Save Game Corruption PC (Version 1.3) Please Help!

[molossos]

Save Game Corruption PC (Version 1.3) Please Help!

I've run into a game breaking issue in my current NG+ playthrough where my save games are repeatedly becoming corrupted after a certain number of saves. The symptoms are: glitchy invisible items appearing in inventory, normal items disappearing from inventory, non-ammo items loaded into crossbow as items, and occasionally Geralt's face vanishing altogether. The attached screenshot shows several of the inventory bugs.

These issues started appearing near the end of the main storyline, and through self diagnosis I've discovered that no matter which earlier save (hours or even days before the bug appears) I reload to prior to the appearance of the save game corruption, and no matter what I do in the game (including just standing in one spot and saving several times) after a certain amount of time or certain number of saves the same problem pops up every single time. The problem only appears after saving and loading, or less commonly after fast traveling.

After several hours of experimentation the corruption appears to be related to the count of number of loads accumulated in a given save. I have several unbugged save game files prior to the appearance of the glitches, all of which eventually become bugged. Save game #1 from several hours before the bug becomes bugged every time after the following: save, reload, save, reload. Save game #2 from the day before the bug requires 10 saves and reloads before the bug appears. Save game #3 from 2 days before the bug requires 17 saves and reloads before the bug appears. The number of saves and reloads before the save becomes corrupted is the same no matter what I do in the game.

While I did play with the FriendlyHud mod, I don't believe it is the source of the problem because even after removing the mod and replaying from an earlier point prior to the save game becoming corrupt, the problem still appeared as usual. I own the game through Steam and have both reverified my files numerous times and done a clean reinstall, with no impact.

I've put over 650 hours into this game and I've never run into this issue before, so please help me diagnose the problem! If there's any way to prevent this problem appearing, that would be enough since I have plenty of unbugged saves to restart from. Right now, I'm running into this problem every single time and I cannot progress in the game. I am happy to attach a save game, but the file exceeds the allowable attachment size limit.

 

[RageGT]

No idea what caused the problem. It might be mod related indeed. I have nearly 2,000 hrs of gameplay and never had that. I use some 10 Hard Saves each playthrough, at the most, which are overwritten oftenly. I never had to reload any of them more than a few times, particularly when making a video and reloading for different options. If reloading that many times causes it, don't do it? Use a fresh slot or just overwrite old saves. I do keep backup of them in a separate folder/HD but truly, I have never had to use them and never wished to. Every new Geralt plays better than the old one. I think I was just scared of a HD crash. =)

 

[SigilFey]

After backing up all of your good saved games (before you corrupt the whole lot!) can you answer:

1.) Any other mods you've been using?

2.) The size of your latest save files?

3.) How much stuff is in you inventory?

4.) Have you tried dumping it all into a stash, closing / reopening the container, and picking it up again?

5.) I doubt this is it, but which area is this occurring in? For example, does it trigger only in Skellige or Toussaint?

Sounds like it could be simply a manifestation of "the rule of large values" (the game is running out of numbers to assign to various things). Although, this should not be an issue with 64-bit processing.

 

[austin26423]

OP, have you had any luck in solving this? I'm having the same issues, but mine started during the "Open Sesame" quest chain in HoS (first playthrough after finishing main game).

-If I reload a save I get invisible items in the "Other" tab of my inventory and lose half of my runes and glyphs. Some of these invisible items are even equippable as invisible "armor". Selling or stashing the stuff in that tab along with my runes/glyphs seems to have solved that problem, at least for now.

-After reloading or progressing to the heist portion of "Open Sesame" I would lose my Mastercrafted Feline gear. Switching out to the blue-quality New Moon set and putting my Witcher gear in my stash seems to have fixed that.

-If I switch crossbow bolts or try to use my crossbow I'll have random items added to my inventory (crafting/alchemy materials, food, drink). If I drop those items from my inventory and pick them back up they turn into regular, equippable crossbow bolts (the kind you get an infinite amount of), but more random items are added.

-Looting items off corpses gives me random items (ex. if I loot a sword it'll turn into a torch, orens, various herbs, etc).

-Sometimes Geralt's face will disappear with only his hair left showing.

