You can try this:
rename your The Sims 3 folder under documents
The Sims 3_old

Start the game so a fresh clean game folder will be created. Then quit.

Copy your old mods folder to the new one
also the options.ini.

Delete all non Nraas mods in the packages and overwrites folder.

Start a new game and see if the issue is gone.
Save As Test_nraas If yes,
Create a Test1 folder under packages and ​​​​​copy some other mods over, like 50%

Delete the cache files and start the new save and see.
If everything is ok.
Create a Test2 folder and copy the rest over in here.
Clear cache.
If the issue is back than you know that the culprit is in Test2 folder
Copy this to Desktop
Delete half and play again.

​​​​​Until you narrowed it down

The most common way is to 50/50 your custom content- removing half, testing, and the presence or absence of the crash tells you which half contains the culprit. Repeat on the 'bad' half until bad files are found.

There are limitations of course, the main one being that there can be more than one bad package.
I'd recommend starting 50/50ing mods only, no CC of the CAS and build/buy variety, as there's likely less and it's more important to make sure they aren't conflicting.
If all is clear, move on to introducing essential CC in small batches. The difficult thing with CC is that an item may not cause a crash until it randomly generates on a townies outfit. It helps to start with only what you need for your active sims right now, confirm it wasn't anything on them with an issue, and bring in more when you need it. No real benefit of having 10GB of outfits if one pair of shoes missing a bone assignment is in there nuking your game to space, yeah?

And as the expertise here centres around NRaas, starting your first test with only NRaas is the best place to start. As if things go wrong from that point, we can either confirm it's hardware or troubleshoot whether NRaas is involved

tysm all! So what I did before you answered was: I took all of my mods out, In s3mo i turned all cc off, I have nraas in mod organizer so I only left Nraas mods on and hair replacements cause they also were in the mod organizer. Started new game. Played some time, till savers first save, then turned the game off. Put in my "game mods" folder in packages. The game seemed fine, but it crashed. So it probably was caused by some of the game mods, however I don't know which mods cause it, if the game needed a few IRL hours to crash... maybe the game just got overloaded, and it wasnt the kind of crash that had happened before.

As the game can only handle 3,4 to max. 3,7 GB Ram it is also possible that you simply run out of memory.
What world size do you play? which world?
​​​​​
Is this happening in only one specific world or others too?

Saver prompts you after each 30 minutes real time play. So this time is maybe not a good reference.
So why did you put All your other mods directly back? And how long did you play until the crash happens again then?

As we explained you need to only put a few back little by little or 50/50.
And you need to play longer also for testing. Almost the same time when the crash happens, to recreate similar behaviour.

Is the crash happening when you do something specific? At a specific in-game time?

I would say ditch the hairs until the crashing is resolved.
A. CAS CC probably has the highest risk of an instant crash.
B. All of the hair replacers I've seen use insanely high poly hair. Having that as a default replacement will contribute to a RAM crash faster than most. I've been working on remakes of EA hairs for a long time, the level of optimisation missing from existing hair is a topic that haunts my nightmares.

If you open the folder where you installed S3MO, you can pull all of the packages back out in their loose form. I'd say delete the merges and install the packages normally to your Mods folder until the contents are confirmed clean and ready to merge.

CardinalSims post_id=100466 time=1711142476 user_id=22933 wrote: I would say ditch the hairs until the crashing is resolved.
A. CAS CC probably has the highest risk of an instant crash.
B. All of the hair replacers I've seen use insanely high poly hair. Having that as a default replacement will contribute to a RAM crash faster than most. I've been working on remakes of EA hairs for a long time, the level of optimisation missing from existing hair is a topic that haunts my nightmares.

If you open the folder where you installed S3MO, you can pull all of the packages back out in their loose form. I'd say delete the merges and install the packages normally to your Mods folder until the contents are confirmed clean and ready to merge.

When you say "the packages" you mean hair replacements? Will they work if I put them in mods, not overrides? Also, I use some replacements I'd rather have on higher priority than the other, thats why s3mo is good for that and I have them in here, not the usual mods/overrides. Like I want some of them to overwrite the others I don't like. Do you think it could really lead to my game crashing? I started playing the cc-less, almost only nraas+hair replacement+now game mods save in Sunset Valley, and some of the premade sims look really weird with the replaced hair, so maybe you are right? IDK if I can put any pics in here, and how can I do so.
EDIT: Also, can I make subfolders in overrides? LIke some people do in packages folder?

I mean any of your mods in .package format, just in case them already being merged was a limiting factor they are still separate within S3MO itself.

The Overrides folder is usually only needed if you have CC that overwrites other CC, it doesn't make much difference otherwise- it's all loading after the game itself, so defaults typically don't need special priority. You can use sub-folders, yes.

It's simply not CC-free to have the hair replacements installed for now, so they do need to be removed even if temporarily. If some premades have broken hair textures, that is a normal side effect of the way replacers are (currently) made and not necessarily something wrong with them. But at the end of the day, they still use CC hair that could have had existing issues / can have anything up to 10x the polycount of the original hair. Which is a potential ~10x the strain on the game.

So is it better if I dont use the replacements at all? Even if its fine (not like im sure about it, just asking for safety reasons)? IDK I still wonder what could trigger the crashes. Im playing on the save rn, moved my hair replacements (higher priority ones to override, lower priority to mods>packages), no crashes so far. I just cant understand what triggers it

For troubleshooting purposes, yes it's better to not use anything. That doesn't mean those will turn out to be the culprit, but knowing if they contributed to it is mostly discovered by thoroughly playtesting without them. If it turns out to be something else, you can always add them back later.

There are a couple of prominent reasons this or any other CC can cause the game to crash:

• The memory limit previously described. Higher resolution textures and higher poly meshes = more resource load. If the game reaches the RAM cap, it will either fail to save (Error 12) or simply crash to desktop.
• Something wrong with the CC itself- a missing bone assignment, corrupt reference, so on. Often undetectable until the item with the issue is rendered, at which point the game will immediately crash. It could be as simple as a sim with a certain hair walks close enough to render into the LOD mesh that has the issue.

Meaning it's quite normal for the crashes to happen at random.
The mention of overwriting default replacements with other ones also stands out to me as something that could become an issue quite quickly. Why can't the ones you don't want be removed? Only one default should be installed at a time, could definitely lead to some weirdness.

and large worlds with many object intensive lots or also very many trees in the world.
So what world are you playing? You didn't answer this question.

The case is, you need to find out if it is a third party mod or bad CC.

Track the time you play in real time when the crash happens with everything in
Then play with only Nraas mods

no others mods and no CC (means hair, clothing, custom objects etc).

Play the same time, do the same things.
then put some mods back and repeat, little by little, until the crash happens again.
So you know it must be something you added back last.

Als switch during game play to task manager,
to see how many RAM the game already uses

Also going into CAS or stylist will increase RAM usage. I always save as before I go in and after, to avoid loosing everything I done, when a crash happens. We all can run out of memory in Sims 3 very easily.