Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - Technical Issues PS-4 Game crashing when opening NPCs' 'Buy' menu

Got a new issue: Quite often now when I attempt to open the Buy/Sell menu on NPCs the game crashes.

I receive the same error as before: "CE-34878-0"

It's not a specific NPC, as when I reload I can frequently open a given NPCs buy/sell menu only to find a later NPC crashes the game.

One of the ways in which I play this game when not actively out questing involves travelling from NPC to NPC in Cyceal, Silverglen, etc. and buying any of their crafting materials that I'd need or can profit from (typically logs, metal ingots, penny bun mushrooms, and unique items), waiting until their inventory re-spawns, and then doing it again. Having it crash whenever I open an NPCs' inventory means having to save before every NPC interaction just in case; this takes a substantial amount of time and is detrimental to my enjoyment of this game.

There is a limit on the number of items that the game can handle (64k with the patch), though it would take a great deal of crafting and trading to reach (one person did so on PC, at almost 350 hours in the game). However, that would be a consistent crash, if this were the cause.

Please email supportdos@larian.com, with a brief description and a save before one of the traders that is likely to crash. For the benefit of anyone one else with this problem finding this topic, the save would need to be transferred to a USB flash drive first.
In the Saved Data in System Storage section of the Settings menu, click Copy to USB Storage Device, select the relevant save and Copy. From there you can zip the files, then copy to email or upload to Dropbox or Google drive, etc, and provide a link.

Did my save reveal that I had vendered too many crafted items or somesuch?

I don't know if that was part of it, but it is something inventory related with bringing up the trade window. It is reproducible, and a programmer is looking into it (QA and a couple programmers were on it right away).

Thanks, I appreciate the update. Let me know if it turns out there is anything I can do on my end to correct it, or if I'll just have to wait until there is another game patch.

It's been a while, so I figured I'd ask: Has there been some progress on a resolution to this issue?

Yes, the support issue has been closed as fixed. There aren't any comments specifically about what the issue was.

I just experienced this same issue about 2 days ago on my PS4 game. I had started a new game since patch 1.04 as it had broken my game (I could not load saves). Running on 1.04 seemed pretty good as I think I only had one game crash in about 100 hours of play (a lot as idle play though).

The game consistently crashed in the same way as the above mentioned as well as a few other ways.
- If I talked with an NPC/trader (not even just opening the trade menu)
- If I created more craftable items (specifically cutting logs into 2 branches and 1 chips). I think making items from one resource and turned into one item were fine.

I did try to reduce my inventory as well (eating food, potions, etc) and tried to craft again and it did do something, but it just let me craft a few more items and then it happened again.

I then troubleshooted on a day older save. Not much item quantity difference would be between these two saves but the error never occurred on this older save. I would have only picked up maybe one re-spawn worth of craftable items and gear, but I crafted about 100 logs into branches and the crash did not occur. On the bad save I would crash after 2-6 logs or so.

I will be continuing play on this older save that works, but I am wondering if I could have maxed out (or near maxed out now) the number of items, or if this is probably a similar error to what Neorealist had.

Is this an issue with games started before Patch 1.05? If so, should I start a new game again?

The 1.04 patch should not have caused a problem with existing saves.

In Neorealist's case it wasn't a problem hitting the item limit, and it doesn't sound like that is the problem for you, either. If you visited traders a lot in between the working and crashing save points, that could have generated a bunch of new items, though.

There is no description of the problem, so I don't know if being started pre or post patch would make a difference. It likely wouldn't be a factor, though; generally it is just story related fixes and changes that can not be safely applied to existing saves.

I'm glad to hear the issue has been tagged as fixed. Has it already been posted live, or will I need to wait until your next patch?

It will have to wait for the next patch. Unfortunately there is no ETA yet.

Exact issue started happening to me. Immediately upon trade, game crashes. This is if it actually boots up now (which it doesn't).

I recently noticed there was a patch released for the PS4 (back in July patch 1.06). It fixed my persistent trade crashing issue and generally the whole game crashed less as well. However, I just encountered it again after probably 30-40 more hours into the game. Now, in this time I have actually been consolidating all of my junk and crafted items by selling them to Thelyron so that when he leaves the game he will take the items out of the game with him (hopefully?).

One other factor that I did was I amassed a huge amount of crafted items on Anna and then just recently killed her for them all back. I picked up a fair amount of the items and loaded my inventory while still leaving probably 10x the amount in my inventory still on the floor. The game gets extremely laggy when I am on top of the pile or very close to it but it has not crashed. The crash I got was actually down at the skeleton trader by the Harbour so very far away from the pile. How many items would you actually have to craft to reach the maximum items in game? Could this just be more of an inventory issue on my character holding so many items?

