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Cannot Find a way to get overhaul mods to be stable.

PutridPestilence666
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PutridPestilence666 Apprentice

PutridPestilence666

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Almost ever single time I download an overhaul mod I get about half way through a playthrough and find broken quests, missing textures or start getting ctds. I have had so many characters that I just had to delete due to this. It could be that I have to many mods or something. Or the wrong combination of mods. But either way I was just curious if there is any advice anyone could give. Because I would like to use these overhauls, its just that it always seems that sooner or later my game ends up crashing or a quest is broken. If not than that is fine too. I think I will just delete everything and do a much simpler mod list at this point so I can actually PLAY the game. I have spent so much time downloading mods and trying to fix them I might as well not even be playing.

 

Here is the load order that is causing issues.

 

 

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And I will also attatch a couple of message logger files from the save that keeps crashing.

 

 

 

 

 

Hopefully there is something I am missing or I just need to cut back on some mods.

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Striker879 Grand Master

Striker879

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I have a rule of thumb that has served me well ... just because something has "better" or "improved" in the title doesn't mean anything. I look carefully through a mod's comments. If I see stuff that I know the root cause of and know how to avoid/fix that then maybe I'll give it a trial (and that never happens on my character's game saves ... that's what testing saves are for). If the mod has a heap of comments regarding problems that are either above my pay grade to understand or I know are difficult to avoid/fix ... well the browser Back button was invented for a reason you know.

 

For a point of reference for you ... my current character's first save was made on Nov 4 2014 after 14 minutes of gameplay. He is currently at over 4900 hours gametime. Only in the last four or five hundred hours have I run into a problem that I haven't found a solution to (yet).

 

One further caveat ... his load order is still largely exactly the same as that first save. There have been a few additions (thoroughly tested before they were committed to his save line) and a single mod deactivated (but that is a requirement of the old alt start mod I use to start the main quest, so that was expected).

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HadToRegister Grand Master

HadToRegister

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  On 5/17/2020 at 4:30 PM, Striker879 said:

I have a rule of thumb that has served me well ... just because something has "better" or "improved" in the title doesn't mean anything. I look carefully through a mod's comments. If I see stuff that I know the root cause of and know how to avoid/fix that then maybe I'll give it a trial (and that never happens on my character's game saves ... that's what testing saves are for). If the mod has a heap of comments regarding problems that are either above my pay grade to understand or I know are difficult to avoid/fix ... well the browser Back button was invented for a reason you know.

 

For a point of reference for you ... my current character's first save was made on Nov 4 2014 after 14 minutes of gameplay. He is currently at over 4900 hours gametime. Only in the last four or five hundred hours have I run into a problem that I haven't found a solution to (yet).

 

One further caveat ... his load order is still largely exactly the same as that first save. There have been a few additions (thoroughly tested before they were committed to his save line) and a single mod deactivated (but that is a requirement of the old alt start mod I use to start the main quest, so that was expected).

 

 

^ Sage advice right there.

 

I'll also add, when I'm considering a mod, I immediately look at the BUGS tab (If there is one), if it's a large number, like 32+ I first check to see if the bugs have a FIXED status or BEING LOOKED AT status, and I also try to determine how much of those bugs are just PEBCACK vs BUGS, also, I note the dates of the BEING LOOKED AT entries as well, if it's over a tear or two, that pretty much means the mod has probably been abandonded

 

After that, I read any stickies, the description, but mostly as Striker879 said, I read through several pages of the posts to see if there's a recurring theme of everybody having the same exact problems etc.

If there is, then I look elsewhere.

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PutridPestilence666 Apprentice

PutridPestilence666

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I guess I'll just test this load order as much as possible and then start from scratch if the problem is something I cannot fix. Thanks for the advice.

 

[Edit:] Well I made a test save and now I am just confused. I thought at first because it was not crashing that the modded Xivilai race I was using could have been the issue but then I made a second test save with the Xivilai and did not get any crashes there either. I played on 2 test saves for around 20 minutes each so that is about 40 minutes of play time with no crashes. It almost seems like there is a specific item/enemy that is causing the game to crash or my save to crash. I really don't want to delete my modlist and start from scratch. But that seems like it is the only way to get around this.

Edited by PutridPestilence666
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Striker879 Grand Master

Striker879

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My routine when setting up a load order is a rather long drawn out affair, in part because of the type of mods I prefer (ones that change aspects of how the game plays, and those have INI settings that can be adjusted, both to your preference and for compatibility with other mods). I probably spent close to 100 hours testing and adjusting Basic Primary Needs, Basic Physical Actvities, Realistic Fatigue and NPCs Yield Refined over the course of days (which was closer to a week or more). Granted most of those test sessions would appear to be just me playing to an outside observer, but all of those saves are not part of my guy's save line (though I do have some of them backed up in case I want to use them for troubleshooting or further testing). I wouldn't consider anything less than an hour session (preferably two) for stability testing.

 

The result of all that upfront work is I have a very good understanding of what each mod brings to the game, how it affects gameplay and what (if any) impact it has on stability ... sort of a you get out what you put in situation.

 

- Edit - I should add ... each of those mods were first tested individually, and INI settings rough tuned before the combined testing and tuning even started. Perhaps a long drawn out process would better describe it.

Edited by Striker879
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SpiderAkira Enthusiast

SpiderAkira

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Seems like your save is suffering from many missing scripts. That could be a likely culprit in your general instability of the game. Every time you load the game it's looking for those scripts and whenever an event requiring them triggers, it will CTD.

