Moraevik

Well, if you got that mesh improvement mod after the missing mesh problem started occurring, I'm stumped. The vanilla meshes are protected in the main game file, "Skyrim - Meshes.bsa", and can't actually be removed as far as I know. Try starting a brand new game, just to test if this problem is in it, as well. If it isn't, then your saved game has somehow become corrupted. If it is, then your game install is probably nerfed and you'll likely have to, at the very least, allow Steam to verify your install. If that doesn't work, then a complete un-install and re-install of Skyrim might be necessary.

Well, considering that the remarks related to the Forsworn m.o. cannot be substantiated within the game, who, indeed are we to believe -- an Imperial scholar's book or our own experiences with the Forsworn? Given, the game, itself, plays with the "lore" a lot. Nothing is sacred, it would seem, and the developers reserve the right to alter things at their whim. It is, after all, Bethesda's baby and not ours. My point, though, is that if it doesn't happen within the game, itself, then it doesn't happen -- at least relating to the time-frame of the game as you are playing it. No amount of NPC-written books will convince me of anything that my own experiences contradict, or at least fail to verify, as I play the game. I've never witnessed a fight between the Forsworn and Imperial soldiers in which "Large sums of coin are often left behind", for instance. In fact, I have seldom ever noticed "large sums of coin" with reference to the Forsworn. Where it concerns their actions, within the game, as opposed to in-game literature about them, the Forsworn act exactly like "bandits". They do the same things in and out of combat and their reactions to the player are precisely the same. There is, therefore, no actual in-game evidence to support Arrianus Arius' claims that the Forsworn are anything but common criminals. I'm a role-player. I can, and would if the game permitted me, play a character who is a supporter of the Forsworn. As events unfold in the game you'll slowly learn that the Forsworn are the original human inhabitants of Skyrim, and that they are the disenfranchised victims of a military seizing of their own land. I find it a bit ironic that the Nords are doing to the Forsworn almost the same thing the Thalmor are doing to the Nords, something nobody within the game ever seems to recognize. Even so, the takeover was "then". This is "now", and however victimized the Forsworn may have been during Ulfric's purge of the Reach, and the Nord invasion of Skyrim before that, actions speak louder than words to me. It's not a matter of what the Forsworn were back then, but of what they've become, now. Kidnapping little girls? For what end? Perhaps we shouldn't pursue that line of thought, but it happens within the game. Torturing and butchering prisoners? Yes it happens. Even their leaders, the Briarhearts, are a form of undead. Their leaders' leaders are the Hagravens? Have you ever met a friendly Hagraven? There's only one, and she still refers to you as though you were a morsel to be consumed. The other one is only friendly for a few moments until you tell her you want a certain ring back. As a player, sitting at my keyboard and divorced of the "reality" of Skyrim as imposed by the game when you're playing it, I find little to like about the Forsworn. I find little to like about the Stormcloaks. I find little to like about the Empire. I find nothing at all to like about the Aldmeri Dominion. Bethesda has painted a bleak, unappetizing picture of Skyrim, and probably for good reason. The time-frame of the game is the turning of an Age. It might not be punctuated by an apocalyptic event like the Oblivion Crisis in the game of Oblivion, but I think it probably goes without saying that Tamriel is getting set for some sweeping changes, what with the Empire, itself, in near total disarray and probably very close to internal strife erupting into a civil war within Cyrodiil, itself. Interesting times lie ahead and I'm anxious to see where Bethesda goes with it.

I don't know about Skyrim, since I've never had this problem, but in Oblivion the symptoms you're mentioning pointed to missing meshes. I can't imagine what might actually break the vanilla game in this manner, but deletion of a mod might inadvertently delete meshes installed by other mods if the meshes in question have the same name and are stored in the same folders. So, here's my question. Do you have, or have you had, any mod installed which in any way affects the city of Whiterun? If so, you need to begin your search for a solution, there. You might also want to post a load order for your mods in this thread, as well as listing any mods that you've recently un-installed. At this point we really just don't have enough information about what's going on in your game to offer any ideas as to causes of your problem, much less solutions.

