Game Won't Stop Crashing

[fctree]

I've been playing BG3 for about 17 hours, and I can't get it to stop crashing. I've had issues with the game crashing since I started playing it, but initially it was manageable. Sometimes, I could play for several hours without a crash. A few days ago, I added Karlach to my party and killed the "paladins" that were harassing her. I finished playing for the day, and from the next day onward, the game has been crashing non-stop. At best, I can play for five minutes before a crash occurs. At worst, the game crashes on startup (not loading a save file, but the initial startup). This problem seemed to crop up after I updated my GPU drivers, so I thought this might have been the problem, but I re-installed the previous drivers and the problem persisted. My GPU fan speed seems fine while I'm playing as well. I've tried running the game with DirectX 11 and Vulkan, and it's crashed in both cases. I did install the game to an HDD instead of an SDD. Could that be the problem? Do I just need to update some of my computer's parts?

Here are my computer's specs:
Operating System: Windows 10 (64-bit)
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core Processor 3.2 GHz
RAM: 16 GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (Driver Version 551.76)
Motherboard: Aorus AX370-Gaming K5

[Photonboy]

If you "verified" the code in Steam then it's probably a game glitch. Other people have reported crashing. I doubt it's a hardware issue. HDD vs SSD should just cause slow loading issues at times.

[Moose]

imo your 1060 can't handle it.

[Photonboy]

Originally posted by Moose:

imo your 1060 can't handle it.

A weaker GPU just means a lower FPS, not crashing. And people ARE using a GTX1060 so, not to be rude, but do a little research before giving advice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUYCGw3YB9U

It's almost certainly a software issue with the game and/or some combo with Windows and/or NVidia drivers. MANY people having crashing issues for seemingly different reasons.

[taniwhat]

Yeah, I had two weeks of crash hell. Manually cleaned everything up, didn't help. Then magically, it ran for around 2 hours of play.

Now it's crashing on startup again.

POS.

IF it's saved games being corrupted, that SHOULD be being detected at startup and the problem games tagged as unplayable. I don't think it's that because it crashed with no saved game present as well.

[MareRee]

I have 200 hours in the game, and my game hasn't crashed once until these last few days. Today alone it crashed like 6 or 7 times, very annoying. I have a 4090 GPU and i9-14900K CPU. So, I shouldn't be having any issues. There was an NVIDIA update day before last, maybe that update and the game hot-fixes are conflicting with each other. Either way, I hope it gets resolved soon.

[AlainTheFrench]

Really unhappy so far having just bought the game to play with friends, and wasted a good portion of time trying to make it run. It would crash on startup until I removed and replaced the BaldursGate3 folder (in AppData) with a low config version. Was able to play without crashes and even change some settings until the end of Nautiloid in Hell portion, then it breaks everytime once the game loads. Changing video settings crashes, trying to remove the AppData crashes, even the blank slate install with verified files crashes on startup. Runtime and drivers have been updated and I have a pretty good GPU (PowerColor Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Gaming) that runs everything else smoothly. Guess my once weekend-bound plans have to change indefinitely.

Edit: Might have found a potential fix for my case (didn't get any crashes in multiple tests); I though about trying to install any video mod to see what would happen and read that BG3ModManager required these two versions of .Net Framework:
• .NET Framework 4.7.2 ( https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet-framework/net472 )
• .NET 7.0.13 ( https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/thank-you/runtime-desktop-7.0.13-windows-x64-installer )

I had the Net Framework updated beforehand, but after just installing these two (maybe one of them was enough, dunno), I booted the game to see if anything broke without installing any mods, but voila, things seem to work now.

[taniwhat]

Pretty much the same situation here. I did manage to make it run again and it saved, reloaded around three times before it went back to 'won't start' not even a splash screen.

I tried everything I can think of. Is ♥♥♥♥.

[fctree]

Jeez. Sounds like this is a really common issue. It sucks because I like the game when it actually runs properly. I've uninstalled and reinstalled it. I'll see if that works. Thanks for all the advice.

[Tourist McGee]

After yesterdays hotfix 21, game won't load my saves. I don't have the heart to start a new game. Again.

[Brids17]

The game works great for me in multiplayer but anytime I load up a single player game, it crashes. This time it crashed my entire PC. This was after having played 700 hours since launch with no crashes. Ever since the last big patch the game has been crash city for me. =\

[Photonboy]

Originally posted by fctree:

Jeez. Sounds like this is a really common issue. It sucks because I like the game when it actually runs properly. I've uninstalled and reinstalled it. I'll see if that works. Thanks for all the advice.

