CTD on any save load or new game when OVER-MODDING Skyrim (a.k.a are you a member of the 67e-bait Modders Club?)

[Sundder]

NOTE: This is an authentic help request, even if the tone is a little tongue-in-cheek.

 

UPDATE: another "member" was found a couple of months ago who also initially ran into the issue after installing DynDOLOD: Dunc01. Working together with Sheson it seems the culprit has indeed been narrowed down to the game hitting a maximum number of persistant references per worldspace, with that maximum number being 65 535. What exactly contributes to the offending total is not yet completely clear however. For example, duplicates do not seem to be counted.

 

Of note, Sheson has already included an option in DynDOLOD to reduce the number of persistant references that it contributes to the game.

 

Also, while Dunc01 was evidently experiencing the same issue based on the symptoms, his CTD was occurring at a different memory address. Based on my testing the address can indeed be DIFFERENT when the number or version of a dll injected into the game by SKSE changes.

 

WHO QUALIFIES

 

Alright, who qualifies as a member of this fairly exclusive Skyrim Modders Club?

 

First and very important, as a Skyrim Modder, you have been able to successfully mod your games to the gills, all the while keeping it stable and maintaining high performance. You have a mix of gameplay and immersion mods, player homes, followers and NPCs, new land mods, quests and dungeons and maybe even a number of mods from LL. Big new land and quest mods like Summerset Isle, Darkend, Beyond Reach, Wyrmstooth, Rigmor of Bruma, Wheels of Lull, Forgotten Dungeons, Forgotten City, etc. are your bread and butter.

 

Also, you do not use any of the mods in the Dangerous mods list and your masters are clean.

 

You are merged, bashed and LOOTed and have taken your Skyrim out for more than a SpINI or two. More than likely, you have a pretty decent to high-end rig or you probably wouldn't have made it this far. Good on you!

 

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Mandatory personal specs (I don't have the specs for my current club co-member):

   CPU: i7 5960x @ 4.6 (water cooled with custom loop)

   GPU: 980 ti (currently stock reference edition Zotac)

   Memory: 32GB DDR4 Corsair Vengence 2666 @ 2811MHz

   Storage: 2x 1TB Crucial SSD in RAID 0

   Power Supply: Corsair 1200AX

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Second, you use Meh's Crash Fixes version 12, or at least have [Debug] WriteMinidumps=1 set in your SKSE ini file and can use an online crash analysis service to get human readable info back from SKSE's .dmp files.

 

Third, and this is CRITICAL: when you add JUST ONE MORE ESP/ESM based mod, Skyrim CTDs within 3 to 4 seconds of trying to load ANY save or starting a new game, systematically generating an error at memory address 0067eeb8, a.k.a TESV.exe+0027eeb8. This will happen exactly when the loading screen would otherwise have its first micro-pause while loading a save (on a setup that does not CTD).

 

What specific ESP/ESM does not much matter, although smaller, empty, or larger but quest/script-free mods seem not to trigger this issue.

 

Your load order does not matter (as far as this specific CTD). The mod you added can have its ESM/ESP at the beginning or at the end (end of the ESM list if an ESM) or you can leave it where LOOT puts it. But you CAN load this mod as long as you SWAP IT OUT with any other mod of roughly the same "weight", for lack of a better word.

 

If your CTD does not occur as a result of an error at memory address 0067eeb8, SORRY, but YOU ARE NOT A MEMBER. (For qualified members please see your membership card here: http://i.imgur.com/csaXNP7.png. Print it, plastify it and keep it safe because this is the specific MOV operation where the engine fails.)

 

Currently we know of two confirmed members of the Club: myself, and DemongelRex/Demonrex and I am looking for other members to share information in the hopes pinning down what causes this particular CTD.

