Greetings,

I am asking for some help getting Skyrim (with all expansions/ legendary edition) up and running
again on the PC, and want to do what I can to prevent any savegame bloat.

I have last played around patch 1.3, I think, and I know there have been a lot of changes. I know
that some of the patches since then have applied the CPU patch which fixed most/some of the
framerate issues in the larger cities. They also seemed to have patched cleaning of arrows,
weapons, nirnroot and ash piles that were causing savegame bloat.

My question to you guys is, do I need any other mods/fixes to prevent savegame bloat? In your
experience, did the patches truly prevent savegames from growing and growing over time? Even
for the expansions? Is there anything new, game-breaking, in the expansions that I should know about? I have not played them...

Just want a stable-as-possible time, this time around. If you know any other tweaks or stability
information it would be greatly appreciated! Thank you all for your time!

The unofficial patches assist greatly in this regard, I'd recommend installing them (they fix a lot of things Bethesda doesn't).

The unofficial patch will fix the many save game bloat possibilities.

I'm curious, do the unofficial patches clean up the weapon that fall from enemies?

They certainly do. While they can roll away or float into the air, weapons and shields are bound to the inventory of any fallen NPC; if you take it from their inventory, it disappears from the scene and into your inventory. When dead NPCs disappear, so do their weapons and shields that are lying on the ground.

ah... that's one I forgot... the npc weapons used to persist after the npc body decayed. I will have to take a look at these unofficial patches....

**Edit - Thank you very much for the tip about the Unofficial Patches**

Is this the correct patch? Looks like it covers all the expansions also...

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

That's the one. The expansion fixes are separate DL's though, the link is just for the basic game.

yea... sorry, that's what I meant... looking into the details of these... I think this was still in the works when I last played, and now they have gone a looong way!

Anyone use or can comment on the BOSS utility they mention? I am reading up on it now...

If you start installing more mods than just the unofficial patches, BOSS is great at helping set the correct mod load order, avoiding many mod conflicts and problems, and also tell you if they have 'dirty edits'. Those are leftover pieces and duplicates of files not needed in the mod that can also cause problems. They can be 'cleaned' by using Tes5Edit. Both programs have helped me enormously. Neither program is hard to do once you thoroughly read the instructions. There are also instructional videos on youtube, however I found them quite confusing and just went over the written instructions until I understood the steps.

Edit: There are threads on both programs in the Skyrim Mods forum. I won't be without either one of these again.

I play on console, and had to stop playing my first character because of the bloat issue. After one of the patches, he became playable again. I haven't had any bloat problems with any of my other characters since then.

Install the unofficial patches, and there are a couple of other patch/fix mods available on both Workshop and Nexus that specifically deal with issues like ashpiles and weapons (if someone finds one that gets rid of dead dragons following you around, please let me know...I've got a couple that always appear when I fast travel or enter city cells).

The really critical save game bloat was caused by one of the Sounds of Skyrim mods, but that was complicated by a Steam problem that occurred around the same time - basically, the SOS problem blew out save files up to around 50-60 meg, and the Steam problem basically crashed everyones games who were playing at the time, and corrupted the Steam files so that Steam wouldn't run. Although Steam got fixes out as soon as they could, it took around 3 days for fixes to come on line for the folk playing Skyrim at the time, or worse, for those trying to identify and correct the SOS problem. Essentially, the Steam error required you to remove your Steam.exe files, then restart it from another location so that the refreshed .exe was installed (Steam didn't tell us this, as they anticipated that their patch fix would sort the problem - it did, but not for those of us gaming at the time). As far as SOS went, a fix was eventually found, but by some of the more experienced modders, but the author of SOS went to ground and didn't contact anyone and was not responding to contact...probably due to the high level of criticism at the time...so, as far as I know, the actual SOS fix has not been released, and SOS is essentially not supported, although some people who didn't experience the bloat issue are still running it.

There are some fixes some people disagree with though. Like Necromage doing only what it should


Very useful utility to have. Especially when used with Wrye Bash, not so much for Skyrim though as Skyrim's Wrye Bash lacks the more advanced function of it's Oblivon and Fallout versions. Nothing bad to be said about BOSS by me though, and i've been using it since Oblivion. It's come a long way since then

BOSS is good value, although if you use a lot of lesser known mods it probably won't have them listed. Where it is handy is if you use TESVedit to clean your mods - that can fix a range of problems, but you do need to read the instructions and follow them to the letter.

Doesn't it also fix the Dawnstar chest?

Ciffworms has been known to completely dissapear from Modding for months, His dissapearance was normal. When Cliffworms returned a fixed version of SOS Civilization was released. The Bloat from SOS Civilizations was caused by removing the Mod from a current Game, not from just using the Mod. I have never removed Wilds and Dungeons from My Game. Removing any Script driven Mod from a character in progress can lead to future problems in Skyrim.

Skyrim has proven to be a very tempermental Game to heavily Mod, and doing a little bit of research when adding Mods to the Game will save a Player headaches down the road. I regularly visit Skyrim Mods just to check on the mods I am currently running. I visit other sites at least once a week to see if My version of the Mods I use are still current. I am still able to take most of My characters and load them into My current Modded Game and play them without problems, unless I forget to use MCM to configure the character to use a newer Mod.

The unofficial patch? yes. But hasn't Bethesda fixed it on their end too? If my memory serves me well, they did.

The Unnoficial Patch removes many of the exploits for a Player Character.

My biggest complaint was the reduction of the radius of Destruction Cloak Spells, but I will still use the USKP.

As of USKP 1.2.7, dual cast cloak spells do have increased radius.

They haven't. I use it from time to time.

What's so important about that chest anyways?

Free stuff.

So? The nearby dungeon also has free stuff, along with skill leveling.

As mentioned, the unofficial patches are wonderful. My Nord has over 400 hours played, with no slowdown or lag. It's been nice, knowing that whenever I stop playing this character, that it will be my decision and not due to the game performance going to hell due to save file bloat, basically forcing me to abandon them.

While playing Oblivion on PS3 and Skyrim on Xbox 360, I couldn't help but feel like I was playing on borrowed time. Gotta love what the unofficial patches do in this reguard with save file bloat.