ALL plugins (excluding ghosted) in your Data folder count toward the soft cap. You may have 250 activated plugins, but all 300 or whatever plugins in your Data folder count toward the soft cap. Merging the SM add-ons would save 5-7 plugin slots.

Uhm... all my supreme magicka pluging WAS ghosted (I activated auto-ghost in Wrye Bash)

Here the section of my Load Order with the SM esps

D4 SupremeMagicka.esp
D5 SM_ShiveringIsles.esp
++ SM_DLCSpellTome.esp [Version 0.80]
++ SM_OOO.esp [Version 0.89]
++ SM_MMM.esp [Version 0.89]
++ SM_COBL.esp
++ SM_AbsorbRestoration.esp
++ SM_EnableCharmChameleon.esp
++ SM_NoPoisonLevitationEffects.esp
++ SM_UnlockSpells.esp
++ SM_Scrolls.esp [Version 0.84]
++ SM_SigilStone.esp [Version 0.83]

only two counts against the softcap: SupremeMagicka.esp and SM_ShiveringIsles.esp and those was active, the others (the one with ++ before the name) is merged in bashed patch and deactivated then was autoghosted by Wrye Bash then don't count against the softcap, at least this was I understood time ago when was explained how the soft cap work, I'm wrong? (I won't sound rude or something but I want to know exactly how it works)

Those are ghosted?? Look at them in the Data folder. If they have ".ghost" at the end of their names, they are ghosted. I did not realize that Bash auto-ghosted merged plugins... Could you verify this, please? That sounds kind of odd...


Edit: I do not use Bash's ghosting feature, so I do not have any hands-on experience with this.

The game will crash outright once you get to 400 or more ESM+ESP+BSA files in your Data folder. Ghosting was the workaround for this to keep the count from hitting 400.

The "soft cap" I'd assume is Tomlong's way of saying that problems from having too many files can start as early as 300. I don't think anyone has ever figured out why it varies, but it does. There's probably some other file types the game is messing with that are contributing to it.

Does Bash ghost purely Bash-merged plugins, Arthmoor?


Edit: I should start using that feature, even though I only have zero to three deactivated (not merged or imported) plugins installed at any time I am actually playing the game.

Edit: Does the count in the bottom-right corner included ghosted plugins? That would be odd too...