CTD on loading save

[Scevenex]

I've come across something which I don't really have an explanation for and haven't been able to fix. On a character I've been playing for dozens of hours worth of time, my most recent save CTDs when I try to load it.

 

I have not:

1) Changed any mods

2) Updated the game

3) Changed any settings

 

The previous saves for this character all work fine. I clear the older ones out occasionally and leave "checkpoints" so it's not a huge problem if I can't get this most recent one working, rather, I can't explain why this most recent one is crashing. I am playing a heavily modded game and expect errors, but I haven't had this one in particular before and it's somewhat worrisome.

 

In looking through google/other posts here, I don't see anyone with the same sort of issue. Most CTDs when loading appear to be people loading their first save after creating a new game, or changing their mods or something along those lines. I've been playing this character with minimal issues for a long time and it suddenly did this.

 

I've tried attempting to load the newest save after loading an older one, after doing a "coc" command from the main menu, and after creating a new character. Those are the general things I saw other people mention to try and get around this.

 

I'm not getting a corrupted save message. The loading screen starts and I get the info blurbs and the random icon is animated and all that, then after a few seconds it freezes for a second and CTDs. If it matters, the save is out in the main world of Skyrim, which is larger to load as far as I know. I also had the game crash when I died that previous time (but that has happened a few times before and never caused a save to be unable to load).

 

Does anyone know maybe what might have caused this, if there's any other methods I can attempt to fix the save, or if it indicates a larger problem? I can always go from my previous save and just accept the ~5 hours of playtime loss and redo ~3 quests, but I'd prefer to fix it if I can. If there's any other information needed I'll provide it if asked for, though please be patient with me because while I am persistent I'm not extremely knowledgeable about modding.

 

Thanks in advance for whoever responds.

[Deleted58783396User]

Souds like Save Bloat - how big is the save in comparisson to previous saves.

 

and have you deleted/disabled any mod in your active playthrough (you mention you have not changed mods, but deleting/disabling mods would not be classed as changing, however it would be classed as changing the load order), more specifically mods that deal with Scripts ? however disabling most mods in an active playthrough will cause issues. but disabling/deleting scripted ones have a higher chance to lead to more severe issues.

 

the other cause of Save Bloat is a heavily scripted mod setup.

 

Freezing and Crashing from loading a Save, is a sign of Save Bloat, which means your saves have a good chance of being destined for Corruption or you are going to have a very bad time, ie freezing and crashing a lot, in your playthrough.

 

try to use as less scripted mods as possible. the papyrus system is fragile.

 

signs of a heavily scripted setup are: Script Latency (massive delays for quests to trigger and update), Save Bloat (very frequent Crashing and Freezing)

[Scevenex]

how big is the save in comparisson to previous saves.

 

I don't think it's that much larger or any larger than most of my others. I usually go for about 4-5 hours saving over the same save, then I'll start a new one to update for a while. This one was on a rather long trek across the main world though, so maybe it was larger than I think.

 

Edit: Googled save bloat and found people talking about save file size in literal terms. The size of the save file that isn't loading is 9,224 KB. That seems very small to me given the size of the game and how long I've been playing, but I don't know how big/small they're supposed to be. My smallest save is just under 5000 KB. For what it's worth, that save that isn't loading IS my largest save file. Most are around 8000 KB. The one previous to it that is working is just over 9000 KB, so the non-functioning one is not much bigger.

 

Edit2: Another note is, my manual saves happen almost instantly. Apparently it's a sign of save bloat if the saves take a while to go through. I've never had mine be more than a momentary pause lasting not even half a second.

 

have you deleted/disabled any mod in your active playthrough

Once a very long time ago, I disabled a plugin. It's been probably over 50 hours of gameplay since. I got caught by Steam updating Skyrim automatically and had to update several of my mods to resume playing. It was the Cloaks - USSEP Patch.esp, which LOOT told me I didn't need to have active because the patch was included in a separate mod I have. Aside from that, I don't think I've changed anything mod-wise.

