixed the API creating a LOOT folder when being initialised.
  - Fixed false successes for loot_create_db() when invalid paths were supplied.
  - Fixed loot_load_lists() ignoring userlist paths, and accepting invalid paths.
  - Fixed loot_eval_lists() accepting invalid language codes.
  - Fixed loot_get_dirty_info() never outputting the loot_needs_cleaning_no code.
  - Fixed loot_write_minimal_list() causing a crash when passed an invalid output path.
  - Added load order sorting and application functions.
  - Added masterlist update and revision checking functions.
  - Added support for native Linux builds.
  - Added unit testing of API functions to help ensure correctness and consistency of functionality.
  - Added loot_get_build_id(), which outputs the shortened revision ID that the API was built from.
Version 0.6.1
- - Fixed: Default Nehrim registry entry path.
  - Fixed: Messages in the wrong language being selected.
  - Fixed: LOOT windows opening off-screen if the screen area had been changed since last run.
  - Fixed: Read-only .git folders preventing repository deletion.
  - Fixed: Unnecessary plugins in cyclic dependency error messages.
  - Fixed: Bash Tag suggestions displaying incorrectly.
  - Fixed: The current game can no longer be deleted from the settings window.
  - Fixed: Plugin metadata being lost when the settings window was exited with the 'OK' button, leading to possible condition evaluation issues.
  - Fixed: A blank report bug when running on systems which don't have Internet Explorer 11 installed.
  - Fixed: Reports appearing empty of all content when no global messages are to be displayed.
  - Changed: Updated Boost (1.57.0), libgit2 (0.21.3), wxWidgets (3.0.2) and libloadorder (6.0.3) dependencies. This includes a critical security vulnerability fix in libgit2.
  - Changed: The game menu is now updated when the settings window is exited with the 'OK' button.
  - Changed: Updated Russian translation.
  - Changed: Updated Brazilian Portuguese translation.
  - Added: German translation.
  - Added: The Large Address Aware flag to the LOOT executable.
Version 0.6.0
- Fixes
  - The uninstaller not removing the Git repositories used to update the masterlists.
  - Miscellaneous crashes due to uncaught exceptions.
  - Plugin priorities are now temporarily 'inherited' during sorting so that a plugin with a low priority that is made via metadata to load after a plugin with a high priority doesn't cause other plugins with lower priorities to be positioned incorrectly.
  - The default language is now correctly set to English.
  - Defaults for the online masterlist repository used for Nehrim.
  - Endless sorting loop that occurred if some user metadata was disabled.
  Additions
  - Display of masterlist revision date in reports.
  - Report filter for inactive plugin messages.
  - The number of dirty plugins, active plugins and plugins in total to the report summary.
  - A find dialog to the report viewer, initiated using the CTRL-F keyboard shortcut.
  - LOOT's windows now remember their last position and size.
  - Command line parameter for selecting the game LOOT should run for.
  - Finnish translation.
  Removals
  - Support for Windows XP.
  - Support for loading BOSS masterlists using the API. This was a leftover from when LOOT was BOSSv3 and backwards compatibility was an issue.
  - The ability to open reports in an external browser. This was necessitated by the changes to report generation.
  - The MSVC 2013 redistributable requirement.
  - The 'None Specified' language option is no longer available: English is the new default.
  Changes
  - Unified and improved the metadata editors launched during and outside of sorting.
  > The metadata editor now resizes more appropriately.
  > The mid-sorting instance hides the requirement, incompatibility, Bash Tags, dirty info and message lists.
  > Both instances now have a conflict filter, priority display in their plugin list and drag 'n' drop from the plugin list into whatever metadata lists are visible.
  > The mid-sorting instance also hides the load after entry edit button, and the button to add new entries (so drag 'n' drop is the only available method of adding entries).
  > The metadata editor now displays plugins with user edits using a tick beside their name, rather than bolding their name text.
  > Plugins that have been edited in the current instance have their list entry text bolded.
  > Checkboxes have been added to set whether or not a priority value is 'global'. The UI also now displays the priority value used in comparisons (ie. with the millions and higher digits omitted).
  > A right-click menu command for clearing all user-added metadata for all plugins has been added to the metadata editor.
  - Missing master/requirement and incompatibility errors are downgraded to warnings if the plugin in question is inactive.
  - Masterlist update errors have been made more user-friendly.
  - If an error is encountered during masterlist update, LOOT will now silently delete the repository folder and attempt the update again. If it fails again, it will then report an error.
  - Masterlist update now handles repository interaction a lot more like Git itself does, so should be less error-prone.
  - Cyclic dependency error messages now detail the full cycle.
  - LOOT's report now uses a static HTML file and generates a javascript file that is dynamically loaded to contain the report data. This removes the PugiXML build dependency.
  - Debug log message priorities adjusted so that medium verbosity includes more useful data.
  - Updated dependencies: libgit2 (v0.21.0), wxWidgets (v3.0.1), libloadorder (latest), libespm (latest).
Version 0.5.0

