Skyrim: Taking FOREVER to Save

[FierySwordswoman]

Moved from here by recommendation.

Alright, Mr. Moderator, I now see the sticky's. Whenever something shows a 'terms and agreement', I'm NOT the type of person to bother reading it. My life moves to fast for that. I have chairs to sit in.

 

 

Alright, so 2 days ago at midnight I started making a new character. I saved towards the end of creation and logged off.

The next day, I finished creation and played for a good few hours straight. 7 ish?

Today, I continued only to find that the time it takes to save the game went from 2 seconds max to 25 seconds max. My load times are still from 2-3 seconds to usually instant depending on the newness of the area. The game boots fast as well.

 

My question: WHY. Why has the save time grown absolutely exponentially when nothing else has changed? I thought it was just my older characters that took a while to save, but his character is only like level 9! The save file size is almost 11 megabytes, compared to my old characters' 13 (1-2 week's worth) and 17 (3 months worth). I've never had a save file randomly bloat. I just assumed it was a side-effect of character progression, but this latest character shows it's something else entirely due to how freakishly smoothly it was running in the first marathon-session. (It also crashed while loading once today, but never yesterday. Maybe a coincidence since it was a ram-heavy moment.) A newly made character's save is slightly more than 10 megabytes for my loadout.

 

Is there a way around this absurd save time? I use to use my rotating quick-saves religiously, but now I only save when I really need to because it locks me out for so long.

 

Yeah, I have like 150 ish plugins, but literally nothing changed from the butter-smooth first session to the atrocious second. It's probably been like this for all of my characters, but I just never noticed that it wasn't because the save files grew a full one megabyte (huge, right?) over the course of a week because I've got some larger mods this time around, creating a more obvious transition.

But since it'll be the first thing asked anyway, heres the MO list:

 

 

+Immersive Sounds - Compendium

+Audio Overhaul for Skyrim 2

+Alternative Rock and Mountains 4K_2K_1K and watery Rock - Dirt Cliffs

+Alternative Rock and Mountains 4K_2K_1K and watery Rock

+aMidianBorn Book of Silence - Weapons

+aMidianBorn Book of Silence - Unique Items

+aMidianBorn Book of Silence - Dragonborn DLC

+aMidianBorn Book of Silence - Creatures

+aMidianBorn Book of Silence - Armors

+aMidianBorn Content

+THE PEOPLE OF SKYRIM ULTIMATE EDITION Update

+THE PEOPLE OF SKYRIM ULTIMATE EDITION

+Immersive Armors

+Immersive Weapons

+OBIS Loot Update

+OBIS Loot

+HDT Bounce and Jiggles UNP ///If I don't have this, everything spazzes.

+The Coenaculi - RaceMenu Plugin for Tattoos

+Natural Eyes

+Real Rain

+Pretty Combat Animations 1.37a

+XP32 Maximum Skeleton Extended

+Pretty Jump Animations

+Pretty Staff And Magic Cast Animations v01.d

+THEHAGs Privat Wartattoos - Facial Warpaints for Females

+KJ Tattoos - Overlay Plugins for RaceMenu

+THEHAGs Privat Tattoos for UNP - UNPB

-Green Water Fix ///I've had the bug in the past, so I keep the inactive file in case the hour becomes desperate.

+Fores New Idles in Skyrim - FNIS

+RaceMenu Overlay Compilation

+RaceMenu Overlays

+RaceMenu

+Dual Wield Blocking Animations

+Dual Wield Parrying

+Capes with HDT physics

+UNP Dawnguard Armors Vampire

+UNP Dawnguard Armors Boots

+UNP Dawnguard Armors

+UNP Dragonborn Armors

+UNP Female Armors Boots

+UNP Female Armors

+HDT Physics Extensions

+Dragon Cliff Manor

+Dragon Falls Manor

+ETHEREAL AURORAS

+Remove Interior Fog V2

+Pure Waters Landscape

+Pure Waters - Waterfalls

+Pure Waters

+Skyrim HD - 2K Textures

+Replace Loading Screen Fog With Snow

+Lore-Based Loading Screens

+Fantasy Soundtrack Project - Combat Music

+Fantasy Soundtrack Project

+Succubus Race

+ShowRaceMenu Precache Killer

+FusaFusa Project - Fluffy Animals

+Aeonbarr - A Unique and Summonable Horse (CH-Friendly)

