Game Keeps Crashing Shortly After Arriving At Ostagar

[JockoJones42]

Finished the early character chapter and shortly after arriving at Ostagar, my game crashes. It's always as soon as I get off the bridge. Any known fixes?

[Wesleypipes77]

Get out while the getting is good is unfortunately my advice. Or you'll wind up like me 40-50 hours further in before it gets so bad you realize the game is so broken it's unplayable and shouldn't be allowed on the storefront until EA addresses the multitude of issues plaguing this game on W10 PC's.

[Veritas]

-Some mods that alter NPCs or areas are too unstable on certain newer systems, such as Grey Wardens of Ferelden Imports. it's unfortunate but you should really limit mods to the DA:O ultimate fixpack and/or dain's fixes.

-When the game has to load many NPCs at once, it may crash. Setting the game to run in dx9 (add "-dx9" to the game's launch properties in steam) can help.

-When loading a save in a crowded area, temporarily put graphics at their lowest settings.

-Use the 4gb patched .exe. Refer to steam guides for this. By default there is only 2gb video memory to allocate which can often lead to glitched textures, freezes and/or crashes in certain areas.

-If there are crashes specifically after archdemon cutscenes, temporarily disable the tactics of ALL companions.

-If all that fails you may need to repair/restore your DA:O files, including the ones in Documents/BioWare/Dragon Age

[briarroot]

There is a lengthy pinned thread at the top of the forum which provides solutions to the various problems that may cause crashes.

However, here' in short form is the best advice I can give you. Try some or all of these.

1) If you haven't already done so, get the "LAA Patch" which is a replacement exe file for the file DAOrigins.exe, It will allow the game to use more than 2GB of system RAM. Search for a link in this forum.

2) Try turning your graphics settings down to minimum. (Video on the Options menu)
My system is 3 years old (Win10, I-5 9600K, GFX1070 at 1080p) and I'm able to run with maxed graphics settings, but you may need to lower yours. There are 3 sliders; move them all to the far left.

3) Get the "Quinn's Fixpack" mod from Nexusmods.com. Although this mod is intended to resolve game-play issues rather than program issues, I find that it also enables the game to run more smoothly.

4) Shut the game down every hour or two and restart. For some reason this cuts down on crashes. It's not an over-heating issue, at least not on my system, but it seems to work.

5) Although I don't understand the reasons, it's been noted by others that the number of saved games has a destabilizing effect on the game while running, so delete some of your previous saves and see if that helps.

Good luck. IMO, this game is well worth all the effort it takes to get it up and running smoothly.

[Zacryon]

Originally posted by briarroot:

1) If you haven't already done so, get the "LAA Patch" which is a replacement exe file for the file DAOrigins.exe, It will allow the game to use more than 2GB of system RAM. Search for a link in this forum.

Thank you very much for this hint! Dragon Age Origins crashed consistently for me when trying to get on the other side of the bridge in Ostagar. I looked for the LAA patcher and found it here:
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/large-address-aware.112556/

Downloaded the "laa_2_0_4.zip", extracted, ran the exe, put daorigins.exe in it and let it be patched. Worked perfectly and the game no longer crashes at that point.

Note, that I own the game via EA. If you got the Steam version, you might need to follow some further steps, as Steam's version seems to be encrypted. Look in the description here:
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/5989 There is a video guide.
Haven't followed that one though. But maybe it helps others who look at this at some point in the future. ;)