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PutridPestilence666 Apprentice

PutridPestilence666

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  On 5/29/2020 at 3:54 AM, SpiderAkiraC said:

Seems like your save is suffering from many missing scripts. That could be a likely culprit in your general instability of the game. Every time you load the game it's looking for those scripts and whenever an event requiring them triggers, it will CTD.

I think you are right on the money. Because this same mod list would crash every single time I even entered a city when I tried to use Unnecessary violence 3 with it. I guess I'll just have to pick and choose what to use with Oblivion. Right now I am working on a similar sized mod list but with out OOO, BeterCities or Unique Landscapes and I am getting a lot less crashes it seems. I've only messed with this loadout for a few hours but it does not seem to crash when I level my character up like it did with my first load out. Hopefully I will actually be able to play this one. Here it is if you're curious.

 

 

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bobbyskel78 Collaborator

bobbyskel78

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it appears you already are using a mod organizer, i use both LOOT and BOSS. if you decide to reload from the start, be sure to save that list to a txt document and load in order from top to bottom. I always include the unofficial patches as a mod as well, oblivion, si, dlcs and look at what each mod is over-writing if conflicts are detected. From there, it's usually a logical decision on which one should take precedence. it's understandable that nexus wants authors to add some compression to their mods to save bandwidth, yet i don't need to save hard drive space, so i always extract the files and recompress it at 'store' compression. it saves a little bit of time in a total reinstall.

many mods just aren't compatible, this should be noted in the description of the mod. some mods are archived into some compressed format ... a requirement of nexus, but the author failed to create a proper directory structure. so don't just blindly add archives, look at the structure and make sure they're getting placed where they should be. i often un-zip the archive, correct the structure if necessary, clean the esp w/ TES4Edit, throw the cleaned esp back into my extracted archive, add patches or fixes over the top of that directory, and then re-rinse and repeat if necessary. leaving myself with a ready to install archive. qarls redimized max + patch was one that saved me a great deal of time in looking at conflicts, as it was writing over the unofficials and the less redimized.

most overhaul mods usually have a number of patches available, MOO is the only one i can think of that doesn't. the patches are normally available on the main mods page, if it's still active, otherwise other authors usually jump in and offer a fix.

some mods aren't sorted as they have no script attached. the main ones that i've personally had problems w/ is UI mods. every time i deactivate it, i have to deactivate every mod that makes changes to the UI and reinstall all starting with the master first then the mods that make changes allowing them to write over any conflicts.

their are a couple of mod/plug-ins that sometimes come in handy. the obse log can be useful. messagelogger also is good at detecting some errors. conscribe is also useful. in some instances messagelogger would throw an infinite amount of errors on the same instance before leading to a freeze or ctd. often i can't find a fix/patch for the problem, as it's usually an older or foreign quest mod. using the CS and correcting/removing a non-essential bypasses the problem, otherwise i abandon it and post the problem to the mod's forum, so others can either try to fix it or not corrupt ones save game.

i guess as a final note, some mods specifically state that any mods that alter the same thing ... cosmetics, race, etc ... will usually conflict and possibly lead to a ctd. Gecko sometimes can be used to merge such files, such as cosmetics, you just need to set which one has priority. so for example, your using a playable race of the xivilia, many cosmetic mods already come packaged w/ custom races ... xivilia may be one of them.

as a final note, read the comments section. some of the older and abandoned mods are known to be hazardous to your games health and even with a deactivate may still potentially corrupt your save game. use the console for saving the game prior to installing questionable mods, ie. save Lvl1StartClean.

i might be repeating what's already been stated, but this is the MO in reference to modding.

Edited by bobbyskel78
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beldaran1224 Collaborator

beldaran1224

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I second the idea of a personal "archive" of mods that have been repackaged, cleaned, etc. For myself, I have an external drive with a huge archive of Oblivion mods, including my repackages of them. I recommend repackaging for Wrye Bash, as MO2 recognizes the structure and it provides a sort of built-in guide to the mod's options. Package the fixes with the base mod, or put them in a folder together in your archives (I do this for OCO related mods), so you can easily find patches, fixes, etc. Create unofficial readmes for things that don't have it.

 

As for your specific mod list, you have a lot of mods which are just...heavy hitters. Some mods are worth figuring out the crashes, working your mod list around them, etc. That's up to you. But you can't really dump mods like Better Cities, UL and OOO in and just expect it to work with whatever.

 

Also, I note the presence of Add Actor Values_examples. This is not an actual mod and should be removed. An example of the importance of not simply dumping mods into a mod manager and installing. Read the readmes.

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HadToRegister Grand Master

HadToRegister

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  On 6/13/2020 at 7:43 AM, beldaran1224 said:

I second the idea of a personal "archive" of mods that have been repackaged, cleaned, etc. For myself, I have an external drive with a huge archive of Oblivion mods, including my repackages of them. I recommend repackaging for Wrye Bash, as MO2 recognizes the structure and it provides a sort of built-in guide to the mod's options. Package the fixes with the base mod, or put them in a folder together in your archives (I do this for OCO related mods), so you can easily find patches, fixes, etc. Create unofficial readmes for things that don't have it.

 

As for your specific mod list, you have a lot of mods which are just...heavy hitters. Some mods are worth figuring out the crashes, working your mod list around them, etc. That's up to you. But you can't really dump mods like Better Cities, UL and OOO in and just expect it to work with whatever.

 

Also, I note the presence of Add Actor Values_examples. This is not an actual mod and should be removed. An example of the importance of not simply dumping mods into a mod manager and installing. Read the readmes.

 

 

I have done this with Oblivion, in order to be able to install Oblivion Mods with Vortex.

I even wrote an article about it. It took me about a week of prep, but in the end, I think it was worth it.

 

Vortex and Oblivion, an experiment

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