Save Bloat - What is it? - Why does it cause CTD? - Why does this fix it?

[GunerX]

(Im sure by now you guys are tired of hearing from me, but the more I learn, the less I need to ask for help)

 

 

So Im enjoying my mostly stable game, no CTD's or bad textures, decent frame rate (with a little bit of macro stutter when loading new cells, no biggie, rather keep some of my texture mods), when suddenly out of nowhere I start CTDing like crazy.

 

Reload the game, try again, CTD.

 

Reload the game, try again, CTD.

 

 

Double check LOOT, rebuild Bash Patch just cause.

 

Reload the game, try again, CTD.

 

 

 

In the past I have used a save cleaner to reduce CTD, so I decided to give a try in this case.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/31724/?

 

Run save cleaner, it found over 6000 form ID's to remove. Remove them. Reload game, try again, no more CTD.

 

 

So I have some questions about Save Bloating.

 

1: What is Save Bloat?

2: Why does Save Bloat cause CTD overtime?

3: Why does running the Save Cleaner fix this?

4: How can I stop Save Bloat from happening in the future?

[Vulgar1]

1-2 As you play the game instances, references, and threads are created and recorded that are attached to many things from the story and quests, to items, to lights, and basically everything in the world all the way down to the bugs and fish (or critters, which can cause a lot of problems actually). If these references (lines of code) aren't executed, analyzed, and basically discarded properly (which can happen for a number of reasons) they will in essence get stuck. When that happens you get problems. Since the engine isn't smart enough it can only do what it is told and will keep compounding the same erronious code through repitition and eventually papyrus will overload. It is called save bloating because it makes your save file enormous with compacted errors and information that doesn't need to exist. When "the game" tries to read the save file and it is too massive and corrupt it becomes overwhelmed resulting in ILS and CTD.

 

3. Save Cleaners analyze data and remove the threads and references in the way it's been written to.

 

 

4. In order to stop it from happening as much as possible you must mod correctly.

 

In the future try this instead, it is more advanced, has more options, and is more recently updated:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/53045/?

 

Here are some steps on how to use it. You will want to have as clean a save as possible. Meaning in as small and empy a cell (room) with NO followers or NPCs. I use the last room of the Hall of the Dead in Whiterun for convenience.

1. Set Data Path to the directory containing your save game files.

2. If running a Papyrus Log set that path as well though it is not necessary.

3. Select the ESS (save file) you wish to edit.

4. Click the orange "Load Papyrus Section" button and wait until it say Analysis Complete in red in the main window.

5. Click the "Remove Unattached Instances" and click "Yes". Wait for it to say "Command was executed successfully" in the window on the right.

6. Now click the grey "Remove Instances" button. When the window pops up make sure "Remove instances with undefined classes only" is ticked. Wait for it to finish.

7. This should fix most problems but if not you can try clicking the blue "Terminate Active Threads" button.

8. Now open your save folder and you will see one or two files starting with the word EDIT. Copy and paste all the other files into a new folder on your desk top as a back up. Go back and name the EDIT files the same name as your last save file (copy paste).

9. Start and load the game and wait awhile inreal time. Then savae and exit the game all the way.

10. Now you can load and play but if you want to be extra diligent you should repeat these steps which is what I would recommend.

Cheers!

Edited August 26, 2014 by Vulgar1

[GunerX]

When you say "repeat these steps" on number 10. What do you mean? Repeat them twice in a row before starting the game again? Or just repeat these steps periodically when playing (like say every 2-3 hours of gameplay)?

 

 

 

-edit-

 

Uhm..after doing this, a few followers were following me but I had to tell them to "follow me" to get some options to come back.

 

Also I can now open ANY locked door/chest/cage of ANY level without actually picking it...it just opens....

 

 

Did I do something wrong or is this a side effect of using that program?

 

 

-more edit-

 

I just encountered a "Stormcloak Courier" deep inside a dungeon that has nothing to do with the stormcloaks, and he attacked me, then tried to run away.

 

 

-way more edit-

 

I dont absorb dragon souls properly anymore. Its almost like its trying to combine various animations during the absorb event, culminating in half one animation, half another, and it looks terrible.

 

 

 

-ermahgerd another edit-

 

The second soul I absorbed correctly.  Maybe I just needed to give it more time to fix itself.

 

 

 

-sigh more edit-

 

this might be something that is supposed to happen, but ive never seen it before. A Werewolf just attacked an Imperial Soldier, killed him, then was attacked by a bunch of other imperials, then the werewolf died, when I walk over to loot it, it is labeled as an Imperial Soldier.

