The frequent crashes are killing the game for me

[「AMOEBA」]

I like this game, nah I love this game, it's fantastic and I love the support it gets from the modding community. But the one thing that kills the game for me is when I'm just playing, moving around the map doing whatever and all of the sudden the game just crashes out of nowhere.

This would be fine every now and again, but I feel like every single one of my sessions with Kenshi ends because the game crashed and I just don't have the spirit to launch everything back up again, load my entire base again and pray to god that I can get maybe 20 more minutes out of the game without another crash. I don't even have that insane of mods installed, just doing basic things like loading my base in will crash the game.

All in all I was wondering if there was any hard solution for this because I have several mods installed that reduce the texture sizes, reduce weather effects and such, basically minimizing anything possible to maximize my performance and I still get frequent crashes. Is this even an issue that other people are getting?

[tebow baggins]

if you have over 100 recruits in a base in will probably crash

[Hatsune Neko Gaming]

Please upload the crashdump.zip file.
if the game did not create one, then zip up and upload the kenshi.txt or the Kenshi._info.txt file after the game crashes and before you restart it.

You can find the files at default install location
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Kenshi
Save file locations are at default install location
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Kenshi\save

To upload your crashdump.zip or Kenshi.zip ( Kenshi.log file ) or save folder,
You can use any of these free cloud storage services
dropbox[www.dropbox.com]
googledrive[www.google.com]
File Dropper[www.filedropper.com]
or the main forum[www.lofigames.com] ( 10 megs max ) to post your bug reports.
You can post the link on the steam forums or on the Lo-Fi Forums.

Any free cloud storage service should be acceptable long as it offers free access to the data for non registered users.

You can read the pinned topic How to report a crash/bug for more information on how to report bugs.

[Pyrrhus]

Press F12 to fix problems. Open gameplay setting to check borderless windows and uncheck fast zone hopping. They usually reduce crashes. If still doesn't work, open kenshi property in steam library to verify integrity of games files under local files tab then you would have to recheck listing of mods at launch menu under mods tab. Try adjust some settings in game's menu like reduce numbers of arrows on ground from 60 to 20, among with other settings to graphics. Enjoying gameplay without crashes is better than candy eye.

[RasaNova]

I won't say it never crashes but for me it's very rare. (maybe 3 times in over 200 hours.) Every 20 minutes seems extreme, and yeah would definitely be frustrating! Could it possibly be a mod conflict? Just a suggestion, try disabling all mods and see if it still crashes, if not then maybe enable them 1 by 1 til you see which are causing the issues. I've also read that the order mods load can have an impact on stability. Other than that, is your system definitely up to the listed requirements?

[happy]

I play with low textures, lowest settings, no weather effects, I crash everytime too many people are around(fogmen/cannibal zones).
I crash when I don't pause to allow loading.
I've ended sessions disgusted and exhausted of reloading.
My pc should run this way more smoothly than it does, it's only a semi potato after all.

But I know that you only need 1 good session to get back into the game, and for that there are (forced) solutions:
plan ahead a project that will not involve a lot of loading and such, clean your base of objects/containers/stuff you don't need, one might say even people you don't need(optional)
And the usual wise stuff to avoid.

get back into the game, play a bit more organised.

AND IF IT FAILS and still crashes: lower squad sizes, don't be afraid to drop it by half, it should drastically improve things, as long as you too limit your squad sizes by half, you should still get a challenging experience

crashes get more frequent with the larger base/party you have

The first thing I would check if I were you is where your base is located: If it's too close to zones with very high population numbers, you load both your base and an insane amount of stuff you need not to, hence the crashes
Also check the size of the loading chunks you deal with, if you try to load too vast, your cpu goes on strike.

also, people with 8 jobs probably do checks to see what to do, and like in rimworld, it may just be the xtra thing that kills your cpu: try clear simple task organisations, try to have your farmers farm and your strike squad do nothing but defend(no jobs)

on my end, I felt a big difference once I had more than 20ish people, I even felt a difference between 29 and 30 people.
Your computer has a limit, find it, and respect it

the good news is that kenshi respects your fun in it's own way: you don't have to start over, you can just import and continue your adventure with new parameters.

I have no magical solutions sadly, but if you did not crash as much when you were in early game, if you crash like crazy since you have a base and over 25 people, then you can do something about it.
The game should not crash as much, but it's better to have work arounds and crashes you understand the reason of than just dumb ass errors you can't do crap about.

[Pyrrhus]

Try reset squad's positions, before loading latest save game, check the box where you see reset squad's positions. It worked for me at least.

[Morkonan]

Are all those reporting crashes often using increased game speeds? Either recently, before the crash, or during the crash?

IMO, which isn't worth a bunch, Kenshi can become "unstable" even at x2 speed. (It seems to bork up references for assets, etc, quite easily. But, I can't prove that and am no authority on the matter and, frankly, that's a "wtf it's supposed to do computer" kind of weirdness.)

[Pyrrhus]

Nerf fast forward? Try that. Crashes still do happen even at normal speed. Reset squad positions stops crashing only for temporary. There's something in the game that's causing the same crash which is pushing players to import repeatedly if not for 12 years since game's first released is being treated like the elephant in the room. Makes me wonder if just telling people to upload bug/crash reports merely has to do with encouraging more activity/data on forums than to actual nail the bugs and stop the crashing.

[SnugSnug]

Sometimes it's the mods that don't play well. Since the .22 update i found that reduce stones and other clutter mod i was subscribed to was causing a hard crash as the error log was compiling a list of incorrect assets. My own mod also messed up because it to was kicking up a whole load of error reports that bloated the log and like a memory leak resulted in ctd. (log file was ~400mb for .txt) ... as things change behind the scenes with each update, mods can go from helping to hindering.

It may also be worth looking at your permissions (admin and r/w) and your autosave timings and making sure its not that causing issues if you have clockwork regularity to your instability.

Normally i can play for hours without any issues... if i start crashing within 30mins i need to spend some time rejigging my setup for that update until the next one hits.

best of luck

[Pyrrhus]

Some people here played mods without a problem, so I doubt this kind of crash is related. I noticed crashes reduced after I relocated a NPC without a leg that I forgot about after putting him in bed at my base some game weeks ago. Maybe a NPC stuck in player's bed for long time can cause crashes. So I took him to city and got him a skeleton leg and let him go then quickly pull myself out of zone. It's a similar crash that happened often when picking up body lying at the gate after periods of time.

[Pyrrhus]

If it's memory leak or PC settings, specs, then why no problem playing other games like Factorio, Space Engineers, Skyrim, etc. Kenshi is 12 years old and my pc is younger. There's no other excuse for crash if as many gamers are complaining about the same thing. There's no gaming freedom if the game is too fragile. Maybe this is why they're making Kenshi 2. It's sort of like tearing down poorly constructed building to redo it. But what if Kenshi 2 still ends up having the same crashes? Maybe the building is fine but the land is bad as it's filled with sinkholes like in Florida which I compare that land to Microsoft Windows. Btw, I turned off autosaves long time ago.

[crtaylor1]

Do a file validation on Steam. I found 3 files missing. After that the crashes seem to go away. At least for now.

[flying1daggers]

My rig is not super, most things set to high and have 157 members of my clan. Occasional frame drops but cannot remember my last crash... in over 1000 Hrs. Guess im just lucky.;)