Is DS3 more buggy than it used to be!?

[paulaus333]

I first completed the game back in 2016/17. Never had a single problem with it, at all. EVER. Now playing for the second time on the same computer (as I want to access The Ringed City) and...

It crashes often, as described in this thread:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/374320/discussions/0/133260492067148698/

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I'm pretty annoyed right now, as I got invaded by a watchdog of Farron about an hour ago & I was having a lot of fun evading the guy (I think from Germany, View -> Players), leading him through the swamps and trying to get him killed by enemies. :D All of a sudden, the game crashed again (DVI NO SIGNAL) and I suspect that counts as a penalty towards me, as if I had alt-f4'd, which I didn't!! I was enjoying our match.

How common is this crashing? Is it affecting you? Not at all? It's really ruining my experience of the game this time around. :(

[Chang Thunderwang]

Not sure about the crashing issue, but there is no penalty for alt + f4. .

[vongogh]

If you are trying to figure out what is wrong, if DS3 is the problem, from my experience playing and looking at this forum, people complain about everything except the stability. It's one of the most stable games I've ever played.

DVI no signal sounds like a graphics card problem.

[scope.wad]

Been having this crashing issue too, I just started having it this month

I'll try verifying the integrity of the files

[Relinquished001]

Depends on your hardware and if mods are installed, on my old pc i used to crash about 2-4 times a session, 8-12 hours roughly.

[paulaus333]

Thanks for the replies.

I read that there may be some problems with the Radeon Adrenalin 2020 drivers (AMD are supposedly investigating black screen crashes), so I have reverted to Adrenalin 19.12.1 (Dec 2019) - which other users have said is stable. I still get a 'DSIII.exe has stopped responding' crash on Quit Game from the title screen almost every time, but this isn't stopping me from progressing or saving safely. Now in Catacombs. :)

Haven't had another black screen yet, but it's too soon to say whether the problem is fixed. No mods in my case.

If your game is crashing, please post your specs. Mine: i5-3570, 16GB RAM, AMD R9 390 8GB GPU, Win7 64.

[quacksouls]

Based on the number of forum threads about game crashing, not starting up, or FPS drop, I would say that the problem is mostly correlated with newer, new-ish hardware (usually graphics cards) or their recent driver updates. I have a GTX 760 and it has served me very well since 2013. I hardly experience crashes, but the one or 2 crashes I have had in the recent months are due to me using PvP Watchdog.

[paulaus333]

Fluff me. After reverting to the older graphics driver the game ran fine for about 4 days. I made it to Irithyll.

Except that now when I load my save (Firelink Shrine), the game crashes near the bonfire. Seriously, that problem is at least 4 years old! Not fixed? I tried setting the lighting and detail settings to 'low' and that makes no difference. Game just goes to black screen (DVI NO SIGNAL) as soon as I linger near or rest at the fire.

Only choice is to revert to an older (manual) save, I think. I wanted to play Ringed City, but I don't know if I can deal with the frustration... :(



Edit: Windowed mode and low detail and going to the Gundyr bonfire (and possibly luck) got me back to Irithyll. Game crashed anyway in the sewers. Ready to give up.

[paulaus333]

For anyone who has a similar problem / cares in 2020:

https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/4ed7hq/crash_reports/

Switch to 'Windowed' mode, rather than 'Full Screen'
Decrease screen resolution (in my case, to 1600 x 900)
Set Lighting, Shadow & Shader level (in Advanced Settings) to 'Low'
Don a completely face-concealing helmet to avoid rendering of character's hair
Set Windows page file (on any drive other than a system SSD) to RAM size in GBs * 1024 * 1.5 (in my case = 24576 min & max for 16GB RAM)

One or more of these things has allowed me to progress past the sewers / other sources of crashes. Now at Pontiff.


EDIT: I have switched back to 'Full Screen' mode and 1920 x 1080 resolution... haven't had a single black screen crash during play since the other changes (above) were made. Think the problem relates to one or more of those.

[paulaus333]

Damn. :(

Just got another black screen crash during the twin princes fight. The first since my last comment.

I noticed that AMD have released a new Adrenalin driver, which supposedly addresses black screen crashes. No idea if it will help in my case.


https://www.techpowerup.com/267776/amd-releases-radeon-software-adrenalin-20-5-1-drivers


EDIT: It didn't help. Made things worse! Now running at 1600 x 900 resolution, full screen. Stable again with earlier lighting and helmet settings reinstated.