Crashes/freezes in overworld only most often travelling after a long distance that increase in frequency as a playthrough continues?

[InDarkestNight]

I'm at my wit's end trying to fix this issue. I know I said I would never post here again, but I have no other place.

This has been happening for years now. I don't know if it began on this machine when I had windows 10, or on windows 7 (I also had stability issues there, but I don't recall ever finding a pattern).

Here is all I've done to fix the issue:

Removed all mods, made no difference, what mods were installed also made no difference. Only mod that ever made a difference was New Vegas Anti-crash, which stopped the common issue of crashing when crossing the borders of specific cells on the roads leading to several cities.

Changing my OS to Ubuntu made no difference at all in the frequency of crashes or their pattern (I didn't do that to fix this issue though).

I had to change to an SSD recently and also upgraded the RAM while I was at it. This also made no difference. The rest of the hardware is the same. If it matters, the computer is a Lenovo ideacentre 710-25ISH and the graphics card is a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti.

I have tried to mitigate mods that cause stability issues. I keep mods with scripts to a minimum, and also removed mods like Beasts of Tamriel and Elemental Dragons which are infamous for causing crashes. The latter did reduce crashes, but didn't completely eliminate them.

The strangest things about the crashes/freezes, is that they increase in frequency as a playthrough goes on, eventually making it virtually impossible to continue it. I can't find why that would be.

The crashes/freezes only occur in the overworld. I can't remember this happening ever in a city or an interior cell.

All I've concluded from this is that the issue must lie either in my hardware, or the game itself. Those are literally the only things left. Why did the change of OS make absolutely no difference? I have 16gb of RAM, and I changed the main memory drive (is there even a generic term for things like HDD and SSDs?), and the issue persists. What else could be the problem hard-ware-side? My processor? My graphics card? I did try to change the processor, but the one I got wasn't compatible with my motherboard. After doing research, I found I couldn't really get a more powerful one on my board anyway, so after returning the one I bought I used the money for something else I could actually use. Same problem with the graphics card; my power supply couldn't support anything much more powerful. Point I'm making is, if it is a hardware issue, there's nothing I can do about it. I could never afford another computer. Even me buying the parts I had was a major investment. I was questioning if I could even afford it, seriously. I only replaced the SSHD in this thing due to it giving up the ghost. RAM wasn't too pricey so I was willing to do that hoping it would help, but obviously it did not.

As for the game, I really think its more likely the game. Why would my hardware be giving me issues? I thought maybe it was the ram, since simply running MO and steam took up 4gb of ram, leaving just 4gb for the game. Of course, it made no difference at all. Also, why would is it that only Skyrim gives me this issues? Its both versions btw, and SE was always far more unstable on my system than LE (probably due to the limited ram I would guess, but what do I know?). If my comp's the problem, then why has no other program ever given me these issues? It seems more likely there's just something wrong with the game. However, asking I was told my issues are NOT normal so it can't be the game. What else could it be?

Either way, I'm thinking there's just no way I could get skyrim into a playable state and I need to just give up. As I said, I couldn't afford a different computer, and replacing it once didn't solve the problem anyway. If its the game, what could I do about it? I did try to do a playthrough with no mods other than skse recently, but the issue has put an end to that. I've done everything I can to fix the problem and have only found abject failure (the only exception being my discovery of New Vegas Anti-crash). What other hope do I have?

[xkkmEl]

The game does crash. There are software bugs in the base game.  There are mods I had to renounce because their assets (textures and/or meshes) were causing systematic crashes, above and beyond the baseline rate.  There are mods that sometimes cause the scripting engine to balloon exponentially (usually exacerbated or triggered by suspended stacks).

You should not have situations where the crashes are predictable.  These are linked to some "bad" mod.  Hunting these bad mods is a pain, I'll admit that much.  There often seems to be little logic in what mods can contribute to crashes.

Do make sure you have NVAC, optimized textures and a low profile ENB.

I dunno what other people's experience is... but on my end, I do get random crashes every couple of hours playtime, or so.  I understand it to be a typical rate.

The fact that your crash frequency seems linked to bouts of travelling seems to indicate you might have a faulty mod that tries to do processing on new locations/cells/something as you travel and it gets overloaded.  You may want to check a save file taken after such a bit of travelling and see if you have suspended stacks.  It'll likely be hit and miss, so check a few such circumstances.

