SureAI

Hello,

I seem to be having a problem around Salen. As soon as I get near the town the game completely freezes. The music plays on though. The only thing I can do at that moment is kill the game though Ctrl, alt, del. The freezes occur always in the same place when aproaching Salen. For example, the game crashes as soon as I walk on the bridge near the "Watchpost at the Erod River". The game also freezes when walking from "Behmal caves" to the "Elemental forge of Beldur" and when crossing the bridge near the "Grotto of the lonely" the game freezes soon after I walk a bit farther. Teleporting to Salen also freezes and crashes the game. It seems as if the area is bugged in my savegame. I have no other mods installed than Nehrim. What I tried was:
1. Trying to look down when entering the area, this still froze the game.
2. Replacing the files mentioned in this (http://www.sureai.net/forum/tracker.php?p=4&t=1953) bug ticket with 16 bit soundfiles, this also didn't help.
3. Reinstall Nehrim, still no improvement.

At this point I really don't know what to do anymore. I could play on, but I don't know if I meet more problems later on in the game. So does anyone know a solution. I will attach my latest savegame. The freeze zone has been there for a few savegames I think, at the time I thought it was another random crash so I kept on playing in other area's. I'm near the exit of the "Vaults of Jadena in that game, so going to the freeze/crash zone shouldn't be too much work. I hope you guys can help!

edit: I'm sorry, I accidentally posted in the quest help forum. This should be in the support forum.

Since this is your save 571, I would ask you to do a binary search for the first save where this problem occurs. You can always check it by the console command "coc salen": if it freezes, then the save is buggy; if it doesn't, then not. Once you have identified your first buggy save, you might try telling us what exactly you did between the last non-buggy save and the first buggy save that might have caused the bug.

Other than that, I cannot help you right now. Neither "tai" nor "tscr" seem to work (although "tscr" is unreliable on cell change), so this seems to be a corrupted save. Without an ESS editor this is all I can tell.

Well, I followed your advise and checked my previous savegames. The freeze happened somewhere between save 521 and 522. What happened:
Save 521: I'm inside the secret vault of castle ledur (for the search for my roots quest which I have just completed in that savegame).
Save 522: A savegame just 3 minutes later, I've walked in a straight line from castle ledur to the road and now I'm near a guy sitting on a bench named "Harrius the broken". I cannot aproach him because then the game freezes, neither can I teleport to salen. When I tried to recreate the circumstances by walking (in savegame 521) to the exact same point and then on to Salen the bug didn't happen.

So something strange must have happened in that brief walk between savegame 521 and 522. Btw, as far as I can tell, back when I made savegame 522 I didn't go to Salen because the next savegame 523 is near the tournament grounds. Of course, also bugged.

For completeness sake I have uploaded the bugged savegame 522 and the normal savegame 521: I hope that this was enough information?

Thank you a lot. I fear I cannot be of help: tai, tscr, killall are all useless. I fear you should continue from 521 on, as long as nobody seems to have a .ESS editor.

Ah well, at least thank you for your help. Could you advise me how to prevent these savegame bugs in the future? Or are they more or less random. I know that I should save in a new savegame every time (which is what I always do) and not use Quicksaves? Is there anything else I should do or not do?

Thank you again for your help, and I guess I'll have to deal with it.

I fear they are random.
Some people discourage the use of autosave and quicksave. I, personally, never have had corruption problems due to these (and I do use autosave and quicksave). But there is another problem here: If you die (or otherwise have to reload - e.g. because an essential character dies) and immediately reload an autosave, your quest progress may be ruined (due to variables being not set back). So it is better to restart the game after dying, and not to use autosaves.