Skyrim crashes shortly after character creation

[Foofer12]

Forgive me if I've missed something obvious, but I'm still fairly new to modding.

 

I recently reinstalled Skyrim SE and downloaded a bunch of mods for it (some nsfw and some not), but whenever I actually try to play the game, it crashes after I make my character. The game works completely fine for about a minute or so, even letting me open menus, interact with objects, and even load into other areas, but after waiting for a few moments, the game closes. I've been trying to research how to fix it for the past few hours, but I'm at my wit's end. I use Vortex mod manager (unpopular pick, I know) but nothing I can find there seems to indicate what the issue is. All file conflicts have been resolved, all of my esps are enabled, I don't know what to do. I've attached my modlist and most recent papyrus log, both of which seem to have been useful in deciphering other peoples crashes. If you need anything else from me, please let me know and I will do my best to provide it.

 

And before you say to, I am currently in the process of disabling all of my mods one by one until the problem goes away. I'm just hoping someone has a less time consuming method to fix this.

Papyrus.0.log skyrimse__06-01-2024_13-24-38.txt

[traison]

Why no crash log? Papyrus log has nothing to do with crashes, unless its a crash that occurs specifically in the papyrus vm, but even then it's a stretch.

[Foofer12]

Did not know that. Crash log appended.

crash-2024-01-06-20-54-02.log

[traison]

Your crash occured because of form id 360421EF, last edited by CWIEnLFXSEPatch.esp. Either disable the mod or inspect that record in xEdit and determine what could be wrong with it.

Edited January 6, 2024 by traison

[Foofer12]

Good news and bad news. The good news is, I have found the culprit (Immersive College of Winterhold). The bad news, I have no idea how to work xEdit. Thankfully, there does seem to be a guide for it, so I'll have a go of it and update this thread if I can figure out the issue.

 

Thanks a bunch for your help.

[traison]

Since 360421EF is a reference, I'd start by finding what it is a reference to, then inspect that record for all mods that affect it. After that it's going to depend on what kind of a record it is. Typically I'd say when a plugin entry causes a crash its because something is misconfigured in it, like a missing value, something the game engine never expected to be undefined. Back in LE, items with no inventory icon assigned to them were somewhat common crashes in this category.

 

Edit: In your case you may be looking at a BGSListForm which I'd assume is a Form List. Maybe form id 000400B6. So, what could be wrong in a form list? A list entry that is null or otherwise invalid comes to mind.

Edited January 6, 2024 by traison

[Foofer12]

Small complication: You mentioned that CWIEnLFXSEPatch.esp, which is part of Immersive College of Winterhold, had edited 360421EF, but xEdit is saying that that id is part of (or maybe referenced by?) EnhancedLightsandFX.esp. I know there is a built in patch for Immersive College that supposedly fixes conflicts between those exact two mods, but it seems to not be working. I've attached a screenshot of xEdit's info regarding it. Even with the guide, I'm struggling to understand what I'm looking at here. Would you happen to know how to actually find the issue?

[traison]

CWIEnLFXSEPatch.esp changed FXAmbBeamDust04 to CWIFXAmbBeamDust04NS in cell WinterholdCollegeHallofAttainment. Your issue may be in CWIFXAmbBeamDust04NS and its associated resources.

 

Edit: The more technical explanation for why it crashed was because it tried to dereference the value in RCX which was null at the time of the crash. Its quite likely you have a null pointer somewhere, as per the example in my previous post.

Edited January 6, 2024 by traison

[Foofer12]

Regarding the second potential troublemaker, 000400B6, xEdit says that's a base game file that's only ever been touched by the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch, as well as the base game. Seems like it gets referenced six times: twice for the quest "Animal Extermination," three times for the quest "Rescue Mission," and once for something called "DGIntimidateQuest." Again, I have no idea what I'm looking at, so I've grabbed a screenshot of this one as well.

[Foofer12]

Just saw your most recent post. Would there be any way to find said pointer so I can try my hand at fixing it or will I just have to make due without the mod?

[Foofer12]

It may be worth noting that there seem to be duplicates of that form id just above and below it that get placed in different areas of the world (at least, I think that's what's happening. The position and rotation for each of them is different.) For comparison's sake, I've also added two more crash logs onto this message to cross-reference with the original.

crash-2024-01-06-21-03-07.log crash-2024-01-06-21-48-32.log

[traison]

33 minutes ago, Foofer12 said:

Would there be any way to find said pointer so I can try my hand at fixing it

 

Not without bypassing DRM and avoiding the debugger traps in SkyrimSE.exe. I've tried several times. I think I know what needs to be done but trust me when I say that, especially in these cases where remote debugging would be required, it would be quite a lot of work. The sledgehammer approach of hitting everything that seems even remotely related is going to be much faster.

 

Also consider the following objects, and what relation they may have to bandits:

0007A605

000831FA

 

13 minutes ago, Foofer12 said:

I've also added two more crash logs onto this message to cross-reference with the original.

 

The good news here is that the problem is not moving around, so this should be relatively simple to solve - it can probably be done from within xEdit and/or maybe removing a mod or 2.

Edited January 6, 2024 by traison

[Foofer12]

Couple of updates: After experimenting with load order, and the disabling/re-enabling of certain mods, I have become extremely confident in saying that both Immersive College AND Enhanced Lights and FX are to blame. If only one of them is enabled, no problem. Played for about 5 minutes each time, doing random actions, no crashes at all. If both are enabled, crash after about 60 seconds. Changing load order didn't solve it either, which has me especially confused. Looking into the two objects you sent, 0007A605 seems to be referring to a decorative crate of some kind, listed as "CrateSmallLong01." It does have a null reference for it's material, but it's also a part of the base game, so I doubt that's the issue. 000831FA seems to be the exact same decorative crate, but placed specifically by the Immersive College mod. Regardless, considering the revelation that Immersive College and Enhanced Lights don't play well together, I don't think either of them is the problem. Unless I've missed something, which is pretty likely. I was also thrown off by your question about those objects relation to bandits. What's that about?

