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.

The bug took some time to appear in my first playthrough too, but that was a long ago - when I started this topic. Since emergence it plagued my game constantly, appearing several hours in and striking every 20 minutes since that. You can play the game some initial time with small number of mods using SkyUI. But it will happen. On the other hands, in my case, getting rid of interface mods and disabling general subtitles allows me to play with any mods I like and the bug never appears. I'm not using a Wrye Bash. Couple of merged patches I'm using I built by myself in SSEEdit. But I don't think it is really relevant. Auto-merged Patch is just a bunch of combined records. They often create a very different experience that you get from non-merged mods, but there is nothing there to ruin your interface. Bashed Patch (or process of its creation) is a bit more complicated, however, and it can have strange side effects.

This issue for me, and I'm telling it after hundreds of hours of testing, has two triggers. They are not the reason, but without them bug never happens. - SkyUI (triggers the bug in 20 minutes) - General subtitles turned on (randomly, after an hour or two) I currently have a game save without this issue. It has 57 hours of play. It runs all mods that was pointed out as causing the issue: wet&Cold, Immersive Armors, ton of crafting mods, OBIS, SoT, Beasts of Tamriel, etc. 632 mods merged in 208 plugins. ENB added just to kill some FPS. 58184 strings. No, it's not the end of the world. The game won't crash after 65k. I did check. Everything runs fine. Until I either: - turn on the subtitles for general dialogue - install SkyUI 2.2 with any fixes. I suspect that QD Menu and whatever will have the same result. It's not just "an engine thing". It's a very particular interface bug. I suspect it's triggered by translations or something like that.

I've got, like, two crashes after expanding my mod list, but it's been another five hours and no bug. I'm not using the Bashed Patch. Wrye Bash doesn't seem to be properly tested on SSE, so I removed it from the equation, instead creating my own merged patches by hand. I don't have any Form 43 mods - maybe it helps. All mods I self-ported to SSE, I saved with the new CK. One thing I noticed that there are still a lot of messages in this thread about installing some particular mod and getting the issue. If you check load orders people posted at the beginning of this discussion, you'll see that in the end they don't have a single mod in common, so it's probably better to not clutter the thread. I mean, this bug is not triggered by OBIS Loot because OBIS Loot is a new mod and no one at the beginning of this thread had it. And thousands of players are using OBIS Loot now without getting the bug. By the same logic it's not Frostfall or Wet&Cold, or Sands of Time, or Warzones, SkyUI, Immersive Armors, etc. And it's not their sum as I'm using them all without the bug while I had it constantly in the past.

So, I'm a bit puzzled. Why not test the conditions before speaking of game engine's limitations? First of all, we don't see the reports of this bug on consoles lately. Consoles are running a lot of mods - often on worth hardware that we have. Simple game engine issue would trigger there a million times already. So, I'm looking at how our game is different from the console's. First thing I see is a number of plugins. Consoles have a stricter cap applied - I would guess because going higher means trouble. Yes, we have hard 255 limit, but "Fallout: New Vegas" had it too and everyone knows tat things go bonkers after 130-140 plugins. It was never fixed. Second guess is the error in interface which triggers only with the specific settings. For example, SkyUI will add much more text on screen compared to the standard UI. So does the enabling of general subtitles. They are disabled by default, so a lot of users probably skip the bug by not touching these settings. It can simply be a matter of consistently trying to put a number of symbols on a screen that breaks the game. It's possible that consoles just have another text/localization system. I like this guess because we have a bug that affects only the interface, so isn't it logical to start looking for it inside the interface section? And the third guess is that bug is triggered by the mods that never go to the consoles. It includes self-ported mods, SkyUI, DLL mods, and a number of others. I feel that it's more productive to start testing the game with these theories in mind than to randomly add and remove mods.Theories are created to be broken. So, once someone will get the bug with 100 plugins we'll know that simply going higher than some hidden limit doesn't trigger it automatically. Strings count is another promising theory, but in my testing I failed to see any proof that the number of strings is connected with the bug emergence. 35k strings is the average number of strings reported in this topic - and people are getting the bug with this. But taking the fresh game and just raising the number of strings to 100k doesn't result in a bug. So, it's not a direct product of a high string count.