-When I reload a save my swords are unequipped but still in my inventory (oil no longer applied).

I haven't figured out how to fix the last few and I don't know how long my workarounds for the first two problems will last. I haven't tried counting saves/reloads, but it seems that every auto/manual/quicksave after my last "safe" save manifests one or more of these bugs. I've tried removing all mods and verifying/repairing the game cache to no avail. Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[austin26423]

Small update, though nothing is fixed. I made a backup of all my saves then gradually deleted affected saves from the default location until I found one where none of the bugs seemed to be at play. After finding this, I proceeded to make new manual saves (not overwriting anything) and load them one by one. Make new save > load it > check for bug > no bug? > repeat. By the fifth save the invisible items bug was back... I didn't progress in the story or test any further to determine if any of the other bugs were still happening (they usually start during/after the heist part of "Open Sesame").

Is this a possible limitation or bug with the amount of saves you can do? I'm a save-a-holic and my save count is probably over a thousand at this point, though I only keep 10-20 manual saves at a time. I wouldn't think the amount of saves would matter, but I'm at my wit's end. This is extremely frustrating on a first playthrough that I've spent 300+ hours on.

 

[SigilFey]

There's definitely something wrong, but it's more important knowing what was done before the bugs started: use of particular mods (if any), tweaks to game files, use of the console commands, installing / uninstalling of certain DLC, etc.

First thing you should do is back up your saves, if you don't wish to lose progress. If you continue saving / re-saving, the damage may spread. Has anyone sent a saved game with the bug into CDPR Support to see what they can find?

 

[austin26423]

No Title

I use several mods (screenshot of them attached below), most of them are graphical tweaks or bug fixes. The bugs occur even after completely removing all mods. I used a few tweaks from the compendium on these forums to fix/enhance shadows, but reverted to the default values for "High" shadow quality. The tweaked values fixed the ambient occlusion issues with some shadows, but made all shadows in game very low-res. I also played around with some console commands (spawning monsters, changing weather) but never saved the game after using it. I have all DLC installed and only had to re-install the free DLC pack one time after accidentally removing it in GoG Galaxy. This was months ago and the only issue it caused was being unable to load any saves where Geralt was using one of the DLC hair/beard styles. Re-installing the DLC remedied that.

I've put dozens of hours into the game after the above "tweaks" with no issues. All of the bugs I've been experiencing have been a recent occurrence after starting the "Open Sesame" quest chain in Hearts of Stone.

 

[ManPerson]

I've just started to have exactly the same problem. (By the way it definitely isn't mod related because I've never used any mods) Were either of you able to find a fix?

 

[Salvatore80]

I experienced exactly the same problem just after I updated to 1.30 a year ago (invisible items, doubled items, default crossbow bolts in inventory, recipes in inventory, invisible face). I'm also save-a-holic and completionist (I search every house, open every container, explore every question mark and save/load to see all possible dialog options/outcomes). I spent hours trying to find any workaround on this but nothing worked. I sent bug report to CDPR, they responded with their few ideas of workarounds, I responded that nothing helped, they responded "I'm sorry" and that's all.
I assumed this is connected with the fact that CDPR reworked inventory in 1.30 (e.g. mutagens started stacking and I had tens or even hundreds of them) and that might have caused save file being corrupted when converted to 1.30. Now I'm playing my second playthrough (I just completed Baron's plot! ) on 1.31 hoping it won't occur again, but I'll be mad if it will
ManPerson, have you started playing before 1.30 too?

 

[karlblau]

I started my playthrough with GOTY 1.31, downloaded from GOG at 05-Nov-2016, filenames were setup_witcher3_en_goty_2.0.0.51.exe and the required .bin's and I got exactly the problem described here after 328 hours ingame time. Therefore, Salvatore80, the problem probably will occur again on your second playthrough, if you don't change your playstyle. Currently I assume, that there is a maximum number of possible game restores and fast travels between different maps (Velen and Skellige are different maps, Velen and Novigrad not).
This is probably a bug in the TW3 GOTY 1.31 game engine, and can only be fixed by the developers at CD project red, and it may be hard to diagnose and do this. Currently I work on keyboard macros doing automated save/restore cycles writing a hard save every 100 cycles. I intend to run this against my many savegames, to check, whether the bug exists from the beginning of the game, or whether it was introduced at some point in the story. If I manage to get a result - TW3 seems to need a prolonged time to hold down a key or does not expose its interface -, I'll report back here.
My playstyle is the same as yours, I did many restores due to exploring every dialog line and would describe me as a completionist too.

