VOLO - Verified Order and Load Optimisation

Verified Order and Load Optimisation

Introduction

VOLO (Verified Order and Load Optimisation) is a load order optimiser for Baldur's Gate 3, in the spirit of what LOOT is for Bethesda titles. It runs entirely in your browser at volobg3.com: nothing to install, no account, and your load order never leaves your machine unless you choose to submit it.

Drop in a BG3 Mod Manager export or the game's own modsettings.lsx (CSV, TSV and plain lists of names work too), and VOLO sorts it against evidence from load orders players have actually played on, resolves declared dependencies, explains every placement, and hands the file back ready to import into BG3 Mod Manager. Mods from Nexus Mods and from mod.io, the platform behind the official in-game mod manager, are both supported.

How it decides

The skeleton of the order is Astra's Load Order Dividers, a community taxonomy of over a hundred labelled positions, used with permission. You do not need the divider paks installed; VOLO places every mod on that skeleton whether or not you use them.

Which position a mod gets comes from the strongest evidence available, in order: hand-curated rules, where players filed the mod in orders they submitted, what the mod's name plainly says, its Nexus or mod.io listing category (both catalogues are checked), where its author's other mods sit, then inference from its neighbours. Every placement is labelled with which of those it came from, so a guess never looks like a verified position. Declared dependencies are hard constraints that nothing overrides, and where VOLO knows nothing it moves nothing.

What it does not do

• []It does not scan mod files for conflicts; it reads load order files only.[/]

  []It does not guess. A mod nothing places waits at the end of the order, clearly marked, rather than being filed somewhere plausible-looking.[/]

  []It is not an oracle. Measured against working orders it had never seen, VOLO agrees with the player about 57 percent of the time (with a VERY small cohort to measure against currently) vs 50 for a random shuffle; the current figures, and the ideas that measured worse and were thrown out, are public at volobg3.com/measured.[/]

  VOLO is a starting point you check, not an authority (Yet!). If it puts something in the wrong place, there is a strong chance you are right and it is wrong, and telling us fixes it for everyone.[/co