How often should you delete saves?

[UgTheViking]

Hey there-

Was just curious how often saves should be deleted and how many should be kept? And how often should you make a save? I often save every 10 mins or so just out of habit. (Had an old system in the FO3 days, heh)

Or if it even makes a difference at all?

-Thanks

[Rabbit1251]

Throughout my gaming experience I have only kept two saves and rotated between the two. I know that you're not supposed to do this but I have almost always have had no issues with this system. Sometimes when I'm experimenting with some new gameplay I will make a new save outside of my two saves so that I can abandon this track and return to where I left off if it doesn't work out. I frequently do this when starting a DLC.

 

 

Rabbit

[cdcooley]

I use the default autosaves, a quick save, and then make a manual save whenever I reach a major story point. Story points for me are usually just before purchasing a house or joining a guild, just after finishing a major quest or long dungeon, right before installing a new mod or updating an existing one, etc. The autosaves and quicksave overwrite themselves, but I never delete any of the other saves. Even when I'm finished playing a particular character I just move those saves into an archive folder.

 

The important point is to keep enough saves that you can go back to a point before problems happen. That could mean 2 saves or 2000 depending on the situation.

 

Most hard drives are large enough these days that it shouldn't be a matter of space and a few hundred files in a folder shouldn't cause any problems.

 

P.S. Rotating between two saves for a TES game is crazy. Even Skyrim's default autosave system uses 3 slots. :smile:

[TwilightDB]

I've began deleting my saved games if they are older than the last two or three saves. It saves on the clutter than to save over a previous save; the boot up of Skyrim seems more amiable that way with less CTDs when it's a fresh save for some reason.

[marat569]

I save constantly while playing ( In combat, after doing something, etc), and after my session I leave the last 3 saves. Usually I get 3gb in saves after 1 session.

 

It takes 3 seconds to delete them, but I possibly save way more than you guys so idk, I don't want to randomly die and have to redo a ton of content. (Save after every mob, save before opening every door, etc)

[IsharaMeradin]

Modified my INI file to make 999 saves before overwriting

[SaveGame]
iAutoSaveCount=999

Use quick save when I think about it before a major fight or other precautionary moments.

A mod I've been working on has an option to make a save whenever locked objects are under the crosshair, so every locked object gets a save.

And I manually save whenever I'm done playing for the current session.

 

As a result, I can have well over 1000 saves (more like 2000 but who is counting) by the time I decide that I've played out that particular character run. I never delete the saves until the moment I decide to fully start over.

[Rabbit1251]

Quoting Cdcooley,

 

"P.S. Rotating between two saves for a TES game is crazy. Even Skyrim's default autosave system uses 3 slots."

 

And yet it works for me. Mind you I must say the two saves that I use are custom ones that I create in the console. With this system I have lost one character long ago in Oblivion when somehow both saves became corrupted. And, yes, I know that it is not advised but... And, no, I would not recommend this to anyone else, but the OP did ask.

 

Making a lot of saves would cause me more confusion than it would be worth.

 

 

Rabbit

[cdcooley]

The great thing about using the console save command is that you get to name your saves, so you can use something meaningful for those special moment saves.

[Balx2]

I have every form of autosave disabled. I use the console to create save points and I use the quicksave / quickload hotkeys a lot.

Sometimes I have a lot of older saves but usually I only keep 3 or 5 of the most recent for each play though.