Culican, it's been pointed out many times in many places that you can't point to an in-game book in an ES game and claim that it represents any sort of "fact" regarding the ES "gameverse". Books were written by people. People have personal agendas. I know there are probably a few users here on Nexus who believe that every book is part of ES "Lore", but that's simply not the case, and in fact, some sources of this nature actually offer conflicting information, just as you would expect from real books in the real world. You have to take into consideration who wrote the book, when, and under what conditions, just like a real historian would when dealing with books that were written during previous time-periods. Even then you can't be sure. I'm certain that Bethesda developers intentionally placed red herrings throughout the game in the form of in-game books, comments NPCs make, and possibly other ways, just to keep some details about "lore" up in the air. I think it contributes greatly to the immersiveness (is that a word?) of a game when you can't be certain of the validity of everything you read, because that's the way the real world is, too. It pays to be circumspect when considering the veracity of any potential source of "lore", whether found in-game or out of the game.

sinnerman, that wasn't the PCs refID you got from typing his name into "help". It was his baseID. You get the refID by clicking on him in-game, because the refID pertains to the spawned instance of an object, and not to the base instance of that object. "setessential" works with baseIDs so you lucked out, there. If you were to use "moveto player" on that ID, though, it wouldn't work, because you need to move the spawned instance, and not the "template" upon which that instance is based -- hence, you click on the actor and use that as the refID for those commands that require them. One of the commands that requires a refID is the "enable" command. Also "ressurrect". I'm guessing this is what wuffser attempted to do to bring back Lydia, but you were using her baseID, and that's not going to work. You can find her refID in the wiki.

Heh ... I usually play as a Khajiit, so from that perspective, without developing a back-story to the contrary, I have no loyalties to anyone. Where was the Empire when the Dominion invaded and divided up Elsweyr? Why should I particularly like the Nords, when they won't even let my people into their cities? This makes it easy for me to just go my own way the instant I get out of Helgen. To Oblivion with Skyrim and the Empire and the Dominion and everyone else. If I never talk to Balgruuf there will be no Main Quest releasing a plague of dragons on the world. If I never talk to Ulfric or General Tullius there will be no Civil War. I don't have to deal with Delphine's arrogant, self-righteous preaching about what I should and should not do. I'm free to be a thief, assassin, join any guild I want to, or none of them. If Skyrim is going to treat me like dirt, well, I can be a predator, too. Or I can be an Imperial or Stormcloak sympathizer. In one play-through I played as a Khajiit born and raised in Skyrim. The cold didn't even bother me. I didn't like either the Empire or the Stormcloaks, but I could see points in favor of both of them. Of course I never joined either side. Their conflict wasn't my conflict and I'd happily slaughter either Stormcloaks or Imperial soldiers if they interfered with my own agenda, which was just to live and let live. I don't base my player's ideology necessarily upon his race. I've played a Nord who was a staunch Imperial sympathizer. I've played an Imperial who thought the Emperor was a weak puppet of the Aldmeri Dominion and I smiled as I ran him through with my dagger. You're right, though. The developers stacked the deck against the Empire in the opening sequences of the game, and that can't have been by accident. It seems to have been carefully planned out that the player would mistrust the Empire and side with the Stormcloaks, although I certainly can't figure out why that would be so. I can think of a dozen or more alternate ways to start this game that would leave the decision equally balanced between the two sides and give the player no reason to side with or against either faction. Sadly, once you've experienced the xenophobia and barely-suppressed mistrust and even outright hatred that the Nords, as a whole, feel for everyone else, and know that Ulfric supports this 100%, it puts the entire Stormcloak rebellion in a different light. Do the Civil War quest for the Imperial side and you'll hear some very interesting remarks by Tullius that shows he's not happy with the White Gold Concordat and that he thinks the real enemy is the Dominion, and not the Stormcloaks. The more I got into the Stormcloak side of this civil war the less respect I had for them, and especially for Ulfric. He might have a golden tongue, but gold doesn't impress me.

