Running out of Ideas

[Dkboy24]

Hey all,

 

Honestly posting here was my last resort as I fully believe in finding the answers myself and the art of Googling. However I'm at a point where I am just utterly stuck.

 

I have been modding now and part of this community for about 7 years from Skyrim, Skyrim SE,and Fallout 4. I just recently bought a new computer with high end gear and I wanted to give Fallout 4 another play through.

 

Here is my hardware:

 

AMD Ryzen 9 3900 12-Core 3.09 GHz

32 GB RAM

2 TB SSD

RTX 2080 Ti 11GB

 

As you can see, I have a decent rig. So excited as I was, I wanted to kit out Fallout 4 with some sweet textures mods and an ENB and actually play at a decent frame rate.

 

I am not new to modding so I did all of the general work. Cleaned my masters using the FO4Edit Script. I am using Vortex to install but I do know how to set a load order when LOOT gets it wrong (Horizon is a good example). And of course I follow every install instruction I can and read each mod page description and sticky. I have made minimal .ini edits other than the mods that I have installed have instructed. I am really not even running that many plugins. I have 91 total plug ins and that includes the core master file and all of the DLC. (I'd post my load order but I have not yet found a way to simply export my load order and post it here). I have also set my VideoMemorySizeMb in ENBLocal.ini to 37000 mb.

 

So fast forward to getting the game running. I always do a test run to make sure the game is stable before I start to mod it. Got into the opening sequence where you run to the vault with your family annnnd....crash. I was floored. How could Fallout 4... a game that came out in 2015 possibly crash with my hardware? I must be a fluke right? So I fired her back up and sure enough... crash.

 

I nearly lost it. But... like a good modder I took to the internet once again to find out what the hell. Turns out the RTX 2000 series cards don't play nice with Fallout 4 and having "Weapon Debris" turned on. Great... love spending tons of cash on a top of the line rig to introduce more bugs. But I get it. This card did not exist 5 years ago so I'm not unreasonable to think newer hardware could introduce more bugs. This is a Bethesda title after all.

 

So I turned off weapon debris and that seemed to fix the issue. Got through the vault and back onto the surface with no problems. So I crack my knuckles and get to modding! Painstakingly reading each mod install instructions to hunt for little requirements or special instructions / conflicts. Checked sticky posts and installed them one at a time. Fired up the game to make sure I didn't blow it up and everything was looking good. Finally ended up installing the ENB to test my FPS and got it at a solid 45 FPS with lots of 2k textures, ultra graphics, and ENB. Needless to say I'm pretty happy with it!

 

I also run my mods through FO4Edit.. but I have to be honest. While I know how to apply a filter for conflicts and I get how I can tell conflict looser vs. winner... I really don't understand each edit of every record. Sometimes I see data overwritten by another mod and I think "Well... I'm assuming that is not game breaking?" But I don't know what magic lens I need to look through in order to figure out what is a normal conflict (I.e. Mod X does one thing and Mod Y does another and overwrites it) and what is a game breaking conflict. Most of my conflicts are to be expected (Horizon overwrites a lot of data as so patches which is what I would expect a conflict winner to do).

 

So I start a new game so I can venture once more into the wasteland. I'm playing Horizon so I do a lot of scavenging in the surrounding areas. I'm in the back near Vault 111 looking for scrap annnnnd..... you guessed it. Crash. *Sigh*. Well... any modded game is going to crash and I can handle them so long as they are sparingly. I fired her up and went out to Sunshine Tidings. Cleared it, worked my way back to my home base at Red Rocket and crash. Loaded again... and crash as soon as I get near Red Rocket.

 

Fast forward about 30 mins and lots of cursing. Crash. Crash. Crash. Over and over again. I cannot get anywhere near Red Rocket without crashing. I am at an utter loss now.

 

So here I am. With my hat in my hand asking the community. Because at this point, I'm pretty done with Fallout 4 which makes me super sad.

 

Thank you to all the community members for being awesome, even when I'm feeling defeated.

 

Cheers

[melvinius]

Hi! I don't have Fallout 4 but I do have a very heavily modded Skyrim SE build. My crash guide is here: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/34268

 

Same engine, for the most point the same CTD diagnosis procedures apply.