The Witcher 3 is possibly the best crpg ever made, but the GOTY 1.31 version may be like a beautiful lady with a dark secret - you should not try to see all.

 

[Salvatore80]

karlblau, this is exactly what I was afraid of after finding this thread yesterday...
I am sure it is not GOTY related issue as my first playthrough was on "regular" version of the game and it may not be only 1.3x related as for me it happened just after about 10 save/load cycles after I updated to 1.3x. Unfortunately I was too lazy to downgrade to 1.2x and check if it occurs there too (or rather I have spent so many hours trying many different things to find any workaround of this to waste any more) and now it's too late as 1.2x is no longer available for download anymore.
I afraid you may be right that this is strictly related to number of save/load cycles, which is very bad for us, but I guess it also may be connected with the number of items in the inventory (when I upgraded to 1.3x I had every 0-weight item I could find, which is A LOT of materials, ingredients, food and books and I also had nice collection of "unique" items in my stash ).
I'm not sure what to do now, The Witcher 3 is indeed the best crpg ever made, piece of art, but continuing to play seems to be really big waste of time for me. And I really enjoy my playstyle, finding every little secret of the game, and even if I change it, I will never know if I changed it enough (well, I will, but it will be too late ).

 

[ManPerson]

Quick update, I may or may not have accidentally stumbled on a way round the problem. I was completely out of ideas and was trying random things so I'll put details of exactly what I did and hopefully some of it is helpful.

The bug started occurring with my game during the Blood on the Battlefield quest (NG+ second playthrough) so I was locked into lengthy cutscenes that autosave at least twice before I can next access the inventory. My last manual save before those cutscenes is just 1 save away from triggering the bug, so if I manually save over it, the bug appears, and if I play through the cutscenes the bug appears as well (caused by autosaving, I assume).

I tried reinstalling the game after making a backup of my saves but that didn't seem to help. Then I cleared all the saves in the "Documents/The Witcher 3/gamesaves" and copied in just the manual save with no bug from before the cutscenes. Again, if I played through the cutscenes the bug appeared and if I manually saved, the bug would appear again too.

Everyone in this thread seems to have inventories full of stuff so I then tried reloading again and dropping EVERYTHING. The only things I had left in my inventory were undroppable quest items and 1/2 other items I couldn't drop or use. I used a potion of clearance as well but I don't know whether that helped. As I closed the menu to begin playing through the cutscenes with no items, the game autosaved immediately. I then went to load that autosave but I deleted the manual save from "Documents/The Witcher 3/gamesaves" before loading the new autosave, so that the only save file in the game was this autosave (again I don't know whether that was necessary). After loading the autosave, I picked up everything that I'd dropped, and played through the cutscenes which lead on to the beginning of Bald Mountain. I checked my inventory and the bug hadn't happened. I manually saved over the top and again the game was fine.

I'll try to find out whether this is a long term fix or not and I'll see if I can figure out which things need to be dropped/reset to prevent the bug. Ideally I'd like to be able to play on without needing to remake all my potions/oils/bombs/decoctions, use a potion of clearance etc. Anyway hope this information is useful to someone haha

 

[ManPerson]

On a separate note, did anyone else use the pang of conscience glitch to generate money? Because with the amount of saves that glitch uses, I bet that contributed quite a lot towards me eventually getting this bug in my game.

 

[karlblau]

There is some more evidence now, that the bug is related to the number of save/restore cycles and travels between different maps only.

I succeeded in creating a keyboard macro, that does repeated saves and restores, and ran this against my last savegame before going to Skellige islands first times. There were 950 cycles left, before the bug appeared. Therefore, nothing done on the Skellige or Kaer Morhen maps has any influence here, and of course the inventory contained far less items.