 

[InDarkestNight]

Sigh, I've already stated that the issue is present even if there's not a single mod installed. If its a mod, then why is the issue completely unaffected by having no mods at all? If that did solve my problem, I would be playing without mods, and maybe asking 'how could I make my game stable with mods'? And no, I'm not using an ENB at all; they all eat up too much performance. I have upgraded my RAM so maybe they could run better, but I don't know because ENB doesn't support Ubuntu. Fml...

That said, based on the pattern I do suspect SOMETHING is accumulating. How could I ascertain what though? One of my  problems is I can't get an error message, or any hint as to what went wrong (freezes often do that). I've been thinking that my only solution is to avoid the overworld as much as possible. I asked somewhere else if that's what one should do, or if doing regular hard saves will 'fix' the problem, but I just got blasted for being a 'troll' for asking if that's how the game's supposed to be played. Wtf? They also insisted my issue was not normal.

Either way, that may be my only solution. Also, I tried to play without the unofficial patch (everything is suspect, though again playing without even skse made no difference), but people keep telling me that does help with stability. I don't know that, honestly I don't really know much about what it does because its list of features is so extensive. I know it fixes ash piles and weapons not despawning, along with some glitches like Ysolde taking over Belethor's shop even though she's not supposed to do that (as evidenced by her lack of supporting dialogue).

Edited May 2 by InDarkestNight

[xkkmEl]

So, I don't claim to understand what's causing your troubles. Only trying to be helpful and suggest things that may help.  I also have no experience with running Skyrim on linux.  From what I hear, it pretty much works the same, except where it does not (duh!)

A lot of the crashes in the base game are due to faulty exception handling.  Installing NVAC was crucial in getting my first modded games running acceptably.  I do remember that it took quite a bit of time, trial and error, to get a stable game to build on.

USLEP is safe and won't cause you any trouble.  It likely does fix some less common CTDs.

I also use Crash fixes, Bug fixes and Load Game CTD fix.

A lot of the crashes not fixed by NVAC are due to memory management, so optimize your textures, limit resolution to 2K, don't go overboard with highpoly stuff.

I use optimized textures (four of them), Bethesda Performance textures (three of them) and Unofficial High Resolution Patch.

I have Skyrim Memory Optimizer installed, but misconfigured (!).  I couldn't tell you if it helps or not.

With those things in place, my experience has been that I can install most mods without problems.  Those that fail readily display anomalous behavior ... though sometimes you need to encounter an area modified by the mod to see it fail.  I always install mods one-at-a-time, and quickly remove mods that destabilize the game; there are many, of all kinds.

Do pay attention to the installation instructions on the mod pages.  They are sometimes quite involved, and getting it wrong can cause catastrophic failures.  There is a learning curve to getting the FNIS, XP32MSE, HDT, CBBE series to work.  I never found the courage to tackle DynDOLoad.

The ENB won't be a major contributor, but it does lighten the load and improve frame rates.  Somehow, this may also help with some CTDs which coincide with higher than usual graphics load (I get CTDs that are seemingly triggered by the visual effect of casting flesh spells when I cast them at certain cell boundaries).  Pity if you can't use it on linux, but it shouldn't discourage you; I had stable games running long before adding this to my modlist.

[InDarkestNight]

Heh, I used to use all three of those in the past. They never seemed to do much. The last one btw I recently looked at; its apparently supposed to fix the 'infinite loading screen' issue, which I've never had (outside of trying to use Spring Forest Overhaul anyway). Do the first two even do anything? Even with all three and nvac I still had crashes. Like I said, nvac seems to be the only mod I've ever installed that made my game more stable.

edit: Looking them up myself, the fist one 'bug fixes' has nothing to do with stability it seems. It seems to just fix a few minor bugs (such as npcs having their perks re-applied upon loading a save, an issue I ran into recently with Deadly Dragons, where the dragon kept getting more and more powerful with every re-load until I realized what was happening, restarted the game, then suddenly the dragon was SERIOUSLY easier). Crash fixes, I don't understand what its doing. It sounds like a memory patch, but that comes built-in with the linux version of MO, which also installs skse for you too!

Edited May 3 by InDarkestNight

[AaronOfMpls]

Meanwhile I am on Linux and am not sure what else to suggest, offhand.  My setup is stable enough with my hardware on Manjaro Linux (xfce edition), and crashes no more than it did on Windows 7.  It's mostly the same mod setup I had on Windows 7 too; I haven't changed much since I got it working on Linux back in January.

