Hello

I have not played for a long time. I remember last time I played, at least a year ago, there were many glitches players had to avoid. Yes I could go threw all the topics and threads to see what to avoid but I have lots of better things to do for the next 5 years. So here is the question.

What bugs should I avoid? Can I buy alchemy lab in Whiterun? Will a flute be stuck in my inventory forever? If you played the game threw from 11/11/11 you know what I mean. And if you played Bethsadas other games you especially know why I ask this question two years down the road from release. So what do I avoid. Just in general. I can look up the quests or houses you point out to avoid. Thanks in advance.

BTW I do have the Add-Ons currently released.

This highly depends on whether you are planning to use an existing game save or start a new game completely. Many bug fixes since the game released have been non-retroactive fixes (i.e. you have to start a new game for the "fix" to take effect). The DLC (add-on) bugs have not been touched and all of them are still there, because Bugthesda (I mean Bethesda) only patches the base game. Here is a list of all of the patches and issues that they have supposedly fixed: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Patch

You can buy the alchemy lab for Breezehome if you have both Dawnguard and Hearthfire installed (Hearthfire seems to have fixed that issue which was caused by Dawnguard). As far as Pantea's Flute goes, I'm pretty sure that it still cannot be dropped (on an existing game), because that fix was non-retroactive (if I remember correctly). In the future if you see "unusual" items in a chest (like Pantea's flute, Rjorn's drum, Finn's lute, and certain "Rare Books") you may want to avoid taking them until you get the associated quest to find them. As far as quests to avoid, I could probably make a list "a mile long" of ones that have a potential to bug up, since things can easily go wrong in many situations during the game (see the paragraph below about saving your game often).

At this point, I would highly recommend that you start a new game so that the bug fixes that were non-retroactive will take effect in your game (should you run into them again). Another thing (which is very important) when playing the game is to make sure that you save your game often and backup old saves to an external area, if possible (e.g. Xbox 360 cloud, a USB flash drive, etc.). Also, don't rely on auto saves, in fact it is best to turn them all off, because they can eventually lead to save game corruption, freezing, slow loading screens and possibly other issues.

Thanks BlackPete. I did start a new game. Of course Bethesda couldn't make the patches repair the games I've spent hundreds of hours on in a game I (we) spent $60 and then some on.

So to summarize. Skyrim is still FUBAR. Got it, expected as much. Thanks again.

You're welcome. You're not alone in your frustration, I've lost hundreds of hours of gameplay for the same (or similar) reasons. Hopefully you will have better luck on your new game.