Skyrim Bug PSA - why you probably shouldn't reload saves while playing
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About this video
- Happens on Vanilla Skyrim (with only the test mod installed)
- Exiting to main menu is not enough
- Reload on death is the exact same
Here is file if you want to test. coc reloadtestcell to start
Edit: I did some more testing after reading some reddit comments talking about plugin flags:
- Removing ESL flag from the plugin fixes the issue. There was a previously known bug with ESL flags that prevents other plugins from editing cells defined in ESL plugins, but this seems like another bug that happens even if nothing else edits the cell.
- ESL + ESM flag does not fix the issue
40 comments
This made my day, thank you! XD
"Say you have ESL mod’s “A” and “B”. ESL “A” adds a new cell containing both “persistent” and “temporary” records. If ESL mod “B” overwrites the cell added byESL “A”, then ESL A’s “temporary” objects don’t show up (i.e. one ESL overwrites another ESL’s CELL records, and causes this problem)."
...but your saying its another problem with ESL's, when nothing else edits the cell?
So, is your recommendation, that if anything adds items which can be picked up (especially quest items), then it should have the ESL flag removed, for safety?
However, this bug doesn't occur for worldspaces, so a more involved way to solve this and keep ESL flag is to move your interior cells to worldspaces.
If worldspaces are ok, and its just (interior) cells with ESL, it does sound like there is some function in the code which isn't called before loading a save. In fact, it sounds like the cause of this bug is two possible cases;
1) There is a function which isn't being called which resets the record flags of interior objects prior to loading.
2) No actual function exists to reset the objects record flags, but the reason why the worldspace works, is because it clears out the memory used by interior cells (and objects) and creates a clean copy of them upon loading that worldspace, which consequently means a fresh set of record flags are copied from the original objects.
By the way, excellent discovery in finding this bug wSkeever! I've frequently seen weird things happen after reloading a savegame, and found things aren't quite the same as they were upon restarting the executable, but I didn't realize what was happening until you showed this video.
Maybe a silly question, but if you happen to die and the game reloads before you can exit to desktop, does the quest state get baked into your save?
That's incredibly gamebreaking if it does.
What I mean is, you die, the game reloads your last save, you then exit to desktop, go back into the game, but the state already got written into your save information? That would mean you'd really have to add something that makes you ctd on death, otherwise you'll eventually end up with broken quests...
Of course, if the load then immediately "saved", and then you tried to continue from that save game, then it could be game breaking. But there would be no point loading that save, because no progress would have been made between the load and the save.