 

So with Skyrim SE you can get random CTDs in certain areas, like Falkreath, after cleaning your masters, even if you did it right. I probably would look through the guide to see if anything else there applies to you, but if you run out of ideas you could try reverting your master files back to the originals.

 

You can definitely have long, stable playthroughs without ever cleaning your masters. That process is just a little bit of extra grease on the wheels, so to speak, but if it's causing more instability than it's worth on your PC, better to do without the master file cleaning.

[Dkboy24]

Here is my load order (Sorry for any typos.. I manually typed all this out from my Vortext list! Yikes!)

 

 

Fallout4.esm
DLCRobot.esm
DLCworkshop01.esm
DLCCoast.esm
DLCworkshop02.esm
DLCworkshop03.esm
DLCNukaWorld.esm
Unoffical Fallout 4 Patch.esp
ArmorKeywords.esm
DDLL.esl
HUDFramework.esm
Z_Architect.esm
Quintessential Quarries.esl
Lucid's Texture Upgrade.esl
OVT.esp
SavrenXWeaponHD.esp
SavrenXBetterRobotHDLibertyPrime.esp
SavrenX HD DLC Armor and Clothes.esp
SavrenX HD Vanilla Armor.esp
SavrenXPropsAndJunk.esp
SavrenXSynthHD.esp
SavrenX SuperMutant Armor HD.esp
SavrenXHdDlcPowerArmor.esp
SavrenX HD Vanilla Clothes Optimized.esp
SavrenXHD1KBuildingAndInterior.esp
LooksMenu Customization Compendium.esp
LooksMenu.esp
KSHairdos.esp
The Eyes of Beauty.esp
PiperCaitCurieDialogueOverhaul.esp
cVc Dead Wasteland 6.esp
Revert and Ambiance Overhaul.esp
Vivid Weathers - FO4.esp
Vivid Weathers - Nuka World.esp
Vivid Weathers - Natural Bright.esp
Vivid Weathers - FO4 - Summer.esp
Vivid Weathers - FO4 - Far Harbor.esp
TheCompleteBallisticOverhaul.esp
WheelMenu.esp
Boston Natural Surroundings.esp
Enhanced Flickering Firelight.esp
Institute Patch for PRC.esp
Backpacks of the Commonwealth.esp
Vivid Waters.esp
CBBE.esp
Campsire.esp
Campsite-Full-Sleep.esp
LongerPowerLines3x.esp
EasyLockpicking.esp
Quieter Settlements - Contraptions.esp
Quieter Settlements - Vanilla.esp
Quieter Settlements - Wasteland Workshop.esp
BetterJunkFences.esp
EasyHacking.esp
def_inv_scrap_en.esp
Crows&Creatures_V1.esp
fo3friedghouls.esp
Quick Save.esp
CROSS_GoreCrits.esp
CROSS_GoreCrits_FarHarborPatch.esp
dD-Enhanced Blood Basic.esp
EAMR.esp
NMC Bundle MEDIUM.esp
ValiusHDTextures2K.esp
FlaconOil_BA2_2K_Part2.esp
DarkerNightsDetection.esp
DarkerNights.esp
DocDrumlin.esp
Vivid Fallout - All in One - Best Choice.esp
EnhancedLightsandFX.esp
Pip-Boy Flashlight.esp
Z_Horizon.esp
Patch - Horizon - CROSS Crits Gore-verhaul.esp
Kim_Horizon_BPOC.esp
Z_Horizon_Loot_Respawn.esp
Z_Horizon_Loot_Respawn_DLC.esp
Z_Horizon_DLC_All.esp
Horizon Power Armor Overhaul Scaling.esp
Z_Architect_EnhancedSettlements.esp
Horizon Power Armor Overhaul.esp
Z_Architect_EnhancedSettlements_DLC.esp
Z_Architect_HomePlate.esp
Horizon Power Armor Overhaul Rarity.esp
Horizon Power Armor Overhaul Brotherhood.esp
CROSS_CoA.esp
Z_Horizon_Campsite.esp
AVBGuns.esp
Z_Extras.esp
Z_Horizon_WeaponPack01.esp
Z_Architect_Extras.esp
Z_Horizon_DEFUI.esp
Z_Horizon_Desolation.esp

 

[Dkboy24]

@Melvinius,

 

Thanks for your advice! I always thought cleaning masters were essential for a modded play through and I don't know if I ever have played without them cleaned? I'll definitely give your guide a read through.

