255 limit

[Megafartmachinery]

Question: it seems the limit of plug ins, .esp files for skyrim se is 255. From the perspective of MO2: 255 on the right side, the mods of the left side: the plug-ins? As far as I understood in many explanations, it is the left side: the plug-ins. Why o why do I have 315 active plug-ins running and no problems so far ? Or do I have them and I do not realise or will they come?

 

 

[sparcymarcy]

I've had 600 mods before and had no issues, other than long load times. What's happening to make you think the limit is 255?

 

[Just Don't]

The limit is for plugin and master files (esp, esm). So you need to take a look at your loadorder. As you're posting in a SE section I assume we're talking about Skyrim SE, so in SE there are also esl files (light master or esp flagged as esl, so basically we have "light" master or plugin files). These esl or esp-esl files don't contribute to the limit.

• Example of an esl file in the loadorder:  (written in italic, esl extension).
• Example of an esp file flagged as esl:  (the plugin is written in italic as the previous one, but the extension is still esp). If you put your mouse over this plugin MO will say something like:

 

In MO2, left panel is your modlist. The modlist will show all your installed mods, plenty of mods don't even have plugin or master files (think about texture replacers or mods that are only a skse plugin, you could have 300 mods replacing different textures and your loadorder won't reflect this). The right side of MO shows the loadorder and if you put your mouse near the Active counter you'll see the detailed info. For example in one of my test profiles I have "156 plugins", but only 101 are esp+esm files, the other 55 are esl files so I only need to worry about the 101 when looking for the plugin limit.

[Mr. Otaku]

Dude 255 is the esp limit, the esp list is on the right side. I'm not an expert but i'm pretty sure esps are often referred to as plugins. You can have a thousand mods on the left side as long as only 255 of them have an actual esp file inside them and enabled on the righthand side.

 

Edit: Well there you go Just Don't already answered your question in much better details before i hit post lol.

[spoonsinger]

You can only install have 253, (or 252 in Skyrim SSE), standard plugins (i.e. esm/esp's) on the right hand side.

 

0x00 - Will be your Skyrim.esm

0x01 - Is your Update.esm

...

0xFF, (i.e. slot 255 - is used internally for run time generated things, (random bandits, clobber, etc).).

 

In Skyrim SSE slot 0xFE, (i.e. 254), is used for ESL's.

[Megafartmachinery]

@ all of you responding so far: thank you.

@ Just Don't. Then I was pretty well informed already, thank you for confirming it. Although I did know about ESL files, I did not know about esp flagged as esl. (Yellow dot behind the filename)

That explains that I run 315 plug-ins without any problems. 135 of those are flagged as esl. With 180 esm/esp files, still 75 esp's for the taking (oh yeah).

 

Thank you for the info.

[alwen]

Sorry to necro this thread, but if one were to go over the 255 esp limit, what's the best way nowadays to get around that? I've seen people talk about Wrye Bash but not sure if that's outdated now? Also something called zEdit?

[monsta88]

23 hours ago, alwen said:

Sorry to necro this thread, but if one were to go over the 255 esp limit, what's the best way nowadays to get around that? I've seen people talk about Wrye Bash but not sure if that's outdated now? Also something called zEdit?

 

OK, I'm no expert but:

- You can flag some mods to .ESL in SSEEDIT (there is a script which tells you which ones). This makes them a Light plugin, which don't count in the esp counter,

- Merge mods. There are nice guides for this as well.

- Think hard about your modlist. Do you really NEED that many mods? How much armor do you actually use? Do you really need 34 follower mods at the same time?

 

 

Peace,

M