 

WHY THIS MATTERS

 

Well, obviously, because it would be nice to keep modding Skyrim 'til it breaks elsewhere, but there's a little more to it. As DemongelRex has pointed out on the Crash Fixes forum, some very large and highly anticipated mods are getting close to release, for example, Beyond Skyrim, and they are of such size that it may become an issue even for gamers with moderately heavy mod orders. Further, as use of tools such as Merge Script, Merge Standalone and Mator Smash become more widespread the odds increase that more and more gamers will run into this issue.

 

Worse, this issue can easily mimic a number of other problems, in particular: mod conflicts, the string count limit, total memory use or CTDs from memory fragmentation.

 

Instead, though as yet unconfirmed, this appears to be the result of the Skyrim engine hitting a particular limit on the total number of form IDs it is being asked to load when a user tries to load any existing save or start a new game once that user has added enough content to cross the threshold.  This may also be a particular threshold such as the number of quest IDs or worldspaces....no clear ideas on this yet.

 

SPECIFICS

1. This issue is 100% reproducible (or avoidable!) once the conditions to trigger it are in place. It is 100% reproducible in terms of predictability, and 100% reproducible in terms of its effects and where the exact failure occurs, EVERY TIME. I.e., this is NOT some type of random crash.
2. This is NOT an in-game stability issue. Your game can otherwise be rock stable. (Mine and DemongelRex certainly are.)
3. This is NOT a performance issue. Apart from the traditional Skyrim hiccups, your game performs well in terms of FPS and does not suffer from any significant script lag.
4. This is NOT a memory issue. When this CTD occurs it will happen while Skyrim is loading, but using still well under 1GB of RAM (750 MB in my case) and/or VRAM. A mod load-out set not to cause this CTD will let you get into game with well over 1 GB of RAM and VRAM.
5. This is NOT some kind of directory thrashing issue. I experience the issue at 240 ESPs loaded and DemongelRex at 218. (We both have a number of mods merged from many other mods and, obviously, different load orders–though he uses LotD and I don't.) Both of us have fewer than 509 TOTAL ESMs/ESPs (active + disabled) though both of us ran tests with Nitpick anyway to see if this would make a difference; it did not.
6. This is NOT a mod conflict issue. Aside from DemongelRex and I having very heavy mod lists our load-outs are very different. In addition, any mod added that causes this CTD will actually work in ANY COMBINATION with the rest of our load orders, AS LONG AS WE SWAP OUT ANY OTHER EQUALLY "HEAVY" MOD.
7. This SOUNDS a lot like, but IS NOT the string count limit bug:

a ) Tested with TESV ESS Editor or SkyrimTools (by MarkDF): this CTD can occur while under the String count limit. I initially encountered this issue while close to but under the normal string count limit by over 400 strings (approximately 65 150 strings); I am currently playing the game while over the string count limit thanks to Crash Fixes (string count grows over time) and avoiding this problem quite easily by staying 3 to 4 mods short of triggering this CTD.

 

b ) Adding mods until you break the string count limit never prevents you from starting a new game, you just can't load back the trashed save files the game writes from that point on. THIS issue will also CTD you on a new game start. (One exception: using Alternate Start leaves you at an infinite loading screen (ILS) right after the "page flip" sound and the intro music loops forever...well, over twenty minutes at any rate. But Crash Fixes still produces a crash log showing the game is crashed with an error at 0067eeb8 (TESV+0027eeb8.)

 

c ) The crash from trying to read a save file corrupted by the StrCount bug ALWAYS occurs at the END of the loading sequence (20 seconds for me with Meh's OS Allocators active in Crash Fixes). THIS crash occurs systematically within 3 to 4 seconds into the loading sequence. I.e., the two crashes do not occur at the same point in the loading sequence.

 

For those who would suggest taking this up with Meh/h38fh2mf, he appears to be unavailable for the time being, but help is always welcome from any quarter. I'd be more than willing to work with anyone who can deal with opcodes and operands (I'm clueless here) or anything else to work this out.

 

Thank you!