I am wondering how long can a character be kept going in terms of play hours before the save file starts giving problems or cumulative errors start crashing the game.


Secondarily.....when SSE comes out is it likely to provide longer, more stable saves.


Just as a measure I'm thinking....could you have a single character with let us say 1000 hours on it?

You're talking about save files in the tens of megabytes, running in gigabytes of memory.

I don't know about hours, but I got a level 82 character who had done almost all quests, acquired every unique item (not just artifacts) and found almost all locations, DLCs included. Probably around 99% completion of the game. I lost the character when I was only missing the thieves guild, dark brotherhood and final part of the main quest.

Thanks Glargg,


No, I'm not talking data size....I mean actual play hours with one char in one save file......before it all messes up.




Being devils advocat to make the point.....

Let say a big save file was for arguments sake 10Mb after 100 hours playing had accumulated.

And lets assume steady growth of data size with time played pro-rata


Then 100Mb gives you 1000 hours

And 1Gb gives you 10,000 hours

Thats 3 years at 8hr/day

Thats a LOT of quests and character development


But do you think the game would be reloadable after even say a mere 1000 hours on the same save file?


I am thinking it would corrupt and sieze.


Lets put it another way....is it possible to do all the quests and faction quests and dlc quests with one character in a single play through?


If not....how much then?


How many play hours can a save become before it crashes?


@ Marked for Death....ok thanks...that is some indication of how long. Anyone best that?

BTW...hiw did you lose the char was it save corruption due to file size....or something unrelated?


And...part two of my question....is it likely that SSE would provide a more stable or cleaner save file?

If SSE addresses save game bloat and memory allocation, then it's highly possible that the game will be more stable and less prone to CTD's and freezes with larger save files.


Adain's game after 600+ hr's was completely stable, now because he was a "dragon slayer" my 1st huge RP after getting my PC, he didn't do any quest-line except MQ and Helgen Reborn. I think in all that time I had one random CTD.


Edit : watch home the heat on the X-box 1, Hubby had a game crash when it got hot, but that's to be expected.

I suffer from a very rare disease: completionitis. It's the opposite of restartitis. I play on PC and use the unofficial patches and I had no problems with corruption of any kind. Trying a profile managing mod I couldn't play my old save files anymore for some reason. This has happened twice already to level 80 characters that had almost done everything.

The size of the save game should plateau because cell resets will let some content be deleted, and there's a finite amount of stuff to keep track of. After some point, there will be nothing left to add.

On PC, this doesn't quite work the same way, as the longer you play, the greater the temptation to add mods that have extra save requirements for the new content.

Thanks guys


That's very encouraging.


Yes....I had not considered cell resetting. As long as save bloat is delt with it looks like we're good for the long haul play through then


Thank you