[SOLVED] Crashes in Sanctuary & Downtown Boston

[-<MOOSE-OF-ANAHEIM>-]

Been playing on my main modded save recently and have been encountering a problem. The game will freeze, then CTD whenever nearing Downtown Boston (north of river, east of CIT Ruins). I was able to get around this for a time by getting to the point where I crashed, save just before proceeding, allowing the game to crash, then load that save and repeat until I made it to my objective. Now having completed the quest "Institutionalized", returning to Sanctuary (the location I chose to build the molecular relay), when I get near Sanctuary, I have the same freeze, then crash issue that I had with Boston. The crash, save, repeat method I used in Boston does not work in Sanctuary, and this is becoming frustrating.

I have already uninstalled my Fallout 4 game, then reinstalled it, F4SE, ModOrganizer 2, and both my NMM mods and BethesdaNet mods. Reloading my last save resulted in the same CTD problem. Could you please help me solve this.

For your convienience, here is my load order:

# This file was automatically generated by Mod Organizer.
Fallout4.esm
DLCRobot.esm
DLCworkshop01.esm
DLCCoast.esm
DLCworkshop02.esm
DLCworkshop03.esm
DLCNukaWorld.esm
Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch.esp
ArmorKeywords.esm
Armorsmith Extended.esp
clothingoverhaul.esp
ClothingOverhaulSP_XB1_PC.esp
keyNuker.esp
BetterJunkFences.esp
Companion Infinite Ammo and Unbreakable Power Armour.esp
Danse GTFO Power Armor.esp
Less Minuteman Quests.esp
dinoshelf.esp
dinoshelf_extra_ammo.esp
IncreasedSettlerPopulation50.esp
settlementheight9000-aio.esp
SettlementLimitSlashed.esp
ManufacturingExtendedFH.esp
DLC items to manufacturing.esp
ManufacturingExtended.esp
move that workbench!.esp
DD_1x1_Foundation_Blocks.esp
DD_All_the_COncrete.esp
DD_flag_poles.esp
IMG_Castle_Wall_Patches.esp
clean & smooth - spectacle island.esp
clean & smooth - tenpines bluff.esp
clean & smooth - starlight drive-in.esp
clean & smooth - sanctuary hills.esp
clean & smooth - red rocket.esp

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: The issue appears to have been a result of the quest "The Molecular Level" itself. Choosing Sanctuary as the build location for the relay is what caused the CTDs. Reloading a previous save and building the relay in a different location resolved the issue in Sanctuary. Thank for the advice on downtown Boston as well.

[no1schmo]

Well, Boston is known for causing problems because it's unoptimized and full of stuff. And your mods suggest that Sanctuary and Red Rocket might also be very full of stuff, if you've been utilizing those settlement mods. So is it possible your computer is just struggling? Does your framerate drop before the crash?

Also, keynuker has a known bug where it causes instant CTD, but as far as I know, it only triggers when going west towards the station that takes you to Nuka World.

[-<MOOSE-OF-ANAHEIM>-]

I don't have any frame rate drops before the crash, the screen just freezes, windows says it's not responding on the window bar, and then it crashes. This takes place in a manner of seconds.

While the "too much stuff" hypothesis is certainly possible, Sanctuary in the savegame while full of stuff, only has a fair amount more than vanilla, as the mod I used deleted almost everything that was originally there. That also doesn't take into account that this problem didn't show up until after a quest. I appreciate your response though.

[Bacon Cheeseburger Apocalypse]

Try disabling all your mods and starting a fresh game. Go to downtown Boston and see if you get the same issues. If you're fps is stable and you're not having freezing or crashes then it's one of your mods.

If you don't get any issues save somewhere outside the city part of the map, enable a couple mods and load the game back up. If nothing changes rinse and repeat until you find the problem mod.

If you are running a vanilla game and still have crashing and freezing in downtown Boston then it's mot your mods but your hardware that's having issues. The downtown part of the map is poorly optimized and if you are running an older PC or one that's near or below the games minimum specs then there's nothing you can do until you upgrade your hardware or get a more powerful computer.

[no1schmo]

I'd still just go for optimized textures, no fog, unnecessary object remover, and other performance mods, even if that's not ultimately what's causing your issue here. Never hurts.