 

I use USLEEP and Crash Fixes, but not Bug Fixes or Load Game CTD Fix.  I also don't have FNIS (haven't used any mods that need it).  And the only body mods I have in LE are a couple of simple early nude mods* and Argonian Reptilian Feet -- nothing like CBBE, etc.  I've never tried DynDOLoad.** 

I have few-to-no large-scale overhauls of combat, NPCs, towns, etc.  I don't have any big texture overhauls either -- not even Bethesda's own official High Res Texture Pack -- because I liked the vanilla textures, and didn't entirely trust my old Win7 PC to run lots of high-res textures without performance issues.  

Though I do use a few mods that edit an individual NPC or two (e.g., wolfgrimdark's Erik the Slayer - Now Older and Wiser) or that add locations and NPCs (e.g., Cutting Room Floor, Inconsequential NPCs, Cosmopolitan Solitude, my own self-created followers like Kolmar the Barbarian).  I have a few new villages like Gavrostead and Shezrie's Old Hroldan***, and a few small item overhauls like Unique Uniques and Dreogan's (sadly gone) Skyforge Weapons and Skyforge Shields. 

I also use use EFF for follower control, the usual SkyUI and RaceMenu for their improvements and additions to the vanilla UI, and Alternate Start - Live Another Life to bypass the cart ride.  Some of my MO profiles also use winter and summer overhauls from a long-since deleted Seasons of Skyrim Project., though my "main" profile doesn't.

 

If anyone is curious about my setup, my main MO profile's modlist.txt and plugins.txt are attached below.  For anyone not familiar with MO, MO's modlist.txt is in the reverse order to plugins.txt, with the last-loaded mod folders at the top instead of the bottom.  Disabled mod folders start with - (minus) (their files don't appear in the game), and enabled mod folders start with + (plus).

 

* Sundracon's Nude Male, and I think thepal's Nude Females (though I'm not sure).  I got them before I had Mod Organizer, and the files are loose in an "_ old data" folder in MO (containing mods I've never gotten around to sorting into their own separate MO folders).

** Though I might in SE someday when I'm more settled on my mod setup(s) for it.

*** I wish I'd downloaded the SE version of that while it was still up.

modlist.txt plugins.txt

Edited May 3 by AaronOfMpls
linked my 2 earlier forum threads about getting MO2 working

[InDarkestNight]

Normally my load order in the past has mainly included Skytest-Realsitic Animals and Predators, Frostfall, INeed, and Vivid Weathers. For graphics, I was using 4k parralax textures and any enb I wanted when I played on SE. Over the past few years though I've been trying to completely fill the museum in Legacy of the Dragonborn. This requires me to install dozens of mods, most of them being quest and 'item' mods, along with patches for all of them. The patches alone normally comprise half the load order, seriously. I recently decided to take a break for the first time in years and play with my 'classic' load order, along with some other mods I was wanting to try. Skytest and Frostfall remained, but I chose Last Seed in place of INeed, Draugr Upgrades and Enhancments, and Deadly Dragons. That didn't last long though, but that had nothing to do with stability. My build sucked, the draugr mod proved to be far more boring than I expected, and I got sick of fighting the same dragon a dozen times over due to it killing me in seconds if I made even one mistake. I've since gone back to trying the LotD thing, but I'm using just LotD on its own, none of its supported mods. I was also thinking of doing a playthrough with Dark Brotherhood of Old and Gray Cowl of Nocturnal (the former is infamously script-heavy, thus the minimal load order). After that, I would do a large load order including all the quest mods that LotD supports minus Gray Cowl of Nocturnal (that only makes sense for an evil stealth character). These are all dry runs before I do a full playthrough with everything installed. Also note I won't be using any graphics mods; all these mods just add too many new assets that aren't affected by my texture overhauls, so I'll be going without them for the sake of consistency. Besides, my lighting overhauls cause issues with locations added by other mods (notably the safe house for LotD).

And before anyone says it, yes my comp can handle a filled museum; I found a save made by someone who had filled it to 99%, and my comp was able to handle it fine. Loading screens took a bit, yes, but I was able to even enter a fully filled armory, which has by far the highest number of items. Keep in mind though this is all on LE, so this is version 4 of LotD I'm talking about here. Don't know if my comp could handle v5 honestly, but I'll probably never do it anyway. If I ever do play SE again, its only going to be for the Beyond Skyrim project, and even that's doubtful. I'm still bitter over the Atmora team cancelling the LE version. I was hoping I would at least get to experience that, and it was one of the projects I was most looking forward to also!