Donations

Straight donations accepted

This article explains what 'load order' is, how you can adjust and how it should be.

Importance of Load Order and when you should start adjusting it

Load order can be extremely important, it can be the difference between 'playing the game' and 'crashing every time you run the game'. You probably won't have to adjust the load order often if you run like 2-3 mods but if you've got 5+ mods you may have to adjust it, load order isn't just for people that create mods, it's mostly for people that USE mods.

Tools needed to adjust the load order

Grab Timeslip's Fallout Mod Manager here, not only is this tool vital to adjusting load order but it's also very handy when managing or making mods.

What is Load Order

Load order is like the name suggests the order your mods are loaded into the game in, the mods at the top of the load order will be loaded into the game first, the mods at the bottom will be loaded last.

How does Load Order work

Vortex How To Manual Load Order

For example, let's say you put a piece of white paper down on the floor, then you put a rock on top of that, if you placed the objects in the 'White Paper -> Rock' order you will be able to see both the rock and the paper at the same time.

If you however place the rock down first, THEN the piece of white paper the paper will cover the rock and you won't be able to see the rock. That's basically what load order is, the piece of white paper is Fallout3.esm and the rock is YourPlugin.esp, you've got to adjust the load order so you see all your objects.

Let's say you use a mod that gives Moira Brown of Megaton a blue hat, then you have Fallout3.esm which basically creates Moira and gives her a brown hat, if you load the plugin that gives moira a different hat FIRST then what will happen is:

WRONG Load Order:

YourPlugin.esp: Loads, Moira doesn't exist, she doesn't get the blue hat.
Fallout3.esm : Loads, Creates Moira, Gives Moira a brown Hat.

If you load Fallout3.esm first, then YourPlugin.esp:

RIGHT Load Order:

Fallout3.esm : Loads, Moira is Created, is given a brown hat.
YourPlugin.esp: Loads, overwrites Moira's brown hat, gives her a blue hat.

Example Load orders of a few popular mods / DLC

RIGHT Load Order:

Fallout3.esm :Loads, creates all the vanilla weapons, gameplay options etc.
Fallout Overhaul Kit (FOOK) :Loads, modifies all vanilla weapons, gameplay options etc

WRONG Load Order:

Fallout Overhaul Kit (FOOK) :Loads, tries to modify all vanilla weapons, gameplay options etc
Fallout3.esm :Loads, creates all the vanilla weapons, gameplay options etc, overwrites everything FOOK did.

When SHOULDN'T Fallout3 be first in the load order?

Those are only in extremely rare cases, it should be specified by the author, I'm not sure if there are any mods so far that have to be loaded first.

Mods that require other mods to run

If you've got mods that require other mods to run then the mod required to run should be loaded before the mod that requires that mod to run.