CTD on any save load or new game when OVER-MODDING Skyrim (a.k.a are you a member of the 67e-bait Modders Club?)

[Gawad]

NOTE: This is an authentic help request, even if the tone is a little tongue-in-cheek.

UPDATE:

A partial workaround to this issue has been found. It looks like whatever resource limit triggers it Skyrim tracks two banks of them, one for ESPs and one for ESMs. When you hit the limit because you have too many of one (typically this will be ESPs first) you can continue to add content by changing one file type to the other until you're breaking both limits. This is far from a perfect solution, but it does provide some breathing room for extra heavy load orders. Just make sure you understand how to change those file types. HINT: you shouldn't be changing the Windows file extension. Not only doesn't that work, but it will break yourgame if the file is a master. You have to use a utility like TESEdit to change the file type flag inside the file and leave the Windows file type extension alone.

UPDATE: another "member" was found a couple of months ago who also initially ran into the issue after installing DynDOLOD: Dunc01. Working together with Sheson it seems the culprit has indeed been narrowed down to the game hitting a maximum number of persistant references per worldspace, with that maximum number being 65 535. What exactly contributes to the offending total is not yet completely clear however. For example, duplicates do not seem to be counted.

Of note, Sheson has already included an option in DynDOLOD to reduce the number of persistant references that it contributes to the game.

Also, while Dunc01 was evidently experiencing the same issue based on the symptoms, his CTD was occurring at a different memory address. Based on my testing the address can indeed be DIFFERENT when the number or version of a dll injected into the game by SKSE changes.

WHO QUALIFIES

Alright, who qualifies as a member of this fairly exclusive Skyrim Modders Club?

First and very important, as a Skyrim Modder, you have been able to successfully mod your games to the gills, all the while keeping it stable and maintaining high performance. You have a mix of gameplay and immersion mods, player homes, followers and NPCs, new land mods, quests and dungeons and maybe even a number of mods from LL. Big new land and quest mods like Summerset Isle, Darkend, Beyond Reach, Wyrmstooth, Rigmor of Bruma, Wheels of Lull, Forgotten Dungeons, Forgotten City, etc. are your bread and butter.

Also, you do not use any of the mods in the Dangerous mods list and your masters are clean.

You are merged, bashed and LOOTed and have taken your Skyrim out for more than a SpINI or two. More than likely, you have a pretty decent to high-end rig or you probably wouldn't have made it this far. Good on you!

==================================================================
Mandatory personal specs (I don't have the specs for my current club co-member):
CPU: i7 5960x @ 4.6 (water cooled with custom loop)
GPU: 980 ti (currently stock reference edition Zotac)
Memory: 32GB DDR4 Corsair Vengence 2666 @ 2811MHz
Storage: 2x 1TB Crucial SSD in RAID 0
Power Supply: Corsair 1200AX
===================================================================

Second, you use Meh's Crash Fixes version 12, or at least have [Debug] WriteMinidumps=1 set in your SKSE ini file and can use an online crash analysis service to get human readable info back from SKSE's .dmp files.

Third, and this is CRITICAL: when you add JUST ONE MORE ESP/ESM based mod, Skyrim CTDs within 3 to 4 seconds of trying to load ANY save or starting a new game, systematically generating an error at memory address 0067eeb8, a.k.a TESV.exe+0027eeb8. This will happen exactly when the loading screen would otherwise have its first micro-pause while loading a save (on a setup that does not CTD).

What specific ESP/ESM does not much matter, although smaller, empty, or larger but quest/script-free mods seem not to trigger this issue.

Your load order does not matter (as far as this specific CTD). The mod you added can have its ESM/ESP at the beginning or at the end (end of the ESM list if an ESM) or you can leave it where LOOT puts it. But you CAN load this mod as long as you SWAP IT OUT with any other mod of roughly the same "weight", for lack of a better word.