The macro can do 250 cycles per hour on my PC (with SSD), if used on the smallest map, the royal palace in Wyzima in the first room of Yennefer's lab. Every 10 cycles it opens the inventory and shows the "Other" items, and every 100 cycles it creates a new hard save.

This should be sufficient, to exceed - in reasonable time - the largest number of save/restore cycles I possibly did during the whole game. I started a new game and rushed through White Orchard without any restore and collected just a few items to make the bug immediately visible when it occurs. The current run is set to 3500 cyles and will be done after 14 hours.

It will show, whether we here are some very unlucky gamers, who catched something unhealthy in the swamps of Velen or the streets of Novigrad, or whether the bug is always imminent.

If I only had known this - never had I wasted my last 950 cycles that carelessly ...

 

[Salvatore80]

ManPerson, this indeed seems promising! I just dropped anything but oils, potions and bombs on my archived save from my first playthrough just one save/load cycle before issue occurs and after that I was able to save/load about 10 times without an issue. I also noticed that save file size dropped about 1kB after that - not too much, but that indicates that something got recycled in the save file. Please keep us up to date about your results, as I think I'll be continuing my second playthrough for now, but from now on I will be visiting merchants more often and maybe reload less.
Thank you for sharing!

karlblau, that's very interesting, it seems it's not just number of save/load cycles issue, but it is connected with inventory somehow as well. I think there is some kind of "memory leak" in saving inventory code which is causing save file degrading over time. I am impressed about your patience and very interested in your results.

Today I was playing with abandoned save editor project (https://github.com/Atvaark/W3SavegameEditor) and it seems that save file contains full history of all save/load events (every time a game is saved or loaded a record is added to save file) but it doesn't seem to cause overflow or anything.

 

[karlblau]

ManPerson: Maybe, I can add some grain of wisdom to your attempts, to clean the inventory. I always tried to sell junk and war surplus to traders, who drop it immediately - hopefully removing it completely from the game - and do not keep it in stock. I found especially three traders suitable for that: The travelling (not always present) traders in Blackbough and before Novigrad near the Gate of the Hierarch (both do an inventory reset, when they reappear), and the smith (armorer) in Kaer Trolde, he has new money and a new inventory every morning, when he reappears.

Btw, did you check whether your empty inventory after the bug/corruption was really empty? During my macro loop I did hundreds of additional save/restore cycles after the bug hit, and later there were black, invisible items in the inventory, and such an item showed only up, when the mouse hovered over it.

Regarding save files, I don't think, that it matters in any way, how many are present, because the game corruption can occur also after fast travel between different maps, when no file operation is involved. Probably the map left is compressed in storage, and the new map is decompressed and activated, because I noticed, that nothing happens or changes on a map if Geralt is not present (like appearance of new Bandits in Novigrad, the traders mentioned above, or just the passing of time).

Salvatore80: Yes, this may be a memory leak, or some overflow of internal structures or arrays. However, I'm not yet convinced it is only inventory related, because I noticed for example Geralts missing face and missing triggers for quests. I'd assume, the inventory is just an obvious victim. And corruption may progress further after that first hit ... or have progressed even before - shudder - but I never noticed any symptoms before.

If all save operations ever done are recorded, this is not the problem, because I verified, that you can save very often, without doing any harm or reducing the number of save/restore cycles left. That is coded properly therefore.

And yes, I too checked that same abandoned project to edit savegame files, but I think, it might be better to scan for differences in storage, when there is no additional decompression needed. Ok, tomorrow I hope to have many savefiles with exactly the same game state, except the number of save/restore cycles and maybe finally the corruption. But I have little hope that in this case anybody outside of CD project red could fix this.

It might well be, that we are looking at a common phenomenon: Many people buy a game, a considerable but smaller number of people beats a game, but very few people really complete a game with a world as large as TW3 GOTY features it.

My gaming PC plays Witcher 3 all the time automagically ...

 

[Salvatore80]

I always tried to sell junk and war surplus to traders, who drop it immediately - hopefully removing it completely from the game - and do not keep it in stock.

