How can you tell when you hit the .ESL limit?

[Dubbyk]

I know in general there is a limit to the number of edits your total .ESLs can have. IIRC it's 300 ESLs if each ESL is at the very max number of edits allowed in a ESL.

 

But since my ESLs are not always at the cap, some of them are just 1 edit how will I be able to tell when I hit the limit? Will the game just fail to run, will changes just not be included like a .ESP after 255?

 

I am just trying to avoid a situation where I am still adding stuff to no effect, especially for hard to test things like a ESL that changes one script of a quest at the end of the game, hard to load up a clean test save to check something like that to tell if it's working.

[JimmyRJump]

Check out CreationKit dot Com's wiki. You could also have a look at Arthmoor's explanations on AFKmods.

 

Arthmoor, besides having several mods on The Nexus, is also a main contributor to the U4OP and LOOT, should you be weary to go to AFK.

[Carreau]

On the discussion page of the CK wiki, CDCooley posted up a dissent about the variable number of ESL files. And I have to agree with him. It makes no sense knowing that there are 12 bits relegated to the ESL fileâs order within the FE load slot. Also, 300 is not a number Iâd ever expect to see when dealing with mins and maxes based on hex addressing. Cooley also chimes in on the AFKmod thread about it. I donât believe anyone has tried to test the limits of ESL grouping.

[Deleted2146844User]

Weird because I have 149 ESL files and I add a little more over 150 and the game crashes at the start menu after the Creation Club news pops up. I found by reducing ESL files to 149 or 148 it works. I will see now I have 153 ESL files I will check if it crashes. My computer is is eight years old though, so maybe my system is at bear minimum to handle it. I will check if it crashes because I added 4 more ESL files and if it does it must be some kind of limit for me.

[VIitS]

I assisted in the followup testing to try and verify that 300 ESL number.

For SSE, the limit is either 512 or 2048 plugins (including non-ESL plugins), no matter how full. It is 512 normally, but increases to 2048 if you have SSE Engine Fixes. I think that includes plugins in the Data folder that aren't active, but I am not certain on that.

For FO4, the number is variable, and depends on the data size of the contained records + number of records + the phase of the moon at the time the components of your PC were created. Obviously the last bit is a joke, but it does not seem consistent in the testing me and shad0wshad3* did. Even using a copy of the plugin they used for testing, with both of us only having base game +DLC loaded, I had crashes slightly before they did (about half a dozen copies of that plugin with 2048 medium-sized ALCH records).


But to answer the initial question, hitting the ESL limit results in a hard crash. It will either be at the start menu (if you are way over), or when you load up a new or existing save. You can also test by just using the COC command from the start menu to jump to a location. If the game crashes, and removing a single ESL (and maybe a normal plugin as well), with it not mattering which ones are removed, you probably hit the limit. If you just added multiple mods at once, it might require more than one to be removed to fall back below the limit.


*the one who did the initial testing that gave the ~300 plugins number. The current info on the wiki page JimmyRJump linked is from a second round of testing that I helped with. The testing was fairly extensive, and found that the limit for FO4 is in some way related to the data size of the records and not just the number of records, and also is affected by whether or not the records are loaded at startup**.

**With a plugin that had a new cell record and 2047 new REFR records, I got to around 930 ESL flagged .esp files. When I added the ESM flag (so that the temp REFRs were actually treated as temp REFRs***), I was able to load over 4000 copies of the plugin that were otherwise identical.

***I was discovered a few months ago that non-persistant REFR records in a plugin that is not flagged as ESM will be loaded into memory as if they are Persistent. This means the game is keeping track of them even when you are nowhere near them, and is also why large .esp plugins that aren't flagged contribute so much to the loaded REFR limit. Unfortunately, you can't just flag a mod as ESM to deal with a setup where you are hitting the limit (2^21, or about 2 million for FO4, half that for SSE) because quests (and probably AI packages) that rely on NPCs being treated as persistent will be broken by adding the ESM flag unless you make sure that everything that should be persistent is flagged as such, or possibly just given a persistent location flag, there is discussion/testing taking place there by people who actually know how quests are set up.

