What happens after the limit is reached is what was termed directory thrashing where the engine would loose track of all it was scanning and errors, crashing, etc would occur until that number was brought back under. I'd bet if you posted your load order others could find issues.Īnd just to contribute to the general knowledge pool - it was discovered with Oblivion (very similar game) that there was indeed a limit to the number of esm/esp/bsa files that the game could handle and that hovered between 360 and 400. I'm very picky about what mods I install and have found that even though it is a confusing mess of what conflicts with what it is possible to get that smooth as silk load order. And I have no crashes and no need of masterupdate. I have 170+ active mods and and if I count the ones merged into the bashed patch 207.