Rock, Paper, Shotgun

FUS! RO! PATCH! Skyrim Updates To 1.2

By John Walker on November 30th, 2011 at 10:43 pm.

If they patch this out, I'm never playing again.

Skyrim has now patched on PC, after the 360 and PS3 saw their version of 1.2 appear earlier in the week. But is it good news? 1.1 managed to break lots of the patches modders had created to fix so many of the tiresome issues Bethesda had left in the epic game, which didn’t win favour. And then today the news broke that the console patch had had some rather unfortunate side effects. Like all defensive buffs no longer working, and the dragons flying backward. No, really. So below you can see what’s meant to be in 1.2 – including a fix for that daft audio crash, mouse improvements, and at flipping last Esc backs out of menus – and then you can let us know if you’ve seen anything strange since the update.

Oh, and dead bodies will no longer show up to your wedding.

I’m currently in a Dwarven dungeon you see, so can’t really bring news on flying dragons, but I’m racing through in the hope of finding one. Anyhow, this is what Bethesda intended to fix:

- Fixed crash on startup when audio is set to sample rate other than 44100Hz

- Fixed issue where projectiles did not properly fade away

- Fixed occasional issue where a guest would arrive to the player’s wedding dead

- Dragon corpses now clean up properly

- Fixed rare issue where dragons would not attack

- Fixed rare NPC sleeping animation bug

- Fixed rare issue with dead corpses being cleared up prematurely

- Skeleton Key will now work properly if player has no lockpicks in their inventory

- Fixed rare issue with renaming enchanted weapons and armor

- Fixed rare issue with dragons not properly giving souls after death

- ESC button can now be used to exit menus

- Fixed occasional mouse sensitivity issues

- General functionality fixes related to remapping buttons and controls

Honestly, I’m a bit disappointed about the lack of corpses coming to my nuptials. And the projectiles not fading was a brilliant bug. But still, it’s good to see some of the issues being loudly raised are being addressed. Still no word on improving the horrendous interface, sadly, but I’m hopeful industrious modders are working on that as we quest.

You can enjoy the sight of a PS3 dragon’s backward flying below:

Edit: I’m disappointed to say that the dragon I’ve seen was flying forward.

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176 Comments »

  1. AMonkey says:

    Lots of people are complaining about save game corruption and being unable to start the game after patching. GG Bethesda. Good to see your Q&A is as good as it ever was.

  2. Skusey says:

    When my horse first ran up a near-vertical cliff face I squealed with joy. Much more interesting than the dragons.

  3. StingingVelvet says:

    They fixed the mouse, which was my only problem with Skyrim. Now the game is arguably perfect.

    • Buttless Boy says:

      Yes, it is clearly a flawless product.

    • TODD says:

      I only regret that I have but one face to palm at this post.

    • Nameless1 says:

      I LOL’ed

    • archimandrite says:

      It’s a Bethesda game! Of course it’s a bugfest. That’s half the fun! Do not deny it.

    • steggieav says:

      Bugs are fun when they’re stuff like backwards-flying dragons, crazy physics glitches, or corpses crashing weddings. Not so fun when they’re CTDs or save corruption. I wish Bethesda would focus more on the latter.

    • CaptainVolcanoes says:

      It’s a Bethesda game.. What do you expect?

      And I’m not hounding on Bethesda.. I’m saying that they make so much content, that there’s bound to be bugs.. so Just deal with it, like us Morrowind and Oblivion players did.

    • StingingVelvet says:

      Yeah, what I meant was technically perfect. There will always be quest bugs and wonky stuff happening in a game like this. Anyone who expects them to patch that buglist is drinking the skooma.

    • bleeters says:

      I’d love to “deal with it”, but since my game crashes roughly every twenty minutes now and all my previous saves have become corrupted and unusable, it’s hard to find the time between deep sighing and rubbing my temples until the pain goes away to actual get any decent dealing done.

    • Prime says:

      @Bleeters – that sounds exactly like what was happening in Fallout: New Vegas, and there was a very simple fix for that. I was crashing every 20 minutes on my Win7 X64, ATI powered system. After the tweak, plain-sailing.

      As it’s the same engine only heavily spruced up maybe you could try and apply that? I wish I had the link to give you but it’s been lost.

    • Ninja Foodstuff says:

      Wow reading all this it’s as if no-one is enjoying the game at all. Me, I’m loving it, but then I’ve only clocked up 10 hours thus far.

    • LintMan says:

      I’ve found that waiting 3-6+ months before playing Oblivion/Fallout/F:NV has greatly improved the experience. By then, the game is generally stable, and the mod scene has produced some good/useful mods. Fortunately, I’ve got a backlog of 6+ games to play in the meantime.

    • Lias says:

      Three to six months? I have this one penciled in for 2014.

  4. Nim says:

    A lot of people recommend disabling automatic updates for the game for the time being and waiting until the issues settle down. Some report nothing at all, other report even more broken UI, graphic glitches, save-game corruption, etc.

  5. bleeters says:

    Unfortunately, after patching, my experience was as such:

    1) The game crashed, lots. And lots. Attempting to fast travel? That’s a crash for you. Trying to load any of my more recent saved games? Crash. Been more than a few minutes since the game crashed? Have a crash.

    2) After a while, all my saves broke. By which I mean, all of them are now flagged as corrupted and won’t load. So that’s around 30 hours of play down the drain.

    I think I’d rather live with whatever issues this apparently solved, thanks. Not that I have that option, having bought it from steam.

    • Dr. Clockwork says:

      Thanks to you, I will now back up my saves before playing tonight.

      You’re a martyr for the rest of us, noble bleeters.

    • StingingVelvet says:

      Sometimes I feel like the only man in history who has never had one crash with any Bethesda product.

