Im a huge Skyrim fan,

and i know im not the only one that thinks its the best game ever made.

I dont even care about most of the bugs and glitches, because you can learn to live with them.

But there is 1 thing that holds this game back,

if you play it for long enough your save game will become inevitably bigger and bigger.

To the point where it basically limits the amount of time you can play a each Character.

Even mods cant completely negate this effect.

Which is strange because the game has these so called "Safe locations" so there is no reason every cup and plate u touch in the world needs to be saved.

In my opinion this issue should not even exist, and hold back a great game like this.

Having a "Time limit" is the only thing that keeps it away from perfection. Maybe its just OCD on my part, oh well.

Large files merely take longer to read - it's the content that has the potential to cause problems.

The most common cause of save bloating, is when a script is running constantly and being put into your save data, because its not being properly attached to objects or events and then not being disposed of.

This usually happens when you un-install mods that rely on scripts. ANY mods from any place that relies heavily on scripts.

But, you can get save bloat without any mods at all. !!!

There was the Nirnroot glow bug, for example - the game failed to remove the glow from each plant, and instead added new glow effects on top of the old ones as time goes on.

Those extra data are recorded to your save. I do not know if it's fixed with any USKP.

Consoles have a difficult time, when the save file grows too much. But on PC, things are not that bad.

How big are they? OFten caused by mods.

I dont use any mods, but my computer starts crashing alot when savefiles grow larger than like 30 Mb.

I just dont see why Bethesda would save every item dropped and every knocked over cup forever, inevitably slowing/crashing the game, therefor giving the game a time limit. Its the only reason i would not recommend this game to other people, even though its the greatest game of all time.

As i see it only quests related stuff and "player homes" are required to be saved permanently.

Forgive my noob question but couldn't you just pickup all of those items like that and ditch them in a dead NPC or monster so they get marked for delete? I did that with Oblivion on my XBOX 360 by picking everything up and ditching them so my large save didn't experience the slowdown issue. Make sense?

Oh I suppose you could also sell those items to a vendor too...

Consider the unofficial patch as that fixes potential save game bloating. Backup your saves if you decide to use it.
I've never experienced much over 10mb in my saves. Not every item dropped is saved.

How many items are you carrying? Do you pick up everything? How long have you played your character?

There is a fair amount to save permanently in the game. Not just quests and player home stuff.

Should i ask how many hours you are in ??? 30MB is a bit too much even for an unmodded Skyrim !!!

You could try those, but after doing a BACKUP OF YOUR SAVES FILES. !!!

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http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/52363/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/53045/?

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Also there is no promise it will fix anything, or lower your game saves size. Just try, and see what happens. !!!