 

the other cause of Save Bloat is a heavily scripted mod setup.

 

Are esm plugins the same thing as scripts? According to LOOT I have 229 active plugins, which I know is a lot. I'm not sure if all of those/how many of them count as scripts. A majority of them are graphics mods.

 

signs of a heavily scripted setup are: Script Latency (massive delays for quests to trigger and update), Save Bloat (very frequent Crashing and Freezing)

 

I've never had any delays with quests updating. They do that immediately after completion of objectives or upon talking to people. I've never had the game freeze such that I had to task manager to shut it off or anything of that sort. Crash wise, I've once had it crash while out in the main world just walking around and that issue didn't repeat in the same area. Maybe 1 in 60 deaths the game will CTD for some reason, which isn't repeated if I die again in the same area anyways. Another thing was killing a particular wispmother which I found through google occurs even on non-modded Skyrim in that particular location.

 

The only semi-persistent glitches I've had are I'll equip a piece of armor or read a book, and the game will teleport me back to the last loading area I went through (door, entrance to a dungeon, gate of a town, etc). Clearing extra saves and simply reloading the area have both helped fix those.

 

One time, enemies weren't moving around and some were floating off slowly into the sky. I reloaded a previous save and cleared out some extras and the issue went away and it's been over 30 hours of gameplay since and I haven't seen it again.

 

Overall, the play-through thus-far has been quite smooth. Much more so than I expected going into this. I easily go 6+ hours of playtime without encountering any glitches or crashes.

 

If it is save bloat, what can I do to mitigate it? Not save in the same slot as much? I've not had the issue happen before now, and I'm at ~500 or so total saves. I don't know if that's a lot of saves or not enough to be reaching that point yet.

Edited March 26, 2019 by Scevenex

[Deleted58783396User]

ESM files are Bethesda Master Files - typically used as mod requirements. every single mod that contains an esp will require at least 1 of Skyrim's Master files. Most ESPs will modify the content from ESM files. ESM files are always placed at the very top of the load order, and cannot be moved down past ESP files, this means ESM files always have low priority, as they are designed to be overridden by ESP files.

 

Scripts are Small Code Snippets.

 

scripts are placed inside your skyrim data folder, in the Scripts folder, no program will tell you how many you have, you would need to check yourself.

 

Mods that use scripts are as follows: Quest Mods (will include a lot of scripts, these mods are supposed to be run as stand alone, basically meaning you should run as few quest mods as possible per playthrough to get the full benefit from them and to eliminate possible issues caused by running too many scripts), Fully Fledged Custom Followers - And other mods that add stuff that typically could not be done via basic Creation Kit Edits.

 

to know if you have a heavily scripted setup would be to check all of your mods, look in the Preview files for each mod, and see if any mod has PSC or PEX files <- these are scripts + source respectively.

 

or typically they would be placed in a Compressed Archive.

 

Generally big fully fledged mods (Quest Mods are 1 such mod) will include a lot Scripts. Running a lot of Big Fully Fledged Quest mods, will greatly increase the amount of scripts your game will be running, this can cause all sorts of issues, due to potentional of overwhelming the Papyrus System, which is fragile.

 

Scripts Heavily Affect the Saved Games. this is why they can be classed as dangerous, because they have the potential of destroying your Saved Games forcing you to restart from scratch.

 

However if you stick to a minimum of Scripted mods, you should be perfectly fine.

 

Bare in mind, that Skyrim itself and its DLC Already Includes and Runs a lot of Scripts.

[Scevenex]

scripts are placed inside your skyrim data folder, in the Scripts folder, no program will tell you how many you have, you would need to check yourself.

 

 

Okay. I checked my Skyrim Data folder and found that I've got 62 PEX files in the Script folder, and inside that folder there's another folder called Source which has 62 PSC files.