      Yes, we do exist. And our existence could arguably mean it is something on your PCs conflicting with the game. I know I keep a very clean gaming PC, putting all my utilities and such on my laptop instead.

    • Dr. Clockwork says:

      @StingingVelvet

      I’ve only really ever had Skyrim crash once or twice for me. Everyone else I know who plays it has ti crash all the time.

      Clearly they’re playing it wrong. XD

    • bleeters says:

      There’s nothing wrong with my PC, thanks. Your personal experience doesn’t suddenly make anything to the contrary the fault of the players.

    • Tei says:

      I think the problem with this game is memory exaustation. A 64 bits exe would fix most problems.

    • mondomau says:

      Stinging Velvet – What a peculiar line of reasoning. By your own admission, players that never suffer from crashes in Bethesda games are exceptionally rare, yet some how this leads you to the corollary that there must be something wrong with beeters computer ? I suspect you don’t really understand how PC gaming works, that or you’re just being arrogant and obtuse.

    • Asherie says:

      @stinging velvet and bleeter – I’m one of the few that has no crashes and no problem too. Figners crossed it stays that way. I have however backed up my saves now, just in case.

      I also keep my gaming pc clean, my super slow laptop has all the utilities. This pc has steam and the games on steam. thats it.

    • Llewyn says:

      @mondomau: I think it’s a reasonable conclusion, when comparing those afflicted by crashes and those not, that there is something about the former group’s PCs which conflicts with something about the game. The error is in assuming that the fault lies with the PCs.

      I’ve been blessed with Bethesda games in the past – I spent 80 hours playing through Fallout NV starting on Boxing Day last year without any issues whatsoever. I’m not arrogant or stupid enough to think that’s down to how ‘clean’ my PC is – it isn’t, as I use it for a lot of things far more important to me than gaming – but it did make me glad I don’t work in PC games QA.

      As for Skyrim, I’m trying to stay well clear until it’s been stabilized one way or another, although I suspect that Mrs Llewyn will insist on buying it for me this month…

    • mondomau says:

      @ Llewyn: “The error is in assuming that the fault lies with the PCs.” Yes, this was essentially the point I was making, hence asking if stingingvelvet understood how PC gaming works (i.e. infinite number of variables in hardware /software configuration = nightmare for programmers) though it obviously wasn’t clear enough, probably because I had only been up 10 minutes by that point. Also, I was grumpy.

    • Magnetude says:

      Installed Windows 7 x64 on a brand new SSD the other day, still crashing to desktop every couple of hours or so. Could be the 4GB loader, could be MSI Afterburner running in the background, highly likely to at least partly be Beth’s fault given that Oblivion would regularly crash my PS3 back in the day.

      Also, having to open up the console to finish quests is not fun. But the rest of the bugs are.

    • godgoo says:

      @Magnetude

      If it helps I am running the 4gb exe and afterburner on Win7 64 and have had only a couple of crashes in 60 odd hours. And they all occurred before I knew to reduce the audio quality and run the 4gb exe!

      Only difference being I’m not running it from my SSD, no point with this game really, loading is quick and it’s not really utilising GPU or CPU properly at this point.

      EDIT: i7 2600k, gtx 560Ti OC, 8GB RAM.

    • Gwenwyn says:

      Patch 1.2 corrupted all my saves… luckily, the Steam verify game files fixed them. 150 hours of play nearly lost… time to back up.

  6. Dr. Clockwork says:

    I just wish they’d fix some of the wonky quests. =(

    But…that’s not saying there aren’t A BILLION OTHER THINGS I can be doing around Skyrim. XD

    • Magnetude says:

      If you go to the Skyrim Wiki and look up the quest, there’s a chance they’ll have posted instructions for how to complete it using a console command. I couldn’t complete a quest with that elf you plant a ring on in Riften because he thought everyone was corrupt, including me. So I reached inside his mind and made him like me just enough to let me tell him about his family history.

  7. TheDreamlord says:

    The custom keys issue does not seem to be fixed. I still cannot set Favs when I bind custom keys. How freaking difficult is it for them to fix this for pete’s sake?

    • pakoito says:

      They’re hardcoded or not depending on which menu, try whatever key you have for change player perspective.

    • TheDreamlord says:

      Thanks, I’ll try that. Still ridiculous though.

    • Highstorm says:

      This patch actually messed up custom keys even more than previously. Yes we can now use Esc. to exit menus, but I could then no longer use Tab to do the same. Having gotten used to it up to this point, that was incredibly maddening.

      Then I go to the map and find I can no longer pan north. See they fixed it so the map recognized my remapped movement controls (WASD -> ESDF), but E is still bound to “Center on Player”. So I try to pan up and end up going back to myself instead. Brilliant.

      But then come the modders to the rescue again. This beauty will let you unbind and rebind all the existing keys, as well as allowing you to have multiple keybinds for one function. So I can have Esc, Tab AND M close the map, woo! The only thing that absolutely refuses to change is R to drop/give items from your inventory.

      http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=88

      (You only really need the “SkyrimKeyHelper” on the downloads page.)

  8. pakoito says:

    For bugfixes and everything else UESPWiki has helped me fix and finish the game: http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Skyrim

  9. fatalarrowhead says:

    Well, I’d love to find some bugs, but the “Continue” Option isn’t showing on the main menu…. In fact NOTHING is showing on the main menu…. Any fixes? I’m frustrated :p I’ve tried restarting.

    EDIT: It’s okay now… I fixed it. All I had to do was turn off all my .ESP files I loaded into Data Files… Works fine now.

    • dan. says:

      Disable any mods you’ve installed.

      Vals Crafting Meltdown seems to be the main culprit.

