Occasional CTD/freeze, general questions

[bofadeez]

So I'm pretty new to modding. About a month ago, I started checking out some lighting mods "just for the heck of it," and descended fully into mod-mania. I was quickly looking at a load order of over 100 mods; basically anything that even sort of sounded kinda cool, I installed. Completely unaware of what installing/uninstalling mods does to your save game, I went balls out, adding and removing mods, and wound up with several unplayable characters.

 

Did some reading, realized I was doing it rong, so I did a clean re-install of Skyrim, then went through my mod list and trimmed it down. Discovered BOSS, and learned how to use TES5Edit and Wrye Bash for the most basic of purposes. I'm now enjoying a reasonably stable game with ~50 mods and ~65 .esp files. However it is not completely stable. I just had a 4-day weekend that I pretty much spent the entirety of playing my modded Skyrim, probably around 50 hours, and I crashed/froze maybe ten times total. I can definitely live with that. I can deal with some instability, as long as it's not so bad that I'm constantly waiting for the next crash. But instability is a real immersion-killer, so anything I can do to improve it, I want to try. My save game is 10MB, at ~50 hours.

 

So first of all, a general question. When playing a heavily-modded Skyrim, is complete stability even possible? Or do you just have to accept the occasional crash if you're playing with mods? It's been months now since I played vanilla Skyrim, but I don't remember it crashing any more than any other game, and I definitely know I never played vanilla in the "gee, I wonder when it's gonna crash again" mindset.

 

Now, let me describe the issues I have in greater detail. There are three distinct symptoms that I experience which may or may not be manifestations of the same problem.

 

1. Unceremonious CTD. I'm playing, and then bam, desktop. Before my reinstall, these were really, really bad. Now they are quite rare, and seem to occur less "randomly," though I can't really give a description of when they happen. The few that I remember from over the weekend are: picking a locked chest - successfully pick the lock, the chest opens, and right as it should bring up the contents, CTD. another occurred in Whiterun, shortly after entering the city. I use Open Cities.

 

2. What I call a "blackout" : graphics freeze, sound continues, after about 5 seconds of frozen image, screen goes black for 2-3 seconds, then the game resumes normally. This seems especially likely to happen while I am looking at perks in the skill menu, specifically when moving around in the skill trees.

 

3. Hard graphical freeze : graphics freeze, sound continues, game doesn't recover, have to end task. This seems especially likely to happen when I am riding my horse in the world, and particularly when sprinting away from hostile NPCs (on horse) and/or sprinting in the vicinity of a city (on horse). It's interesting to note that the horseback-freezing has probably been my most prevalent problem, and every time I can remember it happening was while sprinting. I pretty much don't sprint on my horse now. This does occur on foot as well, but much less commonly than on horseback.

 

So here is my BOSS log. Note that there are some inactive mods, such as RCRN and the official HD texture pack. Cleaned & Bashed.

 

 

These plugins are recognised by BOSS and have been sorted according to its masterlist. Please read any attached messages and act on any that require action.

 

Skyrim.esm Active

Update.esm Active

Dawnguard.esm Active

Bash Tag suggestion(s): {{BASH: Delev, Relev}}

HearthFires.esm Active

ClimatesOfTamriel.esm Active

Lanterns Of Skyrim - All In One - Main.esm Active

SPIKE.esm Active

HighResTexturePack01.esp

HighResTexturePack02.esp

Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp Active

Bash Tag suggestion(s): {{BASH: Delev, Relev}}

Unofficial Dawnguard Patch.esp Active

Bash Tag suggestion(s): {{BASH: Delev, Relev}}

Unofficial Hearthfire Patch.esp Active

Chesko_Frostfall.esp Active

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Illuminated Spells.esp Active

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Dungeons.esp Active

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Minor Cities & Town Interiors.esp Active

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Major City Interiors.esp Active

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - 3.5 Weathers.esp

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - 3.5 Dawnguard Weathers.esp Active

ClimatesOfTamriel-Dawnguard-Patch.esp Active

Del_ConditionalCombatMusic.esp Active

StaticMeshImprovementMod.esp Active

Chesko_WearableLantern.esp Active

Lanterns Of Skyrim - All In One - RCRN Pure.esp Active

Note: Use only one Lanterns Of Skyrim - All In One esp.

Convenient Horses.esp Active

DYNAVISION Dynamic Depth of Field.esp Active

Note: Make sure you have not switched DoF off in your ini file. If you don't see any effect, open you Skyrimprefs.ini and look for 'bDoDepthOfField'. Make sure it is set to 1.

