Skyrim - starting over - bugs to watch out for (minor spoilers)?

Drez

So I played Skyrim back when it was new. I stopped when I got my job back at the end of January. I decided I will start over from the beginning.

I have a fully patched version with all the currently-available DLC and one mod (some portable storage cheat thing because I'm a pack rat and I know it's cheating and I don't care!!!!)

Ahem, anyway, I remember there were a lot of tiny bugs way back when, especially quest and NPC bugs. Did they iron those out? Is there a current list? Some of the notable ones I remember:

a) Killing a dragon would sometimes cause it to glitch and not give you a soul.
b) In one of the cities, if you picked up some...amulet or something before you got the sidequest to fetch it it would be permanently stuck in your inventory and you can't finish the quest properly or something.
c) Some NPCs would stop offering you training even though they should still offer it. Like the lockpicking trainer in the Thieves Guild. That's actually when I stopped playing - she wouldn't train me for some incomprehensible reason.

Did they fix any of those? Any new bugs? Is there a current list?

Afty

I bought and played it on PC recently (having owned it on Xbox for some time) and I found no game breaking glitches.

regarding point C, I think trainers only offer training to a certain level of the skill, like the first archer dude you meet will train you to 50 skill or thereabouts and no further, could that be what you were running into?

I also use a multichest thing, I don't really consider that to be cheating, just time saving ;D

Drez

No, that wasn't the problem with C. My skill was like...12, way below her training level. Same thing happened with the Khajit speech trainer.

Anyway, thanks, good to know there aren't so many bugs now.

never-ending-reign

I think they patched it, but I think it was possible to still glitch the quest for "Blood on The Ice" it was called in Windhelm. Not sure if that would be an issue on PC, but I found it incredibly infuriating and would not want someone to experience the same thing.

mightyjongyo

This may not be a problem anymore - but there is a bug where, if you sell the thieve's guild armor to the thieve's guild fence who is supposed to upgrade your armor, when you get to the point where you upgrade the armor, she will get stuck in a dialogue loop and you will never be able to complete the thieve's guild quest line.*

Also, generally there are issues when you discover locations and clear them out, and then they turn out to be quest locations but nothing respawns, so the quest is borked. There is a PC mod that will let you know if the location you've discovered is tied to a quest, though.

*(this was on the PS3. I never encountered it on the PC, but then again I never tried it so.)

Rend

Watch out for this one

The Scarab wrote:

It's been five days now and he's still chasing me. It was so simple: Track down a few documents, steal a horse and ride off into the sunset. At least, that's what I thought.
But Louis Letrush, fucking Louis fucking Letrush. What a dick. He's marked as essential, therefore cannot be killed by any normal means. Not by stabbing or exploding or a legion of guards swarming him with axes and swords and a million arrows.

And that's fine until the quest he gives you allows you to steal his horse, making him hostile. I thought there would be no problem, so I stole it. It's a cool white stallion, super fast with an awesome name. I like unique things in these games. Anything unique I crave, so a unique horse is like crack.

'Haha, motherfucker' I screamed as I hopped into the saddle and disappeared into the Riften countryside, leaving Letrush in my dust, dagger drawn and blood crazed. Stupid Louis Letrush, what an asshole. Doesn't he know I'm the Dragonborn? That basically means I can do whatever I want.

Two days pass, and I'm hauling back an ungodly amount of loot from a couple of dungeons, selling up in Whiterun and storing the best gear in the various chests around my Breezehome. As I leave the building and turn toward the blacksmith to smelt some orichalcum ores, there he is. Louis Letrush. What the fuck? And he's hostile. And he's rushing right at me!

I mean, his blows bounce harmlessly off my Plus Five Daedric Armor of Fuck You, but now he's aggro'd the entire goddamn hold. And a dozen guards burst out of their clown car barracks and the whole game starts to chug a little but Letrush, that smiling cunt, he's tanking the lot and not dying. Down to his knees is the best they can manage. He's essential.

So I wail on him with my enormous hammer, get bored and leave. A couple of days later, I'm sorting through my stuff outside a nordic ruin in the far north on some island, trying to do the inventory fandango by dropping piles of loot and picking them up in order of priority. And there he fucking is! What the flying moses? Louis Letrush comes running over a snow capped hill at full tilt, dagger drawn, hair flowing in the breeze with the soulless eyes of a madman. I swear, it actually made me jump because, as you know, all the northern islands in the sea are basically completely empty and boring.

Well I've had enough of that bullshit. I hit tilde, click on him and type disable. Haha, Louis Letrush vanishes into the ether and I can't even be bothered to invent some ingame explanation. I simply used godlike developer power to remove him from all existence.

Then, I'm not even kidding, I fast travel back to Whiterun to get my horse so that I can haul more loot (you can fast travel when encumbered if you're on a horse) and as soon as the zone loads, three fucking Louis Letrushes come sprinting at me, shouting in anger in a chorus of doom. Motherfuckers.

Now I'm the victim of a game breaking bug. He's permanently hostile. Every time I disable him and his clones, he pulls some Agent Smith bullshit and spawns two more versions. Now everytime I load Whiterun stables, there are two dozen Letrush assholes standing there who immediately aggro me and an entire zone of guards. The sudden and rig-breaking overload of AI routines crashes my game to desktop. When I'm in another part of the game, he sometimes appears out of nowhere, flanked by his identical cronies causing another CTD. Every load screen is fraught with anxiety and fear. Could this dungeon be the one where he shows up? There's no discernible pattern. I can only imagine he actually treks across the entire game world and if I'm in one place for long enough, he shows up. Killing not me, but my computer.

I guess Louis Letrush won Skyrim. What a dick.

Great Scott

I use mods to keep everything patched. Tons of community bugfixes are available. For examples, see:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/19
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/25127

There are a number available on different site, I use Nexus sites myself (mostly because of the mod manager they make).