Bloated Save FIles

[dailewis]

I need someone's help urgently!

My Skyrim's save file is at 75MB! I've scanned the internet looking for solutions and tried everything that people have suggested. I removed all of my mods (including the DLCs), tried the debloater mods, Turned everything to minimum, stayed indoors and waited to see if that did anything, I even disabled all of the LOD, the sky, water, grass, trees, etc to see if that made a difference. I also had a look at the Papyrus.log to see if i could do anything there, but is still didn't make a difference. But still my game file increases in size!

If there is anyone out there who knows what I should do, i'll be in your debt if you help me as this is ruining my game as it's at the point where it's unplayable.

 

I'm not much of a computer boffin, but the specs of my computer that I do know are:

Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit (I know, I know it sucks)

4GB of RAM (DDR2)

Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intel Core 2 Quad Processor (2.40GHz)

[Georgiegril]

What mods are you using?

[dailewis]

What mods are you using?

All of the mods in my list are...

Unoficial Skyrim Patch

Mart's Savegame De-Bloatifier

Dawngard

Heartfires

Arrowsmith: Vanilla Edition v.3d

Nelriana's Sneak Tree Update For Archers

Improved Dark Brotherhood Dawnstar Sanctuary

Dragonbone Weapons Complete Set

Spend Dragon Souls For Perks

The Extra Ring

Moonpath To Elsweyr

HighResTexturePack01

HighResTexturePacK02

HighResTexturePackFix

Wellbourne Cabin

Improved Smithing

Umbra

Knights Of The Nine v2.6

Elder Scrolls V: Hammerfell Mod (BETA)

Quest:Sea Of Ghosts-Ultimate Version

Quest:Sorcery

Towns And Villages Enhanced WhiteRun

[WIP] Summerset Isles v0.21

Towns and Villages Enhanced Riften

The Grotto-Arena for Skyrim (BETA)

Towns And Villages Enhanced Riverwood

Water And Terrain Enhancement Redux

Whiterun Exterior Enhanced v1.1

Towns and Villages Enhanced Villages

Wuuthrad Waraxe

 

However, the only ones i'm running at the moment are the first 6 in the list. I put them back on after realising turning them off didn't make a difference.

Thanks for replying, anyway :)

[BCbrad]

Super frustrating. I couldnt resolve mine, even going to that testing area completely naked, no mods activated and waiting 31days in there. Made no difference. Safes got up to 95MB and wouldl increase about 2MB every new save. I gave up and reinstalled Skyrim. Help performance, and now I choose mods with a little more discretion. Good luck

[dailewis]

Super frustrating. I couldnt resolve mine, even going to that testing area completely naked, no mods activated and waiting 31days in there. Made no difference. Safes got up to 95MB and wouldl increase about 2MB every new save. I gave up and reinstalled Skyrim. Help performance, and now I choose mods with a little more discretion. Good luck

Will i lose my save if i reinstall it? I don't want to waste 90 hours of my life.

[BCbrad]

Super frustrating. I couldnt resolve mine, even going to that testing area completely naked, no mods activated and waiting 31days in there. Made no difference. Safes got up to 95MB and wouldl increase about 2MB every new save. I gave up and reinstalled Skyrim. Help performance, and now I choose mods with a little more discretion. Good luck

Will i lose my save if i reinstall it? I don't want to waste 90 hours of my life.

No you will not. Wont hurt to back up your last few from each build. I am not sure about stored inventory, foolishly had everything stored at the bathing beauties... including my 300k gold. I will get most of it back eventually so I didnt care, but I would suggest that you store your inventory in a vanilla location, say whiterun house unmodded. I did it with 580hr... but I didn't really care. Was worth it.

Edited October 13, 2012 by BCbrad

[dailewis]

Super frustrating. I couldnt resolve mine, even going to that testing area completely naked, no mods activated and waiting 31days in there. Made no difference. Safes got up to 95MB and wouldl increase about 2MB every new save. I gave up and reinstalled Skyrim. Help performance, and now I choose mods with a little more discretion. Good luck

Will i lose my save if i reinstall it? I don't want to waste 90 hours of my life.

