Crashing at the worm boss (~lvl 10) every time

[gnikkbruch]

Crashes.zip (364.6 KB)

I attached Player log files, crashes (all crashes were the same as described below) and system information.

Issue: I was crashing everytime on the worm boss fight about half way through. Same crash everytime with the screen going black but the system still working (could continue talking with friends in Discord). What happened is somehow the GPU (GTX 970, latest drivers) got disconnected/disabled as I could only use my integraded graphics (Intel) after restarting my PC via the restart button on my PC.
Only a full system shutdown and then starting the PC would bring back my GPU.

Things I tried but didn’t help: Verifying game files through steam (no errors found). And updating my graphics driver.

Workaround: I was able to get through the boss by lowering settings to the lowest preset and also disabling AA completely (previously medium preset with TAA). Also I switched to Exclusive Fullscreen mode (previously Windowed Borderless) and disconnected my Xbox Controller (Bluetooth connection). This is obviously just a workaround and shouldn’t be necessary. I did all this at once and it worked, so I can’t say what exactly was causing the issue here.

I have however reverted all settings to how they were when I crashed and haven’t crashed since (played through the first era). So yea it seems to be a very specific issue with this boss fight.
If I wouldn’t have figured out the workaround I would have refunded the game, as I literally wasn’t able to progress through the game. Hope this helps you isolate the issue and fix it.

[vapourfire]

Hey there, Welcome to the forums…

Sorry you are having hassles…

You havent provided your le_graphicsmanager.ini file so I am not sure what in-game settings you are using, but your GTX970 is unlikely to be able to maintain 60fps at 1080p on Medium settings - especially if you enable the special features (grass/antialiasing etc).

The game is generally unoptimised so performance related instability is often a problem - especially on low-mid range hardware. If your GPU maxes out for any length of time (i.e. not just spikes) then its very possbile that LE will become unstable.

There are many known situations in game where the game will max out the GPU unless appropriate limits are in place to prevent this - e.g. limiting FPS, chosing lower graphical settings etc. Scenarios on certain maps, lots of minions/mobs and screen wide effects and skill procs can definitely cause GPUs to max out and the Lagon fight with all the waves crashing back and forth is one such situations.

Your GPU being disabled is NOT something that LE could cause directly… It might have overheated or attempted to draw more power than your system was able to provide during playing LE when the game tried to max it out.

Please note, I am assuming that you are not having hardware issues - i.e. overheating, power delivery or just failing old hardware.

Considering your comment of disabling your GPU - I see in the diagnostic section of the Dxdiag file show lots of errors related to dwm.exe - this is the Desktop Windows Manager and is integral to using hardware accelleration in Windows and is directly involved with your GPU, DirectX etc… There are at least 6 crashes directly on dwm.exe… This could point to a corrupted Windows install, or various other problem areas - drivers, failing hardware etc. I would recommend that you Goolge this issue and see if any of the recommended solutions help. I would definitely recommend running things like Using System File Checker in Windows - Microsoft Support. I would recommend you check View Reliability History on windows to see if windows is reporting some other issues on your system. NOTE: I unfortunately have yet to see someone resolve a dwm.exe issue that didnt require a clean windows install or using a system restore point from a time before the error started happening.

On the subject of the diagnostics - I see that vgtray.exe (Vanguard by Riot games) is also crashing… I would recommend that you check this and update or uninstall it if you are not using it.

Note that Unity (the game engine that LE uses) based games also tend to have issues depending on other applications running at the same time so its best to make sure that you are not running anything else while testing LE… Vanguard would definitely be something NOT to run while testing LE.

Your Workaround: Lowering in-game settings is usually the first thing to try after updating gpu drivers & verifying the game files… If you are able to do the same content at lower settings, thats usually a pretty good indicator that you are suffering from performance related issues. The fact that you could revert them to higher settings again, could just mean that none of the subsequent scenarios are taxing your system as much (YET) and its likely you may have the same problem later when you try to do something … it may not present as a crash, you might just have a huge FPS spike or stuttering…

Changing Window mode could be directly related to the dwm.exe errors you are getting.

Your logs generally show various debug messages that could be related to your system struggling somewhat - there are graphical debug messages related to NavMesh and colliders and other NullReferenceException errors - these usually show up if the game is struggling. Its not the worst I have see related to performance errors, but these dont happen if the game is ok.

The player-prev.log is simply truncated - this would be when it crashed previously and the game was unable to trap any error itself.

There are a few controller debug messages in the log that seem to indicate its struggling between using the controller vs keyboard/mouse - controller support is not complete yet so this could be causing a secondary problem - its recommended that if you use either one or the other input method - i.e. dont mix and match while playing as this tends to cause issues. I doubt any of these were the reason for the crash though.

So… final thoughts…

I run the game on an i5-7500/1060/16GB/NVME system and over time I have found that running it at very low setitngs, all special features disabled with a 60 FPS framerate limit (very important) @ 1080p gives me the most stable and best performance for the current game beta state.