If your CTD does not occur as a result of an error at memory address 0067eeb8, SORRY, but YOU ARE NOT A MEMBER. (For qualified members please see your membership card here: http://i.imgur.com/csaXNP7.png. Print it, plastify it and keep it safe because this is the specific MOV operation where the engine fails.)

Currently we know of two confirmed members of the Club: myself, and DemongelRex/Demonrex and I am looking for other members to share information in the hopes pinning down what causes this particular CTD.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Well, obviously, because it would be nice to keep modding Skyrim 'til it breaks elsewhere, but there's a little more to it. As DemongelRex has pointed out on the Crash Fixes forum, some very large and highly anticipated mods are getting close to release, for example, Beyond Skyrim, and they are of such size that it may become an issue even for gamers with moderately heavy mod orders. Further, as use of tools such as Merge Script, Merge Standalone and Mator Smash become more widespread the odds increase that more and more gamers will run into this issue.

Worse, this issue can easily mimic a number of other problems, in particular: mod conflicts, the string count limit, total memory use or CTDs from memory fragmentation.

Instead, though as yet unconfirmed, this appears to be the result of the Skyrim engine hitting a particular limit on the total number of form IDs it is being asked to load when a user tries to load any existing save or start a new game once that user has added enough content to cross the threshold. This may also be a particular threshold such as the number of quest IDs or worldspaces....no clear ideas on this yet.

SPECIFICS

• This issue is 100% reproducible (or avoidable!) once the conditions to trigger it are in place. It is 100% reproducible in terms of predictability, and 100% reproducible in terms of its effects and where the exact failure occurs, EVERY TIME. I.e., this is NOT some type of random crash.
• This is NOT an in-game stability issue. Your game can otherwise be rock stable. (Mine and DemongelRex certainly are.)
• This is NOT a performance issue. Apart from the traditional Skyrim hiccups, your game performs well in terms of FPS and does not suffer from any significant script lag.
• This is NOT a memory issue. When this CTD occurs it will happen while Skyrim is loading, but using still well under 1GB of RAM (750 MB in my case) and/or VRAM. A mod load-out set not to cause this CTD will let you get into game with well over 1 GB of RAM and VRAM.
• This is NOT some kind of directory thrashing issue. I experience the issue at 240 ESPs loaded and DemongelRex at 218. (We both have a number of mods merged from many other mods and, obviously, different load ordersâthough he uses LotD and I don't.) Both of us have fewer than 509 TOTAL ESMs/ESPs (active + disabled) though both of us ran tests with Nitpick anyway to see if this would make a difference; it did not.
• This is NOT a mod conflict issue. Aside from DemongelRex and I having very heavy mod lists our load-outs are very different. In addition, any mod added that causes this CTD will actually work in ANY COMBINATION with the rest of our load orders, AS LONG AS WE SWAP OUT ANY OTHER EQUALLY "HEAVY" MOD.
• This SOUNDS a lot like, but IS NOT the string count limit bug:
• Tested with TESV ESS Editor or SkyrimTools (by MarkDF): this CTD can occur while under the String count limit. I initially encountered this issue while close to but under the normal string count limit by over 400 strings (approximately 65 150 strings); I am currently playing the game while over the string count limit thanks to Crash Fixes (string count grows over time) and avoiding this problem quite easily by staying 3 to 4 mods short of triggering this CTD.
• Adding mods until you break the string count limit never prevents you from starting a new game, you just can't load back the trashed save files the game writes from that point on. THIS issue will also CTD you on a new game start. (One exception: using Alternate Start leaves you at an infinite loading screen (ILS) right after the "page flip" sound and the intro music loops forever...well, over twenty minutes at any rate. But Crash Fixes still produces a crash log showing the game is crashed with an error at 0067eeb8 (TESV+0027eeb8.)
• The crash from trying to read a save file corrupted by the StrCount bug ALWAYS occurs at the END of the loading sequence (20 seconds for me with Meh's OS Allocators active in Crash Fixes). THIS crash occurs systematically within 3 to 4 seconds into the loading sequence. I.e., the two crashes do not occur at the same point in the loading sequence.