I'm currently playing without the bug for 25 hours. It's a really heavy mod list: 355 mods merged into 200 plugins. Wet&Cold, Frostfall, Footprints, Sands of Time, Populated mods, Interesting NPC's, etc. A lot of crafting with Immersive Jewelry. 54000 strings. I tested my save with 90000 strings just for science and it loads without issues. I'm playing for 1-3 hours at a time. 40-60 FPS depending on location and combat intensity. Not a single crash so far, one infinite loading screen at Windhelm after a long game with Dawn of Skyrim activated. Some things that helped me this far: - New installation of Skyrim. - Verified game installation after all the mods (but before DLL Loader) - No SkyUI. It guarantees the bug with lightest load orders. - Disabled general subtitles. Somehow it helps a lot. - No Book of Steel. It gives me random crashes even with XMPSE. - No Warzones and Claralux. I do have strange crashes with the latter. - No SSE Fixes. Once again, I love their loading times, but stability for me goes down. Can't say I know what's going on, really. But it's not a string problem. I'm curious if anyone is having the bug withing these lines: - no SkyUI - fresh installation - no subtitles - no "BodySlide" type of mods (Book of Steel, etc) - 200 plugins or less ?

Anyone tried to actually push their strings count really high without adding real script-heavy or visual mods to see what will happen? In my case 90000+ strings didn't trigger the issue after an hour of gameplay. I mean, I understand that they are harmful, and it was intentional save breaking from my part. But the thing is - nothing immediately broke. I could craft items and staff. No symptoms at all. And even the save I created after that... loads just fine.

Hmm... I've added my load order to this message. It's a lot of mods, but they are compatible ones. Basically, it's the setup built around Requiem and Legacy of Dragonborn - main mods that I miss in SSE, with a couple more mods for "survival" experience. I believe that just adding Legacy with supported mods without even touching Requiem part triggered the issue, but it's somewhat difficult to pin down. I'm also really conservative with visual mods, following "only you can prevent forest fires" guidelines. One lightweight expansion for main cities, no ultra hi-res textures, performance settings for grass and ENB.

Ah, sorry, gotten a bit (ok, maybe a lot) confused. So, it's a normal RAM then? In theory, using "Crach Fixes" of meh321 with "UseOSAllocators=1" should give the game access to nearly all my RAM, yes? And, yes, I'm familiar with the STEP. Don't see anything I'm doing wrong.

So, my Skyrim has a tendency to crash cause it's running out of video memory. Which is nothing new in itself. But the thing is, it's not because I'm using these nice graphic mods while ignoring Sheson's memory patch. It's because something drains my video memory constantly while in-game. I can set up the "Memoty Block Log". start new game in nice, quite starting cell of "Alternate Start - Live Another Life", and in 20 minutes of doing absolutely nothing my game will crash. Checking the log, I see that my video memory is, indeed, ran out. "DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB" which I set up to 1024 for testing purposes reached its peak. Is there any known reasons for this behavior or is it normal for Skyrim? Is it supposed to constantly burn through video memory? I have GeForce GTX 1080, new drivers, can't see any problems with other games. The problem actually makes me wonder if I'm secretly having it in SSE as well. It does have a tendency of random crashes, but we don't have diagnostic tools there. I'm not adding my mod list, as the problem doesn't seem to be directly mod-related. It's a straight leak video memory. It can, however, be connected to ENB or scripting utilities like SKSE plugins.

It sorta worked for me in the past to reduce bug intensity. I wonder if this is the result of new system that ties saves to specific character profile. Like, the profile has a limited amounts of data it can safely read before it loses it. Doesn't explain why other text in game disappears though. Still, some of us had luck before with full re-installs and I wonder if this was happening because we actually deleted the number of saves with each such re-install.