Crash when fighting Volcano Boss (spoiler)

I am posting the same message as before (with slight modifications in the log file), because I didn’t even get an acknowledgement from the developers that they are at least aware of the problem.

As said in the title, my game crashes when I fight the Degenerate at the end of the Well of Skelos, usually when I kill the first purple ghostly spawn (more rarely after several). I play in single mode on my PC (Windows 10), with mods but the crash happens without any mod loaded too.

I verified the integrity of game files and found 3 bad files. After fixing them, the crash persisted, and Steam doesn’t find any more bad files.

Since the previous post, I reached almost the end of the game and the journey entry “Destroy whatever dwells at the heart of the Volcano” is the first one in my list.

I had a look at the log file and found that:

ConanSandbox.log (85.0 KB)

[2023.02.18-15.52.36:226][ 61]LogMemory: Process Physical Memory: 3053.76 MB used, 3159.48 MB peak
[2023.02.18-15.52.36:226][ 61]LogMemory: Process Virtual Memory: 6768.21 MB used, 6871.02 MB peak
[2023.02.18-15.52.36:226][ 61]LogMemory: Physical Memory: 9104.29 MB used,  7158.83 MB free, 16263.12 MB total
[2023.02.18-15.52.36:226][ 61]LogMemory: Virtual Memory: 12679.48 MB used,  7158.83 MB free, 134217728.00 MB total
[2023.02.18-15.52.36:226][ 61]LogWindows:Error: === Critical error: ===
[2023.02.18-15.52.36:226][ 61]LogWindows:Error: 
[2023.02.18-15.52.36:226][ 61]LogWindows:Error: Fatal error!
[2023.02.18-15.52.36:226][ 61]LogWindows:Error: 
[2023.02.18-15.52.36:226][ 61]LogWindows:Error: Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0xffff0003
[2023.02.18-15.52.36:226][ 61]LogWindows:Error: 
[2023.02.18-15.52.36:226][ 61]LogWindows:Error: !0x0000000000000000
[2023.02.18-15.52.36:226][ 61]LogWindows:Error: 
[2023.02.18-15.52.36:242][ 61]LogExit: Executing StaticShutdownAfterError
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I just did the encounter to test it and it went just fine, without any crashes or issues.

If your game crashes in the middle of the bossfight as you said, I’m curious as to how are you fighting the boss mere seconds after zoning into the dungeon? Admin fly mode or something?

Also, in both cases the log simply shows you zoning in and within a minute it crashes, it does not contain any usable information (the section you highlighted above is of no use sadly as it’s just a generic access violation, meaning that the program accessed a portion of memory that it wasn’t supposed to, doesn’t tell us why though or what was running when it happened. )

For starters though, make sure that your AMD graphics drivers are up to date, uninstall them with DDU if necessary and reinstall the latest ones

I did not use admin fly mode, but I did use the admin panel to place a bedroll near the boss (admin mode and free building placement aren’t enabled anymore, and placing the bedroll is the only thing I did). I’m clumsy and the game is quite unforgiving in solo mode; I still die occasionally in dungeons and got fed up having to do them all over again with every single enemy respawned, and took the habit to place bedrolls in dungeons. I never had issues with that so far, but maybe it’s time to try without that “trick”, if only to rule that out (or confirm it). Well of Skelos doesn’t seem as difficult as other dungeons (such as the cellar) so I have my chances.

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Aaaaand… crash :frowning: Same error, even the faulty pointer is the same. I have included the new log file just in case, but it looks like rushing to the boss right after zoning in is not the problem.

ConanSandbox.log (89.7 KB)

Yea, it’s similar, nothing specific happens that is being logged and can be identifiable as a cause.

There are a few possibilities though, one of them is that there actually is something wrong with your game installation that Steam is unable to recognize - though if you choose to reinstall make sure to backup your Save!
(right-click the game in Steam, Manage → Browse local files. ConanSandbox\Saved\game.db is the file you need to copy to some other location to back it up - moving it back to this location will restore your save to that state)

The other being is that some weird effect is being played that doesn’t go over well with your graphics card. This is actually a very likely scenario and I would lean more towards this as the fight is indeed scripted with various particle effects playing and the game isn’t known to like AMD cards too much.

So if I were you I’d start with the above suggestion, remove the display driver with DDU and install the latest one from AMD’s site.

If none of the above help, then you might have to provide some additional system logs to see if there’s some sort of error / conflict happening or how Windows categorizes this particular crash.
To do that you can press Win+R, type msinfo32 in the box and hit enter, then on the System Information window that appears you can press FileExport and save it on your desktop or somewhere as a text file (give it a name, like sysinfo for example) and upload that file here like you did with the other logs.
Then do the same but instead of msinfo32 type in dxdiag and use the save all information button to save that log

But first of all try the driver reinstalling

Thanks for the infos on the save files, it’s always good to precise that (even if in my case I already knew that and my backups were ready).

