WARNING - BEWARE - DANGER - Inventory Loss

[Sniffles]

I vaguely recall amgepo telling me about Skyrim's list handling having problems.

A few days ago, I was certain I had made certain pieces of apparel for Serana. But they weren't in my or her inventory.

Today, I decided to switch Sophia from bow combat to destruction magic. I had smithing augmentations on the PC which were also her combat gear. I made Sophia a new set of mod gear at the forge, then walked, I don't use fast travel, to Lakeview. I enchanted Sophia's new gear. She has two menu choices, Check Her Gear and set what she is to wear.

Long story short, pieces I had her equipped went missing. Checking her gear the inventory was wrong, Swapping back and forth with the PC, making more gear, another trip to Whiterun to do smithing then back, I took inventory.

Fourteen pieces of gear, some of Sophia's old gear, her new gear, and four pieces of the PC's gear was gone. 1 1/2 hours, 6 very hard to come by elixirs, and a total of 19 grand and black soul gems used up. Then checking the new gear for Serana, it was all still there.

The problem appears to be transferring gear back and forth between characters. PLUS just equipping and unequipping various items, the PC gear started vanishing. Possibly caused by or compounded by DLCs and mod added characters.

I'm depressed and burned out right now, and out of time. I'm going to reload a saved game later where everything was intact then removing all items and keeping them in containers every step of the way and see if things go missing then.

[Sniffles]

Not a warning as much as a heads up. Re: Dawnguard - Serana questline.

Overview. Dragonborn with Vilja as primary follower. Vilja's coding alone allowed having additional followers. Inigo, Arissa, Sophia, and Serana.

All quests completed with only the normal inherent Skyrim minor glitches up to the quest Kindred Judgement.

-First bug. Report back to Isran that Auriel's bow has been acquired. There must be no combat outside the keep or Isran's correct dialogue will often not trigger.

 Side effect: Two dragons, both dead, circling outside. Apparently they cannot land and conclude the scripting. The same thing occasionally happens in Markarth. Thus, kill dragon(s) or other enemies, enter the fort and immediately exit. Combat will resolve. If circling dragons, they will be gone or have crashed somewhere.

-Second bug. Isran will run his dialogue and summon all the NPCs for his cheerleader talk. Then the script may hang. Exit and reenter immediately and he will finish his dialogue.

-Third bug. More chaos than a bug. The attack on the castle. Eventually some or all of the NPCs will eliminate the vampires and survive. Then entering the final room with Harkon confrontation only Dragonborn and Serana will be let into the room. Maybe. Usually.

-Fourth bug(s). Upon entering the final room the door locks, Harkon goes through his various dialogues and performs a series of scripted events. This can bug out numerous different ways. He becomes invincible, he keeps teleporting all over the room, he stays in his red protective sphere and nothing further happens and several other quirks.

Tested repeatedly

Upon arrival at the outside of the castle, immediately use the console and turn off Isran and all other Dawnguard NPCs AI. All bugs are eliminated.

And a little bonus, after eliminating the vampires and gathering at the door to the final room, all follower NPCs were present in the room. This has no affect on Harkon's scripts but rather facilitated them. Shoot him, he goes red sphere, turns into bats - teleports and etc etc.

After his demise, all followers get ignored and Serana's dialogue executes without any problems.

Theme and canon wise.

Instead of the (lame) hack and slash fierce final battle...

Dragonborn: "Isran, let's get real. Me and my friends have coped with numerous vampire attacks, had our arses ran all over Skyrim on projects and errands, recovered and read the elder scrolls, followed up and recovered Auriel's bow which is intrinsic in Harkon's great plan, so the next step is simple. Take the damn bow. If you can't destroy it use your and your compatriots creativity in making it all but impossible for Harkon to get his hands on it.

Meanwhile, have a little faith in Serana and me. We go in cautiously and carefully and take out as many of Harkon's compatriots as possible. Harkon is now sweating it out so we have two extremely powerful weapons, time, and us choosing when and where to attack. No matter how well fortified a position is, it's a fixed target the enemy can pick and choose how, when and where to attack. If we fail then plan B, attack with the Dawnguard."

And that being said, Dragonborn and followers attack, kick some serious butt, and in the final room when Harkon starts to give his speech, things gets started off with an arrow in his head, he goes through some gyrations while the expected minions get dealt with, and the moment Harkon goes into attack mode again... is he really any tougher than the dozens of dragons that bow and those arrows have turned into compost?

(Harkon about to address Serana... plonk, arrow 1, the followers and Serana lets rip with all they got, Dragonborn goes stealth and waits Harkon out. He rematerializes and  plonk #2. Done.)

Dragonborn, "Our sincere sympathies, Serana. What say us all getting shot of this hole, take a long thoughtful stroll on back to Lakeview that you already said you liked, you can have the extra bedroom all to yourself, and we just take a breather. No rush getting back to Isran. Probably more important is giving your mom the heads up the nightmare is over. We might even be able to get Durnehviir to give her the news."

