[Skyrim] Information Baked Into Saves

[Leonardo]

there is still room to corrupt your save

The save is already *corrupt* due to the information (Papyrus script plus other script) baked into a save behaviour.

[tyrel68]

Sorry misread your statement in your previous post as a question my bad. We are saying the exact same thing XD

[Sclerocephalus]

Adding them to formlists will still mark them as persistent - check it in TES5Edit some time.

 

I tried what happens when I add them to a mod-added faction. This made them persistent as well. Next thing to try is what happens when I add them to the same faction via a script (without having them defined as properties, which requires much scripting on its own.)

[qqqbbb]

When I have a mod opened in TES5edit how can I tell if the mod will leave stuff in savegame after its removed from load order? And how safe is this?

[tyrel68]

Unless you are willing to really muck up scripts you want to keep and you REALLY want to keep the corrupted save you could use that but i would suggest against the scorched earth method.

 

Any mod leaves things behind but the question is will it keep having an effect on the game, bloat is nthe bigggest result of this.

 

Scripts are necessary so the only thing to do if you really need to uninstall a mod using them is to do all the uninstall recommendations they provide, save a game and then wait 30 days. This will reset everything so to at least eliminate some of the downsides of the uninstall.

[Arthmoor]

When I have a mod opened in TES5edit how can I tell if the mod will leave stuff in savegame after its removed from load order?

If it has scripts, just assume it will, because it will.

 

And how safe is this?

It isn't, and neither is anything else claiming to edit ANYTHING in the save game - the format hasn't been decoded enough for any of these utilities to actually work as advertised. They should have been removed from Nexus considering they're dangerous and will only corrupt your save further.

 

The only solution to the baked data problem is to abandon the save and start a new game.

[Ysne58]

Yep.  I have to do that with testing all the time.  Levelers Tower paired with Arthmoor's LAL is great for quick start ups and leveling.

[Leonardo]

It isn't, and neither is anything else claiming to edit ANYTHING in the save game - the format hasn't been decoded enough for any of these utilities to actually work as advertised. They should have been removed from Nexus considering they're dangerous and will only corrupt your save further.

Personally, I consider that mod qqqbbb asked about to be similar to this mod/utility.

[Arthmoor]

Personally, I consider that mod qqqbbb asked about to be similar to this mod/utility.

So do I, but reporting them to Nexus on that basis was ignored. Just like it was for the longest time with Snip.

[Leonardo]

So do I, but reporting them to Nexus on that basis was ignored. Just like it was for the longest time with Snip.

Concur, although I don't want the same thing happen again as it was with Snip, because I read the thread on Nexus were you and a few others was *discussing* or should I say avoiding to step into a landmine.

 

Regardless what opinions we have about those so called *tools* that's claimed to be an users game saviour is more or less useless if that kind of a mod was reported on Nexus.

[Elgar]

Very interesting and informative thread !

 

Would you say it is safe to remove an esp which just adds objects like a craftable armor set ?

[NightStar]

Would you say it is safe to remove an esp which just adds objects like a craftable armor set ?

 

That should be safe to remove, but don't ever remove anything with scripts in it.

[Elgar]

Thank you! Yes, about mods with scripts, I never ever uninstall such mods and keep them forever. Just updating them when needed, by overwriting the previous version.

 

I am reinforced in my practice by this topic. But I was unsure about very basic mods like an armor esp and I am glad to read your answer.

[Sclerocephalus]

What has not yet been mentioned here is WHEN the data from a new mod gets baked into the save: this does not happen when you first save after the installation; it already happens on load. Check your log: before the first "VM is thawing" message (i.e. before you actually enter the game), there will be a "saving" message. That's when it happens.

 

Therefore, before you try out a new mod, make a backup copy of your save and resume the game with that copy if you don't like it.

[DayDreamer]

Check your log: before the first "VM is thawing" message (i.e. before you actually enter the game), there will be a "saving" message. That's when it happens.

i'm not seeing that. I have only:

 

VM is freezing...
VM is frozen
Reverting game...
Loading game...
VM is thawing...

EDIT: But I have auto-saves turned off for every option. Auto-saves were my biggest source of crashes.