    • Calcographer says:

      If you use the Vals Crafting Meltdown WITHOUT Arrows, it will take care of the issue. Everything else works fine for me. That didn’t stop me from redoing everything due to OCD however…

    • tetracycloide says:

      You just saved my evening. Thank you kind sir!

      When I tried to install the new version since it had the same file name I just went to write over it with the unzip. Turns out when the game hangs on the menu screen like that it doesn’t always close all its processes completely when you end task in task manager. Long story short, the file wouldn’t overwrite until I killed the right processes. So if you’re having this problem and you’re looking to fix it by going no arrows keep that in mind.

    • Calcographer says:

      Indeed! I was having the same problem. Apparently by CTRL-ALT-DEL’ing my way out when I saw no menu text, it would leave the 4GBSkyrim program running in the background, needless to say, I didn’t figure it out until I had nine instances of it open…

      Enjoy!

  10. boldoran says:

    In completely unrelated news:

    Here is a Stamkey for the introversion bundle that I have no use for.
    I don’t want it to go to waste
    JAEYE-JQB48-EPJ6C

    Sorry for the Off Topic

    • iainl says:

      That’s very nice of you. Just as a note before anyone else tries it, though, some lucky individual has already taken it (not me, btw).

  11. Cruyelo says:

    The patch is reported as being removed from Steam due to the problems.

    • Baines says:

      One worrying thing is that from what I read is that PS3 owners (who got the patch on the 28th) were already reporting that 1.2 broke resistances, and Bethesda went ahead and released the patch for the PC and 360 anyway.

      So Bethesda just sat around and waited for Xbox360 and PC users to find out if the patch was broken for them too?

  12. Ultra-Humanite says:

    From what I’ve read, magic resistance has been broken across all platforms, which kinda seems like a big deal. I backed up my entire game folder before starting Steam and disabling automatic patch updates and just recopied it over to stay on the 1.1 patch since this also, predictably, breaks the 4gb Skyrim mod. They really screwed this up, there was nothing on the bug list they were fixing that is as crippling as dragons that fly backwards or no magic resistance.

    • Faldrath says:

      Um, it doesn’t break the 4GB mod – I can still load Skyrim with it without any issues.

    • Shubb9 says:

      This was my fear, my game still loads and plays with 4GB mod enabled. No save corruption either thank goodness. Still the same regularity of crashes due to uGrid over-enthusiasm however.

    • Drinking with Skeletons says:

      The resistances are broken. Frankly there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot to this patch beyond the problems its created. I’ve still got some weird AI bugs (Sybille Stentor no longer leaves her bed) and there are still quest problems (my second character cannot trigger Blood on the Ice, even with the console). It seems to have fixed the very minor issues they listed and absolutely nothing else.

      Guess what Bethesda? I could fix that audio bug myself by just turning the setting down. I can exit the menus by clicking Tab or the shortcuts to the menus, which you already had implemented. Maybe prioritize the bigger issues, or just wait until you’ve got more to show until you release a patch. Don’t feel the need to release simultaneous patches if the only really, truly bad one is for the PS3. Most of us really don’t think of console players as C.H.U.D.S. We won’t feel angry if they get a patch to allow them to play the game at all while we wait for one that simply improves our experience.

    • MCM says:

      Magic resistance is definitely gone. My Nord, under the sign of the Lord, wearing 66% magic resistance, just got obliterated by a mage throwing ice spikes, ffs.

      Patch is total travesty.

  13. Dasos says:

    I am not ashamed to admit I pirated this, I fully intended to buy it but had a serious cashflow problem at the time (genuine too, honestly :P)
    Finally sorted out that problem and was going to buy it, but then they broke it with patches so I’m just going to stick with my most stable 1.0 version of the game until it’s properly stable in a few months, then they’ll get my money :)

    • Xerian says:

      The game is hardly unstable, its a TINY fraction of the players that’ve gotten any serious errors. Neither I nor my 15+ friends that play the game has experienced -ANY- bugs besides the always fun ragdoll related ones, so thats really not an excuse, give them your money! The game is worth it ;p
      Also; I fucking love Skyrim. Least buggy bethesda game ever to have seen the light of day ;>

    • Fiatil says:

      Waiting until a game has no bugs to buy it: Best impossible to fulfill piracy rationalization ever?

    • porschecm2 says:

      You know, you could buy it, and then just not install it, and continue playing the copy you downloaded. That way, you’re no longer a pirate, and you get to keep playing the version you like.

    • FRIENDLYUNIT says:

      Um, yeah. Normally when I don’t have the money to buy something I wait and save up until I do. Fancy that eh!

      Some things though I just can’t afford. Like yachts and skyscrapers. As I cannot afford these things I do not buy them.

      That’s just me though, shackled by my outmoded delusions of morality and decency. You go right ahead though, and, as a not very famous fictional character says, “TAKE IT!”

    • jrodman says:

      @porschecm2: Win! And a good way of putting it, too.

    • Aninhumer says:

      @FRIENDLYUNIT
      It makes no difference to Bethesda whether you play a pirated version while you wait until you have enough money. They get their money at the same time, you just get to play it for longer.

    • Ajh says:

      Honestly? I have crash to desktop issues without the 4gb workaround, but otherwise it’s a very playable and stable game at the time…well..one of my companions was dead on the ground when I walked into town once…but really that was the first time that happened and the only time it did. The vast majority of my play time has been bug free.

      I suggest buy it now, and keep playing your pirated copy if you’re worried about what flaws remain, though none of them are DRM related so I don’t see how it’ll help.

  14. rulez says:

    The mouse controls seem as sluggish as before and additionally now without a vertical axis, so I cannot look up and down any longer.