+Rotating quicksave

+Custom Family Home

+Halls of Dovahndor

+More Draconic Dragon Aspect - Custom Colors v1.0

+More Draconic Dragon Aspect

+Realistic Humanoid Movement Speed

+Animated Dragon Wings

+Faster Vanilla Horses

+Clothing and Clutter Fixes 3dnpc

+Clothing and Clutter Fixes

+Extended Encounters

+Behemoth The Feathered Dragon

+Deadly Wenches -Tera Armors random-

+Deadly Wenches

+Sleep Menu Extender

+NARC - No Animals Report Crimes

+Recorder - Standalone Fully Voiced Follower

+Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim Perma

+Gender and Race Heights

+Consistent Older People

+Feminine Argonian Textures for CBBE-UNP (Chameleon and Lizard) ///to be consistent with UNP

+Feminine Khajiit Textures for CBBE-UNP (Grey Cat and Leopard) ///to be consistent with UNP

+Falskaar - TK Children patch

+Interesting NPCs TK

+TK Children

+LeanWolf's Better-Shaped Weapons - All in One Installer

+Skyrim Particle Patch for ENB

+NMUBS All-In-One NMM BAIN

+Real Girls Realistic Body Texture for UNP UNPB and SeveNBase - WIP Normal Map

+Real Girls Realistic Body Texture for UNP UNPB and SeveNBase - WIP

+Better Females by Bella

+DIMONIZED UNP female body ///TERA Armors needs this.

+Better males - Beautiful faces

+Better males - Beautiful bodies ///to be consistent with UNP

+Immersive Patrols

+TERA Armors Collection for Skyrim - Male and UNP female Level Lists

+TERA Armors Collection for Skyrim - Male and UNP female

+OBIS - Organized Bandits In Skyrim Update

+OBIS - Organized Bandits In Skyrim

+Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul

+Immersive detection of NPC ENB

+Immersive detection of NPC

+Realistic Crime Radius

+Dawnguard Wolf Sound Fix

+SkyTEST - Realistic Animals and Predators - Dragonborn

+SkyTEST - Realistic Animals and Predators - Dawnguard

+SkyTEST - Realistic Animals and Predators

+Immersive Music by Hothtrooper44

+PerMa Compatibility and PaMa Patches

+Skyrim -Community- Uncapper

+Lost Grimoire of Skyrim

+Chaos Dragons

+Weapons and Armor Fixes Remade

+Fyr Manor

+Realistic Ragdolls and Force

+Seniors Wear Vanilla

+Wearable Lanterns

+Main Menu Spinning Skyrim Emblem

+No Bethesda Logo In Menu

+Main menu texture and music replacer - Windy Malukah

+Enhanced Blood Textures

+Lighter Dragon Bones and Scales

+Mrissi - A tail of troubles

+Hoth

+Sofia - The Funny Fully Voiced Follower

+SkyUI

+XCE - Xenius Character Enhancement

+Summerset Isle Hotfix

+Summerset Isle

+Skyrim - Enhanced Camera -FPBODY ///My custom settings for Enhanced Camera that's pretty much 3rd person with the camera on the eyes. I kept it as a separate mod to toggle on/off.

+Skyrim - Enhanced Camera

+Superior Lore-Friendly Hair - HD textures

+Perkus Maximus - Maximum Perk Overhaul Wintermyst Update

+Perkus Maximus - Maximum Perk Overhaul Update

+Perkus Maximus - Maximum Perk Overhaul

+Molag Bal's Inferno ///Actually never tried. May remove if it proves lame.

+PerMa Weaponry Fillout

+More Apocalypse - An expansion for Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim Perma

+More Apocalypse - An expansion for Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim

+Immersive Wenches

+T3nd0s Skyrim Redone ///I only use the parts that aren't superseded by PerMa, like standing stones and encounter zones. Fear my bars.

+Falskaar

+Alternate Start - Live Another Life

+Epic Gameplay Overhaul - Version 3.05 ///I only use the Dragons and Civil War.

+Female Facial Animation

+Grass on Steroids ///Grass set to 90 I think.