I've actually experienced a freeze on only one occasion, and that was during a loading screen. As often as some users complain of CTDs, I guess I've been lucky. I can count them on one hand -- without using my thumb, and I'm pushing thirty play-throughs, with characters ranging from level 10 to level 60. I've said it, before, and it may bear repeating. Skyrim, out of the box, was far more stable for me than was Oblivion, and the addition of mods has not noticeably deprecated my stability. I've been quite pleased with that. On the other hand, I have not been terribly pleased with the most noticeable and well-known bugs (such as the Eldergreen bug) that users have known about since the initial release of the game and which (at least as of patch 1.5, so I understand) are still in the game. There are a lot of bugs that occur in the vanilla game that could not possibly have been missed by play-testers because just about everyone experiences them. Instead of fixing these bugs, many of which were quest-breaking, Bethesda went on a DLC spree, and issued patches that gave us eye-candy, instead of fixing the problems. I can understand this to some extent, since it is a small company with more limited resources than some of the big gaming companies, and that they are money-driven, but let's face it. As users we expect the game to be as bug-free as possible. That means concentrating upon well-tested patches to fix the problems before embarking on any new projects. All that said, Skyrim is still my favorite game in spite of its bugs, many of which have been fixed, or are being worked on, by the modding community. We can't do anything about game engine bugs, of course, but most of the issues that people report in the vanilla game are failings of game design and not of the underlying engine. These can be fixed, with enough time and the patience of Job to deal with the idiosyncrasies of the CK.

I didn't have any problem with this on my last play-through when I joined the Imperial Legion. Note that if you kill a Stormcloak soldier who hasn't already gone aggro on you this counts as murder, though. You pretty much have to allow the opposition to get in the first shot before you can take action. I consider this a failing of game design, since the Stormcloaks ARE considered to be criminals by the Empire, but on the other hand, some of the jarls, who actually set the policies for their own holds, are Stormcloak supporters. In that playthrough I made a point of seeking out the Stormcloak camps and wiping everyone out but the injured soldiers. However, I never fired the first shot. I'd just wander into the camp and wait until they started attacking me and then I'd take them out -- but I'd never attack someone who didn't attack me, first. I figured out the had way (with murders and bounties piling up) that this is the only safe way to do it.

Yes, yes. You've said this before, and it's no more true, now, than it was, then. Guilt by association is not a valid charge in our own society and there's nothing at all in the lore of the ES that indicates that it is for the Empire, either. You're making unwarranted assumptions about the legal system and stating them as facts carved in stone. I'm making no assumptions. Nor will I entertain this particular argument any farther. You are welcome to your own opinion on this matter. As am I, and that's the end of the issue since neither of us is going to convince the other of the rightness of our perspectives. I suggest just letting it be, rather than whipping dead horses, which isn't going to further either of our stances with the other readers of this thread. Culiacan, you can role-play as a person who thinks with his head instead of his heart. I've done both. I've followed Ralof and I've followed Hadvar. I've sided with the Stormcloaks and I've sided with the Empire. Role-playing implies the ability to take on a "role" which is not you -- to play a character who might even have a very different way of looking at the world than you do. Like I said, it isn't black and white and anyone who sees it as such is simply missing the Big Picture. Of course, it's possible to role-play a character who is wearing conceptual blinders and can't see the options. I've done that, too. They're all valid approaches to the game. And, once out of Helgen you don't have to follow the person you chose. Indeed, you never ever have to see him, again, unless you involve yourself in the Civil War. That's generally the way I do it, because I don't like having that "Join the Imperial Legion" or "Join the Stormcloak Rebellion" quest crammed into my journal without my permission.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of stuff included in the save game that shouldn't be, such as scripts in mods that are no longer installed. The game engine just isn't smart enough to eliminate all mod resources when that mod is disabled. I suspect that garbage from previous patches similarly accumulates. You might want to check out Arwen's guide to making a clean save if you don't already know how. As users of Bethesda games we just have to bite the bullet, occasionally. Most Beth software is released in what seems to many of us to be a beta version, since the games, supporting software (like the CK), the DLCs and the patches all tend to be full of bugs that even a cursory partial play-through should have uncovered. It's why many of us run with Steam in off-line mode and have our games frozen at or prior to the 1.5 update which started the downward spiral into "bug hell" that plagues many users, today. On the other hand, patches do not play nicely with mods, and the vast majority of the issues that are reported on this site are not due to the vanilla game, but due to mods, either not playing nicely with the vanilla game or not playing nicely with each other. Skyrim, the game, is just not a very nice world, I suppose. The bottom line is that if you want to preserve your characters and gaming experience you cannot allow Steam to push patches. Wait until you're ready to begin a brand new game before you open up the flood gates, and be aware of issues which the latest patch has caused.