[Elgar]

Hi,

 

It's probably a dumb question, but I wondered if the load order was somehow baked into the saves?

 

I mean, is it advised to change the load order and load a save which was created with the previous load order? I use BOSS to sort my mods, but some recent mods are not recognized and I sort them according to what I think is the best. But one day or another BOSS will recognize them and maybe will sort them differently, could this be harmful?

[Arthmoor]

Load order doesn't bake in (thank God) so you should be fine with updating that on the fly.

[DayDreamer]

Thought I'd add my recent experimenting on baked-in scripts. Scripts that are fragments for packages never go away, and seem to begin executing on a None package with no conditions. Or something. It made no sense.

 

I had 5 quests. I made 5 new quests. I made new quest-specific packages for the new quests, and removed the packages on the old quests (leaving the old quests in place to fulfill the existing pointers to them).

 

Boom! The OnEnd fragments for the old packages! What are they ending??? They aren't running!!!

 

Solution: Keep the old packages, and re-purposed them to the new quests with revised scripts with exactly the same names. Delete the 5 old quests entirely.

 

This leaves dangling pointers to the old quests. Fooey....

 

Solution: used TES5Edit to renumber the 5 old quests to the 5 new quests, with the packages still in place.

 

That re-filled all the old pointers with new values, but the old pointers were baked into the savefile.

 

Solution: used TES5Edit to renumber all objects that had dangling pointers. They went away with no objections! No script logs!

 

There were still 5 vanilla objects that I'd filled with a single property script with single pointers to the old quests. Used OnPlayerLoadGame() in each new quest to replace those with Self.

 

Caveat: I have no idea whether the dozens of old objects that were renumbered are still in the savefiles (probably not), or their old scripts with baked values are still there on a [None] object (possibly). As long as they don't run and don't complain, I'm OK with that!

 

Nota Bene: This probably only worked because I'd designed everything from the get-go to be removable. And in the beginning, you could remove it and there were no complaints. Everything was a dynamically allocated object. That's no longer true -- all the static local carts folks asked me to add. It was those static carts that were renumbered.

[tyrel68]

...is the above as huge as i think it is?

[Sclerocephalus]

i'm not seeing that.

 

I'm always seeing it when I install a new scripted mod. Otherwise, it doesn't show up.

Prior to finding this, I made the following observation repeatedly:

 

I installed a scripted mod and loaded a save that had not seen any mods except for UXXP (I have copies of various savegames in an extra folder only for testing purposes), then tested a while but left either without saving or saved in a different slot.

Later on, I changed properties on the scripts, installed the updated mod and loaded the same save again. As a result, I got dozens of warnings about missing script properties. How does the game know when the save was never overwritten with the previous mod version active?

 

Well, it does because it writes some information to the file when it detects a new mod while loading.

[Arthmoor]

Caveat: I have no idea whether the dozens of old objects that were renumbered are still in the savefiles (probably not), or their old scripts with baked values are still there on a [None] object (possibly). As long as they don't run and don't complain, I'm OK with that!

Somewhat of a necropost, but figured I'd address this.

If you change the form ID on a quest, yes, it will start it as though that quest were brand new and do everything you'd expect.

The problem of course is as you suspected. The save still remembers the old form ID and never gets rid of it. You can come back months later, change your form ID back to the old one, and it will simply resume using the old data in whatever state it was last in. As far as the game is concerned you've got a pair of quests using different instantiations of the same scripts.

This is not something that happens when changing a form ID on some other object like a rock or a tree or whatever. Then again, changing a form ID on something like a quest was never designed to be possible.

[Arthmoor]

Bumping to mention that NPC facegen has been added to the list in the OP.

[Leonardo]

Bumping to mention that NPC facegen has been added to the list in the OP.

That too?    How much stuff have you found been baked-in a gamesave?

 

Just curious.

[Arthmoor]

Heh. Anyone who has played Oblivion should not be overly surprised that NPC data bakes in, because it did then too. That's why Wrye Bash has a saves function in OB to update NPC levels.

[alt3rn1ty]

I remember that from using Optimized Facegen Files, there were a few users that didnt get if you were installing it, you were also best to start a new game so that all NPCs were regenerated with the new facegen files, and eradicate any neck seam problems with some of the races.