Skyrim Special Edition and the 255 mod / esp limit - definitive answer

[Evangela]

Such suggestion means to suggest one to search entirely by lifetime download and endorsement totals. While it does mean the mods are popular and by all accounts good enough to use, one most not forget the mods that never got much exposure(this can be many reasons, like the author being an unknown) but are pretty good to a small audience.

Edited July 24, 2018 by Rasikko

[Vexxxoid]

Jesus christ

 

The limit is still there. It will always be there until they completely change how they handle FormIDs. FormIDs are 8bit strings, the leading two bits are used to indicate the source plugin. Starting at 00 and ending at FF. FF is reserved for items dynamically created in the game.

 

Therefore there is a max of 255 individual plugins. Skyrim SE comes with 5. Skyrim.esm, Update.esm, Dawnguard.esm, Hearthfires.esm and Dragonborn.ESM, leaving 250 available for use by the player.

 

This is not news. This has been known for ages.

 

Please attempt to do a modicum of research. ANYONE who works with mods could have told you this.

 

People like this give the modding community a bad name.

 

The OP said he did research, then he came here to complete that research by asking people who would know.

And this dude comes a long telling the OP to go do research... Why do you think he's on the forums, genius?

 

No one needs this pretentious, holy-than-thou attitude.

We want more people to learn how to mod so we can get more mods from new creators.

We aren't trying to scare off the new people by making it seem like all modders are pricks.

 

This is 2019, and you've had the internet for years. It's about time you learn how to use it and quit attacking people online for questioning things they don't understand.

[wfc964]

And the whole argument gets muddied by the introduction of the ESL format. (A good thing from the Creation Club.)

 

Both LE and SE use an 8 digit hexidecimal number for the FormID (i.e. x'2E0058CF'), with the first 2 digits representing the 'slot' number, allowing for 256 slots. The first slot, x'00', and the last, x'FF', are reserved (first for Skyrim.esm and last for system use only.)

 

The 6 remaining digits are used to identify the form/object/resource/whatever within the plugin. This means that LE only has the 2 hexidecimal digits to distinguish between plugin files, so taking reserved slots and DLCs into account, you can add 250 esm/esp files to your Skyrim Legendary Edition.

 

In SE, with the introduction of the Creation Club, Bethesda added the ESL file format. This changed the use of slot x'FE', reserving it for ESL plugins, and changed the use of the digits within the FormID to define a 3 digit 'ESL Load Order' within that slot. I.E. the FormID for ESLs is defined like x'FExxxyyy', where x'FE' is the slot, xxx is the ESL load order and yyy is the resource id set by the plugin. Halving the number of digits used to reference the resources does limit what type of mods can use the ESL format but the trade off is that you can have, theorectically, 4096 ESL plugins. (There are apparently other factors which could limit the number of ESL plugins to about 3000 or so.)

 

 

So the definitive answer is 249, cause SE comes with the DLC. So total of 256 slots, -1 for Skyrim.esm, -4 for the 'DLC', -1 for ESLs and -1 for system use only, leaves you with 249 slots to load esp files. (Which could be merged files if you want.) Or it could be 4345 if you want include the maximum number of ESL files (which could be esl flagged ESPs). Or you could add an unlimited number of mods if you want to include texture only mods that don't have an ESM, ESL or ESP...

 

 

 

 

Computers are dumb, at the lowest level they can only remember if something is off or on, i.e. 0 or 1, but they can do that alot, really alot, and they do dumb things really fast.

 

So a 'bit' is a switch having two states, 0 or 1, (off or on, dark or light if you want). Put 8 'bits' together and you get a 'byte'. Now if a bit can have 2 states then a byte can have 256 combinations of those states (2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2 = 256) which in decimal is represented as 0 to 255 and in hexidecimal as x'00' to x'FF'.

