Fallout 3 freezing upon leveling up

[Tomdogg449]

So I've been struggling with Fallout 3 for over a decade with constant crashing and freezing and it's not like I pack hundreds of mods into my build. I think the most I ever had was around 50 and most of them were minor changes like adding a new weapon into a specific location or a new follower or things like that.

I recently found out that three of the big mods that I used were known to cause many issues, one of them being energy visuals enhanced so I removed all three of them and viola, Fallout 3 ran like a dream. Passed every stress test I put it through and things were going great…until I beat the main quest. I leveled up immediately after and that was fine and then I leveled up again a short time later and when I went to pick a perk, the game froze.

I thought it had something to do with one of the mods I was using but this seems to have affected all of my saves now. I can no longer level up and I don't know what's causing it. Here's my build order. Yes I used LOOT to sort them.

0 0 Fallout3.esm

1 1 Anchorage.esm

2 2 ThePitt.esm

3 3 BrokenSteel.esm

4 4 PointLookout.esm

5 5 Zeta.esm

6 6 Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch.esm

7 7 CALIBR.esm

8 8 Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch - Goodies.esm

9 9 Abbreviated Effects.esm

10 a CRI-Squad-new.esm

11 b Tau Ammo.esm

12 c CALIBRxMerchant.esp

13 d speed.esp

14 e CRI-Squad-new.esp

15 f CRI-HQ.esp

16 10 Sleep in any bed.esp

17 11 EIP.esp

18 12 Skrees_BF2142.esp

19 13 Tau FireWarrior Chap - 1.esp

20 14 PointLookoutLoboto-mod.esp

21 15 HeavyGrenadeLauncher.esp

22 16 BrokenSteelNerf.esp

23 17 HZSmoothLight - FO3.esp

24 18 J3X-VertibirdPlus.esp

25 19 Mannequin.esp

26 1a CratersideSupplyStorage.esp

27 1b Kabr_CompanionRehiring.esp

28 1c BM19DisablePipBoyGlove.esp

29 1d BypassOpAnchorage.esp

30 1e outcast_comp.esp

31 1f EnclaveAPAMKIII.esp

32 20 ModBetterPArmorVanilla.esp

33 21 ModBetterPArmorAnchorage.esp

34 22 ModBetterPArmorPitt.esp

35 23 ModBetterPArmorSteel.esp

36 24 PointLookout_lesstraveltime-3to5days.esp

PointLookout_lesstraveltime-12to21days.esp

PointLookout_lesstraveltime-6to10days.esp

Does anyone have any ideas?