Dawnstar freezing

[szale9001]

I noticed that in 4.0.5, there was mention of a patch that was reverted since it was causing random freezing in Falkreath. Does a similar guard edit exist for Dawnstar?

I ask, because for a while now I have had very odd freezing behavior related to Dawnstar. Sometimes I will walk to the city, and it will freeze seconds after I get there. The sound & music is still going, but the whole interface locks up and I have to exit and restart the game. The thing is, if I reload the save, it freezes again in almost the same spot. To fix it, I have to load the save, fast travel to another city and back, and that seems to alleviate the issue for a time but it is very random.

Since the newest patch changelog mentioning Falkreath freezing on approach, I figured I'd ask. Thanks.

[BlackPete]

According to everything I can tell from the change log and bug tracker - Falkreath was the only location where an edit like this was done. We're getting a few unconfirmed reports of this happening in other areas in the game, but are unable to reproduce them.

 

Are you playing on the PC? If so, can you provide a save file? That's the only way that I can think of we'd be able to make an attempt at reproducing the issue.

 

If you're able to provide a save (assuming you play on PC) you can either link the save from a file sharing site or upload it here by choosing the Upload File option. From there you'll want to choose the "Files for Fixes" category under the Unofficial Patch Project header.  Edit: Scrap that idea then since saves can't be provided from consoles.

[szale9001]

Gotcha. Yea, I should've mentioned I was on Xbox, sorry about that. As for reproducing, I can see how it would be difficult since it seems to be so random (even in my case). I  can tell you what I did, that led up to it just for information's sake.

 

I had just cleared the mudcrab boat wreckage not too far from Dawnstar (brinehammer, I think). I exited through the bottom of the cargo hold and started walking toward Dawnstar. Everytime, as soon as my boots hit the stone walkway it would freeze as I approached the inn. That is, the whole thing would lock up but the sound/music would still go on. If I fast traveled from the boat to Dawnstar, the same thing would occur at almost the same location. The only way I got it to stop was to fast travel to Whiterun and back, which I assume forced it to reload the area or something?

 

Not sure that'll help, but that is what I did.

[thefirebirdman]

I don't know if this will help or hurt the conversation. Also playing on xbox. I have been trying to get rid of a chronic ctd problem since my son and I installed SSE and some mods. I've been at it for about 3 weeks. Started with a very long list, tried to do testing to determine what was causing it (I had a methodology to the approach but no sense explaining that) but gave up. I literally deleted everything, re-installed the game and started with only USSEP and LaL and started adding mods 3 at a time. I believe I have a stable list at the moment with 28 mods, that are mostly quest mods or mods to add or modify towns. Most are Arthmoor's honestly. During all this testing I can easily say that the majority of the ctd's I experienced were in Dawnstar. For the first two weeks I started a new LaL game with the shipwreck option for each test so I did a lot of testing in Dawnstar and the surrounding area. This week I have tested other areas and when going to Dawnstar used the Arrived on a Ship - Dawnstar option to test in that area.

 

Since I was experiencing ctd's in that area so often I took note of what mods I had loaded that affected the area and realized I had the following:

 

Bring out Your Dead - adds the Hall of the Dead

M.A.R.P.H.I.N - quest mod that adds a ship in the port just outside of Dawnstar

Helarchen Creek - Arthmoor's new town mod

Beasts of Skyrim - adds a Dragon boss to be killed right on the coast just east of Dawnstar. Its close enough you can see and hear it easily when in Dawnstar.

 

My current, stable list has all those loaded again except the Beasts mod. Through all the latest testing to get from the 2 mods I started with to the 28 I have now I have only had two crashes (the one walking by the Inn and the hard crash/hard reset walking up to the hunters camp - as mentioned below).

 

Unfortunately overall the ctd's have been pretty random. I've listed the ones I can remember:

 

1 - Fast travelling to Dawnstar from Whiterun in a carriage

2 - Walking past the Inn

3 - Entering Helarchen

4 - Walking up to the Hunter camp just west of Helarchen (twice - one happened today, hard crash that even caused the Xbox to reboot, first and only time that's happened)

5 - Walking up to the Shrine of Dibella

6 - Walking up to the Silver Mine crew

 

That's all of them I can remember. It has happened so much in that area that now I usually test somewhere random AND test in Dawnstar when testing new mods as part of my standard testing regimen. 

[szale9001]

Ok, so to corroborate with you, I have the Helarchen town and Bring out your Dead mods installed as well. Also, when you experience a CTD, is it like I described above (interface freezes but sound still goes) or does it actually crash to the dashboard?

[thefirebirdman]

Mine crashes to the dashboard. Screen freezes and I get some stuttering audio for several seconds and then it goes to the dashboard. 

[thefirebirdman]

szale9001. I have revamped my load order from scratch and have not been experiencing crashes nearly as much.Tested about 35-40 mods and only 3 random crashes that I suspect were either one-offs or due to the recent method of testing I adopted which wasn't as clean as most of the testing up to now. Let me know if you'd like to see my current LO or just want help with yours. Might want to check out this thread too of which I am a part:

 

https://beta-community.bethesda.net/topic/5795/how-to-load-order

[szale9001]

Definitely, would you mind sharing? I'll take a look at that web site as well. Thanks!