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Anyone around coy with being Mr. Fixit? (Ms. Fixit would be even better, but either will do nicely.) I can't absorb dragon souls, and yes, I've been through almost every thread there is here on the answer. (So please, do not duplicate me. Pretty please?)

Mind you, I got a TRUCKLOAD of mods installed... (ducks in preparation for the coming brick) Odd thing is, I was playing with a very similar list before installing Dragon Combat Overhaul and Succubus Race, but deactivating either won't get me anywhere.

Done some digging on the Nexus and Steam forums... I read somewhere that No Spinning Death overwrites a script related to dragon death. It might be mucking up things some, but I can't tell. Disabling that mod didn't get me anywhere, but scripts are baked into saves (right?), so in theory I have to (cringes) restart the game to be absolutely sure...

Other bits worth (?) knowing:

  • Running SKSE
  • Running ENB
  • Using ModOrganizer

UPDATE: There is something seriously broken with my game itself. Tried the following:

  • Disabled ALL the mods, save for Alternate Start for quicker starts (and yes, this includes USKP, UDGP and UDBP)
  • Started a new game, created a vanilla Nord character
  • Toggled godmode on
  • Given the PC Lightning Storm
  • Spawned Mirmulnir
  • Turned the overgrown lizard into charred meat

And STILL I'm not absorbing its soul!

UPDATE 2: Verifying the game cache integrity turned up 3 corrupted files. Wish I knew which those were, but I had cleaned my master files using TES5Edit, so I thought I had screwed up something there. Created a new barebones game, and at last, I'm having some dragon spirit chow. Then, created a new fully modded game, and no soul chow for me... For a moment I wanted to pin the blame on TES5Edit but now I know that's not the cause. The culprit's still at large.

UPDATE 3: After having no luck with a fully modded game, started to gradually activate mods again... eventually I realized that the truckload of mods I had activated on my previous attempt broke something again on my vanilla installation, for even another barebones try was plagued with this issue. Re-check integrity, and bam, another file -a very small one, not even 1k in size- was corrupted. (Again, I wish there was a way to know which!)

UPDATE 4: Tried a new game with just these on:

  • USKP
  • UDGP
  • UDBP
  • Alternate Start

Guess what. AGAIN the corrupted file issue.

Tried again with only Alternate Start active, and still cannot absorb dragon souls. Even while today I could on a similar setup. (I don't understand anything anymore here...) Anyone knows of a way to skip the intro without installing this mod?

(Could it be that ModOrganizer is somehow mucking things up?)

UPDATE 5: Probably ModOrganizer has something to do with this. However insane it sounds. Instead of manually disabling ESPs, I right-clicked on the mod list, selected 'Disable all visible mods', manually re-activated Alternate Start, and this time I could dine on dragon essence. Read again: a near-completely barebones setup, without even the unofficial patches.

UPDATE 6: Disregard what I said about MO screwing up things. One of the unofficial patches is misbehaving. Even with a truckload of mods on, I can still eat dragonstuff--right until activating all three of them. Which one is to blame I don't yet know.

UPDATE 7 AND FINAL: Finally, finally figured what's going on.

USKP has a problem with the dragonactorscript.pex file.

Found and installed a fix available here: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/31685

Personally, I went and overwrote the file from USKP itself instead of treating this fix as a separate mod, keeping a backup available just in case.

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    Yeah, scripts are baked into saves. Why Bethesda thought any echo of the pain of Morrowind modding needing to come back, I'm not entirely clear.
    – SevenSidedDie
    Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 0:03
  • -1 for lack of effort. Disable all mods and see if that helps. Start a new game with all mods disabled and see if that helps. Start a new game with all mods enabled and see if that helps. If disabling all mods does help do a binary search to find the culprit. If starting a new game with all mods enabled helps go back a few hard saves to find a save that was not corrupted by new mods.
    – kotekzot
    Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 2:36
  • @kotekzot: guilty as charged. Just went through that process to try and track down a texture-related bug with no results. <sigh> I thought there could be someone a lot more knowledgeable than me who was able to tell on the spot what the issue is. (High expectations maybe?)
    – Emiliano De Santis
    Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 13:52
  • If you did all that then I suggest you add your findings to your question by editing it. It is almost impossible to remotely diagnose how a unique combination of a hundred mods is conflicting.
    – kotekzot
    Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 14:33
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    @EmilianoDeSantis Please post your solution as an answer, and mark it as accepted. :)
    – Cloudy
    Commented May 18, 2014 at 6:54

5 Answers 5

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Make sure that the mods' load order is correct (as explained in an answer by DouglasLeeder). If you're unsure on how to do this, just let BOSS take care of the mods' load order. BOSS has a database of mods and their proper load order, and can automatically decide optimal load order of mods, provided they are listed in that database.