 

decimal - base 10 number system.

hexidecimal - base 16 number system. Why? 2x2x2x2 = 16, i.e. put 4 bits together and you have 16 possible combinations, represented by "0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F", and is more efficient for a computer to use because it's all '2 times 2' repeated as many times as needed.

 

If 1 hexidecimal digit can represent 16 combinations of bit states, then 2 hexidecimal digits can represent 16x16 or 256 combinations, and 3 hexidecimal digits can represent 16x16x16 or 4096 combinations.

(2x2x2x2 = 16)

(2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2 = 256)

(2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2 = 4096)

 

Darn, hours spent writing this when I could have been playing instead. :sad:

 

 

Edited December 8, 2019 by wfc964

[Deleted119721User]

The number of mods is pretty much irreverent .... much like the megapixel race in cameras

 

If two mods make navmesh changes that are incompatible ...... even 2 mods are too much ..... and this is common

 

If 2 mods have script collision ..... even 2 mods are too much

 

With ESLs the number of mods that can be added is very high, especially if they are patches with <100 records and don't have NPC records and are not overwritten exterior cells.

 

The number of objectIDs added by an ESPs is a hard limit ...... I have 565 mods loaded but most are ESLs and patches and i am no where near the esp object limit....

Edited December 11, 2019 by Guest

[Papajack55]

In all and all, I have been running between 255 to 356 mods on SSE, and on Oldrim I have run as many as 407 that worked perfectly. But, I ran 408 and the game quit. I took a mod off and it ran again, so the mod must not have been Skyrim compatible. Once though a few months back just for kicks to see how many mods I could run on Oldrim, I had up to 562 mods. Had to remove about 80 of them that weren't really necessary. LOL

Edited December 11, 2019 by Papajack55

[SkyrimMovies]

I have 300+ mods downloaded, when I only ran IFPV, not really much issues. There may be times when I go to save, and it says corrupt file save, but I could still save and the files weren't corrupt. Now that I have smooth cam and IFPV, whenever I load a save game, I lose everything and mods install, some don't.

 

IMO, you can go over the limit, but having two different camera mods will affect skyrim se, if over the limit. It could be that me not having a graphics card could also be a factor as well. I'm using an APU, I can run skyrim on initial medium quality(when you go to options and select visual quality) just fine, and my game looks amazing, but it would look way more amazing with a dedicated graphics card.

[Orimagen]

ESL plugins which is the new format of Skyrim SE don't count as a esp -> so all esp that are esl (in MO2 you can see the numbers of esl/esp/esm in plugins by passing your mouse on the number of plugins activated, don't know on Vortex, because I don't use Vortex) don't count in the 255 limit, so you can have a lot more mods on SE without merging them.

[litewolf]

... don't know on Vortex ...

On Vortex you see the flag "Light".

You may see the flag "Can be Light" on some .esp that you can convert in "Light"-

[niphilim222]

There is a limit to how many esp's you have when loaded, but when ESL files you have more of you could have 255 esp-unlimited esl's. I'm currently at 300 mods so far working just nicely.

[anjenthedog]

 

... don't know on Vortex ...

On Vortex you see the flag "Light".

You may see the flag "Can be Light" on some .esp that you can convert in "Light"-

 

Sweet thing is in Vortex, converting a suitable plugin (evidenced by a non solid leaf icon in the Flags column >> ) is as simple as double-clicking on the plugin name to open the side-panel menu, then scrolling down in that menu and clicking a button named "Make Light", and you're done.

 

The only ones I haven't "lightened" are SkyUI, my racemenu plugins (racemenu itself, and the CBBE, CBBE-3BBB, BHUNP, and SOS racemenu "addon" plugins), and SLIF, although I'm not sure exactly why. I think I read some complaints from people many months ago about SkyUI breaking when made light (could be BS, idk) , and I think the same for racemenu, SLIF idk why, so I've been hesitant... If anyone reading this happens to have "lightened" any of the ones I note above and hasn't suffered any issues, it'd be nice to know it's safe. I'm tired of debugging.