Cleaning your save with Save Game Cleaner

Save game cleaning can help fix many problems your game may be experiencing, however it can also break your save game entirely if you don't do it correctly. You should never do a full across the board clean of every entry in your save game, that will most likely spell disaster, but if you carefully and precisely remove the correct entries, your game will survive and run faster and better for it.

Here are the instructions needed to run SURGICAL cleanings of your save game for Legacy content that must be cleaned. I try and keep calls for this to a minimum, but now and then a bug is found in the Legacy scripts that must be cleaned in this manner. In an update that requires this i will list the specific script name that should be purged from your save in the update itself. Just refer back to this tutorial for the steps on removing it.

Before we get started I feel a little explanation on WHY this must be done is in order. If you understand already, have read this before or simply don't care to know how your car engine works as long as it works, feel free to skip ahead.

When Skyrim loads up for the first time it loads EVERY SINGLE SCRIPT in the game and when you save your game all properties of that script are saved to your save game. Congratulations, they are now BAKED into your save and can never be changed or removed under normal circumstances. This is normal. When a mod updates and makes a change to any script, the author can add new properties, add and remove functions from the script but CANNOT remove any properties or change what the properties are pointing to in the game. EX: I have the Rueful axe display set to accept the rueful axe and all other 5 display options are filled with a dummy object because they aren't needed (but chillrend would need them for instance because there are 6 leveled options for it). I decided later to add a replica option for the Rueful axe but I cannot simply change one of the dummy properties to point to the new replica option. It will work for NEW games but the property is already baked into existing saves.

So enter the save game script cleaner. By removing all instances of the DBMweapondisplay script (the script which handles all weapon displays) it will make Skyrim have to re-fill the properties from the ESP WHICH if updated to a new version of legacy will fill one of said properties with the new replica option for the Rueful axe. Problem solved.

The second reason that I may require a script clean is when a scripted object is removed. EX: When I overhauled the safe house I removed a light source for the sun which was scripted to shut itself on and off at certain times. When the object is removed, the script still stays in your save file. Using the save game cleaner program will allow you to remove scripts from your save game that are attached to deleted objects.

Failing to do either of these cleaning procedures will result in Papyrus errors and possible CTD down the line.

Now that that's all out of the way, here are the steps...

Cleaning your save game using Save Game Script Cleaner

Please note. The cleaner above is required for this. There are other utilities which will actually break some displays in the museum because they THINK that the havoc is broken and will delete them which is simply wrong and stupid for it to be doing in the first place. ONLY use Save Game Script Cleaner for this cleaning of legacy.

1- Download the Save Game Script Cleaner (no brainer)
2- Open said program
3- Load your current save game file

Cleaning specific script instances

1- Enter the script name in the SCRIPT search box
2- Highlight said script name under INSTANCES
3- Click DELETE
4- Highlight said script name under SCRIPTS
5- Click DELETE

Cleaning deleted scripted objects

1- Click ADVANCED
2- Click Remove Scripts Attached to Nonexistent Created Forms

After cleaning is done, save your new save game. A backup will be created of your old save file. Note that if you are searching for specific scripts in your save game (per upgrade instructions), and that script is not present, that is fine and you do not need to clean it because it's not yet loaded into your game to begin with.

THAT'S IT!

Slight clarification:
Deleting things via the script cleaner is only removing the script from your save file. ' scriptInstances ' are occurrences of the script on objects in the game and ' scripts ' are the base script stored by your save game where it saves the properties of said script. You must clean both for it to reset properly.

As long as you have not touched any other options, your game should continue to run smoothly. The reason that save game script cleaning in general CAN break your game is if you go on a spree and clean everything. By removing an interconnected script which refers to elements of another script it can cause wide spread failures. Scripts that I have you clean for Legacy will NOT be an interconnected script but rather a stand alone script, so removal of said script is 100% safe as the game will simply re-apply it with the updated content when you load again.