No you will not. Wont hurt to back up your last few from each build. I am not sure about stored inventory, foolishly had everything stored at the bathing beauties... including my 300k gold. I will get most of it back eventually so I didnt care, but I would suggest that you store your inventory in a vanilla location, say whiterun house unmodded. I did it with 580hr... but I didn't really care. Was worth it.

Well, i did it. Unistalled and reinstalled Skyrim. And it hasn't made a sodding difference, is it because I backed up the game content through Steam? I took off all of the mods, and i've used the last save I was at. Is that the reason why or is there something i'm missing here. I'm on the verge of throwing my computer out of the window as it took me almost 6 hours to reinstall it (Because my internet has decided to be really slow. Of all the days). When you did it, did you us the last save you had or did you do something different?

Edited October 13, 2012 by dailewis

[dailewis]

Super frustrating. I couldnt resolve mine, even going to that testing area completely naked, no mods activated and waiting 31days in there. Made no difference. Safes got up to 95MB and wouldl increase about 2MB every new save. I gave up and reinstalled Skyrim. Help performance, and now I choose mods with a little more discretion. Good luck

Will i lose my save if i reinstall it? I don't want to waste 90 hours of my life.

No you will not. Wont hurt to back up your last few from each build. I am not sure about stored inventory, foolishly had everything stored at the bathing beauties... including my 300k gold. I will get most of it back eventually so I didnt care, but I would suggest that you store your inventory in a vanilla location, say whiterun house unmodded. I did it with 580hr... but I didn't really care. Was worth it.

Well, i did it. Unistalled and reinstalled Skyrim. And it hasn't made a sodding difference, is it because I backed up the game content through Steam? I took off all of the mods, and i've used the last save I was at. Is that the reason why or is there something i'm missing here. I'm on the verge of throwing my computer out of the window as it took me almost 6 hours to reinstall it (Because my internet has decided to be really slow. Of all the days). When you did it, did you us the last save you had or did you do something different?

Any Other Suggestions, it's at the point now where the game crashes after 3 minutes so waiting around isn't really an option. Please, i'm losing all hope here.

[Aliera Caine]

I hope this solution will work in your case. My friend, phillipWireland on the Nexus, came up with a solution for his bloated save files and had a discussion with Bethesda, who thanked him for the info.

"1. Determine which mods/ updates that the player has downgraded/ removed/ updated over (as most people just replace/ remove the ESP),

2. Find the Scripts, Meshes (and textures if wish but does not seem to be necessary) for those mods,

2A. finding the scripts and meshes for a particular mod is not too hard. Most mods will have them in a sub folder with the mod name (or abbreviation), and/ or the files themselves will have some type of prefix of that mod FOR EXAMPLE: Levelers Tower by WilliamSea, will have his files in folders named "leveler", and all the files start with the prefix "leveler",

LC Become King of Riverhelm by Locaster, has loose files but all are prefixed with "LC".

3. Search and delete all the old scripts and meshes. If in doubt on version diff, you can delete all from that mod and re-unzip just the version you are now using back into place.

4. (a) Close folders and start game, (b) make clean save preferably in small plain room, © Purge Cell Buffers (as a good measure), (d) hit escape to bring up save menu, (e) let game sit in this state. The engine will start clearing old data, oldest first.

5. After enough time for the game to clear ( For EX: If 40 MB over normal file size, then would be approx 40 min -where normal size is lets say 10MB and current is 50MB),

5A. make a save and check save file size, if need more time for the file to finish shrinking, repeat 4-5, if file back to normal size see 6.

6. Done. save game, continue play, and repeat when file size gets too large or starts creating same issues again.

It takes about a minute per megabyte of uninterrupted (real) time for clearing process.

The menu HAS to stay up (where write interaction is paused).

The first time may take a while. My "normal save-game is about 13-14 MB, my char is 74th LV and has a ton of stuff (approx 1600 hours playtime).

my save file had bloated to 132MB, so first time took a few hours.

The bug is triggered and stays triggered, so on occasion, this process has to be repeated, but it keeps the save-file back down to normal size."

 

If you are still have trouble at this time, you might give this a try. Good luck! ~ Aliera

[OakRain]

Aliera Cane - that is the first time I have seen any practical way to debloat saves - saving your post as a text file in case I need to use the technique at a later date.Thank you.