Vortex mark as regular/light?

[Kagraman™]

Hello. Some of my plugins have a little button next to them that says "mark as regular" or "mark as light". What is this? Should i do anything about it?

[hawkeye]

I wouldn't bother unless you run into problems. The chance of it being important is very low.

Read up on the difference between esp and esl when you have some spare time. In short, esl always take precedence over esp regardless of the load order. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The full set of rules is a lot more complex. I've never run into issues.

[Kagraman™]

Originally posted by hawkeye:

I wouldn't bother unless you run into problems. The chance of it being important is very low.

Read up on the difference between esp and esl when you have some spare time. In short, esl always take precedence over esp regardless of the load order. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The full set of rules is a lot more complex. I've never run into issues.

Well. My game does randomly crash every now and then. But what does light and regular mean? And why do i have both? Should i have both?

[Shadowrun]

hawkeye is absolutely correct, but just to elaborate, there is a limit to how many plugins / mods you can install. they are ESM and ESP files. you have 255 slots for these files and the master game files count toward said limit. the DLC files also.

now, when you start downloading hundreds of mods from nexus then it might matter, but ESL files don't count toward this limit. with those, all the ESL files the game has all get thrown into one mod slot. the ESL limit on that slot is 4,096 plugins / mods. let's call this the "lite" slot.

generally you want to download a mod as an ESL version, if one is available, or, you can flag your ESP ones as ESL's to have them load in the lite slot instead of marking them as regular and having them eat up a precious mod slot. this is what can be done through vortex or xEdit.

if you click the PLUGINS tab from the left menu and look at the top-right of the display, it says Active: ## Light: ##. this is telling you how many mods are in the 255 slots (active) and how many are in the ESL / 4,096 slots (light)

EDIT:

now, you generally want to keep big mods as ESP and do not mark them as lite. it can break them, as ESL has tighter limitations on content. however, really small and simple mods are prime candidates to join the LITE group and vortex is simply showing you those. vortex is saying hey, this one qualifies as a LITE if you want to change it. but really it's up to you. do it just to free up slots if you actually reach the 255 limit or whatever the actual cap is. it's somewhere around 255

vortex isn't changing the file to an ESP file, it is simply doing an ESL "flag" into the file to mark it for loading into the LITE mod slot. so the content isn't changed, it just sets a flag in the mod file. and if it goofs your game you can change it back the same way.

right now i have 145 active and 134 light plugins / mods plus about a dozen manually installed which don't count toward those limits.

[Kagraman™]

Originally posted by Shadowrun:

hawkeye is absolutely correct, but just to elaborate, there is a limit to how many plugins / mods you can install. they are ESM and ESP files. you have 255 slots for these files and the master game files count toward said limit. the DLC files also.

now, when you start downloading hundreds of mods from nexus then it might matter, but ESL files don't count toward this limit. with those, all the ESL files the game has all get thrown into one mod slot. the ESL limit on that slot is 4,096 plugins / mods. let's call this the "lite" slot.

generally you want to download a mod as an ESL version, if one is available, or, you can flag your ESP ones as ESL's to have them load in the lite slot instead of marking them as regular and having them eat up a precious mod slot. this is what can be done through vortex or xEdit.

if you click the PLUGINS tab from the left menu and look at the top-right of the display, it says Active: ## Light: ##. this is telling you how many mods are in the 255 slots (active) and how many are in the ESL / 4,096 slots (light)

I don't have hundreds of mods. Nor do i think i ever will. So does it matter if i have some files that are ESP and some ESL or should they all be the same?

[Shadowrun]

they are mix and match and that's fine. even mine, look at the EDIT, are half and half basically.

"right now i have 145 active and 134 light plugins / mods plus about a dozen manually installed which don't count toward those limits."

[Zes]

shadowrun! teach me the milk of vortex kindness ;)

you are slowly seducing me into the modding world. stop doing that.

[Shadowrun]

Originally posted by Zes:

shadowrun! teach me the milk of vortex kindness ;)

you are slowly seducing me into the modding world. stop doing that.

lol. you have to get all the achievements first ;-)

[Zes]

Originally posted by Shadowrun:

Originally posted by Zes:

shadowrun! teach me the milk of vortex kindness ;)

you are slowly seducing me into the modding world. stop doing that.

lol. you have to get all the achievements first ;-)

I reset my achievements many times ;) actually, I do that almost for every playthrough. There is a program at github, called SAM steam achievement manager..

Kek ;)

[Shadowrun]

well that's pretty hardcore, Zes, i dunno that i would want to reset my achievements and do them again. XD

[globefish23]

Originally posted by Roebuck™:

I don't have hundreds of mods. Nor do i think i ever will.

Haha! LOL!
Yes, you will.

Originally posted by Shadowrun:

Originally posted by Zes:

shadowrun! teach me the milk of vortex kindness ;)

you are slowly seducing me into the modding world. stop doing that.

lol. you have to get all the achievements first ;-)

Or use a mod that re-enables the achievements.

[blueshellchaser49]

Can Mods Be fixed once broken by making them light?

[Zekiran]

Originally posted by blueshellchaser49:

Can Mods Be fixed once broken by making them light?

By nuking your install from orbit and reinstalling them correctly, would be the best way, because depending on your mod organizer it might wind up being somewhere you can't easily just 'disable'.

If you do anything at all to a mod, first you need to make sure it CAN be done, which given your question seems to indicate that it was not the correct thing to do.

If you have a backup of the mod or just find it manually. remove it, and reinstall it from the download site properly, and reactivate it properly, and then

Go back to a save BEFORE you did that, if you are trying to run the game with it... If you're going to try putting something broken into the game, you've got to go back to before it broke.

[socialmediaaddress3]

Most responders have already answered correctly but as a long time Modder and Vortex user, I will throw my 2 cents in and restate it in the clearest terms possible for other users:

"Making a plug in light will cause Vortex to treat it as an .esl , even if its an .esp.
This does not work with all .esp extensions, but Vortex will let you know if its possible via the "could be light" leaf outline icon.
Why do it?
In order to avoid the 255 max plug in limit which only tracks .esp extensions.
.esl extensions are a workaround for those of us running longer mod lists than 254.
Me personally I have over 350 mods running concurrently.
This would not be possible without marking many as light in Vortex or taking care to download files as .esl from the get go ( which some mod authors give you the option to do and publish thier mods with both .esp and .esl versions)"