    • Sic says:

      I hope the fix is the problem where if you equip (for instance) a staff and a spell, suddenly, one of the axis (up/down) has about ten times the sensitivity, with the added bonus of not being accurate at all (jumping 30-40 pixels at a time).

    • Colthor says:

      @rulez:

      If you’d added the lines to Skyrim.ini to control X and Y motion independently, remove them. That fixed it for me, and now mouse movement works as you’d expect.

      Although still oddly laggy on the main menu, for some reason.

  15. ArcaneSaint says:

    That dragon isn’t flying backwards because of some bug, that’s just the very first captured footage of the dragon mating ritual, he’s trying to impress the lady dragons. The poor thing was just looking for a little bit of action, after being dead for a thousand(?) years, and that guy just shot arrows in its face. Nice job, hero.

    • vecordae says:

      This is the most cogent thing I’ve read all day. A fishy stick to you, sir.

    • Hoaxfish says:

      No! As a true Skyrim dragonologist it is a well known fact that the apparent “head” of the skyrim dragon is actually its tail, while the head is at the “tail”… this is to fool any predators into attacking the much less important tail appendage… in the same way that some caterpillars feature this sort of “false head”.

      Any real dragonologist knows dragons mate by collecting horses to ride upon their back, to take them as offertory gifts to the female. The female dragons are also 10 times bigger.

      I won’t go into the real mechanics of their so-called “breath” attacks.

    • Maldomel says:

      And here I thought they flew backwards ’cause they were afraid of me! Seems like my endermen costume is broken after all…

    • vecordae says:

      I would like to point out that, according to science, that turning a flight surface backwards will cause the plane to go down and not up. This also applies to dragons, which are just a sort of slow, wiggly, lazy plane, afterall.

      My claims can be verified by going to this site: http://amasci.com/wing/wingwork.html and looking at section titled “Why use ‘airfoil’ shape at all?”.

      EDIT: I am aware that all of the claims in this comment are intentional fabrications. I find that sort of thing funny.

    • bleeters says:

      The dragons used to fly forwards. Then they took an arrow in the knee.

    • alundra says:

      @bleeters

      wow, I actually laughed hard at that knee bit…faithful testimony of the time I’ve spent on this thing.

    • formivore says:

      But if placed on a treadmill that moves backwards at the precise speed at which the dragon is running forwards, the dragon will not be able to achieve lift. This is due to the Bernoulli effect.

      Also the correct term is ‘draconologist’.

  16. Kinch says:

    Don’t patch for now if you still can. The patch introduced a major bug with resistances – both on gear and racials. Just had a few quite difficult dragon fights despite all of my frost/fire resistance gear.
    http://youtu.be/kk2SbJnsXFM

    • StingingVelvet says:

      Since I don’t really use resistances and the mouse is finally tolerable I am going to stick to 1.2. Good info for others though.

  17. Sic says:

    What? All the dragons were supposed to attack?

    I thought that was rather brilliant. That some of them just flew high up in the air minding their own business. That one happened on maybe something like 30% of the dragons for me.

    • Carra says:

      They won’t attack players who are too low level.

    • Xerian says:

      Actually, those wont attack at all unless provoked. Theres a decent bit of them, which are kind of optional to fight, it doesnt depend on level. (Level does give you more different kinds of dragons to encounter though, tougher ones etc etc)
      Or atleast I still get the “roaming” / “circling” ones, @ level 46. ;P

    • Jupiah says:

      If it’s a bug then it’s a good one. I’ve encountered 4 dragons so far in my playthrough, the first 3 attacked me immediately but the 4th one left me a nervous wreck because it just circled above me for almost 10 minutes like the world’s most terrifying buzzard. I suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to go explore in that dark cave surrounded by skeletons I’d passed by earlier.

    • HothMonster says:

      I think some of them are just afraid of me.

  18. DarthBenedict says:

    Bethesda UI has leveled up to windows 3.1!

    Perk unlocked: Clicking on things in menus now works!

  19. Carra says:

    I hope this means I can finally remap my keybindings to the numpad…

  20. Shadram says:

    QD Inventory is a good start at fixing the inventory interface. It’s still key-based, but putting the categories at the top and the item stats against all the items at least speeds up/reduces the scrolling you have to do.

  21. Uglycat says:

    2 hours of post-patch hitch-free gaming for me. Having to retrain some fingers that keep wanting to go to obsolete keys now they’ve fixed the keymapping (which is nice).

  22. Sp4rkR4t says:

    I am so happy I decided to wait to get this, at the rate Bethesda are introducing new bugs though I might have to wait until the second GOTY/Platinum edition if I want a relatively bug free play.

    • Shadram says:

      But bugs are fun! Now you’ll never paticipate in the hilarity of Lydia spoiling your wedding by turning up dead. But if you’re quick, you could still make it in time to fight a backwards dragon…

    • CaptainVolcanoes says:

      I dont know, I mean the way the game bugs.. it kinda makes the game what it is, the fact that I could never cure vampirism on Oblivion or the fact that Maramal just stands and looks blindly at me despite the fact I’m supposed to be married by now.. it’s what makes a bethesda game a bethesda game.

      EDIT: Or the fact that the fighter’s guild in Morrowind in that weird island to the east? Wolverine hall or whatever it was called… too long to remember. When I got there, everyone was dead inside. No reason, it just was.
      I just thought “Hahaha Elder Scrolls… I love you!”
      I’d never have it any other way :)

  23. nayon says:

    you realize that non-steam versions also activate on steam, right? so there isn’t actually a non-steam version.

  24. CaptainVolcanoes says:

    So tell me, I modded stuff alot, I mean self-made mods and user-made mods..

    I have yet to experience a single problem with the patch… But maybe it’s different vs having modded the game with various mods or not.

