At least that's the conclusion I've come to after downloading the Shadowbringers patches 5 times now. The version I downloaded on 5.1 patch day was had many missing textures in Lhye Mheg (the new area from the Pixie beast tribe quests) and attempting the Grand Cosmos also caused a crash which prevented me from proceeding with the MSQ. This prompted a redownload which worked well in other areas but got me stuck in Lhye Mheg as it crashed whenever I logged in.
I suffered this for a week blaming my computer, drivers, software, and even hardware before randomly stumbling on a Reddit comment about attempting a redownload since it claimed corrupted game data could also cause this. Lo and behold: After a redownload I was able to log in perfectly and only suffered a handful of crashes around Il Mheg. The only problem was that attempting the Grand Cosmos or Copied Factory at all also caused a crash meaning that I was effectively locked out of them. It was time for another download. This time everything worked perfectly and I cleared the Copied Factory until the final cutscene which caused a crash and locked me out of my character again. Yet another download later and here I am at today's maintenance having watched the cutscene and my character is standing outside the raid.
The only thing changed on my computer at all between the second crash and now were the game files that were deleted and redownloaded. Not even the whole game, just the ex3 folder in the sqpack folder which is what contains the Shadowbringers game data. Going even further than this I have a version of the 5.0 game files which requires the 800MB download of 5.1 to run. Just downloading and installing this 800MB was what fixed the cutscene on my most recent download.
I also have a theory that the network errors that the launcher have had recently have caused corrupted data to be downloaded. The only way around these errors that have worked for me is to use a VPN to download them (Activate the Full VPN option if you have to use Mudfish) and even though using a VPN that might be metered to download over 6GB of possibly corrupted data isn't ideal it's what I've had to resort to in order to play the game. CyberGhost and CactusVPN both have free VPN trials that only require email verification and last a day each but you can only use each of them once.
In Summary:
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I suffered this for a week blaming my computer, drivers, software, and even hardware before randomly stumbling on a Reddit comment about attempting a redownload since it claimed corrupted game data could also cause this. Lo and behold: After a redownload I was able to log in perfectly and only suffered a handful of crashes around Il Mheg. The only problem was that attempting the Grand Cosmos or Copied Factory at all also caused a crash meaning that I was effectively locked out of them. It was time for another download. This time everything worked perfectly and I cleared the Copied Factory until the final cutscene which caused a crash and locked me out of my character again. Yet another download later and here I am at today's maintenance having watched the cutscene and my character is standing outside the raid.
The only thing changed on my computer at all between the second crash and now were the game files that were deleted and redownloaded. Not even the whole game, just the ex3 folder in the sqpack folder which is what contains the Shadowbringers game data. Going even further than this I have a version of the 5.0 game files which requires the 800MB download of 5.1 to run. Just downloading and installing this 800MB was what fixed the cutscene on my most recent download.
I also have a theory that the network errors that the launcher have had recently have caused corrupted data to be downloaded. The only way around these errors that have worked for me is to use a VPN to download them (Activate the Full VPN option if you have to use Mudfish) and even though using a VPN that might be metered to download over 6GB of possibly corrupted data isn't ideal it's what I've had to resort to in order to play the game. CyberGhost and CactusVPN both have free VPN trials that only require email verification and last a day each but you can only use each of them once.
In Summary:
- Delete the ex3 folder from your FINAL FANTASY XIV Online > game > sqpack folder then run the launcher
- This will force the game to redownload Shadowbringers which is around 6.1GB
- If your download fails in any way delete your ex3 folder again and restart the process and use a VPN if you want to ensure it doesn't fail
- If you still run into crashes in specific areas after this just try the whole process again and see if anything changes
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