Restringer

[markdf]

On 6/30/2018 at 2:40 PM, CheesusChrist16 said:

I must be an idiot, because i ca't figure out how to use this, i tried loading mods through mod organizer, but when i click to select mod organizers install directory, restringer says that the folder does't seem to contain a mod organizer installation

First off, don't use Restringer. Just get Crash Fixes instead.

 

[nichio]

About a week ago, almost out of the blue my last saves became unusable.

I was able to load them (most of the times), but when I tried to change area (like exit a house or fast travel) a CTD was there. EVERY TIME.

I was totally frustrated, since these saves carry almost 5 years of skyrim gameplay with the main quest and almost all of the good dlc mods out there, completed.

I begun the painfull process of checking every aspect of my game, in order to locate the smoking gun...

To make matters worse, no major dlc mod has been installed lately. Actually there is none left that I have not played

I checked EVERYTHING, from ini files. skse patches, enboost & crashfixes ini files.

I have also removed several sexlab animations that I did not like anyway.

The only result I achieved, was to load a save then exit an area and get a CTD again after a few seconds...

At this point, since I had already begun removing mods that I did not need anymore (using always resaver along with the author's uninstall process), I removed Extensible follower framework. After cleaning the save with resaver, the CTD's vanished into thin air! The game was normal again!

This fact, along with some posts from here got me thinking about reaching the string limit...

I checked with resaver my last save WITH EFF, string count was 66k. Save was unusable, as described above.

On the other hand, the first save WITHOUT EFF string count was 63k. Save was perfectly usable.

The ONLY difference between the 2 saves, the EFF removal...

In one of the posts here, there was a mention about a little tool called Restringer...

I downloaded it, and used it as a test on one of my dlc mods that I have already finished (XamMaximus). String count was shortened by another thousand... No side effects were noticed, save was again perfect.

I have repeated the process for about 10-12 large dlc mods that I have played and finished, Total strings are now around 50k... Saves are rock solid.

 

To summarize this and hopefully help anyone else out there having the same issues, here are my findings.

 

1. Remove any mods / sexlab animations you no longer need.

2. In my case, ENBoost was eating up frames. After removing it, got a substantial frame rate increase. I was using it with the default enblocal ini settings, nothing fancy... My bad, use ENBoost ALWAYS.

3. The use of Crashfixes, helped me LOAD successfully the saves in question. I was already using Crashfixes for 2 years now. As the mod page states, this tool provides a set of fixes /patches that address a variety of Skyrim bugs. Along with the 'string count' issue. But as the mod page states, in this case what the mod does is to allow you to LOAD such a save. It does not say that you will have a playable save again, if your string count has exceeded the 65k limit... Which in my case, it DID NOT.

4. One other interesting find was the uGridstoLoad thing. Having this set to 5, led to an almost immediate CTD after hitting the ok button in skyrim load screen. Seting this to 7, made the problem go away. Use of stable ugrids toload mod, allowed me to go back to vanilla settings which is ultimately the correct thing to do.

 

Closing this, I would like to express my gratitude to the author of this FANTASTIC tool. In my opinion, after 5 years of modding skyrim, restringer and resaver are the 2 MOST USEFUL tools out there. Along with the other stuff I mentioned, I now have a rock solid skyrim legendary edition installation on a fairly old laptop runnning Win10 - 20H2. The performance I reeceive, on a heavilly (200) modded game is pretty decent (around 30 frames in almost every location using medium to high settings).

My final advice, before I close this long post is about Mod Organizer. Of equal value and importance with the above 2 tools, to my knowledge the ONLY way to maintain a modded skyrim installation. Not NMM, not Vortex. Just Mod Organizer. Saves A LOT of headaches.

 

Hope this helps.