Edited August 25, 2014 by GunerX

[Vulgar1]

First off when you do these steps, you'll want to have dismissed all your followers. Go to an empty room wait awhile and save.

By repeat these steps, I mean congruently, or back to back. So, "clean/new/hard save", use the papyrus scalpel and go through the steps, start and load the game and just let your character stand there for a bit. Save again and repeat the steps.

You should only do this if you start having problems again.

The things you listed don't really seem related to the advice I've given you. They seem mod related other than the issue you had with your followers, which again you should always dismiss before using any save cleaner.

I rarely have to do this and I have nearly 400 mods running 250 of which are plugins. I have never had the lock picking side affect. But, then again I use Kenmomod's lock pick pro mod because "I ain't got time for that".

The soul absorbtion issue is wierd, I've never experienced that and I doubt it has to do with the cleaning. Waiting awhile in game and/or sleeping for 72 to 744 hours in game can fix several issues and also allows things to load properly.

The werewolf incident is odd sounds like an Imperial soldier transformed and attacked his own men and they killed him. Are you using any werewolf mods?

Bethesda games are complex and fickle. Even pure vanilla games will flip out at some point. If you aren't careful when modding weird stuff is bound to happen.

Edited August 26, 2014 by Vulgar1

[Aiyen]

This sounds like the classic case of 

I just made the mother of all mod lists but I did not perform all the proper conflict resolution and I did not create all the patches (or patch if you want a single one) that is required to make everything play nice. 

 

Not doing this will create save bloat in a very very short timespan since data from mod A gets overwritten by mod B... however now Mod A has a script that needs what was overwritten to be a certain way.. and it does not execute properly. 

[GunerX]

This sounds like the classic case of 

I just made the mother of all mod lists but I did not perform all the proper conflict resolution and I did not create all the patches (or patch if you want a single one) that is required to make everything play nice. 

 

Not doing this will create save bloat in a very very short timespan since data from mod A gets overwritten by mod B... however now Mod A has a script that needs what was overwritten to be a certain way.. and it does not execute properly. 

wrong. it is the scalpel program that did all that.

 

Half of that I cannot figure out. 

 

The Dragon Soul thing has to do with a mod that I have that adds animation to absorbing Dragon souls. There are multiple types of animations included in the mod, I selected only 1, but after using scalpel it tried to mix and match the various animations at random intervals.

 

 

I have done extensive testing and followed the STEP core exactly. After finishing the entire step core, I added only 10 or so Mods. I am at 125 ESPs.

 

I went back to my original save, and everything is just fine. I am still using the other Save Cleaner I was using before, and I dont get any of these problems at all.

[Aiyen]

Just STEP core on its own will not produce save bloat etc. So issues with for example save bloat come down to people adding more stuff on top without making sure what they add will play nice with the existing list. 

 

If you do have a reproduceable CTD like you describe then it should be rather easy to locate the culprint mod and work from there. Make sure to run tes5edit and check for all conflicts and resolve them. Especially make sure to look for "cannot be resolved" errors that might have sneaked in during a mod update etc. Since those will always produce CTD´s when the asset is trying to load. 

 

In general if you need to use save cleaner tools.. then your mod list is already unstable and will continually just produce errors and the evil circle will never end. 

 

This is also why I recommend that before people get started playing for real that they do a quick "toggle god mode" and just rush to complete up to killing the first dragon in the main quest. Doing all of that should produce at the most one CTD. And have an absolute minimum amount of bugs. 

It wont show you everything that can go wrong, but it will go a long way to show that you are on the right path. 

[GunerX]

the CTD started when I went to collect the Horn for the Greybeards.

 

And also that was the ONLY time I CTD. Ive been playing for about a total of 30 hours on this file with no problems before then, and no problems since then.

 

I still get save bloating, but Im pretty sure thats going to happen anyway. Even if I run the game with Zero Mods im almost positive save cleaner will come back with Vanilla Form IDs that need cleaning.

 

After playing for about 5 hours straight with no issues at all, I ran Save Cleaner and it found over 30,000 Form IDs that needed to be cleaned.

 

It also shows the diff between MODs and just Vanilla junk.

 

Of those 30,000 Form IDs only around 200 were considered to be from MODs.

 

My game runs nice and smooth. Cleaning it once every 5-6 hours is no big deal to me.