Game indefinitely freezes on opening Magic menu

[StrykerNocte]

As mentioned in the title, my game freezes indefinitely whenever I open the magics menu (doesn't even CTD, I have to terminate the game with task manager every time). I find it quite bizarre that my earlier save files are free from this issue, and only the latter ones are affected (I've made no changes whatsoever, not even finding new spells or shouts or passives). So far, I've reverted twice to the old save to continue the game, following different paths each time (first I went to Windhelm to join the Stormcloaks, and the second to Solitude to help the citizens) but still ended up with the game freezing up. Aside from trying to access the magics menu, everything else in the game works flawlessly. I've tried enabling and disabling every mod that I think could be the potential cause of the problem (basically every mod that adds spells and passives, no matter how trivial), but still the issue remains. Other things I've tried is auto-cleaning Update.esm with xEdit and the "psb" console command (as suggested elsewhere), both of which didn't fix it. I'd really appreciate any help at this point...

 

Attached is my load order as copied from LOOT:

 

Edited January 8, 2020 by StrykerNocte

[sixstyx]

did you ever figure this out?

i am having the same problem. i thought i had fixed it for a while by loading Sacrosanct after Alternate Start: Live Another Life

but the problem seems to have returned since then although i don't think i have changed my mods

[JimmyRJump]

The problem might be Vortex, more specific the way it 'handles' mod conflicts. By not overwriting files from mods altering the same files, Vortex creates new conflicts that can't be solved and result in a game acting strange or crashing. I've gone back to NMM for that reason.

[StrykerNocte]

Sorry for the late reply, I finally got around to switching to MO2 from Vortex...but no joy there. I removed and added some mods into the list, but no change was made since then (aside from switching between a few idle animations). Then I started a new game, played it some and encountered no issues or anything whatsoever, game worked perfectly fine. Then after making some progress, the game went back to freezing after opening the magic menu. As with Vortex, a previous save I made works just fine. I'm at my wit's end here...

Edited January 23, 2020 by StrykerNocte

[StrykerNocte]

Bump!

[anjenthedog]

I don't have a concrete answer, but I'd suggest that it's possible you added some magic related mod that either has been removed and left behind crud (scripts and or references) that either can't be purged from your saves or has not been purged (fallrim), or is causing a conflict, OR, possibly, you have way too many spells (for whatever reason) and skyrim is choking on the spell list length.

 

Skyrim *appears to struggle with "thick" db entries. For instance, some people (like me) overload the character inventory (I usually have at least 6000lbs of items in my personal inventory via overload mods and or setav carryweight or modav carryweight). What happens when you do that is that the DB becomes too unwieldy for skyrim's database handlers, and calling up the inventory become slower and slower and slower, until the player dumps a ton of the items either by selling, dropping (NEVER!) or dumping into player home chests.

 

Analogously, one might suspect something like that for the magic menu. (yeah, I admit I'm reaching on this particular error vector, but it IS possible)

 

Personally, I suspect either a conflicting magic mod, or a magic mod that has been deleted but has left behind corrupt data.

 

Try opening a very early save and see if the problem persists. Also try a new game and see if it exists. If either is true, then you probably have some installed magic related mod that's the cause. Which one I couldn't say, nor even if you have such a mod installed, but it's worth a shot to suggest it.

[StrykerNocte]

I've tried checking my save files with Fallrim, it's all clean (as it should be, since I didn't add/remove any mod throughout the playthrough). Not too sure about having too many spells, I have less then 30 items on the list (spells, shouts, passives, etc). As for conflicts, MO2 shows absolutely 0 conflicting files between all the magic mods I use (okay, there's one, it's Arcanum replacing SKSE64's default spawnertask.pax, but that's it).

 

As mentioned in my original post, the issue only appears once I've reached a certain (unknown) point in the game, so previous saves work just fine. I didn't try starting a new game (considering the bug only shows up at an undetermined point), but since I've moved everything from Vortex to MO2, the new character I made might as well count as a new game. With nothing left to try, I'll just remove most of the magic mods (or anything that adds entries into the magic menu like race or standing stone mods) I have installed and start a new game...hopefully, that's gonna help me avoid the problem for good.

[anjenthedog]

If I may suggest...do them one by one with tests in between and fallrim cleanup as you go. No reason to get Draconian, and anyway, handling singular removals is a safer way to debug than blanket installation of a series of mods in general. It will also help yyou to identify which (if any) are "the cause", so you aren't left with several mods you can't trust to reinstall.

 

- five people work for you, one robs you, so you fire all of them even though four are actually devoted and loyal employees... kinda harsh if you catch my drift

[StrykerNocte]

I get what you're saying, I really do. But this particular freezing problem is just too bizarre, there's no one specific point in the game where it's sure to trigger that I can speak of. If, say, it's triggered after having completed a total of 10 quests, then I wouldn't mind checking the suspects a few at a time. As it stands, I can roll with a character for 5 hours and run into the problem.....or 50 hours problem-free and finally running into it. Up until now, I've already wasted 25 hours across 3 different characters, and I still haven't found any discernible cause for this.

 

I can probably put up with scrapping a character just one more time...so which mods I'll put up the firing line will be a gamble. Fingers crossed, maybe I'll get it right, eh?

[anjenthedog]

Fact is we all get CTD every now and then. I get them perhaps once every few "play" nights. (play time per night ~2-3 hours real time). If you're CTDing more often than that, it's one thing, but if not, frankly, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Just make sure to manually save every now and then or do a cell transition so an autosave is triggered (to avoid losing progress)

 

 

in any case, dumping a load of mods simultaneously in a scramble to solve a problem isn't the "healthiest" way to attack error conditions. That's what's known as "Panicking" ;)