Skyrim LE, crash/freezing in Solstheim.

[HeyYou]

Been playing for a while, and finally went to Solstheim. Trouble is, the game freezes FREQUENTLY when wandering around outside. I have been able to travel east along the southern coast, but, as soon as I try and head north, the game freezes. Kinda random just how far I get before if freezes, sometimes I can make it for five whole minutes, other times, I take a few steps, and I'm done.... I have no changed anything in my load order, and I don't have any mods that specifically target anything in Solstheim. The game runs just fine in skyrim. No crashes/freezes at all.

 

So far, I have tried resetting UGridsToLoad back to 5, used Fallrim tools to clean out any orphaned scripts, use some other editor to remove all mention of MG07 quest, and none of it has made any difference at all. I am running enb, with just the memory fixes, also SKSE, and it's memory fixes. (is this redundant?)

 

Hardware:

i7 9700KF @ 3.6ghz.

8gb system Ram.

GTX 1060 ftw 6gb.

Win 10 Pro 64 bit.

 

Game is installed on a 500gb solid state drive, separate from the drive the O/S is installed on. (so, definitely NOT in the program files folder. :) )

 

I can't find any other solutions for this particular problem..... and it makes the game unplayable in solstheim..... I am open to any and all suggestions.

[MFitz56]

Are you using any mods that modify the flora or fauna (including NPCs) of Solstheim? If so, disable them and see if your problem resolves.

[HeyYou]

Yeah, using Harvest Flora/Fauna overhaul.... I'll give that a shot, thank you. :)

[Gorgopis]

After years of playing SR LE offline, we also encountered this exact issue December of last year, moving north on Solstheim along the East Coast. We suspected conflicting texture-issues.

 

It improved after we disabled and re-enabled Climates of Tamriel (CoT). We still got flickering and occasional purple textures. This kind of issue, to our minds, seems to occur when you don't visit STEAM, and play online, but if you're playing online, then our argument is meaningless.

 

We got the best results, though, after we logged on to STEAM, verified the local cache, started the game on STEAM, set our video quality, and played for a few minutes and saved. We have a PC rig very similar to yours.

 

Then we went offline again. We loaded the last working Solstheim saved-game, and used the "console, pcb, save, player.kill, save-game method". Disturbing to kill your character, but revives, at the same spot.

 

Now Solstheim worked? It's been stable ever since, and CoT is enabled. We have no flora-fauna mods installed.

 

But we have a boatload of custom-textured NPC followers (9), with custom-armor, plus four thralls. Hope this helps.

[HeyYou]

Not using climates of Tamriel..... In fact, not using and graphics mods at all...... :)

[Ondrea]

I found this old post where a couple people had the same issue due to having changed their UGridsToLoad. Not sure if you found this already in your searches, but someone mentioned "In order to lower your uGrids, first you need to change them to value that you used in the save (for example 7 or w/e you had), then load the save, go to an interior, edit Skyrim.ini and change uGridsToLoad=5, and then type "refreshini" in the console." A few other suggestions in that post. Also, could the freeze possibly be happening during an auto-save, so try disabling auto-saves completely? Any other ini edits you've made, and if so, use the vanilla settings (especially if any Papyrus changes). I assume, but just checking, you're using the unofficial patches.

[HeyYou]

Yup. Been thru the whole UGrids thing as well. Thanks for the thought though. :) I don't use autosaves at all either.

 

I think the only ini edit I use, aside from enabling mods..... is for arrow projectile reach. (got tired of watching my arrows pass right thru the target, and not do any damage at all.)

 

Yep, got the unofficial patches.

[Gorgopis]

We finally remembered what we did to fix it when it happened to us. Sorry about the wall of text below!

Solstheim Workaround

Suggested:

1) Look up on the UESP wiki and find the coc (developers' code) for the nearest location in Solstheim where your game crashes.

2) Load an early save, from before your character's arrival to Solstheim. We recall once loading a Helgen Keep Unbound save to work this.

3) In game, in that early save, use that console code to move your earlier character to your desired location.

4) Navigate your character along the route you'd like to go. See if it works. If the route now works, may be good news. If it doesn't, try 6b) below.

5) While in that same game-load, open up the SR Save-Load Menu, and now load the save where you keep crashing when traveling north.

6a) You face two in-game options at this moment, 6a) and 6b). You can travel north, to see if your game crashes. This is frustrating, but suggests strongly that there is some object or reference corruption within your conflicted Solstheim save.

If your game doesn't crash, the steps 2-5 above cleared references during the location-load process. (Our theory.)

6b) Before traveling north, in game, in the conflicted save, use our console method, as follows: Use 'pcb' to purge cells buffers. Exit console. Save your game at that spot, without moving.

Go into console again. type player.kill + enter. Exit console. Your character dies. Ouch. Skryim should wipe out all unnecessary references held in the earlier save, and give you a fresh location-slate.

When your character resurrects on screen, wait for all sound efx to quit, then save again, if you run an audio mod. You should be good to go. This was what worked for us.

TESTING. If none of the above works.

7) From in game at your conflicted save, see if you fast-travel go back to Windhelm. If that's broken, too, you can find on these forums remedies for the notorious Solstheim-Windhelm, or vice-versa, broken fast-travel issue.

These remedies, (which we did not need, but have seen), seem to reset Solstheim so you can travel.

8) Another tip, is to try the console, when in your conflicted game save, to see if you can coc-travel to a location more north of where your character crashes, say coc to Bekongerike.

If you can't, then your Solstheim references are broken in your game save. A save-cleaner might help you, though we had inconsistent success with the save-cleaner we found at the Nexus.

GL!

[HeyYou]

Ok, better late than never I suppose..... But, disabling Harvest Overhaul solved the issue. I can wander around solstheim with no trouble at all with it turned off.