I've never done any keyboard remapping in Skyrim, but I'd bet this is stored somewhere in one your .ini files. You have two that a fresh download of Skyrim probably don't touch. They're both in your "My Documnts/My Games/Skyrim" folder by default. One is Skyrim.ini and the other is SkyrimPrefs.ini . You might want to check out those. My guess is that you can just delete them and when you restart the game it will put both of them back in with all their default values. You might want to back them up, first, just in case, though. Do NOT touch the Skyrim_default.ini in your game install folder.

No. He says that in his opinion, you have earned your pardon. That's not the same thing and Hadvar is in no position to make policy for the Imperial Legion. Of course having one of the few Imperial operatives to escape Helgen in something other than a body bag putting in a good word for you can't hurt. Besides, the Empire still doesn't have any actual charges on you, so there's nothing, by Law, that should go wrong when you first approach Tullius and it turns out that he recognizes you as one of the prisoners. I just hope that damned Captain got what was coming to her. "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup." One can only hope but I suppose we'll never find out.

Hadvar, himself, says on the way to Riverwood to avoid other Imperial soldiers and that General Tullius would have to make the final decision regarding the player's innocent or guilty status. This, alone, invalidates your fourth point. I think you're both looking at this in a much too cut-and-dry way. It's not as simple as a binary choice, although the game tries its best to channel you into that sort of thinking. If anything, by putting you with the Stormcloaks in the beginning, and with no backstory (therefore leaving the details up to the player), Beth seems to want you to side with the Stormcloaks. It's the knee-jerk reaction, to be sure. There are other alternatives to siding with either the Stormcloaks or the Empire, or even in following Ralof or Hadvar into Riverwood. This is where role-playing comes into importance, rather than being a nice, little well-behaved stoolie of the developers who want you to do the Main Quest and the Civil War quest from the outset of the game. Choose to be a rebel (and I'm not talking about your character) and a world of other opportunities opens up to you. However, let me remind you both of one important thing. It's not the "Empire" that is attempting to execute a (possibly) innocent person. It's a single rogue Imperial Captain who is making the decision to ignore her own orders and responsibilities to the citizens of Skyrim to execute a person who was not on the list and who, at that point in time, has not even been accused of any crime. It's not even guilt by association, as sajuukkhar suggests, because the Captain's words imply that she simply did not want to deal with an anomaly in her plans and that it was in her own best interests to just eliminate the problem, rather than deal with it later. She's a Bad Cop. Hadvar's a Good Cop. Who do you believe actually represents the Empire and its policies?

I've never tried the format "player.setstage" before, and I rather doubt it will work since "player" should not be a valid target for the "setstage" command. "player" in console commands refers to the character the human-at-the-computer is using to play the game, and not you (the person in real life), and that character (avatar) is not setting anything. The proper context, as documented in numerous articles, including the one l4zy1 cited, is "setstage FreeformSarethiFarm 200".

Sinnerman, it's "bloat". A "blot" (noun) is a smudge on something or (verb) is something you do to spilled liquid with a paper towel. "Blut" is German for "blood". This is why you couldn't find anything for save game bloat. :wink:

The Khajiits in the caravans are flagged essential. They cannot die. I role-played as a caravan guard in one of my play-thoughs so I've seen these guys in battle against everything from skeevers to dragons and know what they can do. Mortal enemies don't stand a chance against essential foes. You had J'Zargo along with you? That would be a kick-butt situation, since all the mage apprentices at the College of Winterhold make excellent mage followers. Their minimum level is 6, although I think they max out at 30, but before that they'll be one level ahead of you (assuming you're at level five or better). Did you know that one of J'zargo's primary skills is Heavy Armor? Go figure, but give him plate steel armor and he's a killing machine. You can also give him a one-handed weapon, since that's also one of his primary skills, but he'll be less likely to use his considerable talents as a Destruction Mage if you do that.