    What do you think?

  25. CaptainVolcanoes says:

    Weird.. When I add a reply, it never seems to show up…

  26. TheBigBookOfTerror says:

    Hmm, worrying. I think I updated to 1.1, will hold off on updating to 1.2. I have had no issues whatsoever, not even crashing and Skyrim came out during my holiday so I put in some silly hours. I only fiddled with some basic .ini settings and the uGrid thing just confused me and I don’t want to break my quite high level save. Haven’t even delved into any mods yet. The only thing I have done is run using the 4GB utility but then since it ran smoothly on “high” before I’m not sure if there is any difference or need for me to use it.

  27. Hendar23 says:

    You see, this is why I don’t run out and buy new games anymore. I’ll probably play this in a few years time. The bugs will have been crushed, by the devs or the modders.The DLC will be bundled in. The best mods will have been made and filtered for quality.. It will be cheaper then. I’ll have a PC that can do it justice.

    It’s not like I don’t have enough games to play. I was playing Morrowind last year. After about ten years of polishing it’s fantastic. Right now my RPG itch is being scratched by Baldurs’ Gate, in the from of the BigWorld mod. It’s a dream. Lots of quality content added, bugs crushed. Running at high res. Zero loading times.

    The last couple of times I bought a full-priced game at release I felt burned. I’ll check in with Skyrim sooner or later. No rush.

    • Shadram says:

      Will there ever be a Skyrim comments thread without people boasting to the world that they’ve not bought it, and will wait for the GotY edition? Well, maybe when the GotY edition is release, I guess. I’m fairly sure that they post to convince themselves that they’re not missing out and don’t need the game, when clearly they are and do.

      The bugs are not bad. I’ve had 2 CTDs in 40+ hours play, and no broken quests. The bugs I have seen have been minor, like some wonky NPC AI, and usually only visual and comical, like a flying mammoth. If bugs is the reason you’re refusing to buy, then don’t. This is one of the less buggy releases I’ve purchased this year.

    • Snargelfargen says:

      I’ve had 3 quests that broke partially. I’ve been able to solve them all except for one where every time I travel to Markarth I get arrested.

      I’ve also had some pretty bad stuttering problems in first person that could only be fixed by playing in windowed mode or downloading a patch that capped the game’s framerate.

      I told myself I would wait. Why didn’t I!
      It really is a very buggy game, people are just encountering an incredibly large variety of different problems. I actually find a lot of the bugs (like backwards dragons, or the random cloned npcs) to be a lot of fun, but the game is a teetering house of cards at the moment.

  28. James G says:

    Had heard about the console patch trouble, and meant to turn off auto patching, but forgot. It patched. However I haven’t had any trouble in two and a half hours play, although didn’t pay much attention to magic resistance. Dragons were flying forward though.

    Haven’t had a huge number of bugs, although the first patch did seem to introduce CTDs every couple of hours. (None seen this session, although that might be due to adding TESV.exe to my DEP exclusions list.) Only other issue is some shonky physics, and the non fading projectiles, although I hadn’t realised that was a bug.

  29. FRIENDLYUNIT says:

    “Rare”?

    I don’t think it means what they think it means.

  30. kikito says:

    Well, my $15 went to the humble introversion bundle. I’ll wait until this is more stable and cheaper. And the lawsuit against Notch has been squashed.

  31. Captain Hijinx says:

    If you have any Mods installed, they’re going to fuck your game up, so you’ll want to remove any if you’re having problems. I couldn’t start my game with one of the Smithing mods that a lot people recommended enabled.

  32. Bubbley says:

    Paarthurnax flew backwards in an upwards spiral while I was talking to him. The subtitles were there but he was so goddamn high in the sky & I couldn’t hear anything he said.

    • Supahewok says:

      That’s not new. Well, the flying backwards part is, I guess. I couldn’t tell which way he was flying when it happened to me a week and a half ago since it was night.

  33. Nardom says:

    Sigh, i was wondering what was going on, i spend the last few days living under a rock… well, not realy, i’ve been investing over 80 hours into skyrim over the course of the last 4 days or so.

    At first everything was fine, but now i’m running into dragons flying backwards and fresh bugs I did not encounter before (and the game doesn’t seem to run that well all in all either).
    (I am a PC user btw, as i saw someone mentioned the dragons being a console only issue,..someone somewhere.)

  34. HothMonster says:

    Now if only they would make my horse less aggressive.

  35. matrices says:

    This patch is a disaster. Do the sensible thing and revert to 1.1. You can do this only on Win 7:

    Right-click skyrim folder in Steam folder, hit properties, previous versions tab, then copy over last night’s version of the folder into some other location. Delete the existing Skyrim folder, replace with the old Skyrim folder.

    Before doing that, though, right click the game in steam and go into the properties or whatever to tell it not to auto update.

    I also heard that it will auto update anyway if you tell Steam to start up with your PC but I don’t know.

  36. Tuor says:

    Wow. That dragon was *moonwalking* across the sky. Michael Jackson lives on!

  37. Bob Sacamano says:

    I must be the luckiest person alive when it comes to bugs or something because I rarely experience them, and when I do their usually trivial/funny glitches. I’ve run into two bugs with skyrim. One during the “cornered rat” quest. That was easily fixed. The second near the end when you first fight alduin (he never showed up). That was easily fixed.

    The gaming gods love me.

  38. Stromko says:

    I know several people in real life who pirate games, and none of them had less cash than me, they simply had their priorities someplace else. They buy silly ear-candy headphones, fancy trench coats, overly tight jeans and all sorts of other absurdities. Evidently they just don’t care about games as much as I do. Also they are hipster douchebags, but that’s not the point.

