Failing a pickpocket skill check summons hundreds of guards

[Destinedknight2]

I have installed the game the recommended way and I'm using the 1.0.0 version of the game. I'm also playing the game on a steam deck.

Sometimes when failing the pickpocket check the game will spawn hundreds of guards and they never stop spawning even after using the killall command.

[pango]

Does that happen without those 83 mods?

[Destinedknight2]

Yes i made a new character with all mods disabled and the same thing happens.

[Interkarma]

There's a hard cap of 5 concurrent guards available to the spawn system. This doesn't include random wandering NPC guards that will attack you if there's an active crime state, so you can end up with a few more. Testing this now with a large crime spree, I ended up with 7 concurrent guards consisting of the base 5 and 2 random NPC spawns.

It doesn't matter if you kill them, guards will continue spawning on a timer for as long as you have an active crime state. The only way to clear your crime state is to leave the area. Guards will despawn if you run far enough outside of a town into the wilderness or fast travel to another location.

If you are hit by guards (i.e. offered to surrender yes/no) then your legal reputation in that region can be lowered based on the severity of crime. This can leave you in an almost permanent crime state of "criminal conspiracy" where you'll be hounded out all towns in that region because you're known to be undependable or worse. In this case, you can either move on to another region to live or try to raise your legal rep again to the point where guards stop attacking you.

[Destinedknight2]

I'm just going to reinstall the game

[Interkarma]

Are the guards actually invisible in those screens, or just not in frame at the time you took those screenshots? It would be kind of funny to see hundreds of them in one place.

My best theory is that something is breaking enemy setup in such a way that active guards are no longer recognised by the system that counts how many are currently live. The most likely cause is a mod that changes enemies, sprites, mechanics, that kind of thing. It's not always obvious what the cause is.

Could you possibly attach your player.log in a zip? It's in the same data path as saves folder. If there are any errors in the log file, it might help isolate where the problem stems from.

[Destinedknight2]

Sadly the guards are either invisible or in the void somewhere. And I just tested a fresh DFU with and without mods and everything seems normal.

Nvm the guards are back.

[Interkarma]

Your logs have a lot of errors, including some that would break guard spawning (see errors relating to SetEnemyCareer). Any mods that touch enemies or class data could be causing the guards issue, but that's just the most visible problem. There are multiple mods failing in various ways.

The best I can suggest is to setup a completely fresh copy with no mods. Before installing any mods, ensure they're up-to-date and specifically list compatibility with 0.16 or 1.0 releases. This doesn't guarantee mod will be stable, but it means at least the mod is being maintained. Always add mods one-by-one and play for a while between each to make sure it doesn't introduce any problems.

Please note the support forum is for the base game with no mods installed. If you can isolate the mod triggering this, it's best to contact the mod author and let them know what's happening.

[Destinedknight2]

Ok thank you.

[SkyBlueFox1]

I was just about to ask about this and then I noticed this thread. Lucky me. :U

Anyway, I haven't had any invisible guards, but I am seeing a lot more than just 5 total. It hasn't caused any problems for me (neither gameplay nor performance have suffered, at least so far), but I figured I'd mention it.

That said, for clarity's sake, I also have a whole gaggle of mods installed, so the cause of it could go either way. I'll mess around some more and see if I can't find anything else!