Dawnguard Crash: Volkihar Ruins and Soul Cairn

ErikWithNoC · September 23, 2012

I finally got around to playing Dawnguard yesterday and everything up until the quest "Chasing Echoes" has gone fine. I haven't experienced any lags or CTD's (well one, but I fixed that by deleting some script files from mods).

However, I've run into a bit of a problem. Without giving away spoilers, I was able to progress through "Chasing Echoes" fine until I needed to enter the Volkihar Ruins. Whenever I go through the door the game switches to the load screen (no rotating object) and then immediately crashes. I've even tried the movetoqt command with the proper quest ID and it still crashes during the loading screen. I've tried unchecking all my mods (not fully deactiving them from NMM, but unchecking all of them) and the crash would still occur. I reinstalled Dawnguard and I don't have any mod scripts running that would cause a problem (there's only one now and I tried deleting it, but it didn't fix anything).

I then decided to just use console commands to skip through that section of the quest hoping things would be fine once I got to the Soul Cairn. So after doing various setstage, coc, and other commands I got myself to the Soul Cairn with Serana. Everything seemed to work fine since Serana's script to talk with her mother kicked in and all the dialogue worked. Then i had to go find the Keepers and I managed to kill two of them before the problem set in. Now I'm located near the area where you need to get Arvarks Skull. Whenever I approach the area at the skull my game will immediatly CTD. I tried just avoiding that quest and going around the place (the last Keeper is past it) and it still crashes. Even usng the the movetoqt command results in a crash.

I made some crash logs and this is always the last line in them:

Line 341
[09/23/2012 - 12:59:06AM] error: Argument variable "::bLooping_var" was not successfully looked up
stack:
[ (000CB03E)].critterSpawn01.OnCellAttach() - "<savegame>" Line ?
[09/23/2012 - 12:59:06AM] error: Argument variable "::bLooping_var" was not successfully looked up
stack:
[ (000CB05E)].critterspawn.OnCellAttach() - "<savegame>" Line ?

If anybody has any ideas on what may be causing this it would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: looking at the objectid (I think its object, could be ref) prior to the .critterSpawn it starts out "00" which means its something from the Skyrim.esm file. No idea what "bLooping_var" is though.

EDIT2: They're reference ID's. Moving them to my player through console commands show's that they're butterflies. Why would my game be doing anything with butterflies when I'm in the Soul Cairn? Also, spawning them didn't crash my game. The crash log had this at the end though:

Line 57
[09/23/2012 - 10:59:31AM] error: Argument variable "::bLooping_var" was not successfully looked up
stack:
[ (00109D6F)].critterSpawn01.OnCellAttach() - "<savegame>" Line ?

Edited September 23, 2012 by ErikWithNoC

ErikWithNoC · September 23, 2012

No ideas? I have to keep using console commands to get myself through the quests when a crash occurs :-/

ual002 · September 24, 2012

You have described my issue EXACTLY. All I have to say is..... BUTTERFLIES? REALLY?

So thinking about it, could a mod like "wearable lanterns" with a torchbug in a jar cause problems? That is the only mod I can think of that I have that effects insects. And I'm sure that wouldn't even matter. I'll keep an eye out here. I think we're at the forefront of this issue. So hopefully the more experienced players/modders will start experiencing this and take a look soon. I've been stuck on this for like a month. I just figured out that the unofficial skyrim patch was causing my random exterior CTDs everywhere else so I uninstalled that. This is my last major obstacle, the 'soul cairn'. Cool place but I'm starting to dislike crashing in here all the time. If it ever does get fixed I'm sure I'm going to be nervous all the way through it expecting a crash anyway.

-Cheers

UAL002

Edited September 24, 2012 by ual002

Dehuman · September 24, 2012

I have this problem aswel, although it's not happening to me in the Soul Cairn (since I can't actually go back there because of curing Vampire Lord one too many times) I get same error which seems to repeat constantly..

(0010D531)].critterSpawn01.OnCellAttach() - "<savegame>" Line ?

[09/24/2012 - 11:41:24AM] error: Argument variable "::bLooping_var" was not successfully looked up

stack:

[ (0010D539)].critterSpawn01.OnCellAttach() - "<savegame>" Line ?

[09/24/2012 - 11:41:24AM] error: Argument variable "::bLooping_var" was not successfully looked up

stack:

[ (0010D53B)].critterSpawn01.OnCellAttach() - "<savegame>" Line ?

[09/24/2012 - 11:41:24AM] error: Argument variable "::bLooping_var" was not successfully looked up

stack:

[ (0010D532)].critterspawn.OnCellAttach() - "<savegame>" Line ?

[09/24/2012 - 11:41:24AM] error: Argument variable "::bLooping_var" was not successfully looked up

stack:

[ (0010D530)].critterspawn.OnCellAttach() - "<savegame>" Line ?