    If you seriously can’t wait to play a game and don’t want to pay for it, then clearly they’ve made a really good game that really appeals to you but you don’t feel like supporting that. Launch sales are actually a huge metric that publishers use to decide what studios are successful and what aren’t, so if you’re pirating it as the only alternative to buying it ASAP, then you’re sending a message that the game you can’t wait for still just isn’t good enough.

    I’ll give one caveat though, games really do need demos. Sometimes I resort to renting them on console, since so many things are cross-platform these days, but then I end up never buying them since I’ve already taken the sheen off the entire game (partly due to being on an inferior platform). Some PC-only games that don’t have demos, I just wait until they’re either crazy cheap or never buy them at all. Either way, they miss out due to not having a demo.

    edit: Reply Fail. This was supposed to be a post about how I’m just not going to play Skyrim until they come out with another patch, for fear that they’re going to break all my saves if I load them now, but instead it posted this thing from earlier in the thread.

  39. Stromko says:

    I’m just going to stop playing until they come out with another patch. 140 hours in-game is enough for now, I think, and I just picked up that introversion bundle (only got Aquaria, Dungeons of Dredmor and Defcon but still worth it) so at least I have something else to do.

  40. MultiVaC says:

    I used to be an adventurer like you. The Bethesda tried to patch my game.

  41. BobsLawnService says:

    So I’ve run the update but haven’t launched the game since then. On WindowsXP is there any way to revert to an earlier patch or do I just hold off on playing Skyrim until they release a newer patch?

    • The Tupper says:

      I’m on XP and it seems okay to me (but haven’t played a huge amount since the patch). One thing that’s annoying me is that they still haven’t fixed the XP bug that causes stuttering and freezing when walking through open areas. The workaround (using compatibility mode and re-activating the second CPU core) hopefully still works. Will come back here if it doesn’t.

  42. hellwalker says:

    I was greeted (PC) by game not starting, shortcut broke and launching game would just start launcher and hitting play restart it,

    I did that steam recheck game files thingie, steam said one file was corrupted redownloaded it and game played fine.

    I have not noticed any bugs appearing in the game, I managed to clean several dungeons and finish sanguine quest before it was time to go to work, can’t say anything about dragon, haven’t seen one after the one attacking Helgen, not in the mood to start MQ, I recon dragon hunting will feel more epic after I have archieved some skill and fame in skyrim.

  43. Viserion says:

    No problems after the patch for me, my mods work ok, killed 2 dragons. I don’t know about resistances but the few fights I had seemed normal to me. Then again I’m not the kind of person who notices that stuff unless it’s glaringly obvious. I hope they fix things, it’s a pity that some people can’t play such a great game. On the other hand heavily modified .ini’s and mods seem to be a recipe for disaster.

  44. Mr Wonderstuff says:

    Most of the problems raised seem to be as a direct result of fucking around with ini’s and adding mods not made within the construction kit. The amount of moaning from the PC crowd (I am a cross platform person including PC) is enough for Bethesda to just stop developing for that market altogether. Whilst it may be fun and in some ways productive to mess around with the settings you can hardly blame Bethesda for some of the crashings/CTDs. I for one am playing this on a PC within minimal tweaks and haven’t encountered many problems at all (except with the screwed mouse/joypad vertical look introduced in the new patch – remedied by creating a new ini).

    • thekeats1999 says:

      Whereas i am playing a completely vanilla version of Skyrim and since the update i have had 3 ctd’s in two hours. Once trying to fast travel and twice at random just travelling.

      Before that. Not a single ctd.

    • Wulf says:

      Let’s just ignore all the bugs and crashes that the PC crowd fixed in Fallout 3 that the whiny console community never had access to, shall we? Good grief, you have a selective memory. Are you one of them forum plants that BBC were talking about?

      Anyway, here’s something funny for you: The ENBSeries patch, the DLL thingy that also comes bundled with the Enhanced Shaders mod (that I’m using) made the game more stable. It used to be that I’d get a tiny stall every 10 or so seconds, which was incredibly frustrating, and the game would just do a silent CTD on every third or fourth taskswitch. Both of these issues were gone before and after the patch.

      This was a case of a modder working to increase the stability and performance of the game, and succeeding at it. In fact, I’d recommend that people having CtD issues actually have a look at that, since the random CtD issues seem to be graphically inclined, even the zoning ones, I imagine.

      So yeah, let’s forget all the good that modders have done for Bethesda throughout the years, let’s gut them and put their mutilated, lifeless corpses up on display, purely because they’re going through a pre-CK rough patch. Let’s ignore the fact that they’ve already fixed a number of quest issues (like the Esbern one), which Bethesda has not (which I actually needed), and let’s ignore the inevitable community bugfix patch that will fix so much.

      Yeah. Let’s do that. That would be so good of us.

      Again, are you one of them forum plants BBC talked about, here just to sew the seeds of discord?

  45. Squirrelfanatic says:

    ” – Dragon corpses now clean up properly”

    I used to love the little visits Mirmulnir’s corpse would surprise me with. One time he appeared right behind my back, stuck in a guards tower. He’s such a sweet guy.

  46. jakonovski says:

    Getting arrested in Markarth is actually a legit conclusion of a certain quest.

    • Wulf says:

      I was so confused by that. See, I went werewolf and I had no trouble taking those guards out. Then I left and none of the other guards said anything, it was like it had never happened. Apparently Beth hadn’t considered that anyone would have a way to take out those three guys, so… it was a bit of a mess. Thankfully I had a quicksave so I could go back and do it the ‘proper’ way, the way they’d intended me to but I didn’t because free will.

