The Heartwood Mill is on strike

[s.kirmish]

Hello again, I am haunted by yet another issue that I need advice on to tackle. In short, when I cross the midst of the bridge towards the region of the "Heartwood Mill" west of Riften, the game immediately crashes to desktop:

 

...This has been proven immensely hard to diagnose, even though I have tried many approaches.

- At first I thought it was a creature skeleton issue again, but it persisted after removing all SL creature content

- Also removed SL Aroused and all dependents in case the scripts here were malicious. However, I had then learned that just standing next to the area never crashed, and it was actually the move into the new cell that would trigger it, so nothing here.

- Papyrus logs are as always useless, with all the listed errors unrelated, and then crashing before the issue got logged.

- Removed .ini's and very cleanly flushed the cache and validated the game files.

- Tried to remove a modded mill texture I found, as I had seen someone had problems with that.

- Tried to remove all mod textures or all mod meshes, but that was expectedly hopeless, and would crash my game on save load.

- Also tried to install a mod that turned all mill-areas into little villages, so the cell would be edited and then maybe fixed.

- Used Loot and SSEEdit, but the few errors found and fixed had no bearing on the issue. My game is now squeaky fine after the measurements that they take.

 

All that did nothing. I remind you my game is otherwise perfectly stable. I have traveled vast areas without ever seeing a cell related environmental crash. I previously had some due to a few creature's skeletons way into the game, but could resolve this part eventually.

It has to be something that loads in that cell, and some research showed that I haven't been the only one throughout the years to have that problem with this particular area:

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/5403690-ctd-when-entering-a-certain-area/

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2867409-random-ctds-near-angarvunde-avanchnzel-and-the-heartwood-mill/

Both these had their issues unresolved sadly. I found another thread that managed to solve it randomly, but the problem there seemed to have been something with home mods or open cities, which I don't use.

 

Currently, though running over 250 plugins, I have only armor, companions, weapons, magic, actor models, well and of course the extensive SL suite in mods. My only house mod so far would be Bathing Beauties (not visited yet), and I run not a single direct clutter mesh, texture or landscape beautification mod, nor enb or weather etc. etc. . I used to do that a lot back in the day, but nowadays I just don't care anymore with SE.

 

So, I am currently out of options to figure out what to do. Skyrim doesn't have a proper debugger as Papyrus often seems to log only the good stuff before the crash, so after the above measures, it could just be about anything in my mods.

 

Does someone have a tip on how to analyze this further?

[Psalam]

12 minutes ago, s.kirmish said:

Hello again, I am haunted by yet another issue that I need advice on to tackle. In short, when I cross the midst of the bridge towards the region of the "Heartwood Mill" west of Riften, the game immediately crashes to desktop:

 

...This has been proven immensely hard to diagnose, even though I have tried many approaches.

- At first I thought it was a creature skeleton issue again, but it persisted after removing all SL creature content

- Also removed SL Aroused and all dependents in case the scripts here were malicious. However, I had then learned that just standing next to the area never crashed, and it was actually the move into the new cell that would trigger it, so nothing here.

- Papyrus logs are as always useless, with all the listed errors unrelated, and then crashing before the issue got logged.

- Removed .ini's and very cleanly flushed the cache and validated the game files.

- Tried to remove a modded mill texture I found, as I had seen someone had problems with that.

- Tried to remove all mod textures or all mod meshes, but that was expectedly hopeless, and would crash my game on save load.

- Also tried to install a mod that turned all mill-areas into little villages, so the cell would be edited and then maybe fixed.

- Used Loot and SSEEdit, but the few errors found and fixed had no bearing on the issue. My game is now squeaky fine after the measurements that they take.

 

All that did nothing. I remind you my game is otherwise perfectly stable. I have traveled vast areas without ever seeing a cell related environmental crash. I previously had some due to a few creature's skeletons way into the game, but could resolve this part eventually.

It has to be something that loads in that cell, and some research showed that I haven't been the only one throughout the years to have that problem with this particular area:

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/5403690-ctd-when-entering-a-certain-area/

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2867409-random-ctds-near-angarvunde-avanchnzel-and-the-heartwood-mill/

Both these had their issues unresolved sadly. I found another thread that managed to solve it randomly, but the problem there seemed to have been something with home mods or open cities, which I don't use.

 

Currently, though running over 250 plugins, I have only armor, companions, weapons, magic, actor models, well and of course the extensive SL suite in mods. My only house mod so far would be Bathing Beauties (not visited yet), and I run not a single direct clutter mesh, texture or landscape beautification mod, nor enb or weather etc. etc. . I used to do that a lot back in the day, but nowadays I just don't care anymore with SE.

 

So, I am currently out of options to figure out what to do. Skyrim doesn't have a proper debugger as Papyrus often seems to log only the good stuff before the crash, so after the above measures, it could just be about anything in my mods.

 

Does someone have a tip on how to analyze this further?

This sort of problem is almost always a corrupted mesh (as you seem to have surmised). Unfortunately, it doesn't have to be a problem with a mesh from that area. When I had this issue it turned out to be a problem with an animal (specifically an animal schlong). My point isn't that you should check animals only that what is corrupted may not be something you "think about" when you get this problem.

 

The "right" way to fix it is to eliminate groups of mods (roughly 10 at a time) until the problem is resolved. Then add the last group back one at a time until the problem recurs.  It is time consuming but it's the only way that I am aware of.

 

And while I am generally more sanguine about papyrus logs than you are I agree that, in this case, it would be a complete waste.

[s.kirmish]

Ok, thank you, so there really isn't a smart way to do it, huh? It sucks, but I guess I will force my way through this tedious process then.

[Psalam]

THAT is a good description of modding Skyrim. TEDIOUS!

[GenioMaestro]

Yes, but when the problem is caused by a bad mesh the only way for locate it is disable mods in groups until isolate the mod that have the bad mesh.

 

Other option in Special Edition is use SSE NIF Optimizer for try locate and correct the bad mesh.

[s.kirmish]

I got it fixed, but in an unsatisfying fashion, where initially I didn't really know what did it. The package of 10 mods that made the difference included some behavior script mod that I thought responsible, but even after re-activating all 10 one by one, the game would still work for no reason I could see other than perhaps the script resetting on reinstall.

 

So I could now cross the bridge fine, and it hasn't been meshes or textures like suspected, making this very true:

On 9/25/2019 at 6:17 PM, Psalam said:

My point isn't that you should check animals only that what is corrupted may not be something you "think about" when you get this problem.

 

However, then I still got some random crashes on other area loads in the region from now on, so now I am sure of what made the difference: I recruited two new followers I found in Riften, and made my way out. Now I had 3 with me, and the problems started. I could confirm this by telling them to stay put and adventuring alone (despite them still being registered), where no crashes happened anymore. Apparently there is something fishy with whatever follower behavior scripting.

 

Since the crashes only ever happened on the area borders, it made this really hard to conclude this, but on the other hand it now probably indicates some possible solutions, like maybe the "followers can relax" thing being off, since that supposedly registers new places in each area to do those tasks.