[bbiller]

I would be looking at that memory edit. Now granted my Fallout 4 has a lot more mods than yours and I'm running a new video card with a lot on medium and I haven't tuned things for the new video card I'm using (going from MSI Lightning 2 Radeon 6970 2Gb video ram to an MSI Armor OC RX580 8Gb of video ram), but I never touched that memory setting. Last time I ran a check on things all was working just fine no crashes, though I was only around level 40 I think and still early in the story. I am running enough mods and have some more to throw in that I'm checking what can be combined or turned into an esl or a pseudo esl through the flag to free slots (lot of work to do there).

 

Hope that helps.

[Dkboy24]

@bbiller

 

Thank you for your input! You know, I have to admit, there is a TON of resources and posts out there related to setting that VideoMemorySizeMb in ENBLocal.ini, I did find a STEP guide here about setting this value. I downloaded and ran the ENB Vramsize test (DX9) and it gave me a value of 27,392. According to the STEP guide I should deduct 350 from this value so I'll try setting that .ini setting to 27,042 and see if that has any impact.

 

Edit: I also found a new .ini setting called AutodetectVideoMemorySize which I can set to true. Sounds like that might be a better solution.

[Dkboy24]

*Update*

So I think I made some progress here. I was able to replicate the crash consistently which is pretty exciting (Considering it is much harder to chase a seemingly random crash). Now the game is crashing every time I approach the Red Rocket station by Sanctuary. When I approach from Concord right past the dead Brahmin with the two blood bugs eating it, I crash.

 

So I did the process of disabling groups of mods to find the culprit. It wasn't until I disabled Horizon and its related addons that I was able to get to the station without issue.

 

I then fired up FO4Edit and looked for any mods that Horizon might be conflicting with and found the only mod to be "Horizon Power Armor Overhaul - BoS - Rarity - Scaling". To be clear not saying anything is wrong with the mod itself, only that it seems to conflict with Horizon's latest version 1.8 as this mod has not yet been updated.

 

I did disable it and I am still getting crashes in the same spot with Horizon installed... but my gut is telling me there might be a conflict baked into my save file that is creating this crash.

 

So I feel like I just need to start another game (*sigh*) without the power armor mod installed and see if I'm getting crashes again. Just such a bummer as I feel like my mod list is fairly light weight and have taken great strides and spent many hours getting everything to work in harmony. I don't mind a crash here and there, but I live in this constant state of paranoia that at any moment my game is going to crash so I just quick save constantly which sucks, but it sucks more to lose progress.

[bbiller]

Lost my pile I was going to put in, but I saw that Institute patch for PRC (Photo Realistic Commonwealth) and so quick digging says there are two patches for that you need in addition to the main enb tools (enb tools not posted to nexus, author forbid for some reason). That could also cause some of your crashing and I will say nice as Horizon might be, it's been a known cause for crash issues.

[Dkboy24]

@bbiller

 

You know that is a good point. In fact I was testing a few ENB's that pair with Vivid Weathers and I believe one of them required me to install just the Institute Patch for PRC. However, I decided on using Pure Atmosphere ENB and after re-reading the mod page, I don't see the requirement for the PRC patch listed anywhere so that could have come from a previous ENB requirement. I suppose I could just strip it out as I am no where near getting to the Institute, then tackle it if it becomes an issue once I actually get into the institute.

 

Good lead. Thank you!

[MightyMonte88]

Hey man i see one thing wrong with your mod setup, and although this can't possible be your problem (if it is i'd be floored), but i was told by other modders you don't actually need LooksMenu.esp with LooksMenu Customization Compendium.esp, i only run looksmenu customization compendium. I hope that somehow this helps, i had just as frustrating of a process recently, had to reinstall fallout 4 twice to figure out the mod Beantown interiors was causing random CTDs in concord and CTDs on loading save files. Good luck man i hope you figure it out!