Hey modders!

I've been working on a new mod for quite some time and always did ingame checks with coc right from the mainmenu. Everything was fine until I used my own character from an older savegame and figured that hes unable to interact with NPCs at all (not just in the modded cells). When I untick the mod everything returns to normal and works just fine.

The last time I checked ingame with an older savegame is about 2 days of work ago and i didnt add anything but level content.

Does anyone know this problem or had it in the past or knows the reason for what could make this happen?


Cheers

Well, the DIRTY SAVE problem (it's not a bug) would cause issues with modding certain things and then loading an old save (because you may have removed, or edited things that are actually stored in the save). You can search on here for topics about it, and/or the Wiki

(I never seen anyone report it was stopping all interaction with NPCs, though. It is in any cell, or just cells you modded?)

It doesnt matter where the character is, he wont be able to talk to anyone at all. As I said, I didn't do anything but leveldesign, therefore I didn't change anything regarding masterfiles or vital game files.

Load skyrim with the mod.

Make a New Game and test (still use coc after cart ride and race). MAKE A SAVE WHEN YOU HAVE DONE THAT BIT, then you can use it again.

Does the problem persist?

Well, my old savegame is still broken but the new character could interact as normal (as the "new" one you get from using coc right from the mainmenu as well). So in the end nothing changed.

So this is only a problem for my locally saved savegame and wouldn't be a problem for others?

Maybe.

It depends what is in your Saved Game (saved games store lots of things that you would not necessarily think were stored) and what is in your mod.

What you have found is something that many of us have found. Sometimes you change something which seems perfectly fine, but - often the point at which you saved a game in skyrim - has conflicting data in it.

It's very difficult to tell you what the "thing" might be, as there are many things it could be.

For example:

Say you saved a game where your character had a particular perk and it was active when you saved
Then you mod changes to that perk (or delete it, or whatever)
When you reload the game, the perk is in the saved game, but you may have altered how the perk is used (removed the perk completely, for example)
That MIGHT cause a dirty save ... which may cause a CTD, or break game functionality ... or other weirdness.

But, from the test you did, you know that your mod has issues with some saved games. If you have other saves, try them and see what happens. It is very possible that the conflict is very specific to your save ... and possible that it is not

(Continually ... loading a saved game, playing - saving - modding - loading the newer save, playing, saving - modding ... is more likely to cause you issues than using a clean save - and never resaving - every time).



I keep forgetting that exists!

I actually don't play at all, just load the save, coc to the area I want to test and quit without saving. Do you know how i put those backup files to use? I could try one from some hours ago and see if there wasn't any bug yet.

Edit: Ok, just rename and replace, I'll try that.

Well I just TESVsnip'ped everything which could refer to the esm and everything works fine again. What a great tool!

TESV is indeed a great tool.

I'm a bit puzzled why the fix worked ... Or maybe better said, why something you did affected the vanilla esm? ... but then puzzled is my default state

Glad you got it fixed.

The esm had to be affected somehow, otherwise the savegame wouldnt have been corrupt I guess. Snip showed some random files I didnt use at all referring to the esm.
If I understand this "dirtysave" thing right, a mod completely based on "new" files (which my was except those strange random references) can never cause the problem I had.

It's the strange random references bit that puzzles me. You'd think we all knew when we were changing vanilla and when we weren't. But when you look at the "Details" of your mod, you do sometimes see entities in there and you think, "I haven't touched that!!?" ... There are similar type reports in the bugs thread, but those seem to be put down to bad indicators in the CK, not changes being made that should not be ...

In the end, I remain in my default (puzzled) state