CTD approaching whiterun just after the companions kill the giant

[rhino_4]

This happens reliably just after the companions take down the giant when you first travel to whiterun. CTD every time.  I can go other places and it's rock steady for hours, but as soon as I head to whiterun this happens. Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Load order:

LoadOrder_Skyrim_2017-03-26T23-29-02.txt

 

And my logs:

Papyrus.0.log

Papyrus.1.log

Papyrus.2.log

Papyrus.3.log

[khumak]

That scene is the beginning of the Companions questline so I would check whichever mods you have that affect the companions for conflicts.  I ran into the same issue with a mod that delays quest start times (The Choice is Yours) until I fixed my load order. 

 

You might also check mods that affect werewolves since at least 2 of the companions in that scene are werewolves.

[Sladen2019]

When you run FNIS, make sure the top two boxes in the options are checkmarked. Rerun FNIS.

Did you clean your official master files ?

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2667094-guide-manual-cleaning-skyrim-master-files/

I recall another user crashing alot with Face Light enabled, when she was sneaking. 

 

It seems you are using the old brawl bugs patch.  A newer modern one is available.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/77465/?

[allsunday]

I'm really curious to see what would happen if you go near the Companions fighting the giant and do console command "killall". Of course, essential NPCs like Aela and Farkas won't be killed and only momentarily incapacitated but you obviously shouldn't save your game after doing this. This is just a test.

 

No joke, I once fixed a crash that kept happening right when I crossed Dragonbridge by doing console command "killall" and then resurrecting all of the NPCs and farm animals and then saved my game. Detect Dead spell really helps for this. Seriously, the game kept crashing every time I crossed the bridge but after I killed and resurrected everyone, no more crashes after that.

I used this strange technique again at The Ritual Stone when the game kept crashing around that area. After killing and resurrecting everybody, no more crashes. It was most certainly an NPC spawn point corruption.

 

This is just a weird suggestion that has worked for me a few times and I don't think it'll work for you but I'm just curious if this technique can help others like it helped me.

 

It makes sense if you think about how killing every NPC stops their scripts, including any bugged scripts they may be having which can prevent the game from crashing. Then resurrecting them (should you decide to, leave the sabrecats and wolves dead if it tickles your fancy) effectively resets the actor and forces them to use the proper scripts of your current mods instead of mods you may have uninstalled a long time ago. Just a theory, of course.

 

However, if you're just barely seeing the Companions for the first time, you probably just started a new game and what I'd recommend is to restart the game. This is a million times better than investing what could be hundreds of hours on a character that already has corrupted scripts that will forever plague your saved games.

 

I'm not endorsing this method, it's just a harmless experiment/solution that I'm curious to see if it's actually useful for other people or am I the only one?

[LibertyPrime]

To add to the post above, I don't think simply 'brute-forcing' your way into resurrecting people is a good idea, at least judging from what I've read somewhere. I remember the post said something about how resurrecting doesn't fully reset the actor, and that may break some quests/scripts. I think there was another command that 'resetted' the actor without killing them, should be recycleactor or something like that.

 

uesp.net has most console commands.

[allsunday]

To add to the post above, I don't think simply 'brute-forcing' your way into resurrecting people is a good idea, at least judging from what I've read somewhere. I remember the post said something about how resurrecting doesn't fully reset the actor, and that may break some quests/scripts. I think there was another command that 'resetted' the actor without killing them, should be recycleactor or something like that.

 

uesp.net has most console commands.

Yes, very true, which is why I emphasized this as only a test. I should mention also that when I did this, I disabled essential NPCs, then killed everything, then re-enabled the essential NPCs so it did not effect them at all. There was only one at Dragon bridge when I did this. Of course, the Ritual Stone has no essential NPCs nearby so I used killall to my heart's content.

If "brute forcing" my way to fix issues kept my Skyrim game running 1,000 hours now with over 250 mods without having the issue repeat then I'll keep this bad idea, thank you. Although, now I've been playing Requiem so I had to start a new game and say bye-bye to the old one.