    • Hidden_7 says:

      The two times I’ve done it, the guards have been quite tough, and more have come. One time Vigilant Tyrannus(? I forget his name) came in from the street to help, and he was unkillable. In any case, it seems they just keep sending guards after you, and guards who refuse to do anything other than send you to prison. So I’d say they did consider that people could take out those three guards, and if you really managed to kill them and get away before more swarmed you, well, that’s a legitimate conclusion to that quest. You avoided going to jail, but you’ll quite naturally have a large Reach bounty on your head because of all the murders you’ve been connected to, so you’ll have to leave town. Seems a reasonable conclusion to that quest to me.

    • Brun says:

      @Wulf:

      Killed all three guards with little trouble but was arrested upon encountering more guards anyway. Might have just bugged for you or something.

  47. joeroyo says:

    The problem I am experiencing now is potentially to do with the latest patch. I bought the game when I was in Denmark, with my Steam account I set up in the UK (bear with me) I am currently in Tokyo and I had been happily playing Skyrim in my hotel room, attempting to fight off a cold.. But when I decided to log into steam instead of running it in offline mode, It suddenly decided that I was no longer allowed to play as the game hasn’t been released in Japan. :(

  48. Drayk says:

    Maybe I am lucky but the only bugs I got are typos since the last patch and had freezes when trying to change the name of an enchanted item…

    Not nearly as buggy as Oblivion was, at least for me…

    I just fought one of those bastards mages with strange mask while exploring… The wall next to him gave me Three dragon words at once… Is it normal ?

  49. faelnor says:

    Hah. I’m still running 1.0 and everything has been rather bug-free so far, plus I don’t have to run Steam to launch the game. So long suckers!

  50. JackShandy says:

    This seems like a mediocre patch Bethesda have rushed out to encourage people who are still using the 4GB Ram fix to play Skyrim without steam enabled to update their .exe so that they can’t anymore.

    They put it out on PS3 first though, so maybe I’m being paranoid.

  51. Silver says:

    strangely enough lost two latest savegames I made, but other before were there :)
    I usually make two saves after every playsession and sometimes in between two (two because my brother also plays, and wouldn’t want some accidental overwrite as happened with FO3 which will bring me down :))

    Anyways, yeah, lost only 15 minutes of gameplay, but backuping my saves now.. to be sure.

  52. meshling says:

    I haven’t run into any dragons yet since patching to 1.2, but I find that the hawk’s flying around solitude are now immortal and will continue to fly around with arrows stuck in them if you try to take them down. No more fletchings for me :(

  53. Zelius says:

    The magic resistance bug is kind of a gamebreaker for me. Luckily, I still haven’t finished the latest DLCs for New Vegas and Deus Ex. Guess I’ll play those until these issues resolve themselves.

  54. amorpheous says:

    Post patch issues for me:

    * Slew a dragon and didn’t absorb its soul. This happened to me once before the patch too, but for it to happen again on the first dragon after the patch that supposedly fixes the issue is worrying.
    * Can’t navigate menus using arrow keys any more. WASD still works though.

    • Wulf says:

      Ironically, I had the opposite happen to me.

      It went something like this…

      Oh, a dragon is attacking Marthal. …sod it, I don’t want to kill it. Besides, I like watching it. Farkas isn’t too bothered either, so we’ll just sit back here and watch the show. Wow, they can’t even scratch him. Wait, where’s he going? …what just took his health down to half. Two giant spiders are kicking his arse… seriously?! What do we need a Dragonborn for again? These people just need to raise pet giant spiders and use them in their militia. Okay, yeah, wow… those two spiders just owned that dragon and good. I wonder what’ll happen now with me all the way over h–the dragon is disintegrating, huh. Wait, what?! I’m getting a dragon soul? Why am I getting a dragon soul from literally almost a cell away when I can barely even see the dragon?!? The hell???

      It’s worth noting that neither I nor Farkas participated in that fight and I still got a dragon soul from a ridiculous distance.

    • Brun says:

      @Wulf:

      Dragon Soul absorbs seem to have unlimited range. I killed a dragon once and then fast traveled away before absorbing its soul, but I still received the soul (complete with animation) in my new location.

  55. foop says:

    Gah! Not only do dragons fly backwards, often at incredible speed. They’re also now sometimes unkillable.

    I just reduced one to zero health, and all that happened is that it flew like a crippled thing and reduced my framerate to a tiny amount before zooming backwards in tiny circles.

    • Wulf says:

      Oh gods. I haven’t had dragons flying backwards yet on mine. That affects the PC version, too?

      Oh dear… oh dear oh dear oh dear.

    • Hidden_7 says:

      Yes, it’s incredibly frustrating. I had to put my Dragonborn character on hold, since I just couldn’t kill any dragons. They’d maintain a minimum distance from me, rather forcibly being pushed back from me if I got close, and absolutely would refuse to attack. Ironically one of the issues the patch was supposed to fix was “dragons not attack” which never happened to me in 1.1, and ALWAYS happens to me in 1.2

      Siiigh. What a terrible patch. And it’s made all the worse by the fact that I really LIKE Skyrim, and now can’t really play it. If I weren’t enjoying the game so much, then a game-breaking patch wouldn’t be that big a deal. Funny how that works.

  56. McCool says:

    Look, I’ve been on Steam since the launch of HL2, but that’s it. I’m boycotting this awful piece of DRM the best I can now. I’ve just been locked out of all of my games due to the arch-idiotic STEAM NEEDS TO BE ONLINE IN ORDER TO GO OFFILNE clusterfuck of a design decision from hell. On top of this Skyrim has mysteriously started to require Steam to run (something which it didn’t used too, most of my time playing it has been while the internet has been out). I finally manage to get online for a few seconds, long enough to log onto steam and put it onto offline mode I think, in those seconds Skyrim starts updating to this patch I want to AVOID and it won’t have time to download anyway, and the game I paid money for is further away from my grasp.

