When I load a save I go bald, start spewing ice from my mouth, and die

[TJBear]

I had this issue many times. I was if I exceeded the number of mods that the game could handle. Same result every time - ice spells spewing from head, MCM resetting, quests resetting as if it was a new game, equipment suddenly gone. I experimented with this at least 6 times now by intentionally trying to exceed the limit with different size mods e.g. expansions vs simple changes. Sometimes it was 288, sometimes 322, and everything in between. The warning sign that this was about to occur was the Reference Count. If it exceeded 900,000 (the dungeon packs are brutal for that), then I knew the end was close. Another issue is that when you exceed the mod limit you can load and save the game - you can even reload the game from the main game. But, when you fully exit and start again the next time, the _____________ hits the fan. The problem is that once you exceed the limit and this happens, I had to go in and manually take out every part of the mods exceeding the limit - just unchecking the mod(s) from MO2 or Vortex did not change everything. For a simple mod it might take 5 minutes. For a large expansion it took me 1.5 to 2 hours. Painful. Then I had to delate all saves etc.