Don't uninstall and reinstall the game. No need. If any files end up corrupted or missing for some reason then "VERIFYING LOCAL CONTENT" for that game in Steam should fix it. You can literally DELETE files in the game, verify the game in Steam and it will automatically download those files again.

It sucks that the game crashes for people, and I have no good advice since it seems to work fine for a long time until it doesn't.

Larian is still patching the game. I would recommend just waiting a few weeks, months and then trying again or returning it if you are able... you'll probably go around in circles trying to fix this yourself and there is plenty of BAD advice.

Solid PC that works fine for your OTHER games? Then it's probably THIS game.

[taniwhat]

I've verified local files multiple times. Nothing shows as broken but the game just won't start

[taniwhat]

O.K. I've hacked a working game. In my case the hint was no crash dumps.

So the game wasn't crashing, it wasn't being found. Hint to Steam/Larian, letting the user know that an executable can't be found would be helpful :).

Fix: There are scripts that allow you to run Windows executables directly on Linux using Proton. Running on that initially got me running bg3 but the wrong save dir.

Some alterations to the script and I had my old save games back.

Reason this triggered is that my game collection is spread across 2 drives, an older HD that has the older and less resource hungry games, and an M.2 drive with the ones that need the speed. Steam got VERY confused WRT BG3 and although it found the Larian launcher that couldn't find the bg3.exe file.

Note that I have other games on the M.2 drive, BG3 is the first to trip this problem.

Unsure if this can also impact Windows users but I wouldn't be surprised.

[Photonboy]

taniwhat,
I'm not quite sure what's going on with your EXE not being found, or exactly what you did to resolve this but "alterations to the script" doesn't seem the way to go even if it's working for now.

I believe BG3 wouldn't launch for me because I had an extra file in the same folder that the EXE was located. I got some weird error (data not found or something?). I think I'd backed up the EXE or something but I forget the details... anyway, the Larian launcher got mad I guess that there was something there that "shouldn't" be there. I've never seen anything like that before.

So... I've got considerable experience in backing up and restoring Steam games and almost NEVER had issues with Steam being confused. It's probably a Larian issue. Here's the way I'd handle your current situation:

1) BACKUP the game in Steam (I assume the backup would be over 100GB)
2) In Steam "browse" to the BG3 install folder (BG3-> properties-> Browse Local Files)
3) UNINSTALL the game

4) DELETE the game folder if it still exists
(I said to browse to it first just so you know you're in the right spot. It should disappear when you delete the game. If it doesn't there may be some file there that shouldn't be there.)

5) BACKUP (COPY) your SAVE folder just in case (but leave cloud backups on. So you shouldn't need it)
6) DELETE your Config/Save/launcher Game "Larian Studios" folder
(see PCGAMINGWIKI link at bottom.. will need to show "hidden Items" in File Manager to see those locations... for example, I'd delete the "Larian Studies" folder here on my system (which includes the "Launcher" folder)->
C:\Users\j_d_b\AppData\Local\Larian Studios

7) RESTORE your backup
8) this MAY sort out any of the odd issues you experienced

9) LAUNCHER-> When I skipped the launcher which was talking about some data error my game launched just fine. Only THEN did I go back and figure out the problem (which isn't the same as yours apparently?).

(Launcher skip, save and config folder locations at PCGAMINGWIKI link below)
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate_3


Side Note:
The launcher still acts like I don't own the game and offers to let me buy it even though I can start it from the launcher. And it won't link to my two other Larian games.

So in SHORT:
- backup the game
- copy save folder just in case
- uninstall the game
- delete the "Larian Studios" folder
- restore the backup...

UPDATE:
I'm pretty sure the "Larian Studios" folder I said to delete doesn't go away if you uninstall the game but I've not tested it. So maybe change the order. Your saves also should be on the CLOUD, but Larian seems to have weird issues I've not had before.

[taniwhat]

Issue is that Proton installs (different variants) are also spread across the two drives, they get dumped into whatever is the current drive when you first used them.

IF I run with proton from the other drive (Proton experimental which has been the most useful in my experience) the paths are messed up when the Larian launcher is run from it's install dir on the M.2 drive. As a result bg3.exe isn't found.

Appears to be a problem in the setup Steam uses, likely impacts anything across drives that uses a launcher. There's no obvious way to move proton versions across drives and even if there was that probably would just mean that older games on the HD would stop working instead.

I'm happy with my hack - starting the game is much faster ;) but getting it across to Steam that there's a problem in this case, well I'm looking at the D20 dice now and thinking 'this is going to roll a 1' :)

I have opened an issue with Steam but odds of it being fixed look miserable.