+Interesting NPCs Update

+Interesting NPCs Alternate Start

+Interesting NPCs Dawngard

+Interesting NPCs

+Wyrmstooth

+No Skill Limit

+Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim

*Unmanaged: Natural Lighting and Atmospherics

+Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch

*Unmanaged: Dragonborn

*Unmanaged: HearthFires

*Unmanaged: Dawnguard

 

please o' please let hidden 'spoiler' text work on this site

 

 

Aaaand the system specs:

 

 

Windows 10, latest update

An after-market GTX 560 TI 1GB, Driver version 362 (Latest as of March 1st)

i5 2400 @4x3.1 GHZ. Stock cooler.

8GB DDR3

Some 7200rpm 1tb hdd

A shameful 'in-a-prebuilt' motherboard that won't boot with anything newer than PCI-E 2.0

ALPEN 2 DAC & AMP with latest drivers/ASIO

G602 mouse.

Some random HP membrane keyboard that came with my PC. Estimated Value: $5

Some high-end 27" 1080p monitor that has literally perfect color. I have no idea what it's serial is.

PC 350 SE headphones to go with the ALPEN 2. Well, it's actually the other way around, but you get the idea.

Some after-market 600 watt power supply with no 80+ certification to go with the after-market 560 ti.

Shameful 'in-a-prebuilt' case.

Literally no case fans, so I took off the right side-paneling to keep the 560 ti from hitting 100*C.

You now know more about my life than you need to.

 

 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand skyrim performance stuff:

 

 

Settings: Max except: FXAA and no AF, shadows manually tweaked to be between 'high' and 'ultra'

1280x720p

ENB: Natural Lighting Atmosphere ENB with reflections, water, underwater, and DOF disabled.

ENBoost: 8x AF, No AA.

Whatever HD Textures are listed in the Mod Organizer list.

-All of the textures (except Pure Water, I think) have been compressed and downscaled to a maximum res of 1024^2 I believe. 1GB of VRAM doesn't go very far. Any that slipped by are in mods that only add a small amount of textures as to not warrant extracting the BSA. VRAM usage anywhere from 500mb (like in an inn) to 900mb (huge outdoor city). Also mipmaps.

SKSE: defaultHeapInitialAllocMB=1024 (I play it safe)

 

FPS: Variable from 40 average in the most intense areas, 50 (ish) everywhere else, to 60 indoors (Capped). Lowest ever: 38, I think?

I got my game to look like this with all those mods that framerate^ on a GPU that can't run GTA V at 720p without stutters.

 

 

Edited March 11, 2016 by FierySwordswoman

[Thessera]

I have same issue, not only does it stops but it lags too.( i use no mods,never did)

Been like that since day one.. i assume its a issue w the game.. the game dosnt work well on PC.

 

maybe get mods to fix it?

Edited March 11, 2016 by Thessera

[FierySwordswoman]

I have same issue, not only does it stops but it lags too.( i use no mods,never did)

Been like that since day one.. i assume its a issue w the game.. the game dosnt work well on PC.

 

maybe get mods to fix it?

Game works fine on PC. It's actually the least buggy edition from my experience. Yours apparently has other lag besides what I'm describing; your system isn't powerful enough to NOT lag. Old HDD? Non-gaming GPU? I find that your system should be above what the recommended requirements are on the steam store page.

 

Also, I have a tingling feeling deep in my pelvis that says getting more mods isn't the solution.

Edited March 11, 2016 by FierySwordswoman

[Signette]

OP, sifting through 150+ plugins looking for inconsistencies and conflicts, I think you understand, that's impossible... so when did it started exactly? Are you 100%-absolutely-positive that it didn't happen after some new plugin added? What does your LOOT says? Do you create bashed patch?

 

Considering specs, I have almost exactly the same ones (lol) and game saves instantly (save file is ~20mb btw), but I wouldn't dare to set so many hi-res mods, for me 60>everything else, tho game is pretty much maxed, and tbh I don't think specs or HDD are the plot here if it works alright and doesn't give you lemons in any other games or apps.

 

Also, who told you defaultHeapInitialAllocMB=1024 is safe?...

 

I'm curious about you script load speed though, it feels to me as something runs in background messing with saving process, like maybe updating scripts for smth? I know Convenient Horses plugin has built-in script load tracker, if you can check it any other way, would be useful to do.

 

Also I heard somewhere that some sound mods cause save bloating in time, tho can't be sure which ones and how.

 

@Thessera

Post PC specs.

[FierySwordswoman]

I'm replying to your words

The last time I added/updated a plugin was a month ago because I don't want anything breaking. I've got it pretty much crash-free despite having a 20 gigabyte 'mods' folder.

