LordEmm

I found both methods of Ash pile removal to be quite safe in the main game (FOOK's is in YUP as well, so no need to get both. Unofficial patch has a similar method, either or both can be used, for the MAIN game, as well as Dead Money for sure, uses a different spawning mechanism that does not seem to interfere). The problem is in how Old World Blues handles spawning and later removal of spawns, because it seems to link this to several activators which are initially disabled, and get filled with a spawn list by another script ad hoc. So, the removal then crashes because the ash piles are save game generated AND hooked to a temporary actor, which in turn is hooked to a quest item, which CAN not be disabled, or the script will crash. That is what i gleaned from it. You can not have any script disable the ash pile, OR the actor independent of each other, it seems. I have not found a full solution yet (as i said, scripting is not my main talent), but i am fairly sure that can be handled with a patch. I can definitely confirm that avoiding energy weapons in the BigMT main map solves the problem. And i can also confirm that you CAN use energy weapons when indoors, as i just finished OWB with no problems at all anymore, even got all achievements (eg, the leaving the fence one, which would cause the crash, because of cocing back to the Sink, which then would cause a cleanup of the spawn zones as soon as you go outside, since there is one right in front of the sink). I have to assume the same is true for Honest Hearts, because of the similar scripts, will test that next, once i have time to play again. I also did not use energy weapons before OWB much, but once getting the LAER i definitely wanted to tackle the "... and disintegrations" challenge, while there. Glad i could help a little bit in solving this mystery. And thank you very much for providing advice to all of us, DubiousIntent :)

Once again, i appreciate the help, but this problem has nothing to do with graphic mods, at least not directly. I am quite proficient with the gamebryo/radiant engine, and have had no problems solving issues in Oblivion, Fallout 3, or New Vagas Main game (only OWB made trouble). After extensive testing i am 99% sure i have found the cause of the problem, and that being ash piles after disintegration (not sure about goo, didn't have any plasma weapons to test with). If you go into an encounter spawn zone and manage to disintegrate any of the spawned opponents, then upon clean up the game will CTD without warning or error. The various lengths of time of no CTDs observed was in fact due to not using energy weapons, OR only using them inside the labs. This seems to be due to how the spawn zones cleanup is set up in Old World Blues. The cleanup only is initiated once you have gone through two spawn zones, and enter a third, or after some time delay and fast travel. That is why for some time it seemed to be connected to other events and only crops up later in playthroughs (as i only got/used Elijah's Advanced LAER very late every time. Sniper Rifle did just fine until then :wink:. Scripting is probably not my best modding skill, but as far as i can see, once an ash-pile is attached to the referenced actor, and the spawn box, or the actor itself, is disabled that somehow causes a chain reaction in the whole process. I didn't use any energy weapons in my first play-through of Honest Hearts, from which this encounter zoning and refreshing script was pretty much cloned, so i have no idea if the problem would pop up there too. If not, i probably could find out what is different in Old World Blues and see why it behaves this way... Currently my only solution is to not use Energy (and probably Plasma) Weapons outside in the BigMT. Inside Caves, Labs, etc, that seems fine, since those enemies are not tied to the encounter zones (unless they follow you inside as Lobotomites are sometimes wont to do)... If somebody with better scripting skills and more time on their hands could maybe look into this, i would be very grateful.

Thank you very much for trying to help, dubious, but i tried everything covered in the links you gave (as i mentioned in my original post). Never even used stutter remover (never needed it for New Vegas). I have reloaded a save from before even Honest Hearts to see if maybe a save game corruption was the problem, and initially all went well, but once again, upon visiting around 30 places in the BigMT, and/or firing the Artillery Gun, and/or collecting some AI improvements out of order, i started to get random CTDs again on walking around. Never fast traveled once, although testing fast traveling seems to acerbate the problem, as did trying to go outside the fence range (to get that achievement were you leave the area twice and get ported back to the Sink entrance). The problem is, i have no idea how far back i should go ideally, to see if this is indeed just a save game corruption problem, because it seems to only manifest itself deep into the Old World Blues storyline, and having that now three times from scratch is kind of annoying. I am pretty sure that it is either tied to the side quests for the AI's and their improvements and/or the amount of time you spend just exploring the Big MT, with maybe the number of places found also being of relevance. Except for YUP and Weapon Mod Expansion, i have no mods that touch OWB, so either there is something hidden in those two (unlikely, since pretty much everybody seems to use them fine), or there is something else rotten in my own little state of Denmark ;)

I have recently run into the same problem as the OP, with a similar (but much smaller) modlist. I have tried pretty much everything in the help topics, NEVER fast traveled while in Big MT, got one upgrade at a time, when the quest would tell me, went back on foot, again NEVER fast traveled, or took more than one upgrade at a time (which seems to be at the root of the problem for some reason). That worked for various amounts of time, but invariable, at some point, when walking the Big MT i'd get random CTDs, but ONLY outside, which is perplexing me. Can't tie it down to a specific upgrade or place discovered as i did these in various order... almost seems like there is a timer as to how long one can walk around in the Big MT before it will crash... @TheTrooper1138, as i said we have some mods in common, maybe we can hash it out and see what the problem may be? PM me if you want...