 

Mods that use scripts are as follows: Quest Mods (will include a lot of scripts, these mods are supposed to be run as stand alone, basically meaning you should run as few quest mods as possible per playthrough to get the full benefit from them and to eliminate possible issues caused by running too many scripts), Fully Fledged Custom Followers - And other mods that add stuff that typically could not be done via basic Creation Kit Edits.

 

 

I've got one custom follower mod (though I don't use them, they stand around in Whiterun where I left them), ~4 other mods that modify NPC behavior like letting them learn spells and being able to interact with them more, and 7 quest mods. Legacy of the Dragonborn SSE, Beyond Skyrim - Bruma SE, The Notice Board SE, Namira for Good Guys, Boethiah for Good Guys, The Paarthurnax Dilemma, and Chantry College of Winterhold. I assume this puts me on the heavier side of things script wise. LOD, Bruma, and CCW are all fairly big questlines I think (not that I've gotten far in any of them yet).

 

After a little more digging, I've found that file size for saves can easily get over 100 MB for some people without issues, and that the bigger concern is the rate at which the file size is growing. Since mine is still under 10 MB after about 60 total hours of playtime and it's been growing at a constant rate, I think on that aspect I'm pretty well off. From what I gather, save bloat is a thing that always eventually occurs and the question is just when. I'm not really seeing any major symptoms of it yet with any regular/predictable/repeatable frequency.

 

Thanks for explaining all this. I think I'm probably okay and that something just went wrong with that particular save, whether it be location or fluke. I did load up the previous save and trek out to the same spot and save in the same area, and was able to load it again without any issues. Trying to load the other one from that area made it crash faster, so I think it's trying to load something weird in particular and that's what's making it crash. I'll keep an eye on that sort of stuff now that I know what to be looking out for problem-wise (and keeping it in mind when/if I ever do another full run through Skyrim and change my mods). I've mostly given up trying to recover the save, since at this point I'm approaching time spent figuring things out on how long it would take me to simply make-up the lost progress. If more saves down the line start being unable to load more frequently then I'll at least know what I'm dealing with.

Edited March 26, 2019 by Scevenex

[Deleted64927026User]

 

However if you stick to a minimum of Scripted mods, you should be perfectly fine.

 

Does this mean that an ".esp(.esm) heavy" setup doesnt have a lot of impact on the games performance/save file?

Edited March 27, 2019 by Guest

[Deleted58783396User]

 

 

However if you stick to a minimum of Scripted mods, you should be perfectly fine.

 

Does this mean that an ".esp(.esm) heavy" setup doesnt have a lot of impact on the games performance/save file?

 

 

nope is does not mean that, it means that eliminating scripted mods (cutting down on them, so you are not running so many, or simply using none at all), means you eliminate the likelihood of Save Bloat.

 

ESP + ESM that Do Not Use/ Edit or Add Scripts, can also cause performance issues and game instability, however this is more to do with Load Order, Mod Compatibility, Game Limitations, Hardware Limitations and last but not least, What the Mod actually does.

 

Save Bloat is not a simple problem, and almost always results in more severe issues, Save Game Corruption being the end result, which is not easily fixed, 9 times out of 10 this literally means you are forced to start again from the beginning (elimination of mods, and start a New Game).

 

Mods that do not use Scripts, are more easily solved, as to solve them would be to fix the: Load Order, Mod Compatibility, and ensure that both The Game and Your Hardware can run them properly, Such as Massive Overhaul mods (Towns as an example) can impact performance, but this is usally to do with either Game Limitations or Hardware Limitations.

 

ENB can also have a massive Impact on Performance, but this is exclusively Hardware Limitations.

 

Save Bloat on the Other Hand has far More Severes issues, Such as Severe Performance issues, Crashing, Freezing, Termination of Saved Games, and Infinite Loading Screens, Script Latency issues, such as Massive delays in Quests updating. ESP + ESM not Do Not Use/ Edit or Add Scripts At All, have a far less liklihood of reaching these problems, and if they do it will almost always be Load Order or Mod Compatibility.