So I've heard a lot of players experiences (random) crashes.
Let me tell you that this should not happen. I tested 3 areas sent to me where multiple players experiences crashes and even when I let my character repeatedly entering them or walking in them for 8+ hours (using automated script), my client didn't crash.
So if you are experiencing crashes then make sure:
1) Patch 1.69 Critical Rebuild
If you just installed your game from GOG, diamond edition, etc. and you didn't install 1.69 Critical Rebuild yet, do it now. It is possible your game is missing few files due to the broken edition/release.
2) Shiny water
ATI graphic cards are known for crashing with Shiny Water enabled. To disable Shiny Water go into Options - Video Options - Advanced Video Options and uncheck Enable Shiny Water.
Even if you have NVidia card, I recommend to disable shiny water even temporarily untill you find the real source of crash.
3) remove content of your override (and patch folder if you use any patch-haks)
Lot of crashes can be caused by custom content. The worst offenders are restore packages such as:
Animation fix
Old-Style Walk/Run Animation w/ New Cloaks
Do not get fooled by the word "fix" in the title. "Animation fix" is a number 1 cause of crashing because all it does is that it restores model from old patches before Bioware changed run animations, but this same model was causing crashing and was update in 1.69. The crash usually happens when you get attacked from invisibility or new monster/npc spawns in your vision range.
I never tried old-style walk/run animation but I assume it works the same way as animation fix and thus I recommend not to use it.
Tileset overrides can cause crashes too, very unlikely but if you experience crashing, try remove them too and restore after you make sure they are not the cause. Good thing on this one is that if the crashing is happening in specific tileset only, then it is not so hard to determine if tileset override is causing it. So if the crash happens in forest remove all forest tileset overrides and try it without them - if it stops crashing you just found the reason. If not you can get them back.
4) If you use community patch, update it
Community Patch 1.70 contains a canopied forest override that is causing crashes - this was fixed in 1.71. If you crash in vanilla forest tileset this is most likely the cause if you are still using 1.70.
Also, older beta versions of 1.72 can cause crashing (with NWNCX) so if you downloaded any 1.72 beta, you should install 1.72 RC 1 asap.
5) Hellball crash.
NWN often crashes when hellball visual effect is appears. This is normal, but there are two ways to fix it.
option 1 - replace hellball visual effect with something else (couldn't find this on vault so no link, also note this fix will not work in CEP/Q modules/servers because the visualeffect.2da in haks will override the one you put into override folder)
option 2 - nwncx_patch plugin from Community Patch 1.72 RC 1 will fix this bug if you run your game via NWNCX
6) Custom dynamic races crash.
This is related to 2), custom dynamic races were made from a human character model that had the crash bug. While this got fixed in 1.69, these custom dynamic races were not updated automatically and will keep crashing. Untill someone remake them, these models are a source of crashes and shouldn't be used. If you are using a custom dynamic race such as brownie/wemic from CEP, dynamic lizard man etc. you can bet the crashing is caused by the models itself.
7) Update your graphic and also sound drivers!
Ok, if nothing from above helped. Then the cause of your crashing is most likely in drivers.
The reason why this is not a first step is that for some players especially with very old graphic card, newer drivers can also cause a crashing. So if the game is not crashing because of drivers, it is not advised to update them. But if everything else failed, then you should update drivers.
Reminder to update also sound drivers, outdated sound driver was causing crashes when casting a spells for me in past.
If you did everything and the game is still crashing. Try send me a savegame before the crash happens (if its not completely random).
If you resolved the crash issue you had, it could be beneficial to others if you write what was causing your crash and what helped you (especially in case of driver-related crashes).
Custom Content related crashes
I forgot to mention that crashes often happens in custom content tilesets. If this is your case, there is not much you can do unless someone post a fix for it.
This crash usually happens when entering area and the source is usually that edge tiles have lights, tilefading or animations.
List of known custom tilesets causing crashes: (updated)
Rocky Mountains
DOA City/Rural Base (fix here)
Lord of Worm's Undersea tileset
The Grass Sewer/Dungeon Entrance in the New section of the Castle, Exterior tileset part of Project
Another reason for crashes might be placeables. Some placeables mustn't be static and viceversa. Especially placeables with skinmesh are doing this.
List of known placeables causing crashes:
CEP Floating Crystals (crashes if not useable)
Mythallar (CPP hidden vanilla placeable, crashes if static)
1.69 Ballista and Ballista, Arbalet (crashing if static)
Here is one error that isn't common in fact it's rare, but will drive you almost insane should you encounter it. The bad .plt inventory icon, encountering one you may crash to desktop, or freeze as soon as you select the inventory page that it lurks on. I only built one of them, but I spend over a week ripping things out of a hak before I found that little S.O.B. Pray to god everyone will test their inventory icons on their own gear before putting them in vault content.
Many thanks for this post - a really good checklist for trying to resolve crash issues.
I did not know that the Rocky Mountains could cause issues
about 3 edge tiles are causing crash - I got fix for that but rocky mountains is on vault in 10 versions, each differ so the fix would not be for much use anyway...
The Prophet - Chapter 1 has incorporated the Rocky Mountains in one of its custom haks. I experienced many crashes when transitioning to certain areas of the mountains, which matches your description.
I managed to overcome this by loading a number of applications (eg IE with lots of tabs opened, Outlook, etc) before starting NWN - it seems that what was in memory could help overcome the problem. Only tried it out of desparation and because I knew there was some kind of bad memory pointer.
Makes me wonder if some other mods have the same issue or an issue caused by a similar problem in other tilesets.
I'm not sure if it has been fixed yet, but Lord of Worm's Undersea tileset also had/has edge tiles that crash the game.
Custom portraits can also cause crashes when you load a game save if they aren't made properly. They have to be TGA and uncomressed.
The Grass Sewer/Dungeon Entrance in the New section of the Castle, Exterior tileset part of Project Q. The original City version has no problems, just the same model ported to the grassy tileset. Crashes so hard that it kills my video. I can't even get back to the desktop or bring up task manager. I have to cycle power.
Don´t use stereo placeable sounds. It works ingame, but you get an error message. Mono only.
Don´t use full size (32x32 for example) inventory icons. 30x30 or less is ok.
This is crashing of server, but my server used to crash when shutdown. I don't remember the exact cause as I simply fixed my files and re-saved them so I can't go look back what I changed, but IIRC there were two causes:
1) iprp_costtable.2da reffered to nonexistent iprp_something 2da
2) iprp_costtable.2da had empty line ie. 31 **** ***** ****
So, if you get this crash on exiting. Try removing 2das from your hak one by one till it stops crashing, then check the 2da that causing this.
I updated the post with crashes happening from placeables.