Sorry, forgot to append the mod list ;) But i found the culprit in the meanwhile. The animation is "vrsleepstand.kf" from the Vampire Revolution mod by Forli, which just recently started to override any animation with that idle one. No idea why this is forced on the PC and every NPC in the vicinity. And why now? Played with for months without incident. I had to deactivate Vampire Revolution, and that made the problem go away. I have not yet found the right compatibility settings/patch i guess, or rather see what changed since this started to happen. Just tested on a fairly clean install again with only these mods loaded: 00 Oblivion.esm01 Beautiful People 2ch-Ed.esm02 Cobl Main.esm [Version 1.74]03 OblivionReloaded.esp04 Enhanced Hotkeys.esp [Version 2.3.1]05 HUD Status Bars.esp [Version 5.3.2]06 Alternative Beginnings.esp [Version 1.4.4]07 Vampire Revolution.esp [Version v1.13] Same problem with the hunching over. And then i took another look at the VR.esp. I had recently changed the names of the two stakes to differentiate them with MOO crafting, and that seemed to have caused the issue. How, i have no idea, as i did not touch the Form ID or Editor ID, just the names. I double checked if a stray edit made it in somehow, but no. Resetting the names to the default seems to prevent the animation from replacing every other animation (i think that may have to do with the initialization script VR runs at every load, but how that causes this particular problem is beyond me)... (side note: Still had to update3d on my test save where the animation problem was already occuring, but that fixed it). So problem solved, no idea how really, but i can game again :)

I was playing along normally yesterday and loaded up my savegame today, when this suddenly happened: After a few seconds this even happens to the PC. And then i can't move anymore, as the animation doesn't seem to stop. I can jump though strangely enough, still in this hunched over mode. If i draw my weapon the normal animation plays, and if i sheathe it again, for a few seconds my PC is normally moving, but then on idle it once again starts with this hunched over idle... I THINK this may be the exhausted.kf from Better Cities (after an extensive search of all installed mods, that looks to be the closest one), but i am not sure and would like to know why it is suddenly playing for everybody. I have Blockhead installed, but it never behaved like this before, so i am at my wits end. This even happens on a new game, immediately after character creation, so i am stumped. I have not changed anything in my load order, or installed no new mods for weeks now... if any of you can identify this posture/animation and maybe tell me what is going on, that would be of great help.

I am just curious, search brought nothing, is there a mod or way to make you not lose skills after serving your sentence?

Hi, i am very sorry for the late reply/thread necro, but i just ran into this problem while during a trilogy playthrough. I also have Improved Atmosphere installed and that seems to be the culprit (as read on other forums). Uninstalling can cause a load of other problems, but i may have found a workaround (not for the crashes itself though, just save often... ) Load a save game from before Denerim (or outside of) Market and then load the actual game you want to load. That seems to solve the save game crashes at least and lets you play for a little bit. Then, as i said, save often (before speaking with anybody important, before approaching the market center), and upon the next crash do the workaround above.

Or you could use something like SetBody: http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/39966/? With this you can go around and set body sizes to every NPC you meet. Of course that will not change the armor sizes, only the body underneath. For armors/clothes you would have to first duplicate the armor you want to change size/become unique/get BBB, then you would have to add that armor via mod, then you would have to add said armor to the NPC, and remove all others to make sure they will wear that. It is not very difficult but a lot of work if you want to individualize every NPC this way. Much easier are general replacer mods (all default armors have been BBB'd and there are many that replace some default armors with BBB versions as well). But of course that way you end up with all NPC wearing the same size armor. So if you are willing to do a lot of work and individualize the clothes and armors, that can be done. There sadly is no spell for changing armor sizes. However you COULD get one that lets you access the NPCs inventory and you could make them wear your custom armor that way.

As i said it is very easy to so. In Wrye you just tell it to esmify, or espify. Simple. In Gecko i think the same. I do not think Tes4Edit has the option to make an esm out of an esp (you can add masters to the esp, but that is obviously not the same).

cfh85, that should not happen. editor IDs are not touched in the conversion of esp to esm and back, all that is done is a change of the file identifier (so Oblivion knows it is a master or plugin file). No changes are done to the records. Did you use Wrye or Gecko to change it from master to plugin? Also i think you meant FormID, as EditorID does not matter for statics really (unless you use them in scripts and call them by EditorID instead of FormID) unless you gave them the same name as another EditorID, then the CS in fact changes the name to "*originalname*copy".

Nehrim is not really a mod, it is a full conversion. And while it looks great, what i have seen so far from the story it looks very poorly written (although that can be offset if the story in general is great). My favorite mod clearly has to be Supreme Magicka. Although i rarely play with less than 100 mods, this one is a must have always.

Or turn the esm to an esp beforehand (then you do not need the CSE)... Also combining, while easy when you know what you do, is MUCH trickier than it would first appear. Unless you know what you are doing refrain from combining anything that has dialogue or animations. Simple Weapon, Armor, Potions, etc or NPC mods should be fine. For anything that edits cells or worldspaces, make yourself familiar with that first. For Leveled Lists or magic effects the same. Familiarize yourself with Tes4Edit and Gecko, the CS screws up a LOT when combining mods.Trust me, it took me about 4 years (and Fallout) to completely get comfortable on how to combine mods.... Always make backups too before you edit anything! These days i am combining most of my mods into a dozen or so übermods ;) Keeps the directory clean :)

Hmmm, no responses so far. I just would like to make sure i am not gonna be insta banned if i upload my subtitled videos, and since i can not seem to get a hold of LordKain in eMail or PM form, i may just go ahead and risk it!?! Maybe some moderators could clue me in on if i would make some terrible transgression considering all the recent bans that have been happening, i would like to stay on the safe side with this.

Have you tried a new game? What do the log files say (OBSE and OBGE)?