So after a lengthy session the game crashed with an "out of memory" error message. Since then everytime I try loading my savegame the game just CTD's on me without any error message.

Please tell me it's not corrupted and it's something else because that'd mean 20 hours of playing down the drain.

Ok so far I've tried repairing the game, no dice.

I tried removing the dx11 renderer, no dice.

I tried new game and same thing happens so I'm pretty sure it's not my savegame.

If the ctd doesn't happen it's the dreaded access violation error.

Something about the out of memory error destroyed the game so gonna try completely removing the game and reinstalling now. Fingers crossed.

Ok reinstalling the game did nothing. I've tried just about everything now.

It happens on new game so it can't be my savegame. This is really disheartening. Even if I wanted to I can't start over.
20 hours gone....

Is game executable patched with Large Address Aware? You can check its status and apply LAA, using this utility:

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/large-address-aware.112556/

Thanks but no dice. I would've been surprised if it'd worked as I've been playing for almost 20 hours without it.

Maybe world-state file has become corrupted? Try to remove everything from saves directory ( including "current" ) and then start a new game.

If you use Galaxy, disable cloud saves as well.

You've got to be kidding me. That did it. I can now start a new game.
But this means it's a very serious gamebreaking bug. No amount of using multiple save slots would've spared me from this.
If playing for too long causes an out of memory error and corrupting the world state this needs to be addressed swiftly.
20 hours are still down the drain and I have no intention to replay all that for now. Looks like I'm taking a break from this buggy mess.

Actually, each save directory contains its own set of world-state files.

When you load from a slot, this set is being copied into the "current" directory. On saving, the process is reversed.

Therefore, as long as you have at least one working save, you can continue playing from there. ;)

But if any file in the "current" directory has become corrupted, you risk to ruin all your saves, simply saving to each of the slots.

Thanks for the info but the really confusing part is that I wasn't even saving/loading at the time of the crash. I was just healing after a fight when it happened. Weird that that would affect my saves.

Saves corruption could have happened earlier and might be unrelated to the crash.

***

ZenGin engine ( Gothic 1, 2 ) can sometimes produce corrupted save-games.

Software hooks, which add new functionality, ( like system pack, DirectX 11 renderer, etc. ) are integrated with the engine in unreliable way. They might decrease game stability even further.

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More reasonable solution is to recreate Gothic engine for modern systems. There are several such projects, and OpenGothic seems to be in active development.

If done right, it will provide much better experience playing both original games and mods. And will allow modders to use any new features out of the box. :)