I recently fixed some issues with my mod collection, so I was told to delete the cache files as well for the fixes to take effect. But now the game itself crashes!

Is there some cache files that I do in fact need to play the game and I should put it back?

Which exact files did you delete? When we (or most of us) say delete the cache, we usually mean the five files listed in the first color shaded box on this page . Was more than this involved?

There were some "dcdb" files in a cache folder.

If you mean within the DCCache Folder, that is a combination of your TS3 Launcher installed CC (files with the .dbc file extension) and your TS3 Store content (files with the .ebc file extension). Removing these bundled files removes the content from your game entirely and is not what is meant by clearing the cache.

Possibly you have one or more mods in play that require certain pieces of content to be present? As a pretty common example, not saying that it's this one in your case, NRaas Cupcake will crash the game on startup every time if the bakery store set items are not present and loading correctly. This wasn't something set up on purpose by NRaas, it's just an unpleasant side-effect of missing but expected content.

No, the files were named dcdb.[filename] and restoration of said files seems to have had no effect.

Those are the files that Igazor was meaning.

I have restored the file found in the IGACache folder, but the game still crashed.

I don't think files in there make any difference one way or another. What happens if you remove your Mods folder entirely and clear the cache (the five files referenced above only)?

If you still can't get your game started, then it might be time to declare this entire TS3 user game folder damaged, pull it out to your desktop or rename it to keep its contents safe, and have the game generate a new one which it will do on its next startup attempt. Then, if you can get your game running on that, start adding your content back in very slowly, then your mods clearing the five cache files at each step, and test for startup stability along the way.

This appears to have fixed it!

Now to sort through the mods.

With the help of the Dashboard tool, I was able to identify and remove all the mods that were flagged as having issues. Scanning the mods folder now comes back totally clean.

And yet... the crashing still happened.

I installed the Crash Log Analyzer tool, and it looks like the past couple of crashes were most certainly related to Custom Content. But the Dashboard can't seem to find the problematic mod!

There is no tool that can do the work for you. Igazor described the process: add your custom content little by little and test (i.e. start the game and play for a bit). Yes, it's tedious, and very time consuming, especially if you have a lot of CC and mods in your game. But the only way to find the conflicting files.

The 50% method is also an option, as described here: https://simswiki.info/wiki.php?titl...he_50.25_Method
But it's also tedious and time consuming.

Well, it took about a week of trial and error, but I think I managed to track down the problematic mods.