In practice this ends up actually being 2048 form ID records because the engine reserves everything from $0x0000 to $0x07FF. Individual files flagged as ESL can in theory hold up to 4096 form ID records.

The theoretical limit now should be 4096 ESL flagged mods. Not even the Bashed Patch or any other form of merged data.Īs a result of this new support, the engine can allow you to bypass the previously hard limit of 255 plugin files. This is now considered a special slot in SSE and should not be occupied by any mods in your load order. Upon loading into the game, the form IDs are remapped into the FE mod index. esp files.įiles with the ESL flag are given special treatment with their form IDs. All standard load order procedures apply to them, and any properly functioning mod manager should handle them the same way it does regular. esp file with no ESM flag will load as a normal. It is important to note that as far as the game is concerned, a. If BOTH flags are set, then it is treated as a light master. If the ESL flag is set, it will be treated as a light plugin. esp file can function as either type of file depending on which flags are set in its file header. The ESM and ESL flags are automatically set in memory.Ī. esl file extension will always be treated as a light master. The ESM flag will automatically set in memory.Ī. esm file extension will always be treated as a master file. The engine treats files in a certain way based on their file extensions:Ī.

Those files load immediately following the 5 official files, according to the order they're listed in the c file. The exception being any Creation Club content you may have downloaded. How these load is determined by their file extension. They load early, immediately following the 5 hardcoded official files and any Creation Club content you may have.įiles flagged with ESL are known as 'light plugins' or 'light masters'. Mod managers all know how these work and various modding tools consider these to be the basics of modding.įiles flagged with ESM are commonly referred to as 'masters'. There will be no type flag set on these and they have the. This causes them to load in different ways, and in some cases handle their form IDs different from the old ways.ĮSP files are standard every day mods. Plugins can have 3 different flag types: ESP, ESM, and ESL. Since questions about new plugin types come up all the time, I felt it was best to make sure our source here is accurate. Elminster has spent a considerable amount of time studying how this works and has had a number of community members aid in verifying this information. Beginning with Patch 1.5.3 of Skyrim Special Edition, the game supports a new type of mod file known as a 'light plugin' with the.

Creation club mods not working