The item limit is 64k global items. Unfortunately there is no cleanup or reuse of item handles, so killing NPCs, or trading to ones destined to die, doesn't make any difference.

So if the game were to run for hours and hours would it eventually reach an item limit because of the NPCs getting new items? If I look at a trade window of an NPC does that mean all of those items now count even though they don't appear again later? Do items generate every hour even if a trade window is NOT opened with each NPC?

I don't think items are actually generated until you trade with an NPC. If you left the game running and came back every hour or two to do a round of merchants, that would eventually cause a problem. Depending on how much crafting is done, it still takes a fair bit of trading, though.
Checking saves for a couple of people who ran into this issue after the limit increase, one was at 575 hours playtime, one at 547 hours and another at 350 (in Luculla Forest, character level 13). That isn't a very big sample size, though, so I don't know what the minimum playtime someone could expect to run into the limit would be, if they did as much crafting and trading as possible.

Well, that is basically what I have done haha. I am only at around 200 hours and probably 90% of those hours I have checked back on time to see new stuff and buy up crafting materials and items from every rare item generating merchant as well as almost all civilians in Cyseal over a period of time for crafting materials. I have only progressed in this run through (my third from previous bugs I ran into which made me restart after each patch) until Silverglen road. It is only at that time that the game consistently crashes when I load Silverglen for the first time.

Firstly, what are ways I could reduce the item count if I were to still go about crafting, in an efficient manner.

For example, I used blacksmithing as a primary means of money because of its increasing value and reusable crafting materials. I would obtain the ores/bars and turn them into the +1 action point item (this could mean I crafted the item, then furnaced it again because it wasn't +1 action point, and this could happen many times). Does this mean in the process of making one item I could use up multiple item handles? Furthermore I will pickpocket/slay a merchant for the weapons back and then start over again. So one bar could take up many item handles then? A better way of crafting might be to use the best crafting material at a later level which gives a consistently high value, or just accept what I have made from bars?

Secondly, what are ways to reduce item generation during game play?

For example, if I do not open up baskets, and caskets and corpses then will that avoid item generation as well? Generally what I receive from those containers is worthless. I know some corpses need to be opened for quest materials, but if I know which ones then I could just open those.

Also I have a question about consumables like arrows, potions, ingredients and food. Do these count towards the 64k item generation? If I turn wheat into flour and then into bread (with water bucket) does this actually involve 4 (or more) item handles being used up? Crafting staves from wood, does this take 5 or more (wood, then 2 branches and shavings [which then could go further into mush then paper then scroll], then staff).

I noticed with the previous crash before patch 1.06 that if I ate food or potions that I held off the crashes (almost like it was taking away the items) but maybe this was because it had to do with another inventory issue and not the max 64k item handles thing.

Repeatedly creating/recycling axes and swords would go through multiple item handles. You would be better off saving, then go through a batch of crafting and reload if you don't get a reasonable percentage with +AP bonuses.

It would be better to delay crafting if you don't need the items or gold.

Local items in the world (some pre-placed items) are not assigned a global handle if you do not pick them up.

I don't think pickpocketing or killing an NPC creates a new item handle.

Avoiding containers that tend to have less useful contents will help a little bit, but I'm not sure how significant that would be overall. It would probably help more not to check every merchant every hour, if you didn't actually need equipment upgrades or new skills.

I think each item in a chain of crafting does require a handle, but I'm not sure about items added to an existing stack.


The 1.06 update was for a separate, PS4-only issue, unrelated to the item handle limit (though the symptoms were similar).

Thanks, now that I understand how the handles work I can see how I zoomed to the item max. My game did become playable again after the 1.06 update. It was crashing anytime I traded with NPCs. For this recent crash I went back some saves and have not had a crash from trading but the Silverglen load still crashes. Based on the handle info I can see if this is really not an item max crash then I will probably see it soon. I think it is time to just play the game rather than min maxing haha... I had some really great legendary outfits on all of my characters at level 10 though...

As for the pre-placed items, do you mean the flora around hedges and shells found on the beach? If I am not going to use them it is better to just leave them there then?

It sounds like the best crafting would be scrap metal/cloth/leather into armour. Always a good value at a later level. Crafting staves seems horrible since the item chain is huge and making swords and axes seems a bit tedious.

As for items added to an existing stack do you mean like smelting ore into bars and that they stack? Either way, I will just go easy on merchant trading until I really need some better gear.

Yes, that's generally what I meant by pre-placed items. Correct.
Yes, smelting ore, creating potions, splitting logs into branches or whittling them into arrow shafts, etc, where a new inventory slot isn't needed, and some or all of the results are just added to an existing stack of the respective item.