Heya

I recently got the itch to play Skyrim again. (Day 1 release player) I think it was patch 1.02 when I stopped playing, mainly due to the corrupted world cells that would start happening to people's save files.

Back then a ton of people where getting these CTDs when approaching places like Solitude and Riften past a certain amount of hours into the game and save sizes. The world cells were getting corrupt and people could basically pinpoint the location of the CTD to pixel level like clockwork. (Clean installs of Skyrim as well as modded up installs were affected)

I've done some reading through these forums and also searching other gaming sites but still can't find a solid answer; so I would like to ask the current players that are at least 150hrs in and beyond, if this type of corruption still occurs or has Bethesda finally fixed that "ticking timebomb save crash" issue.

I've also read the patch notes of past updates but those notes are too vague...

Thanks.

PS, I was level 68 with about 186 hours; 1 character playthrough. Finished MQ and a ton of sidequests; ran everywhere and never fast traveled. So my game world was full of objects scattered around, bloating my saves to 20MB each. I even started deleting corpses via console towards the end to prevent save file corruptions etc...

Anyways, has this been fixed?

afaik 1.4 cut down on a lot of bloat and generally optimized things, which rescued a few people's saves. You won't lose anything by trying, so if I were you I'd update Skyrim (if you haven't already) and try launching one of those "dead" saves. You might experience some stuttering/hanging on first load as scripts, etc. are tidied up if you haven't launched since 1.4 came out; give it time.

You may also want to look into the Unofficial Skyrim Patch, as it includes some bloat-reducing steps like killing the atomic Nirnroot glows, cleaning up ash piles and making it so that corpses hang onto their weapons rather than dropping them. Not all those fixes are retroactive (I think only the Nirnroot one is), so it won't clean up old bloat in your existing saves, but it will prevent new bloat going forward.

I'm at 150+ hours in myself. The largest my saves ever got were ~14MB, before 1.4 landed. After 1.4 and with the USKP running (and the Possessive Corpses mod prior to that), my saves now hover around 7-8MB.

I've currently logged 340 hours on 3 characters, and even though I'm now playing a new save created after 1.5 came out, I'm suffering from exactly the kind of issue you describe. I've tried reinstalling the game, removing mods etc. but I get really predictable ctd's in the Riften area, 100% of the time. My saves are around 6-7MB, and I've actually removed both the others from the Skyrim saves directory. My current character is lvl 14, and I already use a de-bloating mod.

I'd really like to find a fix for this, it's breaking my game and starting afresh doesn't help.

Edit: Yes, not savegame bloat, different issue. Not mods though, ini problems - resolved Ignore me...

@ Tigerseye - Have the CTDs started since 1.5 came out? I've noticed that my system works a lot harder in the Rift since 1.5 came out...all those trees and grass in that area equals tons of the new grass shadows Bethesda patched in, and that's working my system harder. (My GPU's temp jumps from ~75C anywhere else in the exterior gameworld to ~79C whenever I'm in the Rift. Ow.) I'm not seeing a performance drop from it (or at least not a perceptible one), but I know the grass shadows have tanked some people's FPS game-wide (not to mention causing other weird visual issues).

It's possible all the new grass shadows in the Rift are pushing your system beyond its limits and crashing the game, if your PC is on the lower end of the performance scale. Other possibilities might include a bad ini tweak or just a bad ini, if you haven't regenerated those when you reinstalled the game.

The problem HostageTaker was describing is something different to what you're seeing, I think. He's talking about hugely bloated saves that lead to lag, CTDs, and that save eventually becoming unplayable. That was an issue prior to 1.4 in vanilla games; it's still happening to some people, but it seems to have something to do with mod data not being cleaned up properly, or mods doing something to scripts. (Jury's still out last I checked.) If you're experiencing performance issues and CTDs with a modest-sized save (which 6-7MB certainly is), you have another problem.

Yes, I have no save-file bloat, no lag or stuttering. I get steady fps all the time apart from the Rift, where it does slow a bit. My rig isn't a bad one - at least it won't be once my new CPU is installed - so maybe that will make things easier. For now, I think I found the problem: the ini tweak I put in aeons ago (Ugrid=9) was, in spite of several reinstalls and as many ini refreshes, somehow still in effect. So I reverted to the default of 5 and now it runs fine.

Still kind of hoping I'll be able to push it to 7 once I get my new i7 2600K V Pro up and running though!

As Tyraa Rane posted, the savegame bloat/CTD issue was addressed in v1.4 and seems to have worked. What Tigerseye is describing is a separate issue and is almost certainly connected with mods.

@Tyraa Rane

Although my save files were around 20mb each, I never experienced lag or long load times during play. In fact my load times were so quick I could barely read the text on load screens.
My PC rig is fast, the problem was that there was "ticking time bomb" at release and into patch 1.02 w/save files.

It was happening to everyone past a certain amount of hours and file size. It was a well known issue that gaming sites & blogs were reporting on.

Oh and I can't simply launch Skyrim and load up a old save game as I've nuked it all months ago. Hence why I'm on here asking if it's been fixed since, as I don't want to invest 150hr+ again only to find out that all my work/progress was for nothing...

The time bomb was related to the save file size. Er... more like the save file indicated the issue. Certain styles of gameplay caused more and more bloating than others and the difference in machine power as well as the differing number and types of mods made the actual file size and gameplay a wildly fluxuating point where exploding occured. That 20MB save file indicates a lot of bloating.

If you still had your save files (may still exist since uninstalling the game doesn't get rid of the save files), you could install the unofficial patch and see what it does. You'd want to be sure to rest in game if it's even able to turn on.