Hello,

I've been playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for a quite a while now and for a few days now there is this weird glitch when I want to forge items..
Well I can't really forge anything except for arrows even though my Smithing skill is over 80 and I have activated mutiple perks within this skill.

I don't have any mods installed, well not anymore since I tried removing them all to see what would happen, but nothing has changed so far..

Another weird thing is that there are these books I can buy from blacksmiths, they say like 'Spell book: forge leather bracers' and if i buy these I can smith leather bracers.. But I'm nothing going to pay 5k gold to smith an ebony shield or something.

Thanks in advance!

You say that you don't have any mod installed but blacksmiths do not sell spell books in Skyrim. Your problem is definitely mod related. It comes from the fact that you removed your mods but loaded a save that was made while you were using these mods. Their content, scripts and so on, are "baked" in your save. You have two options: begin a new game or re-install the mods you were using, all of them.

Thanks for the answer! Do you think it would be possible to remove this mod entirely if I were to "repair game" in steam? Or to remove the mod entirely without having to lose all of my content in any other way? My character is level 68 but I would like to slay a legendary dragon and for that I have to be level 75 or something.. I'd like to be able to forge some dragonscale armor etc. since I've been hoarding Dragon scale/bones since the day I started..

Unfortunately verifying the game cache in Steam won't fix your save. The content of the mods you were using is in your save and it won't go away. There is a small utility that can remove traces of scripts belonging to mods that are no longer used; you can try it but I cannot assure you that it will solve your problem.

It's here: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/52363/?

I have had this more than a couple times

It seems to me that over half of problems that are supposedly not mod related are actually mod related, because people download 100 overhauls after 5 hours of playtime and can't tell vanilla apart from mods

That may be, but this particular mod related problem is caused by the fact that Skyrim incorporates data from mods into your save file, and that data is not removed when the mod is uninstalled.

The answer, of course, is to make a separate hard save before experimenting with a mod, so that one can revert to the unmodded condition if one removes the mod.

Sorry for my late answer but I think I found a solution.. I'm not sure if my old account is fixed, but I started a new account and it was still the same old bug that occurred.. I did the following: go into steam and launch Skyrim. In the Skyrim start menu there is this option: Data files. When you click on this you can see all the mods, you simply just have to toggle the one off that you don't want to use...

I haven't the heart to tell debelgeast, anyone else up for it?

I guess I'm the only one here, so... First a history lesson.

Back in the days of dinosaurs when we played Morrowind (as well as early Oblivion) those data file checkboxes were all we had, and we used them to activate and inactivate our mods. Activation and inactivation should really not be confused with installation or uninstallation. When you install a mod, it's files are downloaded, unpacked, and placed in a folder where your game can find them and use them. this includes your .esp, but also things like meshes, textures, some scripts (depending on the game) and archives ... bsa files. After that is done, you have to activate your mod, that means checking the little box in data files in one way or another. Nowadays, we use things like Nexus Mod Manager or Wrye Bashe or Smash, and other similar tools that check and uncheck data files for us.

When you go to uninstall that mod, you can if you wish uncheck that little box, and all that really does is make the game not add that mod into the load order when you start up the game. All those files, like the textures, meshes, bsa files and so forth are still sitting there, they haven't been removed. What's worse though, is that scripts belonging to that mod that were running still remain in your save game files. these are called orphans, because in a sense they just sit and spin, with no way to accomplish their intended purpose. they are designed to reset variables, use functions, and a whole variety of things, but if the mod is not activated they just can't do it. Whatever they CAN do, they WILL, and that's where the corruption of your game comes from.

In your case, your smith has a book placed in his inventory that no longer exists. Your forge attempts to use the orphans it can see to do the jobe you want, but it just can't because things are missing. Imagine the golden gate bridge with 200 feet of it's span missing in the middle. CArs could conceivably go almost halfway across, but they couldn't get to the other side. So, some of them would turn around to back, while others would try to back up and a huge mess is the result.

What I'm saying is your solution does nothing at all if you've already deactivated the mods.

Thanks Neil. I'd heard of Orphaned programme data. Now I know what it means....cheers for that.