...completing the main quest. I had the foolishness to believe that I could go through all of it without saving or taking a potion, so I did. Unfortunately, at the last undead Blade, I died. The latest autosave was in the very first time I had entered the tomb. :verymad:

Share your saving mistakes here.

Vampire lvl one. Nuff said.

Overconfidence with a 200-HP cap (lvl 46 currently) is definitely not good...

Having not saved in ages, I went down the way from Bruma to Cheydinhal, only to find a goblin shaman and a Warlord. While I was fighting the Warlord, the shaman acid-poisoned me (3-4 moderate damage hit every 5 seconds). I somehow managed to heal myself and kill the Warlord at the same time, but that shamanistic bastard acid-poisoned me again before the previous spell wore off. It's almost impossible for my char to handle two of those spells at once, so I died

I reloaded to find myself just before finishing all my business in Bruma (aka, upon just arriving to the city).

Something very similar to this didn't die though the game crashed to desktop.

Walked into Chorrol one time with one of my old characters, Bill the Breton, who was a sort of stealthy spellsword with questionable ethics. Saved at the gate, just out of habit. Bill had been there a couple of times before and had done all the basic quests, then had later rescued Dar-ma and escorted the Jemanes back to Weatherleah. I had forgotten that there was anything left until Fathis Ules approached him. "Ah," I thought, "that's right - the Honorblade of Chorrol." Bill was pure light armor and wasn't much interested in carrying the Escutcheon, but he had no use for the Honorblade either, nor did he have any compelling ethical reason to either sell it back to Fathis or return it to the Countess. It was just going to be a fetch quest either way, so... might as well get it over with.

He trudged all the way down to Redguard Valley Cave and cleaned the whole place out and retrieved the Honorblade (as an aside, does anyone else find Ogres really dull? Yeah - they've got a bit of personality, which is nice, but they move so slowly and so predictably that it's really no challenge to fight them, no matter who many HP they have.) Left the cave, started trudging back up to Chorrol, and passed by Hackdirt. Bill had been particularly offended by those scumbags, and suddenly decided to just drop in, as long as he was going by, and see what they were up to now that their sacrifice was gone. He went in and poked around a bit, but didn't see anyone around town. He wandered into the chapel on the off-chance, and there they were. They all charged him (except for Vanhonder, the coward, who ran out the door). While he was engaged fighting them, Vlanhonder and two brethren came through the door (I can only think, in spite of the fact that I don't see how the game did it, that he went and got them). Bill was at the far end of the chapel, so the new crush of people pinned him in the corner. He just barely fought them all off and hadn't even had a chance to move when what had to have been all the rest of the Brethren came through the door. I didn't take the time to count, but it must have been a half dozen or so at least. Weighing options quickly, Bill ran out into the night with the Brethren in hot pursuit.

Running through the forest, he soon picked up another pursuer - a black bear. He ran 'round and 'round, but couldn't get away from the Brethren and the black bear. He downed all his potions and cast as many heal spells as he could along the way, but was still a bit below full. Finally, hoping that maybe he could arrange things at least so that the bear attacked some of the Brethren, he stopped and turned around and faced them. And the bear and the Brethren completely ignored each other and focused entirely on him. And.... after a long and arduous battle, he died at their clubs and claws. And........ I hadn't saved since he walked through the Chorrol gate....

Do some people actually play with the Autosave turned off? I tend to get crashes on the door-type transitions from one cell to another, and the Autosave usually allows me to recover.

Having said that, I've several times gone on a long cross-country jaunt, collecting ingredients and bashing bandits, and have forgotten to save for an hour or more. When I do that, I'm almost guaranteed a non-recoverable crash.

Actually, it was shortly after that that I downloaded and installed Streamline, just for the Streamsave feature - a timed autosave. I've got mine set up to save every five minutes in one of 24 rotating slots, so now I'm never more than five minutes past an autosave, which is why I had to go all the way back to a really old character for that story. I had some issues with the in-game autosave - it seemed to cause more crashes than it saved me from and I got a couple of corrupt saves out of it. Streamsave is a bit too crashy for my tastes too, but better than the game's autosave.

That reminds me.... I've been meaning to look for a better autosaver...... off to TESNexus......

Me. My Oblivion installation is *relatively* stable (having 100+ mods, between esp/esm and non-esp/esm), so I can afford not to autosave. Besides, I prefer manual saving. Isn't Autosave technically buggy and could lead to corrupted savegames?

Yes. I′d have to spend much more time deleting unnecessary saves if I had it turned on. Don′t you worry however that any of the above (or below in due time) will happen to me. I carefully studied the manual to Doom 3. What it said?

Save and save often...

Edit: Manually, that is

I have always played with the Autosave turned on. It comes in handy once and a while, and I never have problems with it. That said, I do not rely upon the autosave. I learned in Doom I to save constantly. I quicksave every few minutes, and make a manual save every time I go into a dungeon, city, etc... Because of this, I do not have saving mistakes.

That's pretty much my practice, too. My only problems have happened on those occasions when I had gotten engrossed and forgot to save. That usually happens to me on those long jaunts through field and forest, playing games with the trolls and minotaurs, and harvesting ingredients.

I create a new save file each time my character levels, and archive the old save. I quicksave before doing anything dangerous or tricky, unless my present character is "dead is dead." I manually save my current file after clearing a dungeon. I can always go back to visit any level of any character, by simply restoring that file to my save directory. I always use the console "save" command to create unique save file names, so that they are always alphabetized and easy to search.

I disabled autosave for stability reasons but I do try to save regulary> However since Oblivion is such an absorbing, immersive game I often accidently forget to save and this has led to many a blank stare at the monitor after dying after hours of gameplay without a save :brokencomputer: (This happens often due to me using OOO+MMM creating some truly challenging battles). While I do seem to save a wee bit more often due to a truly horrible moment where I did 4 quests in a row for the Mages Guild before dying without saving it seems I never learn and may have to consider downloading Streamline for the Streamsave feature.

Yes autosave is always turned off it is mor safer that way but remember
Save often the plains of Oblivion is a dangerous realm (hard saves only)

Seems like a good thing :nod:

Was more the PS3 falling over that did me in - hadn't backed up on a memory stick - haven't made that mistake since...

I used to save all the time, but now, I like to live more dangerously, and purposefully wont save unless I'm in a town, so no saving before dungeon diving, during travel between towns, and many quests - makes it all feel a bit more scary when I get caught in the wild by a mountain lion - eeeek! RUN!