My ess files are now more than 8megs at character level 24. Is that normal or bloated? I used the Wrye Bash tool to remove bloat, but I think it said I didn't have any, but still I thought I'd ask. I just started a new character and was astonished that I didn't even notice when the game would save because it happened so fast. But on my Level 24 guy, saving freezes the game for like 10 seconds - seems like a long time.

lol at the topic. :teehee:

I'd say that's pretty normal. My level 25 ess files are just over 7mb. Of course it all depends on your mods and what needs saving.

My Argonian at just short of 300 hours is at 13MB. Yes, it takes ages to save, but he's still going strong.

My character is level 42 with over 1.5k hours on him. Saves are just under 13mb. Surprisingly saves happen pretty fast. I don't clock 'em but would guess they takes no more than three seconds.

-Decrepit-

Yeah, it's a bit complex... bloat causes big saves, but big saves aren't always bloated.

The term "bloat" in this sense means almost exactly the same thing as "memory leak." It's a side effect of certain script functions being used without sufficient care or understanding. (PlaceAtMe, CloneForm, strings, arrays... did I forget anything?)

Some scripts generate a whole bunch of save data, but do good bookkeeping and actually need it all. They'll make your saves big, but legitimately so.

I haven't used it before, but doesn't Wrye Bash have a tool that reduces bloat? Like I said, I've never used it so I don't know if it applies here, but by the name, it seems like it might.

I've seen you mention this char a few times with over 1.5k of game time...the very definition of dedication :tongue: how in the world do you keep interest though are you not even the slightest bit bored hmy: how much of the MQ have you got left to do if any and how many current/active quests?

Also any chance of a few screenies I'd like to see what your char looks like?

EDIT:

On topic, a few of my saves was about 18-19MB a little while ago and doing a few clean saves on some mods has knocked it down to the 13MB mark.

The vast majority of savegame data is change records to references (NPCs, Creatures, and placed objects), primarily Inventory and Process/AI information. Generally speaking, the size of the savegame is directly related to the number of cells you've visited, and thus the size tends to shoot upwards rapidly as you explore new areas. Most saves seem to range from ~3Mb for new characters to ~15Mb for high level characters, and clearly people have had larger without serious problems.

It's possible (although rare these days) for a lot of unnecessary data to be added by poorly written mod scripts. I believe this is the "bloat" that WryeBash addresses. I'm not sure exactly what it does, but if you're not using any outdated mods then I doubt it will be useful to you.

You don't have to take my word for it, though. You can make Oblivion generate a plain text breakdown of the contents of your save:

• Run Oblivion & load your game
  
• Open the console
  
• Type save filename 1, where filename is a name of your choice. This may take some time.
  
• Open the text dump in you Saves folder, it should be called filename.ess.txt

You'll want to focus on the lines that start with "Total", for example:

Total REFR Num: 4003  Total REFR Size: 152629  Min REFR Size: 2  Max REFR Size: 912  Average REFR Size: 38.13

These tell you the total size for each type of record. CELL, REFR, ACHR, and ACRE records should make up the great majority.

Thanks, everyone! JRoush, you're a rock star. Great info.

If you're a save-a-holic like me, you'll really feel the pain. Every save eating up more and more HDD space on a small fast C: drive. I also archive my saves to keep space free on C: after they're old enough. 7zip is essential. It can compress your saves to around 4% of the original size.

Recently I read of a mod called Clean Up or something like that, that ditches unneeded data to bring down the size of your saves. Personally I'll stick with regular old bloated saves, but that's just preference.