Is it possible to have too many mods?

[Guest]

I'm newb but learning. So is it possible to have too many mods running in one game (which I would guess yes) but most importantly what would be the limit or how can I tell if I'll metaphorically break the Camel's back & ctd. Also I figure with a lot of active mods Load Order will absolutely matter

~ thanks (:

[Rokabur]

Think it might depend on the mods used. I'm currently at 189 .esm/.esp active with around 80-90 quest/dungeon/weapon/follower mods I need to merge so i can squeeze them in lol. I have several script heavy mods running and Skyrim is completely fine, for me atleast. Think it also depends on your system specs as well. The stronger the system, the more mods you can run before the game starts to crap out on you. My previous system was a little under the line for minimum specs to run Skyrim on minimal settings. if I had too many mods running the scripts for the game slowed like hell. The Main Quest to meet the Greybeards, I'd be waiting like 2-3 minutes between each action an NPC took.

[Sentreth]

The integrity of your load order starts to dwindle after 100 mods or so. I would proceed with caution. Each mod causes conflicts when it's overriding or being overridden by a bunch of mods.  

[nutluck]

NMM has a limit I believe which is 250, MO I don't believe has a limit. With that said we all have a limit, the number depends on what kinds of mods you are using and how good your computer is. Like a example a friend of mine and I both play Skyrim. Our computers are very close in almost every way except video card. Mine has double the VRam and has a GPU almost 3 times as fast as his. So needless to say I can run a lot more high graphic mods than he can with out slowing the game down.

 

The only real way to know what your systems limit is, is by trial and error. Keeping adding mods till your system slows down or gets unstable then remove a few mods till it gets stable.

[cocodojo]

I did have like around 200+ mods running for my game before it was getting unstable enough to CTD every so often, I think between 210~220 was the line where it'd still be playable before it'd crash every few hours?  Like some of the posters say, it depends on what you have modded into your game, but I had a handful of rather large mods, many moderate ones and a bunch of smaller ones running.

 

Large ones for me would be things like, Falskaar, SMIM, things like that which changed the whole game everywhere or added whole DLC sized content.

 

Medium ones, probably some overhaul type mods like SFO, landscape texture mods, things like that where it affects a good portion of the game, but you won't run into it all at once.

 

Smaller ones, like weapons and armor mods, because you really won't kill your PC if you had 200 different weapons and armor mods unless they all conflicted with each other somehow, or you had everything onscreen at once (at least I don't think it would impact the game overall as much as the previous 2).

 

Its really just about how much of a mix you want to play with and how much your PC can handle.

 

[Cynical Misanthrope]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the mod limit around 250-255-ish?

 

It's perfectly fine to mod your game till you reach the max number (whatever that may be, and if you have PC that has the power to support it), and set it up to get a working load order.

Just for the sake of this topic, lets say the limit is 250. If you add one more (251), and then launch the game up, and at the title screen, if you click "new game" or "continue" the game will simply crash, since the game engine can't handle more than 250.

[myuhinny]

255 is the limit if you try to install anything else in NMM it will throw out a error and not activate it. I'm not sure but BSA's might also count towards that as well I think I saw something about that awhile back in a different thread.

[Invictusblade]

the limit of mods in most mod managers is around 254-255, however sometimes skyrim mods have additionial ghost mods(can't think of a better way to describe invisible mods) so it is trial and error process to get a game to work at high numbers.

 

also the reason for 255 is that skyrim uses a hex number system and 255 is FF and 256 is 01 00

[Akzyra]

The limit is always 255 mods because Skyrim works that way.

Uses one byte as mod-index. (Could that be patched?)

 

With Mods I mean esp/esm. Textures don't count towards that limit. BSA neither, they load via INI or mod with same name.

You still can have to much mods if your hardware can't support the game anymore

(To much textures/scripts....)

[...0...]

If i install 254 it seems i getting problems but 253 esp is limit and no problems, so 255 mods others claim is nice they can install but i can't so stay at 253

 

But for me 253 mods plenty never needed more i just switches between mods always plenty you don't use for while you can deactivate and install another, no sweat.

[RebelInfernal]

There is of course the 255 limit, but more of a problem for most people is script lag. If you install too many mods with scripts attached it will slow down your game and possibly stop things working properly. Uninstalling these can leave scripts running in your game still, game script cleaners can help but won't make things perfect again.

[yatol]

If i install 254 it seems i getting problems but 253 esp is limit and no problems, so 255 mods others claim is nice they can install but i can't so stay at 253

 

But for me 253 mods plenty never needed more i just switches between mods always plenty you don't use for while you can deactivate and install another, no sweat.

 

that's because skyrim and update esm aren't visible in the skyrim launcher

 

[Veladarius]

I typically run at or near the max number of esm/esp's (255) with very few problems.

 

The biggest issues are conflicting mods and mods that cause repeating script errors. Conflicting mods can cause the errors if one mod changes/removes something another relies on, if it was used with a script it can cause errors. If you get enough errors happening (repeating over and over) papyrus won't be able to keep up and you end up with dump stack errors which cause even more problems.

 

What I recommend is the following:

1- Don't uninstall mods that are script intensive or change a number of standard Skyrim things, it will cause nothing but problems and errors

2- Use caution when updating script intensive mods or things that change a lot of things, if they remove things that were there before (properties and such) they will cause errors.

3- Monitor your papyrus log, if updating / installing mods check them after each play session, if they are getting up towards or over 1mb you can be sure that there are errors in it.

4- Know what your system can handle, don't overload it with large textures (4k textures of ore, really, ore? Why?) or pushing things beyond what it can handle.

 

Of course there are the normal Skyrim issues but there are a number of mods that work to fix those. Between those fixes, not overloading your system and keeping your logs as clean as possible you should be able to run as many mods as you want.

[Erundil]

In case it wasn't clear:

 

The limit is not 255.

Also it doesn't necessarily indicate the number of mods you can have.

The only limit is game engine which will process only 256 ESM/ESP files. Why? Because it indexes them with numbers from 0 to 255 (that's a total of 256 ESM/ESP files).

Some mods have multiple ESM/ESP files, some have none. Also game engine indexes Skyrim.esm, patches and official DLCs together with mods, so if you have the newest patch, all 3 DLCs and all High Resolution packs, it's 5 ESM files and 3 ESP files (8 total). If you add Unofficial Patches, that's another 4 ESP files. That's a total of 12 ESM/ESP files. So the game is left with 256-12=244 slots for other ESM/ESP files that would come from mods.

 

Anyway it's possible that your computer will fry long before you reach the cap of 256 ESM/ESP files