Can't be! I am doing exactly the same thing. Btw. there is another merchant in Oxenfurt, the same who is selling paint for Trollolo. But, as we both are do the same thing, maybe these items are not removed but stuck somewhere in the save files? These merchants also reset when you do save/load cycle , but after load they're missing and you need to move away from them a bit and then return back. That's suspicious

Btw, did you check whether your empty inventory after the bug/corruption was really empty? During my macro loop I did hundreds of additional save/restore cycles after the bug hit, and later there were black, invisible items in the inventory, and such an item showed only up, when the mouse hovered over it.

In my case they're seems to be invisible items with empty tooltip text. And I also had doubled items, even quest ones.

However, I'm not yet convinced it is only inventory related, because I noticed for example Geralts missing face and missing triggers for quests. I'd assume, the inventory is just an obvious victim. And corruption may progress further after that first hit ... or have progressed even before - shudder - but I never noticed any symptoms before.

You're right, but missing face may still be connected with the inventory - e.g. it may be a part of the armor model or a beard can be a kind of hidden item just as default crossbow bolts or recipes are. It can't explain missing quest triggers though, however I've never noticed that.

And yes, I too checked that same abandoned project to edit savegame files, but I think, it might be better to scan for differences in storage, when there is no additional decompression needed.

Save files are compressed in quite not standard way, you can see in the code of that abandoned project. I tried to compare save files as well, but even two sub-sequential saves differ a lot. This may be caused by compression though. It should be possible to rework that tool's code to store the uncompressed version... There is even a tool already doing that written in c++ (https://github.com/solusipse/witcher3-inventory-editor) however it is configured for gcc and yet I didn't have a chance to convert it to Visual Studio project

My gaming PC plays Witcher 3 all the time automagically ...

Mine too! I had few weeks break for Gwent though, does it count?

 

[karlblau]

Last night, my gaming PC went through 4300 save/restore cycles on a new game with only a few items in the inventory, Geralt was in the royal palace in Wyzima immediately after leaving White Orchard and the save file was very small.

Result: There was NO visible corruption of the inventory, all "Other" items were intact afterwards.

Fortunately, there seems to be no notable low limit for the number of possible restores due to some bug in the game engine, but instead the bug observed is the result of something, that was done ingame or happened, before I went first times to Skellige, because in my case the bug was present then (950 cycles left before corruption).

Maybe, the number of objects in the inventory is too high. Possible, because such a test as I did it, is a standard job and was probably done thoroughly by CD project red before release of the game. However, at that time there was no stash and alchemy ingredients / crafting materials had weight, this restriction was removed two month later with patch 1.07.
Therefore, it was impossible to carry so many materials (effectively everything I collected during the game), ingredients (two or three stacks of every common ingredient) and multiple stacks of all kinds of food (many stacks of alcoholic consumables contain only 5, 8 or 10 items). I did not sell the stuff, because I wanted to have values instead of money, to counter the "Reactor" pricing in TW3 (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/...least-squares/). Now maybe, this was too much strain for the game?

If there is something like an overflow, the method proposed by

and dropping EVERYTHING

might even give a new round of possible save/restore cycles until next corruption, and I can collect all the stuff again and keep it. I could test this with the macro now. Oh no, I don't dare ... but I should do such a test anyway.

Btw. there is another merchant in Oxenfurt, the same who is selling paint for Trollolo

Good addition to the list. This merchant is away every night and obviously respawns. The merchant in Blackbough is away, but in his hut, does not respawn therefore, and keeps everything forever.

You're right, but missing face may still be connected with the inventory - e.g. it may be a part of the armor model or a beard can be a kind of hidden item just as default crossbow bolts or recipes are.

Maybe, due to the DLC "Beard and Hairstyle Set" Geralts face is kind of an inventory item - but in this case his hair should be an inventory item too. There are other complaints in the net about Geralt without face, but none about Geralt without hair.

It can't explain missing quest triggers though, however I've never noticed that.

Perhaps this is a wrong interpretation of the first bug I observed, after I hit the save/restore limit. This bug was fixed in patch 1.20, reappeared, but this may be unrelated here: "Patchnotes 1.20: Fixes rare issue whereby interaction was inactive on treasure chest in quest titled Take What You Want." I opened that chest, got one of the best items ever looted (the witcher sword Teigr on level 27, my current level), therefore I killed the bandits again, saved, and tried to open the chest after restore, but it was inactive. That restore was the last possible before corruption.

