LOOT masterlist

Community-curated ordering rules, fetched from the public LOOT Starfield masterlist.

What LOOT is

LOOT (Load Order Optimisation Tool) is the long-standing community tool for sorting Bethesda game plugins. Its masterlist is a YAML document maintained on GitHub that describes groups and load-after/load-before relationships for known plugins. LOOT itself is a separate program; this toolkit consumes its data.

Fetch & fallback

On startup the toolkit attempts to fetch the latest masterlist from its public GitHub URL. If the fetch fails (offline, GitHub rate limit, DNS issue), a bundled copy — the version shipped with the toolkit release — is used instead. A fresh fetch is attempted once per session.

Group model

The masterlist organises plugins into groups (e.g. Early Loaders, Large Mods, Default, Last Loaders). Groups have a declared load order relative to each other; plugins assigned to a group inherit that ordering. Individual plugin entries may also declare explicit after or req rules.

Constraint emission

For each relevant entry, the LOOT sorter emits constraints at priority 20:

• Group-to-group rules → pairwise load_after between plugins in those groups.
• Plugin-level after → load_after constraint.
• Plugin-level req → treated as a load-after for ordering purposes (the requirement itself is a separate concern).

Coverage

The LOOT masterlist covers known plugins. Bethesda Creations is relatively new and coverage evolves; a creation that isn't in the masterlist contributes no LOOT constraints. The toolkit doesn't warn about missing coverage — it just falls through to Categories and Rule Books.