Mofakin, your are partially correct about RWS potentially not being the cause, but, considering the fact that many mods are loaded as well it is entirely possible that it conflicts with a number of other mods. After uninstalling RWS my CTDs have also decreased, and this has been verified by several people. Its a great mod, but is suspect it does not play nice when many other mods are loaded. Its a bit of a fallacy to base the stability of RWS on your own experience with it /smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> If you look at the comments of RWS you will also see post regarding CTDs with the mod, especially in conjunction with other wildlife mods such as SkyTEST. The rest of your reasoning and advice is excellent though.

It is possible to clean, and therefore uncorrupt your savegame, as long as you can load it. Its not guaranteed to work, but usually does. Follow these instructions; http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Troubleshooting#tab=Mods_and_Savegames.

Correction: Specially in conjunction with absolutely no other wildlife mod, but SkyTEST. People should really stop spreading wrong information to revalue their jewel. In fact it's is so bugged up the ****, it's probably the source for all of the OP's problems. Cleaning Plugin anyone? At least he should have the decency to stop permanently making other plugins responsible for the mess he has created.

There are no tools available for large scale cleaning. Only the CK is even safe for small scale cleaning, and its detail screen is awful for that.

It is impossible to clean a save game using the old school clean save methods. Papyrus will not let go of the save. In fact, in some cases you may find the save overrides a script you're trying to change with an old version that you were using before. Deleting the scripts isn't enough either because it's entirely possible your save has captured the whole thing and won't EVER let go of it.

Bottom line: Modders need to be more careful when building scripted mods and users need to be more careful about simply throwing 100 mods in and hoping they all work, because the old days of simply tossing a bad one are over.

So in your experience SkyTEST should also not be recommended/ installed? I am aware that it still occasionally causes CTDs but if they are infrequent enough im happy. However, i was not aware that it was a dirty plugin, can this be seen from the CK?


In the guide i posted it is clearly mentioned that the cleaning method may not clean scripts. In fact there are 2 or 3 sources regarding the papyrus script issue and savegame issue in the guide. However, the clean procedure does reset cells and spawns, which can help in un-corrupting a savegame, if the issue is not script related. Ultimately though, Im careful to never guarantee that it will fully clean the savegame. Atm the wording in the guide is set out as; it may purge scripts, but this still needs to be tested and verified. Fully uninstalling the mod (removing the associated .pex file) will still leave savegame edits behind. So maybe I should update the wording to say something along the lines of the cleaning procedure will NOT purge scripts from your savegame at all. What do you think?

In any case I fully agree with your bottom line. Curious as to whether the sticky script issue will ever be patched officially of fixed via another mod or unofficial patch, if thats even possible.

There's at least one type of information I know won't get cleaned out which is ESP-only. Changes to map marker data. If, for whatever reason, you remove the name from the map marker (because you wanted to make a new one for it) that data change gets permanently recorded in the save and NOTHING can undo it. There may well be other similar things, but I've yet to encounter them. Worth noting this didn't happen in Oblivion.

Yes, you should add something to indicate that scripts are not removed. I've got stuff spewing debug logs in mine that's been gone for eons now. Still looking for it's script file. Fortunately the cases I've run into didn't leave behind perpetually updating code that does nothing, but I've seen logs from people where that's happened and is causing game lag for them.

Unfortunately the USKP can't resolve this. It has to be corrected at the engine level. Possible, though unlikely, that someone could make an SKSE plugin to handle it. I'd kill for something like that.

Anyways, thxs for the info, will be adding it to the STEP wiki sooner or later as an example, the map markers and the perpetually updating code. Would be best if there was a source for your observation; ill get around to forum sifting as well. Ill ask on the SKSE thread if anyone has considered a fix/ workaround for this.

Regarding sticky scripts, is it possible to stop a script running by forcing a cell reset? For example, If a player adds an object in a cell to a container, lets say a sword in a dungeon, that has a script attached, would then forcing that cell to reset remove the offended object also halt the script from running as well? Or does the script continue even if the object is removed?

Going on topic, I have observed that the specific location (guardian stone descent towards waterfall towards Riverwood) requires one of the largest amounts of RAM and VRAM allocation while playing. Only whiterun and riften come close for me, but that Riverwood location still beats them by a margin of about +200MB. Its usually the peak values for RAM and VRAM allocation on the graphs when using SPM and GPUZ/ task manager. Its also a crash/ freeze frequent area for me if i have pushed skyrim over the edge.

This makes me suspect its also possible to CTD and/ or freeze here because your computer cannot handle that area because its so intense. Being able to avoid CTDs while observing the floor and running would also lend some credibility to this observance, since you reduce the textures needed. So if removing RW or any other offending mod mentioned here does not help, try to reduce the number of hi-res texture mods, or lower graphics settings, such as ugrids value if its above default. Lowering resolution of texture mods will have the biggest effect on RAM and VRAM allocation though.

Didn't read everything in this thread and am not sure this was resolved or not but there is one more thing to check that is not necessarily a esp based mod and that is any mesh replacer. If a mod replaces a mesh (body mods) that is broken/corrupted and it gets loaded it can cause the game to crash. I had this issue with a Blacksmith clothing mesh that would cause a crash every time I went to Dawnstar except when the smith was inside their house.

Skytest is a ".esm" file now (1.24).

My CTDs are gone !

It seems very reliable.

There are also some tips about scripts in the thread.

Source for which? The map marker thing? I'm the source. I tried to use that trick to bury the vanilla map markers in Open Cities 0.33 only to have it backfire. People would uninstall the mod (yeah, apparently people LOVE toggling mods on and of for no real reason) only to have those map markers gone, and remaining that way. It's easy to verify with a simple test plugin and a throwaway save. Provided Bethesda hasn't sneak-fixed it since then since I did report it to them.

From everything I've been able to observe thus far, the game preloads all the scripts for all your mods into memory on load up. So all you'd have to do is load a game with new scripts, save it, remove the mod entirely, and that save would forever complain it can't find those scripts anymore. The whole thing is incredibly dumb. I really don't know why Bethesda opted to do things this way.

Yep, meant your map marker observation. Had to ask for source, in case you had posted a thread about this somewhere before, if not I can source this thread. I like to have sources in my wiki entries, the more the merrier, death by citation (well, not too much) /happy.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='^_^' />

Ah well, it does seem stupid. Here is to patiently waiting for some miracle workaround/ fix.

I don't have the PC version and therefore cannot use mods. HOWEVER, I get the same exact lockup on the road to Riverwood with my PS3 version and it is maddening. I don't remember this happening at all until I got the Dawnguard DLC. I don't know if this helps you PC users, but I think you can pretty much rule out your mods as the culprit. It seems to be inherent to the original game or something introduced by Dawnguard.