I have posted about this problem once before, but this was before another gamer (DemongelRex) experienced the problem himself and more information has become known since. (That initial post was how he found me.)

For those who would suggest taking this up with Meh, he appears to be unavailable for the time being, but help is always welcome from any quarter. I'd be more than willing to work with anyone who can deal with opcodes and operands (I'm clueless here) or anything else to work this out.

Thank you!

Edited June 12, 2020 by Gawad

[Project579]

One thing i want to ask is: trying merging the plugins that would otherwise get to the crash point fixes in some way the issue? (Like if you add one more plugin the game crashes, but if you add the just added plugin to a merge does the crash happen anyways?).

Ah one thing the crash happens in Win7 right?

Edited August 25, 2016 by Project579

[Gawad]

An excellent question. I can't speak for DemongelRex here, but in my case, the answer is NO, doing this does not fix the issue; yes, the game will CTD anyway even if the offending ESP is merged in with others that didn't cause the problem.

 

Sorry I didn't point this out in my OP, because it is a good clue, but one of the first things I did to try to get around the issue was to merge together plugins that were causing this CTD to see if reducing the number of plugins would help. The answer turned out to be that if adding a mod caused this CTD, merging it with another mod or group of mods would still cause this CTD even if those other mods on their own didn't. So it looks like it's the aggregate CONTENT of the ESPs that is tipping the engine over rather than any individual ESPs.

Edited August 25, 2016 by Gawad

[Project579]

are those mods part of a determinate category? I understand that they are mods that add scripts that cause the crash. And does using one of those mods with a smaller load order cause the crash? (i don't think it happens but i want a confirm).

[Gawad]

No exact determinate category, but all seem to have scripts in common (although this may be a red herring). I first ran into the issue while "topping up" my load order with quest mods (I always install those last), and although I quickly noticed that swapping out one quest mod for another, or, get this, two or three smaller quest mods to successfully load a larger one, it quickly became apparent that I could also load some of these mods if I left out other mod types such as DynDOLOD or Realshelter out of my active load order. And other thing also became apparent with testing: some mods with very heavy ESPs, such as The Elder Scrolls V: Middle-Earth (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/51319/?) will NOT trigger this while smaller ones will; neither will empty plug ins or ESPs that just involve simple armours and weapons. What all the one that do not trigger this have in common is that they are scriptless. DemongelRex has also confirmed that the small house mod he used to trigger this also has a quest involved in getting the house (Ebonvale fixed version of Eagles nest).

Edited August 26, 2016 by Gawad

[Project579]

So you probably already taken in consideration the max active quest limit right (i think you can increase it on the .ini files but i'm not sure)? (oh and The Elder Scrolls V: Middle-Earth looks like a pretty cool mod i will probably download it an try it :laugh: )

[Gawad]

No, I can't say that I have taken any quest limits into consideration, although at game start (when I'm one ESP short of triggering this CTD) the game only sets up a half dozen active quests or so. I didn't know the limit could be changed in the ini files, so I'll have a look at that at any rate.

[Project579]

Found the setting in Skyrim.ini:

[MAIN]

iMaxQuestObjectives=3000 ; <--- Default is 3000.

[Gawad]

Thanks! I'll see if doubling that makes any difference and report back. Should be a simple enough test.

[Gawad]

O.k., got around to trying this proposed solution but no joy. I set up Skyrim to crash again by adding back four quest mods (I tried two different sets just to check that I got the same CTD in both cases); I then doubled iMaxQuestObjectives to 6000 (iMaxQuestObjectives=6000), loaded up a couple of saves (that otherwise work) and promptly CTD in both cases with an error at 0067eeb8. Same thing when starting a new game.

 

It was a fair call, though. I didn't know there are a default limit on the number of quest objectives, much less that you can set it in the Skyrim.ini.

 

Hopefully Meh can get around to checking out what exactly is going on at that specific memory address.

 

Still, thanks for the suggestion!