[SilverThorn12345]

Hello VIitS could you tell what it means to flag plugins as esl or esm.

[VIitS]

To add or remove ESM and ESL flags without changing the file extension:

1) Select the File header for the mod you are adding or removing flags from.


2) Right click on the "Record Flags" subrecord (near the top, right under data size) -> Edit

3) Check the Flags you want to add or remove, then click OK.

 

If you add the ESM flag, it will be treated as having the ESM flag (i.e. loaded in the "Master" group of files with .esm plugins),regardless of what the file extension. If you add the ESL flag, it will be treated as a a light plugin (i.e. FormID prefix of FExxx___, where xxx is the position in the light plugin list).

 

For FO4 and SSE: If a mod has the .esm file extension, it will be treated as having the ESM flagt checked even if you manually remove it. If a mod has the .esl file extension, it will be treated as having both the ESM and ESL flags. That means that, if you want to flag compatiblity patches as ESL, you want to use the .esp file extension and flag it as ESL using xEdit, as using the file extension would force it to load in the ESM bracket, which would then force the mods it has as masters to load there as well, and completely mess up your load order. If you use a mod manager, it will reflect this. Another advantage is, if the ESL flagged plugin eventually gets big enough that you can't fit everything in the 2048 new record space (xx000800 to xx000FFF), you can remove the flag, and it won't break any existing plugins that use your mod as a master. Changing the file extension would break those other plugins unless the master list was edited.

 

With the current version of xEdit (4.0 or newer), it will not let you save a ESK flagged plugin if it has new records outside the "light plugin" FormID space (i.e. it has a new record with a number higher than xx000FFF).

 

The CK lets you create that sort of plugin, but that sort of plugin has a very good chance of save corruption. As an example, an ESL flagged plugin with a new record that has a FormID (pre-flagging) of xx00189A, and the plugin is the 5th ESL flagged plugin, the plugin would have an formID prefix of FE004___, but the record itself would be treated as having the formID of FE00189A. If your second ESL plugin (FE001___) has a new record with the ID xx00089A, the game would also see that as FE00189A. If the record types are different (i.e. 5th plugin is a CELL and the 2nd is a RACE record), that will cause very big problems as the RACE record would be overwritten, so anything referencing that FormID expecting a RACE would get a CELL instead.

[robantwerp]

I am playing fallout 4 on xbox with all dlc expansions

 

wanted to add a few mods but after adding like 6 or 7 i now get a message 'cannot download this mod memory full' even with those bought from creation club

 

my xbox still has + 300gb free memory ?

 

does it take into account the mods i made favorite ?

 

even when i have not installed so many mods and with little in memory usage only kb instead of mb like : MRE, unlimited resoureces, gardner bot ... i just blocks me from installing more mods

 

Just wanted to add things like winter overhaul, xmas, the clean settlements and the furniture packages from creation club, sim settlements

 

what is the max ESL in mb ? or what am i doing wrong ?

 

i seems strange i can only install a few small mods.

 

PS newbee question : if i start with a few mods and disable them by next continue game do the modded items revert / dissappear or do i get to keep them as the game was saved that way ?

 

many thanks

Rob

[StormWolf01]

Hiya Rob. One of the other immediate notices that you've reached your esl limit is that you can't install new mods without removing several older ones first. Which in itself is rather dangerous, because if you remove a mod that is scripted, those scripts are still in your savegame. Which means that you've got scripts that are trying to fire at targets that are no longer there. Which leads to savegame bloat and corruption.

Both of the consoles, Xbox and PS4 both use pretty generic error messages. I know the PS4 will tell you that the memory is full, and you need to delete a game to make space, if it can't write a save to the hard drive. Even if there's tons of space left on the drive.

 

In your case, you pretty much need to get rid of some ESL files. But choose wisely, because of what I mentioned above.

[VIitS]

Xbox has a hard limit on the amount of hdd space mods can use, a quick search says the limit for FO4 is 2GB.