 

EDIT: Small correction: I think the second object, 000831fa, might not be *placed* by Immersive College, but it is definitely moved by the mod. Still unclear about it's connection to bandits.

 

EDIT2: Just noticed that the second object isn't referenced by anything, not even the base game. Maybe an unused copy of the crate that gets moved out of bounds by the mod?

Edited January 6, 2024 by Foofer12

[traison]

12 minutes ago, Foofer12 said:

Still unclear about it's connection to bandits.

 

Just the way crash logs are read. When it comes to the stack, typically the higher up something is the more relevant it is. So looking at RSP+48, you see form id 00053AE4 with the name "Bandit". Thus there's a chance whatever comes above it, had something to do with a bandit. It is not always the case but without spending a week in the assembly code to know for sure, the second best option is to make educated guesses.

 

Form id 360421F2 may technically not be related either, because (again, without inspecting the actual code) there's no real way to know when the RSI register was last used. Typically things do not linger that long in the CPU registers, but it could still be a long time ago when we're talking assembly code time scale. I'd still say its quite safe to say it is involved. Also, you've determined as much yourself already. This mainly explains why 000400B6 (which is in RDX and RBX) may not be related.

[Foofer12]

Aha, I see. Whatever the case, I did finally manage a solution: Completely wipe the two problem mods from my hard drive and reinstall them. The game's been running for a while now and hasn't crashed. If they decide to start acting up again in the future, I'll just uninstall Immersive College and deal with it. For now, though, I have a brand new problem to work out:The level fails to load any textures until I actually go to that part of it. Should I put this in a new thread or do you mind helping me out with this as well?

[traison]

That's a misconfigured (disconnected) room portal. You'd need the CK to fix that.

 

Edit: Basically its a way to optimize the game world - to not have everything loaded at once. The world is split up into room bounds (cubes) and where these cubes touch there's room portals - planes that work like windows into another cube. If a portal is disconnected, you end up with a window into the void.

 

Edit again: There's decent tutorials for these on youtube.

Edited January 6, 2024 by traison

[Foofer12]

I'm starting to remember why I didn't delve too deeply into modding the last time I played this game. I reinstalled the Alternate Life mod in the hopes that that would fix the portal issue, but now that mod has stopped working entirely. It just sends me into the default opening instead of the dungeon with the Mara statue.

[traison]

Without looking into it too much, I'm going to say that the way LAL hijacks the startup sequence is in qf_mq101_0003372b.pex which runs in  [06] Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp (A41136C5) \ Quest \ 0003372B <MQ101>. From there it goes to arth_lal_startquest.pex which is in  [06] Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp (A41136C5) \ Quest \ 06000DAF <ARTHLALChargenQuest>.

 

Make sure both of those scripts are provided by LAL, and make sure nothing overrides MQ101 after LAL does.

 

Edit: Oh and if it still doesn't work, you may want to make sure the spawn point is still where its supposed to be:

 [06] Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp (A41136C5) \ Cell \ Block 6 \ Sub-Block 9 \ 00021594 <AbandonedPrison01> \ Persistent \ 0600184B <ARTHLALNewStartMarker>

Edited January 7, 2024 by traison

[Foofer12]

Oh what a day this has been. Despite the mod working earlier today, it seems like reinstalling it has caused either Vortex or SKSE to completely forget that it exists. A few points to aid/hinder any attempts at a fix:
 

-Alternate start and it's associated esp file both appear in the Vortex menu, and are both enabled.

-Alternate start has the very last spot in my load order. It's esp file has a question mark for it's load order (I assume this is the culprit, but I figured I should give as much info as I thought was important, just in case.)

-I had to remind xEdit that Alternate Start does, in fact exist. Whenever I open it up, Alternate Start is unchecked, despite the fact that it can clearly read everything in the mod.

[traison]

7 minutes ago, Foofer12 said:

Oh what a day this has been. Despite the mod working earlier today, it seems like reinstalling it has caused either Vortex or SKSE to completely forget that it exists. A few points to aid/hinder any attempts at a fix:
 

-Alternate start and it's associated esp file both appear in the Vortex menu, and are both enabled.

-Alternate start has the very last spot in my load order. It's esp file has a question mark for it's load order (I assume this is the culprit, but I figured I should give as much info as I thought was important, just in case.)

-I had to remind xEdit that Alternate Start does, in fact exist. Whenever I open it up, Alternate Start is unchecked, despite the fact that it can clearly read everything in the mod.

 

I'm using MO2 so I don't know about the questionmark, but this smells like you've hit the plugin limit.

 

Edit: If that's not the issue, then Vortex is for some reason failing to write plugins.txt and/or loadorder.txt - these are the files the game (and presumably xEdit) use to determine what to load, and in which order to load it.

Edited January 7, 2024 by traison

[Foofer12]

If all else fails, turn it off and on again. Checked both plugins.txt and loadorder.txt and both listed Alternate Start. After trying and failing to get it to cooperate, I decided to try the ultimate reset button. Everything is working now.

 

Immersive College and Enhanced Lights are playing together nicely, Alternate Start spawned me in the correct dungeon, the broken portal is now fixed, everything is in order.

 

I thank you for your time and seemingly endless patience.