I hope I did the quotes and the link correctly ...

 

[SigilFey]

I got exactly the problem described here after 328 hours ingame time.

This type of "corruption" issue is common in any game that tries to maintain cohesion of reference data over long periods of time. Sort of a manifestation of the "curse of large numbers". Think of it as the same type of issue as reaching the "Far Lands" in Minecraft. There are such huge values generated that the engine reaches its limit as to how many of them can be processed in real-time. The result is funkiness, oddity, or general borkery.

Similarly, every item you place in your inventory or stash needs to be saved as an individual instance, given reference data, then that reference data saved in the save-state. When you load a game (or rather, an area of the game loads), the reference data for each individual item must be cross-referenced with the existing save-state data to ensure everything appears where it is supposed to be, according to the last time that area was loaded. As you travel with your inventories from place to place, this can create quite a load of constantly referencing long lists of data and updating any changes.

Everyone in this thread seems to have inventories full of stuff so I then tried reloading again and dropping EVERYTHING.

Which, if I understand how the engine works, would create a refreshed instance of each item when you picked it up again. It can help renew the database the engine uses to track instances of items by setting a new "zero point", more or less (effectively "compressing" its reference history).

 

[karlblau]

Similarly, every item you place in your inventory or stash needs to be saved as an individual instance, given reference data, then that reference data saved in the save-state.

A true word, indeed. Exactly this was the reason, why I did my best, to sell all junk to merchants, who reset their inventory completely every morning or whenever they reappear. Unfortunately, the game has no function to destroy an item, and items dropped to the floor often stayed very long on the map.

However, dropping EVERYTHING before the number of remaining save/restore cycles reached zero, did not work for me.

First, I stumbled over another bug: Directly dropping horse equipment (like the first saddle) to the floor is not possible, you need to move this to the inventory, and drop it from there. However, with the Temerian Armor Set (DLC) and later equipment, this worked directly and produced strange results: Either the little bag on the floor contained something else (alchemy ingredients and food) or it was empty and non-interactive, but visible and marked red on the minimap like loot. In both cases, the horse equipment was still in place, when I reopened the inventory.

Next, when Geralt had dropped everything in the royal palace of Wyzima and destroyed all oils, potions and bombs, he travelled nude between White Orchard and Kaer Morhen. When the limit hit, I checked his inventory, and two very special items had reappeared.

One item was a basic grapeshot bomb, and the other was enhanced draconid oil, and both he should not have, because he already had made the superior versions. However, the oil he had acquired during the quest "To Bait a Forktail" and the bomb was loot from Jad Karadin during the quest "Following the Thread". I had quite some hassle to get rid of this bomb, had to drop both versions, to create the basic version and upgrade and drop it twice, therefore the recommendation: Don't take these items, if you have already better versions. Karadin's basic Dimeritium bombs however made no problems, and everybody, who already did "The Battle of Kaer Morhen", knows why the game can handle these ...

Finally I did all the dropping again without provoking bugs and travelled nude from White Orchard to Wyzima several times, until over the limit, and then I picked up all stuff again. Then I travelled to Kaer Morhen, and there Geralts upper body was invisible with the head floating above, and all chest armor and gauntlets were missing in his inventory.

After numerous other attempts, the best result I got was: Two black invisible items in "Other" and a miraculous Gwent Guide, which doubled itself sometimes. Most attempts crashed to the desktop during the next few fast travels between maps.

Therefore I conclude: It is pointless to continue the game, when the symptoms described in this thread are observed. This is not only a deranged inventory, there is storage overwritten and the corruption will increase with every additional restore. The strange behaviour of the inventory is just an indicator, and the only remedy might be, to prevent the corruption BEFORE the number of "remaining save/restore cycles or fast travels" hits zero.

To learn more about the problem, I'd ask for help from the community: Is somebody out there, who has TW3 GOTY 1.31 on a PC with SSD and a (save-) game in advanced state (before or after the Isle of Mists, with Velen, Novigrad and Skellige explored) and would volunteer to run my keyboard macro doing save/restore cycles for some hours? I could describe in detail, how to do this.