Ramagast

So, a year or so ago my Skyrim developed a problem with saving games. It was random - I'm starting a new game with a fresh install and a new, clean mod setup, playing it for 20-40 hours without problem and ten BAM! The game crashes on save. What was weirder, I was playing, say, for two hours, creating saves left and right, no problems at all. Then I would leave the game. return to it on the next day, load any of these saves, including earlier ones, and after loading it any time I wanted to save again, the game would crash. Now, I know my way around modding somewhat - I was here since Morrowind. I understand load order, follow all installation instructions, read descriptions and posts, can see the reasons for most bugs, can create my own compatibility patches in TESEdit, generate Dyndolod, fix the grey face and so on. I never uninstalled a mod during a playthrough. I checked my saves with ReSaver and there is nothing wrong with them: no unattached instances, no active scripts overload, nothing. The game runs fine, it just can't create a save game for some reason. It's not a question of save size - I'm running Engine Fixes with "SaveGameMaxSize = true" and my saves aren't this big. After half of year of rebuilding my mod setup, reinstalling everything, trying dozens of mod combinations and failing, again and again, I found one advice that worked for me, weirdly: "Load your save, then immediately load it again - and you'll be able to save your game in a new slot". And it worked! The problem is, I'm now forced to do it each time I'm launching my game and I can't help but feel that it isn't healthy. Skyrim has a lot of talk surrounding its save system, and while some of it can be superstition, I've always tried to follow the advice - "don't use quicksaves or autosaves", "don't just load your game if you're killed - quit, launch Skyrim again and load it from a main menu", etc. So, while my game isn't completely broken (at least, according to ReSaver, it's still fine), this situation worries me more and more. Anyone else encountered it? Maybe someone knows the cause of it (what's up with the need of double loading?) or the more permanent cure? I'm not attaching my mod list as it's really big, and during my experiments I've changed it a lot with no effect on the problem. If it was some mods fault, it would be wildly known by now.

So, regarding the freezing on save - I found that in SSE it can happen it some places where several mods are changing the same worldspace. You go into the location of conflict, there are no CTD's, but the game is actually broken - it won't load the next location and it will freeze if you are trying to save. Getting rid of some location mods including the "Forgotten Dungeons" helped me. New game can't start with too much mods, that's true. But in my experience, if your can't start your game with these mods, it's probably not a good idea to enable them later as well. Also for me the "Carantyr Tower" always blocks the start of the new game for some reason - it's quest just has some problems starting with all other things.

Yeah, it's Functional Displays all right. I'm still using it in current playthrough, but manually deleted all meshes for vanilla items it installed. It helped and I got to keep the nice collectibles the mod provides. Still not sure about CTD's when going through doorways - haven't encountered them in some time.

I'm still using old version of Bashed Patch which is my only form 43 plugin. I'm also using Skyrim Nexus Overhaul. Didn't have any problem with it before SKSE, but after I installed SKSE and Immersive Creatures, I've started getting random crashes in open world - there are some incompatibilities between the two, it seems. Anyway, since installing SKSE I've yet to encounter false save corruption or disappearing dialogue - even while using SkyUI and general subtitles.

The advice is good, even if it doesn't have to do anything with our bug. We sorta established it during the first month or two of this topic existence. Form 43 is to be avoided, sure. But Form 44 by itself means nothing. Plugin was probably saved in new CK, ok, but it also could also be modified in SSEEdit. It can also carry all sort of errors, including wrong woldspace and waterflow data, dirty edits, old SKSE remains and so on.

As I posted previously, the good way to measure the danger of the growing number of strings is to use the "save breaker" plugin from Oldrim and play with it for a while. In my experience, nothing happens. Simply nothing. There is no growing intensity of our bug, no other noticeable problems. In Oldrim going over 65k strings had only one negative effect - this save could not be loaded. Ever. It doesn't seem to be the case for SSE and there is no visible connection between the number of strings and the "false corruption" bug.

Personally I encountered the bug for the first time while using Shadowman's DLL Loader. I thought it was the case, so I deleted the loader and my save stayed broken, the bug persisted. It was really bad at the time - even tidy, safe mod lists triggered it 15 minutes into the game. In a few months I've rebuilt my Skyrim from scratch and the intensity of the bug gone down. One more rebuild and I could play with any load order I wanted as long as I kept away from SkyUI and general subtitles. Now I'm playing with SKSE, SkyUI, SSE Fixes and a huge number of mods compressed in 200 plugins without issues. Still keeping away from general subtitles though. I'm not using any INI tweaks unless they are required by mods.

After installing SKSE I noticed that whenever I open up "Save" or "Load" menu, it opens twice. Like, opens (with a sound effect) and just a fraction of a second later opens again with the same sound. I wonder if this is SKSE opening it's own save and if it can be related to our problem. I still haven't encounter the bug after switching to SKSE with new official SkyUI. I dropped xSHADOWMANx's DLL Loader, but I'm still using plugin loader for SSE Fixes.

I moved to SKSE and ditched the old DLL Loader I used for Achievements Enabler and Uncapper (it was causing my crashes at start-up, actually). For the last couple of hours I didn't see the bug using the new SkyUI. For something completely unrelated: anyone else had the 100% repeatable crash while walking from Riften towards Dayspring Canyon? I discovered it not long ago I can't for life of me figure what is the source of it. There are some old topics about it been a bug with Dawnguard DLC, but nothing resolved.

By the way, tried the new SKSE, but I'm getting an instant crash just by trying to launch the game with it. Guess I'll check it when it will actually come out of alpha =)

But. "Skyrim - Patch.bsa" also have "Strings" folder. And it probably the one that loads last. Since the problem hit after one of the updates I cannot help but wonder if the things became messy because of it. What if for a percentage of players game fails to load correct .bsa or loads the wrong one last? Edit: both sets of strings appear to be identical though.

You actually have the "Strings" folder, it's just packed into the "Skyrim - Interfaface.bsa" archive that game always loads. Unless it fails to do it for some reason. But I remember that the first version of Wrye Bash for SSE didn't actually work unless we unpacked this archive ourselves - and we did. Actually, there was a theory that unpacked strings were the reason for the bug, but it was quickly disproved. It's still there somewhere, in the beginning of this long topic =)

It's SSE Fixes - something doesn't work with the new update. You can go to Data\DLLPlugins\FPSFixPlugin.ini and set ReplaceFormMap to 0. Technically, it nearly disables the mod, but should stop the crashes.

OK then =) That's really weird. I can do as much crafting as I want and my menus are full of items. I'm running "Immersive Jewelry", "Immersive Armors", "Ars Metallica", "Lore Weapon Expansion", etc. Probably some additional triggers, but how on Earth I dodge them? Not that I like my current situation. Vanilla UI is a huge pain. But I would recommend everyone affected to try it - may help someone else. Beats reloading the game every half an hour.

I have 212 plugins, all active. I'm moving all deactivated plugins to the separate folder on another drive. I never have a corrupted save until I'll either: - Use SkyUI (fast method) - Turn on general subtitles. Now, my guess is - we have corruption in some text fields. It only happens when the game is forced to show a lot of separate lines of text on screen - like when you are crafting and some subtitles from characters speaking nearby trigger an overflow of sorts. Of course, SkyUI triggers it much faster as it adds much more lines on screen. And yes, it only happens with modded game as some resources are probably occupied by mods. This theory is easily disproved. Just play with general subtitles disabled, without SkyUI / QD Menu and get the corruption bug. I wasn't been able too do that.