How to load your unloadable savegame

[mikeynexus]

I didn't think much of this method, as I've been using it for a long time and thought that everyone must know it, but I've since had a few comments in my mod forums suggesting it might be useful to others. If a better post covering this exists, let me know and I'll close this thread.

 

Background: My current game build has now hit over 1000 mods, with ~650 plugins (ESMs/ESPs - right hand pane in ModOrganiser) active, including some biggies like Frostfall, ETaC, dyndoLOD, RND, IJ. Naturally, these plugins are merged using Mator's awesome software, down to about 180 plugins. One MergedPlugin has over 240 mods in it. Yes, this build is for playing, not just testing. And yes, it crashes, sometimes a lot, sometimes only once every few hours.

 

Anyway, the point of this post is to explain how I reload a saved game that would normally be impossible to load. I started getting unloadable savegames around the 400 mods mark so here is my workaround:

 

1) Establish a PureVanilla profile in MO with no mods loaded except the official DLCs and SKSE. Not even the unofficial patches should be there (tbh; I haven't rigorously tested that requirement).

 

2) Start a NEW game. Play through the intro until you exit from Helgen Caverns whereupon you will be met by that Imperial dude or that Stormcloak guy.

 

3) Save the game as "PureVanilla" or some such and NEVER delete or replace it. It must never be re-saved or modified.

 

4) Exit. Go back to MO and load up your normal gaming profile with all your mods.

 

5) Launch the game and Load your PureVanilla savegame. Once it has loaded, if you want to be extra cautious you can wait until all the notification messages in the top-left have been and gone, but this is not usually necessary.

 

6) Return to the main menu and Load your unloadable game.

 

7) If it fails, go to the overwrite folder in MO, empty it, run, load PureVanilla savegame and then load your real savegame again. As a last resort, try loading PureVanilla twice before loading your real game. I have also had some success by emptying the overwrite folder, loading PureVanilla, loading savegame, [CTD], leave the stuff in the overwrite folder that is now there, launch, load PV, load savegame.

 

I don't know why, but for me this has almost always worked (2 failures in 2000 savegames; then I gave up and loaded an earlier save). I don't mind it being an inscrutable black box, as long as it works.

 

The only reason that I know of that a game may still fail to load is if you have more than 2^32 strings in your savegame which has caused the string counter to reset to 0 or 1. If that happens, nothing can save you except finding a previous save that still works and then removing some string-heavy mods (which is always inherently dangerous anyway) before continuing. At the moment my game has ~51k strings, so I may be in trouble in another 100hrs.

 

Anyway, I hope this helps somebody out there to save their 100+ hrs savegame. If you think this is all amateurish crap, just let me know because I'd love to hear from an expert as to why this works (or shouldn't work...but does).

 

[ironbender800]

A better solution is to follow intelligent modding practices and never get to that point.