Larian Studios Forums Divine Divinity (English) Technical Problems Cannot open chests

I was playing fine, went all the way to dark forest to visit the Elf village and played around in the warriors place. Did a few quests (currently on the mission to find the 7 councils)

But i found out i was no longer able to pick up items, open chests, and not even be able to go down the stairs.

I can still talk to NPCs, Fight monsters, Gain exp and lvls. Make potion out of mushrooms. relaunching the client did not help.




Also on the shrimpo quest..I 100% of the time crash when i get its Health to around 40%....is there a fix for this?

Do you have any older saves that work properly?

Try deleting all of the files in the '..\Divine Divinity\Run\Dynamic' folder.
This folder is used as a cache for the game. Files are created / copied there from the save game folder when you load, and written / copied from that folder when you save a game. The files will be re-created as required the next time you start Divinity. If there was a corrupt file in that folder, deleting the files should fix the problem.

If you start a new game, can you open the chest in the starting room, and take the ladder up? If not, then the problem is likely a corrupt file in the game folders (possibly the main items.000 file). In this case, a clean install of the game should help. Backup your savegames first (just in case), then uninstall the game, reboot, make sure there is nothing left in the Divine Divinity folder (other than the \run\savegames subfolder) and re-install the game.

If a new game works, but your current game does not, then the problem is most likely in the save itself. In that case it may be possible to fix the problem by replacing the corrupt file(s) with those from your most recent working save (if any), but that could cause other problems (possibly missing quest items, though there is a workaround for that) depending on the file(s) in question.

Troubleshooting Tips (& manual install procedure)


Do you have the CD/DVD version of the game or the GOG/Impulse downloadable version?

Was Srimpo causing a crash before the problem with the stairs/chests/loot, or have you only tried that quest since then?

At least with the disk version of DD I don't recall a pattern of crashes with Shrimpo. How are you fighting him? Perhaps if you avoided weapons with Freeze or summoned creatures that could avoid the issue, or something...

If this problem still persists after you get the first one resolved, you could try using DAD's item editor to give a very large damage value to some crappy weapon to use temporarily. A one-hit kill would avoid the 40% health point, so maybe it might bypass whatever is causing the crash.

Seems like my other saves are working but they are faaar behind the one i am working on.

Deleting the Dynamics file did not work.

I am running on the impulse version with 1.0004 patch

Shrimpo had the crash before this chest bug happened.

Looks like the problem is in your latest save, unfortunately (a problem with the game files could be fixed by simply re-installing it).


If you backup your saves, and then make a copy of your latest and newest working save folders, you can determine which file(s) became corrupt by copying files from the copy of the most recent working save into the copy of your latest save. I'd start with the inventory files (items.000 and inv.*). Once the copy of the latest starts working properly, you know which files are the problem (though you may have to create a new copy of the latest save folder and repeat the process to make sure you isolate only the problem files).

Mixing files between different games, or from an older save in the same game, can cause minor to major problems, depending on the file(s) in question. For example, the items.000 file keeps track of random stats on equipment; replacing it would likely mess up most or all of your equipment. World.* files keep track of the environment and items left directly on the ground; it would be relatively painless to delete a world file and have the game replace it with the default version the next time the save was loaded (that would re-seal quest opened locations and possibly eliminate quest items), but there are different world files for Rivertown, Verdistis and the Dark Forest, so it would be highly unlikely you would have the same problem in each.


Check your messages (click 'My Stuff' in the top menu bar, then 'My Messages').

Just happened to me.

This game is pretty much dead to me.

This problem is with the game itself; saves where it has occurred work fine transferred to a CD/DVD version of the game.

Someone in a GOG forum mentioned that they couldn't open chests or pick up stuff normally in the Dwarven Halls, but it would work if they used Telekinesis.

I don't have any skill points in it, so I can't try right off hand. If I get motivated enough, I might try to gain a level just to check it out if it would help.

Telekinesis spell books can be bought. If you just want to test it out you could use iZakaroN's SaveEditor (or from Kiya's site, with description) to give yourself some extra skill points.

Well... I probably would have never got around to it because of the level of frustration I had gotten to. Anyway, I emailed GOG and complained about the situation, telling them that I had tried all that I was going to try and would they kindly give me money back for a game that was pretty much unplayable at this point due to the technical issues.

So, they write me back and tell me, "I am sorry to hear that, Divine Divinity was a buggy, but playable game from the start. On certain Hardware configurations it runs great on
other it's not. But the developers are now working on fixing it just for
GOG! For now please try to replace .exe files in the game's folder with
those attached to this email and please let me know if there is any
improvement."

Needless to say, I wasn't happy with answer I received but lo and behold, replacing the files worked (for me anyway). The files were "div.exe" and "configtool.exe"

Perhaps, if you are having issues similar to the one that I and a few others had this solution may work for you.

You weren't happy with the reply?!

You were told
1. That the developers were working on a fix and
2. You were sent two files that actually fixed your problem.

Cripes mate.....what exactly would make you happy?