As an aside, once the glitches were eliminated, there are numerous dungeons with mini bosses more challenging. Major melodrama but a weak threadbare plot and scripted ending that's rather boring for a level 50 PC and a few well developed followers. Not even worth taking screenshots.

(Thanks to my other for working out the bugs and writing this)

[Sniffles]

Solve a solid chunk of Skyrim crash and glitch problems: NEVER save over an old save. Always make a new save and delete old ones as you go.
From my old friend the technician guy:
"Been playing your silly game. Running background logging, the auto saves are often problematic and incomplete. It reminds me of the old days running multi user linux interfaces when all I/O was halted for full DB saves. Same with data entry terminals at the hospitals, a queue is ran as the DB is saved to avoid data loss. The problem is dynamic data cannot be saved. So in the game, people talking or any activities ongoing gets a generic reference point, putting it simply. These reference points ask the game for a refresh to fill in what doesn't get saved.
So the best bet in keeping errors from getting into the saves is stop all activity, preferably with inactive graphics like staring at a blank wall, and make a new save. A new save does not append data to a previous save. Obviously, multiple saves over the same saved game will compound any errors. Autosaves are worse, almost always making saves while there is dynamic data ongoing. The logs revealed nearly all autosaves are riddled with errors. What the game calls unattached references."

[Sniffles]

Continuing with the save-crash problem I got confused and asked for further info. His reply:

"Simplified. A saved game contains errors. Saved games, as many save features on programs today, are expedited. They add, insert, prepend, or append data to a save. Think of a medical record on a hospital. All sorts of data of the patient already exist. Rewriting the entire record each time something needs to be added is out of the question. The introduction or errors is always possible. So the new data is added to what already exists.

Now in this example, the data is static. Most recent report of the patient is simply added. But what if several physicians are sending in data on that patient at the same time? That data is dynamic. So static data, the general info of the patient is never changed. Everything gets appended afterwards. A+B+C+D and so on. But what happens if two physicians send in contradictory data at around the same time? Now you have two sets of records. Which is the correct one? In computer 'thinking' both are. Both get written and an XOR error is added: NOT this OR NOT that.

Now with your game you have static data. The world about the character, fixtures. And you have dynamic data, things which are moving and changing. Place your character in a crowded place with actors around it and take a series of saves each on top of the other. Then take a new save. Both should be nearly that same upon reloading. But the stacked, multiple save will be larger. Why? Appended data. But the game loads all  the data then only sends the most recent dynamic data into the display to be interacted with. What about all the extra data? It's junk, mostly but not completely over-written. Corruption of data is present. Keep adding to that save, more corruption accumulates. Unattached instances. That actor is here, but also there, there, there and there. Make sense?

So I made about 100 saved games in quick succession of one instance, situation, of the character in a crowded area. Then a new save of the same. I then closed the game, restarted and reloaded each of the two saves and ran the save cleaner program on each. Over 1000 more unattached instances in the overwritten saved game.

And the rule is, always, more data, more room for errors. 

This is most obviously seen when an NPC suddenly vanishes or is placed. Or occasionally you get a duplicate, two of the same NPC. So an obvious solution to one of the game's most common problems is make the dynamic data as static as possible. Zero activity, from NPCs or from the dynamic environment. Freeze Frame. Then make a new save.

One very common problem I encountered was a quest evolving dynamic. If interrupted, a save is made while a dynamic is ongoing, it may not happen. The quest won't continue. You can easily force this to happen. An NPC gives the character a multiple choice which will effect the quest. Make the save before  selecting one of the choices. The quest is now dead. The saved game wants a flag set but the dynamic, the character response, isn't present. This can, and does, happen dynamically. Other activities in the background keeping a flag from being set.

The Blood On The Ice quest in Windhelm which you directed me to is classical problematic. It has numerous enactors and a whole series of circumstances that must be in place. Checking your saved game, your quest was dead before it got started. The initialization must take place at night. Utterly moronic coding. Nothing in the code to prevent the quest from starting at other times though it cannot progress past  a certain point. Your save has you entering the city around noon. AND after the fourth time you entered the city. You progressed to Hjerim, picked the lock and entered. That part of the quest did not initiate though earlier parts did. That has to be some of the worst code ever written. No progress checks, no checks to accommodate missing enactors, nothing. But it allows for some flags to be set which are kept in your saved game as static data that cannot be over-written or modified. You would need to reset the entire city and eliminate all operations you have executed there in order for the quest to be restarted. IE, roll back to an earlier save the only way to progress."

[Sniffles]

@graykin I think that he explained how you came about with two Vilja's. Similar to what I did. Two instances of the same character and since they aren't in the base game where the engine can eliminate one of them you ended up with two entirely different NPCs, both legitimate.