I thought you had nailed the problem when saying that the game doesn’t like AMD. Fortunately, my father has a Nvidia card on his PC, and a good one on top of that. So I asked his permission to do some tests. Unfortunately, the game still crashed :frowning: Good news though: I won’t have to mess with my video drivers (I don’t like messing with something that otherwise works, especially drivers, and most especially video drivers).

So to sum up: Another PC, new installation, same save files, same crash. My guess is that something’s wrong in my save files.

At this point, I’m not sure if posting the system details will help, since there are now 2 very different systems that crash. What I can do though is post a debug dump, but I guess the developers already got a ton from me, since I always clicked “send report” at each crash.

Just in case, I also post the log with the other PC, but it seems to be mostly the same boring (and useless) thing (just realized that the game started in French though, but most of the log is still in English).

ConanSandbox.log (110.1 KB)

Actually that is good information!

One other thing I would try though is playing on this different computer, but without any mods at all. (make sure the actual ConanSandbox\Mods\modlist.txt file is actually empty before launching the game)

If you still get the same crash even without any mod, what you can do is pack your savegame into a zip file and upload it here if you can, or if it’s too big because it contains a lot of buildings then somewhere else. That will help the developers narrow it down in case it’s something related to the save itself.
(There is also a possibility that if you used other mods in the past, they left some stuff in your savegame that doesn’t belong and is causing issues)

That’s all the stuff I can think of for now, I know it’s not much to go on

I have done a few other tests, trying to remove anything that was unnecessary for the game to start (basically just kept the game.db file). It still crashes, so if something is corrupted then it must be inside the database itself.

I have prepared a game right before the Well of Skelos. To reach the crash point, there are 3 possibilities:

  1. Use the teleporter right behind, inside the house. This requires the Waystones mod.
  2. Just die, either by removing the bracelet, or having a good warm bath in the lava river ahead. Don’t forget to select the bedroll before respawning. (Un)fortunately, dying doesn’t require a mod :smiley:
  3. Just do it the regular way: enter the Well of Skelos right ahead and make your way to the Degenerate.

I included the game.db file compressed with 7-zip , but for some reason the web interface doesn’t like unknown formats (db, zip and 7z are unknown formats to it) so I renamed it as game.doc , don’t forget to rename it to game.7z (although 7-zip doesn’t seem to mind).
I also included the file modlist.txt as a reference. I tried multiple times the 3 choices above with and without the mods for the same result each and every time.

game.doc (190.5 KB)
modlist.txt (366 Bytes)

Haha, this is looking promising indeed.
I loaded up your save with all your mods in order (you quite the amount of attribute points lol).

And indeed it crashed during the fight, I do have a theory but I’m going to test around a bit. In any case you can be sure that it’s something that is in your database.
I’m not going to say that it’s “corrupted” or “bad”, I simply think a configuration you’re using might be responsible and we’re talking about a basegame bug here.

There you go :slight_smile:

So… the cause of the crash is the Corrupted Vitality 20 Perk Tainted Vessel, the reactive pulse hitting the ghosts causes the crash.

The same thing happens in the devkit btw without any mods or anything, so it’s definitely not computer / mod related, but a basegame bug.
For now if you want to complete that bossfight you’ll need to reset your attributes and avoid corrupting your Vitality all the way to 20.

I’m not sure the issue is just confined to these snake illusions though, I rather think it has to do with their sweep-attack / dash and getting hit by the pulse when they have no collision.

I will make a separate bug report on it and include whatever I can.
Edit: Made report

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I have the same problem, lol -.-

Thank you for all this information :bowing_woman:

Passed this over to the rest of the team for further investigation.

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Talk about (ab)using corruption :smiley: Yes, I pushed the attributes beyond reasonable and even that way the game is still difficult for me. I didn’t think it could be the reason for a crash, especially since corrupting vitality to the max can be done without mods.

I’m not in a hurry to finish the game, there is basically only this to do and it’s almost done. I’ll keep my game as it is and test whenever there are updates. If this topic is still opened by then, I’ll post the results (hopefully to say that it works).

Thanks Xevyr for your hard work :slight_smile:

No, like I said above, this is a basegame problem, it happens without any mods at all, it’s just a bad interaction between the area damage effect of that specific perk and those NPCs :slight_smile:

Technically you could reset your attributes and pick every attribute and perk except for that one, probably could still be able to do the dungeon just fine and then just put that final point back after you’ve done the dungeon :slight_smile: Might be worth it just for the knowledge from the Obsidian tablet behind the boss so you can make obsidian arrows etc.
It’s up to you ofc :slight_smile:

And you’re welcome!
Good luck

Seeing that fighting the boss crashed whatever I did, I rushed for the tablet a long time ago :smiley: Then I loaded the volcano forge with all the tons of obsidian ore I had previously gathered and came back after doing a dungeon (ruins of Xullan if I remember correctly). Then I had fun doing everything related to obsidian :wink:

If I were stuck somewhere in the middle of the game I would already be on my way to beat that boss (not forgetting to keep a backup). But now I’ll just wait a little more for the final cut, like that so expected final episode at the end of a marathon series that I already saw anyway :smiley:

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