Footprints.esp Active

WetandCold.esp Active

SkyUI.esp Active

Cloaks.esp Active

hothtrooper44_ArmorCompilation.esp Active

Bash Tag suggestion(s): {{BASH: Delev, Relev}}

StorageHelpers.esp Active

Dr_Bandolier.esp Active

Run For Your Lives.esp Active

BardSingOnRequestOnly.esp Active

Guard Dialogue Overhaul.esp Active

Headtracking.esp Active

Immersive Weapons.esp Active

Bash Tag suggestion(s): {{BASH: Delev}}

nosalt.esp

SameWalkRunSpeeds.esp Active

UnreadBooksGlow.esp Active

VariousGuardReplacer.esp Active

RealisticRoomRental.esp Active

RRR_Hearthfire-Patch.esp Active

Open Cities Skyrim.esp Active

dD - Realistic Ragdoll Force - Realistic.esp Active

Note: Ragdolls will conflict with other mods that change the skeleton.nif. Check Custom Skeleton Replacers for compatibly with other skeleton.nif.

RealisticNeedsandDiseases.esp Active

Requires: RND_USKP-Patch.esp

RND_Dawnguard-Patch.esp Active

RND_HearthFires-Patch.esp Active

SkyRealism - Capacity and Carry Weight.esp Active

Note: Use the Dawnguard compatible version please.

Requires: Bandolier - Bags and Pouches

Requires: Leather Backpack. Install only the black, brown and original varients. Also be sure to choose "Regular" for all install options.

SkyRealism - Encumbrance.esp Active

SkyrimSpeeds.esp Active

SkyRe_Main.esp Active

Bash Tag suggestion(s): {{BASH: Relev, Delev}}

Warning: The SkyRe has many conflicts with other mods. Please read the readme before playing with mod. This will prevent many problems. Read it here.

Note: If lockpicikng is not work then try to delete 'interface\lockpickingmenu.swf'

Note: If you have a problem with aiming try to install this mod.

Note: To make aiming easier, recommend to add the following lines to Skyrim.ini:

Note: [Actor]

Note: fVisibleNavmeshMoveDist=12288.0000

Note: [Combat]

Note: f1PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.64

Note: f3PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.64

Note: fMagnetismStrafeHeadingMult=0.0

Note: fMagnetismLookingMult=0.0

SkyRe_Combat.esp Active

SkyRe_EncounterZones.esp Active

SkyRe_EnemyAI.esp Active

SkyRe_EnemyScaling.esp Active

Bash Tag suggestion(s): {{BASH: Relev}}

SkyRe_StandingStones.esp Active

SkyRe_Survivalism.esp Active

dD-No Spinning Death Animation.esp Active

UFO - Ultimate Follower Overhaul.esp Active

Note: For safe install need dismiss all your followers, save, delete all included mods, load again, save and install UFO. For safe uninstall or update see special instructions on mod page.

UFO - Dawnguard AddOn.esp Active

UFO - Heartfire AddOn.esp Active

Reduced Distance NPC Greetings.esp Active

Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp Active

SkyRe_Races.esp Active

rcrnShaders.esp

Note: Make sure you have bEnableFileSelection=1 in SkyrimPrefs.ini under [Launcher].

RCRNvolumetric.esp

Bashed Patch, 0.esp Active

ReProccer.esp Active

 

 

I welcome any suggestions or comments from anyone more knowledgeable than I. Again, I'm not looking at an unplayable game. I'm having fun, lots of fun, it's just interrupted once every few hours by problems that I didn't encounter until I started using mods.

 

Thanks!

[ripple]

So first of all, a general question. When playing a heavily-modded Skyrim, is complete stability even possible?

 

That's not possible even with vanilla Skyrim, so....

 

I am running around 150 plugins, 5 CTDs in the last month (one was during testing of a mod to see if it will destabilize my load order). But I don't use any mods that make drastic modifications to the worldspace, and I keep my script mods to a minimum. I also make my own compatibility patches using TE5Edit. If you are using mods like Open Cities and multiple mods with continually updating scripts like Wet n' Cold, Footprints, Frostfall, etc., you're going to have to expect a less stable game than vanilla.

 

If any of your issues can be reproduced (or at least happens frequently enough to constitute a 'pattern', like the horseback issue), then maybe it's worth looking into by checking out your plugins in TES5Edit.

 

In spite of Bethesda's denials, the Creation Engine has some serious memory leak problems. One thing you can try is purging cell buffers every once in a while. This has helped to mitigate CTD issues in my game. I've got an AutoHotKey script set up so I don't have to pull up the console and type PCB every time I want to do it. You should do it infrequently though (I generally do it after 4 or 5 cell transitions or more), as it has been reported to break quest scripts and 'scenes.'