What kinds of mods can be flagged as light on Vortex? What should not be?

[kplusa]

Help please!

Apart from the patches I made on xEdit, I have no idea which ones can be safely flagged as light. Any rules of thumb?

Also, do I have to do/check something on xEdit before/after flagging?

Thank you!

[showler]

Vortex should put an icon on all the mods that are able to be made light.  It's a feather I think.

[kplusa]

I know about that feature. 

However, a lot of people online say that's not 100% accurate and not all those that Vortex flags as such should be converted. 

[subaverage]

Out of curiosity, because I don't use Vortex. When I want to flag a file es esl I use FO4edit. If it's ok the file is flagged and thats it. The mod manager should load it as usual. This method always was save for me.  If errors occur one could still try to compact ids for flagging as esl, but this feature must be used carfully as there are some limits. Using FO4edit is perhaps more work, but for me it's trustworthy. So why not do it that way?

[fraquar]

There is a script for FO4Edit if I'm not mistaken that will scan your whole load order and tell you which mods can be flagged.

>>>Find ESP plugins which could be turned into ESL<<<

Open your mod list in FO4Edit, Right Click on any mod and select Apply Script.

Scroll down till you find that script above.

====

It doesn't change them, just reports which mods can be turned into .ESL.

====

Note:  ID's WILL change when you flag mods as .ESL - and any other mods/patches that rely on the .ESP ID's will fail.

You'd need to change the ID's to reflect the .ESL flagged ID's.

Note:  You do NOT want to do this and apply it to a current save game.    You need to start a new game when you do this stuff.

Edited Tuesday at 11:33 PM by fraquar

[NeinGaming]

On 4/2/2025 at 1:31 AM, fraquar said:

Note:  ID's WILL change when you flag mods as .ESL - and any other mods/patches that rely on the .ESP ID's will fail.

You'd need to change the ID's to reflect the .ESL flagged ID's.

Note:  You do NOT want to do this and apply it to a current save game.    You need to start a new game when you do this stuff.

Hmm? I flagged plenty of ESP as light in a running game. And you can remove the ESL flag as easily as you added it, so it's really not so bad, as long as you make a hard save.

The ID doesn't change because that's based on the filename. That is, plugins don't know what place in the load order their masters will have anyway, so the translation of, say, "blah.esp" to "FE01Cxxx" (if you know what I mean) is not something they're privy to or have to care about, it happens each time you start the game, and the translation between different load orders (e.g. when you insert a new mod) is handled when loading saves.

When you want to change something from .esl to .esp that becomes a problem of course. Something I wouldn't recommend to someone who doesn't naturally reach for that anway, but that totally works, is to edit the master name of a plugins with a hex editor. As long as you don't change the length of the master name (so no problem for ESL -> ESP), it's trivial.

Oh, and apart from that script, another lo-tech way is to start xEdit with the -PseudoESL argument, which makes it try to load everything as ESL. Then you can enter "FE 0" in the filter box on the bottom (to list only plugins that were actually successfully loaded as ESL), and look in the flags column for all those that don't have the ESL flag, and set it.

Wrye Bash also reports plugins that could be ESL-flagged as part of the plugin check.

Finally, there's something that's a terrible chore, but at the same time it's awesome that it's possible... though I would only do that with plugins that are only referenced by your own mods: you can copy something as a new record into a new (ESL-flagged) plugin, then apply the script "Redirect references" to the original, and enter the form ID of the new one. Then it will complain because all the other plugins referring to the need the new plugin as the master -- but it's at the end, because you just created it. So you sigh, close xEdit, move the new plugin you made just before the plugin it's harvesting from in your load order, start xEdit again, and now the really boring part begins, depending on how many records you're moving (I bet there's a script for that out there, but I haven't found it yet). And of course, that can really break save games, depending on what you're changing.

Edited Thursday at 09:33 PM by NeinGaming

[d4em]

Changing from esp to esl mid-save can break scripts, because the formIDs used to track them change, and scripts get "lost" running in the background or references break. Can cause all sorts of nasty. To prevent this, disable the mod (ingame, through MCM or a holotape or something) before converting. If it's a high quality mod, it will tell you on the mod page to deactive before uninstalling to prevent these problems.

Unfortunately, if the mod page doesn't say, there is no easy way to tell which mods have scripts that will break and which have scripts that won't break (many scripts that are fire-and-forget are fine), and even if you test ingame and it looks fine initially, broken scripts can fester under the surface and cause problems down the line. If you check inside the ba2 for a mod and there's a bunch of scripts there, I'd play it safe and leave it alone, at least until you start a clean save.

Stuff that has an MCM menu will need a patch for the MCM when you convert to esl, because MCM uses formIDs for a lot of stuff.

It's true that changing formIDs can cause problems if the plugin you're converting is being used as a master (esp or esm) for another plugin. I never convert masters.

Edited 21 hours ago by d4em

[d4em]

Oh also, you should always compact formIDs before converting. An esl plugin with uncompacted IDs is something of an abomination. The compacted formIDs are the entire point of the esl format. Each record ingame is stored in a number like 01000a72, where the first 2 digits are for the plugin. A finite amount of numbers means a finite amount of plugins, because once you get to zz (a number in hex format) you don't have any more IDs to assign to plugins. An esl stores its formIDs differently like 00100a72 where 001 is for the plugin, and now you have many more plugin IDs to hand out, so you can install more mods. If an esl had genuinely uncompacted formIDs it would not be a functional plugin.

(In the above example we might get lucky as the game does not seem consider 0 to be part of the number and instead reads the record like 1:a72 which should be a valid light formID but not compacting is like cycling on a highway when there is a perfectly good bike lane right next to it)

Plugins that only override records from another mod don't need their formIDs compacted because they don't create any new ones (but it never hurts to run "compact formIDs" anyway just to be sure)

Edited 20 hours ago by d4em

[fraquar]

Converting a file being used as a master isn't an issue as long as you are aware of what is requiring it as a master.    Some mods don't explicitly list mods as masters (you won't see it listed in the header in FO4Edit - but they pretty much refer to them the exact same way.   

A good example of this is a mod like Q.M.W. (Quick Modification Weapon).   The CONF.XML requires the correct plugin name and the correct ID's for the weapons and all the attachments - even if the mod itself doesn't have a plugin that calls a mod as a master.   Compacting a weapon mod changes those ID's - and they'd need to be changed to the new ones in the .XML file to be able to use that weapon again with Q.M.W.   

[fraquar]

@NeinGaming

You are correct.   Not all mods however that otherwise can be flagged can be done with just a simple tick of the box in the header.

Ex.  IMI Desert Eagle.    You can't just flag it - you have to compact it first.    Then it lets you flag it.

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In other words the user needs to know what can be flagged, what are the limitations (i.e. a mod can be flagged but first has to be compacted) and what they need to do to get everything back up and running should they have to compact that mod first.   In the case of the mod above?   Well, if I use any patches they will be broken and have to be converted to the new ID's.   If I use Q.M.W. it won't have any idea I was holding a Desert Eagle because it's none of the ID's are in it's CONF.XML.    Not to mention they'd need to know they have to convert the hex ID from the mod to decimal and enter that in the .XML file. 

Edited 18 hours ago by fraquar