I would recommend that you dont go higher than Low settings - especiallly if you want to enable special features - Medium is ok on my 1060 but stability/performance suffers, and your GPU has more memory but I still would not recommend pushing the game right now. I would recommend you monitor your GPU usage while playing and aim for settings (fps limits, res, quality) that keep usage % between 60-70% while standing still in town. This usually leaves enough headroom for the GPU to spike without it flatlining and the game becomng unstable.

The devs have indicated that the next version of the game (0.9) will have improvements specifically related to performance issues so its likely that this will help out everyone across the board and will mean that those of us on older, low/midrange hardware might have a better experience… The patch is expected sometime after September… hoping for Oct/Nov personally.

[gnikkbruch]

All I can say that is that the game does in fact run relativley smoothly at 60 fps on medium on my system (pleasently suprised myself). Don’t care for an fps counter, but I am sensitive to fps drops and I am not really dropping far below 60 ever nor frequently (during story anyways, who knows what craziness awaits in the endgame). And again I never crashed during any other parts of the game. I do have the frame limiter enabled though I cannot recall if it was 120 or 60fps, will have to see when I start up the game later.

I actually did do a fresh windows install just a week ago and other games rarely ever crash. Also never had overheating or power delivery issues, at least not yet - the 970 really is an old card now unfortunately. A lot of other games have my GPU sitting at 100% usage and again never any real issues there. Regarding Vanguard - I never saw it visibly crash on me. All I do is usually manually quit it whenever I am not playing Valorant, but I cannot say for certain that it wasn’t running during the crashes. My main problems with Windows 10 in general were mostly Xbox controller related which is why I disabled it also. But yeah other than those LE crashes I am not having noticable issues with my PC in recent times.

If any other issues ever pop up, I will investigate into your suggestions though. Really appreciate the input! Can’t wait for the next update (multiplayer beta too right?)

[vapourfire]

@gnikkbruch

I do have the frame limiter enabled though I cannot recall if it was 120 or 60fps,

This is the most important thing… LE runs very well if you limit it to something that is actually a limit - i.e. setting it to 120fps probably does nothing, but setting it to 60fps would definitely improve the stability of the game across the board. Especially the fps drops that you say you are sensitive to… the game does exactly that if you dont limit it… Some people complain of fps drops from 70 to 30. Limiting LE softens the blow .e.g. 70 to 30 might become 60 to 40 instead… Remember its beta - its not going to do what it should and not what other completed, released games would do so you cannot compare it. There are situations right now were LE behaves more like a stress tester / benchmark tool than a normal game…

I dont know what character you are using or how far you are in the game but there are situations that are coming after Lagon where your hardware will be far more taxed than it is right now… and there are plenty of builds that suffer from more performance problems than others…

My system too runs fine at 60fps on medium - until it hits one of the known performance issues - then its very unpleasant… I prefer to err on the side of caution and stability etc… Nothing worse than the game crashing and corruption saves of builds I have spent 100’s hours creating… (yes it can and does happen).

Fresh windows install - you should most definitely not be getting dwm.exe errors then… Unless this has been resolved since the errors were logged, I wouldnt consider your system working fine… Its a core windows component - it shouldnt be having any errors at all. In fact, on a new install, your logs should be empty unless there is a problem somewhere. Up to you, but after 3 decades of using Windows, thats not something I leave until I was sure it was resolved.

Anyway… until 0.9 drop and we have a different beta to test, cannot really offer anything more.

[gnikkbruch]

So last little update here: I was indeed running limited at 60 fps during my crashes since it was still the setting when I booted up the game and I never touched it except for the first boot after install. But I can also confirm that performance is already way worse when playing through the Divine Era of the story (frequent dips into 30~ish fps). However I have now completely played throught the story without another crash on medium settings.

So just wanted to highlight it for the devs as the problem again was only this one single boss. Performance drops and maybe even random crashes I expect from a beta. But this one reoccuring crash that will lock certain players out from progressing through the game is of course something that has to be fixed. Without the workaround that worked for me at least, the game would have been literally (actually) unplayable.

edit: One last thing to add is that you encounter the same kind of boss (I think? it’s also a big worm shooting those purple whirlwind things) later in the story and it wasn’t a problem with again the same settings on which I crashed over and over on the first encounter. So it really seems to be only that one part of the story.

[vapourfire]

Thanks… the devs may not respond to these posts, but they do read them…

From my experience helping out here over almos the last 2 years, you are confirming known experiences of others and I expect that the reason you are able to run at Medium is simply thanks to the additional vram that your GPU has. Your frequent dips to 30fps in certain areas is well documented and why the devs have created performance mapping tools to find and improve these areas (see Dev Blogs)… Your workarounds, again, are what has been recommended to virtually everyone who is experiencing similar issues and was first recommended by the devs themselves years ago.

What will be interesting is if you compare your experience right now to what happens on the same maps and same situations in the next 0.9 version.