I know it's ridiculous to look through a hundred plugins to look for conflicts (it's only there because someone asked me for it), but I can personally say I remove any redundant/stupid/unneeded mods, don't even know what a 'bashed patch' is, use the LOOT in Mod Organizer with no red flags (I had to manually re-order a couple small things), and can confirm it started immediately after finishing my first session on a new character.

 

Again, all the 'high-res' mods have had their textures reduced to be 1024^2 maximum, so it's really just a cleaner, better-looking version of Bethesda's HD pack. I don't add things like SMIM because framerate. The only thing keeping my framerate down to 50 in common places in the crazy-good ENB preset I found; Skyrim, to me, can run ad sub-60 to a degree. 70% of combat is in 60fps indoorss. But yeah, most other games I don't let it drop below 60 no matter what.

 

I somehow ran out of memory at defaultHeapInitialAllocMB=850 (most intensive in-game area) so I bumped it up to a gig just to make sure I never run out again. I told myself it's safe. Has worked fine.

 

Sound mods? Like, replacing the cheesy sound effects with better ones? Not sure how that would cause bloating where mods with heavy custom voice acting wouldn't.

 

 

I just can't get over how, after my first session with the character, the time to save grew by over 20 seconds. I literally was having nice, 1 second saves, then logged off for the night to go to sleep. Woke up the next day, booted my pc, and went straight into the game without touching anything else to find a ridiculously slow save system.

 

 

The script thing seems like it'd be good to look into, and I've always wanted to do that, but I really don't want to mess around with convenient horses since I already have a couple small mods that touch the same area.

Edited March 11, 2016 by FierySwordswoman

[Rooker75]

Definitely sounds like save file bloat. Disable this plugin ( +XP32 Maximum Skeleton Extended ), delete the skse co-save (back it up first) and see if it helps. I had this exact problem a few months ago and it turned out to be the plugin the xp32 skeleton installs by default. It was saving tens of megabytes of rubbish to the save files related to mods I don't use anyway.

[FierySwordswoman]

Script latency test in a village with 30 ish people: 48ms average across multiple tests at various locations. ~About 10% slower than other people's, but they may not have taken the test in a semi-busy spot.

 

Definitely sounds like save file bloat. Disable this plugin ( +XP32 Maximum Skeleton Extended ), delete the skse co-save (back it up first) and see if it helps. I had this exact problem a few months ago and it turned out to be the plugin the xp32 skeleton installs by default. It was saving tens of megabytes of rubbish to the save files related to mods I don't use anyway.

Well, removing XPMSE will break a LOT of things. And you make it sound like it should be making my save file a lot larger than what it is. Right now, it's 11 megabytes, compared to a vanilla 9-10 ish megabytes. Not very 'bloated'. Also, the save file has only grown 0.4mb since it was taking 1 second to save versus 25 seconds. Probably from all the things I did in Markarth. Edited March 11, 2016 by FierySwordswoman

[Rooker75]

Script latency test in a village with 30 ish people: 48ms average across multiple tests at various locations. ~About 10% slower than other people's, but they may not have taken the test in a semi-busy spot.

Definitely sounds like save file bloat. Disable this plugin ( +XP32 Maximum Skeleton Extended ), delete the skse co-save (back it up first) and see if it helps. I had this exact problem a few months ago and it turned out to be the plugin the xp32 skeleton installs by default. It was saving tens of megabytes of rubbish to the save files related to mods I don't use anyway.

Well, removing XPMSE will break a LOT of things. And you make it sound like it should be making my save file a lot larger than what it is. Right now, it's 11 megabytes, compared to a vanilla 9-10 ish megabytes. Not very 'bloated'. Also, the save file has only grown 0.4mb since it was taking 1 second to save versus 25 seconds. Probably from all the things I did in Markarth.

No, you're right. 11MB is nothing. I think mine were 30 - 50MB or something. It's still worth testing though, just to see if that's what it is.

 

Note that I'm talking about disabling just the plugin, not the skeleton itself. The plugin is mainly just an MCM menu. I don't know if it's interacting with the dual wield mod you're using, but it's probably nothing vital. Back up your saves, disable it and see if your issue goes away. If not, just restore everything and no harm done.

