DROPPED Unofficial Skyrim Patch (by Unofficial Patch Project Team)

[egocarib]

An important note -- version 2.0.1/2.0.1a of the USKP is extremely unsafe to use in combination with any other mod that modifies Soul Trap effects in any way. Everytime you cast/use a Soul Trap effect on an enemy, the effect will be stuck on the enemy forever, and an infinite loop will be embedded into your save file. This will undoubtedly eventually lead to huge performance issues and CTDs.

 

There is -no- way to fix these once they have started. Thus, it's very important to revert to a save before you installed the most recent USKP versions if you care about the character. It should be very easy to tell if you've been affected just by looking at your log, which will be quite densely spammed if you have any of these loops active.

 

I am posting here only after extensive discussion with Arthmoor on AFKMods and through PMs, but he has pretty much refused to make an update to fix the issue. As of this morning he has said it will still be "a few days" before he can get around to making an update. There was also a mod posted last night on Nexus that was a temporary patch to fix the issue, which was deleted from the Nexus, and I strongly suspect this was because of Arthmoor reporting it as a permissions violation out of some weird sense of pride or self-justification..

 

Quite frankly I've always thought Arthmoor was a good guy but I have lost a great amount of respect for him in the last 48 hours due to his refusal to respond to this issue or consider issuing a hotfix for such a severe bug, or even to post a warning on his mod page, (and some other things I will respectfully keep to myself) even while thousands of new players download the USKP each day and whose saves will very likely be irrevocably damaged.

[WilliamImm]

...fail all around.

 

I'm seriously considering packaging up the hotfix for this into a separate package. Sense of urgency there, completely missing.

[Allsunday]

That guy DayDreamer was rude, point taken, but refusing to release a hotfix knowing a save is going to be irreparably broken for someone because some guy is acting like a child and you want to fight at the same level? Come on, tell me there's a good reason for him not releasing that hotfix.

[Redferne]

What can you do once you discover you have the bug?

Do we know if it is revertable or the saves are doomed (yeah I played several hours today before discovering the issue here)?

[Korentin]

Arthmoor says (on the official forum uskp thread) that a fix of some sort will be issued "soon", but that people need to be patient since some things need to be verified.

 

From what I've read you'll have to revert to a prior save if your affected by this once a fix has been released.

[Octopuss]

I think this is an unfortunate case of several misunderstandings, anger and impatience. In that order.

[Crimson13]

None of the mods in STEP modify Soul Trap do they? The only ones that comes to mind is Smart Souls and nothing shows up in MO that conflicts with it.

[torminater]

Does anybody know anything more particular about this?

Would skse plugins like smart souls or sound altering mods for soul trap cause those issues?

[egocarib]

I'd say you can be 99% certain that there will be no fix possible for this issue besides reverting to an older save.

 

Technically I could probably give you a script that will fix loops currently embedded in the save, but it would require you to explicitly return to every enemy you've used soul trap on. If you don't remember the location of every enemy or can't return to them all then it wouldn't work. Due to the way that papyrus and magic effect scripts work, there's no other simple way to fix it.

[Redferne]

From what I've read you'll have to revert to a prior save if your affected by this once a fix has been released.

This is bad, so bad...

 

Does reseting the cells where we passed could solve the problem once a fix is released?

[egocarib]

Smart Souls will not cause a problem. SkyRe is the big one that will.

 

From my more detailed post over at Bethesda:

It is not safe to use if you have any mods that edit Soul Trap effects but still use magicSoulTrapFX script. This includes a lot of magic overhauls & total game overhauls out there that are quite popular.

 

You could throw your load order into TES5Edit and check the entries for SoulTrapFFActor, EnchSoulTrapFFContact, and DLC01_SoulTearTrapFFActor in particular, those are the most likely to be altered by other mods. In some cases, a few mods replace the magicSoulTrapFX script attached to these effects with a completely different script, in which case they are still safe to use. (Acquisitive Soul Gems, Corpse Preparation - True Necromancy, Enchanting Awakened, etc). I think SkyRe, Apocalypse, Mighty Magick come to mind as definite threats. I would suspect Requiem and SPERG, and surely quite a few more would also cause the problem.

Basically, the problem is that USKP's newly added properties to the magicSoulTrapFX script are not carried over when another mod also edits any soul trap effect with the magicSoulTrapFX script attached to it. This is what causes the problem.

---

Does reseting the cells where we passed could solve the problem once a fix is released?

 

No, the only way to solve it is to explicitly fix the property on each individual reference. The only way I know to do this is, as I mentioned above, adding a modified script to your game and revisiting every enemy you used soul trap on, explicitly. (This is because the only way to make their scripts do anything different is to hook into a load event when they are re-loaded when you go near them)

[Redferne]

Thanks for the precision egocarib.

[EssArrBee]

Does this also mean that egocarib could just make his own fix and give it to us? *wink* *wink*

[rootsrat]

Will this affect me if I've never used Soul Trap in my game so far? O_o

[egocarib]

No it won't. You can tell easily if you're affected just by looking at your log.

 

And I spent the last hour testing my possible solution, but it doesn't work after all. The references refuse to reset once they're locked in the loop. So yeah, pretty much out of luck :-/