Also, see the troubleshooting steps for the 'cannot absorb dragon souls' issue listed at the Unofficial Dragonborn Patch Nexus forums sticky post by Arthmoor, one of the UDGP developers:

Check for: dragonactorscript.pex and/or mqkilldragonscript.pex. Remove them if present. They are from dragon mods that came as loose files.

DSAMG - Dragon Soul Absorb More Glorious, and Diversified Dragons are known to cause this. Those mods need to be updated with a Dragonborn patch that incorporates the fixes from the UDBP.

Skyrim Unbound will cause this as well due to the script being unaware of the changes for Dragonborn.

Others may be a factor as well.

Note too that the offending mod may have the script packaged inside a BSA. That will need to be handled by that mod's author.

If you are using Mod Organizer and are here to report issues with dragon souls, sorry, but you're on your own as we do not support issues caused by incorrectly letting that program modify the BSA load order system the game has. Your post is likely to just be ignored. We don't have time to keep fending off false bug reports caused by people who insist on unpacking their BSA files using the program and thus subverting the entire system the game relies on for proper behavior.

...scripts are baked into saves (right?), so in theory I have to (cringes) restart the game to be absolutely sure...

Yes, scripts are baked into saves. However, there is a way to remove scripts left by uninstalled mods in savefiles. You need to configure Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) to use its ClearInvalidRegistrations console command. It removes invalid scripts left running by uninstalled mods. This feature was introduced in v1.6.7 of SKSE:

add console command ClearInvalidRegistrations to remove invalid OnUpdate() registrations

This prevents orphaned OnUpdate() events and the resulting bloated/broken saves when removing certain mods. When applied to an already bloated save, it will stop growing further and instead shrink over time as the game processes all queued events. This may take hours depending on the amount of bloat.

To execute automatically after each reload, add this to \Data\SKSE\skse.ini:

[General]
ClearInvalidRegistrations=1

Use the skse.ini method to automatically remove invalid scripts left by uninstalled mods.

I read somewhere that No Spinning Death overwrites a script related to dragon death. It might be mucking up things some, but I can't tell.

After configuring SKSE to use the ClearInvalidRegistrations command, try uninstalling the 'No Spinning Death' mod and then see if the issue is fixed. Otherwise, you'll have to disable half your mods and then test again. Rinse and repeat until you find the offending mod.

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  • The file overwritten by No Spinning Death is a core script which is also one replaced by Dragon Combat Overhaul. Doing this with both mods disabled would cause the original script to kick in again?
    – Emiliano De Santis
    Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 13:54
  • @EmilianoDeSantis I believe so, unless another mod is causing the issue. If disabling those mods don't work, you'll have to disable half your mods and then test again. Rinse and repeat until you find the offending mod.
    – galacticninja
    Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 15:33
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If that is your load order I see one problem: You have the skyrim patch after the DLC patches - it needs to go first.

The correct order is given at: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/19/

  • Skyrim.esm
  • Update.esm
  • Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp
  • Dawnguard.esm
  • Unofficial Dawnguard Patch.esp
  • Hearthfires.esm
  • Unofficial Hearthfire Patch.esp
  • Dragonborn.esm
  • Unofficial Dragonborn Patch.esp
  • HighResTexturePack01.esp
  • HighResTexturePack02.esp
  • HighResTexturePack03.esp
  • Unofficial High Resolution Patch.esp

The patches should be interleaved with the actual DLC.

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  • Tried to do this by creating user rules, but got a problem with BOSS: it complains about bad sorting. (Can't load the user rules panel now. :P )
    – Emiliano De Santis
    Commented Nov 7, 2013 at 11:57
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USKP has a problem with the dragonactorscript.pex file.

Found and installed a fix available here: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/31685

Personally, I went and overwrote the file from USKP itself instead of treating this fix as a separate mod, keeping a backup available just in case.

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I had the same issue. However when I disabled all the unofficial patches I was still having this problem. I ended up taking the script extender off and it worked. Then slowly started uploading my mods back on that didn't need the script extender. I wanna put it back on there so I can have my immersion mods back that made the game more pretty but idk. We will have to wait and see.

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I also used Nexus 31685, but I had to extract the mqkilldragonscript.pex from UDBP (Nexus 31083) which I added to the scripts folder for Nexus 31685. My SMPC (Nexus 23833) was overwriting the updated mqkilldragonscript.pex and keeping the dragon soul from absorbing properly. I used BSA Unpacker (Nexus 4804) to get the file I needed out of the UDBP bsa file.

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