I think Shadow already answered the technical, game engine related questions, but I'd like to add a little that is related to personal playing style and any role-playing you might be doing with your character. First of all, there are several valid approaches to playing an assassin, and not all of them rely heavily upon stealth-related skills, as you'll find out if you talk to the residents of the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary should you decide to join that faction. Even so, it never hurts to develop the right hand side of the Sneak tree to get that bonus with the dagger -- even if you're not playing an assassin. Of course, this means you also need a pretty high sneak skill, but you still shouldn't feel that you have to completely fill out every skill tree you decide to develop. Unless you develop your alchemy skill to a high level and get the Poisoner perk you'll find the strength of your potions dwindles rapidly relative to your raw damage at moderate levels and above. Pump your points into basic Alchemy if you want to make poisons. You don't have to develop anything else beyond Poisoner. This game drops an insane amount of health restoring and health boosting potions, so there's little point in making those, anyway, except at low levels when the ones you make can easily be stronger than the ones you'll get as loot. Why only two points in Smithing? Let me put it this way. In half of my twenty-plus play-throughs I've only put one point into Smithing. Without mods that affect armor rating and weapon damage there's not that much difference at high levels if you're using improved gear, whether you're talking the light or heavy side of the Smithing tree. If you're going to be a sneak-Assassin then you probably aren't going to be going for heavy armor, right? Then just develop the left side of the tree, and only as rapidly as the game drops things on that side of it. There's no point in boosting your ability to create and smith Glass when the game is still just dropping only as high as Elven. Indeed, I've found there's little reason to develop beyond the ability to craft/improve steel. Steel weapons are just fine well into the game, and except for one play-through where I experimented with playing a tank, I've never used anything but leather armor. Regarding your last question, if you're not going to be using magic very much, then don't put points into Magicka. In many of my play-throughs I've eschewed magic in favor of stealth and combat expertise, so I left Magicka at 100 and was content with only casting Novice-level spells. I did just fine. An assassin isn't going to be using a lot of power attacks. You're relying upon cunning and stealth, based upon your questions. Don't go overboard with Stamina, then, either. I'd suggest, for the build you're after, to go with a 2:1 or even 3:1 advancement ratio for Health:Stamina. The reason is that there will be times when things aren't going to go your way and you're going to take some damage. Buffing Health rapidly can make you much more survivable, especially at low to moderate levels. Having that little extra bit in Stamina means you can run farther in sprint mode if you really have to extricate yourself from a sticky situation.

I want her to quit saying "Stupid dog!" Meeko is a member of our family. She should learn that. Seriously, though, I'd have to vote for Vilja, although as has been pointed out it could be a long time before Vilja actually makes it into the game. By far, my favorite vanilla follower is Kharjo, so he'd be tops on my list. I'd really like to see extensive quest-awareness with Cerwiden. I'm not talking about the multitude of purely radiant quests. That would be just absurd to try to accommodate all those possibilities, but the hard-coded quests should be things that she could respond to. I'd love hearing her comments about the various Daedra, for instance. I'm more interested in seeing this for side-quests, rather than the "guild quests", too. I'm at a point in my playing where I couldn't care less about the guilds, anymore. There's quite enough other stuff in the game to keep me happy until the game's leveling starts disintegrating at or around level 35.

Um, I thought it was to collect calipers. Or was that someone else? I keep getting my Khajiits mixed up. (We all look alike to me, you know) Seriously, though, what AnkhAscendant said is perfectly true. Each of us plays the game differently, and many of us play it differently each time we play the game. I've done play-throughs where I didn't even engage the Main Quest, short of the forced addition of the first part of the quest-line right out of Helgen. Dragonborn? Dragons? Shouts? Greybeards? Blades? What's with all that? I'm just a poor, misplaced hunter who would like to find my way back to Elsweyr so I can start a rebellion against the Aldmeri tyranny there.

