Beyond Reach: CTD on Mortifayne/Merosa confrontation outside gate

[anjenthedog]

Hi,

 

First off, if you haven't played this mod, warning, a spoiler is here due to the nature of the issue.

 

I've been playing through Beyond reach. Fun times. Anyway. all was well until I got to the point where Merosa tells off Mortevayne Mortifayne outside the gate of Evermore. His "response" sets off a CTD when his spell lands (some sort of glowy red spell, but I don't get to see what it does due to the CTD, so I'm not sure...although in one iteration I saw a bit of blood spit out her mouth before CTD)

 

After the third or fourth time trying to makke it through (flipping bits in Nioverride to see if I could fix it), from watching when it happens, it became clear that there's some sort of "water ripple" effect being used (like a shock wave) which is (coincidentally?) spiking my video encoding and then, bam, game goes down.

 

 

I googled it, and in one post someone mentioned that she's supposed to be decaptitated, so I disabled face overlays, player and NPC, or NPC alone doesn't seem to be the issue. (But I could be doing this wrong)

 

 

I also disabled NPC blushes in BWA.

 

Does anyone happen to know how I can step over that scene? I get the *idea of setstage and so forth, but I don't know the specifics for this mod and that questline. I'd rather "get on with it" if I can, and frog-jumping it might do the trick.

 

Everything else has worked very well. just this one scene, reminiscent (the ctd) of the lightning spell crashes last year...

 

thanks

[anjenthedog]

Bump...

 

Ok, so I've now confirmed it's not decapitation. (I just decapitated someone in another area of the reach well away from the cell which triggers the scene continuation)

 

I've also confirmed I can't get around it by going back several saves. Can't fast travel to another location and walk back to the gate overland (vs cell change by opening the gate at evermore to the scene) becuase the scene still triggers and the CTD still occurs (I thought maybe it might be caused by a glitch due to the cell transition at the gate)

 

3rd person or first, problem is still in evidence. Being naked or clothed doesn't make a difference.

 

I tried disabling RLO, thinking it might be some clash there. Nope.

 

I also tried running away far enough I couldn't see the scene playing out (jsut heard the dialogue). Still fails.

 

Tried looking at the ground. Still CTDs.

 

So far I've tried to make the scene playout without CTD about 3 or 4 dozen times using various ini changes, mod suspensions, and so forth. Always the same. Mortevayne launches his spell, it hits Merosa, a shock wave washes my screen (visible via the water ripple/concussion distortion visual), and the game immediately CTDs.

 

How about this one which maybe someone *can answer (and which would at least allow me some new avenue to chase the issue)

 

Which spell does Mortevayne use? it's red in color, and it launches like a projectile (vs a constant like sparks, frost, flame, or a vampire health sucker spell) but otherwise I'm clueless as to what he used.

[saurusmaximus]

I don't have this mod installed, so I'm just spitballing here but...

 

Load the mod in TESEdit. On the left, expand the header for NPCs and find Mortevayne. On the right, you should be able to scroll down and find all of the spells he knows. Make a note of any that aren't vanilla (Ice Spike, Fireball, etc) and try using the player.addspell command to give yourself each one and see if they cause a crash. If you figure out which one it is, and it is in fact crashing your game, the tricky part will then be figuring out what to do to fix it. There is also a chance that his casting that spell is a scripted event and he doesn't actually cast a 'spell', in which case this won't work.

 

Another way to go at this is to scroll a bit farther down in TESEdit to "Quest", expand that, and find the quest you are having trouble with. Make a note of the Editor Id for the quest, then scroll down to the Stages sub-header on the right. If there are any log entries associated with the quest stages, you will be able to see those and figure out what stage you are on and which one comes next. Otherwise, you can go in-game, use the SQS command to figure out what stage you are on, and then use the setstage command to advance it manually.

 

Good luck!

[anjenthedog]

Thanks dude. Good advise, and you spelled out the "how" of it all. Nice primer.

 

Much appreciated saurusmaximus

 

-------------

Update:

 

Turns out

 

a) he knows no spells.

b) the quest id for "The worst is Yet to come" is 04021B39 (editor id "arnimamainquest7")

 

So even though there's no spell I can counter, at least there's a possibility I can leap-frog the ctd event via setstage...

 

 

If anyone else experiences this in the future

 

showqueststages arnimamainquest7

Stage 0: 1

Stage 10: 1

Stage 20: 1

Stage 30: 1

Stage 35: 0 << Mortifayne is about to launch his spell.

Stage 37: 0

Stage 40: 0

Stage 50: 0

Stage 60: 0

Stage 70: 0

 

setstage arnimamainquest7 35

 

IFF she's not dead...

 

go outside to where Merosa is and kill her (via console, the manipulator, etc), because she's supposed to die in the overridden quest stage

 

and then everything progresses properly.

 

Thanks again Saurusmaximus.

 

edit: for some other unlucky git's future reference:

 

[saurusmaximus]

You're welcome, glad you got it working.