[TonyOQuinn]

You wouldn't happened to have been on a rampage recently, maybe a quest binge through several dungeons leaving lots of ash piles and corpses laying around? You can see if it's something like by resting for 24 hours, save the game and check if you save games faster.

 

Yeah, you don't want to remove XPMSE with UNP and FNIS. At best some NPC's will do nothing in a t-pose, more likely everyone's navel will come unscrewed allowing their legs to fall off.

 

Edit: Will now I'm curious so I tested disabling XPMSE from my UNP-FNIS profile. It loads my last save fine after the "bwar-rar! missing plugin!" warning, npc's were standing in t-pose (dang, legs did not fall off). Saved my game, re-enabled XMPSE, load the game and save again. My saves are the same, all three about 10.4 MB in size.

Edited March 12, 2016 by Tony_OQuinn

[FierySwordswoman]

Uh...... So because I use Mod Organizer, I created a new profile with no mods except the ones installed to my skyrim's root (SKSE and ENB) and decided to create a new game. Saved and closed at Helgen just to check how small save files could possibly get because I'm self-conscious about mine. I then deleted the test profile, loaded the default, and went back in-game to my proper save, only to find it saving in 1 second again. I fast-traveled to a few different major holds (except Markarth because I always end up murdering the guards trying to arrest me for something Eltrys did) and saved again. 1 second.

I've not saved the game since yesterday, so it couldn't have been the plugin change; because, to my save file, it never even happened.... right?

You wouldn't happened to have been on a rampage recently, maybe a quest binge through several dungeons leaving lots of ash piles and corpses laying around? You can see if it's something like by resting for 24 hours, save the game and check if you save games faster.

Yeah, you don't want to remove XPMSE with UNP and FNIS. At best some NPC's will do nothing in a t-pose, more likely everyone's navel will come unscrewed allowing their legs to fall off.

You may be onto something. Especially considering the experience I just had^. Skyrim is the most 'binge-y' of my games, as in, I even leave it open with my person sitting in an inn if I'm afk. It runs for a quarter to half an entire day at a time.
Buggy 2nd Session Details: Since I'm an aspiring Succubus mage, I raid every bandit fort I come across. I also, in that same session, traveled across the continent checking about 15 nordic ruins looking for Linen Wrap to make some Nightwinder mage armor. I also murdered like 20 people in markarth because I wanted Eltrys' money. I ALSO have a few 'Random Encounter' mods, so I come across people trying to kill me more often; Where you would encounter that creepy Khajiit wanderer, I encounter a 10v10 between bandits and Imperials, or a war skirmish, etc. My load times were never more than 2 seconds, usually instant, so I assumed everything was fine. Above all that, one of my better healing spells turns the corpses of my victims into ash piles, giving my a % of their negative health; I turn 1-5 of the 15 battle corpses into health. Lots of other huge events happened, but I've typed enough already.

The only thing is, my game crashed once during the Dibella's Sybil quest. I noticed the entire dungeon was still having the lags after a game restart. This makes the first paragraph of this post that much weirder.

I'll probably do a 3rd session today. I'll set the sleep menu to 48 hours instead of 24, so if things start save-lagging I'll do the 24 'resetting' hours+however much to get me to 8 or 9 am.

If that somehow is the 2-step magic solution, I'll let you know.

No, you're right. 11MB is nothing. I think mine were 30 - 50MB or something. It's still worth testing though, just to see if that's what it is.

Note that I'm talking about disabling just the plugin, not the skeleton itself. The plugin is mainly just an MCM menu. I don't know if it's interacting with the dual wield mod you're using, but it's probably nothing vital. Back up your saves, disable it and see if your issue goes away. If not, just restore everything and no harm done.

The ESP File? Doesn't that have the Racemenu&MCM&stuff? I kinda use those for FNIS animations...
I also use the Racemenu plugin to edit individual body pieces, like thighs or something.

The dual wield mod doesn't use any custom animations. What it does is allow you to block as if your left hand were holding a torch when it's actually holding a weapon. Multiple configs, the one I chose being right-click to block, left click will randomly use left or right hands while dual wielding. This is necessary since Perkus Maximus uses a lot more timed-blocks in combat.

I think my largest ever save was 17 megabytes. I completed all of one of the DLC's, Wyrmstooth, explored most things, was level 35 or something, completed various other mod quests, etc.

Edited March 12, 2016 by FierySwordswoman