How can I troubleshoot a crash?

[SeraVerte]

Aside from papyrus logs, how can I determine why the game crashes? How do I know if a mod or script is responsible? If there's a problematic mesh, how do I know what it is?

 

Game will suddenly crash to desktop. Usually never at the same spot.

 

Gpu has 10GB and vram usage appears to hover around 8 Gb.

 

Have optimized textures and meshes.

[anjenthedog]

well, if you're a Skyrim savvy code jockey, you can refer to the netscript framework crash logs located at /Steam/steamapps/common/Skyrim Special Edition/Data/NetScriptFramework/Crash for some information

 

Otherwise, (for most of us... I've coded for decades in a variety of languages, but tbh, although the crash logs include quite a bit of info, these crash logs don't usually provide a great deal of useful info to me because my experience with Skyrim is only skin deep as a "simple" player) it's a matter of considering when the crashes began (did you recently install a new mod and now things have changed for the worst?) , ask yourself "Am I staying out in the wild for too long without performing a save and reload?", "Is there some general similarity (perhaps lighting magic is involved, or some other magic, or some encounter with some beasty, etc) to the conditions under which these crashes occur?", and similar questions.

[SeraVerte]

Hah, I think we can rule out save bugs as I usually just boot up the game (with a new character) to test out new mods.

[anjenthedog]

Well then, it's time to start uninstalling mods. (still in reverse order of installation ideally). Yep a draconian solution, but that's what most of us end up having to do when a problem isn't "self evident".

 

Best wishes

 

PS> I can't speak for all SE players, but I've grown accustomed to a certain number of CTDs due to "random" glitches, and exceeding my graphics memory limits (only a 6G card), the latter of which is one of the most common reasons for my own CTDs.