You got it, sssu1. I'd strongly suggest doing that in a batch file and then running the batch file, though. That's a lot safer than risking an errant keystroke while you're actually in the console to do this. You may now commence to pounding your forehead against the wall. edit: My post crossed with bben. That's the second time this has happened to me, today. Anyway, the manual entry solution is if you want to continue your game from your current save. bben's solution will let you continue your game from a previous save. Depending upon how much time has passed you might want to try to salvage your current game. If not, the clean save routine with your stuff stored elsewhere is going to save you a lot of research and typing.

The command "markfordelete" pertains only to your current gamesave. It can't remove anything from the game, itself, because those files are protected in an archive. By the way, if you go the route of obtaining the sap like the priestess asked, you won't run into this problem and you'll wind up with a beautiful, flowering, fully-restored, adult Gildergreen tree. If you want instant gratification, rather than waiting for Whiterun to reset, then click on the tree and type "disable". Hit your <enter> key. Type "markfordelete". Voila, sapling is revealed and old, dead (invisible) tree will be permanently removed from your saved game at some later date when the game "cleans up" in Whiterun. I do suggest saving your game before you disable the old tree, just in case some part of the sapling happens to clip through at the point where you try to select the old tree and you wind up disabling the sapling and can't get it back. I'm really surprised that this hasn't been fixed by an official patch, yet. I'm not sure if the Unofficial Skyrim Patch fixes it, although this has been known as an issue from virtually day one with this game.

Not in vanilla Skyrim frozen at patch 1.5.xx. I suggest that you have a mod which affects mannequins that added that one. Either that or it's something new in 1.6, 1.7, or Dawnguard.

The stalled AI issue even occurs in un-modded games with the timescale set to its default "20". I usually run with it set to "2" and I can't point to any issues in the game that it has caused, save for nerfing the very beginning during the run from Helgen to Riverwood if you fiddle with the default before you talk to your contact, there. Setting the timescale to "1" WILL bork your game. It's not a matter of if, but a matter of when. Setting it to "0" is just asking for immediate trouble.

No, the Dragonborn does not have to be related to the Septim bloodline. This is made quite clear by the absence of any information to that effect. The gods bestowed this power on "mortals" -- that just doesn't mean a single line of humans that culminated (and ended) in the death of Martin Septim. Besides, it would have been ludicrous to allow any player who is not playing an Imperial to be the Dragonborn, if that were so. I do agree with a few points you made, though. IF, and that's a big "IF", the player chooses to concentrate upon enchanting and smithing, yes, the Dragonborn is the best smith in Tamriel, and could easily outfit an army that the Thalmor would stand no chance against. Besides, I wiped out the Thalmor embassy in my last play-through wearing fine-grade leather armor, a fine-grade Imperial bow, a fine-grade steel dagger, and novice-level spells. The Thalmor are not that tough as long as you don't have to deal with them in packs. A well-outfitted army of Nords (who have a lot to dislike about the Thalmor) should be able to run roughshod over the Aldmeri Dominion.

Don't get me wrong from my comments, Promiser. I agree with you 100%. While I can see the argument that's been put forth that the Dragonborn was simply the fourth essential piece in the puzzle to defeat Alduin, I don't personally think it should have been that easy. This was not a difficult fight at all. I've done it several times, already, all at moderately low levels, so that might have been an issue. I really don't know if this scenario is scaled or not, but Alduin was pretty much a pushover each time. Heck, he wasn't even that difficult, except for his meteor storm thing, when I took him on alone. Yes, Parth is supposed to be helping out, there, but I really don't know if Alduin is flagged to only accept player-inflicted damage or not at that point. I pretty much felt that Parth was just there to get in the way when I tried to used Dragonrend on Alduin. I think that everyone present in the mead hall should have poured out and helped defeat Alduin in the end fight. It should have been an epic battle. It wasn't.