    A pirate wouldn’t have any of these problems. If I had pirated Skyrim I’d be playing it right now. I never thought I’d say this, but Fuck you Valve and Fuck you Bethesda.

    • McCool says:

      Gosh, that was me at maximum angry. Err, sorry about that chaps. Really though. Steam = bad.

    • Wulf says:

      Not to rain on your parade or anything, you know there are ways that you can get an executable which isn’t tied into Valve DRM without delving into the depths of piracy, right? Even RPS mentioned it a bit back.

    • dogsolitude_uk says:

      @Wulf: I still have the original .exe file somewhere safe after being tipped off about the damage done by the first patch, tried to put it back in(!!!), but Steam’s not having any of it… :(

      I was using it in compatibility mode to stop the annoying 5s freezes every 5s when outdoors, but the game’s now utterly unplayable on my old machine now. Shame, I had it running really rather well…

      Edit: OK, got it working again… the tesv.exe I used was the 18,676kb one from my original installation. Back to my picaresque Khajiit adventure…

    • Nim says:

      If you have purchased a legitimate copy of the game I do not think there is anyone who can judge you if you choose to play with the pirated version. You have paid for a license to use the software and is well within your right to do so whether or not you are connected to the internet. For example take a game with no DRM outside of a cd-key. I can download a “pirated version” online, use my valid cd-key and suddenly it’s a legitimate copy as I have paid to use the software. So go ahead and play the game if you can acquire a working copy not connected to that mess of digital rights management and do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

    • mechabuddha says:

      I keep hearing about this, but don’t understand. I can log into Steam in offline mode from the start – no logging in to online mode first at all. Am I missing something?

    • Durkonkell says:

      Indeed, although you need to have your user data stored on that machine. The following situation must obtain for you to be able to log straight in to offline mode:

      1. You must have steam set to remember your username and password – this MUST have been enabled before you closed steam last time.
      2. You must actually be offline. Unplug your ethernet / disable your wi-fi.

      Then you start steam and hit “start in offline mode” when it fails to connect to the servers. I haven’t had ‘properly offline’ offline mode fail to work for me in yeeaars!

  57. povu says:

    Modders are making good progress on the UI.

    https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-pjOrjdh9B-E/Ttbsy9WOV8I/AAAAAAAAAE0/eTovjwfHIT4/s912/TESV%2525202011-12-01%25252003-50-16-79.jpg

    Will put equipped items on top, shows more items at once, allows for sorting by weight and price and all that good stuff.

    http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1297152-wipz-skyui/

  58. pipman3000 says:

    Never change Bethesda, never change.

  59. alphadogg says:

    How do “dragon corpses now clean up properly” after themselves?

  60. KlaxonOverdrive says:

    Last night was the first time I was able to play the game for more than 10 minutes without a CTD. It might have been the patch, it might have been a coincidence, but whatever it was I’m grateful.

  61. Wulf says:

    Omigosh.

    Something to note: This isn’t me just hatin’, those who’ve been following the forums know that I’ve pretty much come to halfway liking Skyrim. I still have issues with the content feeling unsatisfying, but generally there has been a lot I’ve liked.

    1.2 bombed, didn’t it? Not being nasty or anything here, but omigosh. It killed a number of mods that I’d come to find necessary (I can’t break weapons down into their base components any more), it’s broken resistances, it’s made custom keybinds worse, and… wow…

    Be glad you’re not on the PS3 version. Those poor sods have their dragons flying backwards.

    Bethesda, do the kind thing, roll the patch on the PC and PS3 back to 1.1? I know the 360 probably needs it for the texture pop-in issues, which were apparently terrible, but the other platforms have a worse game for it, now.

    And goodness knows when this’ll be fixed.

    I miss my crafting mods. :C

  62. dogsolitude_uk says:

    What’s really jerking me off is that f***ing Steam went ahead and updated the damned thing even though I’d ticked the box to explcitly request it *not* to update.

    I’d done this because running the tesv.exe in Win 98 compatibility mode directly through the shortcut game a huge performance boost on my ageing system, and stopped the glitch where the game froze for about ten seconds at a time.

    Luckily I’ve still got the original .exe after having been tipped off about the first patch ruining this process, but now this doesn’t work either.

    All a bit of a bl00dy mess really.

  63. karnie says:

    I have a feeling most of the issues people are having now stems from the patch fixing games that have already been mucked with via mods, .ini tweaks, etc.

    • Chaz says:

      Well I’m running vanila Skyrim and it still crashes out to desktop every so often, and after extended play some of the textures on peoples outfits don’t load in, leaving them all dressed in a smooth glowing purple outfit.

      So I’d say that mods aside there are still plenty of issues with the game. Lets not forget that a lot of these problems affect the console versions too.

  64. Chaz says:

    Damn, and I was going to play this for a bit tonight too. Guess I’ll have to wait for the patch to fix the patch. May as well get back and try to finish Rage off, presuming of course that Bethesda haven’t broken that with a patch recently too.

  65. Grayvern says:

    There’s a link on the steam forums to take the game back to 1.1 after that I suggest you make the game ‘your own’

  66. bonuswavepilot says:

    Not played this, but that screenshot made me chortle.
    The upright, noble bearing, the meticulous fantasy landscape, and a horse magnetically attached to a 50 degree slope…
    :)=

  67. thebigJ_A says:

    The patch to fix the patch is next week:

    http://www.bethblog.com/index.php/2011/12/01/skyrim-what-were-working-on/

    Quest fixes and such aren’t coming till January for some damn reason. That’s data, Bethesda, not code. Sigh.

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